Mountain of Black Glass (74 page)

So at first, that was what had scared Christabel.
Divorce.
That word that sounded like someone slamming a door. When your mommy and daddy didn't live together, and you had to go away with one of them.

But when she had finally made herself brave enough to ask, her mother had been very surprised and said, “No, no, Christabel! No! We're not fighting! Your daddy's worried, that's all. I'm worried, too.” But she wouldn't tell Christabel what she was worried about, except that Christabel knew it had something to do with the Storybook Sunglasses and Mister Sellars' secret, so whatever it was, it was Christabel's fault.

When her parents went on with their whispering-but-scared arguments, Christabel had another idea. Her parents were afraid someone would hear them, but maybe it wasn't Christabel they were hiding from. The arguments were a secret, but who were they trying to keep the secret from?

In her mind Christabel saw something from a kid's show on the net, a story about the North Wind, a frightening, angry face that appeared in the sky. Something like that was all around, maybe, listening, trying to catch her parents talking out loud. Something as thin and slippery as the air, as dark as a rain cloud. Something that could listen at every window.

Whatever the problem was, nothing was right any more. Christabel wished she'd never met stupid old crippled Mister Sellars.

Last night had been the worst. For the first time in days the arguing had gotten loud. Her mom had been crying, her dad shouting in a kind of scratchy way. They were both so unhappy that she wanted to run in from the hall and beg them to stop, but she knew they would just be angry at her for listening. This morning, when Christabel had come down for breakfast, her daddy had been out in the garage and her mommy had looked very sad, her eyes red and puffy-outy and her voice very quiet. Christabel had hardly been able to eat her cereal.

Something was wrong, more wrong than ever, and she didn't know what to do.

 

Christabel had finally switched off Mother Lollipop, because if she didn't keep trying to pick up the teapot at least she wouldn't fall over, when she heard a noise behind her. She turned around, expecting to see the dirty-faced boy with the broken tooth, but it was only her father's friend Captain Ron looking different than usual. He was wearing his uniform, but she was used to that—she hardly ever saw him in anything else. It took a moment before she could figure out that what was different was the look on his face. He seemed very serious, scowly and cold.

“Hello there, Chrissy,” he said. She hated the name, but she didn't make the face she usually did. She felt like running but that was silly. “Is your daddy home?”

She nodded. “He's in the garage.”

He nodded, too. “Right you are. I'll just pop in and talk to him for a minute.”

Christabel jumped up. She wasn't sure why, but she felt like she wanted to run ahead and warn her daddy that Ron was coming. Instead she walked a little way ahead of him all the way across the lawn, then only ran the last couple of steps.

“Daddy! It's Captain Ron!”

Her father looked startled, and for a moment it was like the time when she pushed open the bathroom door and went in by accident when he was naked out of the shower, but he was only taking the seats out of the big van—when he was in a good mood he called it “the Vee-Hickle”—and setting them on the garage floor. He was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, and there were black smears on his hands and arms.

“That's fine, honey,” he said. He didn't smile.

“Sorry to interrupt your Saturday, Mike,” said Captain Ron, stepping into the garage.

“No problem. You want a beer?”

Ron shook his head. “I've got Duncan working with me today and you just know he'd be mentioning it in some report somewhere. ‘I noted an apparent smell of alcohol when Captain Parkins returned.' ” He frowned. “Little prick.” He suddenly noticed Christabel standing near the door. “Oops. Pardon my French.”

“Why don't you run along and play, honey,” her father told her.

Christabel went back onto the lawn, but she found herself slowing down when she was out of sight of the open garage door. Something was different than usual between her father and Captain Ron. She wanted to find out. Maybe it had something to do with why her mother was crying, why they were arguing every night.

Feeling very, very naughty, she quietly walked back and sat down on the path near the garage door where the men couldn't see her. She was still holding Baby Lollipop in her hands, so she made a little pile of dirt and sat him on top of it. He moved his fat little arms slowly back and forth, like he was losing his balance and about to fall.

“. . . Tell you these things pop in and pop out,” her daddy was saying, “but I'm telling you the sonsabitches are lying. I've already scraped all the skin off my knuckles on the damn bolts.” It sounded almost like his normal cheerful weekend voice, but something was not quite right. It made Christabel squirm like she needed to go to the bathroom.

“Look, Mike,” Captain Ron said, “I'll make this quick. I just found out about this little vacation you're taking . . .”

“Just a few days,” her father said quickly.

“. . . And I have to say I'm not real pleased about it. In fact, I'll be honest with you, I'm pretty goddamned pissed off about it.” For a moment as his voice got louder, Christabel got ready to run away, but then she realized he was only walking back and forth between the door end of the garage and where her daddy was. “I mean, now of all times? When we've got the Yak breathing fire about that damned old man? You're just going to cut out for a few days for a little family trip and dump it all on me? That suctions, Mike, and you know it.”

Her father was quiet for a while. “I don't blame you for being upset,” he said at last.

“Don't blame me?
That's
a lot of help! Man, I never thought you'd do something like this to me. And not even talk to me about it first! Shit.” There was a clumpy, clanky sound as Captain Ron sat down on one of the trash cans.

Christabel was excited and scared and confused by the bad language and Ron's angriness, but most of all by this talk of a vacation. What vacation? Why hadn't her mommy or daddy said anything? She suddenly felt very frightened. Maybe her daddy was going to take her away somewhere. Maybe he and Mommy were going to do a Divorce after all.

“Look, Ron,” her daddy said. “I'll tell you the truth.” He waited for a moment. Christabel slid a little nearer to the garage door, quiet as she could be. “We've—we've had some bad news. A . . . a health problem.”

“Huh? Health problem? You?”

“No, it's . . . it's Kaylene. We just found out.” He sounded so strange as he talked that for a moment Christabel couldn't really understand what he was saying. “It's cancer.”

“Oh, my God, Mike. Oh, Jesus, I'm so sorry! Is it bad?”

“It's one of the bad ones, yeah. Even with those whatchamacallits, the carcinophages, it's still not very good odds. But there's hope. There's always hope. Thing is, we just found out and she has to start treatment right away. I . . . we wanted to spend a little time away, with . . . with Christabel. Before everything started.”

Captain Ron just kept saying he was sorry, but Christabel couldn't even listen any more. She was cold all over, as though she had just fallen off a bridge into the darkest, deepest, most freezing water she could imagine. Mommy was sick. Mommy had
cancer,
that terrible pinchy black word. That was why she was crying!

Christabel started crying, too. It was so much worse than she had even imagined. She got up and stared at the ground, her eyes so full of tears that little Baby Lollipop was just bubbles of color. She stamped him into the dirt, then ran into the house.

 

She had her face pushed into her mother's lap, crying so hard she couldn't answer any of Mommy's questions, when she heard Daddy stomp in from the garage and say, “Jesus, that was horrible. I just had to tell Ron the most awful, awful . . .” He stopped. “Christabel, what's going on? I thought you were outside playing.”

“She just came in here sobbing,” Mommy said. “I can't get any sense out of her at all.”

“I don't want you to die!” Christabel shrieked. She pushed her face into her mother's stomach and wrapped her arms around her mother's thin waist.

“Christabel, sweetie, you're mashing me,” her mother said. “What are you talking about?

“Oh, God,” said Daddy. “Did you . . . Christabel, were you listening to that? Oh, honey, were you listening to Daddy and Uncle Ron?”

Christabel was hiccuping now and it was hard to talk. “Don't d-die, Mo-Mommy!”

“What's going on here?”

She suddenly felt her daddy's strong hands curl under her arms. He pulled her away from her mother, although it was not easy, and lifted her up in the air. She didn't want to look at him, but he pulled her close with one arm, holding her against his chest, then took her chin with the other and lifted her face toward his.

“Christabel,” he said. “Look at me. Your mommy's not sick. I made that up.”

“She . . . she's not?”

“No.” He shook his head. “It's not true. She's fine. I'm fine, you're fine. Nobody has cancer.”

“Cancer!” Her mommy sounded really frightened. “For the love of . . . what's going on, Mike?”

“Oh, God, I had to tell a lie to Ron. It was bad enough, doing that to him . . .” He put his other arm around Christabel and pulled her close to his chest. She was still crying. Everything was wrong, it was wrong, everything was crazy and wrong. “Christabel, stop crying. Your mommy's not sick, but there are some important things we have to talk about.” He patted her on the back. He still sounded funny, like something was squeezing him around the neck. “Looks like we need to have a little family meeting,” he said.

 

I
N Cho-Cho's dream he was back on the beautiful island in the secret part of the net, the place with the sand and palm trees, but he was there with his father, who was telling him not to believe any of it—that the blue ocean and white sands were just a trick, that the rich gringo bastards just wanted to trap them like
bichos
and kill them.

Even as he said it, Cho-Cho's father was stuck to the sandy beach like flypaper. It was pulling him farther down, but all the time he kept yanking on Cho-Cho's arm, saying “Don't believe them, don't believe them,” even though he was going to pull Cho-Cho down into the sticky sand with him.

Struggling, trying to scream with a throat that didn't work, Cho-Cho realized that the old man, Sellars, was the one who was pulling on his arm. He wasn't on the beach, he was back in that tunnel, and
El Viejo
was trying to wake him up.

“Cho-Cho, it's all right. Wake up, please.”

Cho-Cho pulled away, wanting only to go back to sleep, but the funny-looking old man kept tugging at him.

“What the hell is this?” said a new voice.

Without thinking, Cho-Cho snatched his homemade knife from the rolled coat he used as a pillow. He scrabbled to the far side of the tunnel and put the wall at his back, then raised the shank of sharpened metal scrap before him, pointing it at the stranger.

“Come near me, I cut you!”

The man was wearing normal clothes, not a uniform, but Cho-Cho knew a cop when he saw one and this was definitely a cop—but there was something else familiar about him, too.

“You didn't say anything about there being anyone else, Sellars,” the man said, staring at Cho-Cho with hard eyes. “What's going on?”

“I admit that I forgot to mention my friend here, Major Sorensen,” Sellars said, “but I assure you he is involved. He must be a part of any plan.”

The man glared at Cho-Cho. “But there isn't room in there! I didn't plan on another person, even a child.” He shrugged and turned his back on Cho-Cho, who was astonished. Was it a trick? Cho-Cho looked at Sellars, trying to figure out why the old man had sold him out.

“I'll tell him everything,” Cho-Cho said out loud to the old man. “Everything about you and that little
much'ita
stealin' food for you, and all that. Little Christy whassername, Bell.”

The big police man turned back around. “Christabel? What about Christabel?”

Cho-Cho suddenly realized why the man was familiar. “
Claro que sí
, you her papa, huh? You in on this?” Maybe this explained some of the weirdness—maybe the little girl's daddy was playing some money game on his bosses, and Sellars was helping him. There had to be some explanation for all this. People like Sorensen didn't just come down into stinking places like this for no reason—you could see it on his face how much he hated the smell, the damp walls.

“Except for Cho-Cho here,” Sellars said calmly, “I have explained everything to you truthfully, Major Sorensen. The boy is here because he sneaked onto the base, and because if I had turned him out, he would have been sure to mention it to you and your associates when he was finally caught.”

“Jesus,” said the man sourly. “Jee-zus. Okay. I'll think of something. For now, we better get moving. I'll just put him in the front seat with me until we get to our place.”

“I ain't going nowhere.” Cho-Cho was beginning to think this was just an excuse to take him quietly. Men like this Sorensen guy were the kind who vacuumed up street kids and disappeared them. Cho-Cho'd seen guys like this before, white and cleanlooking, but hard and nasty, too, when no one was watching.