Phantom (5 page)

"Wow," Ned gasped. "Where did he get all
these cans?"

This made Cloudy laugh even more. Ned moved
to take a closer look. The inside of the shack was a lake of empty
beer cans, four or five feet deep, wall to wall. Enough Iron City
cans to rebuild Pittsburgh from scratch, if that were ever
necessary. The top of a broom handle was just visible, sticking up
in the middle of the single room like the mast of a sunken ship.
Any other furniture or contents the place might hold could not be
seen. Ned couldn't begin to guess how many cans there might be.

"He got some good old ones in there," Cloudy
said. "Down at the bottom."

"Gosh, where does he live now?"

"In the car, where else."

"The car?"

At that moment Peeler emerged from the
baithouse and threw a handful of crab scraps into the little
vegetable patch a few yards away. He glanced up at Ned.

"Damn good car it is, too," he said before
disappearing back inside.

"Only one he ever owned," Cloudy elaborated
lazily. "Kept it all this time."

"Like the beer cans," Ned said. "He must
have every one he ever drank in his whole life."

"And then some. The rest is underground
hereabouts, I forget exactly where."

"Underground?"

"Sure. He used to bury them all, till they
finally got to be too much work."

Cloudy made it sound like the most natural
thing in the world, burying your empty beer cans, but it was too
much for Ned to figure out. He went to take a look at the car. The
weeds and flowers were so tall and thick around it that the vehicle
looked as if it might have grown there, the exotic offspring of
soil, sea and countless subterranean beer cans. The front seat was
gone, undoubtedly the one removed to the baithouse. The floor of
the car was covered with blankets and there was a pillow propped in
the back left corner. All very tidy.

"Sleeping in a car, that's neat, but doesn't
it get cold in the winter?"

"Oh, he got the heater and radio workin' in
there, and he just have to recharge the battery now and then."

"Why does he do it?"

"I never did know that one, Mr. Tadpole."
Cloudy thought about it again, and then shrugged. "For some
unforesaken reason, I guess."

Peeler returned, a beer appropriately in
hand, and dragged a crate across the ground to sit down with Cloudy
and Ned.

"So this old squirrelbait told you about my
house, eh? That what I heard?"

"Yeah, it's great. I wish I could sleep out
in a car."

The two old men laughed.

"But why do you have all those cans in the
house?" Ned asked. "Why don't you just throw them all away?"

"I did. I used to dig a hole in the ground
and dump 'em in and cover ' em up again. When I got tired of that I
started tossin' 'em in the car, but that was no good because the
car filled up in no time. So, instead of livin' in the house and
throwin' the cans in the car, I decided to live in the car and
throw the cans in the house. Took me long enough to figure out, but
ever since things've been fine. It works just right."

"It's a system," Cloudy chipped in, as if
explaining everything.

"But why don't you just have the trash man
take them away every week?"

"If the trash man came here he'd take
everything, lock, stock and barrel," Peeler said, and then he and
Cloudy roared with laughter.

"Where do you live, Cloudy?" Ned asked.

"Oh, I stay in town."

"At the Capitol Hotel," Peeler said
sarcastically.

"Down near Polidori Street," Cloudy went on,
ignoring his partner. "Yeah, I got me a room there."

"I didn't know there was a hotel in town,"
Ned said truthfully. To him a hotel was a big building with a big
sign, and he hadn't seen one in Lynnhaven.

"You wouldn't notice it," Peeler said,
laughing.

"There used to be lotsa hotels here, back in
the days of the old Lynnhaven spa."

"Spa?" Ned didn't know the word.

"Yeah, certainly. All the rich white folks
from Washington, D.C. used to come down here to take a bath."

"In more ways than one," Peeler added.

"That's for sure," Cloudy agreed.

"A bath?" Another one of their incredible
stories was taking shape, but Ned could tell he wasn't being
joshed.

"Yeah, I'm tellin' you," Cloudy continued.
"The rich boys in the govamint come down here with their wives and
girl friends and what not, and they took the hot baths at the spa.
Supposed to be good for you or something. Right here in Lynnhaven.
This used to be quite the town once upon a time."

"Even had a train station," Peeler said.
"Direct line to and from Washington."

"That's right. Lynnhaven Depot, it was
called. Then when it all ended people just started callin' it
Lynnhaven. They forgot about the depot part of it."

"What happened to the place?" Ned asked.

Cloudy held his hand out, palms up.

"The waters went bad," Peeler said.

"Oh, that's what it was, huh," Cloudy said.
"I never did get the right of it."

"The waters went bad and somebody croaked
and the next thing was they shut the spa down. And then they took
away the train tracks and that was that."

"How could the water go bad?"

Peeler smiled at the boy. "Nedly, anything
goes bad if people make it go bad. Somebody put something in the
water or in the ground there that made the water bad. That's what
happened."

Cloudy frowned. "They prove that?"

"Nobody proved nothin' ," Peeler said
emphatically. "Which only goes to show I'm right. You and me must
be the only ones left here who remember anything about it,
Cloudy."

"That's right."

"And you don't remember much .... "

"And Mr. Muckle down to the hotel. He can
tell you about it too, he was around then."

"I thought Muckle was dead," Peeler
remarked.

"Not so's you'd notice."

"Cloudy?"

"Yes, Mr. Tadpole?"

"Is Cloudy your real name?"

"You are one for names," Peeler said,
shaking his head.

"Is it?" Ned asked again, to keep the
question from being sidetracked.

"I won't tell you my real name," Cloudy said
with a broad grin. "But I will tell you how I come by the name of
Cloudy."

"Okay." That was good enough for Ned.
"How?"

The black man sat forward on his crate and
stared hard at Ned. "Look at my eyes," he said. Ned did so. "Now
tell me what you see there."

"Well ... " Ned concentrated. "Big brown
eyes."

Peeler laughed out loud and took another
swallow of beer. The can was empty and he tossed it at the
shack.

"What else?" Cloudy demanded. "What about
those eyes'?"

"I don't know. They're just eyes, that's
all."

"Aw, you ain't lookin' right, Mr. Tadpole.
Okay, I'll tell you. When I was a boy like you my momma look in
these eyes one day and she say, 'Your eyes is cloudy. Cloudy.' And
one of my brothers, fast's can be, he says, 'Is your eyes cloudy,
Cloudy?' And I say, 'No, just cloudy, I guess.' And ever since that
day they's called me Cloudy. That make sense to you?"

"Your eyes aren't cloudy, are they?" Ned
couldn't tell. What did cloudy eyes look like? He'd never heard of
such a thing.

"They must be, everybody says so."

"Do you have, like, trouble seeing?" Ned
asked.

"No, I see just fine. But everything do look
a little cloudy."

The two men cackled with laughter again and
Peeler punched open another can of beer.

"Want to know my middle name?" Ned
offered.

"I surely do."

"Yeah, what is it?"

"Michael. It's my father's name."

"Michael," Cloudy pronounced. "That's a
name, all right."

"I can tell you because you're my
friends."

"Why thank you, Nedly," Peeler said warmly,
giving the boy a thumbs-up sign.

"Everybody should have friends in low
places," Cloudy said, shaking with mirth. "Now you got 'em."

The afternoon wound on, interrupted only by
a couple of people who drove up to buy some sand worms. Ned told
Peeler and Cloudy more about what it had been like living in an
apartment in Washington, and how his parents had waited until his
school year had ended in June before making the move to Lynnhaven,
even though they had bought the house two months earlier.

"That's the old Farley place you live in
now," Peeler said.

'The Farley place?" Cloudy's eyebrows moved
up a notch. "That where he live?"

"What's the Farley place?" Ned asked.

"Where you live," Peeler said. "What's your
daddy do in Washington ?"

"He works for the Internal Revenue." Ned
realized that by answering he had let Peeler change the subject
again, but it wasn't any big deal: a conversation with Peeler and
Cloudy could go here and there, around and around, like a fishline
bird's nest.

"Eternal Revenue," Cloudy intoned.

"That's a good safe job," Peeler said
quickly. "Your folks from Washington, or somewhere else?"

"Buffalo, New York. We go there once or
twice a year to see my grandparents. Usually in the summer and at
Christmas, but we're not going this summer on account of we just
moved into the house."

"Buffalo," Cloudy said. "You been to
Buffalo. I ain't never been there and I'm old enough for a whole
army of you, Mr. Tadpole. What d'ya think about that?"

Long after Ned had left for home and the sky
had gathered into a darkening purple dusk, Cloudy kicked the dirt
with the toe of his shoe, like a nerved-up horse.

"I got to go to town now."

"See you," Peeler said.

"That boy, he very nice."

"He surely is."

"He live on the Farley land?"

"That's right."

"You know—"

"Bullshit," Peeler cut him off.

"I know, I know."

"Besides, there ain't a Christ-thing you can
do about it anyway."

* * *

3. Parents

Michael Covington handed his wife a glass of
sherry and turned to pour a double bourbon with a splash of spring
water for himself. He tested it, approved, and sat down in his
sturdy leather armchair.

"We wanted a place that had been
overlooked," he said. "A nice, quiet, small, older town. And that's
what we found."

Linda nodded. "I know." She hadn't touched
her sherry yet, but held the glass stiffly in one hand.

"You don't have to go far down the road in
either direction to find the kind of new suburban developments that
are exactly what we didn't want."

"I know, and I do like Lynnhaven," Linda
said. "It's kind of run-down and over-the-hill, and that's what
helps make it charming in a way."

"So?" Michael picked up one of his pipes and
idly toyed with it. He hadn't smoked indoors at home in years, but
he still carried at least one pipe with him at all times.

"That's just the problem," Linda said.
"Lynnhaven suits me fine, and you too, as far as I can tell,
but—"

"Absolutely. "

"—but I'm not sure it's right for Ned."

"Now that's where you're wrong," Michael
asserted. "He's loving it here, and you don't need a degree in
child psychology to see that. Getting him out of D. C. was the best
thing we ever did for that kid."

"Don't call him 'that kid,' Michael.
Please."

"Listen, honey, it's like he's discovering
the outdoors for the first time in his life. He's got the woods and
the fields and the brooks to explore, the beach, he can watch the
fishing boats go out and come in and unload. I think it's all
terrific for him, just terrific, and he seems to be having a great
time." Michael sat back with the look of a man who has just reached
the bottom line on a dream of a balance sheet.

"All that is true," Linda admitted, "and it
is important and I am happy about it." She spoke slowly and
methodically, as if she were trying to explain her doubts to
herself as much as to her husband. "But, I don't know ... I guess,
well ... He still has no friends here."

"He will. Give him time. We've only been
here a month."

"That's just it. Kids make friends in a day
or two, or an hour or two even. But the other children around here
are either too old, in high school, or just babies and
toddlers."

Michael sighed. "When he gets into his new
school in September he'll be surrounded by kids his own age and
he’ll make plenty of friends then."

"Maybe, but they'll probably live miles
away."

"Honey, you're worrying too much about
nothing. Really. Let's just take it easy for a while and see how
things develop. I think it's going to be fine. Ned's really come to
life out here."

Linda looked at the glass of sherry in her
hand as if noticing it for the first time and sipped.

"Maybe if he were involved in some team
sports ... "

"You know Ned doesn't go in for that kind of
thing," Michael said patiently. "I tried it with him—baseball,
basketball. Remember? He just didn't take to them. He has his own
interests and you have to let him follow them. I'm not going to be
one of those nutty fathers who drives his son to be the best damn
pitcher or quarterback in the neighborhood."

"No, no, I wouldn't want that either." Linda
made a face, annoyed that she was unable to put her finger
precisely on the source of her doubts, nor even to articulate fully
what those doubts comprised.

Maybe it's nothing, she thought. And maybe
it's everything. Getting older. The usual magazine and talk-show
crisis of those in their thirties. But the problem was real, she
didn't doubt that. Ned was her only child and she knew she could
never have another. And it's so hard to know what is right and good
for a child, and what isn't. You keep thinking and hoping that it
will get easier as the child grows older, but it doesn't. It gets
worse, and harder.