The Adventures of Flash Jackson (5 page)

“I don't mean to be rude, but I think I'm going to stop here and turn around,” I said. “This is about as far as I've gone on these things, and I don't want to overdo it.”

“I understand, dear,” she said. “I'll be fine from here.” She stopped. “What on earth is that young man doing hanging out of that window?” she asked.

“Oh, that's just Frankie,” I said. I lifted up one crutch and waved it at him, but he was too busy staring at us to wave back. “He's a little touched in the head. He spends all his time spying on people. He doesn't mean any harm, though. He saved my life, actually.”

“Indeed,” said Miz Powell. “I wonder what kind of binoculars he's using.”

That was a curious statement.
What on earth would she know about binoculars?
I wondered.

“Anyhow, thank you for tea, Haley, and I'm sure I'll be seeing you soon,” said Miz Powell. “Do stop by sometime, when you're more able to get around.”

“You're welcome, ma'am,” I said. “I sure will.”

“And you can stop calling me ma'am,” she said. “My name is Elizabeth.”

“All righty,” I said. “Elizabeth. Can I ask you something?”

“
May
I ask you something.”

“May I…ask you a question?” I felt shy, suddenly. I was so surprised at myself I forgot to get mad at her for correcting me.

“Yes, you may.”

“How come you talk with an accent?”

“Do I, dear?” She seemed surprised. “Oh, no. I tried so hard to stifle it. I didn't want anyone to think I was…” She trailed off for a minute. “I've been gone a long time, that's all,” she said. “A very long time. My friends in England always teased me because of how American I sounded, but I suppose after almost fifty years…oh dear. I'll have to work on that, now, won't I?”

“That's all right,” I said. “I like it, actually.” I realized, as I said that, that it was true—I
did
like it. “I just wondered, because you said you were born here and everything, but you sounded so—”

“People can be changed by places, Haley,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “That was the reason I left home in the first place—to be changed. I was looking for adventure, you see, and the war came along at just the right time.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. “I mean, Elizabeth.”

“Someday I'll tell you some more of the story,” she said. “I think you're the kind of woman who would appreciate it. You'll come by for tea this week, yes?”

“All righty,” I said, though two tea parties in one week was about twice as many as I thought I could handle.

“See you then, dear,” she said, “and by the way.”

“Yeah?”

“Come alone, if you don't mind.” She winked at me. I smiled.

“I don't mind one bit, Elizabeth,” I said. I guess Mother had gotten on her nerves after all. Well, she'd certainly done a good job of hiding it.

Elizabeth turned and marched on up the road like marching was what she'd been doing all her life. I had completely forgotten to ask her about Flash—the other Flash, I mean. That could wait until I
saw her again. As far as I was concerned, I was the original: Flash Jackson, stuntman extraordinaire, who on top of having to suffer the indignity of living in a girl's body was now confined to crutches, and to having a twenty-pound deadweight attached to his leg.

You're probably wondering by now whether I wasn't just as crazy as poor Frankie, what with my carrying on about this invisible person inside me. Did she really believe there was a man trapped inside her? you may be asking yourself. Was she plumb loco? Did she have a screw loose? Well, that's actually a separate question. Living out in the country will make anyone crazy, if that's not what they're cut out for. And just because you're born in a place doesn't mean you're cut out for living there. I didn't mind it much, to be honest, apart from the occasional bout of mind-numbing boredom, but I certainly had to come up with my own ways of entertaining myself, and pretending I was Flash Jackson was one of them.

It was actually my old Dad who came up with that name, not me. We used to play games together when I was little—hide-and-seek, cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, and my particular favorite, stuntman. Stuntman involved doing all kinds of things that seemed awful exciting, such as swinging out of trees on a rope, or locking myself in a trunk and then making my daring escape. Of course, the branch I swung from was only about three feet high, and the trunk was never locked at all. My dad was always standing right there in case anything went wrong. But it was his imagination that made it all seem so dangerous and exciting—that, and the fact that I was about seven years old.

We both had stuntman names. Mine was Flash Jackson, and his was Fireball McGinty. Fireball McGinty's specialty was jumping a bicycle off a ramp and over a row of my dolls. I wasn't allowed to do that one, because it really was dangerous—I mean, it wasn't life threatening, but there was always the chance that I would fall over and crack a tooth or something when I landed. We would drag a piece of plywood out from the storage area under the house and prop it up on cinder
blocks. Then Dad, who had a bit of a wild streak in him, would start off on his bicycle at the far end of the driveway. He'd race down as fast as he could, shouting at the top of his lungs, and then launch himself over. The ramp was only about a foot high, if that. It was hardly death defying. But it seemed to me at the time that it was.

Poor old Fireball. As it turned out, his stunt name was sort of a prediction of how he would die. I wasn't home when it happened—I was in school. The principal came and got me out of my classroom, which was nothing new. I figured I was in trouble again. In fact, I'd been in a fight that very afternoon, my fortieth or forty-first of my career—I was a great brawler in my younger days, but that's going back to first grade now—and I just assumed I was going to be hauled in and lectured one more time about the evils of violent behavior and the need for “self-control,” which is
still
a phrase that raises the hair on the back of my neck.

That never happened, though. Instead the principal gave me a lollipop, put me in his car, and drove me home. The first thing I noticed when we got there was that Dad's workshop was gone. In its place was a great gaping crater, with a couple of chunks of smoldering wood lying here and there.

That's how cigarettes killed my Dad. It wasn't lung cancer, which is how they usually get you. It was that he was smoking too close to his stash of nitroglycerin, which he'd bought from a friend of his who owned a construction company and which he was planning on using in one of his experiments. God only knows what he was going to do with it. Not being licensed to handle such stuff, he didn't know just how volatile it was, and I guess he thought his cigarette was safe enough. Nobody knows exactly how it happened, of course, but since he was a smoker, that was the likeliest explanation. That's what the fire chief said, anyway.

You can laugh if you want to. I've had a giggle or two over it myself, after enough time had passed that it didn't hurt quite so much to think about him. I mean, it was a fitting end, though it was way too
soon for him to go. And dramatic, too. People still talk about that day. You could hear the explosion way off in Mannville, and folks felt it for miles around. His workshop was obliterated—I mean, just
gone
. It was a huge blast. Luckily, the shed was far enough from the house so it didn't blow up too. It knocked out all our windows, though, and for a while there wasn't a cow in this neck of the woods that would give milk. Mr. Shumacher lost a whole week's worth of dairy money, though he never complained about it. And there was just this big hole in the ground where Dad's shop used to be. As chance would have it, there turned out to be a natural spring running just under the surface there—there's aquifers like that all over the place—and within a few days, the hole was filled with water.

That's where the pond came from. After a while, it looked like it had always been there. Reeds and other water plants grew around the edges, and soon ducks and geese included it in their yearly flight plans. I even got the bright idea of putting some goldfish in it, and they've been living there happily ever after, growing and reproducing. It's only a tiny little thing, as far as ponds go—maybe ten feet deep and fifty feet across. But what I like about it is that it's
alive
. There wasn't enough left of my father to bury, as you might imagine. I was too young to be told such things, but I heard later that they were finding little bits of him for weeks, in the most unlikely places. You can understand if I prefer not to go into that.

There's a headstone for old Fireball in the cemetery, but there's nothing under it. This pond, though—now that's the kind of memorial I want when it's time for me to take the Big Sleep. It's a living, breathing ecosystem, and by now a whole generation or maybe even two generations of fish have grown up there and called it home. Mother won't go near it because it reminds her of him, but I love to spend time at it, or sometimes
in
it, with my snorkeling mask on—just looking at all the bugs and plants and little fish in there, and thinking about old Fireball McGinty and the good times we used to have.

Anyway, that's how I got the name of Flash Jackson. After he died,
I got pretty attached to thinking of myself that way, because it was his name for me. I guess by now it's more than a habit. It's become the real me.

 

I had gotten kind of lost in the clouds for a minute there watching Elizabeth head down the road, so I roused myself and headed back for home. But then I remembered Frankie, who was still hanging out of his window. I waved at him to come on down. He just stared at me through those stupid lenses of his until I shook my fist at him and pointed to the ground in a threatening manner, meaning if he didn't get down here right now I was going to knock his block off. He came running downstairs and across his yard to the road.

“What?” he said.

“Haven't you got any manners?” I said. “That lady was Miz Elizabeth Powell, and I think there are nicer ways for you to welcome her to the neighborhood than to ogle her like she was an exhibit in a museum.”

“What lady?” he said.

“You numbskull,” I said, pointing down the road at Miz Powell's rapidly retreating back, “
that
lady.”

“I wasn't looking at her,” said Frankie. “I was looking for a car.”

“What car?”

“I don't know what it
looks
like,” he said. “Not yet. But I'll know when I see it.”

I noticed then that old Franks seemed pretty nervous about something. He was wringing his baseball cap in his hands again. He only did that in two situations: when he was sitting and talking, or when he was worried. “They're coming today,” he said.

“Who's coming?”

“Some people. Some buyers.”

“Oh,” I said. I understood everything then. “You mean, buyers for the house?”

He nodded. He looked so miserable I thought he was going to cry,
so I stretched out my arms and gave him a big hug. Franks was not the greatest hugger in the world—I don't think he really understood what it was all about. He kind of leaned forward at the waist and let me put my arms around his shoulders for a minute, but that was as into it as he would get. Ordinarily I
never
hugged him, but he looked so upset I couldn't help myself.

“Don't worry about it, Frankie,” I said. “Let's go pet Brother. Shall we?”

“Pet Brother?”

“Yes. Take your mind off of things.”

“I don't know if that's a wise idea,” he said. He was dancing around, wanting to get back to his window. “They might come while I'm gone.”

“Who cares?” I said. “It's not healthy for you to get so worked up. Besides, you can see the road from my house just as easily. Come on, let's go.”

“Not a wise idea, Haley. Not a wise idea.”

“Let's
go
.”

“Oh, all right,” he said; because when it came down to it, Frankie was more like the brother I'd always wanted than anything else, and he always ended up doing what I told him.

We headed back to my house, Frankie trailing behind me. My leg was aching by then and I would have liked nothing better than to go prop it up somewhere for a while, but I didn't like the idea of old Franks sitting up there in his room all day, fretting himself to pieces. I had a soft spot for the old fruitcake. Brother liked him too, and I knew Franks would calm down if he had something to do, so I let him brush the old horse all over again and then saddle him up and take him for a jog around the corral. Brother needed a good run anyway.

Franks was a good rider, his insanity notwithstanding. There were some things he did just like anybody else would do them—most things, in fact. You only knew he was nuts when you started talking to him, or when he forgot to take his medication. I didn't know what kind of
pills he was on, but I did know that if he didn't take them he started hearing voices in his head, telling him to do things.

It wasn't like the voices told him to kill people or anything. I asked him about it once, but Franks wouldn't tell me what they talked about. He said they just flat out bothered him, the worst thing about it being that they wouldn't shut up. When the voices were on, he felt like there wasn't a safe place in his entire head for him to go.

“Like, I can plug my ears, but I still hear them,” he said. “Sometimes I try to drown them out with noise, but that doesn't work either.”

“That sounds terrible,” I'd said.

“It
is
terrible,” he said. “Mostly. You ever read the Bible, Haley?”

“I guess,” I said warily. I tend pretty quick to drop out of conversations that involve religion. But it was usually my grandmother who was starting them up, not Franks.