The Empire of Ice Cream (28 page)

“Krapp warned us about plagiarism, though,” I said.

Jim made a face. “What's he gonna do, go read the encyclopedia for every paper?”

The next afternoon I was in the public library, copying from the G volume. With the exception of the fact that it said the people there ate goat cheese, none of the information in the book got into my head, as I had become merely a writing machine, dashing down one word after the next. The further I got into the report, the harder it was to concentrate. My mind wandered for long stretches at a time and I stared at the design of the weave in my balled up sweater that lay on the table in front of me. Then I'd look over at the window and see that the twilight was giving way to night. I was determined to finish even if I got yelled at for coming home late for dinner. When I hit the fourth page, I could tell the information in the encyclopedia was running out, and so I started adding filler the way Jim described. The last page and a half of my report was based on about five sentences from the book and was infused with so much hot air I thought it would float away.

I didn't know how late it was when I finished, but I was so relieved I began to sweat. I rolled up the five written pages and shoved them in my back pocket. Closing the big, green tome, I lifted it and took it back in the stacks to reshelve it. As I was coming out of the stacks, I suddenly remembered my sweater and pencil and looked over at the table by the magazine section where I'd been working. Sitting there in my chair was the man in the white trench coat. My heart instantly began pounding. I was stunned for a second, but as soon as I came to, I ducked out of the aisle in behind the row of shelves to my right.

I raced down the row, and, once in the middle, pulled a book off the third shelf from the top and then reached through and pushed the books on the other side over so I could see what he was doing. He was sitting there, reading a magazine, or pretending to. Every couple of seconds he looked up and turned to scan the library. The woman who'd been reading the newspaper in one of the big chairs while I finished the last pages of my report, got up, laid the paper down on the table, and walked away. The man in the white trench coat looked around and, seeing no one near him, lifted my balled up sweater and sniffed it. His beady eyes closed and his head cocked back a bit as if my sweater funk was crumb cake day at McGill's Bakery. A shiver ran through me. Still clutching it in his hand, he stood up and started heading for me.

I ran down to the center aisle and made for the back of the stacks. I was pretty sure that when he came looking for me, he would head up the center aisle so that he could look down each row. Once I reached the back wall, I moved all the way along it to the side of the building that held the front door. Checking my pocket, I touched the rolled up report. I didn't care about leaving the sweater and pencil behind. I waited, while in my mind I pictured him walking slowly toward me, peering down each row. My breathing was shallow, and I didn't know if I would have the power to scream if he somehow cornered me. Then I saw the sleeve of his trench coat, the sneaker of his left foot, before he came fully into view, and I bolted.

I was down the side aisle and out the front door in a flash. I knew that whereas a kid might run in a library, an adult would be expected not to, which might give me a few extra seconds. Outside, I sprinted around to the side of the building where my bike was chained up. Whatever time I saved was spent fumbling with the lock. Just when I had the bike free and got my ass on the seat, I saw him coming around the side of the building. My only route to Higbee was now cut off. Instead of trying to ride around him, I turned and headed back behind the library, into the woods that led to the railroad tracks.

I carried my bike over the tracks in the dark, listening to the deadly hum of electricity coursing through the third rail and watching both ways for the light of a train in the distance. Although the wind was cold, I was sweating, trying not to lose my balance on the dew-covered wooden ties. All the time I cautiously navigated, grim scenes from
The Long Way Home from School
played in my memory. At any second, I expected to feel upon my shoulder the bony hand of the man in the white coat.

On the other side of the tracks there was another narrow barrier of woods, and I searched along it, walking my bike, until I found a path. I wasn't actually sure what street it would lead me to since I had never gone that way before. We occasionally crossed back and forth over the tracks, but always in daylight and always over on the other side of town behind the woods that started at the schoolyard. This was uncharted territory for me.

I walked clear of the trees onto a road that didn't seem to have any houses. My mind was a jumble, and I was on the verge of tears, but I controlled myself by trying to think through where I was in relation to the library and home. I had an idea I was west of Higbee and just had to follow that street around to find the main road. Getting on my bike, I started off, following my best guess.

No sooner had I pedaled twenty feet before I saw, way up ahead, the lights of a car that had just turned onto the street. It was moving slowly, and I immediately feared it was the man in the white coat, searching for me. At the same time that I saw the car coming toward me, I noticed there was another one parked on the right-hand side only a few more feet up the road. I would have taken to the woods, but there was no path immediately there and it was too dark to find one. Once off my bike, I gave it a good shove and it wheeled into the tall grass and bushes and fell over, pretty well covered from sight. I got low and ran up to hide close against the side of the parked car, which was an old station wagon with wood paneling like our next door neighbor's, Mr. Kelty's.

The headlights of the car approaching drew slowly closer, and the low speed that it traveled at could easily have been an indication that the driver was looking for something or someone. By the time it passed the parked car I was hiding behind, I was hunkered down, my hands covering my head air-raid style, my right leg off the curb and under the station wagon. The vehicle moved very slowly by and then picked up speed, almost disappearing around the bend at the opposite end of the road before I could get a look at it. No mistaking, though, I saw the fins of the old white car. I wasn't sure whether to sit tight in case the stranger reached a dead end somewhere and came back or get on my bike and make a run for it.

Then I felt the car I was next to begin to gently rock. From inside there came a muffled moan. I lifted my head up carefully and peered in the window. Only then did I notice that the glass of all the windows was fogged over. It was dark inside, but the dashboard was glowing. I found a small spot where the glass was clear. Lying on the wide front seat was Mrs. Graves, her blouse open, one big, pale breast visible in the shadows, and one bare leg wrapped around the back of a small man. After observing his grease-slicked hair and flapping ears I didn't have to see his face to know that it was Mr. Kelty.

I ran over to where my bike had fallen in the weeds and lifted it. In a second I was on it and peddling like a maniac up the street.

As it turned out, I found Higbee and made it back to the house safely, never seeing the white car along my way. When I pulled up in the front yard, I knew I was late and would get yelled at, perhaps sent to my room. Luckily, through all of the turmoil, my report on Greece still stuck out of my back pocket, and my hope was that this document could be used as proof that I wasn't just goofing off. I was sweating and dirty from kneeling in the road next to the car. When I opened the front door, and stepped into the warmth of the living room, I remembered that I had left my sweater at the library and had not concocted an excuse for its absence.

The house was unusually quiet, and I was inside no more than a few seconds when I could feel something wasn't normal. The light in the dining room, where my mother usually sat drinking in the evenings, was off. The kitchen was also dark. I walked over and knocked on Nan's door. She opened it, and the aroma of fried pork chops came wafting out around us. Her hairnet was in place and she wore her yellow quilted bathrobe.

“You're mother's gone to bed already,” she said.

I knew what she meant by this and pictured the empty bottle in the kitchen garbage.

“She told me to give you a kiss, though,” she said. She came close and gave me one of those protracted Nan kisses that sounded like air escaping from the pulled-taut, wet mouthpiece of a balloon. “Jim told me you were at the library doing your homework. I left food for you in the oven.”

And that was it. She went back into her house and closed the door. Like my father, I was left to get my own dinner, alone. It was all too quiet, too stark. I sat in the dining room by myself and ate. Nan wasn't a much better cook than my mother. Every dinner she made had some form of cabbage in it. Only George happened by while I sat there. I cut him a piece of meat and he looked up at me as if wondering why I hadn't taken him out yet.

When I had finished eating and put my plate in the kitchen sink, Jim came down from upstairs.

“Did you get your paper finished?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Let me see it,” he said, and held his hand out.

I pulled it out of my back pocket and handed the rolled up pages to him.

“You shouldn't have bent it all up. What was your country again?” he said, sitting down at the dining room table in my mother's chair.

“Greece.”

He read through it really quickly, obviously skipping half the words. When he got to the end, he said, “This last page is a hundred percent double talk. Nice work.”

“The Greece part in the encyclopedia ran out,” I said.

“You stretched it like Mrs. Ryan's underwear,” he said. “There's only one thing left to do. You gotta spice it up a little for the big grade.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Let's see,” he said, and went back through it. “It says the exports are cheese, tobacco, olives, and cotton. I saw a kid do this thing once for a paper and the teacher loved it. He taped samples of the exports onto a sheet of paper. We've got all these things. Get me a blank sheet of paper and the tape.”

Jim went to the refrigerator and took out a slice of cheese and the bottle of olives. I fetched the tape for him, and then he told me to get a copy of a magazine and start looking for a picture about Greece in it for the cover of the report. Fifteen minutes later, as I sat paging through an old issue of
Life
, he turned the sheet of paper he had been working on around to show me.

“Feast your eyes,” he said. The page had the word
EXPORTS
written across the top in block letters. Below that title, a square of American cheese, a half an olive (with pimento), an old, crumpled cigarette butt from the dining room ashtray, and a Q-tip head were affixed with three pieces of tape for each. Under these items appeared their names.

“Wow,” I said.

“No applause, just throw money,” said Jim. “Did you find a picture for the cover?”

“There's nothing Greek in here,” I said, “but this old woman's face looks kind of Greek.” I showed him a picture of a woman who was probably about a hundred years old. She was in profile, wore a black shawl, and her face was a prune with eyes. “She's from Mexico, though,” I said.

“It's Joe Mannygoats's grandmother,” said Jim. “I heard she was half Greek. Cut her out.”

I did, pretty well too, except that I hacked the tip of her nose off. He then told me to tape her face to a piece of paper and write the title of the report coming out of her mouth as if she was saying it. There was a subheading in the encyclopedia entry—The Glory That Was Greece—that he told me to use as the title of my paper. “Do it in block letters,” he said. “Then take the whole thing and put six books on top of it to flatten it out and you're all set. Krapp's gonna be caught between a shit and a sweat when he sees this one.”

Mary cried at bedtime because my mother wasn't awake to tuck her in. Instead, Nan sat with her until she dozed off. Jim and I were sent upstairs. After it got quiet downstairs, I got out of bed and snuck over to Jim's room and knocked on the open door. It was dark in there and from the light shining in from the hallway it looked like he was already asleep.

“Yeah?” he said, and opened one eye.

“I think I know who the prowler is,” I whispered.

He told me to come in. I sat at the bottom of his bed and told him about the man in the white car and recounted what had happened at the library that night. When I told him about the old man sniffing my sweater, he breathed deeply through his nostrils, rolled his eyes upward, and said, “Delicious.”

“I'm telling you, it's him,” I said. “He travels around during the daytime in that old white car and then at night he sneaks through the backyards, looking for kids to steal. I bet he took Charlie.”

“What's he using him as, an air freshener?” asked Jim.

“Not only that, but I think he might be some kind of evil spirit,” I said.

“If he's an evil spirit,” said Jim, “I doubt he'd be driving a car.”

“Yeah, but remember, the nun said that the evil one walks the Earth. Maybe he gets tired of walking and needs to drive some.”

“Hey,” said Jim, “you said he always smells like smoke? That the books from the library he probably touched smell like smoke? That's what Sister Joe told me was the secret to knowing him when he came. She said he'd smell like the fires of hell. Fire doesn't smell, though, except for the smoke.”

This revelation made me shiver and I felt unsafe, even inside the house with Jim there. The old man could be anywhere, listening at the glass, sneaking in the cellar window, anywhere. I swallowed hard.

“So who is this guy?” asked Jim. “Where's he live?”

“I don't know his name,” I said. “Do you remember the night we dragged Mr. Blah-blah across the street? The guy who stopped and got out of his car? That's the guy.”