The Loblolly Boy and the Sorcerer (10 page)

‘I hope so,’ said Ben.

His father looked to be considering something. ‘Well, are you reasonable enough to tell me what’s been going on? Why the theft? Why the vandalism? You know …’

Ben nodded.

‘Don’t get angry?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘Dad, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t really me.’

His father started up, then sat down again and stared at him bleakly.

‘No,’ protested Ben. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant that it
was
me but it wasn’t me.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Ben thought quickly. ‘It was like I’ve been possessed. Like I’ve been taken over. Like somebody else has been in control.’

His father was about to cut him off when something in the intensity of Ben’s explanation gave him pause.

‘It’s true, Dad. It’s true.’

His father waited.

‘It’s like I haven’t been here since we left that motel down south. It hasn’t been me, Dad. But I’m back.’

There was another pause as his father tried to take this in.

‘Nobody’s given you anything, have they?’ asked his father finally.

‘Given me anything?’

‘You know,’ said his father.

Ben shook his head. ‘No, no. Nothing like that. Nothing, I swear. No. It’s different, it’s been like …’

‘What?’

‘You said it yesterday. It’s been like amnesia, and it’s like I’ve woken up. It’s been like a bad dream.’

‘Well that has to be an understatement if ever I’ve heard one,’ said his father grimly. ‘And even if, as you say, you’ve woken up, I’m afraid the dream’s not over yet.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Anyway, time is rushing on. I’ve got a few things to do in the city. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ said Ben. ‘I’ll be here. Promise.’

Once his father left, Ben decided to leave his bedroom. He made a brief exploration of the house really to find out where everything was. Once he had acclimatised himself to the interior, he opened the back door to explore the yard.

There wasn’t a lot to explore. A small lawn, a
clothesline 
and then a concrete patio beyond with a barbecue area shaded by a cherry tree. There was some garden furniture out there and, as the morning was sunny, Ben wandered across the lawn and sat down on a wooden seat.

He had barely settled when there was a small flurry and the loblolly boy landed lightly on the barbecue. His arrival was so instantaneous, Ben guessed he had settled for the night somewhere very handy so that he could keep a watch on the house.

‘I’m surprised to see you,’ said Ben.

He was, too. He would have thought the loblolly boy would have been miles away by now, possibly in a different town altogether.

‘Well, you know,’ said the loblolly boy. ‘I do have a residual interest here.’

‘You have a bloody cheek,’ said Ben, ‘given the mess you’ve left behind. Mess I have to clean up.’

‘Well, how else are people going to remember you, if you don’t leave a mess behind?’ asked the loblolly boy.

‘I can think of dozens of ways,’ said Ben.

The loblolly boy jumped off the barbecue and sank into a chair nearer Ben.

‘What was it like last night, then?’ he asked. ‘Was it bloody?’

‘About as bloody as it could be,’ said Ben, crossly. ‘And it’s going to get worse.’

‘Take it on the chin,’ said the loblolly boy cheerfully. ‘Anyway, it builds character.’

‘I reckon I have enough character,’ said Ben. ‘I don’t
need any more. Not of that sort, anyway.’

‘So what’s happening?’

‘Well, Dad’s going to pick me up in a couple of hours and we have to go downtown and talk to the manager of some store in a mall. Apparently I tried to steal a PlayStation game.’

‘You didn’t!’ said the loblolly boy in mock horror.

‘No, I bloody didn’t,’ said Ben, ‘but we know who did, don’t we?’

‘Don’t get tetchy!’

‘Then we have to go down to the school so that I can explain why I’ve apparently been tagging … oh, and damaged some car.’

‘You vandal!’

‘Shut up!’

‘I told you not to get tetchy.’

Ben looked at him. ‘Why
did
you do this stuff anyway? Tell me so I can pass it on.’

‘Because I felt like it,’ said the loblolly boy airily.

‘Okay, and why did you try to steal the PlayStation game?’

‘Because I wanted it.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Ben. ‘I’m glad you explained that so clearly. That’s going to be really helpful later on today.’

‘Glad to be of service,’ said the loblolly boy. ‘Was there anything else?’

‘Just one thing,’ said Ben.

‘Yes?’

‘Go to hell!’

Whether the loblolly boy went to hell or not, Ben was never to know. All he did know was that during the rest of the day he surely went to hell himself.

The first interview was bad. Although he was grateful for his father’s support, it was clear that he was trying in vain to support the insupportable.

As Benjy had tried to leave the store, an electronic beeper had alerted staff that he had some unpaid for product on his person. However, instead of coming back and explaining that it must have been an oversight, a memory lapse, the foolish boy had tried to run away, only to be caught by a couple of security guards long before he could even escape the mall.

Mr Findlay turned out to be a long-suffering man with a world-weary view of life. He had a thick moustache and he tugged one end of it when he asked his questions and he tugged it again whenever Ben answered. He’d seen too many street-smart kids like Benjy to be easily swayed by a neat appearance, a respectable parent and a contrite manner. Even so, as he listened to Ben he was reluctantly impressed. The kid seemed genuinely sorry. What made his penitence more convincing was the fact that he blamed nobody else, offered no shonky excuses, simply explained in his halting embarrassed way that it had been a moment of stupidity, a moment he really regretted and one he hoped and prayed wouldn’t happen again.

As he listened, Mr Findlay decided that there was probably no point in bringing in the police this time. Instead, at the conclusion of the interview, he gave his usual carefully honed lecture about the consequences of shoplifting. It was sharp. It was stinging. And it was very, very scary.

Then he shook hands with Ben’s father, and expressed the wish that they would never meet again under such circumstances.

Ben’s father said that he couldn’t agree more, and thanked the manager for his forbearance.

And then, with Ben continuing to mumble his regrets, they were allowed to leave.

Their experience at the school was not so clear-cut nor so easily managed. It soon became apparent that the episode involving the car was simply the last in a long succession of outrages the school had been forced to suffer at the hands of Benjy.

Ms Proctor established right at the outset that his behaviour was beyond explanation and beyond apology. It was, in fact, simply beyond the pale and she had no option but to recommend that the board expel. Her main concern at this point was the matter of restitution. There was not only the vandalism. There was the matter of a staff member’s car. Not only had Benjy coined the paintwork, but he had let down all four tyres causing considerable inconvenience. It should really be a matter for the police, but if the matter were made good and it was accepted that alternative arrangements could be made for Benjy then the
school could see its way to …

‘A staff member?’ asked Ben’s father.

‘It was
my
car, actually,’ said the principal.

Ben groaned inwardly. No wonder she was gunning for him.

‘How much?’ asked Ben’s father.

When Ms Proctor mentioned the sum, he blanched a little. ‘We’ll make full restitution,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ said Ms Proctor.

‘Thank you,’ said Ben’s father.

‘Goodbye, Benjy,’ said Ms Proctor with a bright,
artificial
smile. ‘I’m sorry you have to say goodbye to the school under these circumstances, but it’s all for the best and I do hope that you …’

‘It’s Ben,’ growled his father. ‘His name’s Ben, not Benjy.’

‘Well, whatever,’ said the principal, but Ben and his father had already left her office and were making their way through the administration area.

After it was all over and they were driving home, Ben considered that this must have been the worst day of his entire life. He’d been too small to really register what was happening when his mother had died and while it must have been very sad, the events had largely passed him by. The business of packing up and shifting north had been a
succession of awful days, but this day had taken the biscuit.

He’d been forced to try to explain the unexplainable, gibber apologies, accept blame, and promise to reform before people who probably didn’t believe a word he was saying. And even if they accepted his sincerity, clearly doubted he’d ever be able to make good his words. He’d had to stand before people who quite obviously were convinced he was a thief, a vandal, a complete and utter waste of space without any possibility of hope or redemption.

And he’d had to accept all this humbly and say thank you politely at the end.

It was all so hideously unjust.

So brutally unfair.

The only tiny sliver of good to come out of the whole sorry business was that his father hadn’t given up on him. His father had stood by him, offering to pay to make things good.

‘I’ll pay you the money back, Dad,’ he said quietly.

For a time his father did not answer. He appeared to be concentrating on the road. But then he said, ‘It’s not the money, Ben. It’s not the money at all. It’s your attitude and behaviour.’

This time Ben didn’t answer.

‘If you can manage to turn all that around, then the money would have been well-spent.’

‘I will, Dad. I promise!’

‘I don’t want promises, Ben. You know what I want.’

That seemed to be all that could be said. His father drove carefully home and even more carefully up the drive. There was no little red car and Ben was pleased.

‘Well,’ said his father, unlocking the door. ‘I don’t know whether we deserve one, but I think we need a late lunch. What’ll it be? Eggs?’

Ben nodded and gave his father a small grin.

It didn’t matter what it was.

It would be food in his mouth once more.

He couldn’t wait.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
REACHERY

O
nce in the kitchen, his father set about preparing the eggs.

‘Scrambled, poached, or fried?’ he asked.

Ben gave a wry smile. ‘I reckon scrambled sounds the most appropriate,’ he said.

His father glanced at him, but grinned despite himself. ‘You said it.’ And then added, ‘Tomatoes?’

‘Please.’

‘Okay, then you’ll need to go into the garden. There’s some home-grown out back. Fetch us a few, will you?’

‘Okay.’

Ben remembered seeing the small vegetable garden on the other side of the courtyard from the barbecue area. He even remembered seeing the row of tomatoes tied up to stakes against the wooden paling fence.

He took the stainless steel basin his father had given him and wandered out through the back door and into the sunshine. He crossed the lawn and the courtyard and then
carefully edged his way between two rows of broccoli to the tomatoes, grinning a little as he wondered how often Janice would have cooked up a pile of broccoli to go with her fried chicken.

He was so enjoying being human again. The soft afternoon sun, the smell of the grass and then, when he reached the tomatoes, that pungent scent of the tomato leaves and stalks. He let his fingers linger in the vines and then he brought them to his nose. It was wonderful. There were plenty of bright red tomatoes ready for picking and it didn’t take Ben long before he’d filled the bowl.

He was picking his way back through the broccoli when he happened to glance up at the barbecue. There, almost in the same position as he’d been in when first visiting the house, crouched the loblolly boy.

Ben hurried the last few steps to the courtyard. Then he looked up.

‘Still here?’

‘Well, you know. Unfinished business.’

‘It’s pretty well finished,’ said Ben.

‘Very bloody?’

‘I suppose it could have been worse,’ said Ben, ‘but I don’t quite see how.’

‘What happened?’

‘Well the guy at the store wasn’t too bad. He must have decided not to bring the police in. But he gave me a real earful.’ Ben remembered the stinging lecture and winced.

‘Of course. You deserved it, too.’

‘The school was awful. That woman Ms Proctor …’

‘What an old mole!’

‘Yeah, well, she’d had a gutsful of you. I’m being expelled and she made Dad pay for all the damage. All she was interested in was getting shot of me. And getting the money.’ He looked at the loblolly boy. ‘It was hundreds of dollars!’

The loblolly boy shrugged. ‘So? It won’t matter to the old man. He’s loaded anyway.’

Ben looked at him in surprise. He’d never thought of his father as ‘loaded’ before. They were comfortable, but he wouldn’t have said they were rich.

‘No, he’s not.’

‘Of course he is,’ said the loblolly boy. ‘Why the hell else would Janice stick around with him?’

This was such an appalling thought that Ben couldn’t find an answer. There could have been a grain of truth in it, though. From what he’d seen and heard in the few brief hours he’d been back in the household there didn’t seem to be much love lost between Janice and his father any more. Why did she stay around? Night after night of the sort of bickering that kept him awake last night couldn’t have been much fun.

‘Well, I guess that’s that then,’ said the loblolly boy, kicking himself off the barbecue and coming over to Ben.

‘Are you off then?’ asked Ben, scarcely daring to hope.

‘I reckon I will,’ said the loblolly boy. ‘Might even fly south and check out that old Captain. Who knows?’

‘Tell him I made it,’ said Ben.

‘I will,’ said the loblolly boy. ‘I surely will.’ He thrust
out his hand and said, ‘Well, goodbye then, and good luck.’

Despite himself, Ben grinned and took his hand.

There was a sudden concussive feeling, a bright flash of blue and the loblolly boy was thrown away from the boy, Benjy, who stood grinning on the courtyard stones.

‘I simply cannot believe how stupid you are!’ he laughed.

The loblolly boy shook his head in confusion. Then he stared at Benjy in disbelief.

They stared at each other for some seconds, the one grinning triumphantly, the other looking shell-shocked. The loblolly boy lifted up his arms and stared in distress at the filmy green gauze of his sleeves. He looked back, disbelievingly, at the grinning boy before him. Tentatively, then, the loblolly boy extended his hand.

‘All right,’ he said hopefully. ‘Joke’s over.’

In reply, Benjy folded his arms. ‘Uh uh,’ he said. ‘Joke’s on you, sucker. Not on your Nellie.’

Reality, in its awful way, was returning to the loblolly boy. He brought his hand back, still staring at it sorrowfully as he did so.

‘You had this planned all along, didn’t you?’

‘You’re on to it.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? You ask why? Have you had a fun day so far?’

The loblolly boy shook his head. ‘You know damn well I haven’t!’

‘Well, ask yourself. Would I have wanted a day like that? As you said, it’s all over now. You were sweet enough to take the hot seat for me, but now I can get on with life here on the ranch.’

The loblolly boy stared at him.

‘You are a rat. Know that? A disgusting, dirty, untrustworthy rat!’

Benjy laughed again. ‘I love it when you try to be nasty! Don’t hang around, will you? And oh …’ He bent down and picked a tomato out from the bowl then threw it at the loblolly boy. ‘Have a tomato. They taste just great.’

Then, whistling jauntily, he picked up the bowl and, without a backward glance, strutted across the lawn to the back door.

Almost without thinking the loblolly boy lifted the tomato to his nose.

He could not smell a thing.

Wretchedly, the loblolly boy leapt into the air and began to fly, but aimlessly. He felt shocked for himself, and he felt sick at heart for his father.

What was wrong with him? How did he always manage to stuff it up? The Captain called him silly, the Sorcerer
called him foolish and now this Benjy, not for the first time, had called him stupid.

He’d been set up and didn’t even see it coming.

What a patsy.

The Captain had been right all along.

Had he known it would be this difficult? No, not difficult …
Impossible
! Was that why he’d been so forbidding, so foreboding?

Well, he’d had his chance and he’d blown it. Blown it completely. Fused the whole shebang.

Simply because he had no other options, the loblolly boy found himself winging back towards the large park. He found his linden tree and sat again in its branches.

‘I sure didn’t think I’d ever be doing this again,’ he thought.

Perhaps in the tree he could find his bearings, consider things rationally. The largely sleepless night, the awfulness of the day and then the shock of Benjy’s treachery, all began to catch up with him, however, and before long he found himself drowsing.

It was not an easy or a pleasant sleep. It was filled with visions of the Captain’s doubts and the Sorcerer’s mockery. He could hear in his dream a disturbing duet: two voices singing the strange shanty — the Captain’s raucous braying and the Sorcerer’s oily baritone.

He woke to the words frying pan and burning fire. How sick he was of thinking about those. He was beginning to feel like some sort of pancake flipped from pan to pan at the whim of … at the whim of what?

Destiny?

The thought of destiny reminded him of the Captain’s strange telescope. The Captain had been alarmed the loblolly boy might wish to peer through it.

What difference would it have made? Fate had dealt him a terrible hand. How could it have been worse?

Then the thought occurred to him that the Captain didn’t want him to look through the telescope in case, by some awful chance, he saw a loblolly boy lying in the branches of a linden tree.

That would have been a pretty horrifying destiny.

The thought was grimly amusing in a way the Sorcerer probably would have enjoyed. The loblolly boy grimaced.

‘What’s so funny?’ a voice asked.

A little startled at the closeness of the voice, he peered down and there was Mel who once again had scaled the tree.

‘Oh, hello.’

‘Thought I’d check out the park.’ She grinned at him.
‘What were you smiling at?’

What was he smiling at?

‘Do you know the word fickle?’ the loblolly boy asked.

Mel shook her head.

‘I didn’t either until just recently,’ said the loblolly boy. ‘It sort of means unreliable, like when you expect one thing and you get another.’

‘Like now you see me, now you don’t?’ asked Mel.

The loblolly boy looked at her. It was odd that she should have come out with that. ‘When did you hear that?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘That expression. What you just said.’

Mel thought. ‘I dunno. Probably that funny guy who plays the violin. He was in the park the other day doing tricks.’

Interesting, thought the loblolly boy.

‘Is that what you were smiling at?’ asked Mel. ‘The word fickle?’

‘No,’ said the loblolly boy sadly. ‘I was sort of laughing at how
destiny
is fickle.’

Mel scrambled up another couple of branches to get closer. ‘It doesn’t sound much of a joke to me,’ she said.

‘That’s the trouble. It’s no joke …’

‘This is some weird conversation,’ said Mel. ‘I can’t understand half of it.’

And after that she didn’t say anything. She sat on her branch swinging her legs and plucking the occasional linden leaf to throw down below. While this occupied her
for a while, eventually she turned back to the loblolly boy.

‘How’d you get on with that Benjy dude? Not good?’

‘Not good. Not good at all.’

‘I didn’t think so,’ said Mel. ‘You sort of sound like your cat died or something.’

‘More than the cat died,’ said the loblolly boy.

‘Want to talk about it?’ asked Mel.

When the loblolly boy finished telling Mel the whole story — the fractured household, the Exchange, the interviews, the treachery — she looked at him tragically and whispered, ‘Bummer.’

‘Bummer,’ nodded the loblolly boy.

‘I’d heard that kid was bad news, but, hey, I didn’t know the half of it,’ said Mel.

‘I walked right into it. He had it all worked out.’

‘What’ll you do now?’

‘God knows,’ said the loblolly boy. ‘I’ve run out of ideas, I guess.’

‘I know what I’m going to do,’ said Mel.

‘What’s that?’

‘Climb down out of this tree,’ said Mel. ‘My foot’s going to sleep.’

‘You do that,’ said the loblolly boy. ‘I’ll meet you at the bottom.’

Some time later, they wandered from the base of the tree over towards the swings where they had talked once before.

‘I can’t understand why he wants to stay anyway,’ said Mel.

The loblolly boy shrugged.

‘I mean, he doesn’t get on with your dad, your stepmother sounds like a dog, he’s just been expelled from school and he’s in big trouble all over the place.’

‘Beats me,’ said the loblolly boy. ‘Although he did use me to avoid some of the music.’

He did know though. Perfectly clearly: as rough as Benjy’s situation was, being a loblolly boy was immeasurably worse.

‘You know what I reckon,’ said Mel.

‘What?’

‘We should take a contract out on him. Make life so absolutely rotten that he’d be only too pleased to swap again.’

‘Possible,’ grinned the loblolly boy. ‘Who do we get? The Hells Angels?’

‘Perhaps. Or we could get someone to take him out completely. You know Bam! Bam!’

‘Don’t do that, for god’s sake!’ laughed the loblolly boy. ‘If you take him out then I’ll never ever get to be me again.’

Something Mel had said struck a chord though. When she said ‘Bam! Bam!’ he was reminded yet again of the chorus of the strange shanty.

Bam Bam
! Would it be possible to fill Benjy with fear? To frighten him so much he’d be prepared to Exchange, and Exchange properly this time? How had Mel put it? Take a contract out on him.

The song said it: fear the Jugglers, the Sorcerer and the Gadget Man.

The Sorcerer. He was the one.

He was the one he was frightened of.

Benjy would have to be frightened of him too.

Could he somehow offer the Sorcerer a contract on Benjy?

It was probably the only chance he had left.

‘Where did you say you saw the guy with the violin?’ asked the loblolly boy.

Mel pointed behind her beyond the swings and a small pavilion to a floral clock.

‘He was over there. Not far from the clock.’