The Monster Variations (11 page)

James felt like someone should say something. “I don’t know what kind of thing has teeth like that,” he offered.

“Or wings like that,” Willie added.

“You guys aren’t going to believe this,” said Reggie, his voice popping with the electricity that teenagers always provided him. “You know what they’re planning to do? The big kids? You’ll never guess what they’re planning to do.”

James did not look at him and did not answer. He prayed for Willie to stay quiet too.

“What?” asked Willie.

Reggie licked his lips and left them glistening with saliva.

“They’re going to steal it.”

James prayed for silence.

“Really?” asked Willie.

“Yeah,” said Reggie. “But guess who’s going to steal it first.”

T
he next day, the boys decided to build a pulley system to get Willie up into the tree house, but were distracted by a dog that kept pacing around the trees behind the house. It watched them with black eyes and pawed the dirt, feigning approach before returning to shadow.

Willie disappeared inside and came back with binoculars and reported to the boys that the dog was fat. Reggie wrenched away the lens and planted it to his own eyes. “You can’t use these with one hand,” he muttered as he searched for the dog, found it, then adjusted some rings on the eyepieces.

“It’s going to have puppies,” he said.

They returned to work. Their tools included a hammer, a nest of nails, a length of rope, and a red metal pulley that Reggie had miraculously plucked from a trash can just down the street. Reggie did not usually poke through people’s trash—like most boys, he preferred the epic solitude of the junkyard—but for reasons unknown he was compelled to lift that lid, and when he held up the rusty metal gear, James knew just what to do with it.

“There’s a branch just above the roof,” said James. “You can’t see it, but I know it’s there.”

So he and Reggie scrambled up the steps, then up the side of the tree house itself, impressing themselves with their climbing abilities, then challenging each other with every daring leap and grip. Reggie reached the top of the tree house first, and when James joined him moments later they grinned at each other, chests heaving, as they brushed the crumbled bark from their elbows and knees. Reggie complimented James on a notable piece of footwork, and James insisted that he had no idea how Reggie had hurdled so quickly over the rooftop.

“I don’t know either,” said Reggie, and they both laughed.

They spent a few minutes scanning the distance, pointing out any truck that looked capable of murder. Then they remembered why they were up there and they both went flat on their tummies and snaked their bodies along the roof until their chins poked over the edge. Willie was far below, spinning in the grass. Reggie
lowered a series of spit globs, at first taking care not to hit Willie, then hedging closer and closer. After two direct hits went unnoticed, Reggie shouted. “Hey, moron!”

Willie stopped spinning, then swayed in place, dizzy. His lone hand grasped at the air. He looked up at his friends and smiled. Then he reached down into the grass and held up the pulley. “You guys forgot the pulley,” he said.

The trip down was easier—they dropped through the rectangular opening in the tree house roof, then took the steps by twos before leaping off with five or six feet still to go. Soon they were loading their pockets with nails and experimenting with ways to attach themselves with hammer, pulley, and rope.

“Dog’s back,” Willie said.

The animal was closer now, just across the yard, marching in place and sniffing the grass but never taking her eyes off them. She was black and white and shaggy with a hairy tail that brushed the ground. Dried mud caked her feet and her belly was distended. Six teats hung low, shiny and red.

“Pooch is probably thirsty,” said Willie. “C’mere, pooch.”

“Leave it alone,” said Reggie.

“Poochie, poochie,” said Willie, holding out his hand and making kissing sounds.

“Leave the stupid thing alone!” shouted Reggie. Willie and James looked at him in surprise. Reggie cast his eyes downward, found some nails, and slid them into
his pocket. “That dog’s going to have babies and you don’t want it to have them here, believe me.”

Willie grinned. “Puppies are cute.”

Reggie picked up the hammer, tested its weight.

“My mom grew up on a farm and says that sometimes baby cows get stuck trying to get born and there are only two things you can do,” said Reggie. “You can rip apart that baby cow while it’s still in there, and take it out piece by piece, or you can cut the momma cow in half and save the baby. It’s one or the other.”

Reggie reared back and his arm whistled through air, and a nail struck a tree near the dog. The dog flinched, and sniffed, but did not run away. Reggie tossed another. It bounced off the animal’s back. The dog’s back legs skittered and it wheeled around, looking sharply about and flattening its ears.

“What are you doing?” cried Willie. “Knock it off! That’s mean!”

Reggie threw another nail that fell short and lost itself in the grass.

“You don’t want those puppies born here,” said Reggie, not looking at Willie while he took aim with another nail.

“Hey!” said Willie. He moved toward Reggie. Another nail flew and rang off the top of the fence.

“It has those puppies here and they won’t ever leave, ever,” Reggie said. He leaned back to throw but Willie was now in his way, his face red, his lips drawn from the metal that laced through his teeth.

“Knock it off,” said Willie.

“I’m doing you a favor,” said Reggie.

“I know you are,” said Willie.

“Not with the tree house, dummy,” said Reggie, taking an easy step around Willie, and in the same motion transferring a nail to his throwing hand.

Willie spun and ran at the dog, shouting, “Go away, girl! Go away! Go away!” The animal shrank back, muscles defining themselves inside fur. Reggie threw another nail. It missed Willie’s head by inches, and James gasped—he could too clearly imagine a nail lodging in Willie’s eye, the bad luck of his life continuing.

But all James said was “Hey,” and he was appalled at how weak it sounded. Why wasn’t he moving to help Willie? Why was he just standing there? For some reason all he could think of was his parents.

The dog drew itself even lower and then slunk away in haste, its belly audibly rushing through the weeds. Willie stopped chasing it and then Reggie stopped, too. There was a long moment filled with sound—birds, insects, cars, sprinklers, lawn mowers. Finally Reggie picked up the pulley, hooked it to a belt loop, shouldered past James, and started up the tree.

“So I got a plan for getting the Monster,” said Reggie as he climbed, “before the big kids or Mel Herman or anyone else gets to it. I’d tell you guys if you ever shut up for a second.” Neither boy responded and the proposal died. The next sound from Reggie was the hammering of a nail into live wood.

Only now it was too late. Their inspiration had run off through the weeds with a thirsty, pregnant dog. This was work now, nothing else, and therefore the project was doomed.

It was not for lack of effort. Both Reggie and James shimmied up the tree dozens of times. They each took turns fastening the pulley to the first branch, gave up, then tried other branches, higher branches, thicker branches. When the pulley at last held, it was the rope that failed them, sliding from the pulley time after time. After a while, Mr. Van Allen stepped out onto the door step, perhaps drawn by the absence of conversation, and stood with his hands on the railing, his robe tied loosely around his waist.

His presence demanded a demonstration, but it was a clumsy, humiliating scene. The pulley shook, the rope slithered away, and James was reminded of Greg Johnson’s funeral—those pulleys hadn’t worked either. The boys attached the two-by-four that was to serve as Willie’s seat, but when attempting to sit on it the best he could do was to lock his leg muscles in a squat while pretending the seat was not spinning uselessly beneath him. His friends’ hands were all over him, steadying his back, lowering his butt, clasping his hand over the rope, then repositioning it, then repositioning his hand again and burning it when they moved it too quickly. Willie felt embarrassed for himself but also for his friends, and the more they all touched each other the more implicated they became in this extravagant, monumental failure.

Mr. Van Allen said nothing as his son lost balance and flopped to the ground, the rope spilling from the tree and falling in a pile on Willie’s lap, his two friends collapsed around him, their elbows pink, their knees green, their eyes searching desperately for something that wasn’t their fault.

I
t rained for three days and everyone was excited until they stepped outside. The rain was hot.

Willie was sent out for milk and butter and eggs, no matter that it was late in the day and spitting liquid. He moved slowly, relishing this rare solo venture. It had come unexpectedly. Willie’s mother had put on her shoes—the right one first, and then, much later, the left—and slung her purse over her shoulder and declared she was going to the store. Then she stood at the screen door for a long time, her hands at her sides, breathing slowly and watching the occasional raindrop explode on the
sidewalk. Willie saw this happen too often: loud, busy preparations for some out-of-the-house errand that ended at the front door, as if his mother did not know how to release the lock or was afraid of what she would find beyond, or who would find her. Finally she repositioned herself and asked if Willie would like to go get some milk and butter and eggs.

He hopped up and thrust out his stump and she pinned the shirt’s armhole in place so that the rain would not dampen the bandages, and then she opened his palm and unfolded into it dollar bills. “You be careful,” she told him in a labored whisper, her eyes brimming with tears, and she hugged him forcefully as he wriggled to be set free. He stuffed the bills in his front pocket and strode out the front door, the wad of cash feeling thick and important against his hip. As he bolted down the front steps, he heard behind him a gasp from his mother, as if she too were thrilled and astonished by his velocity.

It was difficult for Willie to remember a time when he had gone out alone without incident. Once he had chipped a tooth on a parking meter. Another time he had become caught in a snowdrift until a mailman answered his cries. Yet another time he had been hit by a truck and lost his left arm.

This time he stuck to roads he knew and aimed himself along familiar landmarks: the Harper family tire swing, the tennis courts, the electrical cage with signs warning him to
KEEP OUT, HIGH VOLTAGE
. Then he was there, pushing through the door, goose-pimpling in the
refrigerated aisle, sloshing around jugs of milk, attempting to gauge their comparative worth. Butter was easy-he grabbed the first package he saw. Eggs on the other hand involved lengthy deliberation, for Willie was not satisfied until each egg was lifted, rotated, and inspected for hairline cracks.

He had wrangled himself a cart, but on the way to the register ran into trouble. With only a single arm to guide it, the cart bore heavily to the left and Willie found himself tracing one, then two, then three ever-widening circles, and with each orbit he felt more eyes fall upon him. Still he wrenched and shoved and kicked, and tried to muscle the cart into a checkout lane, until a man in an apron came over and plucked the three grocery items from the cart. The man smiled at Willie, as if to assure him that he had made a valiant effort, but Willie knew a failure when he saw one and so avoided the man’s face, kept his eyes on the food.

Willie left the store with change rattling in his front pocket, and though he was weighed down by groceries he felt quicker and lighter, overjoyed to leave behind the store, that bastard cart, the meddling men in aprons and the women ignoring their shopping lists. The paper sack he clutched marked him as someone not just winding his aimless way through the streets like Mel Herman. No, Willie Van Allen was
working
. He felt wonderful, and went down a wrong street on purpose.

Then he became fascinated with the way the rain darkened the brown paper sack and how the patterns
expanded—miserly faces swelled into obesity, branches grew root systems, stars joined to create planets—and when he finally remembered to look up it was too late. He was lost. The rain slopped against his neck and he stood there, letting his new failure fully soak.

The houses looked friendlier down one street, so he went that way. A sprinkler circulated pointlessly in the rain and Willie stepped out of its spray, briefly onto the road. He heard tires skimming though wet pavement. He rushed back to the curb, regripped the humid sack.

A truck rolled past and Willie eyed it warily.

When the truck reached the far street, it turned right. When Willie reached the same intersection he turned left. Something was happening to the paper sack; it felt gummy. He felt a wave of panic and snuggled it deeper into his armpit. He looked at a house and saw a face in a window, a child. Willie became aware of his stump in a way he hadn’t before. He looked away from the child. Water dripped from his long nose. There was a squish in his socks. He felt his bandages getting wet and wondered what that meant—his mother had warned him against it so many different times. He searched this way and that for orientation, but everything was as smeared as a Mel Herman painting, and for a moment Willie wondered if the world through Mel’s eyes was always this murky and upsetting.

From the corner of his eye he saw the truck again. The same truck as before, he was almost positive. It sat in the middle of the road, engine humming, gray smoke
rolling between its back tires. Willie gripped his grocery sack and his fingernails slid right through the paper. The jug of milk was warm and perspiring. His mother would not approve.

The truck moved, then its taillights went red and it paused, as hesitant as the pregnant dog skulking around Willie’s house. Willie stared straight ahead. He heard the truck slither away. It would circle around and come back again, he knew it.