The Shadow Year (17 page)

It was the day the temperature finally rose above freezing, and we were allowed back on the playground after lunch. The ground was still hard as a rock, and the dark clouds threatened more snow. I was on the way out toward the fence to talk to Tim Sullivan when I passed Peter Horton, and he was telling two other kids, “Boris's gone.”

“Boris?” I said, and went over to where they were standing.

“My dad was there when they went to his house last night,” said Peter.

“Who?”

“The cops,” he said. “He didn't come to work for, like, four days and didn't call. Cleary sent the cops to see where he was. He was gone.”

“What do you mean, ‘gone'?” I asked.

“His car was gone,” said Peter.

“He's driving back to Yugoslavia,” said one of the other kids.

In my mind I saw a barrel of the red stuff with a broom leaning against it in the dim light of the furnace room beneath the school. I looked for Boris—his plaid shirt, his missing teeth, his five strands combed over a bald head—but only his voice came to me. “You are talking dogshit,” he said. I pictured a cop
throwing our letter in the trash along with the pink hatbox that held the footprint.

When I finally got out to the fence where Tim was, he asked, “Who'll clean the puke now?” and the saliva slid to the corners of my mouth.

By the time Jim and I arrived in Botch Town that night, Mary had already been there. Boris was off the board. The white car was turning onto Hammond, and the prowler was at the edge of the woods behind Halloways'. Jim called Mary over to our side. As soon as she came through the curtain, he asked her, “Where's Boris?”

Mary turned and walked to the back wall. She lifted something off the big pipe that ran to the sewer. When she returned, she showed us it was Boris.

“Where is he?” said Jim.

“Away,” said Mary.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I heard it in school,” she said.

“She doesn't know any more than we do,” said Jim.

“Did the prowler get him?” I asked.

“I don't know,” she said.

Mary stepped backward toward the curtain. Just before she went through, Jim asked her, “What
do
you know?”

“He's cold,” she said. “Very cold.”

The next morning we were dressed and out early. The sky was overcast, and a light snow fell around us as we made our way through the woods. Neither of us said a word, and the journey went so fast it was as if the woods were shrinking. We were suddenly there, like in a dream, peering through the branches at Mr. White's backyard. There was a numbness throbbing in my head, and I felt weak. Jim scanned the windows for signs of movement and said, “Same as last time.” He crouched low and ran for the garage. For a whole minute, his
back to the wooden wall, he stood perfectly still, and we listened.

I looked to the house for the thousandth time. When I looked back, Jim was gone around the side. A second later he was back, waving me to follow him. I couldn't move at first, but then he whisper-yelled, “Hurry,” and it put me in motion. I joined him, and we walked around to the front.

Again I hesitated in the shadow at the edge of the entrance. The cold concrete-and-oil smell put me off. I turned and looked behind me to where the driveway curved around toward the street. Jim was already at the back of the place, his hand on the freezer latch. It squealed when he opened it. He got his fingers under the lid and was trying to pull it up.

“Help me,” he said. “Hurry up.”

I ran to help him. Together we lifted the heavy lid like the top of a coffin. A light came on inside, reflecting off the walls of ice. It was big enough for a body, but there was no body there. It was empty.

“Shit,” said Jim, and he was about to lower the lid when I saw something crumpled up in the corner.

“Look,” I said.

He saw it and said, “Get it. I can hold this by myself for a second.”

I let go and dove halfway in to grab the piece of wadded orange paper. I knew what it was before I put it in my pocket. Sliding out, I helped Jim lower the lid. With two inches left to go, we just dropped it and ran. The sound of it latching echoed behind us. We were out and around the garage in a flash. At the edge of the woods, we crouched down and rested, watching the house.

“Where's Boris?” said Jim. “Mary sent us on a wild-goose chase.”

“She just said he was very cold. Maybe he's in the lake.”

“The lake's still frozen,” said Jim.

“Let's get out of here.”

“Wait a second,” he said. He brushed away the pine needles on the ground and dug around until he found a good-size stone. Seeing the way he gripped it, I got up and started running. I ran a hundred yards before I heard the crash of window glass, and then I heard Jim running behind me. We didn't let up until we were all the way to the stream behind Halloways'.

“Let me see the clue,” he said, working to catch his breath.

I dug into my pocket and pulled out the ball of orange tissue paper.

“A snot rag?” said Jim.

“No,” I said. I opened the paper, and as the folds came away, inside was revealed a length of black ribbon.

“Fig Man,” he said. “His Halloween treats.”

I nodded.

“How'd you like that throw?” he said. “Right through the upstairs window.” He laughed.

I jumped the stream. “Now he'll know we were there,” I said.

“He knows less about us than we know about him,” said Jim. He jumped, and off we ran.

At dinner we learned from my mother that the cops wouldn't even consider Boris a missing person until another week or so went by. She went on to tell us about how he left his family and ran away from Communism. “Boris came all that way to be the janitor of East Lake School,” she said, and laughed.

As soon as the last word was out of her mouth, we heard the sirens coming down the block. Jim was the first away from the table, but we all—my mother, Mary, and me—were at the window when the three cop cars screamed past. We went for our coats and shoes, even my mother.

She told us to stay close to her, and we followed. It wasn't as cold as it had been. The skies were clear, and the moon was out. Other neighbors were either ahead of us or just coming out
their front doors as we passed. We saw Mr. Mangini, Mr. and Mrs. Hackett, the woman my mother called Diamond Lil, and the tired old Bishops with Reggie between them, talking a mile a minute.

Jim walked up behind me, leaned over, and said, “Maybe they found Boris's body.”

I nodded, and Mary looked over, bringing her finger to her lips.

The action was definitely at East Lake. As we passed Mrs. Homretz's house, we could see the police cars pulled up on the field between the school and the woods, their red lights flashing. A crowd of people from the neighborhood was being held back by a cop. We joined the group. Mr. Mason, a thin man with big glasses, like a grown-up Henry, told my mother that Tony Calfano had shot out all the windows of the school with a pellet rifle. We heard more little bits and pieces of the story from other people. Mr. Felina said, “Apparently he just went from window to window, like clockwork, and shot each one.”

Jim grabbed me, and we wove our way through the crowd until we were near the front. Across the field we saw the broken glass everywhere, reflecting the moon. From there I could see that some of the windows had no glass left and some just had huge jagged holes, like Mr. Barzita's frozen eyes. The cop who was keeping us back told everybody as much as he knew. We listened to him, and he said that the suspect was still there when they arrived. “He's in the back of the patrol car,” said the cop. “We have the gun.”

Cleary pulled up then and parked in the bus circle. He got out of his car, wearing a rumpled suit. Moving stiff and slow as a sleepwalker, he came over to where we all stood.

“Please, go home,” he said, even letting go of his throat to raise both his hands in the air. “Go home and call your neighbors and tell them no school tomorrow.”

The kids in the crowd were told to shut up by their parents.

Jim and I looked at each other and smiled. “No school for you,” he said. “Tony Calfano is my new hero.” He made like he had a rifle and was shooting from the hip. “I should do the same at the junior high.”

“No school,” Mary said on the way home. No one else was near us, but my mother kept her voice low. “Our taxes are going to have to pay for that,” she said angrily. “Who gave that crazy guinea a gun?”

Well after we put ourselves to bed, Jim knocked on my door. He let the light from the hall in and took a seat at the end of my bed. “Did you think it could be Mr. White's revenge for my busting his window?”

“What?” I asked.

“What happened at East Lake. Maybe he possessed Tony to break the windows.”

“He has powers,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “It's starting to get scary.”

“Is Boris dead?” I asked.

“Here's what I think,” he said. “Mr. White killed him and then put him in his own car and drove it way out onto the ice of the bay. The ice melts, it cracks, and Boris and his car are gone.”

“Maybe,” I said.

It was late afternoon and raining hard outside. Mary and I were in the cellar, staring at Botch Town. Jim hadn't gotten home from school yet. She told me to sit down in Jim's chair.

“You have to stare hard at one person,” she said.

“Who?” I asked.

“You pick,” she said.

“I'm going to stare at Mr. Conrad,” I said, and pointed.

She stepped up next to the chair, leaned over, and started whispering numbers into my ear. Numbers and numbers, like string that held my head in place. They came in torrents, then showers, and then I didn't notice them at all. What I noticed was that a piece of clay had crumbled and fallen off the back of Mr. Conrad's head. I noticed his ears, and his pose, slightly hunched. He was standing in front of his house, looking across the street toward the Hayeses' place. It was all cardboard and clay, but something was shifting at the edges. I saw the lawns and the house across the street with its shrubs and yellow door. The color of the door caught my attention, and then I heard Mary say, “Equals,” and for just a split second I was in a bedroom and Mrs. Hayes was naked on the bed. She was smoking a cigarette, and her legs were open. I blinked, and she vanished
back into the hole in Mr. Conrad's clay head in front of his cardboard house.

“Like that,” said Mary.

After she went into her schoolroom and the lesson had begun, I noticed that Boris the janitor was no longer on the sewer pipe but now rested on top of an old end table halfway between Botch Town and the pipe.

I wasn't sure if my head hurt because of what Mary had done or if everything was just too much to think about anymore. The four-thirty movie on TV was
Mothra.
There were two tiny twins in it who lived in a birdcage and sang like the antenna. I fell asleep when Mothra's caterpillar was swimming across the ocean and woke once when he had wings and was destroying a city. The next I knew, Jim was calling me for dinner.

At dinner Mary told how this kid in her class, Gene, who walked with steel crutches and was called “the Mechanical Crab,” puked. “Mr. Cleary came in and cleaned it,” she said.

My mother laughed into her wine.

“Did he use the red stuff?” asked Jim.

Mary nodded.

“Did he make a face?” I asked.

“Almost,” said Mary.

Jim put his right hand to his throat, tightened his nostrils, and shifted his eyes side to side. My mother laughed so hard she coughed. Even when Mary and I stopped laughing, my mother kept on coughing. It went on and on. She held her cigarette away from her with one hand and used the other to cover her mouth. Her face went red, and tears came to the corners of her eyes. The harder the coughing got, the less sound came out. Jim got up and slapped her hard on the back. She took a swing at him, and he jumped away. A moment later she caught her breath. “You're gonna kill me,” she said, still laughing.

After the Pledge of Allegiance and the collection of lunch money, when Krapp was telling us about George Washington cutting down the cherry tree, a knock came on the classroom door.

“Come in,” Krapp called. In stepped Mr. Cleary. He held the door with his shoulder and said, “I want you to meet the new janitor, who'll be taking over until Boris comes back.” I pictured Boris sitting behind the wheel of his car at the bottom of the bay. Charlie was in the passenger seat. Cleary stepped in and to the side, opening the door more. A tall, scrawny man in gray work clothes came forward. “This is Lou,” said Cleary. The man's shirt had a white oval that held the name L
OU
stitched in red.

Krapp said, “Welcome, Lou.”

Lou lifted his head, and I saw how pale he was. The light was on his hair, and it was White. The shivering started in my legs and ran up my spine. Mr. White mumbled, “Thank you,” and stepped back into the shadow of the hallway.

Before leaving, Mr. Cleary turned to us and said, “I expect you to treat Lou with all the respect you would Boris.” Someone laughed for a split second—one of the girls. Cleary scanned the class, shot a look at Krapp, and then left.

I was stunned well past the class punishment of writing a
hundred times
“I must not laugh at Mr. Cleary”
and past the making of George Washington's wooden teeth. On the playground at recess, I stood with my back to the chain-link fence at the boundary of the field, shivering.

Later that afternoon our class passed Mr. White in the hallway on our way to the library. His smell of pipe smoke gagged me and made my eyes tear. With a squeegee on a stick and a bucket of water, he was cleaning the big windows that looked out on the courtyard. He had his back to us as we went by, but after we passed, I glanced over my shoulder and saw him watching.

In the library, now under Krapp's control, perfect silence was the rule. I sat with a book open on the table where the sunlight streamed in through the courtyard window. My eyes were closed, and I repeated to myself what Jim had said: “He knows less about us than we know about him.”

When I eventually opened my eyes, I saw Mr. White out in the hallway through the glass panes of the library door. He was slowly rubbing with a dirty rag. His eyes darted quickly as he looked from kid to kid to kid and back again. Before he could look at me, I closed my eyes.

That night Jim gave me his penknife. “Keep it in your coat pocket,” he said. “Go for the face.” I tried to picture myself stabbing Mr. White in the cheek and heard metal hit bone. Jim's advice was “Don't let him get you by yourself.” He told me six different ways to escape from Mr. White. One was to crawl between his legs and run, and another was to kick him in the nuts and run. He repeated all six.

The next day it took me twice as long as usual to walk to school. Mary even told me to hurry up. The whole time I kept shoving my hand into my coat pocket to check for the knife. Once in the building, as we passed the main office on the way to our classrooms, I looked down the hall to my right at the door to the furnace room and pictured Lou standing amid flames.
I stopped walking and thought about running home. Then, between the main office and the door at the end of the hall, I saw the entrance to the nurse's office.

I made it to my desk in Krapp's room on time. After holding out until well into the lecture about the solar system, I put up my hand. He noticed me, and although he hadn't asked a question, he pointed to me and said my name.

“I feel like I'm going to throw up,” I said.

“Oh, no,” he said, and in less than two minutes he wrote out a pass.

The windowless hallways were empty and dim. I moved quickly, afraid that at each turn I'd come face-to-face with Mr. White. When I reached the hall lined on one side with courtyard windows and saw the main office, it was like coming out of a tunnel. I ran the rest of the way to the nurse's door.

Mrs. Edwards was thin and old. She kept her gray hair long and always wore her white nursing cap and uniform. I never saw her give out any medicine or cure anybody of anything, but she was nice. If she bought your story, she'd send you home. Mary, who visited her frequently, had told me that if the coffee in Mrs. Edwards's cup was dark, she'd make you stay, but if it was light, she'd call home and have someone come and pick you up.

The nurse asked me what was wrong with me, and I told her. When she went into the little room in her office where she kept supplies and a cot for sick kids, I stepped closer to her desk and looked into her cup. There was coffee the blond color of the club with the dice, and inside I felt like Pop winning a double. Mrs. Edwards came back and choked me with a wooden stick, checked my ears with a flashlight, and banged my knees with a rubber hammer. Then she told me to go lie down on the cot in the sickroom.

“Take your sneakers off first,” she said.

It was dark in the small room, with the exception of a sliver
of light coming in the half-closed door to the larger office. I lay there peering at the opening, listening hard to hear if she was calling Nan. She made a phone call, mumbled for a few minutes, and hung up. A second later the door opened wider, and she was standing over me.

“I'm going out to use the lavatory,” she said. “I'll be right back.”

I nodded, hoping I looked as miserable as I was trying to. She pulled at the door, leaving it a bit ajar. I heard the outer office door open and close, and then silence. In my thoughts I pictured the cup of light coffee and saw Nan getting into the blue Impala. For a few seconds, I was pleased with myself, until another thought broke through. Jim and I hadn't told Mary that Lou was Mr. White. Jim had said not to, because it would scare her too much. Now she'd be left at the school with him roaming around and not know. She'd have to walk home by herself. I tried to talk myself out of its being a problem, but in the end I knew I couldn't leave her. As soon as the nurse came back, I'd tell her I was okay. A little while later, I heard the door to the office open and close. I got off the cot and went to talk to Mrs. Edwards, but just as I reached for the doorknob, I smelled pipe smoke. Through the opening I saw a bristled broom head pushing red stuff around the floor. I nearly cried out. I heard Jim's voice in my head, telling me to hurry up in Mr. White's garage. I stepped quietly backward, got down on the floor, and slid under the cot. My cheek rested against the cold floor as I stared hard through the opening into the outer office.

Three times I saw the broom go by, followed by Lou's big sneakered feet. He was working his way across the office, getting closer and closer to the sickroom. I thought of the penknife in my coat pocket back in the closet in Krapp's room. Then he was right outside, his shadow blocking the light from the office. Even above the pounding of my heart, I heard him
sniffing the air like an animal. He pushed the door open, and as his left foot moved forward, I heard Mrs. Edwards's voice. “Hi, Lou.”

He backed away from the door and turned around. “Just about done here,” he said, and moved out of sight. I slid out from beneath the cot and got onto it, knowing that Mrs. Edwards would be looking in to check on me.

“Okay, that's it,” I heard Lou say.

“Thanks,” said the nurse.

Lou had left my door open wider than before, and as he passed by on his way out, he turned his head and stared in at me. When he saw me lying there, his eyes widened. He hesitated for a fraction of a second and then smiled.

I told Mrs. Edwards I was better, and she sent me back to class. On the trip through the hallways I scurried like an insect but slowed when I passed Room X. The teacher was at the blackboard writing numbers, and I saw Mary sitting next to the Mechanical Crab, her eyes closed, mumbling to herself. I didn't see Lou again for the rest of the day. When I found Mary after school, I told her to hurry, and we walked quickly toward home. On the way I told her that Mr. White was Lou. She nodded but said nothing.

Another sleepless night, and the next day my mother made egg-salad sandwiches for our lunch bags. Their fart stench swirled around me as we walked to school. Jim had told me he'd come up with a plan by that night, but we had to go another whole day. He knew I was on the verge of just telling our parents everything. In the meantime he taught Mary some karate moves. Every step we took was dreadfully slow. When we passed Mrs. Grimm's house, Mary said to me, “I'll poke his eyes like Moe.”

“Good,” I said.

By the time we got to school, almost late, we came through the front door, and there was Boris the janitor in his baggy shirt
and work gloves, pushing the broom. It was just us and him in the foyer of the school.

“Boris, where were you?” I said to him.

He stopped sweeping and looked up. He shrugged. “I run away,” he said.

In the following days, Boris's story came to us through our mother at dinner as she relayed whatever gossip Nan had picked up from the neighborhood ladies. She told us that someone had put a letter in Boris's mailbox that said they were after him. He got scared and ran away for a while. He visited a cousin in Michigan. The police were investigating it, but Boris had lost the letter. My mother laughed at this last fact. “That figures,” she said. “Sounds like he was on a bender.”

For Jim, Boris's return called into question Mary's powers. Even with all she had been right about, he let this one thing convince him we'd been fooling ourselves. “It makes sense that Mr. White has Mr. Clean bottles at his house,” he said. “He's a janitor. Barzita did get hit by the snowplow, and Charlie must have fallen into the lake by accident. It's all coincidence.” I went along with him because I also wanted it to be true.

All Mary said was “Who sent the letter to Boris?” I never asked, “What about the orange paper and ribbon?”

Spring stuck its big toe into winter, and we let the investigation drop as the days grew a little brighter, a little warmer. I was slowly forgetting my fear, and at night, without the howling of the winter wind, the antenna was silent. Charlie no longer had a voice. His sullen, sodden presence behind the open closet door became increasingly easy to ignore, to pretend it was nothing.