The Shadow Year (23 page)

We headed home.

Before I turned off the light in my room, I checked the note in my pocket. Unfolding it, I read,

I was going to tell Jim, but I was too tired. I fell asleep, looking out at the stars.

We sat in the alley behind the deli on overturned crates, passing a carton of chocolate milk back and forth. Jim had predicted that my father wouldn't return to church. I was so weary from having participated in the night watch, but Jim pumped me with questions, and eventually I told him everything that had happened. I'd already given him the note from Ray.

“Jumped out a window in Cleveland,” said Jim, and shook his head.

“When Curdmeyer said the prowler looked like Ray, I almost puked,” I said. “But you know what was weird?”

“What?”

“After they'd already said that the Halloways had moved away, Conrad said, ‘It can't be him,' like there was some other reason than that they'd moved. And then Curdmeyer said, ‘That's right, I forgot.'”

“What d'ya mean?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Yeah, you do,” said Jim. “You just don't realize it yet.”

“What's he looking for?” I asked.

“I don't know….” He unwrapped a chocolate-chip cookie and held it up like the host again. It broke, and he handed me
the smaller part. “The question is, what's he going to do when he finds it?”

When we got home, my mother quizzed us about the sermon. Before I could even blush, Jim, as cool as could be, said, “Jonah and the whale.” It was a story we'd learned from Mrs. Grimm.

“What did the priest say about it?” asked my mother.

“Be good or God will swallow you.”

The sun was shining, and I was sitting in Jim's chair, overlooking Botch Town. Mary was standing next to me.

“Can you do that thing with telling me the numbers again?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Mickey's leaving,” she said.

I wasn't sure what she meant. I turned and looked at her, searching for Mickey. Finally I asked, “Where's he going?”

“Away,” she said.

“So?”

“He's got the
numbers.
”

“Can
you
still do Botch Town?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” she said.

“But not the numbers in my ear?”

“I could try,” she said, shaking her head, as if she weren't sure. “Who do you want to see?”

I stood and reached behind the Halloways' house for Ray. Sitting back down, I set the figure in front of me, at the edge of the table. In life Ray was always in motion, even sitting cross-legged by the lantern in his underground camp. In clay he was thin and stiff, standing straight with his arms at his sides. We hadn't really known him, though, when Jim made the Botch
Town version. The figures were only meant to hold the places of the living, but I wondered if in the world of the board, life on the painted Willow Avenue was something different.

Mary started with the numbers, pouring them into my ear like a batch of spaghetti dumped into a colander. The strings of digits swam around inside my head, and I stared hard at the clay Ray. I wanted to know what he was looking for, and I believed that the answer would suddenly evolve into a Technicolor scene before my eyes. For the briefest time, I felt like I wasn't sitting in the chair but actually on the street in Botch Town—and then Mary moved, and I found myself returned to the chair. The second she stopped speaking the numbers, I realized I'd imagined the whole thing.

“No good,” said Mary, shaking her head again.

“Never mind,” I said.

She mumbled a few words and went over on her side of the curtain. I kept staring at Ray, hoping I'd get something. Before long, though, my glance drifted, looking for Mr. White. I found him lying on his side at the edge of the board up near Hammond, which meant he wasn't close by. I scanned the street, studying the houses and our clay neighbors. Eventually I came to the end of the block at East Lake. When the school came into view, I remembered I had to make the moon for Krapp. It was due the next day. I knew I'd need Jim to help me. I stood up to go see if he was home yet, and just as I reached for the light string, I noticed someone back in the woods standing by the lake. It was Mrs. Edison, her hair fanning out behind her, her thin arms folded over her chest. She was at the very edge of the water, staring out across the sparkled blue.

“Mary,” I called.

She came through the curtain.

“How long ago did Mrs. Edison go into the woods?”

“Today,” she said.

“When will she be there, outside of Botch Town?”

“I don't know,” she said, and turned, going back through the curtain.

I stood looking for another second and then ran upstairs and put on my coat. I got George on the leash, and we went out the door. Once we hit the street, we ran down around the turn toward East Lake. I was breathing heavily, and in my mind I saw Mrs. Edison sitting at her dining-room table staring into a bowl of water.
Maybe Charlie found a way to tell her,
I thought.

It took extra effort for me to venture into the woods. There was still plenty of afternoon left, and it was a nice day, but always lurking at the edge of my thoughts was the fact that Mr. White had been leaving his car at home and Mary seemed to be losing her powers. Halfway up the path, my neck was sore from turning my head so quickly so many times. The occasional sound of a snapping twig made my heart race. George stopped to piss every ten feet, and I let him so he'd be on my side in case Mr. White showed up.

We turned off the path and walked quietly through the low scrub amid the pines. As we neared the lake, we passed through a thicket of oak and I caught a glimpse of the water. Drawing closer to the shore, I saw her. She was no more than ten feet from me. Tall yellow grass sprouted right up to the water's edge. She stood between two pines, her back to me. I could tell she had her arms folded across her chest. Her hair was as crazy as she was. The sight of her stillness overpowered my amazement that she was actually there. From the moment I'd seen her on the board in Botch Town, I'd thought she was going to drown herself.

I dropped the leash, and George took off back through the trees. I ran in the opposite direction to Mrs. Edison's side and made a face my mother would describe as simpering. “My dog got away. Can you help me get him?” I said to her.

She turned her head and looked into my eyes.

“My dog got away, and I have to get him. Can you help me?” I said.

It took a while, like she was waking up, but she smiled and nodded. With her arms still folded, she followed me. I walked through the scrub, and she followed silently, like a ghost. I waited for her at the path and saw George standing a few feet ahead of me. When I took a step in his direction, he bolted.

She joined me, and we walked along together, shoulder to shoulder.

“You were in Charlie's class,” said Mrs. Edison. Her voice was calm. She leaned her head toward me but kept her gaze trained on something far ahead.

“Yeah.”

“Do you miss him?” she asked.

I told her how Krapp had left Charlie's desk empty so we would remember him all year.

“I think he's in the lake,” she said.

I didn't respond.

“He's fallen into the lake,” she said. “I can
feel
it.”

My throat was suddenly dry, and when I spoke, it came out cracked. “I think they checked the lake.”

Abruptly, she stopped walking and opened her arms. I looked up, and it took me a second to realize that she was motioning to George, who stood a few feet away. I crouched down so he wouldn't run. He looked at me and then at Mrs. Edison, whose arms were now open wide. She made a kissing sound, and the dog ran to her. She leaned over and grabbed his leash with one hand while petting him with the other.

“His name is George,” I said.

She handed me the leash. “He's a nice dog,” she said.

I started walking again toward the school field and hoped she'd follow. She did. We were almost back to Sewer Pipe Hill when she said, “You're going to the junior high school next year.”

“I hope so.”

When we reached the field, she stopped almost exactly at the same spot my father did to show me the star, and she suddenly put her arms around me. She pulled me to her. Fear and something else ran through me, but I didn't move a muscle. I could feel her ribs and the beat of her heart. A big chunk of a minute passed before she let me go. Then she touched the top of my head and said, “Go home.”

I tightened my grip on the leash and ran. At the gate I called back to her and checked to see that she was moving toward the street instead of back to the woods. She was, very slowly. She waved, and I took off.

Even though Krapp's moon needed making, when I got home from the woods, I sat in the corner of the couch and watched the afternoon movie. James Cagney was tap-dancing and singing “I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy.” I escaped into the television and then into myself, huddled in sleep. It was dark when my mother called me to dinner.

Not until the next morning, Thursday, did I remember the moon. I saw its big, creamy face laughing in a star-filled sky just before my father shut the door on his way out to work, waking me. I opened my eyes to the early-morning darkness and felt instant panic shoot through me, straight up from my feet like electricity. Krapp loomed in my thoughts, and he wasn't standing for it.

I went across the hallway and tapped very lightly on Jim's door. There was no answer. “Jim,” I whispered. Nothing. I tapped again. Then I heard the springs of his bed, his feet on the floor. He opened the door dressed in his pajama pants. His eyes squinted, and his hair was in a whirl.

“What d'ya want?” he said.

“I forgot to make the moon for Krapp.”

A few seconds passed, like he'd fallen back to sleep on his feet. “Is it due today?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Now you're at my mercy,” he said.

“He's gonna kill me if I don't have it.”

“You'll be in detention for a week. He'll make you write, five hundred times, ‘When Krapp Says Make the Moon, Make It.'”

“I'm begging,” I said.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Dad just left for work.”

“Okay,” he said. “But later.”

“It's going to take a while, isn't it? We should start now.”

“I said I'll do it. Go away.”

He shut the door, and I heard him roll back into his bed.

I couldn't sit still. I even tried to think of some way to make the moon on my own, but every idea I had vanished as soon as it appeared. What was frustrating was that I could see it clearly, the image from my dream. No matter what else I thought about, it was also there, hovering in the background. I washed and dressed, brushed my teeth and combed my hair. Then I paced back and forth in my room, practicing excuses that I knew had no chance with Krapp.

We had to leave for school by eight o'clock. Mary and I would walk to East Lake, and Jim would catch the bus at the corner across from Barzita's. That morning he didn't get up until seven, and then he decided he needed a shower. I was so mad at him, but I knew not to say anything. He ate his cereal like an old man, lifting the spoon to his mouth as if it weighed ten pounds. He chewed in slow motion, a smile on his face. It was 7:35 by the time he put his bowl and spoon in the sink. We had a little more than maybe fifteen minutes if we hustled. He stretched and yawned.

“Okay,” he said, “let's go.”

I followed him down the cellar steps. He turned the light on. Then he stood rubbing his chin and his head, saying “Hm
mmmm,” like Betty Boop's Pappy. He walked over to the little table next to his chair that held his supply of junk for Botch Town and pushed the mess around with both hands.

The cellar door opened. “What are you guys doing down there?” my mother called.

“I'm looking for my compass for school,” he said.

“It's almost quarter of,” she said. “You've got to get going soon.”

“Be right up,” he said.

“The Glory That Was Grease” went through my mind, and I was just about to curse him out when he knelt down and pulled a box from under the table. He opened it, and inside was a plastic bag. After unrolling the plastic, he reached into it and came out with two handfuls of gray clay, the stuff of the inhabitants of Botch Town. He placed the two clumps on the table, rolled back the plastic, and slid the closed box back into its place.

“One moon for Krapp, coming right up,” he said, standing, rubbing his hands. He lifted the two hunks of clay and mashed them together. When they were melded into one big piece, he began rolling it, rolling it, rolling it, faster and faster, like he was making a meatball. When it was a perfect sphere, he really went to work on it, pressing into it with his thumb, pinching pieces up, digging with his pinkie nail. I couldn't believe it, but when he was done, holding his creation between his thumb and forefinger at its poles, it really looked like the moon.

“There you go,” he said. “Krapp'll never be the same.”

“How will I carry it without wrecking it?” I said.

“Easy,” he said, and looked down, surveying his junk collection again. He reached in and pulled out an old wooden Popsicle stick and stuck it into the bottom of my moon. “Moonsicle,” he said, holding it out to me. “I should sell the idea to Softee.”

“Hurry up,” my mother called from the cellar door. Jim ran
up the steps, and I followed more slowly, holding the moon in front of me like one of Mrs. Grimm's candy apples.

My mother had already gone out to her car. Mary had her coat on and was waiting for me by the front door.

“What's that?” she asked, pointing.

“The moon,” said Jim. He brushed past us and left. “It looks great, doesn't it?” he called back from the front steps.

I'd gotten my arm into one sleeve of my jacket, but as I switched hands with the moon to get the other in, I banged the soft clay against the banister. There was a small dent where it had hit, which I felt like a wound in my side.

All the way to school, kids laughed at my moonsicle and flaunted their own huge creations of baked and painted plaster or papier-mâché balloons. Still, I held that stick carefully, not letting the weight of the clay ball topple it from my grip. It was the only thing standing between me and Krapp.

I got to Krapp's room and was heading for the coat closet when someone gave my elbow a shove. My arm flew straight out, but I held tight. Unfortunately, the moon didn't. It flew three feet through the air and then landed with a plop on the floor. I wanted to turn and see who'd hit me, but just then Hodges Stamper was backing away from the closet. I heard Hinkley laughing as I lunged for the clay. Too late. Without realizing it, Stamper stamped one half of it into a pancake with his heel. I considered just kicking it into the dark part of the coat closet, but then Krapp called for us to take our seats. With one good jab, I skewered the mess that was my moon.

Everybody had a moon project on his or her desk, and each was more amazing than the next. Pat Trepedino's could actually have
been
the moon. I just sat there holding my stick. Krapp started his inspection, up and down the aisles. He made no comment as he went. You could hear him sniffing like a bloodhound for failure. Finally he got to me, and he looked down at the thing I held in my hand. I stared up at him.

“It got stepped on,” I said. I darted a glance up the next row and saw Hinkley smile.