Waking Lazarus (7 page)

The hall emptied as quickly as it had filled. Jude stood, alone again, with his sign.

He placed the sign back in the same place, then returned to the mop and bucket. He wheeled the squeaky-wheeled contraption to the section of floor he’d just finished and began mopping to cover the fresh footprints.

Ron Gress was a head-scratcher for Frank, one of those things (and there were a few) he couldn’t quite figure out. Like those blasted word puzzles in the newspaper, for instance. He could fill in the right answers here and there, but never all of them. Never. Each time in frustration he told himself he’d never do another. Yet he always did, because a different part of him inside demanded it.

So maybe that’s what Ron was, too: one of those word puzzles with a five-dollar word for the answer. The guy wasn’t your average village idiot, Frank could tell that. Ron was pretty smart, a lot smarter than himself, though that wasn’t saying a whole lot. The bottom line was, Ron shouldn’t be here, because . . . well, he just shouldn’t. Ron should be doing something else, something that qualified as True Work.

Frank, himself, had some True Work. Something he was born to do. He’d always hidden the results of his True Work in the basement. But maybe he could, maybe he
should
, show Ron. Inspire him a bit. It would be a good deed, and the truth was, he
wanted
to show someone else his True Work. Lately he’d been having trouble keeping it locked up inside his home, locked up inside his brain. The time was coming when he’d have to let the world see what he’d been doing down there. After all, it needed to be seen to be appreciated. Ron, he’d probably be a good place to start. And it would show him there was more to life than just janitorin’.

Of course, if Ron wanted to be a janitor, well, that wasn’t Frank’s biscuit to butter. It wasn’t as if he himself had set out to be in this position; so many people end up in places they never dreamed they would. And Frank had to say that being a janitor wasn’t all bad. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, as his dad always used to say. Janitorin’ gave him time to clear his mind, because these days, with everything on the TV, with the newfangled cell phones and gadgets and computers, even with those godforsaken newspaper puzzles, well, there was too much to fit in your mind, wasn’t there? Jani-torin’ gave him a chance to let loose all those jumbled thoughts. That, and his True Work.

Most people hated their day jobs, but Frank wasn’t one of them. It gave him a chance to be around kids. Especially the young ones, kindergarten age or so. A janitor was just as fascinating to them as an astronaut, and they were always full of smiles and questions. And Frank, for his part, made sure he was full of answers. Oh, sure, he acted as if he didn’t care for the kids when he was around Ron and other adults—it was so much easier to do that, because adults never trusted anyone who genuinely loved being around children—but deep down he was drawn to the young kids. They were, after all, what his True Work was all about.

Overall, being a janitor had a good beat, and you could dance to it. Frank gave it an 87.

Ron, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be happy anywhere. He walked through life in a cloudy daze, like that kid in the Charlie Brown cartoons who always had the storm of dust swirling around him. Frank knew a lot of kids picked up on that kind of thing, but he doubted Ron did. Or cared. Sometimes Frank would just sit Ron down and tell him the way things worked. In a small-town school such as this, you had to deal with kids of all ages.

And while Frank genuinely loved the small children, the older ones were a pain in the pants. Once they got up around middle school age, an orneriness leaked into their personalities. With these older kids, you couldn’t be friendly. You had to be firm, in control. Frank knew that; any blooming idiot would know it. Ron, on the other hand, was always in some world far away, and the middle school kids liked to take advantage. If Ron heard his name, the haze lifted for a few moments; once the conversation at hand was done, the haze always returned.

Frank watched as Ron emptied garbage cans, obviously nose-deep in his own little dream world. A group of middle school boys—that snotty, uncontrollable age—walked by Ron, and one of the boys kicked over a full, as yet untied, garbage bag. Refuse scattered in every direction. The boys snickered as they walked on, and Frank waited a few seconds. Maybe Ron would say something. Maybe he’d take control of the situation. Had to happen some day, didn’t it?

Instead, Ron simply bent down and started picking up the garbage, then stuffing it back into the bag.

Frank sighed. ‘‘Earth to la-la land,’’ he said, a bit torqued that Ron had let the middle school kids get away with their stunt. That meant they might try other stunts. Maybe even with him.

Ron’s eyes focused briefly.

‘‘Sorry, Frank. Just . . . uh, thinking.’’

Frank smiled. Yeah, thinking. Maybe that was Ron’s True Work. He grinned, picturing Ron’s head on that famous Thinker statue.

That thought, in turn, made him think of his own True Work again.

And his smile grew.

9

COUNTING

That night, Jude stood on Rachel’s porch, unsure of what to do. Rachel invited him over frequently—he was thankful for the chance to see Nathan, even if he’d never told Rachel so—but he always felt so awkward just before knocking on the door. Every time he felt like he should just turn and run. And keep running.

He knocked. He expected to wait for a few minutes before Rachel answered, but the door swung open almost in mid-knock.

Rachel stood in the doorway, looking surprised. ‘‘Oh, it’s you,’’ she said. Jude couldn’t quite tell if she had been expecting someone else or if she just couldn’t think of anything else to say right away. ‘‘You’re early.’’

‘‘First time for everything,’’ he said, trying a joke. She looked somewhat puzzled by his statement but then smiled before swinging the door open and inviting him to enter.

Rachel retreated to the kitchen while Jude found his way back to Nathan’s room. He peeked around the door and saw Nathan on the floor playing with toys from his own childhood: good old Lincoln Logs. Jude smiled as he watched his son. Every time he saw Nathan, a warm wave of pride always washed over him; he could scarcely believe he had been a part of something so beautiful. But soon after the pride came the shame. He wasn’t much of a father.

Frightened, weak, and yes, paranoid. He knew he was paranoid, knew he
felt
he was being watched more often than he actually
was
. But he couldn’t just turn off those feelings at the spigot; even if he could, some of the paranoia would still leak through, anyway.

Tonight, however, another emotion came as well. Call it resolve. Jude vowed he was going to change for Nathan. After Kristina’s confrontation, he somehow felt . . . freed. Soon she’d probably let the world know that Jude Allman lived, ha ha, and he’d have to face the constant hounding once again. But until then, in this brief afterglow, he was free from a chain he’d been dragging around the last six years.

And maybe, just maybe, this was what he needed to turn the corner. Recently he could feel he was getting stagnant, the paranoia steadily worsening. The blackouts, he felt, were part of a deeper sickness, something he didn’t want to face. When he was younger, he had always assumed mentally ill people couldn’t
know
they were sick. After all, if you were sane enough to recognize you were crazy, how crazy could you really be? But now he knew that wasn’t the case. He had always been able to feel the paranoia creeping into his own brain. Felt it crawling like a low slug, and yet he was powerless to stop it.

‘‘Hey, squirt,’’ Jude said to Nathan. Nathan immediately turned and grinned; he jumped to his feet, then ran over for a hug. Jude was always uncomfortable being touched, but he never stopped Nathan. Never. As they embraced, Jude thumbed through his memory banks, trying to find similar images of his own father. Memories labeled ‘‘father’’ were there, part of the buried trash he’d tried so long to abandon. He knew that much. But he didn’t want to dig deeper and risk launching another headache. Not tonight.

They heard Rachel call to them from the other end of the home. Jude looked down at Nathan. ‘‘Ready for some chow?’’

Nathan nodded. ‘‘It’s your favorite, Daddy. I asked Mommy to make it.’’

‘‘What’s my favorite?’’

Nathan furrowed his brow. ‘‘Spaghetti, acourse.’’

Jude smiled and rubbed the top of Nathan’s head. ‘‘I think that’s
your
favorite, if I remember right.’’

‘‘Acourse.’’ Nathan had recently discovered the term ‘‘of course’’ and found it to his liking for most situations, but he always pushed the two words into one:
acourse
. Jude wasn’t sure if Nathan heard it as one word himself, or if he just liked the sound of the words together.

Jude bent down to pick up Nathan, and they made their way to the dining room. As they entered, Rachel froze when she saw them. ‘‘What’s the matter?’’ Jude asked.

She blinked, then the moment passed. ‘‘Nothing,’’ she answered. ‘‘Sit down, sit down. What do you guys want to drink?’’

‘‘Milk, Mommy,’’ Nathan said as Jude put him in a chair.

Jude looked at her and smiled. ‘‘Me too,’’ he said. She smiled back and disappeared into the kitchen again.

Jude sat and started to ask something about kindergarten but stopped when Rachel came back into the room with two glasses of milk. As much as he wanted to be gregarious and attentive for his son, he was still a long way from it.

Rachel sat, then Nathan immediately chimed up. ‘‘Can I say the blessing, Mommy?’’ he asked, the eagerness dancing in his eyes.

‘‘You bet,’’ she said.

They closed their eyes, and Nathan delivered his prayer in an unmistakable singsong cadence. ‘‘Dear God. Thank you for Mommy and Daddy, and for Poppa and Gramma Sanders, and for kindygarden. And bless this food, in Jesus’ name. Amen.’’

‘‘Amen,’’ Jude added as he opened his eyes. Both Nathan and Rachel were staring at him. Uncomfortable, Jude looked down at his plate, found the salad in front of him, and started dishing it into his bowl. Obviously he’d made a mistake. It must have been the amen thing. Maybe they resented him saying it; he knew Rachel was a bit of a Holy Roller, even though she’d never tried the ‘‘God loves you’’ lecture on him. She and Nathan went to church regularly, and he was okay with that. Let Rachel believe what she wanted. Like his mother had.

And wouldn’t he, Jude Allman, the Incredible Dying Man, know more about that than most people? He had died three times, come face-to-face with . . . Best not to think about that.

Jude decided he should just shut up for the rest of the dinner. He’d once seen a bumper sticker that said
A closed mouth gathers no
foot
. Now, there was something he could say ‘‘amen’’ to. Just not aloud.

Jude played with the mound of spaghetti on his plate, avoiding eye contact with either of them. Who was he kidding, anyway? Rachel couldn’t wait to get him out of the house. And Nathan would soon be old enough to figure out his father was more idle than idol. Maybe he could move again, start over. Leave behind the sham life he’d set up for another sham, add another blanket of secrecy. That would also solve the newly discovered Kristina problem.

Nathan broke the long silence. ‘‘Are you ready for your surprise, Daddy?’’

Jude looked nervously at Rachel. She smiled (a forced smile, he thought), then he looked back to Nathan. ‘‘Yeah. Sure.’’

‘‘Can I get it?’’ Nathan asked.

Rachel touched Nathan’s hand, caressed it a bit, and nodded. Nathan jumped out of his chair and ran from the room.

Jude admired how she could touch their son so casually, without a thought. Each time he touched Nathan—the one person he actually
would
touch—he had to make himself do it. Not because of Nathan. Nathan was perfect.

But touching other people was so foreign to him now; doing it overloaded his senses and sent shock waves into his mind. He had hugged Nathan and brought him to the table that evening, and the feeling was wonderful. But before the hug, before picking up Nathan, he had to tell himself:
touch your son
. Rachel didn’t have to do that, and Jude was jealous.

Nathan came back, slid into his chair. ‘‘Close your eyes, Daddy.’’

Jude did as instructed. Closing his eyes was easy, comforting. As long as he was sitting up.

‘‘Surprise!’’ Nathan squealed. Jude opened his eyes and saw a picture: an outline of Nathan’s hand turned into art. Scribbles of color raced across the page, displaying a creative disregard for the boundaries of the handprint.

‘‘My hand, Daddy. I did it in kindygarden today.’’

Jude smiled, forced himself to pick up the paper. ‘‘It’s great, Nathan. It’s really great.’’ Nathan beamed at him.

‘‘I can almost remember doing something like that,’’ Rachel said, ‘‘when I was in kindergarten or first grade or something. It was . . . wait, it wasn’t quite that. It was a handprint in that plaster of Paris stuff. And I remember my teacher—Mrs. Zieske, that’s right, it was second grade—painted it gold.’’ She looked at Jude. ‘‘You ever do anything like that, Ron?’’

He returned Rachel’s gaze for a second. It was too much for one night, trying to talk as well as touch. One sense at a time, no more. And to top it off, there was the ‘‘amen’’ mistake. Jude’s head was starting to itch, and despite his vows to avoid a headache, he knew one was in the neighborhood. Soon it would be pounding on the front door of his brain, demanding to come in. ‘‘I’m not sure. I don’t remember too much about school. Maybe.’’

Rachel turned her attention back to the spaghetti.

Maybe next time they could talk. But not tonight. The batteries were too low.

During the rest of the dinner, Jude listened to the old-fashioned clock on the wall pound out the seconds, then minutes. Jude counted the ticks to himself, a comforting action that staved off the waiting headache:
one thousand three hundred twenty-seven, one thousand three
hundred twenty-eight
.

He wanted to be home, safe in his recliner behind locked doors.
One thousand three hundred thirty-three, one thousand three hundred
thirty-four
.