Born Weird (12 page)

Kent loved all these ideas, but there were problems. He couldn’t figure out how to set up and secure the running chainsaws. He didn’t have the money to hire four garbage trucks and their drivers. The technical knowledge needed to install a tub of water in front of city hall was beyond him. Kent’s problem wasn’t creativity, but cash and expertise. He needed something simple.

Kent’s mind was so preoccupied that he failed to notice the large pothole directly in his path. The front right wheel of his shopping cart fell into the hole. It tipped to the right. Kent looked down just as his empties began hitting the pavement. The sound was enormous. Quickly, Kent uprighted the cart but he used too much force and it fell to the left. The remaining bottles flew out and smashed on the road.

“Fuck,”
Kent said. He jumped up and down. The thick soles of his workboots broke the glass into smaller pieces. “Fuck, fuck,
fucking
fuck!”

One bottle remained unbroken. Kent picked it up. He smashed it against the side of his overturned shopping cart. Then he walked back to his house, which was less than half a block away. In the coach house Kent got a broom, although he could not find a dustpan. He walked around to the front door and he went inside.

Having removed his workboots Kent continued looking
for a dustpan. He was searching the third floor when he happened to look out the window and see that his siblings were standing in the front yard.

This did not make him happy.

R
ICHARD
, L
UCY
, A
BBA
, A
NGIE
and Paul stood in the grassless front yard of 465 Palmerston Boulevard. They stared at the house. They could not believe what they saw. Most of the windows were covered with cardboard. The stained glass above the doorway, which used to show the house number, had been replaced with a roughly nailed piece of plywood. Large patches of the roof were without shingles. Numerous bricks were missing from the facade and the porch leaned dangerously to the left.

“It’s like it’s been abandoned,” Richard said.

“It’s like it’s been abused,” Lucy said.

“It didn’t used to look like this,” Angie said. She turned to her left and held out her arm. Paul took a step closer to her. “Honestly. This was a beautiful house.”

“Like that one,” Richard said. He pointed to the house on the right, which was well kept and recently painted. All the other houses on Palmerston Boulevard were. Theirs was the only one that wasn’t.

“The neighbours must just hate him,” Abba said. Then
she walked up the steps and onto the porch. The boards sagged under her feet. She twisted the antique doorbell. It fell into her hand. She dropped it onto the porch and the bell quietly rang.

“You don’t think he still lives here?” Lucy asked.

“Oh he’s in there,” Richard said.

“How do you know?”

“Where else would he go?”

“There’s no way he’s still living here.”

“Come on, Abba! Let’s just go!”

“We’re going in!” Abba yelled. The screen door hung on an angle. Abba pulled it open. The main door wasn’t closed.

“Will you come with me?” Angie asked Paul.

“Sure,” Paul said. Together they climbed the steps and went through the doorway. Abba continued to hold open the screen door. Several moments passed.

“Now!” Abba said. Lucy and Richard climbed the steps and went inside and Abba followed them in.

An even layer of grime covered everything. The chesterfield wasn’t the one they remembered and this one had the legs sawn off of it. The bulbs in the chandelier had been replaced with candles. Black soot stained the wall above the fireplace. But much more disturbing were the things that hadn’t changed. Angie saw her winter coat hanging in the front hall closet. Her basketball was on the shelf above it. Their family portrait still hung on the wall. The room
had the feel of a shipwreck, one that had sunk quickly, without warning.

They were still in the hallway when Kent came down the stairs. His hair and his beard were long. His feet were bare. His toenails were yellow. He looked like a mountain man and he reeked of stale booze. Six or seven steps from the bottom, Kent stopped. His eyes became wide and he gripped the banister tightly.

“Kent?” Abba said. “It’s me. It’s us!”

“You … 
fuckers
!” Kent screamed. They took a step back. Kent remained on the stairs. He kicked the wall with his bare foot. Large pieces of plaster fell onto the steps.

“You
fucking
fuckers. You
fucking
think you can come back? Just like this? You can just return?
Fuck
you! You fucking
fuckers
!”

Even Abba turned and ran. No one looked back until they had safely reassembled in the grassless front yard. They listened to the sound of Kent breaking things and occasionally screaming the word
fuck
.

“What do you think he could be breaking?”

“It didn’t look like there was that much stuff to break.”

“Maybe he’s re-breaking things,” Angie said. She stepped closer to Paul and then she leaned into his shoulder and he put his arm around her. For a moment it was quiet inside the house. Then a series of objects—a baseball glove, a comic book and several dresses—were thrown from the top left window on the second floor.

“That’s my room,” Angie said. She pointed to a window that several volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica were flying out of. The books landed on the sloped roof of the porch and slowly slid down. Angie took Paul’s hand and put it on top of her stomach. A board game sailed through the window. The fake money scattered into the air and then it rained down on top of them, like confetti.

BOOK TWO:
Triple Terror

T
HREE HOURS AFTER THEY
’
D
learned of their father’s accident Richard was left in charge while their mother accompanied the police to the station. It seemed there were some questions. Why the Shark chose to go with her, and not stay with them, they did not know. They didn’t even think to ask. They sat in the living room in a state of shock, not knowing what to do. Richard looked at his watch. He waited for ten minutes to pass and then he looked at it again. Only one minute had.

“I have no idea what we should be doing,” Richard said.

Kent was the only one who sat on the floor. He had been given the game ball, which he threw up into the air and caught. “We should unpack Rainytown,” he said.

“That feels very wrong to me,” Abba said.

“No,” Richard said, “it’s perfect.”

The cottage had been sold a year and a half earlier and Rainytown had been flattened and stored in the attic. Richard led the way. The rest of them followed him up. It did not take them long to reassemble it. They didn’t try
to make it sturdy. Instead they focused on putting everything back in the right place, making all of it like it used to be.

In twenty minutes it was done. They all stood in front of it. And then Richard turned around and faced them.

“I propose,” he said, “that Rainytown needs a cemetery.”

“I think it should go right there,” Lucy said and she pointed to the Greet Your Meat Stockyards.

“I agree,” Angie said. Kent was already heading downstairs for supplies, but Abba blocked his way.

“I won’t have anything to do with this,” Abba said.

Kent pushed past her. He returned with glue and paper and scissors and pencil crayons. The four of them got to work. Several sheets of green construction paper became the grass. The tombstone was cut from a black shoebox. With a white pencil crayon Richard began to write on it.

“Wait,” Abba called. She’d been so quiet that they’d forgotten she was there. “At least use a question mark.”

“I think I’d kinda like that,” Angie said.

Richard looked at Kent and Lucy. They didn’t disagree. It was an idea that, at the time, presented a small measure of relief. Richard handed the pencil crayon to Abba and in thick block capitals she wrote:

Abba set the tombstone inside the Rainytown Bone Orchard. It was the only one. They didn’t make any more. Not then, not ever. Lucy crafted tiny paper flowers and put them on the grave. They had a moment of silence. Then they all breathed out at once. They felt strong enough to go back downstairs and wait for their mother to come home.

No one made dinner. Nine o’clock came and their mother wasn’t home. Then it was ten and she still wasn’t there. Just before midnight Richard turned on the television.

“Triple Terror,”
he said.

Every fourth Friday Cable 57 aired a show called
Triple Terror
. Starting at midnight they’d play three monster movies back to back to back. Under normal conditions the Weird children would wait until their mom and dad were sound asleep and then they’d all creep downstairs. They’d sit close to the TV and keep the volume low. They’d watch all three movies. Anyone falling asleep would be punched awake. They loved it if the movie was black and white. They loved it even more when you could see the strings on the flying saucers. But the ones they loved the most were the movies where the monster was obviously a man in a costume.

The night of their father’s accident they watched all three movies. None of them fell asleep. After the monster movies they watched an infomercial and then the national anthem played and then the station began to broadcast a test
pattern. They muted the television but they did not turn it off. They fell asleep, together, on the couches.

When they woke up the next morning, their mother and grandmother still weren’t home.

R
ICHARD
, L
UCY
, A
BBA
, A
NGIE
and Paul stood on the lawn, looking up. After the board games came dishware. Then record albums. Then dress shoes. Once the siblings and Paul retreated to the sidewalk objects ceased being chucked from Angie’s former bedroom window. They all stood at the end of the driveway, staring at the dilapidated house.

They had failed to anticipate that both the house and Kent would have slipped into such disrepair.