Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It (11 page)

CHAPTER 19

It felt like forever until I found the truck.
In nae, in nae,
I said to myself over and over. Tenet number three. I would need perseverance to reach help in time.

Finally I saw the ridge where we’d parked. I ran as fast as I could the rest of the way. I put the key in the ignition and turned. The engine whined, then stopped. I wheezed, trying to catch my breath after racing up the obstacle-covered hill.

I tried the key again. Nothing.
What was I supposed to do now?

Baekjul boolgool,
I recited. Indomitable spirit. Courage in the face of adversity. I imagined Ed starting the truck. What did he do? Sometimes he put his foot on the gas as he turned the key. I tried it. The engine roared and the truck shook to life.

Keep your foot on the brake. Move the lever to
D
for drive.
I needed to turn around. It would be a sharp turn, across the road, but this was an old logging road. No cars would be coming. I pressed down on the gas, turning the wheel hard to the left. The engine roared, but the truck stood still.

Emergency brake.
My hand shook as I reached for the release. I pulled it and the truck started to move. I cranked the steering wheel left. I couldn’t make it all the way around—at least not without going over the edge. I braked. I would have to back up and turn the wheel again.

Ed and I hadn’t practiced going backward, but I knew that was what the
R
on the dashboard was for. I moved the lever and pushed the gas again. The truck zoomed back faster than I’d expected. I stomped on the brake and bit my tongue. “Ow.” My mouth watered. My heart pummeled my ribs.

“Baekjul boolgool,”
I said out loud.

After a couple more tries, I got the truck pointed in the right direction. I gave it more gas. Too fast. Brake. Gas. Brake. The truck lurched down the mountain.
Baekjul boolgool. Baekjul boolgool.

I got to the curvy part in the road. My knuckles ached from squeezing the steering wheel. My insides felt like they would fall out. I turned too far to the right and came dangerously close to the edge of the drop-off. I jerked the wheel left and the truck swerved toward the mountain.

“It’s okay,” I said, panting. It would be okay. Everything
had
to be okay. The road felt bumpier than before. Where was I going? How would I get help in time?

Ed would die. I knew it. After not knowing him my whole life, I had finally found him, and now he was gone, just like that. Just like Grampa Clem.

Hot tears burned the rims of my eyes. If I had stayed home like I was supposed to, this wouldn’t be happening. Was this my punishment for not behaving like an honorable Tae Kwon Do warrior—for disrespecting my parents and being dishonest?

I worked to stay in the center of the road as I rounded the next curve, but my watery eyes made it hard to see. I blinked a few times.

A van!

I jerked the wheel to the left. Something hard jammed into my chest as the front of the truck crumpled against the side of the mountain.

The truck was silent. Pain. Around my heart. I couldn’t breathe without it hurting. I’d forgotten to put on my seat belt.

“You okay?” someone yelled from outside.

“Huh,” I said, because it was the only thing I could get out. I looked out my window, slowly, as if I were underwater.

A white man with a blue bandana on his head pulled open my door.

“Is he all right?” A woman with brown hair down to her elbows peered around his arm.

“I can’t tell. Nearly killed us all, though. What are you doing driving, kid?”

“Who cares, Brian? Help him into our van.” The woman stepped in front and took my arm. “Can you walk?”

“My grandpa,” I said. My throat hurt from being so dry.

I told them what had happened; then we climbed into their van and started up the mountain. I sat on the shaggy carpet in the back, smelling gasoline and praying that God would help Ed stay alive, even if Ed didn’t believe in Him.

Back at the digging site, P.J. clawed at the dirt. Ed’s rear end was still up in the air—but he wasn’t moving. Was he all right?

I ran to Ed. “Good dog,” I said, pulling P.J. away.

Brian wrapped his arms around Ed’s thighs. The woman, Tammy, grabbed one of his legs and I took the other. “Pull!” Brian said. I yanked as hard as I could. I fell backward as the hillside gave way and Ed popped out, red as a beet. He sat on the ground, gulping for air. His hair was full of dirt.

I was so relieved to see Ed alive that my chest stopped hurting. I thought about hugging him, but I was too embarrassed and he was all bent over, trying to catch his breath.

He coughed a few times. “I owe you one,” he said to Brian and Tammy.

“Are you okay?” I asked, stuffing my hands into my pockets. It felt as if we were still in danger, standing there on that shifting mountain. The ground no longer seemed solid. The tunnel where Ed had been digging was gone.

Ed nodded. “Yeah. I’m okay.” He held up a chunk of rock. “And I got this.” He wiped it off and handed it to me. The rock was mostly black, rippled with blue.
A thunder egg!
“I think that’s as good as we’re going to do today,” he said. He ruffled his hair and slapped at his shirt. Dirt flew everywhere.

“I can’t believe you came out of that alive,” Brian said. “How did you breathe under there?”

“A big tree root created an air pocket right where I needed it. Got lucky, I guess.”

Was it just luck? I thought about my prayer in the back of the van.

“Like I said, I owe you.” Ed looked at the place where he’d been buried.

“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Tammy said. My head bounced in agreement.

Ed gulped down some water, then offered me the bottle. The water trickled cold all the way to my stomach. Then we climbed the hill and Brian drove us to Ed’s truck. After making sure the engine would start, we thanked them again and said goodbye.

I leaned my head against the back window. The bone over my heart was hurting again, but I didn’t care. We’d made it out alive.

“Sorry about your truck,” I said. The fender had been pretty banged up and the left headlight was shattered.

“You saved my life.”

Warm waves rippled over me. Ed saw what I’d done as saving his life?

“The truck can be fixed.” He sniffed. “That was a close one, though. A little too close.” He smiled at me with one side of his mouth. “Better buckle up.”

By the time we reached the bottom of the mountain, my insides felt like a tumbler full of rocks getting polished. The maple donut and root beer swirled together in the beaker of my stomach. They were having a bad chemical reaction—with potentially dangerous gases.

We stopped at a gas station and I went to the bathroom. Then I figured I’d better call Gladys and let her know I was all right.

I dropped in two quarters and dialed my number. “Please deposit thirty more cents,” a voice said. I put in a quarter and a nickel and waited for the ring.

It rang three times and the message came on. I listened for the beep. “Gladys? Are you there? I’m calling to let you know—”

“Have you lost your mind?” Gladys was breathing hard, as if she’d been doing chair-obics before coming to the phone. “You better be on your way home. Your folks will have my head on a platter if you’re not here when they get back.”

I told her it would be a few hours but I’d be there in time.

Before I got home, I had a question to ask Ed. A Big Question.

Inside the truck, Ed held out a bag of sunflower seeds, already shelled. I poured some into my hand and crunched them between my teeth. Ed drove onto the road.

I looked out the window at the forest around us. My stomach was still tumbling. I licked the salt from the sunflower seeds off my palm. I looked out the window again.

“My birthday’s August twelfth,” I said.

“That right?”

“Maybe you could come to my party.”

“Doubt your mom would be too happy about that.”

I saw Mom hitting the hood of Ed’s truck with her fist. “Why didn’t you want them to get married?” I kept my arms by my sides and waited.

Ed’s eyes searched the dashboard as if he had X-ray vision and could see the engine through the gauges. He rubbed his nose. Then he pulled on his ear—one of the ears that stuck out like mine. “I guess I didn’t much like the idea.”

“Why not?”

He tugged on his ear some more. “Well, I guess it just didn’t seem right…at the time. Races mixing like that.” He glanced in the rearview mirror.

He had confirmed the truth.

“You mean you didn’t want my mom to marry my dad because he’s black.” I looked at his pinkish face. My skin tingled, as if I were a big peach getting peeled. My heart sat at the center of me, turning hard as a pit. “But you play chess with Mr. Henderson every week.”

“That’s different than getting married.” The truck sped along the straight road.

“Why is getting married different than being friends?”

His face turned even pinker. He sat as straight as the trees outside the window.

“You’re too young…for all the details. I just think families should look alike. White people belong with other white people and black belong with black.”

I thought about quartz. Purple, pink, brown, clear—it came in many colors, but all the colors belonged to the same family. “You still believe that?”

He glanced toward me, then looked back at the road.

“Is that the real reason you told your rock club I was just a boy from the mall?”

His eyes narrowed. “I tried to tell Kate, the children are the ones who suffer.”

I leaned against the door with my chin in my hand. I thought of kids I’d seen suffering on TV—ads that showed children with dirty faces and their bones poking through their skin, kids who always had their fingers in their mouths and flies around their eyes. That wasn’t me.

“I’m not suffering,” I said.

We were silent the rest of the way home.

CHAPTER 20

Back at the end of my street, Ed pulled over to the curb. P.J. barked and scratched on the window.

Ed picked up the thunder egg from the floorboard and held it out. I took it in my hand, but all I could think about was that Ed didn’t think we belonged together. I got out of the truck. I didn’t care if thunder eggs
were
like Christmas presents. It sure didn’t feel like Christmas.

I had hoped Ed would tell me something that showed he’d changed his mind—that he didn’t think the same way anymore. I’d hoped he’d say how sorry he was and what a big mistake he’d made. But he’d given me nothing.

I gripped the rock. I wanted to hurl it at him. I felt like a big, angry thunder spirit.

I raised the thunder egg, ready to smash it to the ground. P.J. barked.

“Wait!” Ed said. “We need to
cut
it open.”

I looked into his eyes. What I saw wasn’t hate or dislike, the feelings that swirled around my heart like a hurricane. What was that word Gladys sometimes used to describe white people?

Ignorance.

Ed didn’t have any idea why I’d wanted to throw the rock.

“You can keep it,” I said, tossing it onto the seat. I zipped open my pack and pulled out Ed’s tools. “I’m giving these back. Some boys in the park took the pick from me and broke it. They thought they were better than us, too.” I dropped the black bundle on the seat. “I’ll send you the money to replace it.”

Ed stared at the tools.

I put my hand on the camper shell’s window and P.J. licked the glass. “Bye, boy.”

Was P.J. a brown dog with white spots, or a white dog with brown spots? Didn’t matter. To me, brown and white looked like they belonged together just fine.

I tromped up my front steps and turned the doorknob. Locked. I started to reach into my backpack pocket for my key, but the door flew open.

Gladys grabbed my arm and pulled me inside. She held me by my shoulders. Her nostrils flared and her breath was hot on my face. Then she pulled my head into her chest and squeezed.

“Sorry, Gladys,” I said, and I truly was. Sorry that I had gone. Sorry that I’d met Ed DeBose. Sorry for how he felt about my parents getting married. For how he felt about me.

I pulled back. “Are you going to tell my parents?”

“No. But you are.”

My hands were dirty. I went to the kitchen to wash them. I didn’t want any reminder of my day with Ed DeBose. The experiment was over. I had my answer. But still no grandpa.

After my parents got home, Gladys raised her eyebrows a lot and kept poking me in the side when they weren’t looking. When Mom and Dad went to put their suitcases away, I whispered, “I’ll tell them tomorrow. Promise.”

She crossed her arms and lowered her chin, but she didn’t do any more poking or eyebrow-raising after that.

Gladys stayed for ice cream sundaes. While we sat around the table, Mom asked what we had done all day. I shoveled a huge spoonful of ice cream into my mouth so I couldn’t talk.

“I’m sure Brendan will fill you in tomorrow. He’s got lots to tell you.” Gladys’s mouth snapped shut. “As for me, I’m tireder than a petting zoo pony. Time for me to be getting home.”

Dad left with Gladys. I said good night and went to my room. I sat at my desk, thinking. The rock tumbler that had been in my stomach earlier had moved to my head. My thoughts spun around and around. What scientific proof could be given to show that black people and white people shouldn’t get married or have kids? The evidence actually proved the opposite.

Me.
I was the evidence.

So what if one of my parents had brown skin and the other had white? It didn’t make a bit of difference to the molecules that came together to make me. I’d learned in Mr. Hammond’s class that I had some genes from my mom and some from my dad. Some genes from Grampa Clem and Gladys, and some from my mom’s parents.

I had Ed DeBose’s ears. He’d said so himself. And our interest in science—that could be genetic, too. It was possible.

He was my grandpa. We were blood-related, whether he liked it or not.

Didn’t Ed DeBose know that science was supposed to be unprejudiced? I wanted to hit something, but I couldn’t make noise.

I stood in front of the long mirror on my closet. I kicked to the front and my mirror self kicked back. I punched to the front. My mirror self punched back. Faster and faster, I kicked and punched. To the front. The back. Left. Right. Finally one giant jumping kick, then I crumpled on the ground. I had nothing left to kick or punch. I had kicked and punched all my mad feelings out. I lay there, nothing moving except my lungs. No sound except my breath. Eyes closed. Darkness. And then against the black screen in my head, one tiny yellow word:
Why?

One little word, only three letters long, but it was the biggest question I had ever come across. And science couldn’t answer it.