B.u.g. Big Ugly Guy (9781101593523) (11 page)

“Live,” he whispered, adding, “this Jew needs your help. Keep me safe.” He thought a minute, adding, “Oh—and my friend Skink, too.”

Then almost passing out with fever and exhaustion, he closed the closet door and went back to bed.

And dreamed that he was making a golem.

13.

Still Life with Golem

Sammy woke drenched in sweat but clearheaded. The fever had broken. Sitting up in bed, he tried to sort fevered memories from the dream images that still lingered.

He shook his head.
Whatever,
he thought,
it's
all
weird.

Throwing off his blankets, he barely got one leg on the floor, when there was a knock on the door, and he scrambled back under the covers, making sure to tuck away his clay-spattered hands.

“Come in!”

His mother bustled in with a glass of water and a thermometer, and looked at him critically. “Well, now, don't you look a whole lot better!”

She put the water on his nightstand and popped the thermometer in his mouth. “Hardly need to take your temperature. I can tell your fever's broken.” Putting her hands on her hips, she looked down at him. “I think it's time to go back to school, don't you?” She didn't wait for an answer, just spun around and marched to the closet. “Let's get you some clothes and get you off to school.”

Oh, God! Not the closet!

There was nothing Sammy could do. He was in bed with a thermometer in his mouth, and before he could grunt or speak or jump out of bed to protest, she was at the closet and opening the door.

I can't watch.
He turned his head away and squeezed his eyes shut, though he knew it was an infantile reaction. All he could do was wait for his mother to say, “Sammy? What is
that?” That being a golem. And bits of clay. And a trashed closet. And . . .

In fact, he was terrified. Terrified what his mother would say in another second about his closet and what his father would say about all the wasted clay, and terrified that it would all lead to the discovery of his theft from Rabbi Chaim.

His thoughts kept him from realizing that one second had turned into two, and then three and four and five, and then Sammy realized that either his mother was too stunned to speak or something very strange was happening. Slowly, he turned his head back toward the closet and opened just one eye. His mother's back blocked his view of the closet as she stood peering into it, one finger tapping her cheek.

Sammy opened his other eye.

His mother reached out and snagged a shirt with bright stripes that he hated and some pants that would get him wedgied for life. He didn't say anything, though. Because, as she turned back with the clothes draped over her arm, he could see clearly into the closet.

There's no golem in there!

Sammy was too stunned to speak. He was too stunned to think. He lay transfixed, staring into the closet, as his mother took the thermometer out of his mouth and smiled at the normal reading. She puttered around his room for another minute and then said, “Okay, Sammy, dear. Get up and get dressed. Your dad's driving you to school and after that he's got a big order to fill. We won't be seeing him for days. I have a lunch date so am going out later and need to get stuff done here before going.”

Sammy didn't answer. He was still staring at the empty closet, trying to figure out where the golem had gone.

Did I move it?
Could
I have moved it? Would I
remember
that? And how could it have moved? It hasn't been fired yet. And . . .
His thoughts and memories were all jumbled up.

“Sammy?” his mother said.

“Um . . . yeah. School. Up. Okay.”

Or had the whole thing just been a fever dream from first to last?

His mother turned and was about to walk out, but then stopped in the doorway and looked over her shoulder. “Oh! I almost forgot. A friend of yours from school has stopped by to see how you're doing.”

“Skink? He's out of the hospital?”

His mother shook her head. “No. Well, yes, Skinner is out of the hospital. Only stayed overnight. Been home five days now. But no, the friend is someone else, someone we've never met before. He's—” She stopped. Frowned. “Well, I hate to be so blunt, Sammy, but he's a strange-looking kid. Big for an eighth grader. And bald as an egg!”

“Um . . .” Sammy's mind was whirling, a thousand thoughts a second whizzing through.

It worked!

It couldn't have.

There's got to be another explanation.

It's magic!

It's bunk!

Alopecia.

“Alopecia?”
his mother asked. He hadn't realized he'd spoken the last thought aloud. “You do know the oddest words, Sammy.”

“Um . . .”
Where'd I come up with that one?
Then it hit him. They'd studied alopecia in the human body class, as well. “It's . . . it's hair loss that can occur at any age. My . . . um . . .
friend
suffers from it.”

“Oh.” She nodded. “I'm glad it's that. I thought it might be cancer. He doesn't look well. Sort of gray, if you know what I mean.” She turned toward the door and this time did walk out, saying over her shoulder, “Get dressed. Your father and your friend are already sitting down for breakfast.”

“Erp.” It was hardly a response, but she took it as such and shut the door after her.

Sammy sat up. Pulled his hands out from under the covers and stared at them. They were pretty clean.

Put his feet on the floor. They held him up.

His mind was no longer whirring. In fact, it seemed entirely empty.

He put on the dorky pants one leg at a time. Then the striped shirt.

Plodding into the bathroom, he turned on the water and washed his face. The coolness felt grand. Afterward, he washed his hands, getting rid of the rest of the clay. He hoped the cool water would kick-start his brain, but if anything it numbed him even more.

Back in his room, he put on socks. Sat on the bed. Listened to his mother shout, “Sammy! Breakfast!” Finally, he stood, hiked up his pants, yanked down his shirt, and headed for the stairs.

And there, sitting at the kitchen counter, head and shoulders poking out from behind the basket of flowers and fruit Sammy's mother kept on the table, was the golem. The tall, broad-shouldered, gray-skinned, hairless golem. He was fully dressed in canvas pants, work boots, a tan V-neck T-shirt, and a Chicago Cubs baseball cap. Though where the golem had gotten those clothes, Sammy was never to know.

Sammy sat. “Hi . . . um . . . , Gully,” he said, “nice to see ya.”

The golem nodded.

“Had any breakfast yet?” Sammy asked, glad he'd given the creature teeth, though worried because he hadn't given it any internal organs, like a stomach or a colon. Or, for that matter, a . . . um . . . hole for food to exit from. “Or are you not hungry?”

“Not hungry,” the golem said. Its voice was large. Flat. Uninflected.

Uninflected,
Sammy thought,
as well as uninspected, undetected, and possibly unsuspected
. At least he hoped so.

“Nonsense, Gully—is that your name?” Sammy's mother said. “I've never known a boy your age who couldn't eat more.”

“Gully,” said the golem, smiling. The mouthful of teeth were the color of the clay.

“He's not much of a talker, Old Gully,” Sammy put in quickly. He raced through his own cereal and banana so quickly, it felt as if it had all become a mass of clay in his belly.

Tongue
. He remembered that enormous tongue he'd shoved into the golem's mouth just hours before, and all the banana and cereal threatened to return as quickly as it had gone down.

“I've noticed,” Sammy's father said, who had been sitting behind the newspaper and not doing much talking himself.

“All done,” Sammy said, putting down his napkin. “Let's go, Gully. Don't want to be late. I'm never late.”

“I've noticed,” said Gully. Again in that flat voice.

Sammy stood, the golem stood, and Sammy's mother stood, too. “Well, I've never seen you so eager to get to school, Sammy.”

“I just don't want to miss any more,” he answered, trying to keep his voice even, though not quite uninflected. “Or make Gully late. He's new to the school—and it wouldn't be a good start.” He could feel his heart pitter-patting like mad, and hoped no one else could hear it. He knew that if he didn't get the golem away from the prying eyes of his parents, things might really spiral out of control.

As for the golem, so far he seemed to say only what he'd heard spoken. Maybe he needed a vocabulary lesson.

But—I have to be careful,
Sammy told himself.
Careful what I do and what I say.
He'd been so intent on
making
the golem, he hadn't given any thought to what was suppose to come after.

“Come on, Gully. Time for school.”

The golem grinned his big gray grin again. “I want a good start,” he said, almost as if he was being as careful as Sammy.

They made a strange procession out to the car: Sammy's father, small but powerful, taking the lead with a steady march; then slight Sammy, not watching where he was going and almost tumbling onto the walk because he kept craning his neck around to look at the golem; and at the last Gully, whose long strides threatening to carry him past the other two.

His mother had insisted. “A new boy and a boy just back from having a fever? Of course Dad will drive you.” She didn't mention the bullies, but Sammy suspected she was thinking about that, too, and he didn't protest.

Sliding into the backseat, he motioned Gully to sit next to him. The golem looked the car up and down and side to side before ducking his head low to slide in.

“Seat belts!” Sammy's father called.

Sammy leaned over and grabbed Gully's seat belt, stretching it nearly to its limit to get it around Gully's big frame, before clicking it into place.

“Seat belts?” Gully asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Seat belts to keep you safe,” Sammy said, wondering at the same time when he'd given the golem eyebrows. He couldn't remember doing it. Then he leaned back and grabbed his own seat belt. But before he could stretch it across his chest, Gully snatched it from his grasp, and with a motion that looked practiced—but obviously couldn't have been—whipped it around Sammy and clicked it into place.

“Seat belts,” Gully said, with a satisfied nod. “To keep you safe.”

Sammy smiled at him and Gully smiled right back.

I wish I'd glazed those teeth white,
Sammy thought. But of course he'd never glazed anything without his father's help. And even if his dad hadn't noticed the enormous amounts of missing clay, he'd have surely figure out the kiln had been used at night—by the residual heat if nothing else.

Residual,
he thought.
A good word. For a difficult moment. Trying to cover for a made-up creature who was created out of residual ideas and leftover clay. All gray.

However, he didn't have to look at the offending teeth for long. As soon as Sammy's father got the car rolling down the driveway, Gully's smile disappeared into a tight-lipped frown and his eyes bugged wide. His whole body went tense, his arms bulging with ropy muscles and his grayish knuckles turning white where his hands grabbed the edge of the car seat.

But he only stayed that way for the briefest of moments. With a snort like an angry bear, he released the seat belt, leaned forward, his hands curling into alarmingly large fists. Then he sneered at the back of Sammy's father's head, pulled his right fist back, and—

“No!” Sammy screamed, and flung himself across the backseat at the golem.

“What? Did you forget something for school?” Sammy's father glanced in the rearview mirror. “And why are you hanging off your friend's arm?”

The golem was looking down at Sammy as if he wanted to know the answer to that last question, too.

“Um . . .” Sammy began uncertainly. “Gully here is a nervous rider.” He patted the golem's arm. “He doesn't have a lot of experiences riding in
cars
.” He patted the seat. “Cars.” He patted it again. “Cars that help us get from one place to the other and are usually driven by my family that I love. And that I don't want hurt.”

“What in the name of Thomas Wedgwood are you going on about?” Sammy's father demanded. “A nervous rider? Never been in a car? Is Gully Amish, or something?”

Thank you, Dad!

“Yes, exactly!” Sammy gushed. “Amish.”

“Car,” Gully said. “Amish.”

Sammy plumbed his mind for everything he knew about the Amish.

They don't use technology. They ride in wagons and raise barns. They have funny beards and even funnier names.

Then he remembered the most important fact he'd gleaned from his extensive research into the Amish culture, which involved watching half of one old movie with the Indiana Jones guy and reading a couple of
Newsweek
articles in the bathroom.