Epitaph Road (8 page)

“No. Please. I'll get over it.”

“You might not. Smart girls stick with you.”

“Merri was smart. I got over her.”

“Okay,” she said. “Keeping a secret ain't difficult for me.” She moved a little ways away. “But let me give you a little tip. When you talk to Tia, use her name. Girls like that. Even smart ones. It makes us feel special. Not one of the crowd.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I said kind of sarcastically, but in truth I was grateful for any information about girls in general and Tia in particular. Being vastly outnumbered by females hadn't helped me understand them any better.

“No problem,” Sunday said. “Let's go see what she's up to.”

We found Tia in the reference room. After my confession to Sunday, I felt different — something beyond nervous — about being this close to her cousin. I tried not to stare at her, but now she suddenly had this aura thing going for her, and I couldn't ignore her at the center of it.

Sunday gave me a knowing grin, but she didn't let Tia see it. “You about ready, Tia?” she said.

I mentally kicked myself.
I
should have asked that question. “Find what you're looking for,
Tia
?” I added. Her name felt good rolling off my tongue, especially with the little emphasis I gave it. Sunday pretended not to notice, but I was sure she was proud of how smoothly I'd worked in the use of the name.

“I guess.” Tia smiled at me. She hit
PRINT
on her touch pad and signed off. She had a stack of four or five books on the desk, and she picked them up and moved to the printer to collect her pages.

On our way out of the room, a woman stepped out of the shadows and straight into my path. She stopped in front of me, arms folded across her chest. If it hadn't been for her scowl and the shiny silvery badge that said
SECURITY
pinned to the stiff poop-colored fabric of her shirt, I would have said she was attractive.

“I've had my eye on you,” she snarled in my direction, and although at first I hoped she was talking to someone else, her glare didn't waver, and she was the law, at least in these parts. Most crimes had become rarities, but petty thievery, including sneaking stuff out of the library, remained a problem. I'd never been interested. Guys who were caught pocketing library materials faced an extra helping of trouble.

Finally, I pointed to my chest and raised my eyebrows: a question the cavewoman might understand.

“
You
, man-sweat. I see what's under your arm. That book doesn't leave this room.”

I was speechless, searching for words. Sunday wasn't. “You're talking to Mr. Law-abiding, Sheriff,” she said.

“And I'm
not
talking to
you
,” the security cop said without looking at Sunday. She still had me in her sights. She took a big breath, puffing herself up further. Her chest strained against her uniform. I tried not to stare. I didn't want her thinking I found anything about her attractive.

“Kellen's not a thief,” Tia said reasonably. “All of his books are okay for checkout.”

“Mind your own business, brown eyes,” the sheriff said. She still had me locked in her steely stare. “How about you, hairball?” she said to me. “You don't talk? You a dummy?”

It had taken me a while, but at last I figured out her problem. She didn't know anything about me, so I guessed a chronic case of male-phobia was fueling her fire. Still, though, she would have needed something to set her off. I slipped
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
from the stack under my arm. I held it within inches of her face, so she couldn't miss the title. “Is this the one you're worried about, skunk-sweat?” I said. I opened it so she could see the scan code on the inside of the cover.

She turned a nice satisfying shade of red. “Pissant,” she said, but she moved out of my way.

“Butt-wipe,” Sunday said as we resumed walking.

“Bigot,” Tia said over her shoulder.

I was quiet until we were out of the reference room and on our way to the exit. I pictured the guard spotting me, profiling me, hanging close like a scent-challenged bloodhound. “I'll bet both of you she's not a Fratheist,” I said.

The girls humored me with laughter. They must have felt sorry for me. Most of the time I wasn't subjected to male-hate, but right now the idea of someday heading off to the hinterlands looked more appealing than ever. Maybe they saw it on my face.

I tried to think of a way to coolly use Tia's name again. Then a doubt hit: Maybe Sunday was trying to sabotage me. Maybe Tia didn't like her name worn thin from overuse. Maybe she liked being one of the crowd. But she
had
smiled.

We scanned out the reading material and escaped into the sun and warmth. Feeling grateful to the girls for sticking up for me, I insisted on stuffing all our books in with the balls and hanging the bag on my handlebars. It was an off-balance ride the rest of the way home, but we all managed to get there in one piece.

“Thanks for helping me out with the book cop,” I said as we parked our bikes on the side of the house. “Sunday. And
Tia.”

“You're an okay guy, Kellen,” Sunday said, as if she'd never brought up the subject of making out with me. “She was an embarrassment.”

“We're on your side,” Tia said with another smile. “Really.” I got nervous again.

The parlor window was open once more, but no sound escaped. We went inside and got rid of our stuff. The old house breathed quietly. I inhaled the good aromas of cooking coming from the kitchen, where the two helper-women were preparing our Thursday dinner. I was reminded of my chores.

I went to the backyard, dragged the lawn mower — prehistoric but earth-friendly — from the ramshackle shed, and attacked the lawn, building up a sweat, breathing in the smell of fresh-mown grass. Not quite a match for dinner on the stove, but not bad. I raked the lawn clean, pulled new weeds from the flower beds, threw everything in the compost bin, and returned the mower to its home.

Peonies grew tall against the sun-soaked boards of what we called the “wayfarers' wall,” the nearest-the-house side of the shed, where over the years my housemates — and I — had written random thoughts when moving in or out or on appropriately — or inappropriately — inspired occasions in between. Hellos, good-byes, one-liners, poems, dissertations, sayings, quotes, political statements, lyrics from songs, rants, recipes, prayers.

When I was six years old and just starting to read, one of the newer arrivals at the house, an angular, freckled college student with a nice smile that featured liquid brown eyes and shiny red lipstick, surrendered to suicide in her room. Pills, I heard much later. The day after she died, I was the first to discover her good-bye note among the wall's other writings. Instantly, its words were engraved deep into my brain, even though at the time I didn't grasp all their individual or collective meanings or even their pronunciations.

I am cursed by a full and relentless imagination. What was. What could be. Wishes. Dreams. Possibilities. Reality pales. It is vapid and vacant and empty of promise. I reject it.

Later that day, I scribbled down the words in my beginner handwriting on a scrap of paper, and after the policewomen left, and the assistant collectors from the Office of the Early Departed took away the body of the college student, someone painted over the message. It was almost as if it had never appeared.

Almost.

The suicide lowered a dark cloud over our whole house. I remembered the sad faces and the quiet that settled everywhere. To encourage their remaining housemates to get their feelings out, Mom and Aunt Paige came up with the idea of stocking brushes and jars of paint and waterproof markers in a cabinet just inside the shed door. Next to it they placed an eight-foot stepladder to reach less-accessible and still-blank spaces on the wall.

The writing incentives did their job. Or maybe tradition and doggedness and more optimistic points of view would have shrugged off the chill of the college girl's farewell message anyway. Regardless, before long the writing resumed.

When I was eight or so, after I realized Dad had really meant it when he told me he wouldn't be coming back to stay, after I discovered that thoughts and impressions could be translated into something called poetry, even if it was just beginners' poetry, after I found out it was okay for me to make a contribution to the wall, I climbed the ladder and claimed a virgin spot in the upper left-hand corner. There I wrote:

Across the deep water, a man, tall and plucky,

stows his anchor and sails the sea.

He stands at the helm of his boat, Mr. Lucky,

looking for fish but thinking of me.

Wishful imagining, maybe, but Dad's exit didn't keep me from believing that deep down he loved me more than his fish or his freedom, that he'd prefer to have me standing next to him at
Mr. Lucky
's wheel. That someday he'd come back and reel me in like a trophy salmon and take me home with him.

I crouched at the far right end of the wall now, spreading apart the long stems of the flowers. I'd chosen the spot when Merri, the one-time object of my affection, was still living in our house. I thought she might discover this perfect place — inconspicuous but accessible.

Inside the red outline of a heart, I wrote my initials and hers:

KD
AND
MN.

F
OREVER
.

Kid stuff. Immature. Naïve. I knew it, even as I'd painted it on the wall, but I didn't care.

For weeks afterward, I checked the weathered boards for some kind of acknowledgment from her. But nothing showed up. I quit looking. The day before she left, though, I noticed a cryptic piece of writing in what I'd come to believe was my private domain: the spot on the high left corner of the wall I'd staked out at an early age and marked with additional pieces of writing over the years. The trespassing couplet simply read,

Long winding highway,

may it take a homeward turn.

I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know who wrote it. But it must have given me some encouragement, because the day after Merri and her mom ran off, something made me look at my semi-hidden heart-note one more time.

Inside the heart was an arrow, pointing from Merri's initials to mine, and next to my word
Forever,
the words
And beyond.

Although it occurred to me that someone else could have written it, the writing looked closely similar to the highway note, and I chose to think Merri had made the additions. The thought gave me comfort, even though her departure made me sad.

The heart and initials and words — already faded — were still there. I left them now and cut a big bunch of peonies and carried them around to the front of the house.

Inside, I dropped off my fistful of flowers in the kitchen and headed for the stairs, passing the study on the way. The door was closed. I paused, listening. I heard a woman's voice, just one. One side of a phone conversation, it sounded like, but the words didn't filter through. Just the inflections and tones and attitude. It was the old lady, Rebecca Mack.

I got upstairs and walked down the hallway to the big bedroom Mom and Aunt Paige shared. Another closed door. There was an epidemic of them. I heard voices. They sounded agitated or angry or something. I didn't care. I knocked.

Mom came to the door. She didn't open it all the way. Now she didn't look happy. I saw Aunt Paige's reflection in a wall mirror. Her face was flushed.

“What's going on?” I said.

“I'll talk to you later,” Mom said.

“How long will you be home this time?” I said.

“Why?”

“You were going to tell me about Dad, when I could go see him.”

“Not for a while.”

“You said
soon
. In
a while
I'll be all involved with my trials. Right now I'm ahead on my reading and everything.”

“We'll talk after dinner.” She shut the door in my face. I heard the latch click. I stood there for a moment, wanting to pound through the brittle old wood. Instead, I went to my room and sat on my bed, boiling inside, fingering through
Slaughterhouse-Five.

After a moment I realized I was mutilating the poor pages. White-knuckled, I slammed the book shut and tossed it on the floor. I wasn't in a mood to read. Mom had practically promised me I could visit Dad, and now she was backing out?
Why?

I slid a chair into my closet. In its ceiling was a trapdoor to the attic. I stood on the chair, pushed the door aside, and pulled myself up. The low, cramped space was warm, and I began sweating immediately. The weak dust-flecked light came only from vents in the walls.

The attic ran the length of the house. I knew it like I knew my own room. I'd spent a ton of time up here, taking a break from the constant attention, listening to conversations from time to time when the feeling arrived that something was about to affect me.

Like now.

The key thing was being quiet. I was already on my belly. I pushed, pulled, and slithered my way toward Mom and Aunt Paige's room, a few inches at a time, until I was there.

I held perfectly still. Their voices rose like smoke, bumping into the ceiling below me, wafting through.

“You're being terribly thickheaded,” Mom said. “But let me say it one last time. We don't
have
a choice. Our own operative — beyond reliable — reports that they're in the final phase.”

“They're too close to Seattle,” Aunt Paige said. “And civilization. You can't guarantee the quarantine won't be breached. And then what?”

“The alternative is unthinkable,” Mom said. “We can't allow their work to see the light of day. Especially with the latest analysis from PAC Intelligence.”