Jewelweed (24 page)

Amy Roebuck wanted the house to look just the way it did when she was a girl. All the furniture was old-fashioned, and everything had to look just so—the floors, ceiling, walls, even the lights and light switches.

Ivan's mother helped her and sometimes Ivan did too. It was really boring work, especially scraping and sanding some crusty old bureau or chest. There was also gardening to do, because Mrs. Roebuck wanted peonies and irises to grow along the sidewalk. Her grandmother had had peonies and irises and she wanted rows of them just the same.

One afternoon, Amy and Dart were putting up wallpaper in the dining room. They called it “hanging” but there was nothing hung that Ivan could see. They used paste to stick it to the wall. While they were working on a long piece along the doorway, Dart slipped on the ladder and a big blob of paste fell into Amy's hair. “Oh crap,” Dart said, and climbed down from the ladder. For some reason this got them both to laughing so hard they couldn't stop. Then they went after each other, throwing paste.

“Get away from me!” yelled Dart.

“Don't you dare!” howled Amy.

“Stop,” said Dart, giggling. “You stop.”

“Dart, put that down right now.” Amy laughed. “Let go of me.”

“Look what I've got for you, Mrs. Roebuck.”

“If you call me Mrs. Roebuck again—okay, now you're really going to get it.”

They were running around, tossing paste and paper, and shoving each other and hollering like wild monkeys in the jungle. The ladder fell over and Ivan's mother jumped over it. When Kevin came in to see what was going on, the two women were lying on the floor next to each other, laughing uncontrollably. The room looked as if a Tasmanian devil had just gone through it.

When Dart saw Kevin she turned white, jumped up, peeled a piece of the wallpaper off the front of her shirt, and began to clean up. Amy stayed on the floor laughing, spread out as if she were floating in water.

Then Kevin spoke up in his jittery old-person voice. “Mom, what are you doing? Mom?”

“It's all right, Kevin,” she replied. “You don't need to worry.”

“What do you think you're doing?” he demanded.

“I guess we weren't thinking,” she said. “We were just doing.”

“I don't like it,” said Kevin. He was talking to his mother, but looking at Dart.

Amy climbed slowly to her feet and wiped some paste from her cheek. “Well, Kevin,” she said, “this isn't something you need to like.” And then her laughing face disappeared into her normal expression.

At that point Quiet Shoes came in, sighed loudly, and joined the other women in cleaning up.

Kevin scowled at Ivan, and Ivan felt more embarrassed than he could ever remember. His mother had never done anything like that before, and from that moment on, every time he saw Amy Roebuck he remembered her laughing and lying there on the floor.

Everyone wanted Ivan to be friends with Kevin, but it wasn't easy. Kevin was crabby. It was as if someone had kicked the kid out of a fourteen-year-old and put a jittery old man inside. He hardly ever left home except to visit doctors, and he knew way too much about hospitals, infections, pills, and disease—at least according to Dart. Nobody that young should know that much about unpleasant things, she said.

Kevin loved video games, and sometimes he let Ivan play them with him. Kevin was much better, but Ivan still liked to play, and sometimes they played together until Kevin got too tired and went back to bed.

As the days continued and he felt more and more at home at the Roebucks', Ivan found himself spending more of his free time with Wally. Being with him was often easier than being with anyone else, depending on what everyone was doing.

Wally carried a pocket notebook in whatever drooping shirt he was wearing, and from time to time he scribbled in it. He was making a list of all the things he'd miss after he was gone—two lists, really, one short, one long. The long list included items like lightning bugs, early light, the smell of grease in the alley behind a restaurant, water running from roofs, barred owls, holding a shovel, clear skies, listening to a crowded swimming pool on a hot afternoon, leaves, wavy windows, snow piled on limbs, coffee, putting on a clean undershirt fresh from the dryer, moss on stumps, the sound of a well-hit nail, paths in the woods, women talking far away, spiderwebs with dew, the moon, and fish.

The short list had things like Buck, Flo, and night air.

“Night air?” asked Ivan.

“Night air is just what it says,” replied Wally. “It's the way it feels when you step outdoors at night.”

“Sure,” said Ivan, “but that isn't air, it's the dark.”

“Night air means dark and it also means cool. And it means anything can happen.”

Then Ivan told Wally what August said once: “Words don't always say what they mean.” Ivan went on to explain who August was, and Wally said he must be a good friend, to say something like that and for Ivan to remember it.

A couple of days after they'd moved in, Florence explained to him what part of Jesus's life each bead in a rosary stood for. Then she paused and asked, at the speed of ice melting on the North Pole, “Are you satisfied with your new accommodations, Ivan?”

Ivan said he was, and to illustrate the point he described a few of the very worst things about their old apartment above the meat locker. He also told her how he and his mother had once lived in the Bronco for six months, after they got kicked out of an even worse apartment. At that moment his mother came in, looking as if she'd just been stabbed with a dull knife, and said that in fact they had never lived in the Bronco.

That wasn't true, of course, and Florence didn't believe it either. She understood that Dart was really saying something like “I feel ugly when
people know we lived in the Bronco, and I'd like to kill my son for telling you about it.”

Florence smiled, slid her glasses down her nose until only the very tip bumped out, and tugged a red bead along the string to its place above the plastic cross. “I see.”

Buck was almost always gone during the day, and when he was home the phone rang all the time. Some nights after dinner he had to go out again, and when he did, Ivan often asked Buck if he could go with him.

These requests usually prompted Buck to ask Dart. “Excuse me, Ms. Workhouse,” he would say, “I have to go back to the office for a couple minutes. Would it be all right with you if Ivan came along? You have my word that we won't be longer than an hour.”

At first Dart said no, there was work for Ivan to do.

The second time he asked, she was standing barefoot in the hallway, holding an armload of laundry in front of her. “Okay,” she said, then turned around and walked away. Buck watched her until she turned into the laundry room.

“Let's go,” he said. When he opened the front door for Ivan, a herd of moths flapped inside. Buck's hand shot out and caught one.

“How'd you do that?” Ivan asked, trying six times and missing.

“Practice,” he said, and
blammo
he caught another one.

“It helps to have a catcher's mitt on the end of both arms,” Ivan said.

“That too,” said Buck, and laughed in a way that felt good to both of them.

On the way down the sidewalk, Ivan asked if Buck had ever known someone called July Montgomery. Buck said he had, but not very well.

Ivan told him what August said about July Montgomery being stronger than anyone else, and asked if Buck thought that was true.

“Strength is an odd thing,” Buck said. “The strongest men sometimes have no strength at all, and even those with hardly any strength will sometimes surprise you.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” asked Ivan.

“It means a man might be strong one day, but not the next. So it's hard to say who is and who isn't. It changes.”

“Is it true that July Montgomery was murdered in cold blood?”

“I don't know, Ivan. I hope not.”

Buck's red pickup had a step-up super cab and suicide doors. It was
hard to find a place to sit inside because of all the wiring, hard hats, tool cases, chains, electrical boxes, clipboards, and other things that Ivan didn't recognize. Buck had an even more difficult time, and scrunched up behind the wheel like a rabbit too big for his cage.

On the road, the cab seats rode a lot higher up than in the Bronco. Ivan asked if Buck had ever thought about getting monster tires. Buck said, “No, not really.”

When they got to the office in Grange and parked in front of the brick building, Buck climbed out and said he'd be just a couple minutes. Then he went inside and Ivan could see him through the window talking to an older woman behind the counter. They passed some papers back and forth. Buck wrote something on a couple of them, then she handed him a telephone. He talked into it and then hung up. More papers.

Ivan went in and sat in one of the chairs. Buck introduced him to the woman, his bookkeeper, and she smiled a tired, worn-out smile.

“This may take a couple minutes longer than I thought,” said Buck. He tugged his billfold out of his back pocket, which remained fastened to him with a chain, and handed Ivan a five-dollar bill. It looked like Monopoly money in his hand.

“Here, Ivan, go across the street and get some ice cream.”

Ivan went out. There was a Deep Freeze on the corner. The sign with a grinning ice cream cone had been turned off, but it was still open. When the guy in the window asked what Ivan wanted he ordered three Chunky Shakes and slid the five dollars over the counter.

The man with the paper hat said that wasn't enough, and Ivan said it was for Mr. Roebuck, across the street.

The man looked out, saw Buck's truck, and gave Ivan three Chunky Shakes for free.

When Ivan carried them into the office Buck looked surprised to see him for some reason. The bookkeeper didn't. She looked tired and hungry.

“What is this?” Buck asked, taking a bite of his.

“A Chunky,” said Ivan.

“What's in it?”

“Ice cream and chopped-up cookies.”

Ivan handed the five dollars back to Buck and explained how the man had given them the shakes.

“Really?” said Buck. “Who was it?”

“I don't know.”

“Who works over there?” Buck asked the bookkeeper.

“Williams from Lake Street.”

“Oh, Bob,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Buck looked over three papers and signed them as the bookkeeper gulped down her Chunky, scraping the bottom with the green plastic spoon like a mouse in a wall.

“I didn't know they had these things,” said Buck, taking another bite.

“They've had 'em forever,” Ivan said.

“Do you want to send back the load of trusses?” asked the bookkeeper.

“No,” said Buck. “Send it over to the cement company. Let them sort it out over there.”

“Beulah won't be happy about that,” said the bookkeeper, throwing the empty cup in the trash and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She smiled at Ivan.

“Probably not, but they've got storage. Have her call me.”

“Here, initial this before you leave.”

“What did you call this, Ivan?” asked Buck, taking another bite.

“A Chunky.”

“They're something new?”

“They're not new at all. They've been selling 'em since the Stone Age.”

“You think your mother would like one?”

“She doesn't eat ice cream. She says it's not a smart use of money.”

“Good point. Is that all, Rebecca?”

“What do you want to tell Harvey about the drainage chase?”

“Don't tell him anything for now. Have him talk to Bernie next week and tell Bernie we're not doing business with that company anymore.”

“Okay.”

“Let's all go home,” said Buck. “It's late. Thanks for everything, Rebecca. I don't know what we'd do without you.”

“No trouble, Buck.”

On their way back, Buck took a side road below the water tower, and while they finished the shakes he pointed to a house. He said he'd grown up there. Six blocks later was the house where Mrs. Roebuck had lived when she was a girl.

“You could put both those houses inside the one you've got now,” Ivan said.

“I know,” said Buck. “But back then you didn't need much to be happy.”

“What do you need now?”

“I don't know, Ivan. If you find out, tell me.”

“Okay. And if you find out, you tell me.”

When they got back, there was a car with tinted windows and wide tires parked beside the machine shed.

“Who's that?” Ivan asked.

“Amy's brother,” said Buck in a flat voice.