Jewelweed (31 page)

“Yup.”

“You said something about him before. Does he have any cool games?”

“Nope. His mom won't let him. He's got a bat though.”

“A baseball bat?”

“No, a
bat
bat.”

“That's weird.”

“No it isn't. It's cool.”

“Bats are rodents.”

“So what, they fly.”

“How would he know what happens after you die?”

“I don't know how he knows stuff, but he does. He's my best friend. August's always thinking about things that other people never think about.”

More coughing.

“Like what?”

“I can't tell you. Those are secrets between August and me.”

“No they're not.”

“Yes they are.”

“I could get your mom fired. I could tell my mom to make you move out.”

“She wouldn't do it.”

“Yes she would. I've gotten people fired before.”

“I don't care. Go ahead.”

“Then you wouldn't be able to play my games anymore.”

“They're stupid games anyway.”

“People say your mom was a drug dealer.”

“Not true.”

“Not true that she was, or not true that people say she was?”

“Both.”

“Lucky said she was.”

“How would he know?”

“He knows some of the same people, I guess.”

“Same people as what?”

“Same people who took drugs and bought them from your mother.”

“Not true.”

“I heard him tell my mom.”

“What did she say?”

“I couldn't hear. I asked her later and she said that was just the way people talked. But still, Lucky said it.”

“You better never say anything like that again, not to my mother and not to me.”

More coughing.

“God, I'm tired of this,” said Kevin.

“Tired of what?”

“These fucking tubes running into me, this bed. I'm sick of it all. Do you ever just hate everything?”

“Sometimes. Hey, here it comes.”

Kevin opened his eyes. “Go hard right as soon as you see the first spider.”

“There.”

“Go.”

“The wire's too high.”

“Push over the dumpster and jump up on it. There, now grab the wire.”

“Got it.”

“Easy now.”

“I got it. No trouble.”

“Jump up in the window now.”

“I know. I know.”

“You made it. Now go down the hall.”

“I don't need any more help.”

“There's a woman in that room at the end. She's really hot, and you have to get a key from her.”

“I can handle it,” said Ivan.

“Keep your eye on her. She's got a gun in the drawer.”

“I saw that giant turtle of yours,” said Ivan.

“When?”

“A couple nights ago. I've been watching for him.”

“Where was he?”

“First, he was in the middle of the pond, looking like a big hump. Then he swam over and crawled out. He's a monster.”

“I told you. Did you look into his eyes?”

“It was dark and he was a ways off.”

“You're lucky. He's the devil. You can see it when he looks into your eyes.”

The nurse came back from the bathroom then and told Ivan he had to finish his game and leave. It was time to check Kevin's vital signs and take a blood sample.

B
uck and Wally arrived home at the same time. They walked into the house together, and went right into Kevin's room. After several minutes, Wally continued down the hall and climbed the staircase up to his own room. The nurse went to the kitchen to find something to drink, and Buck sat in the recliner next to the bed.

“You smell like cigarettes, Dad,” said Kevin.

“I guess I do,” said Buck. His spirits were unusually high, having just spent the last hour with his father. Something about being with Wally always made Buck feel good. “I bought a pack and smoked one. Dumb thing to do, really, but I guess we all do dumb things from time to time. Most of the time we get away with it.”

“It smells kind of good.”

“I know. I like it too. But smoking's a dirty habit. How are you doing?”

“I'm okay. It's after dark. You're late.”

“Your grandfather felt like eating steak tonight, so we went to a restaurant near Red Plain.”

“I hate steak,” said Kevin.

“I know you do, but your grandfather likes it. Did you have some pizza?”

“No.”

“Not hungry?”

“Nope.”

“You look like you might be feeling a little better though, better than yesterday at least. Is that true?”

“I'm not.”

“You will. There have been spells like this before and you've always come through them. You're tough.”

“Clearly these infections are tougher. The doctors said this one was that old one, back again, a strain of staphylococcus.”

“You'll beat it. You always do. After a while you won't remember anything about times like these. It will be like they never existed.”

“What happens when you die?”

“I honestly don't know, but I don't think that's a question—”

“Do you think anyone does?”

“I doubt it.”

“Ivan says his friend August does.”

“That seems unlikely, but unless you know yourself I guess there's no way of knowing if anyone else does.”

“Good. I don't think he knows either.”

“That's not quite what I said, Kev.”

“I know.”

“Ivan and you were talking today?”

“Some. He's out looking for that turtle now.”

“Outdoors?”

“He's got a flashlight.”

Buck went to the window. In the distance, a small spot of light jiggled along the edge of the water, about halfway around the pond.

“He wants to look in its eyes,” said Kevin.

“Why does he want to do that?” asked Buck.

“I don't know.”

“Does his mother know he's out there?”

“Probably not,” said Kevin, and adjusted the oxygen tubing in his nose. “Dad, is Ivan's mother bad?”

“Danielle?”

“Is she?”

“Of course not. What do you mean?”

“Would some people call her bad?”

“Some people will call almost anyone bad, but that doesn't mean anything. It's just the way people talk. Doesn't mean anything.”

“She looks like she might be bad. How can you be sure she isn't?”

“I'm pretty sure.”

“God, I'm tired of this,” said Kevin, coughing again.

Buck sat back down and leaned closer to the bed. “You're going to feel
better soon, Kev. When you're not feeling well, time slows down. It always seems longer than it is. And then before you know it things are better. I'll give you an example of that, but you have to promise never to tell your grandfather.”

“Why?”

“Because that's the rule of the story. It's the only way I can tell it.”

“All right.”

“Your grandfather was working up on this cherry picker in the summer—that's one of those cages on the end of a telescoping beam. We'd just gotten it, and, fully extended, the cage would run up nearly ninety feet in the air. When it was closer to the ground, you could operate the base from controls in the cage. The base sat low on four wide rubber tires, and when the cage was down it would move three or four miles per hour. When the cage was high up in the air, the wheels wouldn't turn at all. That was a safety precaution, because the whole rig could tip over easily when the lift was extended.

“So there your grandfather was, up about twenty feet in the air, flashing around a chimney. The building next to him was five stories tall, and way up on the roof he sees that someone has planted a pear tree, and there are pears growing in it. So he thought it would be fun to rise all the way up there and pick one. He drove the base about twenty yards to position it beneath the building, and brought the cage up to the level of the pear tree, about seventy-five feet off the ground. But when he rose above the roofline, he saw that there were four girls about your age sunbathing in the nude, lying on blankets. As you can probably imagine, they weren't at all happy about your grandfather invading their privacy. They jumped up, wrapped blankets around themselves, and went for a water hose. By this time Wally was headed down, but at that height the cage came down very slowly, and while it was coming down the base wouldn't move at all. He could only inch away from them. Those girls had a good long time to really soak him before he could get out of range. All of which is to say that sometimes time seems to move very slowly. It probably wasn't very long, in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly seemed like it at the time.”

“That's pretty funny,” said Kevin.

“I thought so myself, but don't tell him that.”

“How were they lying?”

“What do you mean?”

“Were they faceup or facedown?”

“I'm not sure he ever mentioned it, but the way I imagine it was two up and two down.”

“That's a good story, Dad.”

Wally climbed the stairs to the second floor and stood in the hallway outside his room. Voices murmured from above him on the third floor and he climbed the next staircase. The door to Flo's room was halfway open, and on the other side Flo, Amy, and Dart were talking. Wally sat at the top of the stairs. Though he couldn't make out everything in the conversation, he liked the sound of their voices. The way women talked had a calming effect on him at night. He wasn't sure why. It might have been the rambling talks he and his wife had often indulged in before they went to sleep, speaking of things on their minds in order to settle them down, soothe them into lying flat and keeping quiet, but he wasn't absolutely sure this was the reason. There was also the way that, when he was growing up, his mother and aunt used to talk in the kitchen at night. But in the end it didn't matter. At his age, demanding reasons no longer made sense. Delight was the only guiding light he needed, and he followed it wherever it led.

“Aren't you going to eat any more of that?” asked Dart.

“I have always loved goat cheese, but I think I've had enough for tonight,” said Flo, speaking with such deliberation that her listeners clung to her last uttered word in order to make retrospective sense of those that had preceded it.

“You didn't even eat a whole piece.”

“Almost.”

“Almost only counts in horseshoes,” said Dart, glaring at the uneaten portion on Florence's plate.

“Close,” said Amy, her voice creating an almost musical tone. “Close only counts in horseshoes.”

“That's what I said,” replied Dart.

“You said almost.”

“They mean the same thing.”

“Do you need any more beads, or anything else for making your rosaries, Florence?”

“I work slow and have plenty.”

“I'm worried about Kevin,” said Amy.

“You don't need to,” said Dart. “He's going to be fine.”

“Something's different this time.”

“That's not what the nurse says. She says he's going to be fine.”

“I know, but there are other things too.”

“Like what?”

“Last night I had this dream where Kevin was standing out by the road. It was wintertime, and snow lay around him on the ground.”

“I don't put much stock in dreams,” said Dart. “If it were up to me, I wouldn't have them.”

“This school bus came along and Kevin got into it. I was worried, so I followed behind in the car. At every house the bus stopped and picked up another child, until all the windows were filled with faces. As more and more children climbed on, the bus got bigger, until it took up both sides of the road. The bus just kept going on and on, filling up with all the children in the world. It got harder and harder for me to keep up, because my car was old and the school bus was new. It got farther and farther ahead, but I still followed it over the hills, where it would often dip out of sight for a while. Then it stopped and stayed at the very bottom of one little valley. I caught up to it just as Kevin was let out. Then the bus drove away and Kevin was there by himself, standing in fresh snow. I tried to get him in the car with me, but he wouldn't come. ‘I don't want to,' he said, just like that.