The Book of Joby (61 page)

He gave Raphael a reassuring smile, and being what he was, the angel accepted the truth without discontent.

“So you see, Rafe, I could make that perfect world Lucifer imagines, where everyone always does just what they’re supposed to—a world where no one had any option but to believe and obey.” The Creator smiled sadly. “To do it, I would only have to murder choice, and with that, any real being, and, with those, love itself. But, I won’t murder love, Rafe, just to conquer hate, however tidy the corpse. Unlike my angry angel, I have known eternity in that lonely void. If Lucifer’s part in refining my creation is ever finished, I may give him that perfect world he claims to crave, but he’ll be its only truly living citizen, and, trust Me, Rafe, he’ll complain. Bitterly.”

. . . and stare into the embers
searching for some mislaid compass,
until, grown warm and drowsy,
I surrender to the press of blankets
drawn and tucked around me
by deft and unseen servants
of the soft, suppressing night.

Joby stared at the poem he’d been crafting, as if some final stanza might magically appear to resolve the riddle tugging at his metaphorical shirt-sleeves. Ever since his hike with Jupiter, Joby had been haunted by thoughts of the boy’s easy laughter, adventurous spirit, and utter lack of self-doubt, until, by now, the bright sap that seemed to flow through all his students here had him feeling such desperate need of some defining answer to a question he could hardly name that he’d started writing
poetry
again for the first time since college! Things were that bad—
here
—where everything was always good!

With a sigh and a crooked smile, Joby set his pencil down, pulled on his coat, and set off for one of his now frequent after-work wanders on the headlands. Was there enough of whatever fuel had once burned within him to ignite again? Could he still shine as brightly as his students did? Had he ever been as luminous in youth as they were, or did he only wish he had been now? The more he struggled to remember, the less certain he became.

Gotta leave the path,
Jupiter had told him. At times, it seemed almost as if they were trying intentionally to teach him something. But they never told him precisely what. Leave what path? How? Joby hadn’t asked, and wasn’t going to, because he didn’t want to see the boy’s blank look, and face the fact that they weren’t trying to teach him anything at all—that there was nothing to his vague new urgencies but vague imagination.

Lost in thought, Joby didn’t see Hawk until he stumbled, almost literally, over the boy sitting cross-legged and silent in the tall, twilit grass.

“Whoa!” Joby exclaimed. “I almost stepped on you!”

Hawk shrugged without looking up. Joby was about to move on when he noticed Hawk’s reddened nose and puffy, pink-blotched eyes.

“Everything all right?” he asked.

Hawk still said nothing.

“Sometimes,” Joby pressed uncertainly, “it helps to talk when things are bad. I’ve had a few bad times myself, and once, when I really didn’t want to talk at all, someone—”

“What would you know?” Hawk demanded, finally turning to look at Joby, his face an angry challenge.

“Only what you tell me,” Joby answered, fearing he’d been wrong to push.

“Bet you got As in everything,” Hawk scornfully accused. “Bet your folks were proud as could be of their little genius.”

“You got that wrong,” Joby replied. “My father left us when I was thirteen. My mother thought everything I did was going to destroy us all.”

For an instant, Hawk looked confused. Then his angry mask returned.

“You’re a teacher,” he said, sneering, as if that proved Joby’s every word a lie.

“By sheer dumb luck,” Joby replied.

“Bullshit,” Hawk said, turning away again. “Nobody gets hired to teach if they’re stupid. I could tell if you were stupid.”

“I could tell if you were too,” Joby said, sitting down in the grass, not too close.

Hawk shot him an angry glare well suited to his name. Joby met his stare until the boy looked away again. After that, they sat.

. . . And sat.

Joby was about to give up when Hawk asked sullenly, “Why’d
your
dad leave?”

Ah, Joby thought, and his heart went out to Hawk with sudden ferocity. “I thought he went because he was ashamed of me, Hawk. He didn’t think I was much of a man back then. It was a long time later before I realized it was mostly all about things between him and my mom.” Hawk didn’t move, but his posture softened some. “He’s never been willing to talk about it,” Joby said, “so I don’t know what, exactly, those things were, but it hurt me for a long time . . . They’ve gotten back together since then, but I still have trouble even visiting them.” When Hawk still said nothing, Joby took another risk. “Why’d
your
dad leave?”

Hawk turned toward him with an expression Joby couldn’t decipher. Anger? Fear? Surprise? “Who told you that?” the boy demanded.

“Like you said,” Joby answered gently, “I’m not stupid.”

“ ’Cause he’s a fuckin’, puck-eating, drunken dickhead,” Hawk said quietly.

Joby hid his surprise. He couldn’t recall hearing a single obscenity in Taubolt before, and had been lulled into assuming everyone here was innocent of the ugliness taken so for granted elsewhere.

“Do you miss him?” Joby asked.

Hawk’s expression became incredulous, and Joby was sure he’d blown it.

“I don’t
miss
him! . . . How could I miss him? He’s still screwin’ up every day of my life! He’ll never quit!”

“How? What happened?”

“My mom won’t stop bawling her eyes out! That’s what happened. She’s never gonna get over it, and I’m fucking tired of it!” He was trembling now, but Joby resisted an urge to reach out and embrace the boy. “If she wants to crawl into her hole and die, I wish she’d just do it and quit blaming everything on me!” He took an angry swipe at one of his eyes, clearly embarrassed by the tears gathered on his lashes.

“What’s she blaming on you?”

“The fuckin’ note!” Hawk spat, glaring at Joby. “Now she’s all fucked-up again, ’cause of you guys and your Nazi little prison camp!”

“You’ve lost me,” Joby said, laying Hawk’s anger aside. “What note?”

“The notes you dickheads send to my house every three weeks,” Hawk retorted. “I didn’t find this one before she saw it, and now she’s—”

“Notes about what?” Joby pressed.

“ ‘Hawk has been absent from school again this week,’ ” the boy said in an angry parody of adult authority. “ ‘Hawk is in danger of failing his courses. Hawk is a criminal disgrace who should be beaten with a pipe and executed for—’ ”

“Okay. I get the picture,” Joby interrupted, resisting another urge to assert that Bridget had only Hawk’s best interests at heart. “So, how does your father figure in here?”

“Your dad ever hit you?” Hawk demanded. “He throw beer cans at your mom, and slap her around, and fuck with you ’til you got angry, then hit you for mouthing off?”

“No,” Joby said. “I was luckier than that.”

“That’s what I thought,” Hawk said, turning away again as if Joby had fallen beneath his dignity to acknowledge. “You don’t know shit.”

Ignoring Hawk’s taunt, Joby said, calmly, “I’ve been hurt, Hawk. I’ve lost family, dreams, friends. . . . I’ve done things that got people I cared about killed. And I’ve been arrested, if that helps any. So you can sit there and tell me off as if you knew anything about who I am, or you can give me a chance to listen and try to understand. But, whatever you think, I’m not remotely qualified to look down on you or anyone else.”

Hawk gave him a skeptical glance. “What’d you get arrested for?”

“Starting a riot in the city I came from,” Joby said, braced to finish what he’d started. “A good friend died that day. The police said it was my fault. In some ways they were right. . . . It’s why I came here.”

“They still after you?” Hawk asked, turning to look at Joby again, his anger turned suddenly to shy interest.

“No,” Joby sighed. “My friend’s death was even more their fault than mine, and they knew it. So they let me go.” He saw Hawk’s expression shift from interest to something terribly like admiration, and his stomach twisted. “There’s nothing neat about it, Hawk.” Joby’s eyes began to burn, and his throat to tighten as he thought about Gypsy for the first time in months. “It was nothing to be proud of, and it hurts even to remember now. I just want you to know that I do understand what it’s like to hurt.”

The eagerness left Hawk’s face. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “for what I said.”

“It’s okay. You were angry, and it sounds like you’ve got plenty of cause to be.”

Hawk looked down and began to pluck stalks of grass, thoughtfully twirling them between his fingers or bending them into simple shapes. “I got all Bs once, before we came here.” His eyes stayed fastened on his busy hands. “Worked my butt off. But when my dad got the report card, he just said I had a knack for falling into a pile of shit and comin’ up with a gold ring in my teeth, whatever that means. Told me not to expect him to get all impressed until I was really working
up to potential
.” Hawk stopped fiddling with the grass, but wouldn’t look at Joby. “My mom stood there the whole time and didn’t say a thing.” He shrugged, and sighed. “You had to be crazy to mess with my dad when he was in one of those moods. I know that. . . . Later she told me how good I did and how she was proud of me. But . . .” Hawk trailed off.

“Trying never did me much good either,” Joby conceded, losing ground to the heat in his eyes and the lump growing in his throat. “Not ’til I came here, at least. Your dad was wrong about you, Hawk. Sounds like he was wrong
about a lot of things.” He struggled to find something wise and helpful to offer, but drew a total blank. “Is there . . . anything I can do, Hawk?”

No,” he said. “I’m just a screwup.”

“I don’t think so.”

“How would you know?” Hawk asked wearily.

“School is not the meaning of life,” Joby insisted. “I forgot to mention that I also flunked out of college.”

“Okay.” Hawk shrugged. “So you’re an even bigger screwup than me. You win.”

“Winning’s not the point.”

“I want to try sometimes,” Hawk said. “It’d make my mom happy. But I can’t stand all the stuff they make you do. It’s like everything’s set up to point out what a dumb-ass I am.” Hawk frowned. “It’s always been that way.”

“So what interests you, Hawk?” Joby said. “What do you really enjoy?”

Hawk looked up as if Joby had asked something dangerous.

“There is something then, isn’t there?” Joby pressed.

Hawk shrugged. “Bein’ outside.” He studied Joby uncertainly. “Doin’ things with the other kids.”

“If you like hanging out with people, suppose you did your homework with someone who was there to make it a bit more fun.”

“I tried that,” Hawk said wearily. “Rose and Bellindi just kept tellin’ me to shut up so they could do their homework.”

“I didn’t mean Rose and Bellindi.” Joby grinned.

“Who then?” Hawk insisted.

“I used to tutor kids after school, and we did have some fun.” He drew his hand across his chest. “Cross my heart. Real fun.”

Hawk rolled his eyes.

“Just give me a chance, Hawk.”

“Jupiter says you’re cool to hike with,” Hawk conceded. “I could show you something better than a bunch of huckleberries. You should hike with me.”

“Sounds possible,” Joby mused. “How long’s the hike?”

“What’s that matter?” Hawk protested.

“How long?” Joby insisted.

“Long,” Hawk said defiantly.

“Equal swap then,” Joby said. “I’ll trade an hour of hiking for every hour of homework we do together after school.”

“We could do my homework on the hike,” Hawk said hopefully.

“I’m not stupid, remember?”

Hawk heaved a long sigh. “Okay. But we hike first.”

Joby shook his head. “If the hike’s that long, we can’t go ’til Saturday, and that’s three days off. I say we meet tomorrow after school, which, by the way, it might be good to try coming to for a while. Then we’ll celebrate this weekend with that hike.”

Hawk’s face scrunched in world-weary disgust. “You know, you’d be a lot more fun if you lightened up some.”

“All right. I’ll tutor you in English, and you can tutor me in lightening up. Fair?”

“I guess.”

“Shake on it,” Joby said, sticking out his hand.

Hawk looked at the proffered extremity as if it were a rubber chicken, and said, “You’re really weird, you know.”

But he shook on it anyway.