The Book of the King (8 page)

Rollie played a little, and Owen was amazed. The combination of Rollie's voice and his proficiency at the keyboard was unparalleled at school.

“You're going to win one of those contests on TV,” Owen said.

Rollie shook his head and laughed. “With this face? You have to be pretty or handsome to win those contests. I just want to write a song that people will never forget.”

“Maybe one day you will,” Owen said.

* * *

Owen kept his head down much of the day, but he could feel everyone's eyes and hear their whispers. No doubt Gordan had spread the news, proud of himself.

Stan caught up with him at lunch. “Gordan told the principal you slipped in the bathroom and hit your head on the toilet. He said he ran for help.”

Owen could only shake his head.

Well, he had one oasis in this desolate desert. No matter how bad things got, he knew Mrs. Rothem would be there for him. She smiled as he knocked lightly and entered her classroom.

“What frightens you most about your speech?” she said after he had explained the situation.

“Everything,” he said, careful to keep his face turned away so she couldn't see his bruise. “I can't breathe. I shake. I'm nervous now just thinking about it.”

“I can see that.” She laced her fingers and rested her chin on them. “And nothing works? No coping mechanism?”

“I tried thinking about everybody in their underwear; that's supposed to make it easier. But then I picture myself in my underwear, and it gets even worse.”

Mrs. Rothem smiled. “The hardest part is just getting up there. Once you get over that hurdle, it's easier.”

“But I hate it. I feel like I'm going to die or throw up or throw up and die.”

Mrs. Rothem pushed back her chair. “Owen, sometimes the things we find the hardest and most painful are the very things we need to lean into. There may be some great orator hiding inside you, and we'll never know it if you don't try.”

“Trust me, there's nothing hiding inside me.”

“What in the world happened?” she said, touching his chin and turning his face.

“I fell.”

“Owen, don't lie. Not to me.”

“It's not a lie. I did fall.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

He knew he had to come clean. “Well, I guess my face was already bruised before that.”

“Who did this? Did your father—?”

“No, it was here at school.”

“Someone hit you?”

“Mrs. Rothem, I'm not going to get anyone in trouble. Something worse might happen. But could you talk with my science teacher, maybe get my speech postponed a day or two?” Owen pleaded with his eyes. Surely she could see that he would be humiliated, looking like this in front of the class.

“That would only delay the inevitable. Maybe if you were better prepared . . . let's rehearse it right now.”

“It's not the words, Mrs. Rothem. I know the words. It's being up there. And looking like this.”

She nodded. “I'll talk with him.”

* * *

Owen felt like he had dodged a bullet as he walked home from school. He even felt light on his feet. He had seen Gordan only once from a distance, and the kid had simply sneered, seeming to enjoy the masterpiece he had painted on Owen's face.

Owen still had six dollars from his failed dessert trip, and in the window of the antique store near his home he saw a sturdy white chair for five dollars.

“Quite a shiner you got there,” the proprietor said. He was a white-haired, scattered old man who was always writing something on a pad of paper. When he wasn't doing that, he was reading books or talking about them.

“I just need a chair to replace the one I broke at the store.”

The man looked over his thick glasses. “Take that one there. No one's going to buy it.”

Owen took the chair, and though the proprietor protested, he left the money on the counter. He carried the chair home and placed it behind the register.

His father looked up from a book. “Is that what took you so long?”

Owen nodded. “It was the least I could do.”

His father slapped his book shut and grabbed his jacket, heading for the door. “Watch the store.”

If Owen had the same ability we storytellers (and you, the reader) do— to rise above the world and look down on it—he would have seen his father walk resolutely toward the school building, a piece of paper crumpled in his hand. And if Owen could have backed up time and listened in on the phone conversation his father had had with the principal, or gone even farther back in the day and seen the being with the skeletal hand speaking quietly to his father, he might not have stayed behind the cash register as a woman walked in and asked for the Shakespeare section.

As it was, Owen was grateful that at least the store was open for business. The idea of being alone in the very building where a ferocious monster had chased him from the depths, well . . .

But if Owen had known what was going on at the school, he would have run there to protest. He would not have been at Tattered Treasures to take the money from the woman purchasing
The Taming of the Shrew
for her daughter, nor would he have seen the man in the long black coat holding the door for her as she walked out.

Owen was busy at the register as the man walked in. Owen couldn't know this for sure, but he assumed they were the only two people in the store—and he was right.

The man seemed to scan the new books, but in reality he stared at Owen through his long gray hair that hung to his shoulders. He also wore a dark hat that cloaked a face sporting a white mustache and beard with whiskers that danced to their own tune and hid the heavy lines of life from cheekbones to chin. He picked up a book, checking the price. His left hand stayed by his side as he walked into the fiction room, then back toward Owen.

Owen shifted in his chair and caught his breath. It was the man from outside his window—the shadowy figure in the alley! Owen prayed they were not alone, but as we have said, they were.

The man seemed to be searching each room.

And he had something under his arm.

Under his coat.

Owen's father had never discussed what he should do if anyone tried to rob him, but Owen had read enough about robberies to know that his life was worth more than a few bills. He would give up the cash if he had to, but still he set his mind on a plan of escape. He could hit the man with an umbrella kept behind the register. He could lure the man to a big stack of books along the side wall and push them down on him. He could lock him in the upstairs back room.

Owen said, “We have some really good books back in that section,” pointing him to the fiction room.

But the man held his gaze. Something about his piercing blue eyes startled Owen but strangely not in a bad way. They warmed him like a mug of hot chocolate on a cold day.

“I'm not here to buy a book,” the man said softly, clearing his throat. “I'm here to sell one.”

“Well, my father is out right now, and he's the one—”

“What happened to your eye?”

The question caught Owen by surprise. “A misunderstanding, I guess.”

The man grimaced, as if living Owen's pain. “Would you mind stepping out here for a moment? I want to show you something.”

Owen's stomach knotted. This is how it happened in stories. The robber asks you to do something, and the next thing you know you're facedown in a pool of blood and he's going through the cash register. But if Owen refused, the man would know he suspected something. Owen moved around the counter.

“You're limping.”

“It happened when I was young. An accident.”

The man squinted. “What sort of accident?”

“A fire. My father can tell you. He'll be back any minute, you know.”

“Take off your shoe. Let me see your heel.”

A bizarre request, but the man said it with such urgency and expectation that Owen felt compelled to obey. He had never shown his scarred foot to anyone other than his father. In gym class he wore pants he could take off over his shoes.

But now Owen kicked off his shoe and sock in one motion. “I was burned here—all the way to the bone. They tried to reconstruct it. It's grotesque, I know.”

The man studied the wound and the scar tissue and mumbled.

“I'm sorry?” Owen said.

“Put your shoe back on . . . uh—what is your name?”

Owen told him.

“Well, Owen Reeder, for your courage in showing me something that clearly troubles you, I have a reward. Something I think you will like.”

It should be said here that if you ever encounter a stranger (whether he is wearing a long coat or not) who asks you to take off your shoe, you should run screaming and flailing to get help.

But though something was otherworldly about this aged character, Owen felt a certain strange connection with him, a comfort and ability to communicate that he had not enjoyed with any adults other than Mrs. Rothem. When he had his sock back on and his shoe snugly laced, Owen stood and looked the man in the eye.

The moment a future astronomer first recognizes the Big Dipper or a future NASCAR champion sits behind the wheel of a go-kart is not often captured on camera. But because this is our story and we are telling it, we enjoy the privilege of describing the moment Owen Reeder's life was changed forever. We know this moment is pivotal and important because of what happens to him in the future—the things he does, the battles he fights, the courage he summons, the foes he defeats. And it all began bizarrely in the front room of Tattered Treasures.

Some say life cannot be dissected and inspected in such minute detail, that you cannot break someone's experiences into such small bits, that it is the cumulative experience of life that makes up the whole. But those who say that have not met Owen Reeder, have not limped in his shoes, and never saw the book that slipped from under the strange visitor's arm and landed with a whomp on the counter. It seemed to Owen that at that moment a pulse shot through him and through the shelves as well. The other books seemed to move, as if bowing in reverence.

An intricate design like an old coat of arms lay deeply textured in the leather of the book's thick, dark, wine red cover. It depicted a crowned lion with a scepter in his paw. His eyes blazed, and out of his mouth came a sword. Other grand aspects of the cover Owen would notice later, but these were what he noticed first.

The pages were gilded with gold at the top and the bottom so they glowed even in the dim light of the bookstore. The front edges, however, were pure white, uneven and ragged. It was unlike any book Owen had ever seen, and, as you know, he had seen many.

The very size of the book took Owen's breath, as if the reading of it could take a lifetime. But to him, no book was too long, unless it was boring, and then even if it was short, it was long, if you know what we mean. If a story captured him, he wished it would never end. For instance, he loved
War and Peace
and
Les Misérables,
which each took more than a week and a half to read, even for a speed-reader like Owen.

This thrill inside Owen, this kindling that had long awaited ignition, could not, of course, be seen by the naked eye (or even a clothed one). Not even a surgeon would have seen it in his liver or kidneys or stomach or large intestine or even in his pituitary gland, for it lay somewhere deeper than all this in a place not made of blood or bone or flesh. No, it lay in the deepest place of humanity—where mind, body, and soul connect.

Owen ran a hand over the spine—as thick as three math textbooks—caressing the textured leather. “Some animal gave its life to cover this.”

The man chuckled. “Several actually.”

“Where did you find it?”

The man leaned against the counter, still holding Owen's gaze. “This book is not found. It finds. It is not simply stories and words; it goes deeper.”

“If it's so special, why would you want to sell it?”