The Orphan (28 page)

‘What you got there, Daddy?’ Tommy whispered.

His father raised his cupped palm in the dark, up at Tommy, holding it there in front of his belly, and there were colors, pretty colors…

It was the rainbow barrette, the clip sprung open, three little strands of blonde hair stuck in the teeth.

Tommy’s heart stopped cold. He couldn’t move or make a sound. His mouth dried up and he couldn’t look away.

‘Tommy,’ his father said, and there was a draft on Tommy’s ear, sour breath, the smell of rotten J&B and vomit and decay. ‘I been holding onto this for so long. The pain. I’m in so much pain, Tommy. You gotta tell her what she wants to know. If you don’t tell her the truth, we ain’t never gonna be rid of this. She won’t let me settle down until you do it, son.’

Tommy knew his father was staring at him from only inches away, but he could not bring himself to look up into the old man’s eyes. His heart felt broken and he was struggling not to cry.

‘I’m sorry, Daddy. I shouldn’t have done it. It’s my fault.’

‘Never mind that now, just tell her what she wants to know. Tell her where the boy is. Adam. Where did he go?’

Tommy felt relief. He saw the path out, the means by which to set his father free. ‘He’s with Darren Lynwood. Darren Lynwood has him. In Boulder. Darren knows everything about Adam.’

‘Is that the truth?’ his father said.

‘Yes, sir.’ Tommy nodded quickly. ‘I promise.’

‘Good boy,’ his father said, and the bed began to creak with a series of small tremors. Tommy realized his father was chuckling silently.

His father’s hand turned over, the knuckles facing upward, and the hand came up and passed over Tommy’s cheek, cupping his chin for a moment. The old man’s hand was very cold, and stiff, the skin at his fingertips rough. When the hand retreated the rainbow barrette fell in Tommy’s lap.

Tommy leaped from the bed, staggering away.

His father watched him, black eyes shining in the dark, and his laughter sounded through the house.

‘No, no, nooo…’ Tommy moaned.

His father faded like the last shot of a black and white film. The bathrobe was gone, his gray hair turned to mere streaks of dimming light, his stubbled cheek was swallowed, and then there was only darkness, rich black darkness, and swimming out of it a pale face, her face.

Sheila Burkett was on the bed, sitting where his father had been, facing him with a horrible smile. She was naked. She wasn’t a girl anymore, but he knew it was her, and not just because the symbols were all over her skin, in stars and spirals and calligraphy, some of which looked ancient, others like swastikas. Her eyes were only partway open, rolled back so that he could see only the two slitted white moons of them.

Near the top of the bed, on either side of the family heirloom headboard, pillars of shadow slipped from the walls, solidifying into columns of black, then white above, their shapes coming into focus. Her parents, and he knew they had been there all along, watching, waiting. They were dressed in black, their bald heads pruned with scar tissue, and they faced him like a couple of sentries. One of them, or all three, smelled like baby powder.

‘Adam is with Darren Lynwood,’ Sheila said in her little girl’s voice, though her mouth did not open and Tommy never saw her lips move. ‘In Boulder. You promise, Tommy? Do you swear on your father’s soul?’

He nodded, stepping away from her, into the doorway. He was bending to reach for the shotgun and she did not react. Her parents did not react. He found the barrel propped against the doorframe and raised it as fast he could. His fingers found the trigger and he set his left hand on the barrel’s grip. Oh, sweet lord he was going to paint the bedroom with all three of these freaks.

Sheila’s eyes were still white, lost, rolled back. The black symbols and lines began to writhe on her skin, swirling and shifting like a den of baby snakes, like smoke.

Don’t you like me, Tommy?
said the little girl.
Don’t you want to play with my rainbow barrettes?

Once it was in motion, there was no stopping it. He had Sheila’s chest and head dead to rights. His arms were shaking but he did not hesitate, even when he noticed that the brown stock was at the far end and the barrel was slipping upward, toward his mouth. The steel pushed past his teeth and the taste of gun oil filled his mouth. He tried to close his eyes but they were stuck open.

Don’t forget about me, Tommy Berkley. Don’t you forget about me
…
 

His thumb hooked the trigger, the pressure went away, and this time the barrel flash of fire was not visible, to Tommy or anyone else.

Click.
 

The bedroom filled with light and Beth shrieked, snatching her hand away from the lamp. She looked down at her feet, to the bed, behind her.

No one was in here with her. No small cold hand encircled her wrist.

The boy she had seen in her mind’s eye the second before the light came on was not here. She looked under the bed, too, half-expecting him to be hiding there, but she saw only lint and dust accumulated on the carpet.

She was starting to lose her mind. Darren’s delusions were becoming her own. She had to find her husband. She pulled a pair of jeans over her pajama bottoms, a loose sweater over her T-shirt, and slipped into her running shoes. She hurried through the bridge, into the living room, out the sliding glass door and into the backyard. She ran to the shop and reached the door in less than a minute. The door was unlocked. The lights were on.

Inside, she called out to him as she searched, expecting a replay of the scene from yesterday. Finding him on the floor, nearly catatonic. She checked everywhere, under the desk in the office, between the shelves, but he wasn’t in here.

She pushed the rear door open and surveyed the back end of the property. Nothing. She went back inside, trying to think of someone to call.

Her gaze swept across the rows of bikes, to the plywood stairway at the back. The stairs made her think of the ones she had seen in her dream, the heavy man at the top, terrified of her… or whatever had been at the bottom. She did not understand the connection between her dream and what was happening now, if there was one, but she knew something bad had happened and she needed to find her husband.

She climbed the stairs to his storage space above the shop.

Darker up here, and she had no idea if he had installed a light switch or where to find it. Turned out she didn’t need one.

When she reached the top, he was there, seated on the bare plywood floor. He was not asleep. He was sitting cross-legged, upright, leaning his forehead against a bicycle, one hand clutching the front wheel, his fingers laced through the spokes.

It was the Cinelli. The one he said was connected to the boy.

‘Honey, what is it? What are you doing out here?’

At the sound of her voice, he did not turn to her. He was in another trance of some sort.

‘Darren!’ she snapped. ‘Talk to me!’

After a very long minute, in a voice that sounded an awful lot like the one she had heard murmuring in the bedroom, a child’s voice, he spoke.

‘They’re not monsters. I know who they are, the ones chasing Adam. I know why he’s so afraid of them.’

Beth remembered the magazine he had showed her, the masked things Adam said were chasing him.

‘They pushed him to do it,’ Darren continued. ‘I know the truth now. He’s dead. He’s really dead and he can never come back. Not in this world.’

‘What happened?’ Beth said. ‘Where are you right now?’

He finally looked at her, his eyes dull, unfocused. ‘It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.’

Suddenly he looked away from her, down into his lap. He shuddered, crying.

Beth moved carefully, drawing close until she could kneel beside him. She put her arms around him. He cried harder and tried to pull away but she held on.

‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘None of this is your fault.’

‘Yes, it is,’ he said.

‘No. You didn’t hurt anybody. I know it. I love you. Come back to me.’

He sniffed. His eyes were wet but they fixed on her. She felt him returning, not lost in some vision, but finding his way back to here and now.

‘His parents burned in the fire. Adam didn’t know they were home. He was trying to run away. The bike was going to set him free, not just for days but for ever. He tried to run, he almost got away, but someone else caught him.’

‘Who?’

‘Me. I killed him,’ Darren said, in his own voice. ‘I cut him with the knife and put him away, deep underground.’

‘No. I don’t believe that.’

‘It’s true. I can show you where, but we have to go tonight. Before it’s too late.’

He was already up and walking toward the stairs.

Beth followed him. ‘Too late for what?’

‘Tommy. Adam. For all of us.’

Adam wakes beside the stream, surrounded by darkness, his legs stuck in mud and wet leaves. For the first few minutes he cannot remember his name, where he has come from, or why his muscles are sore. He sits up, chilled and stiff, and sees that he is in a wood. He has been resting behind a large fallen log, with ground cover piled up on one side to conceal him. He’s been on the run, something has been chasing him. At first he cannot remember his last name or his family or any of his friends. They are all blurred creatures, their features melted like pale wax, their eyes black as the sky above him.

Then he remembers the awful horror of it, everything that happened yesterday, or the day before, whichever was the last day of school. It all floods back into him like gallons of cold water, and he wants to run away from it all, but there is no running now because it has already happened.

Yesterday he lost the only thing that mattered to him, and then lost everything else, including his mind.

The last day of school.

He is in Mrs Fletcher’s fifth-grade class, watching the black hands of the clock above the chalkboard moving slower than creation. The students grow restless, waiting for noon. It is painful for all of them, but for Adam it is the most deliciously excruciating hour of his short life. He has big plans come noon, the culmination of fourteen months’ worth of pain.

Soon as the final bell rings and they all hug Mrs Fletcher goodbye, he will run home as fast as his feet will carry him. Once he is sure his family aren’t home, he’ll sneak into his bedroom. Brace the door with his sister’s twirling baton. He will reach under the mattress, into the hole he cut into the box spring last summer, where he has hidden the old brown and orange-striped tube sock holding his savings.

Five-dollar bills, mostly, one from each lawn he has mowed. This has been his flat rate, his secret to making sure they never say no. Doesn’t matter if the lawn is tiny like the ones in his trailer park or half an acre like the ones the rich people have up in Wonderland Hills – he never charges more than five dollars. Some of them offer to pay more, but he refuses. It is policy. And it has worked beautifully.

Fourteen months he’s been saving, ever since Darren Lynwood crashed his Huffy into the ravine. It wasn’t a tragedy, it was a blessing. Best thing that ever happened to him, even counting the whupping his father gave him for letting the other kids trick him. It has hardened him. Gave him a mission:

Saving for the best bike he could find, one that would shame all others, including Darren Lynwood’s stable of elite bikes. It seems like a decade has passed since the fall, when Adam had made a Sunday habit of walking all the way down to Dave’s Bike Shop (three miles each way), looking for the one.

Usually he is standing at the door by the time Arnie the manager arrives to open up. Arnie is always surly on Sunday mornings, his friendly nature and gleaming eyes dulled from the weekend. He has come to expect Adam and always points him to the newest bikes.

Adam is tempted by the Kuwahara KZ-1, the JMC Black Shadow, the Hutch Pro Racers, and even the Quadangle. But he cannot commit to any of these bikes. He needs to fall all the way in love before he commits his labor, his future, his heart. He comes to the shop, he studies, he talks with Arnie, wearing on the man’s patience, but always he leaves without a bike.

Then one Sunday in February Arnie opens the doors for him and when Adam asks if there is anything new, Arnie says, ‘Probably not for you.’ This piques Adam’s interest, because it implies there is something new and it must be different if Arnie is brushing it off. Normally Arnie gives him a cursory sales pitch, then leaves him to ogle the bikes, but not this time. Arnie heads straight back into the mechanics’ bay and turns on the music and places his usual Sunday order from the New York Delicatessen. Two pastramis on rye, half a dozen knishes, three Cokes.

Adam wanders to the BMX section, past the rows of familiar bikes, and he doesn’t see it right away. Then a flash of red catches his eye, up on a special racing stand, not on the floor. The red bike is displayed at the back of the store, above all the other BMX bikes, Adam understands immediately, because it is superior. Arnie has set it out of reach to keep the kids from monkeying with it. Adam stares at it for nearly twenty minutes, trying to digest what he is seeing. The oval tubing, the smooth orb of a stem, the elegant dropouts, the clean purity of its color finishes, its exotic name.

When Arnie comes out to Windex the glass display cases, Adam asks if he can take ‘this new one’ for a test ride. Without hesitation Arnie says, ‘Nope. No one rides that bike. Not before they buy it.’

$579.00, the price tag reads. Adam is aghast, and more or less condemned.

Why so much, he asks. Adam has never seen anything like the Cinelli, or even heard of the brand. Never seen it in a bike magazine, never heard any of the other guys talk about it. He doesn’t even know how to pronounce it.

‘Of course you haven’t seen one,’ Arnie tells him. ‘This is the only one in the state. One of twenty in the whole country as of now. They ship the kit with the Campy parts. I picked out the rest and assembled it myself. This is a true Arnie bike, and there won’t be another one like it, in this shop or any others. And it’s “Chih-nelly”, not “Sin-eely”. Italian goods, my friend, hotter than a Playboy model.’

Adam asks more questions and Arnie fills him in on the history of Cinelli road bikes, Italian craftsmanship, the Campagnolo partnership, the beauty of Columbus tubing. Over the course of three weeks, Adam gets a crash course in all things Italian cycling, frame geometry, manufacturing. Why this bike has these rims, these tires, these brakes, and a special Campagnolo road headset whose cups Arnie has machined to fit BMX because otherwise it wouldn’t exist and this bike deserves nothing less.

Adam knows this is the one. It is the fastest-looking BMX bike he has ever seen. It is small, sleek, almost as if it has been made just for him. Best of all, none of the other guys’ bikes even compare, not in terms of originality. This is a work of art, the Ferrari of BMX bikes. Adam will be the only kid in the state with a Cinelli.

When he says he is going to buy it, Arnie looks at him with a combination of annoyance and pity. Adam knows what Arnie is thinking. This poor worn-out kid who comes in every damn week for the past three years, holes in his T-shirts and sneakers, never enough money to buy so much as a new brake lever or a new pair of grips, suddenly he wants to buy the most expensive BMX bike the store has ever carried.

Adam pulls out fifty bucks, a wad of fives he always brings to the shop for just this occasion, the day he sees the one. He plops the mashed pile of bills on the glass display case beside Arnie’s styrofoam take-out box.

‘That don’t look like five-seventy-nine to me,’ Arnie says, gnawing pastrami.

Adam has prepared for this too. ‘You do layaway, don’t you? I seen you doing it for the other kids. All I’m asking is you hold it for me for ninety days, and I’ll come back with the rest. I promise.’

‘Son, I see your money there,’ Arnie says, dabbing a smear of Thousand Island from his mustache. ‘And I appreciate your business, your dedication. But even after that pile there, you got over five hundred to go. I never seen your folks in here. Where you gonna get that kind of money?’

Adam doesn’t blink. ‘I’m working for it. I work every single day.’

‘Okay, that’s something. Who’s your employer?’

‘Me. I work for myself.’

‘Paper route? No, you don’t even have a bike. I can’t imagine what you kids do for money these days, but let’s hear it.’

Adam explains how many lawns he’s mowed, his five-dollar rule, his schedule, customer base, and everything that has happened in the past year (except for the part about his dad beating on him, because he doesn’t want the pity and his family affairs are private). He sees recognition in Arnie’s eyes when he mentions Darren Lynwood and Tommy Berkley and Ryan Tiguay. He casts no blame, but he senses Arnie can read enough into his telling to get the gist.

When Adam finishes his speech, Arnie leans over the counter and looks down at his sneakers, the Puma Baskets he bought for himself three months ago, white as teeth in a toothpaste commercial back then, now stained permanently, the grass clippings and juice having literally dyed the leather green. Arnie sighs and takes a layaway slip from under the counter. He pushes Adam’s money back at him and writes ‘SOLD!!! – see Arnie’ across the invoice. He tears off the pink copy and hands it to Adam, then walks to the end of the store and hangs the slip on the Cinelli’s gold v-bars.

‘But what about my deposit?’ Adam says, feeling tricked.

‘I trust you,’ Arnie says. ‘And I don’t want part of your money. I want it all. You go finish your lawns now. Save it up, kiddo, because with this bike, it’s all or nothing. Never mind that ninety days business. You come back to me when and only when you have $579.00 in your pocket, I’ll pay the tax myself, and the Cinelli is yours. Deal?’

Adam is scared. He trusts Arnie, but something about it all unnerves him.

‘Are you sure you won’t —’

‘No one’s gonna sell your bike, champ. You have my word. I’ll tell all the guys. Believe me, it will be here.’

Adam’s eyes fill with tears on the way out. Arnie slaps him on the back.

‘Get back to work, son. Summer’s gonna be here before you know it.’

How many nights has Adam lain awake in his bed, trembling with desire, dreaming of the last day of school? Turns out to be over a hundred, because the ninety days come and go and he is still sixty bucks short. For the first few weeks after striking the deal, he walks down to the bike shop every Sunday morning to make sure it is still there. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be working?’ Arnie asks. But he had to see it. He couldn’t stay away. After about six weeks of this, Arnie thinks it will be funny to trick him, hiding the bike in the back to make him think it has been sold, until he sees the terrified look in Adam’s eyes, the way his face turns red and his breathing goes out of control. Arnie apologizes, says he’s just trying to get the kid to lighten up.

‘We made a deal, Adam. Your Cinelli isn’t going anywhere until you’re ready to take it home.’

After this point, it becomes too painful, visiting the Cinelli. Better to put it out of his mind and focus on work, one lawn at a time. It is only about thirty or forty lawns later that it dawns on Adam why Arnie hadn’t accepted his deposit, why he’d said all or none. Because he believes in what Adam is doing, the work, the plan, the goal. Refusing Adam’s fifty bucks down payment was Arnie’s way of saying, I believe in you.

Arnie’s faith in him – something he has never gotten from his parents or teachers or anyone in his life – pushes him harder, gives him confidence, makes him feel in charge of his own destiny. Nevertheless, when the ninety-day mark arrives, Adam is so wound up he has to visit the shop and ask Arnie three times if he is sure it’s not going to be a problem exceeding the usual layaway limit.

Arnie is filling out an order form on the counter, flipping through a Schwinn catalog. When Adam finishes his paranoid rant, Arnie raises his chin and shouts back into the mechanic’s bay. ‘Is anybody in here allowed to sell the Cinelli?’

In unison, half a dozen employees holler back. ‘Hell, no!’

Arnie shouts again. ‘Who’s the only person allowed to buy the Cinelli?’

‘ADAM!’ they hoo-rah.

Adam blushes, speechless.

‘How close are you?’ Arnie says. Adam opens his mouth and Arnie puts a hand up. ‘No, don’t tell me. I can tell by the look on your face you’re close. We’re talking days, aren’t we?’

Adam nods.

‘Then get the hell out of here.’

And so it goes. Ninety lawns on he is nearing five hundred and he knows he is not going to make it before the end of the school year, which is when he stumbles upon Mr Gerald Wimbley’s chicken coops out in the pastures beyond north Boulder. Adam has ridden his bike out here on the dirt farm roads when he wants to escape his parents and the wickedness they get up to, sometimes in the middle of the night. He has seen the short, stubby farmer cursing his chickens and Adam can smell the coop from a hundred feet away. He makes his inquiry. Gerald grins like a pirate.

This turns out to be worse than all the lawns combined, the chicken coop. Over two hundred chickens in there, a reeking sauna, and it hasn’t been cleaned in years. Adam scrapes every board from ceiling to floor with paint knives until his hands bleed and his lungs choke with chickenshit dust and he throws up at least six times over the course of the four weekends it takes him to strip it down. He shovels wheelbarrows full of guano paste, sweeping it all out, hauling the mess across the property to the burning ditch where Gerald showed him to dump it.

When he finishes, the grinning farmer refuses to pay him unless he paints it too. Fifty bucks they had agreed, and now Adam must renegotiate. Gerald tries to deduct the cost of the paint, until Adam threatens to call the cops and turn him in for child abuse. Seventy-five they agree, Gerald pays for the paint, but only after two coats. It will take two more weeks, plus a few more odd jobs, and then Adam will cross the finish line.

He will have the bike he’s been dreaming of for almost five months and, in another way, the bike he’s been dreaming of since he learned what a bicycle is. This is not only his dream bike, it is his dreams incarnate. All of them.

Adam finishes painting the coop the last weekend of the school year, and Gerald hems and haws come payday, but Adam badgers him so hard, he finally gives in, paying the agreed-upon seventy-five. That should have done it, but there have been expenses along the way. Gas for the mower, a new spark plug, blade sharpening, and more often than not, his own dinner. He’s been skipping lunch at school to save a little extra, but by dinnertime he is usually shaking, palsied from labor, and his parents don’t cook or keep much groceries at home.

Sunday night, the week school is to end, Adam waits until his parents are passed out and his sister is sleeping before counting up his money. This is the scariest part of the whole routine, because he hasn’t told anyone what he’s been up to. His folks know he is mowing lawns, of course, and he’s had to buy them off a few times with a five- or ten-dollar loan. But he’s convinced them that, after paying for the lawnmower repairs and tune-up and gas, he isn’t earning more than five or ten bucks per week, and he tells them most of that is going for lunch at school. They believe him.