The Twelve-Fingered Boy (15 page)

We go through the ritual established so long ago: me the dutiful son, her the lounging queen. I clean off the table at her right elbow while she leans into the armrest of the couch and sips her drink, feet tucked underneath her, staring into the flickering light of the television. I take the ashtray, so full it's hard to pick up without spilling butts, and bring it to the kitchenette trash bin, also full. Somehow I get all the butts into the trash. I wipe out the ashtray with a Taco Bell wrapper and return it to her side table.

Jack looks at me, raises his eyebrows.

My face is throbbing and flushed as I take off her shoes and get her feet up on the small ottoman.

If there's a clean place in the whole trailer, it's around the TV.

“Moms?”

“Honey, why do you have to call me that?”

“What?”

“Moms. You used to call me momma.”

“It's just one of those things, Moms.”

“I don't like it. It's like you're saying I'm … I don't know…”

“More than one.”

“Yeah, like that. Like I'm more than one person.”

We're all more than one person. But I don't say that.

“Okay, momma. Okay.”

She lights another cigarette and sips her drink.

I go to the TV and flip through the channels.

“You want
Dancing
,
CSI
, or this movie?”

She thinks for a little while. “
Dancing
, hon. They dance so good. And they're not even real dancers.”

I change the channels for her.

“Okay. Momma?”

“Yeah, hon?”

“It's good to see you.”

“Did you see that twirl? She used to have her own TV show, but now she's dancing. It's dadblamed amazing how talented they are.”

“Jack and I are going back to my room. Is my stuff still there?”

She doesn't answer. We leave her to it.

In my room, I grab an old school backpack and my army duffle bag. The dresser is still stuffed with our clothing, mine and Vig's. I pick up his dinosaur T-shirt. I lift it up to my nose. It doesn't smell like him anymore, just stale cigarette smoke.

Under the mattress I find my stash, still there, in a cigar box. Seventy-three dollars and change. Mostly taken from cars in Holly Pines. It's wrong, but you do what you have to do.

We change clothes. My jeans are too big for Jack, and we have to find a belt and roll the legs. I grab a couple extra pair of shoes and shove them in the duffle. In my closet, I rummage around and get my survival kit—another cigar box, this one with matches, a pocketknife, some twine, some nylon rope, and a compass.

When we're packed, I sit down on my bed and Jack comes over to me, sits down, and doesn't say anything as I cry.

Huge sobs rip out of me, hurling out there for Jack to see. It's like a cough I can't control, with bits of my lungs coming up and out. Messy and raw. I feel like a boat rolling over in the sea, hull exposed. I feel like a car-struck dog, too injured to crawl under the porch.

I cry. Jack watches.

When I finally stop, he puts his hand on my shoulder and gives a long squeeze.

That's all.

“I'm so sorry, Shreve.” Jack's said this before, but it's always been about something he's done.

I wipe my nose. It's not bleeding anymore, but it is running like a faucet. My throat is sore.

“Don't be.”

“I can't even begin to—”

“Then don't.”

I'm everything she said I am. Selfish. Here I am crying about what a rough deal I've got, what a crappy mother I have. And Jack, the orphan, the homeless kid, the parent-killer, he tells me he's sorry. I'm a fool.

Moms continues to stare into the TV as we come out. I make her a last drink before we leave. Then we walk out through the park and into the woods.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

—John Donne, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”

Well, as a spaniel is to water, so is a man to his own self. I will not give in because I oppose it— I do!—not my pride, not my spleen, nor any other of my appetites, but I do—I! Is there no single sinew in the midst of this that serves no appetite of Norfolk's but is, just, Norfolk? There is! Give that some exercise, my lord!

—Thomas More, in
A Man for All Seasons
by Robert Bolt

 

Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun;
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder,
At 'em boys, Give 'er the gun! (Give 'er the gun!)

—“The Air Force Song” by Robert MacArthur Crawford

In the end, Jack relents. I spend less and less time incarcerado and more time out in the wide blue yonder.

I'm fifteen. I can't get a job. I don't have a driver's license. And I've got a record. Jack is just thirteen. Two kids alone in the wilderness, two kids alone in the city, they can't make it by themselves. Not without some manipulation. Not without some help.

I've learned what my destiny is, out here.

I'm a judge.

You can't lie to me.

We spent a week in the piney woods west of the Holly Pines Trailer Park before a train came through. We'd turned near feral, living off pasta, jerky, chips, flat soda, and anything else we could buy at the interstate turnpike Git-N-Go. Seventy-three dollars doesn't go very far these days, it seems.

During the day, perched between the rails and the dark green of the piney woods, we watched for trains. It's not quite the Old West around here. Not a lot of rail traffic. At night we crept back to the safety of the woods. Occasionally we'd hear the buzz of ATVs and motorcycles burning through the forest. But they never came too near. The weather turned colder, and we made wood fires to stay warm and slept in beds of pine needles.

“Jack, how much do you remember of going all explodey?”

“Don't call it that.”

“Well, what should I call it?”

“I don't know. But saying ‘explodey' makes it sound like a trick or something.”

“Well, it is kinda a trick, isn't it?”

He shook his head. “I don't know how to tell you.”

“Try.” I raised my hands, heading off the hurt looks. “I just want to understand.”

“It comes from pain.”

Silence.

There's not much I could say to that. Not much more than we're born into pain, and we leave in it, too. It's our constant companion. I hate it, but it's true and I've never seen otherwise.

“And I put up with it. So, so long. As long as I can. But the anger builds, and I want to shove it away from me.”

“So, it's like a super-shove? Like you're just shoving everything away from you?”

“When it hurts bad enough.”

Sometimes I would take out the paper with Vig's foster home address and stare at it, dreaming of ways to get to him.

Sometimes, with Jack in tow, I'd creep to the gully and watch Coco's trailer. Jack stayed silent—maybe from hunger, maybe from sympathy. We didn't talk much.

But how could I contact Coco or Vig? Quincrux could show up at any time. He'd be sure to possess them, strip-mine their memories, and know that we were nearby.

So we waited for trains, and I thought about Coco and Vig, and we lived in the woods. A miserable existence.

It was maybe six or seven days since the breakout, and Jack was lying on the tracks, his ear to the rail.

“It's coming.”

“What?”

“The train.”

And it did. When it neared, I ran as fast as I could and caught myself on the lip of an open cargo car. I pulled myself in, but not without a moment of terror when my legs swung underneath and I thought I'd be pulled under and cut in half by the train wheels.

Once I was on the platform, I got into a kneeling position, ripped off my backpack, and turned around to see Jack falling behind. His legs and arms pumped furiously, his pack swung wildly on his back.

“Come on, Jack! Come on.”

Jack tripped, lost his balance, and then righted himself. A flash of anger passed over his features, and then he threw out his hands. The air rippled, and the shockwave sent him shooting through the air. As I watched, he arced toward me, pinwheeling his arms. He hit me hard in the chest and bowled me over backward, back onto the train car's wooden floor.