Charlie's Key (17 page)

“I think so—I mean, I’d have to check with Dez.”

“Just tell him you want to go for a walk. Can you walk?”

“Yeah. I’m slow, but I can. Doctor says I should, so Dez might like that.”

“Good. It’ll be dark, but just give a knock and I’ll let you in. I’ve got some candles. Gerald and I used to hang out there when we were kids. Nobody else’ll be around. We can talk, and I can give you your stuff. So right after supper, okay?”

“Okay.”

She hangs up before I do.

A fog horn’s blowing when I step outside after supper. I like it. I don’t know why—I guess it makes things less lonely. I mean, the fog horn’s blowing so people on ships can hear it, so you know other people are around, even if you can’t see them.

I never saw fog before I moved here, only read about it or saw it in movies. And before I saw it, I just sorta thought of it as being a big lump of gray stuff that sits in one place, like a giant cotton ball dropped on your head. But when you’re actually out in it, it’s almost like it’s alive or something, swirling around, brushing against your face, leaving drops on your hair. And then it might just float off completely, so everything’s clear again. It’s like something alive, creeping along, slipping over and under and around you. I like it, even if it did send me over that cliff.

Dez, he didn’t like it so much when I asked him about going for a walk after supper.

“By yourself?” he asked.

“If that’s okay—I been inside all day.”

“Fog’s coming in,” he said, getting up to look for Tubby. He’s not there though—must be suppertime.

“I guess it’s okay. Just watch for cars. And don’t be too long. Back by seven thirty?”

“Okay,” I said, then headed off.

You know what I’m hoping? I know it’s stupid, but I’m hoping Clare maybe wanted to meet at the shed so we’d be alone. And if that’s how it is, I’m going to kiss her—not on the lips, unless she wants to, but on the cheek. Just to let her know I like her. Which, I know, is pretty stupid, since I’m only thirteen and she’s, like…I don’t know how old, really. Fifteen or sixteen? I’m not much good at guessing ages of people older than me—kind of like trying to figure out how far something is away from you. Maybe Clare is eighteen, but I don’t think so. She doesn’t seem that old—at least she didn’t when I first met her, back at The Hollow. Now that I’ve seen her drinking a beer, and with that pill bottle in her hand, she does seem older. Still, she looks like I could talk to her about whether she likes to draw pictures or what books she reads or what she does in the summer, so you never know—maybe she could like me. And if she did, maybe she’d kiss me back. Though probably I’m crazy for even thinking about it, I know. Which I can’t stop doing.

Anyways, there’s the shed, a little ways down a dirt path, off toward the water. There’s no streetlight to show the way, though there is a bit of light flickering behind one of the windows—a candle, I guess. I tap at the door, pushing it open at the same time and calling, “Clare?”

Right away I see there’s two people inside, huddled up together on the floor, away from the candle, off in the black. Soon as I step in they pull apart, and one—Clare—stands up and into the candlelight.

“Charlie,” she says. “Jesus—you’re quiet as a cat. What were you doing, sneaking up on us?”

“No. Didn’t know there’d be anyone else in here—just you, I thought.”

“Don’t worry, Cowboy, it’s just me,” comes another voice. Frankie. “What are ya at?” he asks, giving me a nod.

“Good,” I say. I still don’t know how to answer that question.

“Jesus, some cast, b’y,” he says. He comes closer and gives it a knock with his knuckles. I can smell beer on him, and probably Clare, too, since there’s a few cans on the floor.

Clare moves her hand across her face a couple of times, pulling hair outta her eyes, I guess, though it’s all done up in a ponytail, just like I thought it would be when I was thinking about her in the afternoon. I see strands of it are hanging down as she moves closer to the candle, reaching for something on the floor.

“Here,” she says, holding up my backpack. “Everything’s in it.”

“My uncle looked through it,” I say, reaching into it to feel around. “Seems like everything’s here though.”

“I’m sorry,” says Clare. She looks like she means it. Then she puts her hand up to her mouth and gives a little cry.

“It’s okay,” I say. “Everything’s here.”

“It’s not that I’m sorry about…”

“That’s right, Charlie, b’y,” comes a voice from behind me. “Poor young Clare’s feeling bad about setting up this meeting we’re about to have, isn’t that right, Clare?”

It’s Nick, standing two feet from me, blocking the door.

He reaches into his jacket pocket, then tosses something to Clare. A pill bottle.

“There you go, my girl,” he says. “As promised. And yours, Frankie, is out on the path. Don’t drink it all at once or it’ll be the death of ya.”

Clare doesn’t look at me as she walks toward the door, but Frankie stops.

“We’ll be right outside, Cowboy,” he says. “Nick just wants to talk with ya—if he tries anything, just sing out and I’ll be here quicker’n shit through a goose. All right?”

Then he follows Clare outside.

“Jesus, Charlie,” Nick says, shutting the door behind them. “It hurts my feelings, that does—the way Clare gets all weepy and sorry ’bout settin’ up this little meetin’ between me and thee. ‘Sorry, Charlie,’ boo-hoo, like she’s deliverin’ ya to the devil himself. And here she was yesterday, beggin’ me to give her a lend of those pain pills of mine. ’Cept she didn’t have no money, Charlie, so what did she do? She begs me to work out a deal with her, find a way she could get ahold a some pills. Which I done, outta the kindness of my heart.

“‘All right, girl,’ I says, ‘You just find me a quiet place to have a chat with me nephew,’ I says, ‘and I’ll get ya a few of these Oxy-whatevers.’ So we done our deal, like reasonable people. And here I come to find her cryin’ ’bout how sorry she is to have done it. Jesus, you’d think I were out to slit yer throat, wouldn’t ya, Charlie? Wha?”

There’s a crate on the floor beside him that he kicks my way.

“Put your arse on that and we’ll have a little talk.”

He pulls an old chair with a busted back outta the corner, sitting in it right in front of the door.

“Now, me and thee had a little deal, too, didn’t we, Charlie?”

He gives me a long stare, and I can see wheels moving behind his eyes, even if he’s saying nothing, which is what I say too.

It’s still and quiet till there’s a knock at the door.

“You okay, Charlie?” Frankie calls.

Nick gives a little smile at that and stays quiet for another sec, then all at once whips his claw round and bashes it into the door as hard as he can. There’s a snapping sound I think must be his hand till he swings it back into the candlelight and I see a long splinter sticking out of a claw from the wooden door. He takes hold of the splinter in his good fingers, looks at me and pulls it out.

“Don’t feel nothing in that hand,” he says, his eyes flickering black and orange in the candlelight.

He smiles again, turns to the door and shouts, “Leave us be,” before turning round to me again.

“Now, we was talking about our deal. Which was that I’d go for the fire boys, up on the hill, and you’d give me the key. So…”

He holds out the claw and clicks the two fingers together, keeping his eyes on mine, like he’s seeing right inside me.

“So give it to me,” he says, dropping his voice to a whisper that slinks into my ear. “Go on, now, Charlie. Kick off that shoe, dig it out and give it to me. I means it. Either that or I’ll look meself. And if I don’t find it there, I’ll—”

“Okay,” I say. “I gotta stand up, though, with this cast.”

“Stay where you’re to,” says Nick, and he bends forward in the chair and takes my foot in his hand. He unties the laces and slips it off and passes it to me. Then sits back and holds the claw out again. I take the insole out, wet and stinky, then tip the sneaker up till the key drops into my hand. I pass it to Nick. It’s gold in the candlelight, sitting on his black palm. He holds it up, close to his eye, and squints at the number.

“What’s that say, at the top?”

“One fifty-eight,” I say, with Nick saying the numbers just behind me, like they’re words to a song he sang a long time ago.

“One fifty-eight,” he says again. “That’s it, b’y. That’s the key.”

I expect him to tuck it somewheres safe—his shirt, his jeans—but he doesn’t. ’Stead, he leaves it in his open palm, then offers it back to me.

“Go on,” he says, holding the claw out, the key there for me to take. “Go on—take it. It’s yers.”

“Mine?”

“Well,” says Nick, “yer old man’s. But he’s dead and gone now, so it’s yers. Take it.”

“But I thought…”

“What? That I wanted the key? No, b’y. The keys no good to me. What I wants is what that key can unlock. And the only person who can do that, Charlie, b’y, is you.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, reaching out to take it. Nick’s hand is dry and cold and hard as a rock when my fingers brush it.

“Course you don’t,” says Nick. “I knows that, so I’ll explain it to ya. But first…”

He leans forward on the chair, an elbow on his knee, his claw reaching out to tap on my cast.

“But first I got to know if you’re prepared to help me.”

“Prepared? What do you mean ‘prepared’?”

He leans back. “Well, what do I mean?”

He gives his chin a rub with the claw,
scritch-scratch
in the dark.

“I means this,” he says at last. “Take yer little friend, Clare, there. Now there’s a girl what I never even met till a few days ago, but right away I can tell she needs help. She’s all messed up on those drugs. She’s in and outta rehab like a fly at a shit pot. Got no one what loves her. Leastways, that’s how she feels, with her parents off travelin’ the world all the time. Sure they’re planning a trip right now—off to New York or some such—and her just outta the rehab. It’s not right, b’y. And she knows it’s not right.”

“How’d you know all this stuff?”

“Gerald,” says Nick. “Me and him and Frankie been talking a bit lately. I’m giving them a hand getting a bit of a business started, using some old friends of mine. So we’ve had a chat or two. Anyways, that’s a girl what’s in need of help. Anyone can see it. So I been helpin’ best I can, gettin’ a few Oxys now an’ again—just while she’s going through this rough patch. Checkin’ up on her when she’s home alone, her parents off to the movies or dinner or wherever. Couple a nights ago, they spent half the night at some fancy spot downtown, their just-home daughter left all alone. Can you believe that, Charlie? It’s a sin, b’y.”

He leans back for a second.

“Speaking of sins,” he says, “I’m goin’ to have a draw if ya don’t mind.”

He pulls out a smoke and bends into the candle to light it, the scar down his face white like wax on his cheek.

“Now,” he says, blowing the smoke outta the corner of his mouth, away from my face, which he’s leaning into again.

“That’s what I means by help, with Clare—doing the right thing, even though I don’t got to do nothing. I mean, she’s nothin’ to me—not my sister, not my daughter. Nothing. But I feels the need to do what I can. Because, you know, Charlie, she’s right on the edge, b’y. One little shove the wrong way and she’d be over. I’m talkin’ about doin’ herself some harm— doin’ away with herself, like. And nobody in the world would be surprised if she turned up in the Gut one mornin’, floatin’ facedown, done in by an overdose of those Oxys.”

“You wouldn’t…,” I start.

“Whoa now, mister,” says Nick, holding up his hand. “Don’t you go readin’ nothin’ into what we’re talkin’ ’bout here. I’m talkin’ ’bout helpin’ people—not doin’ them a mischief. Jesus, Charlie—you and yer imagination. You should be ashamed.”

He takes a long pull on the smoke, then stubs it out on his palm and drops it onto the shed floor.

“Jesus. Why does people always think the worst of me? Why is that, Charlie?”

“I don’t know,” I say, looking at the cigarette that’s still smoldering on the floor.

“Anyways, see what I means about Clare—’bout how I’m helpin’ her, just because it’s the right thing to do? And that’s why I wants you to help me. Not because I’m yer uncle, nor because you got the fear of God put into ya about me because of what some social workers told ya I done years ago. I wants you to help me because it’s the right thing to do. To help a man what needs some help, after doin’ twenty hard years inside. You’d be givin’ me a hand up by helpin’ me—makin’ it easier for me to take care of meself, to get my own place, to hold my head up when I walks down Duckworth Street. To get back a bit of the pride what got splattered all over walls of three friggin’ prisons—’scuse me for swearing.”

“That’s okay.”

“Swears a bit yourself, do ya, Charlie?”

“Not really. But I heard it lots.”

“No doubt ya did, with yer old man,” says Nick. He gives me a wink.

“My dad didn’t swear…much,” I say. Which is true. Sometimes when he was drinking he’d swear, which I didn’t like because it was always angry then. But sometimes it wasn’t, like when we’d be out together doing something— maybe fishing, say—and he’d swear about “the god-damned fish, hiding up their own arseholes.” And he’d be smiling after he said it—and giving me a wink too.