Hokey Pokey (16 page)

“No. Just I’m surprised we never hit each other. Since we hated each other so much.”

He shrugs. “No big deal. I’m not much of a hitter anyway. I was probably afraid you’d hit me back and make me cry.”

They laugh. They ride.

He blocks her with his arm. “Stop!”

“What?” she says.

“This.” He nods. Before them is Flowers. The little square plot of soil is gashed with footprints and tire tracks. Flowers lie like dead soldiers. One remains standing in a corner. Jack resumes riding, steers carefully around the plot. Hesitating, Jubilee follows. They ride a brief way when Jack stops again.

“What now?” she says.

Jack says nothing, seems at a loss for words. He stares at her, looks behind. He dismounts and walks back to the patch. He kneels before the last flower. He looks at it, closely. He’s never done such a thing before. There are white petals surrounding a round, dusty
yellow button. He counts the petals. Nine of them. He wonders if the flower has a name. Something in him wants to pick it, perhaps give it, but in the end he lets it be. He returns to his bike.

“What was that all about?” she says.

He has no answer. They ride away.

They hear shrieks in the distance. A herd of Gappergums is racing across the flats followed by a badword—barnacled, feelers flailing—followed by a flapping pelican—the warden—mouth pouch skimming the ground, ready to scoop. They halt to watch.

“The jailbreaker,” says Jack.

“Ten-legger,” says Jubilee.

They resume their ride.

“I almost called you that once,” he says.

Jubilee is shocked. “Really? You hated me
that
much?”

Jack backtracks. “No, no, I would never really say it. It just popped into my head once.”

They ride in silence for a while, giving the thing time to blow away. Eventually she chuckles.

“What?” he says.

“Just thinking.”

“What?”

“Some stuff
I
could have said. Never did.”

He nods, smiling. “Yeah. Me too.”

“Once”—she chuckles—“once I was going to dare you to do something.”

“What?” he says.

“I was going to dare you to bend over backwards with your hands flat on the ground.”

“Why?”

She shrugs. “Just to show you that you couldn’t and I could. You were always acting like you could do everything and girls can’t.”

“Really? That’s how I acted?”

They’re riding side by side. She looks at him. “Yeah.” Suddenly she stops, dismounts. She stands, legs spread slightly, and cranks herself back slowly until her palms press firmly into the ground. Her thighs and belly make a table. Her cap falls off. The end of her ponytail kisses the dust. She straightens up with a grunt, retrieves her cap.

Jack claps, says, “You win.”

“I know,” she says brightly, and they ride off.

He begins laughing. He can’t stop.

“What?”

“I’m just thinking … do you remember—you were pretty little—remember finding your doll one day with its head off?” He’s grinning at her.

She turns to him slowly, memory emerging from the fog.
“You?”

He nods. She punches his arm. They ride.

“I could’ve messed up your bike,” she calls over the windwhistle, ponytail flying.

“I could have knocked that green hokey pokey out of your hand,” he counters.

“I could have put mud in the fingers of your precious baseball glove.”

“I could have kidnapped your little brother.”

Ahead of them, crossing their path: two runners. A tiny red-haired one chasing a big brown one. Jack laughs. He’s heard about this. “It’s LaJo,” he says. “Got stuck with a first-day Newbie.”

LaJo is pulling away but the Newbie—“LaJo! LaJo!”—isn’t giving up.

They laugh. They ride.

“I didn’t know there was so much stuff we didn’t do,” she says.

“Me neither,” he says.

“Too bad.”

“Yeah.”

“Too late now, huh?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Another thing,” she says.

“What?”

“I never tried a root beer hokey pokey.”

“Really? Never?”

“Everything but.”

“It’s my favorite.”

She skirts a tumbleweed. “I know.”

They stop. Stay. The sun perches on a mountain, a raspberry hokey pokey melting across land and sky. A dandelion puff floats by.

They ride. They’re heading for the red bluff.

They circle the blackberry bramble. “Hey,” he says. “Let’s do Gorilla Hill!”

As they have often done separately, they get a running start and pedal furiously up the hill but only make it halfway. No one has ever pedaled to the peak. They walk their bikes the rest of the way. They linger at the top, surveying the land. Behind them are the tracks, the creek, the jungle. Before them Hokey Pokey sprawls to the Mountains. They can see all the way to Thousand Puddles and Trucks. They can see the mustang herd moving across Great Plains, the big round button of Tantrums, Cartoons’ giant screen. And everywhere: kids.

“It’s all so little from up here,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says. He points. “Look—”

She looks, smiles. “Circle. And look—another.”

They keep finding them:

“Three!”

“Four!”

“Five!”

Kids in circles dancing the hokey pokey all over the place. Laughter and words ride thistledown up the slope:

“Best time to do it,” she says.

“Sundown,” he says. And catches his breath. It’s the sound. He hesitates, asks her, “Hear it?”

She looks at him. She listens. “What?”

“Whistle. Train.”

“But—” she starts to say, and stops. She leans into her handlebars, bows her head, closes her eyes. He’s never seen anyone listen so hard. Nor, when she at last looks up, has he ever seen eyes so sad. She shakes her head.

The sun has rolled down the far side of the Mountains.

He crunches his pedal. “You first!” he says.

She doesn’t argue. One push-off and she’s zooming down the hill. He follows in her dust, both of them pitching wild, primal screams across the land. They coast onto the flats, turn back up the hill and do it again. And again. And again. They switch: he goes first, she goes first. There is no talking, only the screaming and the flushed faces and, as they coast the flats side by side, a silence of more words than they have spoken in all their lives.

Each time they cross the flats, the shadows are longer. Over the shoulder of the Mountains the sun heaves the last of its light. Hokey Pokey is golden.

Jack looks up. The moon is out. And the first star. He feels a chill. He looks at her. “I gotta go,” he says.

“But—” she says.

“It’s time.”

They walk their bikes toward the bluff. Crickets
clickit
.

They stop at the blackberry bramble. Jack parks his bike. “Guess I’ll just leave it here,” he says. “Somebody will take it.”

“I’ll tell them Jack rode it,” she says. “They’ll fight over it.”

They walk to the edge of the bluff. Below them, the
tracks emerge from the trees on one end and vanish into the trees on the other end.

“Is there really a train?” she asks him.

He nods. “Yeah.”

They stand silently at the rim. “I can’t come, can I?” she says.

“Not now,” he says.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

“Neither do I,” he says.

The brown bird flies in the twilight.

He sighs. “Well—”

“Well—” she says. Her eyes are brimming.

He starts to go.

She calls, “Jack—wait!”

She comes to him. She unwraps the yellow ribbon from her hair. She holds it out. He takes it, stares at it, puts it in his pocket. And he is gone, slipsliding down the steep bluffside, two hops over the tracks and into the trees.

She calls, “Albert will miss you!” She hopes for a last glimpse, a flash of his cap, but through her tears she can see nothing but shadows and green.

E
MERGES FROM THE TREES
onto the creek’s stony apron. On the island before him stands the ramshackle Forbidden Hut. He sloshes through the water, ignoring stepping-stones. He is not thinking, just doing. Something has awakened in his blood, voicelessly guiding him. He doesn’t even pause at the door. The shiny brass knob turns easily in his hand. The door creaks open, cobwebs shred. In the dying daylight he makes out a dirt floor, nail-pocked, mouldering walls. The only object seems to be a rectangular metal cabinet as tall as himself. It is framed in tiny red lights that twinkle. It is
otherwise gray and faceless except for two small openings: one round, the other a slit. Except for the twinkling cabinet, the place is dreary and unremarkable, not at all what he has always imagined. It has the faintly rotting smell of muck.

He knows exactly what this place is. It is the station.

And now he begins to hear a new sound. At first he assumed it was the rush of creekwater. But no—it is something else. It is like many things. It is like wind in the trees. It is like the panting of a thousand puppies. It is like the hum of things unknown. But it is none of these. It is names. Names and names and names, swarming through the gloom, bouncing off the walls, winged whisperings by the millions, an eternity of names:

Lana Percy Amy Hildegarde Jillian Peter Herman Angel Janice Reynaldo Lucy Robert Choi Wanda John Esther Toya Bernard Ivan Pierre Marguerite Fantasia Boris Maude Solomon Joshua Odette Ethel Ryan Brod Virginia James Natalie Mia Chloe Zack Russell Summer Taylor Kevin Xavier Timothy Thomas Mary Sasha Ben Gwen Harold Ormorod Bill Leslie Heather Giselle Will Anthony Ildiko Marina Larry Claire Leah Donald Wilson Sven Sarah Mitchell Noreen Yvonne Brooke David
 Yasmir Eileen George Jennifer Sean Joel Edwin Isabel Barbara Jeffrey Suki Sam Molly Helen Roger Courtney Allie Katherine Walter Ingrid Keith Patty Lulu Salome Pedro Okalani Kofi Danny Konstantin Bob Amanda Nina Tao Michelle Cosmo Katie Emily Ahmed Janet Calliope Kenny Lena Bruce Ashton Ashley Emma Mark Ava Orson Audrey Bart Rachel Harriet Jacob Bobek Charlie Hattie Michael Malcolm Bjorn Wesley Curtis Penelope Brittany Natasha Morgan Aung Emmanuel Christopher Lonnie Paul Olga Angela Joey Lorna Louis …

He wonders which of them was The Kid.

He takes the walnut half shell from his pocket. He’s tempted to listen to it once more, for old times’ sake, but he knows there is no longer anything to hear. The Story has been told. He deposits the shell in the round hole, and out of the slit with a cheerful
ching!
pops a ticket. It does not say where he is going. It says simply:

He does not breathe air inside the station—he breathes names. They pass through him as if he is nothing. They race along his vessels, leap pumping from his heart. He stands at the door. He clears his throat, for he
wants to say it right. He stands tall, for everything he has ever been, everything he is, and he joins them, boldly, proudly, better than he has ever said it, for it must last now and forever:

“Jack!”

He steps outside, closes the door.

It is dark.

He hears the whistle. It is getting louder.

He crosses the creek, makes his way through the trees to the tracks. They shine now, silver ribbons in the moonlight—and suddenly he has a thought. Something he wants to do. But the train is coming, faster now and faster. The train that never was now suddenly is—
is
—and he knows it will not wait for long.

He bolts across the tracks and scrambles up the impossible bluffside and races to the blackberry bramble. The junker bike is still there. He mounts it, races across the moonlit shadows to Gorilla Hill, plunges up it with every Jack he’s ever been. The pedals become his legs, the wheels his lungs. He doesn’t stop till he becomes the first ever to pedal-mount the peak. At night! He kickstands the nag, smacks it on the rump, whispers sternly in its ear. The moon is directly above
him, the stars, the constellations twinkle across the sky, so many, one for every kid on Hokey Pokey and more. He has never seen such wondrous things.

Below him Hokey Pokey sleeps.

Campfires!
he thinks. Then realizes he’s looking down on a night-world of sleep monsters. From here, they might be the glowing embers of fallen stars.

Down there Dusty sleeps under the great pointing arm of The Kid. LaJo wherever. Somewhere Jubilee dreams beside her little brother. Kiki. Lopez. Harold the not-so-mighty Destroyer of Worlds. In the other direction a few stragglers stagger toward the trees, kids who can’t sleep unless they cross the tracks, even the creek. Wanda is down there somewhere, Wanda and her dopey doughball of a monster. Beyond the Mountains the thunder seems to be cracking, breaking into … what? … babble? … voices? …

He stands on the bike seat. It wobbles but holds. He wishes he had thought to bring a stick, but maybe that’s OK. He’s about to find out if it’s as close as he’s always thought. The bike is no Scramjet; it’s too unsteady. One good jump will have to do it. He crouches. He gathers himself. He pushes off, up to the sky, reaches, reaches for the moon, swats and—yes!—brushes it with
his fingertips, catches just enough of it to set it trembling in the sky as the nag goes crashing. He falls to the ground. Flat on his back he sees the moon teeter above him. It sways. It circles like a bug going down a drain. It lurches drunkenly, and suddenly, with an audible
floop!
the moon pops from the sky and falls to the ground beside him. It bounces. He stops it from rolling down the hill. He sits up. He holds it in his lap. It’s just as he has long suspected. It’s about the size and color and feel of a soccer ball.

The train whistle is now a scream, a scream smothered by the monstrous chuff of the oncoming locomotive. A shaft of engine light skates off the track bend.
Time!
He leaps to his feet. He holds the moon in both hands. He punts it as high as he can. It bounces off constellations like a pinball and finally comes to rest where it had started, a bike-seat leap above his head.

Jack cups his hands to his mouth and sends one final Tarzan yell to his sleeping Amigos. The train is roaring. The light shaft is rocking up the tracks. He grabs the nag, flies down the hill.