Hokey Pokey (17 page)

F
OR A CHANGE
, LaJo and Dusty are bunking together under The Kid’s arm. LaJo dreams Jack is calling. Now the three of them are yipping and chasing the herd across the Plains and LaJo is about to lasso a black-and-gold beauty when he feels somebody pulling his finger and calling his name.

He opens his eyes. It’s William the runt.

“LaJo! I finded you!”

LaJo recloses his eyes. “I’m sleeping.”

Now the runt is pulling on LaJo’s wrist with both hands. He’s actually grunting with the effort. “C’mon, LaJo—let’s play.”

The Newbie’s first day is over. LaJo’s job is done. He doesn’t ever have to see this kid again. So why is he staggering to his feet, allowing the sleepless runt to drag him off to who knows where? To Playground, it turns out, lit along the way by the soft glow of sleepers’ monsters.

“Push me, LaJo!” the runt pipes, plopping onto a swing seat. LaJo pushes. The runt goes, “Wheeee!” Then it’s on to the sliding board. The seesaw. The monkey bars. “Wheeee! Wheeee!”

“Cartoons!” cries the runt. He makes LaJo sit through
Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones
and, most painfully, Donald Duck’s rich uncle, Scrooge McDuck. LaJo is fast asleep when he feels the finger-pull again. “LaJo! Hippodrome!”

They’re riding a hippo mouth in a circle for about the hundredth time when LaJo finally catches a break. The runt is slumped against him, dead asleep. He eases himself away, steps off the carousel, walks—and stops. Stops and just stands there in the dark for no good reason. Turns for no good reason. Goes back to Hippodrome, grabs the runt, slings him over his shoulder and returns to The Kid for no good reason. Dusty is giggling in his sleep. LaJo lays the runt down, lays himself down.
The runt is between him and Dusty. The runt turns and flops his arm across LaJo’s chest. LaJo is about to remove it. But doesn’t. No good reason.

Now he’s wide-awake. He crosses his hands under his head. Except for the runt’s flopped arm, he wouldn’t know there was anything but himself and the night. The sky. The stars. So many. He’s never seen so many of anything. He lifts his head. There’s the moon. Over Gorilla Hill as usual. It looks so low. Reminds him of a soccer ball. He knows it’s crazy, but he can’t help thinking that if he went over there right now, climbed up the hill and stood right under the moon, he could jump up and touch it.

T
HE TRAIN IS THERE
, belching smoke, barely still. As Jack looks down from the rim of the bluff, a thin shower of grit falls on him. Steam gasps from the great iron wheels. He can feel the heat. Behind the engine is a parade of passenger cars. Their dull red color matches that of the bluff he stands on. They go on and on around the bend to the east. He wonders if there’s a caboose.

Out of the first car steps the conductor, stubble-chinned but spiffy in black suit and brimmed cap. “All aboard!” he calls, looking up and down the tracks as if he doesn’t know Jack stands above him. Jack skids
down the bluffside, rushes to the train. “Almost didn’t make it, kid,” says the conductor. He moves aside so Jack can mount the steps.

Jack stands at the head of a long aisle of empty seats. He wonders if he’s the only passenger. Above him a dim light flickers behind frosted glass. He chooses a seat on the right side. Then changes to the left. A window seat.

A flurry of chuffs: the train begins to move. The conductor comes down the aisle barking, “Tickets!” Jack hands over his ticket. The conductor punches it, but instead of handing it back, he keeps it. He pulls a round brass watch from his vest pocket. “Running late,” he says, and moves on. For a moment Jack wants to call after him, wants to say
Where are we going?
But he doesn’t.

As the train slowly gathers speed, he watches the bluff go by, then Gorilla Hill and Great Plains, milky in the moonlight, then nothing but trees. Panic rises. He glances back for the conductor but he is gone. He stands. “Stop! Wait!” He tries to open the window. It won’t budge. He runs down the aisle to the next car, which is empty, and the next car, which is empty. Where is the conductor? He calls: “Stop the train! I
want to get off! Please!” The ceiling lights flicker a final time and go out. The pale light of the moon skims the crests of a hundred empty seats. From the engine’s heart beats a strong and steady rhythm.

Groping in the dark, he returns to his seat. For some reason it feels important to reclaim the same seat he started with. Occasionally a passing branch scratches at the window. He has to look back now to see the moon. He cannot find Gorilla Hill.

Why is this happening? Why must he go? He thinks he hears the Amigos calling him from the bluff. In the black glaze of the window he sees the faces of Hokey Pokey. Kids. Kids. From the other side of the window Jubilee smiles at him. Scramjet rears up majestically on his hind wheel. The herd thunders across Great Plains. Kiki pounds his fist into his glove, calls, “C’mon, Jack—send me a hard one!” He has been happy here. Happy. The Hokey Pokey Man flips his towel over the block of ice. The Hokey Pokey Man says,
Sayonara, kid
.

The train labors up a slope, now cruises onto flatlands, bogs of moongleaming pondwater and the contorted stumps of trees. It is so different here. Jack has never known anything but Hokey Pokey, has never known
there was anything
but
Hokey Pokey. The train clatters over a bridge. His creek, where he explored and stone-crossed and poked at crayfish all his life, is but a trickle to the broad river below. The engine hurls its whistle into the night.

Jack looks back out the window and panics—the moon is not there! He rushes to the other side of the train—there it is, high above the bogs. When he returns to his seat, he sees dark, massive shapes receding in the distance. The Mountains. They have now passed beyond the Mountains that speak in thunder, the end of the world.

The bogs give way to a landscape of humpy hills, like dumped potatoes. Dinging, flashing red lights race by the window. He glimpses roads running into the tracks. He sees a light in the distance. A fallen star? Pale lights drizzle from unseen sources. The train rolls on.

Boxy shapes race by. In the distance a cluster of lights, some of them moving. Into the dark well of a tunnel and out to a hailstorm of lights on all sides. The train seems to be moving faster, seems excited. Jack’s heart matches the pulsebeat of the screaming locomotive. The smell of burning coal fills the swaying, clattering
car. He is thrilled. He is terrified. He wants to cry. He wants to cheer. There are no faces at the window now, only lights against the blackness. He closes his eyes. He breathes deeply … deeply … he is feeling creamy … he tries to remember …

NOT HOKEY POKEY

TOMORROW

“W
AKE UP
, Jack!”

He opens his eyes. A pelican is staring at him. A pelican with a bunch of mop-haired little kids peering wide-eyed over the lip of its basketball-size mouth pouch. The same wallpaper pelican he’s been waking up to all his life.

The door opens. “Time’s flyin, Mr. Boy. You’re the one who wanted to do this.” His father.

Do what?

He thinks. But he’s sleepy. He thinks harder. He remembers. It’s Saturday. The day his dad agreed to
help him change his room. Get rid of those dumb pelicans once and for all. Strip off the wallpaper. Paint the walls. Some cool color. Black maybe. Or silver.

He gropes out of bed, staggers down the hallway to the bathroom, pees, splashes water on his face. Suddenly his mother is screaming: “Omygod!” He steps into the hallway. She’s standing at the doorway to his room. She’s leaning in, sniffing. Now she steps into the room, out of his sight. She’s there for about a minute. Now he hears it again, slower this time: “Oh. My. God.”

She reappears at his doorway. She’s staring at him like he’s a total stranger.

What did he do now? It’s too early in the day to defend himself. Whatever it is, he’ll confess.

Now she’s coming his way. The look on her face, he’s never seen it before. She stops in front of him. It occurs to him that her eyes are on the same level as his. Yes! He’s no longer shorter than his mother. He tries to find
mad
in the look she’s giving him. He can’t.

Her look is changing again. Now it’s puzzled. “Jack,” she says, and now he thinks she’s actually looking
up
at him a little. “Jack,” she repeats, like she wants to be sure she got his name right, “has anyone else been in your room? I mean, like, since yesterday?”

He wonders if parents begin to go dotty in their early forties. “No,” he says. He kind of wants to ask
Why?
but he really doesn’t want to get into a conversation.

“You’re sure?”

He gives her a glare that says:
I’m not gonna take this anymore. Now will you please step aside so I can get back to my room
.

She reads his glare. She has always read his glares perfectly, way better than Dad. But she doesn’t step aside. She takes his shoulders in her hands. The look on her face is becoming half smile, half wonder. “One more question.”

“Mom,” he says, “one more question and I’m gonna have to shove you outta the way.”

She knows he’s joking. She leans into him until the top of her head is resting against his chin. He can smell her shampoo. Like April. He wants to squirm away but dares not. She chuckles softly. He hears her breathe words into his shirt, but they make no sense.

“Huh?” he says.

She backs off, repeats herself into his eyes. “I can’t find your dirty socks anywhere. They’re not under the bed or in the closet. Where are they?”

“I ate them,” he says.

“Where
are
they?” She’s smiling and she’s wonder-eyed but there’s something else too. Bulldog. She won’t let it go.

“In the hamper,” he says.

Her breath catches. For a moment he thinks she’s going to cry. He’d never have guessed she could squeeze his shoulders this hard. “And who”—she’s having trouble saying it—“
who
put them in the hamper?”

“Me” is barely out of his mouth before she’s hugging him and rocking him from wall to wall and laughing her head off and calling, “Richard—wait till you hear this!” She holds him at arm’s length, looks him up and down, shakes her head. “Never thought I’d see the day.” She crashes into him again, kisses him and is gone, dancing down the hallway—a quick look into the bathroom (“And he turned off the water!”), dancing down the stairway, pumping her arms like a cheerleader. “My baby is growing up!”

Whatever. He reminds himself that his mother does acting at the Hedgerow Playhouse. When he calls her
hysterical
, she says
theatrical
. Safely back in his room, he mightily wants to flop into bed but doesn’t. He gets dressed. He grabs a felt-tip poster marker and
does what he’s wanted to do for a long time—he scribbles all over the stupid pelicans.

Proof that he did something good is waiting for him at the breakfast table: blueberry pancakes. His all-time favorite. His mother keeps turning from the stove, saying, “More?” He’s relieved to see she’s no longer going nutso. He keeps catching her staring at him. He’s on his last bite when his father comes in. “Let’s move, pal. Places to go. We’re already late. Anything not done today you’ll have to finish on your own.” Thankfully, his male parent is his usual crisp, all-business self.

As they head for the front door, his father glances into the den, says, “Kiki, back off.” His little brother is there, as always on a Saturday, cross-legged on the rug, his face about three millimeters from the TV screen, watching his cartoons. As his brother pushes himself backward on the rug, Jack sees he’s been sitting on Mr. Shortstop. Kiki senses Jack, turns, waves the glove.

“Play catch, Jack?”

“Later,” says Jack. “Gotta get some paint with Dad.”

Kiki re-sits himself on the glove, turns back to the screen. Jack hears, “Ehh … what’s up, Doc?” Bugs Bunny. Kiki’s favorite.

Before his father can open the door, there’s a knock. It’s the little Lopez girl—Gracie—barefoot and wide-eyed, from up the street. “Can Kiki come out to play?”

“If you can tear him away from his cartoons,” says his father. He steps aside. “Go ahead and try.” The girl runs past Jack, calling, “Kiki! Kiki! Let’s go to the playground!” She’s trying to yank him away from the screen. Good luck.

His father wags his head. “Kids,” he says, chuckling. “They live in their own little world.”

Outside, the sun is dazzling. He hears a couple of lawn mowers going already. There are kids up and down the street, mostly little. Any respectable teenager is still in bed. Across the street, little kids are killing each other with everything from lightsabers to golden pistols. There’s a black-taped ball in the driveway, smeary with yellow dust. He kicks it aside.

As they head for the car, his attention is caught by a bike moving down the sidewalk across the street. It’s the girl from the next block. Jubilee Trimble. Hair flying behind her baseball cap. As she goes by, she seems to look in his direction. He smiles at memories of their little kidhoods, when they tormented each other daily as sworn enemies. It occurs to him to wave to her, but
by the time he decides this, she’s halfway down the block.

In the car his father is saying something about paint and wallpaper stripping, but Jack is noticing something in the pocket of his jeans, something that wasn’t there before. He takes it out. It’s a yellow ribbon. His first impulse is to throw it away, but he does not. The ribbon is fat and bold. Such a ribbon might wrap a spectacular gift. Where did it come from? Why does he have it? He runs his finger over it. As the engine comes to life and they back down the driveway, he turns away so his father cannot see. He sniffs the yellow ribbon.
Girl
. He touches it to his lips.

He opens his window, catches the breeze. As they cruise through the neighborhood, he hears, from somewhere behind them, a kid’s voice. Shouting. Yodeling. Sounds like a Tarzan yell.