Just North of Nowhere (14 page)

Funny. Sometimes the step would be loose. And things sometimes vanished from here, there and the freezer. She'd find drops of blood frozen where. . .

Quickly, his father had enough.

Teachers began calling, evenings, to ask, casually, had they noticed anything strange about their boy? Would they keep their eyes on him? Would they have words with him?

Dad’s “words” got angrier. He became really mad when the art teacher called to suggest, perhaps they'd like to stop by to take a look at Roy's, uh, work.

Every drawing, every finger painting, was of mom and Roy, of the house and car and shapes and forms unaccounted for as child-made trees, trucks, cars, pets, friends, clouds, bushes, garages, daddies, or anythings. The lumps of dark color Roy drew always seemed to be under, in waiting, watching stilly, or lurking at the edges.

The teacher asked what did they suppose these things were? Mother shrugged. Daddy shook his head. Later, daddy shook the boy and made him cry.

In all that time, he never spoke the words he whispered, now, in Leslie's ear. “I bring the monsters,” Roy had said.

A few years earlier, he might have said it differently. A few years earlier, he might have said, “I know there are monsters.” Later, he might have said, “Knowing there are monsters, takes their power.” Even later, he might has said, “I destroy monsters.”

“’Outer people?’” Leslie said.

Roy nodded.

They were different. Outer people lived in secret places. Outer people couldn’t be killed with knowing.

“Well that's something,” Leslie said. “You see any here?” she asked, looking around.

Roy smiled, raised his eyebrows.

In the bright kitchen where Esther chopped and cooked, the man without a head, black with blood, covered in worms and engorged flies, bumped over and over into the same spot on the wall between the hot black ovens and the back door. His foot-long fingernails curved away from his bony fingertips and scraped the greasy aluminum wall. His toe claws tapped the tile floor as he padded back and forth in his ever-repeating pattern. He'd been at it since he'd come in. Probably a lot longer. Esther didn't seem to mind. The face on the ceiling? That was probably the staggering man’s.

Roy nodded.

“What's it look like?” Leslie whispered in his ear.

He told her.

“Oh,” she said. “You see its head anywhere?” She asked.

He looked. “Nope,” he said.

“Well huh!” she said. “Now, that's probably Olaf. Olaf Tim.”

Roy looked at Olaf Tim scratching at the wall. Olaf Tim. His monsters didn’t have names, not real names. He liked knowing who this one in the kitchen was. Mr. Tim.

“Yeah. Tim built this dump back in…” She considered the impossibly long stretch of years between that cool summer evening and the time at the turn of the century when Olaf Tim had built the American House—Eats!

“He comes here from Sweden or wherever with Mrs. Tim and stakes out this spot by the river. The river was closer then. Figures its going to be the only diner in town. He builds it himself, yada-yada-yada, all that stuff, through the hottest damn summer on record before or since. Every board, beam and shingle. And Mrs. Tim watches him. She sits on her rocker, middle of the street out there. . .” She pointed to the street. Roy looked and saw only gathering dark and a few people – or whatever they were – moving or drifting with the breeze. “She gets fatter and fatter with a baby, never lifts a finger to help.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And the day he finishes the last coat of paint and nails up the sign, Mrs. Tim give birth and Olaf goes inside, gets his shotgun, sits down in the kitchen and blows his head clean off.” She waited for Roy to react. He smiled. “Most of it anyway,” she added.

Roy peeked again at Olaf Tim, scratching the wall. Feeling what he could of the world. Missing the door, working his way around the room. At least this monster had a name and a past.

“I think he can't find the door,” the boy said.

“Maybe.” Leslie said. Then, suddenly, “Or he's looking for his head!” She stretched out the last word. They both laughed and that was good. Leslie grabbed Roy's hand and dragged him through the Dutch door to the kitchen.

“So, maybe he’s not a monster.”

“Ghost, you figure?”

The tall lady with the dark hair now sat on a long table, her legs swung underneath her. She wore black New Balance shoes and her feet were dirty. She’d loosened her hair and it hung below her shoulders in long, mahogany waves. A long white streak started above her right eye.

“Maybe one of the outer people?”

“Hi, Leslie,” the tall woman said, “who is your familiar.” They both laughed.

“I'm Eugene Roy,” he said before Leslie said anything.

“Eugene?” she said.

The headless Swede swept toward him as he stood talking. At just that minute, there in this good-smelling kitchen, Leslie next to him, the pretty dark haired woman dangling a shoe from her foot, he felt brave. And as the headless Swede swept through him on his way to the Dutch door, Eugene Roy felt, for just a moment, as though he’d grown, lived, died and come back to life.

The dark woman shook his hand. “I am Cristobel Chiaravino,” she said. Her voice sounded foreign. A little bit, anyway. Maybe she wanted it to. She looked at Leslie. “I brought Esther the last of the morels.” She hesitated for a moment.

“And you need more?” Leslie said.

“For that,” she hesitated again, “that recipe,” she said.

At her cutting board Esther was slicing a large brown puffy thing. She looked up in time to have Mr. Tim swipe his claws through the smile.

“Well, Eugene Roy,” Esther said, “you and your mom decide to stay here in Bluffton, you're going to have to find your own ‘shrooming ground. About everyone's got a morel patch somewhere out there!” She waved her long knife at the back door. The blade passed through the spot where Olaf Tim's head would have been. He couldn’t help smiling. “When you find a good’n, you'll most likely get strange. Be perfect and ordinary most times, then come May 'shrooming, you'll go twitchy and start looking over your shoulder. You'll slip off to the woods by misdirect wanderings just to hide your patch.”

She dumped the contents of the second shopping bag onto the table. The roiling scented air of the kitchen filled with the smell of earth and age. Dozens of the puffy fungi rolled across the table.

“These are Leslie’s. The morel’s a weird guy, ain’t it?” Esther laughed, holding one of the puffballs up.

Roy took it. It was indeed. Looked as though you'd have to hold it down to kill it before cutting it up. He held it to his face. It smelled like time; as though he held forever in his hand. Forever or something else. Life maybe. He laughed.

Esther joined him. Leslie smiled and Miss Cristobel just watched.

Roy handed the mushroom back to Esther.

“Looks like a monster, honey, but it eats good.”

He nodded.

Leslie nudged him. ‘Lets get,’ the nudge said.

“Bye,” he said as Leslie dragged him through the Dutch door.

Olaf Tim waddled toward the middle of the kitchen then spun toward the stove.

Roy and Leslie sat on the top step on the Eat’s front porch. Evening oozed through the afternoon. Mother still leaned over the open mouth of the car. Einar ticked off points in his greasy palm. He waved, gestured, did a little dance to translate what was wrong in woman terms.

Mother's head shook and her tongue added sums on the roof of her mouth. Her eyes had already gone squinty.

“I know where,” Roy whispered to Leslie. “I found it.”

“Huh,” Leslie said squinting at him.

“What'd you find?” Leslie asked.

“Olaf's head. His face anyway. It's stuck in the ceiling. Looking down. Maybe in the paint. He keeps telling the body to 'look oop. Look oop. Here I yam you bik dumb sumofvitch.'“

Leslie nodded and sighed.

“'Look oop here,'“ Roy quoted again. “He doesn't know his body can't hear.”

“Ears are on the head,” Leslie said.

He nodded.

“You figure you'll stay?” she said.

Roy looked at his mother. She looked at him, smiled, sighed and turned back to Einar.

“Yes,” Roy said. He looked at his watch. Five-fifty-two. He put that in his head to remember. Five-fifty-two, and he knew where he was. “Now what do you mean, 'you know where things are?’” he asked Leslie.

Some time later, he’d realize that what she meant was she knew how to HIDE things.

Ruth? Five O'clock and she shuts it down; slams the library door, locks, jiggles it – jiggles it again to make sure – and that’s that.

Thank the Lord
, Ruth thought,
that’s one more day I won't have to live through
. She yanked the shade, sneezed, then sat to consider dust.

Sunset streamed in the windows. In its glow, every surface was soft with dust. Move a book, it smoked with dust. Run a finger across a study table, a dark trail remained in the dustscape. Breathing, Ruth inhaled dust, dust, she knew, to be flecks of the past: the ashes of Harald Bluetooth's dragon ship, a molecule of Stegosaurus broasted for eons in Gobi heat, a chip of George Washington's ivory dentures, iron atoms drifted down from the bursting hearts of stars now cold cinder cores, dead beyond the Magellanic Clouds. Particles of every age, place and time swept up her nose and into the alveoli of her lungs. Ruth Potter's lungs, soon to be dust, too. Soon but not soon enough for Ruth.

They'll have to get someone in, they really will. Twice a month. Once, at the very least!
Even part-time, Ruth knew a janitor would be out of the question. The Selectmen had made
that
clear. As people the board members were fine. Ruth had nothing against them as folks. Alone, they would have had been magnanimous, generous perhaps. Yes?

With
her
around? With them as
her
board! No. Ruth knew where to lay the blame, yes indeed she did! On
HER
: Hillary Arroyo Burroughs. Naturally!

“A little more money, Ruth?” A look around the table, “Well maybe we can find. . .”

Then, at the top of the table, Hillary's dry smile would seep across the polished wood. Suddenly “maybe we can find” turned to “no, no, Ruth. Sorry, no.”

A few more dollars? Some new non-fiction titles, a couple, three, periodicals?

The Hillary stare chilled the damn clock.

“A janitor? Well, maybe
you
could clean up a little around here Ruthie? Not like you're exactly 'busy' over here, now is it?”

Not exactly.

Was he right or was he right?

Exactly. Yes. Indeed.

And the antique ivory of Hillary Arroyo Burroughs’s smile would shut like a retreating glacier, to wait. Wait. Wait.

A time ago – half a career now – Ruth would have done the cleaning. She'd taken pride, was proud of what the place meant, for goodness sake.

That was when people read, for goodness sake; when children entered, caps in hands, wiped their feet without urging. The children once stood awed by the knowledge on the shelves around them, they breathed in the scent of knowledge.

Ruth drew in a lungfull of library. Even under the dust, the scent remained. That wonderful library aroma, like...well, all Ruth could say was: It smelled like power, like time itself, the past informing the future!

People's awe was enhanced, she knew, by that aroma: books and sunlight, mixed essence of paper, leather, ink and glue, mingled in thick steam heat, stirred by generations of cold Bluffton winters, percolated in the locust buzz of summers.

She'd never admit it, but the smell of a library was a good part of why she'd chosen the life, became a guardian of the past. Coming forth from her studies to her first job – this one – setting a gentle foot for the first time into her library, she breathed it in and knew: Yes, civilization was in her hands and safe here in Bluffton.

Before she knew she was going to, Ruth screamed. She let out a long dry yowp. It wasn't a loud cry but louder than most sounds she made these days.

The motes swimming the air froze for a moment like a school of tropical fish then swarmed off on another course through the sunbeams.

Her life had become silent. No! In fact it always had been! Oh, she’d never hissed people quiet as librarians were to have done. She hated clichés and would not be one. No, she adored scholarship. In her mind, learning was thunderous, a rush of questions posed, debated, concluded; the thunderbolt of understanding crashed down from on high through these disputations. And all of it, attended by the passionate whisk of flicked pages, the fevered scratch of steel nibs on rough paper, perhaps a distant strain of Mozart drifting from the music room, above.

But! Ah, but. The sounds of scholarly pursuit, the shouted Eurekas, alas, were for others. She was just the keeper of the power.

But she did like the scritch of pen on paper.

“Flapdoodle,” Ruth said. No one used inkwells and nibs, had not, not in her working life. She
wanted
them to, but they hadn't. No one played Mozart on that old Victrola upstairs, either. When they signed to use the music room, the children giggled and groped one another in the shadows while their white earphones thumped their separate rock and rolls.

Inkwells and Mozart!

If she'd gone a little deeper into herself, if she'd had a friend with whom to share such romantic nonsense, she would have whispered that such things, pen nibs and Mozart, made her damp between the legs! At lest “The Abduction from the Seraglio” did.

“Enough,” Ruth said, slamming the cover on
that
little tickle! “Cancel it and move on!”

She sneezed again.

Maybe she'd been wrong. Maybe the trappings she'd loved – sunbeams and ranks of books, scholarship’s murmurs and the scent of age – never had awed others. Maybe that library aroma was just mildew, mold, and rot. Maybe (oh unthinkable) all the years, maybe the children who came so silently and with such seeming awe, maybe they simply were afraid, afraid of catching something. An illness? From her! Maybe even the elderly, maybe scholars and tourists, selectmen and mayors, maybe all these years they looked at her – as had Hillary Arroyo Burroughs from the start – and seen only a moldering crank. Someone you didn't like to be near because you might laugh aloud at her, her, someone who might shatter with a thing you might say, some look you might give. Cranks do weird things, you know. What might a dusty old woman do, Roofless Potter, going bald on top, a five o’clock shadow on her chins and cheeks?

Consarn it, Ruth
, she thought,
like a bad tooth, it can't be left alone.

But that was it! Yes, they were frightened of her, the Bluffton Oddity, the bulging eyes and tissue skin, the ever-thinning ring of gray hair and spreading blush of liver spots, the shadow kept at bay with a secret razor once a week.

Fear? Ha! Disgust, more like. Do not worry children! It’s not catching.
This
cannot happen to you. Stay out of books, don't breathe the molds and you'll be fine.

“Ruth Potter!” She had had it! She was not going to tell herself again! “That
is
enough! Now hush, damn it!” She said it aloud and clamped her mind silent!

Afternoon sun knifed down from the upper windows. The dust rose in widening gyres...
(Now, what was that from? Oh for goodness! Of course!)

Maybe she would leave tonight; lock the door, never come again. That'd show 'em, like the kids used to say.

Today, since 9 a.m., three people – only three – had opened that door. One used the lady's room. Another, just a hand, dropped an overdue bestseller in the entry and vanished before Ruth could catch her. She couldn't remember the third, but was sure there'd been one. Three. If she vanished? It would be days before Vinnie Erickson would get a call to come investigate the still-locked door at the old library. Nancy Drew would have had a time with that, but Vinnie Erickson?

She sniffed at the thought: Vinnie’s brogans leaving tread marks in the dust. She squinted at the imagined sound Vinnie’s fingernails scratching the tight skin on his sunburned scalp as he squinted at her world, trying, at least, to look as though he were thinking,
figurin' just what the hey had happened to old “Roofless” Potter, for cripes sake
. She could see, she could hear plain as day!

She sneezed again.

Maybe she could find a few dollars – her own – to give to that Bunch person. He was an acceptable winter shoveler. He could probably sweep and empty and not do too much damage.

My own money!
She laughed, then laughed aloud.

With the laugh, there came a tapping at the locked and shaded door. Her heart leaped. “Fer garsh sake! Open all day and they come by at closing.” She snapped up the shade, prepared to glower down some tourist, lost, some housewife, late, some child, frightened.

Peering dead sour at Ruth, nose flattened on the glass, was Hillary Arroyo Burroughs. The old bitch staggered to hold on to a wooden crate.

Ruth clicked her tongue loud enough to carry through the glass. “You can't come between business hours for goodness sake, Hillary?” She cracked the door, hating what became of her manners near Hillary.

Grunting like an old pug, Hillary shoved her aside. “Haul ass, Ruth, I’m coming though.” She staggered a moment, then waddled full tilt to the back of the reading room. The dust sucked toward her in the wake of her passing.

“For goodness sake!” Ruth didn't care if Hillary was darned near 100 – 90 anyway – old bitch shows up like a bull in a china shop, she can carry her own truck, confound her anyway.

“Watch the goddamned street,” Hillary shouted without turning around. “I don't want every swingin' dick in Bluffton knowing this business!”

Hillary wiggled the crate gently onto the 18-foot oak study table. Once it was down, she leaned her shoulder to it, shoved it to the center.

Ruth cringed at the screech of nail heads plowing tracks in the newly varnished surface. “Sakes alive, Hillary! Never mind the Selectmen just refinished that –- and I remember there was one member fought even that!” Ruth touched one of the bright gouges as though it were a battle wound. “The
last
capital expenditure you people approved...”

“Piss sake, stop gawping like a landed trout and give me a hand, Ruthie. This is a behest!”

Could have dropped her with a feather, but Ruth held ground.

Hillary blew past and Ruth followed to the front. The old woman's black Hummer was cocked on the sidewalk, one rear wheel on the pavement, the other on the bottom step of the library. The hatch yawned and the old biddy’s butt wiggled as she kneeled, wrangling another box from the vehicle.

“PISS-sake, Ruth, get your flabby buns down here! This shit's important.”

Ruth didn't respond well to orders, even when issued by Bluffton’s richest citizen – former whore that she may (or may not) have been (depending on whom one believed). She certainly did not respond to orders tied to grotesque profanities never before shouted in her library or on its grounds.

“I assume you mean a bequest, Hillary.” Ruth looked up and down Commonwealth Street, determined no one who mattered would see her physically handling these things, these dirty items from God knew where, from the back of Hillary Arroyo Burroughs' jeep, from her basement, her attic, her life. She descended the steps. “A behest is an entreaty, a request. These... Criminies! This is heavy!” The words burst out of her as she strained and only half lifted the box with Hillary.

“Don't jostle,” Hillary said. “They're glass and they're priceless. So watch what you're doing! Here. We take it together.”

By the time they had gotten it and the remaining seven crates onto the study table, Ruth was soaked, her first work sweat in 27 years. It felt horrible. Horrible.

On Hillary, the faint slick of oily damp looked natural.

“Bequest, behest, be fucked. What the shit,” Hillary said, “get me a glass.” She waved a bottle at Ruth and sucked down great rasping gasps of library air.

Ruth waited long enough to let Hillary Arroyo Burroughs know she was not to be ordered in her own library.
Truman and Macarthur
, she thought,
Truman and Macarthur.
Then Ruth fetched, curse it, she fetched.

“And bring one for yourself,” Hillary shouted. “We got a night's work ahead!

By midnight or so, Ruth didn't mind aquavit. She really didn’t. She had never had it. Even if she – she and Hillary Arroyo Burroughs, that was the kicker, fer garsh sake – even if
they
were drinking in the library – drinking in the library late at night! Even if she and the town's richest oldest lady bitch were drinking booze (was this booze? Ruth guessed it was!); were drinking booze in the library late at night; even so, this aquavit was not so bad! Imagine! She'd never tasted it and it wasn't bad.

She took another sip, a secret sip. Room-warm the aquavit made her shiver from the throat down to gut.

Across the table from Ruth, Hillary snored. The things Hillary had said as they'd unpacked the crate! One of many. How many? One, two, well, many. Silly things. The things she'd spoken of as they stacked the glass plates – what in the world?! They'd handled the glass with gloves, old lady sundress gloves, Hillary had brought a pair for herself, a pair for Ruth. They'd worn the lacy things to handle the glass, for garsh sake.

Ruth sipped again. Aquavit, a licorice surprise. She knew liquors tasted like licorice. She had heard that. Was aquavit a liquor? She wasn't sure. What was more, she didn't care. Not even care enough to look it up! And there were books she could have looked in! Right here. “Books all around!” she said aloud. But she didn't! That was a surprise, too.
Liquors are thicker
, she thought, sipping then gently burping. “Thicker, they make you sicker,” she said aloud and giggled at her rhyme.