Malus Domestica (19 page)

As Wayne walked alongside the gaggle, the feeling of adventure only grew. It was a real
halleluah
moment. The redneck-ness, the
remoteness
of Blackfield was already starting to grow on him.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sky was a thousand miles wide and twice as high, and if he stared hard enough at the airliner carving a whispering contrail across that blue dome, he thought he could almost make out the faces in the windows. It was as if God had reached down and smoothed the world out like a blanket, leaving only him, his new friends, and the tall blue.

He made a mental note to thank his dad for dragging them out here to ‘the middle of nowhere’, as he’d been thinking of it all day. With the warm sun on his bare head and healthy green grass under his feet, he found it hard to keep talking trash and playing the pouty transplanted kid.

Children were hanging out in the baseball diamond, chatting in the bleachers and dugouts, and throwing balls to each other out on the dirt. Pete led them around the back of the risers, passing a blue Porta-Potty.

“I heard one of the high-school kids got trapped in this potty by a mountain lion last year,” said Johnny Juan.

Amanda watched her feet eat up the grass, her thumbs tucked behind the straps of her
My Little Pony
backpack as if they were suspenders. “There’s no mountain lions out here, dummy.”

“There’s bobcats.”

“There’s Bigfoots too,” said Pete.

Amanda’s ponytail flounced back and forth like an actual horse’s tail. Wayne found it as hypnotic as a metronome. “No such thing as Bigfoot.”

“Sure there is.” Pete looked over his shoulder at Wayne. “What do
you
think? Do
you
believe in Bigfoot?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’d
like
to.”

“See? Wayne believes in Bigfoot.”

“I think I’d crap my pants if I ever saw Bigfoot,” said Johnny Juan. “Have you ever seen him, Pete?”

“No. But I know about a website that tracks sightings. Bigfoot Research Organization or something like that. They had like forty reports right here in Georgia.”

Wilmer Street was on the other side of the baseball diamond. They jumped a deep culvert and followed the road’s shoulder to where the sidewalk materialized under their feet, assembling itself out of broken slabs where the weeds and mud had started to reclaim it.

That took them up a long valley of nameless brick buildings with wooden house-doors and metal doors without knobs, roll-up garage doors and glass doors with sun-faded signs taped to their insides that said O
UT
OF
B
USINESS
and C
USTOMERS
E
NTER
A
ROUND
S
IDE
and M
OVED
TO
V
AUGHAN
B
LVD
. Wayne quit paying attention to where they were going and let his feet carry him along behind the plodding Pete in a sort of auto-pilot.

At one point they passed an open cafe where two men were perched in a large window cut in the side of a twenty-foot shipping container. A hand-painted sign over the dining-area awning said D
EVIL
-M
OON
B
EER
& B
URGERS
and had a picture of two disembodied red hands cupping a crystal ball.

Despite Johnny Juan’s good-natured beggaring, the men wouldn’t let them have a beer, but they had cans of something called Firewater, a locally-made cinnamon sarsaparilla, for a dollar. They each bought one and continued up Wilmer drinking them. Amanda bought some fried dill pickles and let Wayne have one. He thought they were the best things he’d ever eaten in his life, and made another mental note to talk Leon into bringing him back to the Devil-Moon.

That means he’ll have to go to a bar, though,
he thought.

Johnny Juan pulled some berries off of a holly bush in front of a lawyer’s office and chucked them one by one at the back of Pete’s head.

You keep on and they gon fire your ass, lil brother,
Aunt Marcelina had said to Leon.

This conversation had taken place back in Chicago, but Wayne could remember it as if it had taken place that morning. She and Leon stood behind the car, almost nose-to-nose, while Wayne sat in the front passenger seat reading the latest Spider-Man comic book.

I know life been tough since you lost your old lady,
Aunt Marcelina told Leon, her hands on her ample hips. Her tone was soft but reproachful.
But you can’t carry on like this. You keep showin up to work tore up and they gon let you go. And you know what’s gonna happen then?

Leon had said nothing, but his arms were folded. Normally a Leon Parkin with folded arms meant you were about to get an earful about something or other, but this time he was hunched over as though the wind were chilling him, even though it was August and the armpits of his shirt were dark. He looked more like a kicked puppy, sweaty and diminished.

This time he was the one getting an earful.
They ain’t nobody else gon hire you.
Marcelina pointed at the school with an open hand.
Ain’t nobody gon hire a drunk-ass teacher.

What you want me to do?
Leon had asked.

His neck-tie was loose, his collar open. His hand drifted up to his mouth and he pulled his face in exasperation, wiping his hand on his slacks.

You need to get right with God,
Marcelina told him.

God?
scoffed Leon.
God needs to get right with me.

Don’t you start, Leonhard Luther Parkin.
Marcelina’s broad shoulders hulked over him when she handled her pear-shaped hips like that, like she was using them as leverage to make herself even bigger, and she was already built like a linebacker. Her painted lips pursed under flaring nostrils.
I’mma tell you what we gonna do.

What ‘we’ gonna do?

I’m
gonna give you a little money, and
you
can get out of town. Get outta your head, get outta that apartment, get away from here and go somewhere you can get clear. Somewhere quiet you can dry up.

Leon jerked with a hiccup, standing a little straighter in his surprise.
Get outta town? What is this, Tombstone? You runnin me outta town now?

If that’s what it takes to fix you.

Marcy,
Leon had said,
I can’t take your money.

Yes, you can,
she told him,
and you will. Look, you can pay me back whenever.
She pointed at Wayne sitting in the car. The nail on the end of her finger was a bright red claw.
I want you to think of that little boy sittin in there. Do you love him?

Leon recoiled.
Of course I do.

Then get outta here, get away from these memories, away from this city, and get right with God. Baby brother, don’t make me hafta raise my own nephew. I got three boys of my own.
Marcelina hitched up her giant leather purse where it’d slipped down her shoulder and took out a wadded-up tissue.
You know she would want you happy, dammit.

Leon peered through the back window at Wayne, biting his lip in apprehension. His eyes were pink, and his face was twisted like something hurt deep inside. The boy could see the pain sticking out of him like a knife-handle.

I been talkin to Principal Hayes,
said Marcelina.
There’s a job down south he wanna recommend you for. It’s close to Atlanta. Trisha lives in Atlanta. Your cousin, Aunt Nell’s daughter, you ‘member her? She’s all right, you know? You two used to play together before her mama moved them down there to go to school.
She craned her head forward to look up into Leon’s face.
Will you think about it?

“You asshole!” howled Pete, startling Wayne out of his daydream. He looked up from the sidewalk and almost ran into Amanda.

The four of them had come to the intersection of Wilmer and Broad and were approaching the traffic light. To the left and right was a long stretch of two-story buildings: boutiques, offices, shops, storefronts.

A pet shop across the street boasted about its hamsters, kittens, turtles. Next door, a frozen-yogurt shop in pastel colors claimed more flavors than Baskin-Robbins, and after that was a knick-knack shop with bamboo wind chimes and frilly marionettes on tin bicycles.

Broad reminded him of the older parts of Chicago, the streets that led back to the wild-west days, but Blackfield’s historical district was cleaner, almost precious in its maintenance. On the other side of the intersection, Wilmer turned into a brick road bisected by a median full of little trees, and lining it was a funnel of fancy bistros and taverns.

Pete held up his sarsaparilla. “You ruined my drink!”

“How did I do that?” asked Johnny Juan.

Pete showed him the can. Johnny leaned in to examine it. “You threw a holly berry in my Firewater!”

Wayne and Amanda clustered around Johnny to see. The girl tugged it in her direction with her long, pencil-slender fingers and he noticed that her nails were green.

“I’ll be dang,” said Johnny, leaning back to laugh. Wayne looked down into the mouth of the can—which was no bigger than a nickel—and sure enough, a little red berry bobbed at the bottom.

Amanda smirked. “You should try out for basketball!”

“Maybe!”

“Basketball my ass!” fussed Pete. “I can’t drink this now.”

“Why not?” asked Amanda. “It’s just a berry.”

“Aren’t holly berries poisonous?”

She paused and squinted up at the sky, palming her mouth in thought. “I have no idea.”

Johnny shrugged. “You could try it and see. Hey, there were food tasters back in King Arthur’s court and stuff. They tasted things to see if they were poisoned before they were served to the king.”

“Then
you
taste it, Sir Lancelot,” said Pete, thrusting the can in his direction, “and let me know if you die.”

Johnny stepped back as if the can were a spider.

“You are the biggest wuss,” Pete growled, balling up a fist. “That’s two for flinching.”

“Aww.” Johnny hugged himself protectively and Pete punched him twice in the shoulder, hard enough to almost knock him over. He balanced on one foot, rubbing his arm. “Jesus! Do you have to hit so hard? That’s like the third time this week.”

Pete poked the crosswalk button. “Do you want me to carry you across the street, or do you think you can do it?”

Johnny sulked, his hands jammed into his pockets.

The light changed and Pete trudged across the street, the others in tow. Wayne followed them, looking around at all the shops. He’d have to talk Leon into bringing him back here—especially to the pet shop. He needed a new pet, he thought, walking backward, checking it out. Maybe a dog.
Yeah, that’s the ticket. A new dog for a new house. That creaky old house needs a happy dog living in it.
Tappity-tap-tap on his cellphone.

theres a pet store in town

Oh yea?

Yep.
can we go when u get home?

Maybe this weekend. what u wanna go to pet store 4?

can we get a dog?

we’ll talk about it.

There was some ineffable quality to his father’s texts that Wayne couldn’t quite place, something low and dim, or maybe it was an absence of warmth, an uncharacteristic dismissiveness.

In the time since his mother had passed, he had become finely attuned to his father’s moods, and he seemed to have developed the ability to glean his father’s demeanor from nothing more than a few words on a cellphone screen.

When you’ve had to wake up your drunk father and make him go to bed a few times, you learn to anticipate his lows. Sort of like an earthquake scientist watching a seismograph for the tell-tale jags and spikes that preceded disaster.

You doin ok today dad?

The cellphone didn’t buzz again for a long minute, long enough for Wayne to look up and sight-see a little more.

They were even with a barber shop, and a man inside was getting his hair cut by a dainty Korean woman. She had already buzzed his head into a brush cut, and was now scraping shaving cream off his neck with a long, curved razor. The blade flashed in dusty sunlight.

yeah i’m doin alright I guess. as long as I stay busy its all good.

A moment later Leon added,

I could use a dirnk but if I’m hre @ school I cant get 1. So thats good 4 me.

Wayne answered,

Yeah thats good. U do what u got to. I’ll b fine @ home. I can take care of myself.

He put the cellphone in his jacket pocket and took out the ring on the ballchain around his neck. Lifting his mother’s wedding band, he peered through it at the world, and at Pete’s broad back.
Can you see my new friends?

Something about doing this lightened him, made him feel like he was sharing his eyes with his mom, as if the ring were a camera, transmitting some ethereal signal that she could see from wherever she was now, if that ‘wherever’ was Heaven.

“Here we are,” said Johnny Juan.

Through the ring, Wayne saw a big storefront picture window with superheroes painted on it: Spider-Man on the left, Batman on the right, both of them in action poses, swinging through the air. Over Spidey’s head was F
ISHER
’
S
H
OBBY
S
HOP
, and over Batman’s was C
OMICS
, B
OOKS
, T
OYS
& G
AMES
.

Warm sunlight streamed in through the Spidey and Batman paintings, leaking dim and dusty gold beams into the depths of the shop. The door chime tolled like a cathedral bell in the silence; it seemed they were the only customers in at the moment other than a gray cat curled into a ball on the windowsill.

“Hello?” called Amanda.

The place had a generally musty smell of disuse, the action figures nearest the front door sealed in packages bleached green by countless days facing the sun. Most days probably passed without seeing many customers, outside of regulars and the people that came for Movie Night.

Shelves of games occupied the racks alongside the larger graphic novels and action figures: chess, Monopoly, Scattergories, Apples to Apples, esoteric card games he’d never heard of. A council of Halloween masks stared down at them with empty black eyes, perched at the tops of all the shelves—Jason’s hockey mask, Michael Myers’ white face, a warty pig-man, a grinning devil, Pennywise the clown, Pinhead from the
Hellraiser
movies.