Malus Domestica (30 page)

“Yeah.” He gasped and gave a slow sigh. “Pulled a muscle clockin that dude in the snoot.”

“He’s all right, you know,” said Wayne.

“Maybe.”

“Was that the first time you ever punched a guy?”

Leon cracked a crooked grin. “Heh, yeah.”

“You hit him hard as hell.”

“Man, watch y’mouth,” said Leon, getting behind the wheelchair as the door clunked open.

He pushed Wayne down the hall and into the waiting room, leaving him in front of a television while he went to the receptionist to process out. The TV was playing the local sports scores, which were Greek to Wayne. He took the opportunity to polish his glasses, feeling like a gigantic nerd.

Luckily, it was still early in the morning, so the lobby was relatively quiet except for the gurgle of the aquarium. A man and two women sat in the waiting area, reading magazines.

The sports scores returned to the local news, and the anchorwoman talked about two Jehovah’s Witnesses that had gone missing earlier that week in the middle of their mission ride. At this point in their investigation, authorities believed David Hansford and Greg Tell had used their absence to slip away from the church.

She handed it off to an on-the-street interview with the boys’ pastor in front of the local Witness chapter. “They’d never do such a thang,” said Jackson Reilly, a beet-faced old white man in a navy blazer. “I know their families, and John Hansford, for one, wouldn’t put up with that kind of nonsense.”

Leon asked incredulously, “What do you mean, it’s taken care of?”

Wayne turned the wheelchair to look. His father scratched his head in confusion, rotating an upside-down clipboard so he could read it. “Karen?” he asked, pressing a fingertip to the paper. “That old lady?”

The receptionist smiled. “Yes sir. She paid you up in full.”

“Just the co-pay, right?”

“No sir, Mrs. Weaver paid everything in full. She was the one that brought him in, and she took responsibility for his care, so your insurance is totally irrelevant.”

Leon’s hand crept up to his mouth and he rubbed his mustache, either contemplating or trying to put his brain back together. “How…how much was the bill?” He flipped through paperwork and actually ducked in surprise as if he’d been shot at.
“Thirty thousand dollars?”
His eyes were bowling balls. “How was
that
thirty thousand dollars? All they did was give him a shot and keep him overnight!”

The receptionist helped him look through the papers. “Right here… the CroFab antivenin, twenty thousand a vial, plus the medical procedure, the room, workups, all—see this?”

“I see it, I don’t believe it.”

“Well, it’s not
quite
thirty thousand.”

“Close enough, twenty and some change.” Leon signed where signatures were needed, but he shook his head as he did so. “A
hell
of a lot of change. How is an ambulance ride worth several thousand dollars?”

The receptionist smiled. “It’s a bit of a sticker shock, but look at it this way, Mr. Parkin: thanks to your new friend, it’s totally out of your hands, and out of your wallet.” Taking back the clipboard, she went to work typing up the information. “Sounds like you’ve got the biggest thank-you card of your life to write.”

❂

Leon was quiet crossing town in the morning rush-hour chaos. It wasn’t exactly Chicago-busy, but everybody drove like they were in a funeral procession. He chewed his lip, so deep in thought that the glacial flow didn’t even elicit his usual fussing and complaints. Wayne was glad. At the moment, he was savoring the relative peace and quiet of the car after sitting in the hospital all morning.

“That Weaver lady said she lives in the hacienda across the highway,” said Leon. “I think we ought to go over there and say thanks. Maybe invite her over for dinner. What do you think?”

“Sure.” Wayne fidgeted with the crutch in his lap.

“The doc says you should be fine in, like, a week. You won’t be on that crutch long.”

They rode on, neither of them saying much of anything. The Subaru was gliding up Hwy 9 into the hills when Wayne happened to glance at his father and saw a tear slip down his cheek.

Leon swiped it away and saw that he’d been caught. “I thought I was gonna lose you yesterday, man.”

Wayne smiled. “Adapt and overcome.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“The guy at the comic store in town.” He remembered the job offer from Fisher. “Oh! He gave me a job helping him run his comic shop after school!”

Leon grinned. “That’s pretty cool. Gonna have you runnin the register, or…?”

“Yeah, I think so. And helping him do his Thursday Movie Nights or something.”

“All right, my son’s a work-a-day man now.”

“I can walk there from school in the afternoons. It’s only a few blocks down.”

“As long as you don’t go back in those woods.”

“Nope.” Wayne drew it out long and deep:
“Noooooooope. Nooooope.”
Leon joined in and they made a frog-chorus of Nopes.

As the Victorian sidled into sight, Leon thumped the steering wheel. The U-Haul truck still sat in their driveway. “Shit—! With all the drama I forgot to take the truck back yesterday.” He pulled in next to it. “Hopefully they’re open on Saturdays. Do you think you can chill here at the house while I take care of that?”

“Sure.”

Wayne got out of the car and put his weight on the crutch, shoving the door shut with his snakebit foot. He was at the bottom of the stoop when he realized he was about to go back into the house where he saw the owlhead Sasquatch thing, and a cold wet blanket of oppressive fear fell over him.

Leon unlocked the front door and looked over his shoulder as it eased open. “Hey, you all right?”

Some dark part of Wayne expected to see the monster standing in the foyer behind his father, peering over his shoulder. The steps in front of him exuded some repellent force, as if they were magnets and his shoe-soles were made of metal.

“Remember how I told you I saw that monster in our house when I went through the door in the wall?”

Annoyed concern flashed across Leon’s face. “Yeah. I get it, man.” He came back down to the front walk and gave his keys to his son. “Tell you what. I’m gonna leave my keys with you. You can be my wheelman. I’ll go check the house and if I come running out, you start the car.”

Wayne felt a bit patronized, but he accepted the keys. Taking the tire iron out of the Subaru, Leon crept into the house.

Out in the middle of the expansive front lawn, the boy stared up at the windows, looking for shadows, glowing eyes, twitching curtains, the vaguest hint that something other than his father was lurking inside. The siding was raincloud-blue again, which mitigated some of his fear.

Shoes scuffed on the pavement behind him. Wayne twitched.

Pete and Amanda were coming across the highway from the trailer park, followed by little Katie Fryhover, who was carrying a plastic kite with a picture of Sully from the movie
Monsters, Inc.
on it.

“Hey, man,” said Pete. “You’re out of the hospital already?”

Amanda broke into a run and wordlessly gathered Wayne up in a hug, pressing his face against the cool vinyl of her windbreaker. She was wearing some kind of perfume that reminded him of pancakes.

“We’ve been worried as hell, Batman,” said Pete, his hands crammed in his jacket pockets. “I figured you were gonna be up there for at least another week.”

“The doctor said I was doing really good. Said the main reason I was even there was because I had an allergic reaction.”

Pete stared at his feet. “That’s good.”

“Hey,” said Wayne, pointing at him with his crutch. “I saw what you did before I passed out. I saw you hit that snake with that hammer.” The smile spreading across his face belied the burn flowering in his throat. “Man, you got balls.” He let out a hoarse laugh. “Thank you. For smacking that snake.”

Pete looked up, one corner of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile. “I wish I could have gotten there before it bit you.”

Wayne spread his arms, putting his weight on his good leg. “Hey,” he said, holding up the crutch. “I’m fine. I’m fine, you know? Everything aight.” He tucked it under his arm and leaned on it. “I just gotta take it easy and stay off it for like, a week.”

“Sounds like time to bone up on your PlayStation skills.”

“Heh heh, you said bone.”

Amanda was meticulously wiping tears out of her eyelashes with her fingertips, trying not to ruin her mascara. “You kids are a bunch of nerds.”

“What did you do with the hammer, anyway?”

“I took it home.” Pete jerked a thumb back at the trailer park. “When my mom saw the blood on it, she didn’t want it in the house, but when she heard what I did with it, she let me do whatever I wanted with it.” He laughed. “Actually, when she saw me coming with it, she thought I hit somebody with it. I got in trouble for going to the fairgrounds again, but—”

The front door of the Victorian scraped shut and Leon came down to join them, his phone to his ear. “And I wanted to know if you could give me a ride home from the U-Haul place,” he was saying. “I’ll give you gas money. Yeah. Yeah, the one on Quincy. Okay, thanks.”

Leon hung up the cell and stuck it in his pocket. “I checked every room in the house, including the cupola. One-one-six-eight is officially monster-free,” he said, taking his keys off of Wayne, the tire iron dangling by his thigh. “Hey, y’all. What’s up?”

Pete pointed at the tire iron. “What’s that for?”

Leon held it up and regarded it as if it had magically appeared in his hand. “Oh, this? I’ll let Master Wayne tell y’all about this. I got to go run an errand. I’ll be back in a little bit. You guys hang out in the house or something, I’ll bring back pizza for lunch.” He left the tire iron in his car and climbed into the truck. Starting the engine, he rolled the window down and pointed at the kids. “And by ‘something’ I don’t mean go out in the woods and get bit by a snake again.”

“You got nothin to worry about there,” said Pete, saluting. “Bruce Wayne is safe with us.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Y’all be good.” Leon saluted them and backed the cumbersome truck out of the driveway. After grinding a few gears, he managed to get it into first and trundle down the road and out of sight.

Katie Fryhover looked like a windsurfer, trying to control the kite in her hands. “You got bitted by a nake?”

“I’m babysitting her until her grandmother gets home,” said Amanda. “Is it okay if she comes in too? She’s a good kid, real quiet. She don’t get into anything.”

“Yeah, of course,” said Wayne, but he didn’t lead them into the house. Instead, he lingered there on the lawn, absentmindedly rubbing the aluminum shaft of his crutch, staring at Katie as she fought the wind.

“Sooo…” Pete stared at Wayne’s shoes, then met his eyes. “What was up with the tire tool? Your dad said something about a monster?”

“Y’all gonna laugh at me,” said Wayne, crutching over to the front porch. The October breeze was brisk, chilling the toes of his left foot (which was only wrapped in a tight elastic bandage) but it was nothing compared to the chill he got when he looked at the house’s sheer white curtains.

The others followed and sat down on the stoop alongside him. Katie tucked her kite into the corner between the porch and the stoop, behind a bush.

“I’m not.” Amanda still stood on the stepping-stones in front of them, trying to keep her balance on the edge of one stone.

“Me neither,” said Pete.

“Me needer!” said Katie.

Wayne turned sideways and sat back against the stoop banister. He didn’t like having his back to the house. “I think my mom’s ring might be magic,” he said, taking the wedding band out of his shirt and off his neck.

“Magic?”
Katie shouted. Her mouth fell open, her eyes wide. “Like a
widzerd?”

“Not really like a wizard. …I don’t know. It started when I woke up in the hospital.” He launched into yet another rendition of the story, going on through the garage rescue straight on to falling through the painting into Kenway Griffin’s kitchen.

“Dude that’s crazy,” said Pete. “I mean, that’s—
that’s
crazy, what you
said,
I’m not saying
you’re
crazy, just that, y’know, what you
said
was crazy.”

Wayne nodded, looking down at the ring in the palm of his hand. “I know what you’re sayin. It does sound crazy.”

“So you said a Sasquatch? In your house?”

“I don’t think it was a Sasquatch.” The crutch rested on Wayne’s shoulder, feeling like a rifle. He lifted it up and pretended so, pressing the armpit pad against his shoulder as if it were a stock and aiming down the side of it. “But it kinda looked like one. Except it didn’t look like a gorilla. It had a big head like a hoot-owl and glowin green eyes, and fingers kinda like Freddy Krueger.”

“Wow,” said Amanda. She was hopscotching from stone to stone, counting numbers under her breath. “No wonder you don’t want to go in the house. I wouldn’t want to either.”

Pete got up and fetched Leon Parkin’s tire tool from the Subaru, then marched up the steps and opened the front door. “Let’s get it over with,” he said in mock exasperation.

“Didn’t Wayne’s dad already say the house was clear?”

“He didn’t go in with the ring.” Pete swung the tire tool like a Vaudevillian twirling his cane.

“Good point.”

Putting his necklace back on and tucking the aforementioned ring into his shirt, Wayne was reluctant. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Pete made a face and walked away into the Victorian. “You can’t stay on the front porch forever. Your dad’s not gonna let you sleep out here.” He leaned back, peeking out. “You comin, or not?”

Wayne sighed and followed him inside.

The house was quiet and dark, but at least the walls were still blue. Wayne crutched into the kitchen to make sure the table was their round wooden one, as opposed to the faux-diner table with the metal trim. The room was unburnt, as well.

“Shh,” he said, flashing his palms at the others. The floor creaked and popped as they crept from room to room. “Stop movin for a second and listen.”

They all froze, even little Katie Fryhover.