Puddlejumpers (10 page)
A shrill hoot pierced the night.
Beason felt the hair on his neck rise. He peered into the swirling snow, then shouted, “Hello? Anybody there?”
An unearthly bellow answered.
He buried his nose in his jacket sleeve. There was a stink he'd never smelled before and hoped he'd never smell again. Cussing under his breath, he opened his jackknife to cut the raccoons free from their harness, then hoisted the boy into the air. Shawn kicked and screamed with all his might.
“Settle down now, I got you,” the trucker assured, tucking him inside his jacket. The raccoons crawled away as he hustled back to his rig. Whatever was out there, he had no intention of making its acquaintance.
Beason pinned the wild child on the seat beside him, revved the engine, and eased the truck into gear. The gargantuan tires crushed the sled as the eighteen-wheeler plowed onward down the Interstate.
The Troggs lurched onto the pavement, raging at the disappearing taillights. At the edge of the highway, beneath a road sign, NEXT EXIT, CIRCLE, Root and Runnel burrowed deep into the snow. They trembled in each other's arms, devastated.
The Puddlejumpers had lost their precious Rainmaker.
F
ORGING THROUGH
the blizzard, Joe Beason shifted his gaze from the road to the urchin beside him babbling some crazy gibberish he couldn't understand. Unnerved, he tugged his Cubs cap a little tighter and wondered what he'd gotten himself into. He picked up his radio mic to tell somebody, anybody, what had happened. All he got was static. Then he remembered. It was Christmas Eve and there wasn't another truck on the road.
“Hooty-hoo!”
cried Shawn, lunging for the door, but Beason yanked him back by the foot and pasted him against the seat with his big hand. “You stay right where you are, mister,” he warned. “I got enough problems without you taking a flyer.”
His passenger's only response was to jabber indignantly. Still spooked, Beason furrowed his brow. “What language are you talkin', boy?” He lifted his cap to scratch his bald head as he pondered the hair bracelet on the boy's wrist. The kid smelled strange. It wasn't a bad smell, just different. It was as if somebody had bottled the great outdoors and sprayed it on him like cologne.
The storm showed no sign of letting up. Beason was tired and struggled to make sense of what was happening. He'd been driving for close to eighteen hours and was determined to reach Chicago for Christmas. He'd been invited to his sister's place for dinner, but, more than that, he had ideas about breakfast at the Kosmikon, a little diner on Martin Luther King Boulevard that he especially enjoyed. The pancakes and grits weren't on his new diet, but Shona, the pretty waitress who poured his coffee, always welcomed him with an especially warm smile. He wished he were looking at that smile right now, because that would mean all of this would be over.
Beason kept one hand on the wheel and the other on the crazy little kid, who was working himself into a full-blown tantrum. He reached across and buckled him into the seat belt. It was a loose fit, but it was better than nothing.
The cab interior was filled with Cubs memorabilia, including baseball cards pasted on the dashboard and ceiling. Joe Beason had named his truck Bleacher Bum because he was a dyed-in-the-wool Chicago Cubs fan. For him, there was nothing better than to see a game at Wrigley. If he was working, he loved listening to the game on the radio. But it was winter, he was a long way from Chicago, and the wild child was still bawling his eyes out.
As Beason downshifted on a tight curve, one of his baseball cards popped unglued from the ceiling and fluttered end over end to land smack-dab on the boy's lap. To Beason's great surprise, the kid went quiet for the first time. Being somewhat of a superstitious man, he took a long look at the familiar face on the card, then at the boy studying it in fascination.
“That's rightâhe's a man to live up to, and you can start right about now,” declared Beason.
With one hand clutching the card and the other on the Crystal Acorn draped around his neck, Shawn blurted,
“Kadudee, matadie ra!”
Joe Beason just shivered. “Listen up, Ernie Banksâyou sit right smart in that seat and stop talkin' crazy. And don't be pointin' that rock at me neither.”
It was still dark on a bitter cold Christmas morning, in lightly falling snow, as the eighteen-wheeler navigated past a silent Wrigley Field. Joe Beason thought about going to the authorities, but the more he thought about it, the less he liked the idea.
Who wants to spend Christmas explaining a story to the police they probably won't believe anyway? The best thing is to leave
the
boy with people who know what to do. Everybody will be better off in the long run.
He turned his big semi onto a narrow street adorned with Christmas decorations.
The truck wheezed to a halt in front of an undecorated six-story tenement. The word
ORPHANAGE
was chiseled in concrete above the door. He knew the place because he'd spent the first seven years of his life there. Beason descended from the cab with the kid, finally asleep, swaddled in his Cubs jacket. He laid the bundle on the icy stoop, rang the bell, then hurried back to his truck.
Little Ernie would never know how he got there. No one would. Not even Mrs. Annie McGinty, the stern-faced matron of the Lakeside Home for Boys, who was up early that morning getting ready for Christmas. Mrs. McGinty was five feet tall, with thick arms and legs. Her red hair was coiffed with obsessive neatness and she always kept her nails well manicured. She had a ruddy complexion and her face turned bright red when she got mad, which was often. She was thirty-eight years old, but the worry lines etched around her eyes and her constant frown made her look much older.
Mrs. McGinty waddled down the hall and opened the door just as the big semi disappeared in the swirling snow. She was surprised to find a bundled Cubs jacket on her stoop and even more surprised by what she found inside. In a tart Irish brogue, she muttered, “And on Christmas morn, what a shame. As if I didn't have enough trouble already.”
The child was asleep and stark naked except for a strange necklace around his neck and a filthy hair bracelet on his wrist. He was clutching an Ernie Banks baseball card in one hand and a scribbled note in the other. The note read as follows:
To Whom It May Concern, this is Mr. Ernie Banks.
Please give this little Cub a good home.
Yours truly,
A concerned Bleacher Bum
Mrs. McGinty looked in both directions before fingering the ice-blue crystal hanging from the boy's neck on a dirty piece of twine. It was a perfect replica of an acorn and the most unusual piece of jewelry she'd ever seen. She held it to one eye and squinted through the glass like a greedy jeweler checking stolen goods. Her view of the naked child multiplied as the image fractured into a hundred Ernie Bankses. She leaned close to inspect his bracelet. “One thing's for sureâyou won't be bringin' this disgusting thing into my house.” She ripped it off his wrist and threw it in the gutter.
Unannounced, a stream of warm pee geysered up to squirt her in the face. McGinty recoiled in horror. Startled awake, Ernie Banks recoiled, too, and shouted something that sounded like “Hooty-hoooooo!”
From that moment on, Ernie and Mrs. McGinty began what would become a very difficult association.
Nine Years Laterâ¦
B
EFORE HER ALARM
clock could ring, Mrs. Annie McGinty woke in her tidy room on the first floor of the Lakeside Home for Boys. With a stretch and a yawn, she got up and got started. She took off her flannel nightgown and put on her best outfit, a red business suit with white buttons and a bow on the side. Today was Christmas, the day she enjoyed more than any other, and this year she was ahead of schedule. The night before, the Salvation Army had delivered fifty wrapped presents and stowed them under the donated fir tree in the big front room on the second floor.
When Mrs. McGinty climbed to the second landing, she saw that the Christmas tree was lit, which she always unplugged just before going to bed. She also noticed that someone had pilfered Santa's cookies and drunk his milk. Not
someone,
she thought. It was Ernie Banks and none other. He craved milk like no other boy she'd ever met. “I swear that boy will be the death of me,” she grunted, then squatted to pull the plug on the Christmas tree. Electricity was too expensive to waste, and Lakeside ran on a strict budget.
Mrs. McGinty glanced out the window. It was snowing and the city was already blanketed in white. She sighed, remembering it had been snowing like this the morning she'd found the boy abandoned on her doorstep. She silently cursed and wondered how her life might have been different if only she'd been able to find a home for Ernie Banks.
Mrs. McGinty climbed the back stairway to the third-floor kitchen, where she put a kettle on the stove. This was the one peaceful moment of her day. While she waited for the water to heat, her mind wandered back to the Lauers, the first family who took him home. Fred and Molly had been happily married for three years but unable to have children of their own. Beaming with pride, they left with Ernie walking hand in hand between them. Three weeks later, they returned with frayed nerves and sunken eyes, embarrassed to be returning him. But return him they did.
The problem, they said, was Ernie's bizarre behavior, which included his nonstop gibberish that no one could decipher. He also had a very unnerving tendency to hoot when least expected, and they practically jumped out of their shoes every time he did it. Even worse, he cried morning, noon, and night. He cried so much they couldn't get any sleep. But it was more than crying. Molly said it sounded like something not of this earth.
The Lakeside doctor examined him but couldn't find anything wrong, though he did remark on the strange spiral birthmark on the bottom of his foot.
As Mrs. McGinty sipped her morning coffee, she cringed at the memory of those early years. Ernie had refused to speak English and wouldn't eat anything that was packaged or canned. When she strapped him into his chair at mealtime, it was always a battle. He'd fling food in every direction, all the while protesting in high-volume mumbo-jumbo. To combat his ranting, she would turn her portable TV up loud and go about the daily chore of pulling bits and pieces of food out of her hair and scraping breakfast, lunch, and dinner off the wall, floor, and ceiling. Sometimes it got so bad that she just left him strapped in his chair and escaped to her room to eat by herself. Frankly, Ernie scared her.
Finding parents for a parentless boy was her favorite thing in the world, and she prided herself on putting together the right matches. She was good at it. In fact, the only time she'd failed in her long career was with Ernie, but she most certainly didn't think that was her fault. Either he misbehaved, or he frightened the other children, or he just didn't fit in. Never mind the reason, defeated parents always had a good excuse for returning him.
Mrs. McGinty rinsed her cup and saucer, then started up the back stairway, passing the fourth- and fifth-floor dormitories, where the younger boys resided. The boys twelve and older slept on the sixth floor and she woke them first. She huffed up to the final landing and opened the door to the dorm.
Mrs. McGinty stood in the threshold, taking in the stares of twenty-five boys all eagerly awaiting the Christmas festivities. Usually it was a chore to get them up and out, but today everybody was dressed and the beds were already made.
“Good morning, boys. Merry Christmas,” she said.
“Good morning, Mrs. McGinty,” the Lakesiders chorused in well-practiced unison. “Merry Christmas.” These orphans knew that the best way to survive at Lakeside was to obey the rules and please Mrs. McGinty.