The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (26 page)

Barney finally made it to the platform, swinging one leg onto it and then holding on desperately to the car as he swung his other leg upward. In doing so, he relaxed his grip on the car and it dropped a bit, only a few inches or so but with enough force and weight to cause Mazzo to cry out in anguish. Barney took hold of the Bumblebee and held on for dear life. With Mazzo pushing and shoving, doing the job by himself now as Barney lay panting and fighting for breath on the platform, the car nosed up to the platform. Barney grabbed at it, pulling and hauling furiously, while Mazzo struggled to obtain a foothold and pulled himself up by sheer determination, veins on his forehead bulging like worms beneath his skin.

Now: The two of them on the platform with the Bumblebee between them, both triumphant, exhausted, grinning at each other, but the grins terrible, lacerated by pain and fatigue, Mazzo’s flesh gray as if the flush that always tinted his skin had been wiped away with a cloth.

“Can I come up?” Billy called from below.

Barney risked moving, looking down, dizzy, lungs bursting as if he’d been holding his breath too long. He heard his voice saying: “Not enough room … wait.” It was like somebody else’s voice, raspy, coming from far away.

Mazzo pointed to the skylight.

Barney nodded. Couldn’t stop now.

He reached up and unlatched the skylight, pushed at it with all his strength. The skylight swung open, up and away, and Barney secured it with a steel rod that kept it from swinging shut. He raised himself and glanced out, saw the night for the first time from this vantage point, the sweep of sky spinning with stars, the moon radiating silver, turning the sloping roof into a glittering ski slide, the lights
of Monument center glowing in the distance, staining the sky with gold. The wind caught at Barney’s mouth and he swallowed it hungrily. Suddenly he simply wanted to stay there, drinking in the night, bathing in the wind. Didn’t want to go any further, do anything more. But knew he had to.

Reluctantly, he hauled himself up, leaned against the sill for a moment, then swung himself up onto the roof, arms and legs in a furious scrambling, his body pushed to the utmost. In his final desperate effort to gain the roof, he felt something break inside of him, not bone or ligament, but a fracture of something deep within, never to be repaired or restored. He clung to the roof, feeling the sandy shingles pressing against his body, his hands clutching the sill.

“Here it comes,” Mazzo called.

Barney was astonished at Mazzo’s effort, heaving the car upward from inside so that Barney saw the car’s bumper and hood lifting up like a ship raising its prow in the air before the final plunge to the bottom. The front of the car hovered above the sill, poised perilously, and Barney gritted his teeth, getting ready to catch it as it swooped down. The car fell heavily and brutally, like a tree crashing to the ground, Barney absorbing its weight on his shoulders, holding on, past pain now or even fear of sliding off the roof, embracing the Bumblebee, wet cheek pressed against the glistening wood. Looking up, he saw that the car was being supported on the roof by the two rear wheels, which were still inside the skylight, hooked against the sill. Big test now: letting go of the car to see if the rear wheels would continue to keep it from rolling free. Barney pulled away from the car, releasing it from his grip, held his breath. The Bumblebee did not move, remained in position, pointing downward, ready for flight.

Raising himself up, scrambling to his knees, he peered
inside the skylight and came face to face with Mazzo, eyes inches apart, both still grinning those terrible crazy grins, exhausted, spent, bodies singing with the ache of all that exertion but triumphant in this desperate beautiful moment.

Barney motioned to the night and the sky, and Mazzo boosted himself with a mighty effort onto the roof, leaning against the trunk of the car, looking out at the night, shaking his head in disbelief. Raising his face to the sky, he laughed, the sound so startling and musical that Barney, caught by surprise, almost lost his balance as he leaned back to look at Mazzo. Mazzo glanced down, face radiant in the moonlight, and Barney saw, for a blazing moment, Cassie in his face. Cassie and the melting eyes. Cassie and that husky tender voice. Mazzo laughed again, the sound like silver coins in the night.

Barney thought of that marvelous moment when Cassie had looked at him with such admiration, making his life golden for a precious moment. She had made him see the sweetness of living, made him look with awe at blossoms on a tree branch, gave him a sense of life going on, from one person to another, from trees to flowers, from one season to the next. Dazzled by the thoughts, groping for their meaning, his love for Cassie singing inside him—a hopeless love, maybe, but bringing beauty to his life—he reached out and touched the Bumblebee, this impossible object he had stolen and taken apart and re-created with his own hands. Looking away to the golden glow of the town on the rim of the sky, he knew that he didn’t want to die. He wanted to cling to life and breath. Didn’t know why but knew he must. Maybe because Cassie inhabited this strange and terrible world. It was the only world he knew, and he was tired of the unknowns.

“Barney.”

His name on Mazzo’s tongue was a sound with a wound in it. Mazzo began sliding down the roof, slowly, inching toward Barney, arms clutching at the air. The wind rose, stiff and biting, as Barney rose up to grasp him. Mazzo trembled as Barney gathered him in his arms, supporting him, preventing him from slipping any farther. Mazzo was heavy as he rested against Barney, face turned away. Mazzo his enemy and now his friend. Mazzo who wanted so much to die. But I don’t want to die, Barney thought. I thought that I was one of them, Mazzo and Billy the Kidney and even Allie Roon, but I’m not. Even though he was here on the roof with this absurd car he called the Bumblebee. Maybe he was absurd, too, taken apart and put together by the Handyman like some kind of Humpty Dumpty. But he was still Barney Snow. And he wanted to shout out at the night: I’m not resigned the way the Handyman says everybody here is resigned. Not willing to accept it all without struggling, fighting.

Mazzo’s voice in his ear, a hoarse whisper: “I don’t think … I can make it … into the car.” Words faint, like ghosts. “Won’t fly … can’t fly.”

“The Bumblebee’s going to fly,” Barney said, lips close to Mazzo’s ear.

Mazzo’s face was sour, the old Mazzo face of bitterness and scorn. And then his eyes softened. “But we got here … didn’t we … Barney?”

Barney nodded. We got here. And he realized that getting there had been the important thing. Not the flight, although the Bumblee could still fly. For them. Hey, Mazzo, the Bumblebee is going to fly and we don’t have to be in it. The Bumblebee will fly for us and we’ll be a part of the flight because we made it possible, you and me, me by building it and you by giving me a reason to build it. We’re all mixed up in it—you and me and Billy the Kidney and
Allie Roon and, yes, Cassie, too. He knew he was hysterical, barely coherent, didn’t know whether he was talking or shouting or just thinking these thoughts, didn’t know whether Mazzo could hear him or not but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the Bumblebee and the flight.

“Barney.”

Mazzo’s voice again but this time something strange in it, a difference in the tone and timbre now, like the last strokes of a bell lingering in the air.

He turned Mazzo’s face toward him and cupped it in his hands, saw Mazzo’s mouth move in an effort to speak again. But no sound came. Mazzo’s eyes were glazed, like specimens in a jar, not looking at him, not looking at anything, unseeing. Mazzo’s body was suddenly still against him, the way a stone or a rock is still.

“Mazzo,” Barney whispered, his own voice now with a bruise in it.

He knew Mazzo couldn’t hear him, couldn’t hear anything. Wouldn’t ever hear anything again.

From far away Billy the Kidney’s voice shouted his name. He looked up to see Billy not far away at all but peering out at him.

“What’s going on?” Billy asked, eyes wide and wondering.

“The Bumblebee’s about to fly,” Barney cried, but still not knowing whether he was talking out loud, whether he could still make his voice heard.

“What do you want me to do?” Billy asked eagerly.

Good old Billy the Kidney.

“Lift up the rear wheels,” Barney called, pronouncing the words precisely, enunciating them slowly and carefully, knowing that he probably didn’t have the strength to repeat them.

“Right,” Billy said, rubbing his hands together.

“Get the wheels onto the roof,” Barney gasped, still holding on to Mazzo but shifting his body now so that he could stretch his legs under the front wheels of the Bumblebee to prevent it from plunging downward as soon as the rear wheels touched the roof. He wanted to do this correctly, properly. He heard Billy grunting as he lifted the wheels over the sill. And then felt an immediate crush of weight against his legs, so heavy and sudden that he didn’t know whether he could hold the car back. Or hold himself from rolling off the roof.

The Bumblebee and he and Mazzo on the roof. Digging down for whatever reserves of strength remained in him, using even the broken thing deep inside of him, Barney managed to make his legs rigid, keeping the Bumblebee stationary, blocking its descent.

Billy called: “Hey, Barney. When are we going to fly?”

Didn’t Billy understand? They didn’t need to fly. The Bumblebee would fly for them. He couldn’t speak now, couldn’t stop to explain it all to Billy. Tell you later, Billy the Kidney, tell you later. Trust me—did I ever lie to you?

He turned Mazzo’s head toward the Bumblebee, positioning himself carefully to meet the increasing weight upon his legs, and then slowly, agonizingly, beyond exhaustion and pain, beyond everything, he began to draw his legs back, arms encircled around Mazzo, head raised to the night.

“Here we go,” he yelled with all that was left in him.

He heard his voice loud and clear, skipping across the night and the moon and the stars. Triumphant, brave, beautiful.

And the Bumblebee flew at last.

S
HE
awoke suddenly, leaping from sleep, startled and disoriented, because she hadn’t realized she’d dropped off. Last thing she remembered was floating, drifting, listening to an old Simon and Garfunkel tune, “The Sounds of Silence,” on the radio, headachy, a bit troubled. Troubled by the Thing, of course, which was always with her now but also by that poor kid, Barney Snow. Funny, pathetic boy. That desperate cheerfulness of his. And the car he was assembling in the attic of that place. To give Alberto a ride. She sometimes doubted that there was a car, thought it real only in his imagination, but a small part of her delighted in the possibility of its existence.

Stirring in the bed, reaching to turn off the radio that emitted only small static sounds now, she decided she would buy him a farewell gift and drop it off at the clinic tomorrow before he left. She was also determined to see Alberto again, to insist that he admit her and Mother to his room. Without Barney Snow as a go-between, the link to Alberto was broken. And—

She was caught in midsentence, midbreath, caught and held, breathless, trapped, immobile, no pain, weightless, transparent like glass, but also breakable like glass. Then
she was released, mobile again, and now a stab of pain, quick and sharp in her chest, and a flutter of the heart, her breath returning, the air rushing in to fill a deep cavity within her, arms and legs trembling, head light, the room swimming away from her. She had never felt like this before.

And she knew.

Knew what was happening.

To Alberto at the clinic.

Knew he was dying. At this moment.

And she, too, dying then.

But, strange, no panic, and no pain, just this breathlessness, as if she were the eye of the hurricane, waiting, dangling in time and space.

She managed to make the Sign of the Cross with a trembling arm.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the
 …

But wait.

Must be more than prayer.

Must pray, yes, like at the Hacienda. All the time she’d been there she’d been praying, even while doing chores maybe, but hadn’t known it at the time. But something must come out of the praying.

Like now.

God, please help Alberto. Make it easy for him, don’t let him have too much pain or panic. Don’t let him be alone. Be with him. Give him someone through You.

And me.

God, I don’t want to die.

She curled up in the bed, making herself a small target, knees drawn up to her chin, arms locked around her knees, waiting. But she didn’t want to simply wait, didn’t want to lie here like this, defenseless. Must do something, fight,
anything. Even that poor kid, Barney Snow, did something. Put a car together in the attic. Like a bumblebee. Even if only in his dreams.

I don’t want to die.

She waited to hear her voice echoing in the room, resounding throughout the house, waking her mother and Mrs. Cortoleona, but realized she hadn’t spoken aloud, had screamed the words silently, but they were true, nevertheless.

I don’t want to die.

And I won’t die.

She raised herself from the bed, threw off the quilt, felt the cold touch of the linoleum beneath her feet, sat there like a boxer in a corner of the ring waiting for the bell, ready to fight.

She felt caught and held again, breathless, trapped. Still, in the way a clock is still when it stops ticking. She fought the stillness, sensed danger in it, struggled, twisted away, rose from the bed
I don’t want to die
stalked with stiltlike legs to the bureau
I will not die
felt again the stab of pain, held on to the bureau with her hands, held on to life with all the strength and will that she could gather. Dear God.

Then a last flutter, heart beating in a rush, blood pounding at her temples. And nothing. Emptiness. A void.

And she knew with a calm and cold and certain knowledge that Alberto was dead. His life extinguished, obliterated the way light becomes darkness at the snapping of a switch.