The Way to Schenectady (10 page)

“Are we there yet?” said Bill. “I’m hungry.”

“Do you want to stop for a snack?” asked Dad.

“No, let’s not stop,” I said. I had the map out on my knee, and a pad of paper. I was figuring out how much farther we had to go. I didn’t want to stop. It was ten thirty and we were still a long way from Schenectady. If we were going to get Marty to the church on time, we couldn’t afford to stop for long. And, of course, the longer we took to Schenectady, the longer it would be before we got to Auntie Vera’s.

“But Bill’s hungry,” said Dad. “I’ve seen a couple of fruit stands. Fresh blueberries. I wouldn’t mind a rest. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Oh, let’s not stop yet,” said Grandma.

“I thought you might want to …”

“I can wait awhile longer.”

“And Bill can have something to eat,” I said, “right here. Have a mint, Bill.”

“Have a banana, Hannah,” sang Dad. “Have some baloney, Tony. Have some chili, Billy.” My Dad likes old songs. We were all named for songs he likes.

“Have a mint, Clint. Have a candy, Andy.” Dad was making up verses now. “Have a peanut, I mean it. ‘Cause …”

“Everybody eats when they come to my house,” sang – someone. That’s the next line. Bill knew the song; Dad sings it a lot. But it wasn’t Bill’s voice. And it wasn’t Grandma’s.

“Quiet, down there!” said Grandma.

“I didn’t say anything,” said Bill and Bernie together.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” said Grandma.

“There’s our turnoff,” I said. “Next stop, Rome.”

We turned left, which brought the sun into my eyes. We drove a little longer. When we came to a big fruit stand that advertised
REAL CHEAP BERRIES
, Dad pulled over.

I offered to change Bernie, to save time. “Buy your fruit,” I said. “I’ll wait in the car.”

Grandma got a cigarette going right away.

Dad was back very quickly. “These aren’t great prices,” he said. “The berries were cheaper back in Pulaski.”

For a horrible moment I thought he wanted to turn back, which would have thrown off the whole schedule. “Let’s get going then,” said Grandma. She butted out
her cigarette, even though she wasn’t finished. Dad offered again to let her smoke in the van.

She shook her head and ground out the butt before climbing back into the rear seat. “It’s a stupid habit. I know I’m poisoning myself, but I don’t want anyone else on my conscience.”

“You see,” I whispered to Bill. “She cares about us. She’s not so bad.”

“She looks the same to me,” he said.

The next stretch of our journey passed quickly, though not quickly enough for me. Between the picturesque little cities and towns, the landscape was green and rich and pleasant to look at, full of dotty little farms and silos, each worth a point. The sun shone; the wheat waved; the signs in front of the gas stations spun bravely, advertising bigger and better and cheaper. We passed Rome and Utica and a bunch of little places. The Mohawk River ran smoothly beside us. Everything looked fresh, as though it had just come from the store. Hills, streets, mailboxes, front porches, sheep – they all had crisp edges and stood well against the backdrop of fields and sky.

“We’re making pretty good time,” said Dad.

“Still … almost two thumbs to go,” I said. “That’s over two hours.”

“Do you think, Alexander,” Grandma asked hesitantly, “that we might have time to make a tiny detour to Schenectady, on our way to Pittsfield?”

“Schenectady?” said Dad. He turned quickly to dart a look at me. “Jane mentioned Schenectady earlier. What is it about that place?”

“Oh, nothing much.” Grandma was elaborately casual. “I think they have a museum. And some old churches. And a baseball team. And, maybe, a few nice restaurants.”

“I guess we could stop there for a bit,” I said.

Dad stared at me. “You didn’t want to stop for blueberries.”

What could I tell him? “I don’t really like blueberries.”

“I’d like to see … Schenectady,” said Bill, relishing the word. The way he said it, it sounded like someone ripping paper in half. “A whole new planet to explore!” The planet of the Oberdorfs.

“Are you serious, Bill? Do you want to go to Schenectady, too?” said Dad.

“Wilco! Maybe we’ll get to see a dead guy.”

“Bill!” Grandma and I said together.

The tires were saying
Popocatepetl, Popocatepetl, Popocatepetl
, as they bumped along a poorly paved stretch of road. And then the van made an unhappy noise, something between a grind and a groan. We slowed down. Steam started to leak from under the hood. Dad steered to the side of the narrow highway – it was only two lanes wide, and looked like a country road – and let the van come to a complete halt. The tires were silent now. With the engine shut off, I could hear the tick of cooling metal, and the hiss of escaping steam.

We sat at the side of the road. No cars passed. The landscape was deserted. Trees overhung this section of road. I looked at the map on my knee and felt sick.

“Anyone want a mint?” said Dad.

“Well,” said Grandma. “Aren’t you going to get out and open the hood?” She sounded a bit snippy. More worried than angry, though.

I was beyond anger, beyond worry. I felt hopeless.

Steam poured out from the front of the van, as if there were a little witch’s cauldron underneath the hood. Dad turned around in his seat. “Why would I do that?”

“To fix the engine, of course.”

Dad smiled. “But, Mother-in-law, I don’t know how to fix it.”

She made a noise of exasperation.
Tchah
, it sounded like.

“Sorry. I wish there was a way to fix the van. I wish that a good fairy would suddenly pop out of the backseat
and announce an intimate knowledge of the internal combustion engine.”

“Aren’t you even going to check under the hood?”

“No,” he said.

“Tchah!” she said again.

“Gesundheit,” said Bernie.

Dad turned around and started to cough. His eyes opened wide and he pointed, like the heroine’s girlfriend in the horror movie just before the “Thing” gets her. I turned around to see what had panicked my father, and saw a long skinny arm reaching over the back of the rear seat. A skinny arm, with a skinny hand attached. A not-quite-clean hand, a man’s hand, though the nails were rather long. Marty’s hand.

After a moment, Marty’s head appeared over the back of the seat.

“Are you okay, Dad?” I asked.

He nodded. “Swallowed my mint,” he whispered.

Grandma helped Marty climb over the backseat, and sit beside her. The smell was stronger. “Bit dusty back there,” he said. “Cramped, too. Hello, Jane. Helen.”

Dad glared at me. I blushed.

Bernie couldn’t see over the back of his car seat. “Who is there?” he asked.

“A man named Marty,” I told him. “He’s a stowaway.”

Bernie digested this for a moment. Dad didn’t speak.

“Do you know him?” Bernie asked me.

“I don’t,” Bill put in hurriedly.
Coward.
“Not really.”

“Yes,” I said. “So do Grandma and Bill.”

“Oh. That’s okay, then,” Bernie said.

I was glad to have Bernie’s approval. I was more worried about Dad. He hadn’t gone this long without saying anything since last spring, when he had laryngitis.

Marty spoke first. “Well, I guess you’ll want me to take a look under the hood. Would you mind opening it? Please,” he added.

“Who are you?” Dad croaked. “What are you doing here? What’s going on? WOULD SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON?”

My spirits sank as Dad’s voice rose higher. “It was all my fault,” I began.

“No, it was my responsibility, dear.” Grandma had a soft little smile that actually looked like it belonged on her face. “Alexander, if you’re going to waste time getting angry, you might as well get angry at me.”

“How do you know,” said Dad, “that I’m going to get mad? Why would I get mad that you two smuggled a strange man into our family van without telling me? Who would get mad at being circumvented, manipulated, and lied to?”

Oh, dear.
His eyebrows jumped up and down as he talked. They looked like a pair of fighting caterpillars.

Grandma tried to speak, but I stopped her. “Dad, do you remember when I told you about punching the bully in grade three?”

“No,” said Dad, eyebrows down, frowning.

“I do,” said Bill.

“It was like punching the bully. We had a long talk and you told me that there were some things that were sort of wrong and sort of right at the same time. Greg the bully, remember? He used to take our cookies? And I punched him in the nose when I was wearing my Hercules ring of power, and he bled all over the place, and I got sent to the principal’s office?”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Eyebrows up almost to his hairline.

“And you made me write an apology to Greg, and then you gave me seconds at dessert?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it was like that with Marty. Taking him with us was wrong, and it was right, too. It was. I asked Mom about it last night.”

A car went past us going the other way.

Dad’s jaw fell open like a trapdoor. “Your mother knows?” he said.

“Sort of.”

“Are you going to fix this van or not?” Grandma was sounding testy.

“I am not,” said Dad.

“What kind of -”

“Now, Helen,” Marty spoke up. “Not everyone can fix cars.” Sitting next to her on the backseat, his head came up to just past her shoulder. The expression on his face was reproving. “If you beat a cow, it will not lay eggs for you.”

Bill snickered.

Dad scowled. “If you think I’m about to -”

“Dad, please, we’re falling behind. It might be simple.”

“It would have to be pretty darned simple for me to be able to do anything about it. I’m not bad at fixing kids’ toys, or changing lightbulbs, but that’s my limit. If there’s a broken
lego
carburetor in there, maybe I’d be able to rebuild it. And even then, I’d need the instruction booklet.”

“There is no carburetor in this van,” said Marty. “It has fuel injection.”

Of course, he knew about engines. I remembered him talking about ours this morning. Hope flew up inside me like a startled bird.

“Dad, you have to let Marty try.” I could picture Mom all by herself at
The Music Man.

“Do you know how to fix cars?” asked Dad.

Marty ducked his head. “It is why I climbed out of the storage area. Didn’t you say you wanted someone to come and fix the car? A good fairy? I thought I heard you say that.”

Dad stared at him. “I believe I did say that.”

“And so I thought, Marty, here is something you can do.”

“So you are the good fairy I called into being? You can fix our van?”

“I can try,” he said, “to repay you for your kindness in taking me to …”

“Schenectady?” Dad finished the sentence for him.

I don’t know about Grandma, but I felt guilty.

“How,” Bernie asked, “can something be wrong and right at the same time?”

Dad sighed. “Don’t you start. I heard about that from your mom for days.”

Dad handed me a bag of jelly beans and told me to take the boys to look at the cows in the pasture while Marty looked at the van. “Bernie, don’t wander away,” he said. Bernie nodded solemnly. “And Bill, don’t climb over the fence.” Bill’s shoulders slumped.

We hopped across a dry ditch, except for Bernie, who hopped through it, and climbed up the bank to the pasture. We looked at the cows and ate jelly beans. “No black ones, Bernie,” I said. “They’re not good for you.”

“Oh,” he said.

Bill and I ate the black ones.

“Have you noticed his fingernails?” Bill asked me, his mouth full.

“Marty’s?”

“No, Grandma’s. Of course, Marty’s. They’re like claws.”

Yes, I’d noticed. “Maybe he’s a vampire,” I said.

“Yes. He is from Schenectady after all. Maybe he’s a werewolf.”

We were joking, but Bernie started to whimper. I felt bad. “Sorry, little guy,” I said. “Here, have a black jelly bean. They’re really tasty.”

He whimpered some more. “But they’re bad for you.”

O what a tangled web we weave. “Okay,” I said, and ate the black jelly bean.

We were standing in the shade of a pine tree. Near us
was a farm fence – strands of rusty wire strung between thick, old posts. On the other side of the fence stood the inhabitants of the field: huge, ungainly, piebald beasts, large-eyed, deep-voiced, uncaring. Bill regarded them with a thoughtful eye.

“Alien life-forms,” he said. “They should be investigated.”

“They are cows,” said Bernie.

“They have horns, Bernie. Horns. And they have four stomachs.” Bill made his voice sound low and thrilling – as low and thrilling as a ten-year-old can. “Think of that, Bernie. Pretty strange, hey?”

Bernie nodded.

“Fortunately, I am fluent in the cow language. Let me see if I can communicate with them.” Bill went up against the fence and mooed as loudly as he could.

The cows looked up.

“Ah, ha! Contact!” he said. “Now I’ll ask them to take me to their leader.” He mooed again. And, very slowly, the cows began to amble over.

Bill put his hand on a strand of wire.