Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books) (4 page)

In a sudden movement she hurled the bottle against the liquor shop wall. It shattered in a shower of glass and I jerked like I’d been slapped.

“The Mark follered me. What’s yer game?”

“Game?”

She turned her head slightly in my direction with a jerk, eyes narrowing and darting, sometimes in my direction, sometimes around the littered courtyard, like a bird watching a cat while looking for food. “Meaty, beaty, big and bouncy.” She dropped her chin, lowering her coarse voice until it sounded like a man. “He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce.”

I looked at her blankly.

She raised her head, voice returning to its normal level, and peppered me with questions. “Got the drop on me? Got me bang to rights? Flushed me out, five by five?”

“I just thought you might be hungry. At least, I remember you saying something like that.”

The Creature grabbed the frayed hem of her cotton print dress and wrapped it tightly around her calves, bunching it up in her hand. Brown legs covered with black hair extended to the scarred brogans below.

“The Mark was hungry.” She rocked forward and backward on the transmission. “In hunger and thirst,” she rasped in a throaty whisper, “in nakedness and dire poverty, ye will be a restless wanderer on the earth. But the Mark will foller ye.” She twisted the cloth in her hand and turned her head slowly toward me.

“I was also powerful thirsty.” Her eyes followed mine to the empty gin bottle. “Fancy a drink?” I shook my head. “Got another dollar on yer?” I shook my head again. “Didn’t reckon yer did.” She turned her head back and rested her chin on her knees, keeping watch on me from the corner of her eye. We sat in silence for awhile.

I finally got the courage to speak. “What’s your name?”

The Creature didn’t move, or even blink, but I heard a small growl that seemed to echo from the walls enclosing us. It could have only come from her, since we were completely alone.

“Lilith,” she hissed.

“Thilly rabbit,” she lisped in falsetto. She jerked upright. “Thufferin’ thuckotash, the Mark follered me!” She looked at me suspiciously. “Yer tryin’ to make me?”

“Make you what?”

“Stand and deliver,” she boomed, jumping up and stomping in the red mud at her feet. “The Mark follered me. Which one are ye? Senoy? Where are yer friends?” She reached into the neckline of her dress and pulled out a chain with some kind of charm or pendant hanging from it. It looked like a cross, but the top was a loop. “Sansenoy, Semangelof, show yerselves!” Holding the charm toward the sky, she turned slowly around, looking at the roofs surrounding us. “Yer can’t touch the child. I have the Mark!”

I looked around apprehensively. Who was she talking to?

The Creature completed her circle, scowling at the sky. Then she dropped the chain back into her dress, shuffled to the cardboard box, and crawled in, wrapping the blanket around her and facing out so that I couldn’t see the purple splotch on her face. “Who are ye?” she whispered. “What do yer want?”

“You know my name but I don’t know yours.”

“Naamah,” she said, hoarsely. “Just call me Naamah.”

“Naamah? What kind of name is that?”

“The kind I hand out fer free. I make yer a present of everythin’ I said today.” She was silent for a few seconds. “What do yer want?”

“I just wanted to find out about you.” I ignored the babble. “After all, I did give you a dollar. And some food,” I added, in an attempt to shame her into answering my questions.

“And here I thought ye was doin’ yer Christian duty.”

“Maybe I was. I can still get something for it, can’t I?”

“Oh, no. Yer supposed to do it expectin’ nothin’ in return.” She cleared her throat, which induced a coughing fit that concluded in her spitting phlegm four feet in front of the box. In a deep, throaty voice she intoned, “Cast yer bread on the waters. Don’t let yer left hand know what yer right hand is about. Ye ask and receive not because yer ask amiss, fer yer own selfish lusts.”

After this last utterance, she arranged the blanket low on her shoulders like a party shawl and tossed a suggestive leer my way. Her green eyes sparkled from beneath the shadow of her brow. I saw the ghost of a younger woman—attractive, carefree, a hint of playful innocence.

Then she turned her face full toward me, and I caught sight of the purple splotch. The ghost was exorcised. Her eyes returned to the dull, leaden green I had seen earlier, and she glowered at me.

“What do yer want, boy?” she demanded in a low, threatening growl.

I glanced around nervously and looked back at her without a word. She turned, crawled into the recesses of the box, and pulled the blanket over her head. I waited for awhile, staring at her brogans, then got up quietly, circumnavigated the box, and squeezed through the gap toward home.

CHAPTER FOUR
The next Saturday M and I made our library trip as usual. I let M use my twenty-inch Spyder bike with the chopper handlebars and tiger-skin banana seat; I “borrowed” Heidi’s bike. (I would not have normally agreed to be seen in public on a girl’s bike, but it had a large basket convenient for transporting the large number of books we always checked out.)

I was quiet as we rode along, which didn’t bother M. He chattered, oblivious to my silence. My thoughts were on the Creature and how she was faring. I wanted to check on her, but I didn’t know how to ditch M. As we neared the theater, I made a snap decision, turning down the alley instead of taking the street to the library. It took M awhile to realize I wasn’t with him. He stopped in midsentence. “Hey, man, where you goin’?”

“This way,” I hollered over my shoulder. He caught up with me at the end of the blind alley.

“Hey, what . . . ,” he started, but I held up my hand for silence.

“Wait here,” I whispered, “I want to check on something.” I climbed the trash can by the fence.

“Where are you going?” he asked in a stage whisper.

I jumped over the fence. The courtyard was unchanged. I padded silently to the cardboard box, but the Creature wasn’t there. I stood looking into the box’s shadows when M dropped over the fence.

He looked around nervously. “What are you doin’?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper. “Are you crazy?”

I could see something in the back recesses of the box, beyond the tattered blanket, and was intrigued by the thought of what the Creature would stash away. I hoped it might give me a clue to who she was and why she lived as she did. I looked around quickly and dropped down, reaching into the box. A miasma of sweat, alcohol, and vomit enveloped my head and I rolled back out, gasping for fresh air.

M said, “Hey,” but I took a deep breath and plunged back in, so I didn’t hear the rest. My hand reached back and closed on the object. It was a small Bible, bound in limp, black leather with the name Pauline Jordan barely legible in flaking, gold gilt letters. A screeching wail and a startled shout caused me to drop the Bible, and I scuttled backward like a deranged crab.

M was backing toward the fence, his eyes large and fixed on something behind me. I spun around. The Creature shuffled toward me, a large cabbage nestled in the crook of her arm. The other arm stretched out, forefinger extended toward me like an accusation, trembling.

“The man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber,” she screeched, spittle in the corners of her mouth. Then she saw my face. “The Mark,” she breathed. “The Mark follered me.”

Her gaze drifted from me to M. “Ham,” she said, eyes burning a deep green. “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” She jumped a menacing step in his direction, and he disappeared over the fence without a word.

The Creature turned to me. “Those who hate me without reason outnumber the hairs of my head,” she said with deep venom and threw the cabbage at me. I dodged it and followed M over the fence. It took me a block to catch up with him. He didn’t stop until we were on the steps of the library.

“What was that?” he demanded between gasps for air.

“I think it was Pauline.” I told him the story of my previous visits.

He shook his head. “Don’t mess with her, man. She’s crazy.”

Once inside the library, M insisted I get something by “my namesake,” so I picked up a copy of
Tom Sawyer
to go with
Treasure Island
. M got
Homer Price
and
The Underground Railroad
. We got on the bikes and headed back. I suggested a detour by the church to watch Dad work on the furnace, a recalcitrant coal-burning monstrosity in need of occasional rehabilitation. We were halfway down the hill to the church, zipping along at a good pace, when my shoelace got hung in the chain. I couldn’t pedal forward because the lace was wrapping around the center shaft and binding up. I couldn’t pedal backward because the bike had coaster brakes. I had finally figured out that I had to hang my foot out to the side and turn the gears to push the lace through when I heard a yell.

While I had been preoccupied with the physics of shoelace-from-gear removal, I had traveled the half block to the corner, gaining speed all the while. A flash of tiger skin, black skin, and large white eyes passed under me as I mowed M down and lurched into the street—just in time, as luck would have it, to bounce off the side of a passing mail truck turning right. The rear bumper of the truck snagged the front tire of Heidi’s bike and dragged me back up the half block to the point where my troubles had begun before the driver realized he had a bike attached to him like a lamprey on a shark. He screeched to a halt, jumped out, and ran back to where I sat, dazed. I was still sitting astride the bike, which leaned toward the front of the truck, held up at a forty-five-degree angle by the bumper. I stared at him, my attention riveted to a patch on his shirt that said, “Dotson.”

“What’s all this, then?” he demanded.

I was roused from my stupor and leaped backward from the bike. “Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!” I shouted.

“What?” Dotson leaped backward too.

“Heidi will kill me! Look at the bike!” The front tire was shaped like a paramecium, the spokes splayed out like cilia.

“Look at you!” he responded.

I looked down and leaped backward again. “Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!”

“Now what?” Dotson asked as he echoed my leap.

“Mom will kill me! Look at my shoe! I just got these yesterday!” My left shoe looked like it did when I left the store. My right shoe looked like Old Glory after a particularly rough night of shelling. It was in a state unlikely to inspire the most ardent patriot when viewed by the dawn’s early light. Viewed by the afternoon’s light, it was appalling.

A lady, looking like she was constructed entirely of feather pillows cinched up in an apron, scudded from the house behind us. “Oh my goodness! I saw the whole thing. Are you OK?” she screeched in a flurry of agitation, practically running a figure eight around Dotson and me, her hands pressed to her cheeks, fingers splayed like overstuffed sausages in a pan of dough.

If only her voice had been as soft as she appeared to be. Instead, it had much in common with the screeching of metal on metal I had heard while the truck was transforming Heidi’s bike into modern art. She could have had the same effect with a lot less effort if she had just pounded nails into my ears. I covered my ears with my hands.

Dotson thrust his hand in my direction. “He’s crazy. He keeps raving about his bike and his shoes.”

Mrs. Puffy-Screechy looked at me holding my head. “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness! He hit his head! I must call the ambulance.” She veered toward the house and screeched, “Heathcliff! Call an ambulance. He hit his head.” Then she spiraled in my general direction, grabbed me, and steered me through the gate to the porch. “Here, you must sit down and don’t alarm yourself. No time for hot tea, but I can bring you some lemonade.” She disappeared into the house, squeaking, “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness.”

I looked around, wondering how I ended up on the porch swing. Dotson produced a little cigar with a white plastic mouthpiece and paced beside the truck, trailing smoke like the Little Engine That Rather Wouldn’t. He stopped occasionally to gesticulate toward the bike and ask “Now what?” to nobody in particular.

Mrs. Puffy-Screechy reappeared, thrust a jelly glass into my hand, and disappeared back inside the door like a Frau in a cuckoo clock. I stared at the lemonade. She popped back out again with a wet dishrag and slapped it against my forehead. “Here, hold this on.” I was sitting on the swing, lemonade in one hand and a dishrag in the other, when M came running up the sidewalk to the porch, leading Mom, Heidi, and Hannah. I was attempting to explain what had happened, pointing at my shoe with the dishrag—which Mrs. Puffy-Screechy kept pushing back up to my forehead—when an ambulance appeared. The technicians jumped out, popped open the back door, and pulled out a gurney.

“I’m OK. I can walk,” I hollered and jumped up from the swing, spilling the lemonade.

“Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, he’s going to faint,” the harpy cried and grabbed me. I jerked away and stumbled down the stairs. M caught me. “Whoa, man,” he said. “Take it easy. I’ll just hang right here with you.”

The assembled masses decided I should be x-rayed to make sure I wasn’t harboring a fatal wound like a secret grudge with which to accuse them later. As they ushered me toward the ambulance, I heard a familiar voice cry “Hey!” and I looked up. Dad was headed toward us, looking from the ambulance to the mail truck to the bike and to me. He was covered head-to-foot with soot from the furnace, a slightly overdone Pillsbury doughboy.

Dotson paused inside his cloud of cigar smoke and spread his arms, looking up. “Now what?”

“Hey,” Dad repeated, gesturing with his glasses toward me in the middle of the crowd. “That’s my boy you got there.” He looked like Malcom X’s brother Y, the short one with the gland problem.

The ambulance driver looked at dark, short, and dumpy Dad and then at M standing next to me, also dark, short, and dumpy. “No, sir, your boy is just fine. It’s this one we’re taking to x-ray.” He took me by the shoulders and lifted me into the front seat of the ambulance. I still held the dishrag in my hand.

“No, no, that’s my boy,” Dad said, following the ambulance along as it pulled away, looking like an escapee from a minstrel show. I could hear Mrs. Puffy-Screechy wailing, “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness” from her yard.

“It’s OK, mister. We’re just going to give him an x-ray,” the driver said, and rolled up his window. He looked over at me. “Was that your dad?”

I looked back and nodded.

He shrugged, looked out the window, and looked back at me. “Do you want to hear the siren?”

I nodded. And we went to the hospital.

Later that evening I sat in my room under house arrest, charged with unauthorized removal of Heidi’s bike from the premises. Heidi was given exclusive custody of my bike until I could earn enough money to repair or replace hers. I was reading Tom Sawyer. A dark, round head appeared around the door.

“You conscious, man?”

“Yes, but grounded.”

“That’s what I figured.” M walked in and pulled a flashlight out of his back pocket. We padded lightly up the attic stairs to the secret alcove and sat next to the window, M pointing the flashlight to the ceiling between us. It cast a soft light with heavy shadows around us. “So, what happened at the hospital? Did you have brain surgery?”

“No, just an x-ray.”

“Did they find a brain?”

“Ha. Very funny. They said I have a concussion.” I had no idea what a concussion was, but it sounded impressive, so I was glad to have one since I had no bandages to show I’d been to the hospital.

“Wow! A concussion! Does it hurt?”

“Not yet. I’ll let you know if I feel anything coming on.”

“Just think, man, if I hadn’t been there, you’d probably be dead right now.”

“What?” I hadn’t considered this theme and wasn’t particularly pleased with its introduction.