Boy's Life (17 page)

     Currents thrashed around us. I came up again, and Gavin took a gasping breath and yelled his head off. At that point I started yelling, too. “Help!” I shouted. “Somebody help us!”

     A light speared through the front door, over the choppy water, and hit me in the face.

     “
Cory!
” came the sound of judgment. “
I told you not to move, didn’t I?
”

     “Gavin?
Gavin?
”

     “Lord God!” my mother said. “What’s that smell?”

     The water was settling down. I realized Old Moses was no longer between the two mothers and their sons. Dead fish floated in a slimy brown sludge on the surface, but Mom’s attention was on me. “I’m gonna tan your hide, Cory Mackenson!” she shouted as she waded in with Nila Castile behind her.

     Then they walked right into the floating monster disgorgement, and from the sound she made I don’t believe my mother was thinking about whipping me anymore.

     Lucky me.

7
A Summons from the Lady

NONE OF MY FRIENDS BELIEVED ME, OF COURSE.

      Davy Ray Callan just laughed and shook his head, and he said he couldn’t have made up a better story if he’d tried. Ben Sears looked at me like I had seen one too many monster movies at the Lyric. Johnny Wilson thought about it awhile, in that slow, deliberating way of his, and then he gave his opinion: “Nope. Didn’t happen.”

     “It did!” I told them as we sat on the porch of my house in the shade under a clear blue sky. “It really did, I swear it!”

     “Oh yeah?” Davy Ray, the feisty one of our group and the one who was most likely to make up astounding tales, cocked his brown-haired head and stared at me through pale blue eyes that always held a hint of wild laughter. “Then how come Old Moses didn’t just eat you up? How come a monster ran from a kid with a
broom?
”

     “Because,” I answered, flustered and angry, “I didn’t have my monster-killin’ ray gun with me, that’s why! I don’t know! But it happened, and you can ask—”

     “Cory,” my mother said quietly from the doorway, “I think you’d better stop talkin’ about this now.”

     So I did. And I understood what she meant. There was no use trying to make anybody believe it. My mom herself couldn’t quite grasp it, though Gavin Castile had sputtered the whole story to his mother. Mr. Thornberry, incidentally, was all right. He was alive and getting stronger day by day, and I understand he wanted to get well so he could take Gavin to see more Looney Tunes.

     My friends would have believed it, though, if they could’ve smelled my clothes before Mom threw them in the garbage. She threw her own tainted clothes away, too. Dad listened to the tale, and he nodded and sat there with his hands folded before him, bandages on his palms and fingers covering huge blisters that had been raised by the shoveling.

     “Well,” Dad said, “all I can say is, there’re stranger things on this earth than we can ever figure out if we had a hundred lifetimes. I thank God the both of you are all right, and that nobody drowned in the flood. Now: what’s for dinner?”

     Two weeks passed. We left April and moved through the sunny days of May. The Tecumseh River, having reminded us who was boss, returned to its banks. A quarter of the houses in Bruton weren’t worth living in anymore, including Nila Castile’s, so the sound of sawing and hammering in Bruton was almost around the clock. There was one benefit of the rain and the flood, though; under the sunshine, the earth exploded in flowers and Zephyr blazed with color. Lawns were deep emerald, honeysuckle grew like mad passion, and kudzu blanketed the hills. Summer was almost upon us.

     I turned my attention to studying for final exams. Math was never my strongest subject, and I was going to have to make a high grade so I wouldn’t have to go to—and the mere thought of this made me choke—summer school.

     In my quiet hours, I did wonder how I’d managed to beat Old Moses away with a bristle-brush broom. I had been lucky in jamming it down the monster’s throat, that was for sure. But I figured it might have been something else, too. Old Moses, for all his size and fury, was like Granddaddy Jaybird; he could holler a good game, but at the first sting he took off running. Or swimming, as the case might be. Old Moses was a coward. Maybe Old Moses had gotten used to eating things that didn’t fight back, like catfish and turtles and scared dogs paddling for their lives. With that broomstick in his throat, Old Moses might have figured there was easier prey where he came from, down at the bottom of the river in that cool, muddy banquet hall where nothing bites back.

     At least, that’s my theory. I don’t ever want to have to test it again, though.

     I had a dream about the man in the long coat and the green-feathered hat. I dreamed I was wading toward him, and when I grasped his arm he turned his face toward me and it was a man with not human skin but diamond-shaped scales the color of autumn leaves. He had fangs like daggers and blood dripping down his chin, and I realized I had interrupted him in the process of eating a small brown dog, the upper half of which he held struggling in his left hand.

     It was not a pleasant dream.

     But maybe there was some truth in it. Somewhere.

     I was a walker in these days, bereft of two wheels to call my own. I enjoyed walking to and from school, but all my friends had bikes and I definitely had lost a step or two of status. One afternoon I was pitching a stick to Rebel and rolling around in the green grass with him when I heard a clankety sound. I looked up, Rebel looked up, and there was a pickup truck approaching our house.

     I knew the truck. It was splotchy with rust and its suspension sagged, and the noise it made caused dogs to bay in its wake. Rebel started barking, and I had a time getting him quiet. The truck had a metal frame thing bolted in the bed from which hung, clattering like asylum inmates, a bewildering array of tools, most of which looked as antique and worthless as the truck. On the driver’s door was stenciled, not very neatly, LIGHTFOOT’S FIX-IT.

     The truck stopped in front of the house. Morn came out on the porch, alerted by the clamor, but Dad wouldn’t be home from work for another hour or so. The truck’s door opened, and a long, skinny black man wearing dusty gray overalls got out, so slowly it seemed that movement might be painful for him. He wore a gray cap, and his dark skin was smoky with dust. He came slowly toward the porch, and I have to say that even if a bull had suddenly come charging up behind him, Mr. Marcus Lightfoot probably wouldn’t have hurried his pace.

     “Good afternoon, Mr. Lightfoot,” Mom said, her apron on. She had been working in the kitchen, and she wiped her hands on a paper towel. “How are you?”

     Mr. Lightfoot smiled. His small, square teeth were very white, and gray hair boiled up from under his cap. This is how he spoke, in a voice like a slow leak from a clogged pipe: “Good     afternoon     to      you,      too, Miz      Mackenson.        Hey   there,      Cory.”

     This was a good-paced conversational clip for Mr. Light-foot, who had been a handyman in Zephyr and Bruton for more than thirty years, picking up the task from his father. Mr. Lightfoot was renowned for his skill with appliances, and though he was slow as a toothache, he always got the job done no matter how baffling the problem. “Mighty fine.” He stopped, looking up at the blue sky. The seconds ticked past. Rebel barked, and I put my hand over his muzzle.

     “Day,” Mr. Lightfoot decided.

     “Yes, it is.” Mom waited for him to speak again, but Mr. Lightfoot just stood there, this time looking at our house. He reached into one of his many pockets, brought out a handful of penny nails, and clicked them around, as if he were waiting, too. “Uh…” Mom cleared her throat. “Can I help you with anythin’?”

     “Jus’     passin’,” he replied, slow as warm molasses. “Wonderin’     if    you”—and here he paused to study the nails in his hand for a few seconds—“might     need somethin’      fixed?”

     “Well, no, not really. I can’t think of—” She stopped, and her expression told me she
had
thought of something. “The toaster. It went out on me day before yesterday. I was gonna call you, but—”

     “Yes’m,       I   know.” Mr. Lightfoot nodded sagely. “Time      sure     does      fly.”

     He went back to the truck to get his toolbox, an old metal fascination filled with drawers and every kind of nut and bolt, it seemed, under the workman’s sun. He strapped on his tool belt, from which hung several different kinds of hammers, screwdrivers, and arcane-looking wrenches. Mom held the door open for Mr. Lightfoot, and when he walked into the house she looked at me and shrugged, her statement being:
I don’t know why he’s here, either
. I left Rebel the gnawed stick and went into the house, too, and in the cool of the kitchen I drank a glass of iced tea and watched Mr. Lightfoot stare down the toaster.

     “Mr. Lightfoot, would you care for somethin’ to drink?” Mom asked.

     “Nome.”

     “I’ve got some oatmeal cookies.”

     “Nome,      thank you      kindly.” He took a clean white square of cloth from another pocket and unfolded it. He draped the cloth over the seat of one of the chairs to the kitchen table. Then he unplugged the toaster, set it on the table alongside his toolbox, and sat down on the white cloth. All this had been done at an underwater pace.

     Mr. Lightfoot chose a screwdriver. He had the long, graceful fingers of a surgeon, or an artist. Watching him work was a form of torture for the patience, but no one can say he didn’t know what he was doing. He opened the toaster right up, and sat staring at the naked grills. “Uh-huh,” he said after a long moment of silence. “Uh-huh.”

     “What is it?” Mom peered over his shoulder. “Can it be fixed?”

     “See   there?   Little      ol’      red      wire?” He tapped it with the screwdriver’s edge. “Done      come      a’loose.”

     “Is that all that’s wrong? Just that little wire?”

     “Yes’m, that’s.” He began to carefully rewind the wire around its connection, and watching him do this was like a strange kind of hypnosis. “All,” he finally finished. Then he put the toaster back together again, plugged it in, pushed down the timer prongs, and we all saw the coils start to redden. “Sometimes,” Mr. Lightfoot said.

     We waited. I think I could hear my hair growing.

     “Just the.”

      The world turned beneath us.

     “Little things.” He began to refold the white cloth. We waited, but this particular line of thought had either derailed or reached its dead end. Mr. Lightfoot looked around the kitchen. “Anythin’      else      need       fixin’?”

     “No, I think we’re in good shape now.”

     Mr. Lightfoot nodded, but I could tell that he was searching for problems like a bird dog sniffing game. He made a slow circle of the kitchen, during which he delicately placed his hands on the icebox, the four-eyed stove, and the sink’s faucet as if divining the health of the machinery through his touch. Mom and I looked at each other, puzzled; Mr. Lightfoot was certainly acting peculiar.

     “Icebox      kinda      stutterin’,” he said. “Want me to       take      a peek?”

     “No, don’t bother with it,” Mom told him. “Mr. Light-foot, are you feelin’ all right today?”

     “Surely, Miz Mackenson. Surely.” He opened a cupboard and listened to the slight squeak of the hinges. A screwdriver was withdrawn from his tool belt, and he tightened the screws in both that cupboard door and the next one, too. Mom cleared her throat again, nervously this time, and she said, “Uh… Mr. Lightfoot, how much do I owe you for fixin’ the toaster?”

     “It’s,” he said. He tested the hinges of the kitchen door, and then he went to my mother’s MixMaster blender on the countertop and started examining that. “Done paid,” he finished.

     “
Paid?
But… I don’t understand.” Mom had already reached up on a shelf and brought down the mason jar full of dollar bills and change.

     “Yes’m. Paid.”