Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga) (17 page)

Harvey
was
in Avalon Park. He’d made his way there slowly over the course of a few days and hunkered down in a damp and thickly shaded glen. He’d dug himself a hole to sit in. He was sitting in it now.

For the first time in his long life, sitting in a dank hole in the ground felt a lot like sitting in a dank hole in the ground. And now nature was calling.

He’d heard the Goodco guards use this expression on occasion. “Nature calls,” one would say, and he’d step out of the room to do his business. Harvey had scoffed at this—Nature did not call these children of men. He supposed she probably had called them in the distant past—called them again and again, left messages, but eventually gave up trying. Nature should want nothing to do with the human being.

But now, in his dank hole, Harvey realized two things
about himself that made Nature seem very far away: that he had just, without thinking, made an analogy about telephone answering machines, and that he was once again about to walk halfway across the park to visit those Porta-Potties by the merry-go-round. Fifty years of confinement meant that he wouldn’t have given a second thought to doing his business on a toilet in front of two armed guards; but he could no longer, gods help him, do it in the woods.

Harvey crawled to the entrance of his burrow and looked out at the stars. His nose joggled at the smell of a hot dog, somewhere. A revolting whisper of chemical pork.

“Thtupid humans and their thtupid hot dogs,” he muttered, and pulled himself out of his hole. Then he crept, wanting a hot dog, to the edge of the park.

Biggs drove the kids to the border of Avalon Park, where he’d purchased a parking space. Biggs owned an old Citroën 2CV, a ridiculous little car made in France. It was like a curvy little clown shoe, all rust with a black top and fenders and a very earnest-looking grille. It was small by American standards, and with Biggs inside it looked like an optical illusion. Emily sat up front on the passenger side while Erno squeezed himself into the back horizontally.

Biggs’s home, his
tree
, was a ten-minute walk into the
park grounds. Erno trained his eyes skyward, trying to catch a glimpse of a real house somewhere up among the leaves, but he never saw a thing, even when they came to a stop at the base of a huge oak.

“Here we are,” said Biggs, looking up.

“It’s … it’s amazing,” said Emily. “You can’t see it at all.”

“Thank you.”

Erno tried not to stare, but Biggs had kicked off his custom-made shoes, and Erno could see his feet. His
feet
. They were like sides of cooked beef. Their knobby, curling toes splayed outward, too long, and the hair! Like little toupees.

“Um,” said Erno, trying to prioritize all the questions he wanted eventually to ask, “how do we get up?”

“I usually just climb,” Biggs answered, scratching his cheek.

“I’m afraid of heights,” said Emily suddenly.

“What?” Erno replied. “You are? I didn’t know that.”

“I didn’t know either until just now.”

“Hmm,” said Biggs. “That’s bad.”

“I can’t go. I CAN’T GO! It’s so
high
.”

“I could carry you,” said Biggs. “I could carry you both.”

Emily let them know, by way of trembling, just what she thought of this idea.

“I think it’s best, Emily,” said Erno. “You won’t have to even look. Here!”

Erno removed a scarf from his bag and tied it around Emily’s head.

“There. You’re blindfolded. You won’t even know what’s happening.”

Emily’s trembling quieted, then shuddered to a stop. “Okay.”

Biggs lifted Emily up in one arm, and Erno climbed onto his back as though he were getting a simple piggyback ride.

“I’ll only be able to use one hand,” Biggs said, “so I’ll be slower than usual.”

Erno hadn’t the chance to comment before Biggs leaped into the air. He scrambled up the trunk like a squirrel and jumped from branch to branch like an ape. This was slow?

Emily shrieked. She was beginning to hyperventilate.

“It’s okay!” shouted Erno. The air whooshed around them as they dipped and lurched ever upward. “He’s really good at this!”

“Keep talking to me! Don’t stop talking!”

“Um…”

“Talk! Tell me a story! Sing me a song!”

“Uh, okay … um… Rock-a-bye, baby, in the treetop. When the wind blows… Oh, um—”

“Erno!”

“WEEE AAALL LIIIVE IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE! A YELL—Oh, we’re here.”

They were. The tree house had appeared so suddenly that Erno saw it only a moment before he could touch it. It was like a great egg or cocoon, as big as a sailboat, shaped from curved branches and clever shingles that looked like dead leaves.

It’s a nest. It’s just a big nest
, thought Erno; and he began to imagine what life would be like here, huddled among the harsh twigs, probably eating bugs and going to the bathroom God knows where.

“You go in first,” Biggs told Erno, “and help your sister.”

“Go … in? I… I don’t see a door.”

“Oh. Yeah,” said Biggs, and he pulled at one of the branches, indistinguishable from all the rest. A round door, cut neat as you like, swung out from the twig-egg. Inside was a sort of hall leading to the house beyond.

This looks pretty clean
, thought Erno as he took Emily’s hand to guide her inside. Biggs joined them.

“Do we … do we light a candle?” asked Erno, realizing immediately what a dumb suggestion this was. Light a fire in a tree house?

“Naw,” Biggs answered. “I’ll just turn on the lights.”

He flipped a switch behind Erno’s head, and the foyer was illuminated by a warm amber glow from a glass globe overhead. More lights winked on around the corner, and a stereo on the same circuit started playing something bossa nova.

“Is it safe?” asked Emily, still blindfolded.

“It’s … safe,” Erno whispered to Emily. “The shag carpeting is a little thick, so watch out for that.”

Biggs had to attend to Emily as Erno stumbled through the foyer, bewildered.

The next room (and, apart from the kitchen, the
only
room) was very hard on the eyes. It was hard because this room, with its smooth curves and (fake!) wood-paneled walls seemed to have no connection to the rough tangle of limbs and twigs that formed the outside of the house. It was hard on the eyes because beanbag chairs and aquariums are not things one expects to find in a tree. It was hard on the eyes because the green carpet didn’t really go with the orange boomerang coffee table.

“Would’ve vacuumed,” said Biggs, “if I’d known there’d be visitors.”

“’S okay,” said Erno. “’S fantastic.”

Emily, eyes wide-open, brushed past Erno to look out a tiny window.

“It’s slanted upward,” she said, “so you can see the sky, but people below can’t see in.” Then she scrambled over to a metal post hanging down from the ceiling with two eyepieces like binoculars. “Is this a periscope?”

“Yup,” Biggs agreed, scratching his jaw.

“Sooo,” Erno said to Emily, “you’re not afraid of heights anymore?”

“Oh, probably,” she answered with a wave. “But I can’t
tell
I’m high up. I can’t even tell I’m in a tree.”

Biggs grinned and walked into an adjoining room, the kitchen. “I’ll make dinner. Get comfortable. Y’have to lay your sleeping bags out in there,’s only the one room.”

“Where do
you
sleep?” asked Erno, seeing no bed.

“In the corner, standing up.”

“Ah.”

Emily was busily unpacking her things. When she came upon her pajamas, she took them behind a Japanese screen made of thick rice paper. Erno went to sit by the screen.

“Biggs lives in a tree,” he said, as though he was the only one who’d noticed this.

“Yes,” Emily answered. “I thought he might.”

“You thought he…? You did not!”

Emily poked her face around the screen. She hadn’t even a hint of a smile.

“Sure. I figured it was something like that. I mean, his listed address is a post office box, and, you know, he’s always scratching.”

“What? Scratching? What does that have to do with anything? He just has dry skin.”

“Hmm. That, or he’s Bigfoot.”

“Bigfoot.”

“Yes. Or
a
Bigfoot. I don’t really know.”

Erno waited for Emily to laugh. She didn’t, so he said “What?” again, so high his voice cracked.

Emily emerged from behind the screen, dressed in her pajamas, and sank into a beanbag chair.

“Biggs,” she said. “Bigfoot. Get it?”

“Oh, come
on
. Just because his name is Biggs—”

“It’s more than that. He’s huge. His feet are even bigger. He’s always scratching because he shaves his fur. He never makes any noise when he walks. He can smell things happening across the street!”

Erno didn’t like how much sense she was making. “How long have you believed this?” he asked.

“I dunno. Since we were six or seven.”

Erno threw his hands in the air. “I can’t believe you never told me!”

Emily crossed her arms. “I
did
tell you! Like, five years ago I told you! You laughed so hard milk came out your nose!”

Erno winced, then looked down at the shag rug.

“Oh. Yeah. Well, I figured you were kidding.”

“Yeah,” said Emily. “I thought you might’ve. Anyway, I realized it was such a crazy idea that I’d better just keep it to myself.”

“Have you ever asked Biggs?”

“What, if he’s Bigfoot?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course not!” Emily whispered, eyes wide with shock. “It might be
rude
.”

“Dinner!” Biggs shouted from the kitchen, and they both jumped.

Dinner was good. This was no surprise: Biggs had always been an excellent cook. There was trouble, however, in suddenly knowing that it might be Bigfoot who made you dinner, that it was Bigfoot who passed the broccoli, that it could be Bigfoot now, shouting, “Who wants SUNDAES?”

Biggs was clearly happier than normal. Perhaps he was pleased to have the Utz kids in his home, and to be able to see them more than usual, though he seemed occasionally to catch himself smiling too hard, or laughing too loud, and stopped. Perhaps in these moments Biggs remembered the misfortune that had brought them all here. But he could barely contain himself now, scooping out the ice cream, microwaving the chocolate fudge, sprinkling the crushed peanuts. And when he presented the kids with their desserts, Erno thought,
Bigfoot fixed me a sundae
, and didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.
Bigfoot fixed me a
sundae.
The Loch Ness Monster cleaned my room. The Abominable Snowman knitted me a cardigan
.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said as Bigfoot
cleared the table. Erno was a little anxious about this conversation. He’d seen every inch of the tree house—there was an outdoor shower just off the kitchen, but there wasn’t any restroom.

Biggs paused, the dishwater suddenly still. “You can’t hold it?”

“H… Hold it? Until when?”

“Morning.”

Erno coughed. What happened in the morning? Maybe at midnight the car turned back into a toilet.

“You don’t have a bathroom,” Emily said. “You work somewhere during the day and you … go there.”

Biggs nodded. “Library.”

“You’re a librarian?” asked Erno. “I figured you cleaned other houses … took care of other kids.”

“Just you.”

“Well, I have to go too,” said Emily. “And I can’t hold it until tomorrow. Did you see those Porta-Potties by the merry-go-round?”

There were two Porta-Potties, each an antiseptic blue closet on a particularly lush patch of grass by the quiet carousel. And one of the doors was locked, which was odd. It was the middle of the night—was a vagrant in there? So Erno waited with Biggs as Emily took her turn.

The merry-go-round looked haunted when it was dark and still. Each of the horses, the unicorn, the giant rabbit and rooster and dragon, were frozen with their necks back, their jaws open in surprise. Petrified. Or maybe they just preferred to breathe through their mouths—in spite of the Porta-Potties, a fair number of people seemed to be using the carousel for a toilet.