Jewelweed (25 page)

Just inside the door sat a tall, well-dressed man with watery blue eyes. A slim black briefcase rested beside him on the chair. His shoes were polished black and he had long clean fingers.

“It's after nine,” said Buck.

The man laughed as if he'd just heard a very old joke. “Business never sleeps,” he said. “I thought you'd be glad to see me. Who's the boy?”

“Ivan, this is my brother-in-law, Lucky.”

Ivan looked puzzled.

“That's right,” said the man. “You know—like, it's better to be lucky than good.” And he laughed again in a not-funny way.

“Go on, now,” Buck said. “Make sure your mother knows we got back on time.”

They went into the little office and closed the door.

Ivan found his mother in the laundry room, folding clothes.

“We're back,” he said.

“Where did you go?' she asked.

“To the office, like Buck said.”

“Anywhere else?”

“No.”

“That's good. I'm almost finished here and it's getting late. Go clean up your room.”

Ivan went down the hall, but he did not go right to his room. Outside the door to the office he crouched down and listened.

Buck spoke first. “I don't like giving money to people who work for the government, especially when business is slow.”

Lucky replied, “But you have to spend to make any money these days.
State contracts have been good to you before, and they will be again. They're the only way to do well in bad times.”

“We can bid like everyone else,” said Buck.

“Sure,” said Lucky, “but if certain people don't know you, nothing will come of it. You have to develop a relationship. Then they remember you.”

“We did that two years ago.”

“And now the relationship has to be renewed. If we get started before the end of the month, the chairman will float the early bids and we can lowball.”

“There's too much paperwork with government jobs,” said Buck.

“Hire someone to do it for you.” Lucky laughed. “These jobs are plums. Delays, cost overruns, substandard material, subcontractors, it doesn't matter. The only people minding the store are the ones you have a relationship with.”

“I hate this,” said Buck.

“These people make the laws, Buck. Get over it. It's the way the country's going. Put up or shut down. Get ahead or get behind. Your equipment will be bought out from under you by those new outfits with Mexican labor. You'll be out of business.”

“My father's still the head of the company, and he has the last word.”

“Say, who was the quick trick in the hall?” asked Lucky. “When Amy answered the door there was a caramel number behind her, standing there like a piece of licking candy. You ever think about squeezing into that, Buck?”

“Watch the way you talk, Lucky.”

“No offense.” Lucky laughed. “Just pointing out the obvious.”

A
ugust was worried about Milton. A mysterious fungal disease called White Nose Syndrome had been killing bats across the country. He'd been reading about it on the Internet. The scientific name of the fungus was
Geomyces destructans
, and some fatality estimates ran higher than one million. In some areas of the country nearly all the hibernating insectivorous species had been wiped out. Many of the carcasses were still in sleeping mode when they were discovered, but most fell to the ground and piled up on each other. They appeared to be spotted with frost. There were no living bats for hundreds of miles around the fungal extermination zones, and August was horrified by the thought of such barren places. How lonely those night skies must be, he thought.

Apparently no one knew exactly how the fungus killed its victims, but most scientists thought something in the fungus caused the unsuspecting bats to end their hibernation early and go hunting in the middle of winter. Bats were extremely sensitive to low temperatures, and they often died from exposure. Others just stopped breathing while they slept.

August sensed that his mother was tired of him talking about it, but she also said it was an important topic, and suggested he make a presentation about it at the next science fair, which was two weeks away. He immediately began preparing his report, intending to warn everyone in attendance that most scientists expected WNS to soon arrive in Wisconsin. And once it got here, the contagion would spread through direct contact with other bats, which was especially problematic for a highly social species.

August thought it reasonable to assume that Milton was not as vulnerable as other bats because he spent most of his time with him. But Milton's family was surely in grave danger, and August was convinced
that Milton knew this. After all, Milton knew things people couldn't even begin to think about. And he'd also been anxious lately. When he hunted he often came back early, hours before sunrise. His body weight had gone down a half ounce in the last month.

August wondered if he could find where Milton's family lived. He ordered a bat detector on the Internet and his dad helped him solder it together in the shop. It could detect the ultrasound emitted by bats during echolocation. The instruction manual said he could “listen to the night skies and identify whether the bats were hunting, talking to each other, or singing.” It seemed wonderfully strange to think of bats singing in a medium inaccessible to the sensory capacity of humans.

Whenever August thought about the bat world his imagination was set on fire. He had just learned from a library book that when Milton or any other insect-eating bat identified a flying insect, the signal bouncing back informed him of its species—say, a mature lacewing—how far away it was, the angle of its flight, and how fast it was flying. He also discovered that as soon as the bat made contact with the lacewing, the lacewing would also know about Milton. The insect had the same sensory equipment, which meant the night skies were filled with a kind of knowledge that humans could only dream about accessing.

August's detector really worked too. He could dial in Milton when he was flying. The signals were especially clear as he caught bugs under the light pole in the yard. With the pocket-sized device positioned on the ledge just outside his bedroom window, August could hear Milton far in the distance—up to one hundred meters away. He could listen to him coming across the valley and into the room.

Blake Bookchester had helped with making the detector, too, though August's dad had to redo some of his soldering. And he'd offered excellent suggestions about how to position all the components within the small plastic carrying case.

At first, August had kept his distance from the ex-prisoner, but August spent a lot of time at the shop during the summer, and after a couple of weeks Blake seemed less threatening. He got along all right with his father most of the time, and even seemed to go out of his way to be pleasant to customers.

Still, there was plenty of talk about him around Words, and August's
parents' voices got low, slow, and careful whenever they mentioned him. Everyone seemed to know he worked at the shop, and some of the people at church were upset about it. One Sunday a couple of old folks had talked to his mom after the service about how she never should have visited the prison in the first place. It was just plain wrong, they said, and now people in other churches were talking about it. His mom said she appreciated how they were willing to share their feelings, and then after they went home she sat by herself for a long time in her garden.

Uncle Rusty was even more wound up about it, and he came into the shop almost every day to hobble around and stare at Blake through the dark plastic goggles that protected his cataracts. And whenever he got the chance he yelled at August's mom, saying she had no understanding of the darker side of human nature, and needed to live in the real world.

August didn't think his dad particularly liked Blake working in the shop, either, and it wasn't just because Uncle Rusty came around a lot more often. Blake repaired some things almost as well as his father did, but he didn't seem to understand chain saws, and on some days he seemed too tired to do anything but stare out the windows and throw wrenches around when he lost his temper. He complained that he couldn't sleep at night.

Still, whenever August's mom asked about Blake, his dad always said he was improving. Even when Blake yelled at customers, his dad would say, “It will work out, Winifred. Don't worry. Things take time. Blake finished the stalk-chopper today.”

But when Winnie asked Jacob to bring Blake home for supper after work, Jacob said Blake wasn't ready yet.

“Why won't he come?” August asked.

“He's waiting,” said Jacob.

“Waiting for what?”

“For something inside him to change.”

Blake never went anywhere, even though he had a license now and drove his father's old pickup. He just came to the shop in the morning and went home at night. He never went anywhere else, even on weekends. August heard him talking to his dad once about needing to stop at the library to check out some books, but the next day, when Jacob asked him if he'd gone, he said he hadn't.

A week later August went to the library himself, looking for more information about White Nose Syndrome from Mrs. Landwagon. She was a friend of his mom's and worked behind the desk. He asked if Blake Bookchester had been there. No, she said, he hadn't. She wondered aloud if prisoners were still permitted in public libraries. She thought maybe they were, but she wasn't sure. The new governor was said to be tough on crime.

When August was leaving, she called him back. “Here,” she said. “You might as well take these. Your father ordered them last week.” She put eight books in a plastic bag and handed them to him. They were schoolbooks, and August wondered why his father had ordered them. Later, Jacob explained that they were for someone from church. Then he put them away.

Blake had been out of prison for only about three weeks, and he'd already been called in for three drug tests. His parole agent came to the shop pretty often to make sure he wasn't drinking beer or carrying guns, or talking to other men who had been in prison. That was one of the rules—no talking to felons who'd committed major crimes. Jack Station also made surprise visits to Blake's house at night, just to make certain he was there. One time Station showed up in a van loaded with police officers and they searched Blake's house from top to bottom, looking for alcohol, drugs, and guns.

Blake was really mad the next morning at the shop, and Jacob spoke firmly with him for a long time over by the drill press. Blake said Station hadn't found anything, but he'd still torn up the house looking. Apparently Station even went through his father's bedroom and yanked all the clothes out of the drawers. Jacob told him to calm down, but Blake didn't seem to know how to do that. His rights had been violated. They had disrespected his father, he said, and then he talked for a long time about the government.

On the ride home after work, Jacob told August not to say anything to his mother about what had happened at the shop that day. She thought Station was trying to push Blake into doing something, so he could send him back to prison. So August didn't say anything.

Three nights later, just as August was falling asleep, he heard a scraping sound, followed by a thud. He went to the window. The moon lit up
the yard and he could see the limbs in the big pine trees all the way to the sky. And then he saw the Wild Boy. He was sitting on the first limb up, his feet hanging down about six feet from the ground.

When August saw him the Wild Boy rocked back and forth, swinging his legs. Then he jumped down without making a sound.

They stood there for a moment, August on the inside and the Wild Boy on the outside, looking at each other. The Wild Boy was wearing a shirt and pair of shorts that looked to be too large. August waved and the boy smiled, his teeth white. Then he ran off.

August tried to keep him in sight, but he disappeared into the woods. Then August saw a jar on the window ledge, and he brought it inside. After looking at it he carried it down to the kitchen, where his dad was sitting at the table, eating an egg salad sandwich.

August showed him the jar and he set his sandwich down, unscrewed the top, and pulled off the lid, making a little
psssst
sound. After smelling the contents, he stuck in a spoon and pulled out a piece of fruit.

“It's good,” he said. “Peaches. Where'd you get this?”

“It's a secret,” said August.

“Can't you tell me?”

August thought about it for a moment and decided that he could tell. The peach delivery seemed to place everything on a higher level. “The Wild Boy.”

His dad looked worried, but it didn't last long. “I see,” he said, and stood up to get two bowls.

“I've got to find him, Dad.”

“Why?”

“I have to. He has a scar on his face and I have to find him. I have to.”

“That's not a good idea, August.”

“It is to me.”