McMummy (7 page)

Concern made his voice unnaturally high. He took a deep breath. The last thing he wanted to do was to alarm Richie, but this talk of monsters, this strange appearance of a pod behind Jack’s bean plant—it was beginning to get to him.

In a voice so soft and modulated it could have come from
Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood
, he said, “I want to see this because I want to know about storms.”

Mozie heard the sound of a car on the road. He said quickly, “Someone’s coming! Maybe your mom and dad heard about the storm!”

He got to his feet and ran to the window.

The car did not turn into the driveway. It passed by and began to build up speed for the hill ahead.

Mozie sighed. Then he raised his head and looked beyond the road, to the mountains. He could see the lightning flashing in the sky, turning the sky white. The thunder boomed.

“It’s coming,” he said.

“What did you say?” Richie asked from the sofa.

“Nothing. I was talking to myself.”

“You can’t talk to yourself because I be here. If I be here you have to be talking to me.”

“All right, I was talking to you.”

“So, so what did you say to me?”

“It’s coming,” Mozie answered.

M
OZIE WAS SITTING ON
the sofa with Richie on his lap. They had been like this for thirty minutes, waiting for the storm to hit. Mozie’s legs were getting numb.

“Want to lie down for a minute, Richie?”

“Noooo. Don’t put me dowwwwnnnnn!”

“But the storm’s still miles away. Listen, see, there’s the lightning, now listen to me count—one-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two, one-thousand-and-three, one-thousand-and-four. Now, there’s the thunder. The storm’s four miles away.”

“Do four miles be a lot?”

“Yes.”

“It dint sound like a lot.”

“Well, it is.”

“Don’t put me dowwwnnnn!”

Mozie sighed. He realized he could never be a department-store Santa Claus—even though he had the face for it—because he could not hold children on his lap without wanting to let them slide off. “Whoops, old Santa’s so sorry. Whoops, dropped you again, did I? How ‘bout that. Old Santa’s …”

The wind was getting stronger. It was beginning to whine around the chimney. Mozie could hear the branches of the magnolia trees whipping together. An occasional limb was blown off a tree and struck the house.

Mozie said, “Richie, I have to make one very short phone call. I want to speak to my mom. She doesn’t watch TV and she may not know about this storm. I’ll leave you for one minute—here’s my watch.” He slipped off his watch. Richie took it and threw it on the floor.

With a sigh, Mozie made an effort to retrieve his watch and keep Richie from slipping off his lap.

“Richie, now listen. I’ve got to call my mom.”

“Take me with you.”

“To the phone?”

“Yes.”

“It’s just right over there. You can see me the whole time.”

“I want to go with you.”

“I don’t think I can, Richie. You’re a big boy.”

“No, I be little.”

“Why, I think you’re a big boy. I think—”

“Waahhhhhhhhh—”

“Well, maybe I can,” Mozie said. “I’ll give it a try.”

Mozie struggled to his feet, holding Richie in his arms as if he were a baby. Richie began sagging in the middle, so Mozie pushed him higher with one knee.

“This isn’t going to work. Let’s try piggyback.”

As he was helping Richie onto his back, the phone began to ring. “Oh, there’s the phone. It’s Mom!”

He hurried toward the phone sideways, like a crab, with Richie on one hip. He picked up the receiver.

“Mom!”

Batty’s voice said, “I can’t talk but a minute. This storm is coming—I just heard it on TV—with dangerous hail—hail! You know what hail can do to a greenhouse? It’s—”

“I know about the storm. I know about the hail. I thought you were going to be my mother.” With great control he stopped himself from yelling, “I want my mother!”

“Also tornadoes—which probably won’t actually happen—but hail—the TV said golf ball-sized hail to baseball-sized hail. You know what golf ball-sized hail can do to a greenhouse?”

“Yes.”

“It can shatter every pane of glass, batter every plant. Do you remember the time I hit a baseball through someone’s picture window?”

“That was our picture window.”

“Well, remember—” He broke off. “I got to go. Linda’s coming.”

The conversation ended with a bang. Mozie waited a moment and then hung up the phone.

“Was that Batty?” Richie asked.

“Yes.”

“I wish Batty was here instead of you.”

“So do I.”

“Batty makes me laugh.”

“He makes me laugh too.”

Mozie picked up the phone again and dialed his own number. He waited for fourteen rings, but there was no answer at Crumb Castle. “Where can she be? She can’t be out in the storm.” He dialed again. Again no answer.

As he put down the phone, he heard the sound of rain—big drops—they had to be as big as golf balls themselves—begin to pelt the roof like bullets. The wind grew stronger. Lightning struck close by with an ear-splitting crash. The air had a strange metallic smell.

Richie clutched Mozie around the neck.

“Not so hard. You’re strangling me.” Mozie began to make his way back to the sofa. “Let go of my neck, or I’m going to—”

This was his big weakness as a baby-sitter, one of his big weaknesses—he didn’t know how to make kids do things they didn’t want to do. The only thing he could think of—I’m going to take you to the doctor and tell him to give you a shot—wouldn’t work because Richie knew Mozie didn’t have wheels.

“Noooooooooooooooo—”

“Let go, I’m not kidding.”

A shutter on an upstairs window began to bang against the house. The porch swing began to do the same thing. A limb crashed onto the porch.

There was a blinding flash of lightning.

“One-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two,” Mozie counted in an unsteady voice.

Then came the thunder. Two miles away that time.

The huge drops of rain on the roof sounded louder now, as if frozen. Hail.

Then there came a crash of lightning so loud, so earsplitting, so powerful that the floor actually shook under Mozie’s feet.

And the lights went out.

I
N THE DARK LIVING ROOM
Mozie held Richie on his lap while the storm raged. He had stopped having cheerful thoughts about Santa dropping kids on the floor. Mozie was afraid.

The black, almost primordial darkness of the room was broken by blinding flashes of white lightning. There was no separation between the thunder and lightning now.

Richie had a cushion over his ears. Mozie wanted to hold one over his head too, but every time he loosened his grip on Richie, Richie began to scream.

The house had started to shake with the fury of the storm. Doors rattled. Windows trembled so hard that glass panes popped and splintered into the house. The thunder overhead was like tons of stones falling on the house.

“Do you have a basement?” Mozie said.

Richie didn’t hear him.

Mozie picked up one side of the pillow. “Do you have a basement? If you do, we ought to get down in it.”

“I don’t know.”

“You have to know if you have a basement!”

“What be a basement?”

At that moment, the door to the garage’ burst open and the storm was in the house. Curtains flew in the air. Rain splattered into the kitchen, a lamp blew over in the bedroom.

A scream rose in Mozie’s throat and he struggled to his feet. He would have dropped Richie if Richie had not gotten another of those strangleholds around his neck.

“It’s us,” Mrs. Hunter called. She was out of breath. “We’re back.”

She held a flashlight under her chin to prove her identity, but a blinding flash of lightning turned her into a stranger and made Mozie want to scream more than ever.

“Mommy, Mommy,” Richie cried. He pushed his way out of Mozie’s arms and ran for his mother.

“It’s all right,” she told him. She looked at Mozie. “The power is off all over town. Lines are down. The Hawkinses’ whole pecan grove—every single tree—is laid over on its side. We saw fire trucks turning in to the”—she broke off as the thunder rattled the house—“the airport,” she finished.

She took off her scarf with her free hand and shook the drops of water from it. “I’ve never seen such a mess.”

In his mother’s arms, Richie said, “Mozie told me to shut up.”

Mozie came forward tensely. “Where’s Mr. Hunter?”

“Trying to get the garage doors shut.”

“Why? Isn’t he going to drive me home?”

“There is no way you can get home tonight. We’ll call your mother—if the phone isn’t out. Lines are down all over town. We had to drive to Sumpter to get home.”

“But my mom’s expecting me. If I’m not there …”

“Your mother will know you can’t get home.”

“But I could if Mr. Hunter would drive me!”

“That’s not possible, Mozie.”

Mozie’s shoulders slumped.

“Now, now.” Mrs. Hunter gave him one of her hugs. “You can sleep in the guest room. I’ll get one of Bob’s T-shirts for you to sleep in, and in the morning”—another hug—“in the morning Bob will drive you home.”

“I’ll walk,” Mozie said.

“Absolutely not. I won’t hear of your walking.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, I do.”

“I want to walk.”

“You are not leaving this house. Bob, talk to him.”

Mr. Hunter was closing the door to the kitchen, and Mrs. Hunter swung the flashlight around to spotlight him. “Bob, he has some idea that he can get home tonight. He’s talking about walking!”

“No,” Mr. Hunter said, shaking his head. “There are trees blocking the roads. Power lines are down. It’s like a war zone out there.”

“See?” Mrs. Hunter said. “Now, come on, Richie, I want you in bed. And Mozie, I know you’re tired too.”

Reluctantly Mozie allowed himself to be pushed down the hall. Mrs. Hunter opened a door and shone the flashlight, revealing a room that appeared never to have been used.

“I’ll leave this flashlight with you,” she said. “Bob’s getting some candles for us.”

Mr. Hunter came down the hall, lighting his way with a candle. “Here’s the T-shirt.”

“And there are toothbrushes in the guest bathroom. What we all need now is a good night’s sleep.” She lifted her head. “The storm is moving on—listen!”

“If it’s moving on—” Mozie began quickly, but Mrs. Hunter cut off his words by giving him a hug.

Mozie was still standing in the hall, keeping his toes out of the guest room the way Batty kept his toes out of his sister’s bedroom when he had to talk to her for some reason.

“Well, go on in.” Mrs. Hunter gave him a gentle shove, put the flashlight in his hand, and Mozie, much against his will, found himself for the first time in his life in a guest bedroom.

M
OZIE LAY STIFFLY ON
the guest bed. He had taken all of the little pillows off and put them on a chair, but he was still uncomfortable. The remaining pillow had lace on it.

Mozie felt stiff and awkward and strange. More than anything in the world, he wanted to be home.

He shifted. He was wearing Mr. Hunter’s T-shirt, but his legs were cold. He didn’t want to get under the covers because the sheets had lace on them too.

If he were at home, he thought, and if he felt this strange and uncomfortable, he would know exactly what to do. He would get out of bed, go to his closet, and take his father’s box down from the top shelf. The box on the shelf in his closet and its contents were the only valuable, irreplaceable things Mozie had ever owned.

He would sit with the box on his lap and he would lift the lid. And always, there would be the immediate smell of leather and wool and a vague, indefinably masculine scent—after-shave perhaps. What Mozie knew of aftershave he had learned in Eckerds, standing in men’s toiletries, testing the various scents, but he was never able to identify the exact one that his father had favored. Perhaps his father had shopped at a finer store.

At any rate, the sum total was the true scent of his father. Mozie had no actual memory of his father—he had died when Mozie was a baby—but when he opened this box, he got a sense of his father that was strong and loving. It never failed to comfort Mozie.

Everything in this box had belonged to his father, had been worn by him or used by him or saved by him. On top was his dad’s wallet—leather, dark and smooth. His father had worn his wallet in his hip pocket, his mom had told Mozie, and so it still bore the slight curve of the contour of his body.

Inside the wallet he could see his father’s face, framed in a yellow construction hard hat. His eyes were bright and brown, kind eyes. Mozie would flip slowly through the wallet, checking the other IDs, the credit cards, the snapshot of his mother, the lock of her hair curled in one corner. Among the contents of the box was a Swiss Army knife, and one blade of that knife was the tiny scissors his father had used to cut the curl from his mother’s neck.

Mozie liked that story, but his favorite was how his parents met. They met at an Elks dance. The first time his mom saw his dad he was sitting down at a table. He was the same medium height as everyone else.

He asked her to dance and she said, “Yes.” They stood up together, and Mozie’s father was the tallest man she had ever seen off a basketball court. “His legs! His legs! I fell in love with your dad because of his legs!” she always cried in such a comical way that Mozie begged to hear the story again and again. “Tell about Daddy’s long legs,” he’d say.

Later his mom told Mozie she had once read a book called
Daddy-Long-Legs
, and they checked it out of the library and read it together. After that, their nickname for him was Daddy Longlegs.

Mozie would give a lot right now to be sitting on his own bed, turning through his dad’s wallet, touching the dollar bills, the exact ones that had been in his wallet the day his dad died, saying to himself that his father had touched this ten-dollar bill, this five, these very ones, that he was touching.