Tales of the Madman Underground (46 page)

And after all that, the strange thing was that despite all the strange stories, and people coming up to ask me about them, all I had to do was keep saying, “We were locked out, we just shared a room, and we didn’t have pajamas,” “He knows I didn’t do anything with his girl now, but he didn’t then and I don’t blame him for hitting me,” and “Well, I was kind of pissed off at Gratz about something else, and I guess he just decided to cut me some slack,” over and over, and mostly it was all still okay. I guess everyone loves a good story and they’re willing to let you be normal if you’ll tell one.

After French, I went to my locker to stash the textbooks and get a couple things to take home with me, and while I was fiddling around in there, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and discovered Stacy; she had a shy little smile and she looked like she’d just freshened her makeup and fluffed her blonde mane. “Hey,” she said, “can you still explain everything?”

“Well, there’s a
lot
of everything.”

She stood a little closer. “Sometime soon, I want to hear the whole story.”

“Will you promise to believe it?”

“If it’s true.”

“Then I’d love to have an excuse to talk about myself.” I figured I was totally misunderstanding something somewhere—I mean, I’d always been invisible to popular socials—so I was just kind of playing, being a little cool and cracking jokes, while I figured out what was up with her.

But she grinned and said, “Don’t be too slow about calling,” and walked away, giving me the little social-wave over the shoulder for the second time that day. Maybe Cheryl could interpret this for me, if that wouldn’t violate the Secret Protocols of the Socials or something. Anyway, the view of Stacy walking away was pretty nice.

“Karl.”

I turned around and it was Gratz and for one crazy second I felt like blurting out
Okay, you saw me looking at her ass, but I can explain.

Not seeing any way to escape, I said, “Coach Gratz,” and waited to see what would happen next.

Strangely, nothing did happen for a couple seconds. Like he had some other script in mind entirely and was baffled by what I’d said. Finally he seemed to shake himself and make himself say, “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Which is not an easy thing for a teacher to admit to. If you don’t mind, I’ve got a couple important things to discuss with you—I promise, I’m not still angry about this morning—and what I’d like to do is give you a ride home.”

Getting into Gratz’s car was weird enough to begin with; he kept it so pristine that I was really hoping my feet were clean enough for it. It was a big Continental, white, black landau roof, with those silly wire spoke wheels that were so hot in 1960, and you could tell it was absolutely his baby. I felt like I was sitting on an old lady’s antique chair.

He drove a couple blocks before he said, “In my planning period, I was noticing that I was wanting to kill you, and
that
was making me want to drink. So I decided that I wouldn’t kill you and I wouldn’t drink, and instead, I went and caught a midday meeting at Saint Iggy’s. I’m sure you know how that goes.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Well, there was a new guy at the meeting, name of Bill, an English professor, but not one of those jerks I try to warn you all about, the good kind that loves books and wants people to love them and could do something besides teach English. And he was trying to figure out what to do about a big problem.”

I almost told him to turn at MacReady, but then he put his blinker on. Of course he knew the way.

Gratz seemed to be thinking hard. “So I’m violating a lot of the traditional rules, but, sheesh, Karl, you know the way that is, it’s a small town. Like it or not, most of the stuff that comes up in meetings, you know
what
it’s about and you know
who
it’s about. So, all right, it seems that Bill has been having some trouble with this new girlfriend who he is crazy about for all the wrong reasons, and who is absolutely everything that a guy in Bill’s situation should be running away from, and I’m sorry to say that about your mom but—”

“But it’s true,” I said. “That’s why I don’t go to Alateen meetings, to avoid hearing true stuff about my mom. But I sure know it anyway. Did Mom do something new, since I saw her this morning?”

“I guess so, from what Bill says. He went back to your house to check on her after an eleven A.M. meeting and she was drunk, setting up a night at the bars with Rose Lee Nielsen on the phone, doing a lot of things that aren’t good for her. Bill didn’t stop her—you never can—but he was dumb enough or infatuated enough to try, and he had a quarrel with her, and felt awful. So he did the right thing—finally—and went to another meeting, and that’s where Dick Larren and I ran into him.” He made a strange little face, and the deep tan crinkled around the blue eyes. “Dick got most of the story out of him, and he’s kind of taking care of Bill and they’re kind of taking care of things together, and so now I’m Dick’s relief, because he’ll need to get down to Philbin’s and cook pretty soon. We’ve got kind of a plan we want to present to you, and if you say it’s okay, we’ll do it right away.”

We pulled up at my house, the Continental floating up to the curb like riding a cloud, and I got out, wondering what I was about to find.

Dick and Bill were in the backyard, just finishing painting the now-reglazed storm windows. I could tell at a glance that they’d picked up the glass from the lawn, too.

Bill was puffing away on a vile cigar and still wearing that damned cap, but I couldn’t seem to come up with any disgust at all. “Karl,” Bill said, “you should know that Dick here can be trusted to do perfectly acceptable work, in case you ever want to hire him.”

“I did this stuff for
years
,” Dick said. “I’m just
rusty
, is all.”

I realized I was wiping my eyes, and the two of them were improvising because they were embarrassed that I was crying. I also realized I didn’t give a shit, wiped my face one more time, and said, “So what’s going on? Coach says you have a plan.”

“We do,” Dick said. “And we’re going to try to make it work. You know how trying can go, Karl, no one knows it better than you do, but we want to try this.”

Bill puffed out a big foul cloud, set a piece of cut milk carton against one of the stiles, and painted that side in one neat stroke, no drips, no hurry. He turned the cardboard around and did the other side, backhanded, and then one clean stroke long the top of the stile.

I looked around. The reglazed window so far was perfect; I suppose I knew it would be, but I liked to see for myself.

Coach Gratz must have seen me look. He shook his head, grinning sadly. “You’re lucky I had to teach this afternoon, Karl, or I’d’ve insisted on helping and it wouldn’t have looked half as nice.”

Bill stepped back and looked at the finished storm; it was really good as new now. “Well,” he said, “we’re delaying because we’re scared to death you’ll say no. But we have to tell you sooner or later. So here it is: when I got here after the eleven o’clock meeting, your mother had already had most of a six-pack from the fridge and was working the phone pretty hard to line up her evening. She’s definitely back to being buddies with Rose Nielsen, which is not necessarily a good thing, as you know. It bothered me to find this going on, and it bothered me a lot more that she kept demanding that I come along on the binge she was planning with her buddies, but what really upset me was that she wanted me to help look for one of your stashes of money, which she told me all about.” He took the cigar out of his mouth, tapped ash onto the grass, smeared it around with his foot, and kept his gaze on his foot. “So as I found out more and more about her taking that money, she said a lot of things that made me angry, or I got angry about things she said, anyway. She pounded down another couple of beers to show me I couldn’t stop her, and shouted at me, and I felt like shit but I stuck to what I was saying and kept it cool. So she stormed out and that was the last I saw of her. Didn’t know what else to do so I ended up going to the meeting, where I found these guys.”

He made himself look me in the eye and said, “After she left I snooped in your room. I knew a meticulous, systematic guy like you would be keeping some kind of record. I didn’t have to snoop much because it was right on the desk.”

“My IOU book? You read that?” I asked. It was like I was so stunned that I was getting things down to the smallest idea I could.

“Yeah. I’m a snoop, a spy, a rat, and a dick. But I did.”

“I left it out in plain sight ’cause I was always hoping Mom would read it,” I said. “It never worked.”

“Anyway, I didn’t understand why you didn’t have your money safe in a bank account, till Al Gratz explained to me about the adult cosigner rule here in Ohio. And Dick pointed out that either he or Gratz could cosign, just say they were your uncle, any bank outside Lightsburg. Nobody would ever check. Dick was pretty upset—”

“Shoot, Karl, I’m your sponsor. If you’d only told me—”

“You don’t have a car, Dick.” I still couldn’t quite get used to the idea that someone else knew, I mean besides my mother, and Neil, and her drunk asshole friends, I mean. Someone that wasn’t throwing it in my face, or telling me to stop thinking I was better than they were.

Someone that said they were going to try to do something.

That was the really hard idea to latch on to.

Dick shrugged. “I’d’ve found us both a ride, or gotten Philbin to take us over there, or something. It wouldn’t have been
anything
for me to take care of that for you, Karl.”

I could tell he was still hurt, and I didn’t know how to apologize for not asking for help.

Gratz cleared his throat; it was sort of his teacher-noise, same sound he used in class, or at school board meetings when he was going to straighten everyone out about the Youths of Today, or pretty much whenever he was about to lay down the law. “Dick, don’t take it personally, it isn’t that Karl didn’t trust you. Kids are that way, if they’re getting hurt bad. They think it’s their fault, they think it’s something wrong with them, they won’t tell anyone. It’s just how kids are.” His hands were dug into his hips and he was standing like a phys ed teacher about to lead calisthenics, and then suddenly he said, “Shit.”

Coach Gratz swearing. Okay, the world was ending.

“Shit,” he repeated. “Dick, I’m lecturing you like my hollering asshole self. All I should’ve said was you have to figure Karl’s a kid. Even if he’s a great one and even if he’s Doug’s kid.”

Dick smiled a little. “We need to get Karl moving if you’re going to get to the bank before it closes.”

“The bank?” I asked.

“Yep. You’re opening a bank account in Vinville. With ‘Uncle Al’—i.e., me—as your cosigner,” Gratz explained. “Get those cans of money down into my car and we’ll go right now, we just have time before they close.”

I stared at all three of them, just managed to squeak out a “thank you,” and ran to get the money cans. There were nineteen in all, from most rooms of the house, plus two outside behind removable stones in the exposed basement wall, plus the ones from the toolshed. I think they were a little surprised there were so many, but it took me almost no time to get them all into Gratz’s trunk. I could have grabbed them all twice as fast except I kept stopping to wipe my eyes.

It’s funny how Vinville is only eight miles from Lightsburg, along the cleverly named Vinville Road, but it might as well be another world. Vinville has the college, built on the slope of Gravel Ridge down toward the town, with old maples, oaks, ginkgos, and buckeyes on it, tended for a hundred years, and the red brick of the college buildings peeks out from between all those trees, making the whole thing look like a tiny slice of a movie college stuck in the middle of all those flat Ohio fields.

Lightsburg has more going for it if you think about money—the interstate ramp, more stores, the high school, and a couple little factories; in the old days it had Prentiss Petroleum. But Vinville can look like a little chunk of somewhere nice, picket fences and red bricks and all that, when the right light hits it.

Which the right light was doing right now. We were coming into Vinville from the west, with the sun at our backs, and maybe I was seeing it like the cavalry making it back to Fort Apache or some knight catching his first glimpse of Camelot, but it was also just great photographer’s light—this would have been a calendar shot, I can tell you that. The steeples and the Augelsmann Brothers department store glowed above the just-changing trees, fall colors swarming over the green, and behind them, the red brick college did a real good job of faking being like someplace out of
A Separate Peace
or every college movie ever made.

Gratz said, “We don’t want you to keep more than a couple of days of your cash earnings in the house, from now on. So try to make a deposit three times a week or so. If you can’t get a ride with a friend, ask me, or ask Dick and he’ll find you one. I kind of think he’d appreciate it if you asked him for some help, too. Tom Browning would do it for you, too, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t know how to ask.” How do you say
My mom is crazy and her friends are dangerous and they’re robbing me
, when you figure the next thing it leads to is cops and family court and maybe not having a mom anymore? At least Gratz had understood that much, though he blamed it on being a kid, and I figured it just kind of went with moms and love and stuff.

“Anyway,” he said, never moving his eyes from the road, he was that kind of obsessive careful driver, “no matter what, keep your money here in your account. Not just so it doesn’t get stolen. We want to make sure your mom can’t get it to go on a bender, and we think if she doesn’t have those windfalls to rip through, a lot of her friends will drift away.”

“Like Neil?”

“Like Neil. Some of us would like to help him drift a little faster but I think Bill’s opposed to that, says it would alienate Beth if we talked to him directly.”