The Adventures of Flash Jackson (18 page)

“What time is it?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “Time to go home.”

“All righty,” she said. She stood up, groggy, and we headed out of the hospital and back to the parking lot. “Can you drive, Haley? I'm afraid I'll fall asleep behind the wheel.”

I was alarmed. “With my leg?”

“It's an automatic,” she said. “You only need one leg.”

“I'll try,” I said. So we headed home with me at the wheel, proceeding mighty slow and hoping we wouldn't run into Madison, Mannville's police officer. I knew how to drive, but I'd never bothered to get my license. Out in the country you didn't need one—kids start driving tractors when they're around ten or eleven, or even younger sometimes, and you never see cops out in our neck of the woods. It was impossible to bend my leg, of course, and the seat wouldn't go back hardly at all because it was a pickup. So I sat at a sort of cockeyed angle and did the best I could, and I guess my guardian angels must have been watching over me, because we made it home safe and sound with Mother snoozing away in the passenger seat.

It was good that I had driving to concentrate on. I knew I'd be
seeing Frankie in my mind for a long time, tied down and drugged, drool coming out of his mouth. That was a part of Frankie I'd never believed existed—and yet it was real. All the time I'd known him, there had been two sides to Frankie—the calm side when he was living at home with his parents and checking out our little corner of the universe through his binoculars, and the crazy side when he would disappear for weeks or sometimes months. I never knew what happened to him during those times, but now I'd seen it with my own eyes, and I understood that Frankie had done time in hell.

Damn it
, I thought. He was like a brother, even more than I'd realized. I loved the helpless little bastard. I really did. And all I could think about was what Miz Powell had said about oracles, back in the old days in Greece. Once upon a time, according to her, we had known what to do with people like Frankie. Today, almost no one knew how to deal with him, except maybe someone like my grandmother. So he needed calming down every once in a while? Well, I was no herbalist, but one thing I did know was that for every pharmaceutical kind of medicine out there, there was a natural one that did the same thing. There were herbs you could take to relax, to clear your mind, to make your passage through the world seem a little smoother. She could help him, though I didn't think I'd ever get Frankie all the way out there to see her. Not him. He'd get too scared out there in the woods.

Now, if I knew the secrets my grandmother knew,
I thought,
then I could treat him myself. He would be free to do his thing.

It
had
been bugging me a little, the fact that Grandma was probably going to die soon without having had the chance to teach me anything. Much as she freaked me out, the old hag had some good qualities too. I felt better every time she worked me over. If I could do that myself, I could save a lot of money on doctor bills down the road. And I could help other people, too. Especially Frankie.

Maybe
, I thought,
I should make the most of her while she was still around
. Like it or not, she was all I had left—besides Mother, that is,
and Mother didn't seem to know a blessed thing that was worth passing on. If Grandma had ever taught her anything in her youth, she seemed to have forgotten it.

I looked at Mother, sleeping away next to me, her head bobbing against the windowpane with a gentle
tump, tump
. I had the idea in my head to visit Grandma now, but I wasn't going to tell Mother about it right away. If ideas were airplanes, she was an antiaircraft gun:
bang bang
, she popped away at them until they came crashing down in flames. She had done it to me a hundred times. I had mentioned college to her once or twice in the last year, and all she'd had to say about it was that I would be better off learning a trade a woman could really use, such as cosmetology or hairstyling. Better yet would be to marry a wealthy man and let him take care of me. That was her idea of how to live. Even though she seemed to have had a change of heart lately and thought it might be good for me to get to know Grandma, that was because it was her idea. If it had been mine, rest assured she would have thought of a dozen different arguments against it.

We pulled into the driveway and rolled to a stop. “Wake up, Mimsy,” I said. “We're home.”

Mother roused herself. “Oh, dear,” she said, yawning. “How long was I out?”

“A hundred years,” I said. “It's the future, and everyone we knew is dead. Look! There goes a rocket ship.”

I pointed out the window. Mother looked in spite of herself and then smacked me on my good leg.

“You stop it,” she said. “It's not funny, joking about people being dead.”

“Why not?” I said. “We're all gonna die anyway. Might as well laugh about it.”

We got out of the car and I reached in the back of the pickup for my crutches. She walked ahead of me as I poled my way up to the house.

“I swear, I don't know where you come up with the things you
say,” Mother said over her shoulder. “But you're not funny. Not funny at all.”

“Not trying to be funny,” I said. “Just real.”

But my meaning was lost on her. She went into the kitchen without even holding open the door for me, and started directly upstairs.

“You going back to bed?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “I'm
exhausted
.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do with myself?”

She didn't answer. At least she didn't slam her bedroom door.

I wasn't tired. I had to talk to someone about Frankie, and about Grandma. And I still had the truck keys in my skirt pocket. So I went back outside and started up the truck, and headed up the road to the Powell house.

I found Miz Powell and Letty sitting in the parlor, chatting away, as pleased as penguins who'd come back to their home iceberg. Miz Powell looked about ten years younger than she had when I met her, and both their faces were flushed with laughter when I walked in the door.

“Look who it is, Letty,” she said, after letting me in. “Isn't that a coincidence?”

“Not really,” said Letty. “We were just talking about you, Haley.”

“We summoned her,” said Miz Powell, which was good for a burst of giggles from both of them. I couldn't believe my ears. Giggles? From these two fossils? “Come in and sit down, dear.”

“Thanks,” I said. I had the feeling that I'd just interrupted something, but neither seemed unhappy to see me. Miz Powell offered me a cup of her ever-ready tea, and they moved over to let me sit between them on the sofa.

“What a horrible shame about Jimmy Grunveldt,” said Letty. “Ain't it, Lizzy?”

“Certainly it was,” said Miz Powell. “How is Frankie, Haley? Have you been to see him?”

“Just got back,” I said. “He's not doing too good.”

“I was afraid of that,” Miz Powell said.

“Poor boy isn't quite right, I take it?” Letty asked sympathetically.

“He'd be better off at home, if there was anyone left to take care of him,” I said. “He can't really handle things as serious as this. He's too fragile. They've got him all dosed up now, and tied to the bed. He was trying to scratch his own eyes out.”

“Oh, dear,” said Miz Powell.

“I've been thinking a lot about what you said about oracles, Miz Powell,” I said.

“You can call me Elizabeth, dear,” she told me again. “What about them?”

“That's really what Frankie is,” I said. “He's a visionary, isn't he? There's nothing wrong with the way he sees things. It's just that he sees them differently.”

“You must keep in mind that I don't know him as well as you do,” Miz Powell reminded me. “It's entirely possibly that a long time ago, you would have been right. But the modern world doesn't permit such things. It flouts our own sense of superiority to the ancients.”

“You sort of know him, though,” I said. “He stayed with you for a while.”

Too late, I remembered that we had promised each other never to bring that up in front of other people, lest Miz Powell get in trouble. I turned beet red and looked down at my shoes. Letty looked curiously at Miz Powell.

“Isn't he the young man who was missing?” Letty asked.

“Sorry,” I murmured.

“Nonsense,” said Miz Powell. “I don't care what Letty knows about me. I never had any secrets from her before.”

“We don't have any now, either,” said Letty.

“Frankie stayed with me because he was in need, and I was pleased to be able to help him,” she announced. “I would do the same again if it was required of me.”

“Well, he needs something different now,” I said. “He needs my help. And I don't really know how to give it to him. I have some ideas, but they're all going to take too long.”

“Such as?”

“Well…never mind,” I said. I was too embarrassed to bring up my grandmother in front of Letty, who was still a stranger to me. I hadn't known she was going to be there. “I'll work it out on my own, I guess. Not to change the subject any, but…the other night, when we were all down at the creek?”

I was half expecting them to be ashamed when I brought this up, but they weren't. Both of the old ladies looked straight at me, peering at me through their glasses like a pair of gophers.

“Yes?” said Miz Powell.

“You were, ah—well. Can I ask what you guys were doing?”

For a moment I could see them as they must have looked when they were fifteen years old, two girls with a million secrets between them and no desire to share them with an undeserving world. I never had a friend like that. It was like the last fifty years and more had never happened—as if a clock had stopped when they separated and started up again when they came back together. As if the two of them had their own kind of time.

“Wasn't it obvious?” said Letty.

“No,” I said.

“We were Zamming you,” said Elizabeth.

“Zamming me?”

“You're one of us now,” said Letty.

“We thought you understood,” said Elizabeth.

“I see,” I said.

“It's nothing
serious
,” explained Letty. “It's a fun thing.”

“Well, it's
partly
serious,” said Elizabeth. “We
are
the only two left, you know. Or rather we
were
, until you came along. All the rest of us are dead. It's time for us to look for new members.”

“We had a club,” said Letty. “We didn't really have a name for it. A Zam club, I guess you might say. There were lots of girls in it. But they're all gone now.”

“Gone, indeed,” said Elizabeth. “We needed fresh blood.” She smiled.

“I see,” I said. “You Zammed me?”

“You don't mind, do you, dear?” asked Elizabeth. “We were saying a Zammish prayer for your protection. And to help your leg get better.”

Was this the same iron woman I'd met in the stable just several weeks ago? The same one who'd worked for the CIA all those years, the one who'd run spies in and out of countries all over the world? In the short time she'd been back in the Greater Mannville Metropolitan Area, Miz Powell had changed a lot, kind of slipped backward into the kind of person she must have been before she left—more carefree, open, silly. I wondered what had caused this change in her. I liked it—even though I still hardly knew her, I liked this side of her better. It was less…
formidable
, I guess.

“In what language?” I asked.

“Why, in Zammish,” said Letty. “It's not hard to learn. We can teach it to you.”

“Rather like pig Latin,” said Elizabeth. “Hard to figure out if you don't know what it is, though. Quite useful. I actually used it once in my work, many years ago.”

“You're kidding,” said Letty. “You did? With the spies?”

“Oh, yes,” said Elizabeth. “It was perfect for meetings on the street. Anyone who overheard us would have thought we were speaking something Slavic.”

“How do you do it?” I asked. “What's the rule?”

“There's more than one, dear,” said Letty. “Don't worry. We'll explain it all to you.”

“It might take you a while,” said Elizabeth. “But don't get discouraged.”

“She won't get discouraged,” said Letty. “Not this one.”

“Maybe another time,” I said. “I was also wondering—did you see anyone else down there?”

“Anyone else?” The two of them cocked their heads like a couple of spaniels.

“You mean—someone was spying on us?” said Letty. “A pervert?”

“No, no,” I said. “I just…thought I saw someone.”

“Who, dear?” asked Elizabeth.

“An old lady,” I said. “My grandmother.”

“She wasn't at the party, was she?” asked Letty.

“Hell, no,” I said. “She doesn't believe in Fourth of July.”

“I certainly didn't see anyone,” said Elizabeth.

“Me neither,” said Letty.

Well, that settled that. It meant either I was seeing things or they had missed seeing her, and of course I already knew the answer: Somehow, my grandmother had made herself appear to me. I'm not flat out saying magic was involved. It wasn't beyond her to walk all that way just to scare the hell out of someone. I knew it wasn't my imagination. The fact that Letty and Elizabeth hadn't seen her didn't make the slightest bit of difference to me. I just wanted to check.

“Thanks, then,” I said. “I better get going.”

“Good luck,” said Elizabeth. “Drop in as soon as you can.”

“Ta,” said Letty, who seemed to be experimenting with sounding English, now that Lizzy was sounding more like her American self.