The Adventures of Flash Jackson (8 page)

But she still went to church, when she had a special reason to go. I guess Frankie's disappearance qualified as a special reason. They were going to pray that he come home safe and sound, with a minimum of mosquito bites.

“It'd be nice if you would come, Haley,” she said.

“Church?” I said. “No, thanks.”

I knew she would ask me to go, and she knew I would say no. There was no surprise there. But I was surprised at what she did next: She sat down on the foot of my bed and sighed, like she was tired. More than tired—sad.

“What's up, mutton chop?” I asked her. “Why so glum?”

“There was a time I went to church a lot, you know,” she said. “Before you were born.”

“I know,” I said.

“Before I met your father,” she said.

I didn't say anything then. It was unusual for her to talk about my dad. I had the feeling something big was coming, so I stayed quiet. She had a faraway look in her eyes.

“Haley,” she said, “I've told you a little about how it was for me growing up, haven't I?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you know I'd never even ridden in a car before I met your father?”

When Mother was raised in that little house out in the woods, believe me it wasn't any more modern then than it is now. No electricity, no running water, no nothing. Cars were against the rules, too. I'd always known that, but I'd never really thought about it before.

“Never? Never
ever?
” I said. “What was it like? How old were you?”

“I was only a little older than you are now,” she said.

“Did you go fast, that first time?” I asked.

But she didn't hear me.

“So many things changed when I met him,” she murmured. “My whole world became different then.”

“Was Grandma mad when you rode in Dad's car?”

She heard
that
, all right. Her whole face changed and she set her lips tight.

“I didn't tell her,” she said. “But she knew anyway. She looked at me different—like I'd been polluted or something. She could tell.”

“Just from you sitting in a car?”

“Not just that,” she said. “From…all kinds of things.”

I started getting a little red then, because I thought I knew what she was talking about.

She'd been in love, y'see. She was crazy about my dad, and he was crazy about her. I remember them laughing all the time when I was little. He was a silly, fun-loving, fast-car-driving, dancing fool, and he must have swept her off her feet faster than a tornado goes through a trailer park, because my mother put down everything that was Mennonite and came out here to live with my dad, in the house his grandfather had built.

I remember my mother as two people. One was before Dad died, and the other was after. After, she was kind of like walking dead. Her eyes were hollow, she didn't smile anymore, and everything seemed to startle her. And she never did fully recover from that whole incident,
not like I did. I was only little, and children are pretty bouncy—I mean,
resilient
.

“I was afraid, at first,” she said. “There were so many new things to understand when I came to live here. I didn't know the simplest things—how to use a dishwasher, or a stove, or a radio. He had to teach me everything.”

“Kind of like being taken up to a futuristic alien planet?” I said.

She almost smiled at that, old Mums did. Not quite, but almost.

“He was patient,” she said. “He knew everything. He even knew how to
build
some of these things. I think that was what amazed me about him most of all—that he understood
machines
.”

“He sure did,” I said.

“I would never have made it in this world if it wasn't for him,” she said. “You'll never know what it's like to grow up like I did, Haley, and I think sometimes I feel bad about that.”

Aha
, I thought.
I knew she was feeling bad about something.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because,” she said. “You understand more about life when you grow up simple.”

That didn't mean what it sounded like—growing up simple. In Mother's vocabulary, simple didn't mean dumb. What she meant was, growing up
uncomplicated
. I knew Mother thought the modern world was way too complicated. There was just too much to keep track of. I guess for her it must have been kind of like fast-forwarding a hundred years into the future to come live in this house.

“You just notice more,” she said. “You know, when I was a young girl, I knew every wild animal that lived within a mile of our place, just like we know our neighbors now. I talked to them like they were people. And I knew the plants, too. I knew where everything grew, and when it would bloom or seed. I could tell what the weather would be just by looking at the moon.”

That kind of impressed me. There was something spooky about it—something powerful. I guess there are things we take for granted
about our parents. For example, I'd always known my mother preferred to tell time by looking at the shadows on the lawn rather than at a clock. And she would spend a long time looking at the sky to figure out when the next rain was coming, when she could have just snapped on the radio. It was something she'd always done, and I never thought anything of it. But suddenly it hit me that that was
not
the way things were done anymore in this world, not by most people, anyway, and that made my mother unusual—in a good way.

“But life got easier for you too, right?” I said. “Didn't it? In some ways?”

“In
some
ways,” she said. “It doesn't take me all day to do laundry anymore, for example.”

“And that's good, right?” I said.

She looked down at her feet, at her nice shoes, as though she was seeing them for the first time.

“I guess so,” she said. “It's easier, but…”

I waited.

“It's less, somehow,” she said.

“Less of what?” I asked.

She stood up then, and our little moment was over. She was back to herself again.

“Oh, I don't know,” she said. “I don't remember what I was talking about. I'm going to drive the Grunveldts to church. I'll be back in a few hours.”

“How come you're going to church, anyway?” I asked

“They want to pray for Frankie.”

“No, I mean how come
you're
going?”

“Because I'm worried about him.”

“Are
you
going to pray for him too? In the Lutheran church? Won't God think you're changing teams?”

She looked at me with that same sad look again. I didn't really think there was anything wrong with it—I was just egging her on.

“I've been praying for him right along,” she said. “Have you?”

I thought about telling her about how I prayed for Brother to come home, and how in the next split second he did. But I didn't think she'd like hearing about it. Mother may have quit church, mostly, but she still had strong ideas about religion, and I was pretty sure you weren't supposed to pray for horses. It wouldn't be considered a real prayer—it would be a waste of good praying time. Besides, the whole thing was probably just a big coincidence. I didn't fool myself about the chances of God actually listening to me.

“Sorta,” I said.

She sighed. “Anyone calls, take a message,” she said.

“I
know
,” I said.

“Don't leave the stove on if you go out,” she said.

“Mother.”

“And be sure not to—”

“Mom.”

She stopped then—she just stopped. She clacked out of there and got into the pickup truck, and then she was gone in a screech of tires and a whirlwind of gravel. That's old Moms—she would always drive like someone who'd never seen a motor vehicle before in their lives.

 

One thing about a broken leg is that it certainly seems to slow life down. I laid there for a while after she left, just kind of twiddling my thumbs. I thought about watching television, but our set was buried under a pile of fabric swatches—fabric swatches were a fact of life when you lived with my mother. She was always re-covering an old chair, or sewing curtains. Besides, there was nothing on. You drive around out here, you see a satellite dish in everyone's yard, just about—but not ours. We didn't even have cable. That was all right with me, before I went all gimpy. I preferred to spend my spare time outside. But now that I was an invalid, suddenly a hundred and forty channels didn't sound so bad.
Maybe I could learn to speak French on one of those educational stations
, I thought.
Maybe I could become addicted to soap operas.

Old Frankie. I could feel him—he was close, that little runt. But I couldn't imagine where he would be. I wondered why Mother didn't take the Grunveldts to Grandma's place instead of church. She could do her hocus-pocus for them. Maybe they'd get some real answers then.

And then I thought,
why not try it myself?

It was one of those ideas that seems so crazy you almost toss it out the window right away, but you stop at the last minute and kind of examine it like a weird fossil or something, because it's too damn interesting to get rid of. Try it myself? Well, maybe I could. I'd seen her do it—Grandma, that is. I thought I knew what to do. There were lots of little steps involved, and I wasn't sure I remembered all of them, but the important part was having the feeling, or the seeing, or the knowing—being able to look behind the Veil. And
that
I was pretty sure I had.

The Veil, in case you don't know, means the covering that lies over everything we don't know or understand, everything that isn't right in front of our noses. There were probably a bunch of different ways to lift it, but I'd only seen it done one way before, and that was Grandma's way. Before I knew what I was doing, I was out of bed and poling along into the kitchen, where I got a pot out from under the sink and filled it most of the way with water. I set it on the table and pulled the curtains shut. Then I took a little hand mirror out of the bathroom and propped it up against some books in front of the pot, so that when I looked into the mirror I could see the reflection of the water. That was the real secret—you had to have
two
doors into the other dimension, one opening right into the other. I remembered Grandma saying something about that, a long time ago. Or at least I
thought
I remembered it. I didn't have any dope to burn, but my first time out I wouldn't worry about that. I wasn't seriously expecting it to work anyway. I mean, I had a feeling that it
could
work, but I didn't assume it
would
.

It was good and dim in the kitchen now. I lit a candle and set it next to the mirror, so it kind of made everything glow. Then I set
myself down in a chair and leaned over it, positioning myself just right so I could see the glare of the candle of the water, and I asked myself:
Where is Frankie?

All this was just stuff I'd seen my grandmother do before, but that was the outside stuff. What I didn't know was what to do inside—what to think about. I had to wing it. So I just cleared my mind and tried not to think about anything, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Everything distracted me—the ruffles my breath made on the water, the throbbing in my leg, some damn bird chirping his head off right outside the window. But after a few minutes I kind of got into it, and next thing I knew the world around me went black and all I could see was the water like it was a screen, and there on the water was an image: a bunch of sunflowers.

For about a second it was as plain as a hog in a dress, and then it was gone. I sat bolt upright, feeling mighty shocked.
Sunflowers?
I thought.
What the hell is that all about? What did that have to do with Frankie?

Nothing
, I thought—
a misfire. Just a bunch of stupid flowers.

But then I started feeling a little warm glow, because I'd
done it
—I'd seen something. It wasn't much, maybe not even accurate, but it was something. And it seemed like it happened right away, too. I couldn't have been sitting there longer than ten minutes.
That
was pretty good.

Call me an optimist, I guess.

I kept staring into the water.
Right
, I thought.
Think. Sunflowers. What do those mean?

Suddenly I heard the pickup truck come crunching into the driveway, and Mother came up the back steps and into the kitchen. I didn't have time to move, I was so surprised.

She was surprised, too—more than a little. She came in the door and stopped and stared at me like I'd sprouted horns.

“Forget something?” I asked.

“Haley Bombauer, what are you doing?” she whispered.

Well, there was no need to answer that, so I just didn't.

“How come you're home so soon?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” she said. “I've been gone for three hours!”

Well, I got a bit of a chill then, I don't mind telling you. Mother went to the curtains and threw them back, and sure enough it was dusk. When I sat down it had been broad daylight. I looked at the candle, and it was out. Just a smoking little stump.

“Oh, my,” I said.

“Haley,” said Mother.
“What are you doing?”

“Looking for Frankie,” I said.

We stayed like that, staring at each other for the longest time. It was like I had been sharpened, and I could see more now—I mean more of
her
. I looked into her eyes and read things I hadn't seen before. I could read her feelings, but more than her feelings—like her thoughts were words in my head. And I knew she couldn't add it all up, poor old Mudder Dearest. It just didn't make sense. Here was me, likely as not the most outrageous undaughterly daughter our family had seen in five hundred years, or even five thousand, and yet I was taking right along after my grandmother, and doing it in secret so nobody would know. She just didn't know what to make of it.