The Dark Side of Nowhere (6 page)

She punched me in the stomach, not hard enough to hurt.

“Don't even think of stealing second,” she told me, “because I'll pick you off with no mercy.”

And that was fine. I wasn't thinking any lofty goals here. That wasn't my style. Then it occurred to me that I really didn't have a style until that moment. I giggled, then kissed her again.

A few moments later, a screen door squeaked open and she pushed me away. Mrs. Quinn appeared, silhouetted against the door frame. I didn't know if she had seen, but I realized that I didn't care. At that moment, I felt I could have charmed my way out of anything.

“Paula, come in for dinner,” said her mom. “Who's that you're with?”

“Just a friend from school,” she said. “We were talking about science.”

Then Mrs. Quinn, who was not blessed with good night vision, said, “Would she like to stay for dinner?”

“No,” said Paula, “she was just leaving.”

Mrs. Quinn went back inside, and Paula turned to me, but this time we both kept our distance.

You can't imagine how different things will be tomorrow,
I thought, and smiled. I thought of the glove in my bag, and the unexpected boldness that brought me to this moment. “Do you ever feel,” I asked Paula, “like you're hanging on the edge of the biggest moment of your life?”

She rolled her eyes. “It's not that big a deal,” she said. But then she realized that I wasn't just talking about us.

“What's going on with you, Jason?”

“I'll tell you the second I know,” I promised her. I went over to her and kissed her again—just a quick one, like a pinch to make sure it was real.

“See you in school,” I said, and rode off boldly into the fading sunset.

W
hen I got home, all was not well.

“I came to pick you up at school this afternoon, but you had already left,” said Mom, with an urgency in her voice that had nothing to do with my lateness for dinner. In fact, I noticed there was no smell of meat loaf in the house at all. The table was void of either utensils or leftovers. There was no dinner tonight, and she was busy going through drawers. “Where were you?” she asked.

“Just hanging out with Wesley,” I told her, which wasn't entirely untrue.

She didn't seem concerned with my answer at all. I watched as she pulled some photos of the three of us from a drawer, then crossed to the sofa and slid them into the side of a suitcase. Suddenly my appetite, which had seemed all-important just a moment before, vanished. There was some powerful unpleasantness going on. I swallowed hard, and my voice cracked as I asked, “Who's leaving?”

The door had opened, and Dad came in with another dusty suitcase he had pulled from the garage. “All of us,” he said.

As I glanced into the bedroom, I saw more over-stuffed suitcases piled on the bed. I didn't even know we had that many suitcases—we never go anywhere.

“There's a case on your bed,” said Mom. “I've already packed most of your clothes. Anything else you want, pack it in there.”

“Where are we going?”

“Elsewhere,” Dad answered. “Someplace far from here.”

The moment had all the elements of a pillow-shredding nightmare: You finally start dating the girl of your dreams, and your parents decide it's time to enter the Witness Protection Program.

About a million thoughts, images, and emotions flashed through my mind. I thought I might yell at them; I thought I might demand some answers. I thought I might just take off and run. But in the end, I realized that I had my own variable to add into this nasty little equation.

Instead of saying anything, I merely reached into my backpack and pulled out my glove, holding it in front of me, so that they could see.

It stopped them dead in their tracks. Considering the things Grant had been saying, I thought it might play a part in whatever was going on, but I never expected the reaction I got. They stared at me standing there defiantly. Finally Dad spoke, his face turning red.

“Where did you get that?” His voice was a furious growl.

I felt my hands shaking a bit but didn't give in to fear.

“First you tell me why we're packing.”

In an instant Dad was on me. He grabbed me by my shirt and pushed me hard against the wall. I could hear things falling in the china cabinet on the other side.

“Who gave it to you?”

“John!” warned my mother.

My father loosened his grip. “Answer me!”

“The school janitor,” I barked at him. “His name is Grant.”

“I know who he is!” Dad shouted. Then he ripped the thing from my arms and flung it across the room. It hit the coffee table, bounced against the wall, and spilled its load of ball bearings all over the floor.

“You are to go to the garage, and you are to destroy it—do you understand me?”

“Not until you tell me
why
.”

I thought he would hit me then. I actually thought he would haul off and belt me until I couldn't ask any more questions, but even in his feral parental state, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He backed off, and the phone began to ring.

Mom thought to let it go to voice mail, but on the third ring, picked it up.

“Hello.”

I heard a faint voice on the other end but only for a moment. She hung up quickly and loudly, then turned to Dad. “It was Grant,” she said.

The little vomit-ride in my head started to spin in the other direction.

“Speak of the devil,” I said.

My father ignored me. “What did he say?”

“He said if you don't call a meeting right now, he'll do it himself.”

“Fine,” snapped my father. “Let him call his own meeting.” He zipped open the suitcase he had just
brought in and continued packing, as if the issue was closed.

I put my fingers in my mouth and let loose an ear-splitting whistle. “Hey! If you don't tell me what's going on here,” I threatened, “I'll—I'll do something worse than anything I've ever done before!” Although for the life of me, I didn't know what that could possibly be.

Dad looked at me, in the way fathers do when they can't translate a generation down.

“You say Grant gave you the glove,” he said. “What do you know about Grant?”

I shrugged. To be honest, there was only one thing I knew about Grant. “His satellite dish points in the wrong direction,” I said.

The significance of that, which was lost on me, hit my father like a shock wave. He paced, and dragged his fingers nervously through his graying hair. “What has he told you? Has he said anything to you that sounded unusual?”

“Everything he says sounds unusual,” I told them, realizing that I was giving information but still not getting any in return. “He said that you've forgotten, and it's up to us to remind you.”

“Us?”

“There's about thirty of us,” I told him. “The kids from our church.” And then I added, “They've all got gloves like mine.”

Whatever wind was filling my parents' sails seemed to die when I told them that. Dad stalked away and got himself a beer from the refrigerator.

“We'll finish packing,” he announced. “Then we'll call some of the others to let them know we're leaving. If they want to follow, it will be up to them.”

I felt like screaming, but I knew that wouldn't get me anything. So instead, I searched a rational, sensible corner of my mind and said, very calmly, “Mom, Dad, listen, I know that you're trying to protect me, but you can't. I'm not five years old, and I wish you'd respect me enough to tell me the truth.”

They looked at each other, cornered by my sudden display of maturity and reason.

Dad turned to me, opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again. It was Mom who broke the silence.

“We're not . . .
from
here, Jason,” she said.

Dad drew a deep breath and tried awfully hard not to look at me.

“What do you mean ‘not from here'?” I sputtered. “You grew up here—I've seen pictures of you as kids—Grandma and Grandpa are buried in the town graveyard!”

“Yes and no,” my father said.

Yes and no. Okay, I thought. This is fine. My life
hasn't necessarily been a lie; it's just been a huge half truth. “So where are we from?” I asked. “Another state? Another country?”

Dad put down his empty beer bottle. “Think bigger, son.”

I saw tears building in his eyes. I turned to my mother, and she couldn't even look me in the face. She turned and pulled the suitcase off the sofa, but she had never zipped it closed, and its contents clattered onto the floor—it was full of little glass vials, each filled with a thick pink liquid.

A lifetime's worth of our monthly shots.

I nodded. Okay, I said to myself. Okay. All right. I can deal with this. But the truth was, I couldn't. Instead, I let all of this information pile in my head like a stack of dirty clothes that would eventually need a washer, and I sat there in silence, watching Mom carefully pick up the vials.

I
don't think Mom and Dad said a word to each other for the rest of that night. I don't even think they finished packing. By ten Mom had dropped into a restless sleep on the sofa, and then about an hour later I saw my father walking into the backyard alone. I slipped out the back door and followed.

It was a clear night, and the moon was high. Following
him was easy. He held something in his hand, but it was a long time till I got a good look at what it was. When my eyes had fully adjusted to the light, I could tell that it was a handgun.

He walked a steady pace from one field to another, to another, until I could see where he was going. Our little church was on the hill up ahead. The lights were on in there, and the lot was full of cars. I didn't even know he owned a gun.

He walked up the hill, striding toward the church, and I started to get more scared than I ever remembered being. I was about to call out to him—to let him know that I was there, and maybe that would shatter whatever plan he had—but he stopped halfway up the hill and just stared at the building.

I could hear voices inside—angry voices, troubled voices—but the voice coming from the pulpit was not Pastor Bob's. It was Grant's.

My father stood there a good ten minutes, then he made a course change, down off the hill, and toward the woods.

I followed him on to Old Town.

L
ike so many things in Billington, the Old Town storm cellar, where Paula had almost dropped my glove, turned out to be more than it appeared.

My father disappeared down the cellar, and I followed far behind. At the bottom of the steps, a false wall opened up to reveal a metal hatch on heavy hinges, and beyond the open hatch was a narrow, curving corridor. I ventured forward into a dim light that seemed to have no source.

It was a tight, self-contained place, like a submarine. Everything was a gunmetal gray, with valves and conduits winding around one another, down curved walls, and for an instant, I had the strangest impression that I was walking on the inside of my own glove. I shuddered.

Empty, dark chambers loomed on either side of me, but finally I came to one that was slightly brighter. It was a space not much larger than my bedroom, with dark
walls and a rough steel floor. It was empty—it seemed that whatever had been in this place had been pulled out, scavenged for other purposes.

My father sat in there on a steel bench, looking forward at nothing. He still held the revolver in his hand, with the safety off. I stepped into the room.

“Dad?”

He didn't seem surprised to see me. “I'm sorry I pushed you against the wall,” he said, “but when I saw your training glove, I went a little crazy.”

Training glove?
I thought, but didn't dare to question him about it now.

I sat down on a bench across from him, not sure how to feel—I was still sort of piling up the laundry. I could tell what this place was but didn't dare ask about that, either. All I could do was watch my father's every move, every blink, and stare at the gun that rested in his lap.

He looked around. “Not much left of it, I'm afraid,” he said. “We all agreed we'd dismantle as much as we could, then bury it. We couldn't do anything about the engines, but I doubt it will ever fly again.”

“Dad, tell me who we are . . . who
I
am.”

My father looked at me, then to the gun, then back to me, but still said nothing.

“I'll tell you what,” I said to him. “Tell me the truth,
and if it really sucks, you can give me the gun and I'll shoot you myself.”

He laughed at that. I knew he would. Still, he kept the gun tightly in his grasp.

“I
have
told you, Jason,” said my father. “I've told you hundreds of times.”

But I just shook my head, not understanding.

“You would ask me to tell it every night,” he continued. “Then one day you said you were too old to hear it anymore.”

It came to me then in a flash of memory—something I hadn't thought about for years. I gasped, and my gasp echoed in the lonely chamber. “The Warrior-Fools!”

My father nodded. “Do you still remember it?”

I searched my memory. Yes, I did remember! There are some things that you don't think of for years, but the second you do, they burst forth—every word, every image. That's how deeply it had been ingrained in my mind. That's how carefully my father had put it there. I could still hear my father's tone of voice as he told it. Always the same. He would tell it with passion and tenderness. It wasn't so much the story but the way he told it that made me want to hear it so many times, all those years ago. Now I tried to tell it back to him in the same way.

“Once upon a time,” I began, “there sailed a ship of fools who fancied themselves warriors. . . .”