The Voice of the Night (3 page)

Two blocks from his home, Roy Borden turned left, into another street, away from the Borden house, and for a moment Colin again felt that the other boy was trying to lose him. But Roy pulled into a driveway in the middle of the block and parked his bike. Colin stopped beside him.

The house was neat and white with dark blue shutters. A two-year-old Honda Accord was parked in the open garage, facing out, and a man was leaning under the raised hood, repairing something. He was thirty feet away from Colin and Roy, and he was not immediately aware that he had company.

“What’re we doing here?” Colin asked.

“I want you to meet Coach Molinoff,” Roy said.

“Who?”

“He coaches the junior-varsity football team,” Roy said. “I want you to meet him.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

Roy walked toward the man who was working under the hood of the Honda.

Reluctantly, Colin followed. He was not much good at meeting people. He never knew what to say or how to act. He was sure that he always made a terrible first impression, and he dreaded scenes like this one.

Coach Molinoff looked up from the Honda’s engine as he heard the boys approaching. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, sandy-haired man with gray-blue eyes. He grinned when he saw Roy.

“Hey, what’s up, Roy?”

“Coach, this is Colin Jacobs. He’s new in town. Moved up from L.A. He’ll be going to school at Central in the fall. Same grade as me.”

Molinoff held out one big calloused hand. “Really glad to meet you.”

Colin accepted the greeting awkwardly, his own hand disappearing in Molinoff’s bearish grip. The coach’s fingers were slightly greasy.

To Roy, Molinoff said, “So how’s the summer treating you, my man?”

“It’s been okay so far,” Roy said. “But I’m mainly just killing time, waiting for preseason practice to start the end of August.”

“We’re going to have a terrific year,” the coach said.

“I know it,” Roy said.

“You handle yourself as well as you did last year,” said Molinoff, “and Coach Penneman might just give you some fourth-quarter time in varsity games later in the season.”

“You really think so?” Roy asked.

“Don’t give me that wide-eyed look,” Molinoff said. “You’re the best player on the junior-varsity team, and you know it. There’s no virtue in false modesty, my man.”

Roy and the coach began to discuss football strategy, and Colin just listened, unable to contribute anything to the conversation. He never had shown much interest in sports. If asked about athletics of any kind, he always said that sports bored him and that he preferred the excitement of stimulating books and movies. In truth, while novels and films gave him endless pleasure, he sometimes wished he also could share the special camaraderie that athletes seemed to enjoy among themselves. For a boy like him, on the outside looking in, the world of sports was intriguing and glamorous; however, he did not waste a lot of time daydreaming about it, for he was fully aware that nature had given him less than the necessary equipment for a successful career in sports. With his myopic vision, his skinny legs, and his thin arms, he would never be more involved in sports than he was at that moment—a listener, a watcher, never a participant.

Molinoff and Roy talked football for a few minutes, and then Roy said, “Coach, what about the team managers?”

“What about them?” Molinoff asked.

“Well, last year you had Bob Freemont and Jim Safinelli. But Jim’s folks moved to Seattle, and Bob is going to be one of the varsity team’s managers next season. So you need a couple of new guys.”

“You have somebody in mind?” Molinoff asked.

“Yeah,” Roy said. “How about giving Colin a chance?”

Colin blinked in surprise.

The coach stared at him appraisingly. “You know what’s involved, Colin?”

“You get a team jacket of your own,” Roy told Colin. “You sit with the players on the bench at every game. And you get to travel on the team bus with us to all the out-of-town games.”

“Roy’s painting only the rosy part of the picture,” the coach said. “Those are just the benefits of being a manager. You’ll have duties, too. Like collecting and bundling the uniforms for the laundry. And taking care of the towel supply. You’ll have to learn how to give the players good neck and shoulder massages. You’ll run errands for me. A lot of other things. You’ll be taking on a good bit of responsibility. Think you can handle it?”

Suddenly, for the first time in his life, Colin was able to picture himself on the inside instead of the outside, moving in the right circles, mingling with some of the most popular kids in school. Deep down, he knew that a team manager was a glorified messenger boy, but he pushed all the negative thoughts out of his mind. The important thing—the
incredible
thing—was that he would be a part of a world that previously had been completely beyond his reach. He would be accepted by the players; at least to some extent, he would be one of the guys. One of the guys! His mental image of life as a team manager was dazzling, enormously appealing, for he had been an outcast all of his life. He couldn’t quite believe this was really happening to him.

“Well?” Coach Molinoff asked. “Do you think you’d make a good team manager?”

“He’d be perfect,” Roy said.

“I’d sure like to try,” Colin said. His mouth was dry.

Molinoff stared at Colin, his blue-gray eyes calculating, weighing, judging. Then he glanced at Roy and said, “I guess you wouldn’t recommend anybody who was a complete washout.”

“Colin’s right for the job,” Roy said. “Very dependable.”

Molinoff looked at Colin again, finally nodded. “Okay. You’re a team manager, son. Come with Roy to the first practice. That’s August twentieth. And be ready to work hard!”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

As he walked with Roy to the bicycles at the end of the driveway, Colin felt taller and stronger than he had felt only a few minutes ago. He was grinning.

“You’ll like traveling on the team bus,” Roy said. “We’ll have a lot of laughs.”

As Colin got on his bike, he said, “Roy, I ... well ... I think you’re just about the best friend a guy could ask for.”

“Hey, I did it as much for me as for you,” Roy said. “Those trips to out-of-town games can be boring sometimes. But with you and me together on the bus, there won’t be a dull minute. Now come on. Let’s go to my place. I want to show you those trains.” He pedaled away.

Following Roy along the tree-shaded, sun-speckled pavement, elated and somewhat dazed, Colin wondered if the team manager’s job was the thing for which Roy had been testing him. Was it the secret that Roy had been harboring for the past week? Colin thought about that for a while, but by the time he reached the Borden house, he decided there was something else that Roy was concealing, something so important that Colin had still not proved himself worthy to hear it.

They entered the Borden house through the kitchen door.

“Mom?” Roy called. “Dad?”

“I thought you said they weren’t home.”

“Just checking. I better be sure. If they caught us...”

“Caught us doing what?”

“I’m not supposed to mess around with the trains.”

“Roy, I don’t want to get in trouble with your folks.”

“We won’t. Wait here.” Roy hurried into the living room. “Anyone home?”

Colin had been here on only two other occasions, and as before he was amazed at how spotless everything was. The kitchen gleamed. The floor was freshly scrubbed and waxed. The counters shone almost like mirrors. No dirty dishes waited to be washed; no overlooked crumbs marred the table; and there was not even a single vague stain in the sink. The utensils were not hung on wall racks; all pots and pans and spoons and ladles were secreted away in drawers and dust-free cupboards. Mrs. Borden apparently did not appreciate knickknacks, for there was not a single decorative plate or plaque or piece of needlepoint wisdom on the walls, no spice rack, no calendar, no clutter at all—and no sense that this was a place where real people cooked real food. The house looked as if Mrs. Borden spent all of her time performing an elaborate series of cleaning operations—first scraping, then scouring, then scrubbing, then washing, rinsing, polishing, buffing—much the same way that a cabinetmaker sanded a piece of wood, beginning with coarse sandpaper and working up gradually to the finest grain.

Colin’s own mother didn’t keep a dirty kitchen. Far from it. They had a cleaning woman. She came in twice a week to help keep things neat. But their place didn’t look like this.

According to Roy, Mrs. Borden refused to consider a cleaning woman. She didn’t think anyone else in the world would have standards as high as hers. She wasn’t satisfied with a neat house; she wanted it to be sterile.

Roy returned to the kitchen. “No one’s here. Let’s play with the trains awhile.”

“Where are they?”

“In the garage.”

“Whose are they?”

“The old man’s.”

“And you’re not supposed to touch them?”

“Screw him. He’ll never know.”

“I don’t want your folks mad at me.”

“For Christ’s sake, Colin, how are they ever going to find out?”

“Is this the secret?”

Roy had started to turn away. Now he looked back. “What secret?”

“You’ve got one. You’re almost ready to explode with it.”

“How do you know?”

“I can see ... the way you act. You’ve been testing me to see if you can trust me with a secret.”

Roy shook his head. “You’re pretty smart.”

Colin shrugged, embarrassed.

“No, you really are. You’ve just about been reading my mind.”

“So you
have
been testing me.”

“Yeah.”

“That dumb stuff about the cat—”

“—was true.”

“Oh sure.”

“Better believe it.”

“You’re still testing me.”

“Maybe.”

“So there
is
a secret?”

“A big one.”

“The trains?”

“Nah. That’s just a tiny part of it.”

“So what’s the rest of it?”

Roy grinned.

Something in that grin, something strange in those bright blue eyes made Colin want to step back from the other boy. But he didn’t flinch.

“I’ll tell you all about it,” Roy said. “But only when I’m ready.”

“When will that be?”

“Soon.”

“You can trust me.”

“Only when I’m ready. Now come on. You’ll like the trains.”

Colin followed him across the kitchen and through a white door. Beyond, there were two short steps and then the garage—and the model railroad.

“Isn’t it a popper?”

“Where’s your dad park the car?”

“Always in the driveway. No room in here.”

“When did he get all this stuff?”

“Started collecting when he was a kid,” Roy said. “He added to it every year. It’s worth more than fifteen thousand dollars.”

“Fifteen thousand! Who’d pay that much money for a bunch of toy trains?”

“People who should have lived in better times.”

Colin blinked. “Huh?”

“That’s what my old man says. He says people who like model railroads are people who were meant to live in a better, cleaner, nicer, more organized world than the one we’ve got today.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ll be damned if I know. But that’s what he says. He can ramble on for an hour about how much better the world was back when there were trains but not airplanes. He can bore your ass off.”

The train set was on a waist-high platform that nearly filled the three-car garage. On three sides there was just enough room to walk. On the fourth side, which featured the master-control console, there were two stools, a narrow workbench, and a tool cabinet.

A brilliantly conceived, incredibly detailed miniature world had been constructed upon that platform. There were mountains and valleys, streams and rivers and lakes, meadows dotted with minuscule wildflowers, forests where timid deer peered out of the shadows between the trees, picture-postcard villages, farms, outposts, realistic little people engaged in a hundred chores, scale-model cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, bicycles, neat houses with picket fences, four exquisitely rendered train stations—one Victorian-style, one Swiss, one Italian, one Spanish—and shops and churches and schools. Narrow-gauge railroad tracks ran everywhere—alongside the rivers, through the towns, across the valleys, around the sides of the mountains, across trestles and draw-bridges, into and out of the stations, up and down and back and forth in graceful loops and straightaways and sharp turns and horseshoes and switchbacks.