What Came From the Stars (7 page)

Tommy ran through the long and deep puddle again—once your sneakers are wet, it doesn’t much matter if they get wet again—and James Sullivan cut back so that Tommy had to cross the stupid puddle one more time, and when James Sullivan reached the end of the parking lot, he held up the authentic Tom Brady-signed football as if someone should hand him a trophy. “Touchdown!” he cried. “Touchdown with no time left. Sullivan fakes Pepper out of his wet socks and he wins the game! The fans go wild!”

Tommy went and picked up his backpack. “Real wild,” he said. He clapped once.

Inside, the class bell rang.

“Kind of wild,” James Sullivan said, and headed back.

But he stopped at the long and deep puddle.

“Hey,” he said.

Tommy turned around.

“Look at this,” said James.

Tommy went back. He looked down into the long and deep puddle.

In the still water, a sunny beach shimmered. Tommy could see the bright light heating everything up. Colored umbrellas propped in the sand. People sleeping beside radios and picnic baskets. A woman spreading suntan lotion on her legs. Two boys running down to the waves. And just coming up from the water was—Tommy looked closer—was a kid who looked like him. Wearing his Ace Robotroid bathing suit. Holding his Ace Robotroid sand pail and shovel. Quickly Tommy looked for the familiar striped umbrella. It was there, driven into the sand crookedly, and beneath it were Patty and his father and...

“That’s wild,” said James Sullivan. “It’s like colors moving in there.”

Tommy bent closer.

His mother?

His mother! And she saw him running, his pail full of seawater and starfish. She was getting up. He remembered this. She was going to come down to look at the starfish.

He remembered this!

She came out from under the shade of the umbrella.

And that was when the Southwest Side bus turned the corner of William Bradford Elementary and began to cross the parking lot, faster than usual because it was a little late.

James Sullivan looked at the bus. “Hey, Pepper,” he said.

The bus driver honked.

“Pepper,” said James Sullivan.

The bus driver honked again. Twice. Then again.

James Sullivan grabbed Tommy Pepper’s arm.

“Just a second,” Tommy said. His mother had almost reached him.

The bus honked again.

Tommy started to kneel down toward the puddle.

He didn’t hear what James Sullivan heard: the engine shuddering and the brakes shrieking and the tires sliding against the asphalt. He didn’t hear Alice Winslow and Patrick Belknap and even Mr. Burroughs yelling from the sixth grade windows. And he didn’t see James Sullivan dropping his authentic Tom Brady-signed football.

But he felt James Sullivan jerk him up and away from the puddle.

The bus rolled past, sloshing and spilling the water across the parking lot, and squishing James Sullivan’s authentic Tom Brady-signed football with its front right tire and throwing it under the rear left tire and ripping open almost all the seams, and missing Tommy Pepper’s butt by not much.

When Tommy looked back, the puddle was all gone.

“Are you crazy?” hollered James. “Did you want to get run over?”

It was all gone.

“Didn’t you see that bus?” yelled James Sullivan.

Everything was gone.

James Sullivan bent down to pick up the corpse of his Tom Brady-signed football, but Tommy walked over to the sixth grade door and went inside. He hung his jacket in his locker, put his books up, and went into Mr. Burroughs’s classroom, where everyone turned to look at him.

He sat down at his desk.

“Tommy?” said Alice Winslow. “Oh my goodness. Tommy?”

He put his head down on his hands. He closed his eyes.

He didn’t even see James Sullivan come inside.

It was the kind of day when you hope, you really, really, really hope the teacher puts on a long movie. It doesn’t matter what the movie is. As long as it takes up most of the morning and most of the afternoon, it will do.

But it was the kind of day when Mr. Burroughs wanted to study the ancient Indo-European culture that gave rise to all modern languages, because it was over-your-head exciting.
“Polis,”
he said.
“Polis
is the word for ‘city’ in ancient Indo-European. Can you think of how the word
polis
has survived into our own language today?”

No one said anything.

Tommy stared at the posters of Fenway Park over the whiteboard.

“Has anyone ever been to Indiana and driven through its central city, Indiana...” He drew out the
a
for a long time.

No one said anything.

Tommy stared at the posters of Ted Williams and Tony Conigliaro and Carlton Fisk between the windows.

“Indiana
polis?
Or has anyone even flown to the city next to St. Paul? Minnea
polis
?”

Tommy stared at the the baseball in the glass case on Mr. Burroughs’s desk—signed by Carl Yastrzemski.

“Tommy, where does Superman live?”

Tommy turned his head.

“Where does Superman live?” said Mr. Burroughs.

“The North Pole. But
pole
isn’t the same word as
polis.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Mr. Burroughs.

“Does
pole
come from
polis?”
said James Sullivan.

“No, it doesn’t. At least, I think it doesn’t,” said Mr. Burroughs.

“So what does it matter where Superman lives?” said Alice Winslow.

“He lives in Metro
polis
,” said Mr. Burroughs.

“I thought it was the South Pole,” said Patrick Belknap.

“No,” said Mr. Burroughs.

“Wasn’t it Krypton?” said Jeremy Hereford.

Mr. Burroughs ran his fingers through his hair.

Tommy bet he wished he were showing a long movie.

It was the kind of day when the cafeteria served Tuna Delight. With white cheese. And two asparagus spears. And a brownie baked sometime during the ancient Indo-European period, in some polis very far away.

It was the kind of day when low clouds came in over Plymouth Harbor and shrouded the school with a mist that deepened until it began to pour, so instead of lunch recess, everyone stayed inside and read—except for James Sullivan, who stood by the windows and stared at the rain, holding the carcass of his authentic Tom Brady-signed football.

It was the kind of day when in Mrs. Low’s Music Appreciation class, Mrs. Low played the Bach piece, the actual Johann Sebastian Bach piece, that Tommy used to practice. She played it much better than he did, and it was still awful. When Mrs. Low asked him why he had his hands over his ears, he told her that he had a headache—even though it was because the music was so rucca—and she asked Tommy if she should send him to the nurse, and he said no. Then she asked him if she should send him to Mr. Zwerger’s office, and he said no. Then she asked him to take his hands away from his ears, and he did.

It was that kind of rucca day.

When Tommy picked Patty up at the first grade door, he could tell right away it had been that kind of rucca day for her, too. She dragged her backpack behind her and she didn’t even try to keep her hair brushed from her face. She just let it fall across her eyes. She hardly smiled when she saw him.

“I know,” he said, and squeezed her hand.

She squeezed back—a little.

“Do you want to go back home on the bus or along the beach?”

She looked up at him.

“The beach it is, then,” he said.

Another squeeze.

So together they walked down along Water Street again, past Plymouth Rock and toward the shore. The rain had stopped and a cool breeze came off the water and blew at Patty’s hair, sometimes so hard that she had to close her eyes against it. But Tommy barely felt it. He looked down at the beach and he could see it all: the sunlight, the striped umbrella, the Ace Robotroid pail, the shovel, his father, and right there—right there—his mother getting up. The sun was warm. Everything illil.

Patty tugged at his arm.

“Patty,” he said, “do you remember the last time we were...”

And immediately, her eyes filled with tears. Immediately. Just like that.

What an idiot he was. What an idiot! He squeezed her hand again, and together they clambered onto the rocks leading to the seawall. They climbed all the way out, the low waves murmuring against the stones, and they tried skipping the clamshells that the seagulls had dropped at the seawall’s end. Then back to the beach, and Tommy stood while Patty bent at the edge of the water, picking up white stones, dropping them, picking up more, and every so often putting one in her pocket to keep.

Tommy took off his backpack, put it on the sand, and sat down on top of it. He started to finger the chain through his shirt. It warmed.

How bright and sunny it had been in the puddle. He could see himself in that stupid Ace Robotroid bathing suit. Coming up from the water. Plopping down in the hot sand beside the striped umbrella. Starting to build a sand sculpture. An octopus. Or a lobster. Or...

Tommy reached toward the damp sand.

He started to trace out a lobster.

Only it wasn’t a lobster.

More like a squid.

But not a squid.

He knelt down on the sand to get the thing right.

Whatever it was, it had very long legs with knees that came too low. The feet were large and ... webbed. Tommy sat back to look at it. Webbed was right. The chest was thin and long, but its arms were huge. Its hands hung down to its low knees, so in battle, it would be able to swing wildly. Tommy could imagine the whistling of a club, or a sword, or something worse.

Its head was round and large, but then again ... Tommy rubbed away the sand. Not round. More jagged. Sort of random. Like its long mouth. Other than the mouth—Tommy was very sure of this—it had no face.

He finished outlining ... whatever it was, and started to pile the damp sand into the outline to make the body. He sculpted the strange long legs, the thin chest, the arms. He added a hooked weapon in its hand—a trunc. Of course a trunc. Then he built up the jagged head and left the face blank except for the terrible long mouth.

He stepped back and looked around until he found a scrap of wood. With that, he scalloped out the armor that covered the thing’s body. When he got to the head, he added more sand from the shoulders up and shaped the tall, sharp helmet it wore.

Then Tommy knelt and added the halin that it would wear at its belt. He made the handle look like bone. The blade at the end of the halin had the same hook as the trunc.

Tommy stepped back again and looked. It seemed so...

An O’Mondim. It was an O’Mondim! How could he not have known this from the moment he started? An O’Mondim!

From over the water, the wind struck up and began to push the waves inland more fiercely than they had come in all day. Gray clouds began to scud above him. Sand blew against his face.

An O’Mondim.

Tommy stared at it. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.

An O’Mondim.

He should destroy it. He should destroy it before the tide reached it.

He looked out toward Patty. Her jacket pockets were bulging and she was weighing two very large white stones in her hands, probably trying to decide which one she was going to try to fit in.

Tommy looked down at the O’Mondim again.

He fingered the chain.

Something was not right. There was more that he should do.

The tide began to come up. A wave almost reached the O’Mondim.

Tommy knelt down by the O’Mondim’s head. He wiped the sand helmet away and reshaped the face quickly. Then he reached under his shirt and took off the warm chain and pressed it across the creature’s forehead—deep, so that when he pulled back his hand, the chain’s line was clear and sharp. He looked down at what he had done.

Another wave came, and this one reached the O’Mondim. It did not wash away the sand.

Tommy put the chain back on over his head. Hot against his skin.

Suddenly, the beach was very, very still. The traffic from Water Street stopped, the seagulls lighted, the waves rolled dead.

And Tommy heard a moan.

It was low, quiet. He couldn’t be sure he had heard it at all.

Then another moan.

This one he was sure of.

He had heard the O’Mondim.

Tommy stood.

A sudden wind came up. Tommy felt it hard against him, pushing him away.

With a jerk, Tommy Pepper kicked at the O’Mondim’s right hand, obliterating it.

And the sound of everything started again—the traffic, the seagulls, the water. He listened. He couldn’t hear anything like a moan.

He stepped back from the O’Mondim, and after a moment, he called to Patty. She came running over—sort of. She was pretty loaded down with white stones, including the two large ones that she couldn’t decide between so both overflowed her jacket pockets. They moved up to the top of the beach and Tommy helped her choose the white stones she’d bring back—“Just three this time.” Then they climbed the steps to Water Street, Tommy hurrying her. At the top, he looked back once more at the sand O’Mondim. The waves had reached its long legs, but when the water pulled away, it still didn’t take any sand with it.

They hurried back through town and then along the gravel path toward home, which, when they got there, was surrounded by a new sea of yellow flags marking out foundations and roads and parking lots. There must have been hundreds of them. Thousands.

“You go on in, Patty,” said Tommy.

She looked quietly at him.

“It’s all right. Dad will want to see your new stones. I’ll be up.”

She pulled the stones out of her pockets, but she climbed the railroad-tie steps slowly.

Tommy went down to the shore, stepping around the yellow flags as if they were snakes with reared heads—and it wasn’t easy, since there were so many. He looked far out to a horizon that was misty.

The sunlight, the striped umbrella, the sand pail. His father. His mother. Patty singing—he’d forgotten this!—Patty singing one of her songs that went on and on and on and that he would give anything, anything, anything to hear her sing again.