Ask the Dark (9 page)

Why so? I said.

’Cause the money, he said.

’Cause I ain’t told you. At the bottom of that flyer, under Jimmy Brest’s face and the day he was took and what he was wearing and how old he was, there was wrote something else.

ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD
.

Findin’ him, findin’ him alive, Marvin said, that’s
luck.
But gettin’ the money, too, that’s
double
luck. That’s like a lotto ticket that wins twice, and that shit don’t happen. Fact is, they shouldn’t’ve put up the money, ’cause ain’t nobody gonna ever get it, he said.

Yeah, you prob’ly right, I said.

’Cept maybe the grave digger, he said, and we went driving on.

Part Two

Chapter Fourteen

Here’s how I had it.

Maybe the chip bag was in that car. Say it was.

And maybe it was the same I’d seen Brest had when he chased me.

So what?

Could’f come from anywheres. ’Cause it just a chip bag, don’t mean nothing.

’Cept to me it did, and here’s what. Meant maybe that I saw Skugger in that car, and he was high, smoking dope all day with the man driving. And he tells about Brest wanting to find me and then flips me the bird, Skugger does. I cuss him good for that, so he calls Brest on his cell phone maybe, and Brest finds me quick and chases my ass. And he got them chips with’m, munching on the goddamn things as he’s running along after me. I get away, but Brest, he calls Skugger back, and Skugger comes to give’m a ride. Then they both go off to party somewheres with the man, and Brest leaves them chips he was eating in the car, and Skugger leaves his hat.

Damn. Getting all that straight in my mind almost gave me a headache. But I was thinking, maybe this was the
last
time anybody seen’m, seen Jimmy Brest, I mean. Course I couldn’t prove nothing, and what was there to prove? Can you ’magine me walking in the police station holding some chip bag and saying it belonged to Jimmy Brest? But along with the boxes and the mittens and the car and the man, it all might add up if I was sure it was the same bag I’d seen Brest holding when he chased me.

So just to be sure, I had to see that car again.

When Marvin dropped me off it was still afternoon and instead of going home I went to the dark house. I walked past looking at it for just a second, ’cause I didn’t know if anybody was inside and I be damned to let’m catch me spyin’. But there weren’t no sign of anybody, and I was thinking of sneaking around back to see if the car was there, but tell the truth I was a little worried to do it by daylight.

Then I hear a noise comin’ up the street, noise goes,
swap!
Then a minute passes and you hear another
swap!
I turn around fast and what I see is my boy Sam Tate coming up the middle of the street, chucking his papers at houses both sides.

When he comes by I say, Hey, Sam, c’mere a minute, I gotta ask you something.

Hi, Billy, he says, and he comes on over.

Now Sam Tate, he’s my friend. Got long hair, blond like me just longer, and he’s about my size, which ain’t tall, but he got a face which I swear looks like a church angel, it’s so straight and regular and not like mine which is all stubby and beat. He sort’f likes me. He ain’t like the average boy around here, I mean all snooty. First, his daddy’s crazy. Yells at him all the time, a sort of yelling that drove Sam’s mother away and his brother and sister, too, until now it’s just Sam in the house with his daddy climbing the walls from all those bad memories he got, ’cause that’s what I s’pose Sam’s daddy has, bad memories, I mean.

I heard him yelling. Won’t deny it. Used to hide in the bushes out front of the house just to hear. And he could
yell,
believe me. Whole neighborhood knows. It’s so fuckin’ loud is why. Sort of like he got a terror in him. But I won’t say what it’s all about, the yelling, I mean. That’s nosy. You go ask Sam Tate if you really wanna know.

Funny thing is I never heard
Sam
yell. In the house I heard him screaming and crying, but never outside. Outside he’s calm as could be, and quiet and real inside himself, and don’t hardly talk at all. Some boys think that’s funny and it do make me smile, until I think how Sam feels inside.

You see, me, I got scars on my face. But this Sam Tate, this friend of mine? All his scars are on his heart.

Still, he really easy to fool, and I played tricks on’m plenty of times, can’t help it. You just listen to this.

Sam, I said, duck on down! Come inside here.

I was acting really sneaky and I’d figured he’d go for that, so what I did was duck down’n he did too and followed me inside a hedge about four/five foot, where we sat in a clear space where nobody could see us, even walking right by.

What is it? Sam said, sitting there picking prickles off his shirt.

I waited a second before I talked, looking up through the bush brambles at the house now again like I was waiting for something to happen, looking at a front window that didn’t have no cover inside and let on to an empty room. Then I looked at Sam.

You know that boy Skugger, right?

Yeah, Sam said.

Know him good?

We don’t hang out like we used to. He does different stuff now, Sam said.

I knew that meant they weren’t good friends ’cause he weren’t ole Skugger’s drug buddy.

But you still see’m, right?

Yeah, now and then. What’s up?

I want you to do something for me. Skugger’s been driving around in this blue car, you seen it?

Oh yeah. Plenty of times, he said.

Do me a favor, next time you see Skugger, ask him who owns that car, will ya?

I know who it is already, Billy, Sam said. It’s the guy who sells him drugs.

So I was right about that,
I’m thinking.

I say, You know his name?

I never met him, Sam said.

Try, I say. Try’n meet’m. He won’t meet me ’cause Skugger don’t like me. But if you do it I’ll have something for you. Something good.

What?

Don’t know yet, but
something,
I say.

Sam looks sad a minute. You aren’t doing drugs, are you, Billy? Because if that’s what it is, I don’t want any.

No way! I says. Never done’m! Ain’t gonna sell’m, neither, that ain’t why I’m asking. I just want to know what his name is, if you can manage it.

All right, Sam said. When I see Skugger I’ll ask him.

Knowing Sam like I do and how he wants boys to like’m, I hold up a minute. I know he might just walk right on up to Skugger and say, Hey, Skugger, who’s that man you hanging with, Billy Zeets wants to know. So I take Sam’s arm and look at’m tight. Just do it on the sly, I said. Don’t go saying it’s me that’s askin’, you hear? And if you can, try’n find out where he lives, will ya? It ain’t for nothing bad, I promise you. Will you help me?

Sam said yeah, he’d try. Then he got up out the bushes. I’ve got to finish my route, he told me. Curfew’s coming.

Thanks, buddy, I said, and I squeezed his arm again and he smiled.

He went up the street and I saw him tossing papers all going
swap, swap,
and then he walked down to the bottom of the hill and it was like them trees rose over his head’n swallowed him.

I turned back around, real sudden. Watchin’ Sam walk off, something had caught me out the corner of my eye. So one last time I looked up at the house.

A man stood at that window, the man from the car. I seen him just a second, before he pulled down that tarp and disappeared.

I stood a minute, staring, feeling cold all over. Then I started on home, walking down the middle of the street, faster than usual. Every few feet I looked behind myself, though that didn’t slow my walking.

And once or twice . . .

I started runnin’.

I was prob’ly just seeing things, ’cause’f shadows on the street.

But the feeling I had was that this man I wanted to find was now trying to find
me.

Chapter Fifteen

I got home all sweaty, and all I done was go upstairs and rest until dark. I ain’t one for getting scared, I guess you know that. But this man I seen was bugging me out. Fact is, Sam and me in the bushes couldn’t be seen from the street, but anybody in the house could’f looked right down and seen us fine, and maybe even heard a word or two. So I was worried, and knew damn well somebody followed me partways home, ’cause I got a sense for that.

Something weird was going on. I mean, them mittens struck me as weird and that blue car struck me as weird and so did the chip bag. I felt so damn confused. It was like when you in class and just staring at your desk and not listening and then all a sudden the nun prods you and asks you for the answer, asks just because you ain’t been listening, and you get all startled and try to remember, and maybe if you had a spare hour you
would
remember, remember what you sort’f heard but didn’t pay attention to, ’cause you heard it just the same. But you never do get that hour and so you hear everybody say you ain’t nothing but a dummy and laughs all round the class.

Them things like the mittens and the boxes and the chip bag, they was like them answers you sort’f heard but can’t remember, and you gotta give’m time to come up.

So what I done was lay still, waiting for them answers.

But I didn’t get no time ’cause right then I heard a sound from out the hall, a sort of mewling like a cat’ll make. And I sat up ’cause I knew it was Leezie crying outside my door.

I looked over. Made me miserable to hear her. Weren’t the first time, neither. Going past’r door at night I’d heard her cry plenty’f times, ’specially nights since that mortgage letter come. Most days she was angry and bossy, and really sort’f pickin’ on me ’cause she was so damn antsy. She spent most’f her nights out, but the nights she stayed home she was always shut up in her room all alone. And she never did try’n get a job or nothing. Had me thinkin’ she was too sad to get busy, ’cause all our troubles just broke her down.

Leezie? I say. You out there?

My room was dark now, and Leezie come in. First she opened the door and just said, Billy? and I said, Yar? because I could hear already she was crying again. She was standing there at the door with just the hall light behind her. I could only see her outline, rest of her was dark, and I could even see her hair, which was hanging loose and stringy, which was odd because Leezie, she’s a real pretty girl and likes to take care of herself, but there you go.

I reached out and she said, Leave the light off, and I said, Sure. Then she comes over to me and sits and I edge over. I could see she was holding something in her hand. Looked like an ink pen. But it was too dark to tell, ’cause she’d shut the door behind herself coming in.

Why you crying, Leezie? I said.

She didn’t say nothing and the window was open, little glow of the community center lights out there through the trees, and a cool breeze coming, ’cause the hot day had settled down.

Do you love me, Billy? she said.

Hell yeah, I said.

Don’t curse, she said.

Scuze my language, I said. But yeah, I love you lots.

Well I love you too, Billy, she said. Or she tried to say it, getting past the choke in’r voice. I know I ain’t helped you none with making any money, she says. I’m just so scared, Billy. And I been really mean to you this summer. I’m sorry.

Ain’t even noticed, I say.

Then she says, Billy?

Uh-huh?

Look at this, she said. She meant the thing she was holdin’ in’r hand, ink-pen thing. She held it up.

I can’t see it, I said, and I reached aside. Lemme turn—

Leave it off! she said.

Okay, I said.

Just look at it, she said.

I did. I leaned over, right over her lap. She didn’t smell like nothing. I mean she smelled like herself. I mean she didn’t have no perfume on, and was just good ole Leezie again. Thought I’d mention that.

I looked. Looked hard. Couldn’t see a goddamn thing.

Keep looking, she said.

I did. And there it was. In that ink-pen-shaped thing she held, cigar-shaped thing, there it was.

Little plus sign.

Little glow-in-the-dark plus sign, that you saw better when you weren’t looking straight at it but a little off to the side.

It’s a plus sign, I said. Ain’t it?

She tried to say something but all she did was cry and breathe fast and grab at me. Then she tried again and still couldn’t.

You right now are prob’ly looking at me thinkin’ I’m dumb because of course everybody knows what the plus sign means. But at that moment I didn’t
want
to know and didn’t care if I
did
know. I figured what with everything else going on I just weren’t
interested
in knowing.

Sure, I see it, I said. What it mean?

It means I’m having a baby, she said. She was calm all a sudden.

Where’d you get this doohickey? How’s it work?

Bought it at Shatze’s, she said. I had to pee on it.

Yeah? I said. What if I pee on it? That gonna make the minus sign show up?

Billy!
she said.

Okay, I said, thinking it’s prob’ly best not to joke with’r.

What you gonna do about it? I said.

She trembled. I don’t
know!
I’m going to have to leave school! Oh Lord, what would Mommy say? Everyone will know!

You can’t worry about that, Leezie, I said. And Mommy, well, you never was no trouble for’r like I was. She’d prob’ly just say she loves you. I mean, once she was done bein’ mad atchu.

She was sniffin’ then, but at that last I said she laughed a little.

Then I waited a minute and said, You gonna go ’head with it?

She knew what I meant. Because her face flashed at me and even through the dark I could see the look on it, and she said,
Yes yes yes!
like she’d scratch me if I asked again.

Up till now she’d seemed lost, Leezie had. But right then I felt I had her back again and she’d be okay. ’Cause that’s her way, like I told you, and just how she gets when there’s something she wants.