Flyers (9781481414449) (16 page)

I thought about this. The idea of Judgment Day had always fascinated me. I'd read a couple of different books by people who claimed to have died and
come back to life, and they both said the same thing—that Judgment Day actually consists of
you
judging yourself. You sit there and watch your life play out before you, and you see not only all the things you've done, but how those things have affected others. Supposedly the pain that comes from this can be excruciating, because you see your actions with total clarity, stripped of all the rationalizations you'd wrapped them up in during your life. I couldn't help but think that if this were true, maybe Pop was getting a head start on the rest of us. He'd always been hard on himself.

“You're a good person, Pop,” I said. “The best I know.”

Pop smiled sadly. “That generous statement is undoubtedly more of a testament to your goodness than mine, Gabriel. But right now I should be more concerned with John than the state of my own pitiful soul. This whole business has already taken quite a toll on him. As I say, it probably helped bring on his stroke, and I'm afraid it's affecting his mind as well. I finally realized today what he's been trying to tell me all week. He actually thinks he saw his son on the night of his stroke.”

“The guy who was killed in the car accident?”

Pop nodded. “I wish you could have known him. He was as kind and sweet and gentle as anyone you could ever meet. And
talented?
He could fix anything on wheels. Oh, how he loved cars—the faster, the better. It couldn't be fast enough to suit him. He'd take an old junk heap and fiddle with it till that thing could practically fly.” Pop finally lit his pipe, puffed on it a few times, and sat there in a cloud of smoke, remembering. “Ironically, it was his love of fast cars that turned out to
be his undoing. That was an awful night, that was. I'll never forget it. And even though the years have come and gone, John never really got over Andy's death.”

I sat up straighter. So that's who Andy was. Andy
Lindstrom.
He was the boy in the picture I'd been studying the day we cleaned Mr. Lindstrom's house.

Pop had enough on his mind, but I had a question that just couldn't wait any longer. “Pop,” I said, “were you over at Mr. Lindstrom's house within the last few days?”

Pop nodded. “Today. I had to pick up a few papers. Why?”

“Did you go upstairs?

He shook his head. “I'm afraid I didn't make it that far. I told John what a splendid cleaning job you did on the downstairs though. Don't tell me you're tackling the upstairs now too.”

I shook my head. “It'd be nice, though—for when he comes home.”

“It would indeed,” Pop said. “It would indeed.”

Actually I wasn't thinking much about cleaning at that moment. I was thinking how I'd be helping Jeremy stack some hay the next day, and how after we were done I'd talk him into going with me to see what the deal was at Mr. Lindstrom's house. We'd do it together, and we'd do it in the daylight. And I wouldn't have to worry Pop about the whole thing.

“How'd the date
go?” I asked Jeremy before I even got off my bike. “I hear Amy's mom is very nice.”

“It was better than the date
you
had,” Jeremy answered. I had to admit, he was getting better at this all the time.

The main haymow was already filled, and we started in on one of the old dilapidated barns off to the side. This particular barn had plenty of boards missing from its sides, not to mention an entire open section facing east, so it wasn't as stifling as it had been in the main haymow. It was hot enough, but nothing compared to before. Our main problem this time was entirely different. It seems that by setting up shop there, we were challenging the territorial rights of a group of not-so-hospitable bumblebees. I never did find out where their nest was located, but they'd fly in through the open east section, buzz around our heads a few times, and then fly out again. I'm not crazy about bees, but I've never had any major problems with them. Jeremy, on the other hand, had a long history of disputes with every kind of bee you could imagine. The trouble was, Jeremy couldn't just let a bee fly by. If there was one within swatting range, he seemed to feel it was his civic duty to swat at it. I don't think this was a decision on his part, but more like some kind of a spastic reflex. Whatever the reason, the bees did not appreciate the attention. Before we'd finished stacking the first load, Jeremy had been stung twice.

“Just
ignore
them,” I advised after the first time.

“Shut up,” he advised back, trying to twist around
to check on the welt that was forming on his back.

“Have it your way,” I told him. “Just make sure you let them know I'm not with you.”

“Shut up.”

By the middle of the second load I was pretty much on my own as far as stacking hay went. Jeremy's skirmishes with the bees had escalated to an all-out war, and he was losing ground fast. At one point, while he was swatting at the enemy in front of him, a battalion circled behind him and started dive-bombing on his bare back. Before I knew it, Jeremy was doing some diving of his own—off the hay we'd (I'd) stacked and down onto the dirt floor. He rolled to his feet and shot out the door, with the bees in hot pursuit. It was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen, and I had to sit down, I was laughing so hard. I didn't get to stay seated long though. With Jeremy gone, a few of the leftover bees fixed their attention on me, proving—since
I
hadn't done anything to them—that even bees can be bigots, and I ended up diving in the dirt and retreating the same way Jeremy had.

Even as I was galloping across the yard, I could hear Jeremy's father's happy guffaws from the wagon. He was still chuckling five minutes later when Jeremy and I returned, our backs covered in dabs of aloe vera lotion his mother had supplied.

“You boys ready to go back to work?” he said as we flopped to the ground in front of the wagon.

Jeremy looked up at him as if he'd lost his mind. There's bees in there,” he said, pointing angrily at the old barn.

“You're gonna let a few bees call the shots?” Mr. Wulfson said, pretending to be totally perplexed at such a state of affairs. He motioned for us to follow him.

Jeremy and I looked at each other and shrugged. We
then followed him into the barn, the two of us practically tiptoeing, and keeping a sharp eye out for bees. Mr. Wulfson stopped just inside the barn and turned back toward the opening. He had his hand on the brim of his hat as if he were about to tip it to a lady, but of course that wasn't what he had in mind. The first bumblebee that sailed through the opening was snapped out of the air with a flick of his wrist. The bee fell to the dirt, and the cap returned to Mr. Wulfson's head. He repeated this simple motion many more times in the next few minutes, laughing after each swat and seeming to get a big kick out of the whole thing. Jeremy and I watched in awe as a little pile of bees started forming around his feet.

“We can't be lettin' a few bees dictate policy, now, can we, boys?” he said happily. “Here, Jem”—that's what he called Jeremy—“you keep this cap on your head and if one of those fellas gets too close, you snap him into a better world.” He flicked the hat once more to demonstrate.

Jeremy scowled at the cap for a few seconds and then put it on his head. Mr. Wulfson returned to the wagon, turned on the elevator, and started loading hay onto it again. A few minutes later I became aware of a commotion going on behind me and turned to see what it was. Jeremy had his father's hat in his hand and was going A-l nutso, dancing around like somebody possessed and swatting in every direction for all he was worth. I couldn't even see any bees, but that may have been because I was laughing too hard. Two minutes later we both dove out of there and onto the dirt again.

•   •   •

After lunch Jeremy and I got on our bikes and headed out to Mr. Lindstrom's house. Jeremy was still in kind of a foul mood, even though I'd been extremely nice to
him, courteously thanking him a number of times for the free entertainment, and forgiving him for the welts on my back, which, I was quick to explain, were all his fault and still hurt more than you might think—aloe vera lotion or not.

“Ooouuuu, I'm so scared,” Jeremy mocked after we'd dropped our bikes in the yard and he caught me staring up at the house. “There's a ghost in there that pulls shades down. Ooouuu.”

“Too bad you didn't bring your father's hat with you,” I said. “Then you could swat it.”

“Shut up,” he told me.

We climbed onto the porch. As I stuck my key in the door, I started feeling a little silly about how I'd bolted away from there the night before. The place didn't seem nearly so creepy now. Of course, it's hard to work up too much fear when you have somebody like Jeremy right on your heels going “Oooouuuu, I'm so scared” every two minutes.

I took a quick peek into the living room, which still looked pretty good, except for a little film of dust that had already started to settle over everything, and then headed for the staircase. I stopped at the top and thought for a second, trying to decide which room I'd seen the light in. Jeremy made another ghost noise.

“You know, Jeremy, you actually make a better ghost than you do a person.”

“Shut up,” he said in his person voice.

There was only one door open in the upstairs hallway, and it was on the wrong side of the house. Any windows from that room would face the backyard, not the front. Still, since that was the door that was open, we walked over to take a look.

Even from the doorway it was obvious that this was
Mr. Lindstrom's room. To say it had a lived-in look would be a gross understatement. The whole room was like an industrial-sized hamper. Dirty clothes were strewn everywhere, the bed gave new meaning to the word “unmade,” and the smell was . . . well . . . almost as bad as it had been in the kitchen. We didn't bother going in to investigate any further.

“Let's find the room that had the light on,” I said.

“Let's find a room that doesn't stink,” Jeremy added.

We headed across the hall. It felt strange being up there, and I still had the feeling that we were violating privacy—not just Mr. Lindstrom's but the whole family's, even though they were all long gone.

“This could be the one,” I said with my hand on the knob to the first door right of the staircase.

“Then open it, scrub.”

I did. Right away I knew it was a girl's room, so it must have been Rachel's, the daughter who'd left home and was now suing her father. Except for the dust and cobwebs, it was actually cleaner than Mr. Lindstrom's. There were still some things on the walls—a picture of John Travolta dancing in
Saturday Night Fever,
another picture of the Bee Gees, and next to that, a picture of the
Mod Squad,
which couldn't have looked more
un-mod
if it'd been Julius Caesar and the gang.

“You could get polyester poisoning in here,” I said.

“Huh?” Jeremy gave me his what-are-you-babbling-about look.

“The pictures,” I explained. “All the guys in the pictures are wearing polyester.”

“What do you care?” Jeremy said.

I walked into the room, starting to get into the whole idea of snooping. All around the bed and in front of the desk were posters of beautiful scenes from
nature—really obvious things like sunsets and mountain streams—each one ruined by having a corny message plastered across it about love and peace and happiness. There was one poster of a butterfly that said something about love being like a butterfly—hold on to it too hard and it'll die, but let it go and it'll return to you on its own.

Jeremy walked over and scowled at that one. “If you let it go, why wouldn't it just fly away for good?” he said in that rational way of his that never failed to crack me up.

“Maybe you're only supposed to do it with a trained butterfly,” I told him.

Jeremy didn't say anything but his look said “shut up” for him. As he wandered back into the hall, he was still shaking his head—maybe about the poster or maybe about my trained-butterfly joke. I started out after him and then, remembering what I was doing there, checked the shade on the window (which was up) and the lights (which were off).

The next room down the hall was definitely a boy's room. It had to be Andy's. There were pictures of hopped-up Camaros and Mustangs as well as a few Ferraris and Lamborghinis hanging on the walls. It seemed kind of funny—the kid who Pop said was sweet and gentle had things like race cars on his walls, and the one who was suing her own father and wouldn't even visit him after his stroke had posters about love and peace on hers. Or maybe not so funny; maybe the idea is you hang up things that you
wish
you had.

Anyway, the predominant theme in Andy's room was definitely cars, and on one dresser there were a few pictures of him standing next to different cars he'd probably owned—the first a Mustang, a seventy-something one, which is when they were seriously ugly, and the next
a Camaro that didn't look half bad. Both of them had wide tires in the back with skinnier ones in front and both had jacked-up rear ends. On his desk, in an eight-by-ten frame, was the school picture I'd seen downstairs and figured was his senior picture. He was looking out on the world with a shy smile, and I thought again that it was probably not long after this was taken that he was killed. Above the desk, tacked onto a bulletin board, was another picture that caught my eye. It was of a kid in a pair of cutoffs standing in front of some kind of river or lake. I pulled the picture down and looked at it closer. I knew it was Andy even before I read the back, which said “Andy at Rexleigh Bridge” in handwriting that was probably his mother's. I turned the picture over and studied it some more. You couldn't see the bridge, but behind the kid you could see people splashing around in the water and then some tree branches hanging down off to the side.