Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy (14 page)

“Journalist,” I corrected. “Well, me, anyway. But, Dad, we went back because the first time we saw a scary shoe in the woods, and I had a bunch of hallucinations and I probably don't have a brain tumor, since I'm not dead yet, and Angel found a barrette like Mom's.”

My hand went to my mouth on reflex, because I hadn't meant to say that much that fast, and the barrette thing . . .

Dad sat up slowly.

I kept my hand on my mouth and watched him, trying not to freak out.

He sighed and stretched, and the sheet fell away from his white T-shirt. It had a stain on the chest, right where a blop of chocolate ice cream might have fallen. When he looked at me, his right cheek was red and his brown eyes seemed bleary and exhausted.

He squinted at me, and I wasn't sure what he was seeing.

“Brain tumor,” he mumbled. “And a scary shoe? That would be the scary shoe you e-mailed the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation about? The one you told them might belong to Captain Armstrong?”

My eyebrows lifted. “I sent them a picture.”

“They called me at work today.”

“Oh.” I sat on the edge of the bed next to him.

“They appreciate your efforts to be a good citizen, but they'd rather you not e-mail them anymore without asking me first.”

“Okay.”

“And, Footer, you realize that if the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation had taken your e-mail seriously, you could have made life very difficult for Captain Armstrong.” Dad had his way, way serious face on, and it made me squirm. “He could have been investigated. Embarrassed. Some people in town already aren't too comfortable with him, due to his problems from the war.”

Guilt poked directly at my brain, and when I said, “I'm sorry,” I really, really meant it.

“It's not me you owe the apology to,” Dad said, looking more serious than ever. “Captain Armstrong knows about your e-mail and the photo. He was there, you know. That afternoon. That
was
his shoe in the picture.”

I froze in place, totally stunned, and started to ask what Dad was talking about, but he cut me off. “He was trying not to ruin your fun, but he was watching after you because he promised Adele he would, so she'd get in the ambulance. Remember?”

Oh.

Oooooooooh.

Dread and shame settled in my belly like a hot bunch of rocks. I did remember, now that he said it. And I felt kind of awful for forgetting it in the first place.

I was such a—

“Now, that guy you had the school call the police about, the one you called a creep? That wasn't a bad idea. He had a record and he hasn't been out of prison very long—no business being around a school.” Dad rubbed his big hand through his hair. “All of that to say, not every wild idea you get is off-base. But, Footer, a little girl lived at the Abrams farm. You know that, right?”

The sheets on Dad's bed felt soft when I picked at them. “Yes, sir.”

“Lots of little girls wear barrettes.”

Okay, so I had told myself that same thing over and over, and told Peavine, and he had agreed. “But this one looked like a pretzel.”

Dad made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a yawn. Maybe it was both. “So do lots of the barrettes you can buy at Walmart. That's where your mother gets hers. I'm sure Cissy Abrams shopped at the same place. It's not like we have a lot of options in Bugtussle.”

I couldn't make myself look up from the sheet I was bothering with both hands. “Mom got new barrettes after the fire. She was wearing them when she shot the copperhead.”

Dad didn't answer right away. The only sound in the room came from me, my breathing, and my pulling at the sheet's edge.

Finally, Dad said, “Brain tumor.” He shook his head, and I could tell he was getting ready to lie down again. “Honey, it's late.”

“She might have been there,” I whispered, looking away from him and staring at the sheet so hard and totally that my eyes watered. “I think I saw Mom go to the Abrams farm the night of the fire. I think I followed her through the woods.”

Dad went quiet again, this time so long that I would have looked at him if I hadn't been scared of seeing his face. When he spoke, his words came out too quiet, like when he was mad and trying not to yell. “You were asleep in your bedroom the whole time. That's what you told me, and what you told the police. It's what your mom told the police too.”

“I don't think that's true.” I took a deep breath and tried to figure out how to explain the hallucinations. Telling him outright was probably best, even if he thought I needed to go to a hospital, like Mom.

“What's the truth, Footer? Do you even know anymore?”

Dad's questions startled me so badly, I glanced at his face. Both cheeks had turned red, and his mouth made a straight, solid line. He had looked like that when I accidentally
caught the backyard on fire, after he'd hugged me and finished hollering about taking dangerous risks and why did I have to try every experiment I ever read about.

Dad's anger punched me right in the heart. In the night, in the dark, with the whole world asleep and Mom gone so far away, I could barely talk to her, I felt like an alien stranded on an ice planet, lost and freezing and completely hopeless.

I shook from the cold inside me.
In my dreams, Cissy shot Mr. Abrams. One of them set the fire that probably killed Cissy and Doc. I think it was Mom.
I looked at Dad and I wanted to say those things, but even as the words played through my mind, they sounded stupid and baby and crazy. I didn't even know what I had seen. They were just hallucinations, nothing real, and nothing with any proof.

“I'm not sure what the truth is,” I admitted, “but—”

“Then you better go back to your room,” Dad said, still too quiet, talking way too slow. “Get a good night's sleep, and think very, very hard. I want you to consider if what you're telling me is real.”

Tears slid from my eyes, and I wiped them away with the backs of my hands. “Okay, but—”

“Footer, this is serious. Do you understand me?”

I had to look away from him, or I would have cried more. “Yes, sir.”

“If it's like your walruses and serial killers and brain
tumors and that shoe—knock it off before you really hurt your mother and this family.”

“Yes, sir.”

I got up from his bed and ran out of his room, back to the hall, and away from his frown and sad eyes. Some part of my mind knew I had left his lights on, but I didn't care very much.

For some reason I didn't even understand, I ran straight to the kitchen and pulled open the pantry. I let the tears wash down my cheeks, and I kept breathing so fast, it made me dizzy, but I couldn't stop as I pulled out a bunch of my lunch drinks and the new jar of peanut butter and the fresh loaf of bread Ms. Jones had brought from the store. I had been eating myself silly in my sleep, right? So maybe it helped me somehow. Maybe it kept the bad dreams away. Maybe it filled up the great big empty I felt with Mom gone, and it was so much bigger now that Dad had sort of left me too.

He didn't believe me. He thinks I'm crazy.

I stared at the sandwich stuff on the counter. This was totally stupid. I knew it, but I couldn't stop myself. If I stopped, I might see Dad's mad face, or Mom lying in her hospital chair babbling about mice and playing the piano she thought she had inside her wrist, or Mr. Abrams blowing into pieces, spraying dark spots all over Cissy and Doc and me and Mom.

Stupid seemed better than any of that.

I went to the fridge and got the jar of grape jelly Mrs. Jones had left us. I got knives and forks and spoons out of the silverware drawer, and paper plates and napkins off the top of the microwave, where Mom kept them. Judging by the messes I made when I sleep-ate, this had to be how I did it—just grab everything and go downstairs and stuff it all down.

Fine. I could do that awake, too. I crammed so much stuff in my arms, I had to use my foot to push down the handle of the basement door and shove it open.

When it banged against the wall, I jumped at the sound. I thought I heard scurrying, scuttling sounds from down in the blackness, but that was just my baby-scared-of-the-dark mind playing goofs on me. I used my shoulder to flip the light switch and chase all the noises away.

I went down one step at a time, like a little kid, so I didn't lose my balance, and I carried all the food to the pool table and spread it out better than a picnic. Then I went back upstairs and got the brownies and cupcakes meant for my lunches, and I took them to the pool table too. I unwrapped enough to fill up three or four plates and then made five peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

Maybe when I was asleep, I didn't go to this much trouble, but who knew? Might as well make it as fun as possible, since everything else so completely and totally sucked right now. After I got everything arranged, I ate a brownie, stuffing each bite in my mouth and forcing
myself to chew it and swallow it, ignoring how much it tasted like sugar-coated cardboard. I choked down one of the sandwiches, but I couldn't face a second one.

Great.

Just great.

Nothing. No help at all. My stomach already hurt. Awake, I couldn't seem to put away as much food as I did in my sleep. I couldn't even make as spectacular a mess. It was kind of disappointing.

And it was time to face the fact that I was losing it, just like Mom.

“Losing it, lost it—not much difference, right?” My voice sounded like a ghost whisper in the silent basement.

I glanced around at the weights, and the shadows they made on the floor. For a time I studied the closed bedroom door and imagined the bed and the little bathroom. I wished I could pretend Mom was in there, just taking a little vacation from the world. Then I could wake her up and ask her if she felt this way when she started going crazy, all confused and empty and sad. Did she think she was letting Dad down, and her friends and me and everybody? Did she try to stop it?

I had wondered those things before, lots of times. I had asked myself if she tried not to get sick, and now I knew. She tried with every bit of strength she had, but it just didn't matter. When sick came, it did what it wanted to do.

That felt like too big a thing to know, so I got under the pool table and curled up, resting my head on the cool wooden pedestal. For the first time ever in my life, I didn't care if the darkness snuck up on me after I fell asleep and covered me like a big blanket full of black, scary nothingness.

I wasn't even sure I wanted to wake up.

I managed to get back in my own bed before morning. Sometime in the night, I must have eaten the rest of what I had taken down to the pool table, or the dinosaur mice got it, because it was gone. I was surprised I didn't blow up like a beach ball.

School—now, that concept seemed worse than turning into a pool toy, so I told Dad I felt sick. He did the usual stuff, looking in my throat (could he see five peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches trying to urp back up?), taking my temperature (can you get a fever from half a box of brownies?), and checking my pulse (maybe juice drinks cause a racing heartbeat?).

“Well,” he said after he mashed on the glands in my throat until I gagged, “You don't seem like you're dying, and I don't see any spots or rashes, but you do look pale.”

I pulled away from Dad's hands, settled back on my pillow, and shut my eyes, wishing he'd just go away. I didn't want to talk to him, and I didn't want him to sit there looking worried, and I didn't want him to decide he needed to go to the basement before I cleaned up the nasty mess of crumbs and wrappers I had left down there.

“Footer, if I upset you last night, I didn't mean to.” Dad sounded worried enough that I almost opened my eyes, but I knew if I did, I'd probably hug him and tell him I didn't mean any of the stuff I said.

I kept my eyes closed.

Dad kissed my forehead. “I love you very much. I just want you to take this stuff about your mom and the fire seriously, okay?”

“Okay,” I said back, feeling nothing much but numbness, and like I wanted to burp peanut butter.

“If you have something to tell me now, I'll listen.”

J
ust make sure it's the truth, right?
The problem was, I didn't want to lie, and I really, really didn't know what truth I needed to tell. Whatever truth it was, Dad probably didn't want to hear it, no matter what he said.

He waited, like he might be hoping I would say something else. When I didn't, he patted my sheet-covered shoulder. “All right, then. I'll see what I can do about getting somebody to stay with you.”

When he got up, I turned over and stared at my white wall.

A few minutes later, Dad came back to my room and said, “Ms. Jones is coming over in five or ten minutes. Will you be okay if I head out so I can stop by the post office on my way to work?”