Ivyland (7 page)

*

I was walking with a sign so beautiful. Up to the trains for the line-up train people to see and tell me clues. And sure you bet sure some people talked at me. Of most, people were looking sad at me, prolly cause it is so sad when animals get lost. The talky people, surprise: they knowed nothing about Dr. Hal. They give me free dollars like the Harvey House helper ladies give dollars for Ice Cream Saturdays. It was riches for me! At the first, I was giving dollars back and axed about Dr. Hal, but these people just was talking bout other things. One goes: “Can't your worthless ass get a better job than this?” I say my weekly chore job is organizing arts and farts table at Harvey House. He says to shut up. I axed if some information ‘bout my ferret, but again he was saying to shut up, and is calling me Simon. I ax who Simon is. He is saying, “My worthless ass son,” and leaves.

*

More yelling at the train tracks. More dollars. Some peoples throwing dollars but not yelling. What about Dr. Hal Rockefeller? Nothing. One guy is yelling bout his girlfriend that is sexy but making him nuts. I was laughy cause he's saying sexy, a laughy word. I had a girlfriend one day at Harvey House, helper lady name of Jessica, except o boy is here the kick: her favorite Jell-O being
orange
! And since mine is lime green which will be of course a superior flavor of all time, we must be calling it grits, which for usual come the day after Jell-O Night. I told Henri bout my love life once, and he says, “Irreconcilable differences.” Sing it! Cause I say that also to Henri's music—they say it too on Sunday morning singing TV with criminals.

*

A train stops once for long. Sad and sadder faces in it.

*

One guy is going, “What do I want to rant about.” He's looking at my sign and says, “Boss, that's good,” and then was yelling bout Mr. Price someone. He's yelling into a while, well, other peoples want turns. He says, “We need more people like you.” I says, “Tell Dr. Hal I'm here, if you're seeing his furry behind.” Just then I heard my name and there's good old Vince! He goes, “Grady, what's this racket?” I says it's cause of wanting to find Dr. Hal. He reads at the sign. “I'm sorry,” he says. “Somebody played a joke on you.” And even though I fuss he wouldn't hear me explain and says he has to take my great sign! That was the most sad, so here I was to cry. Again. He took the sign. “Grady Grady Grady” is Vince's words, and he is fold of the sign. I am not a kid forever, but sometimes just like the Harvey House helper ladies say, you can't help it. Vince is not mean like this, I think, and the people waiting in a line for talking at me start leaving cause of Vince! I try no more crying and yell, “Dr. Hal Rockefeller is alone plus to that prolly scared!” But my crying is making the yells blubby and I know I still look like big stupids, cause I am. “Trust me,” goes Vince, giving me a touch, which I am
hating
now and want to say but so ugly a word, suchlike a thing always they tell at Harvey House to Ty, they tell that Hate Is An Ugly Word. So true, cause I feel an ugly in my guts. So I runned, I runned. And downstairs of the trains, even worse! The bike locked up by the scoundrels is not locked up but gone! The criminal unlocking my bike finally, but stealing it, the frosting on a fate worse than breath. I runned again for Harvey House and a phone: the police given me a hotline to a detective. He is Larry and at most times sleepy on a desk, but other police are telling me don't let it fool you, don't judge a book by his sleepiness, cause he is extremely detectively.

*

Only it's lated. I runned past the creek for telling me the way back to Harvey House and look and my precious bike is sinky in the crappy brown water! All bent. All crappy. And I don't swear like Ty but jeez is it crappy now. And the crying, like a dumb baby, but Vince was mean and criminals broke my bike and Dr. Hal is lost and Henri doesn't play me songs or come visit even and nothing is fair, so I lie in the garbagy grass and let the cry cry.

DH /// ANDRONICUS, FLORIDA /// LAST FALL

DH Forsyth and Leviticus Van Vetchen sit dozing in their renovated ice cream truck until a clanging at the rear door startles them.

LEV

Open Sesame.

 

DH obeys. A rangy, tanned man with a torn white shirt and faded Miami Dolphins cap climbs into the truck and stands, hips thrust, facing its owners.

DH

You with Endless?

LEV

Yeah, are you?

TOM

F'ize with Endless, I'd be dressed better.

 

DH and Lev share a look.

LEV

What can we do for you? (
scrutinizing
) Facelift? Not gastric.

TOM

Name's Tom. Want the VV.

DH

Who said we—

LEV

Five hundred.

TOM

Shit, son, I only got but three. Ball'n'chain doesn't know I have
that
much. Won it on the ballgame today.

 

DH and Lev share a look. Tom pulls a crumpled brown bag from his jacket pocket, flinging it onto the operating table. He produces a second brown bag and drinks from it.

TOM

Suppose I need to be a damn sight drunker to not feel the cut and all.

DH

Actually, we've got the gas.

 

Lev smacks his forehead as Tom's eyes drift up to the shelf of silver tanks.

TOM

Make me manager at a MexiLickin'SurfHog. I don't believe this.

LEV

Tom, I would love to perform VV on you, for your own continued safety and blah blah blah, but Hallaxor gas is expens—

TOM

Okay. Cards on the table. You give me the VV, I can direct you toward a high school car wash. This truck hasn't met much dirt, but there's a little firecracker working there you'd get along with nicely. My daughter. They're all in bikinis; she's the only one in red. Babysitter hair.

 

He takes another swallow of booze.

DH

We'll do it.

LEV

“We.”

 

Lev starts rooting around in cabinets for his tools.

DH

Can I ask why you want the procedure, Tom?

LEV

(
Head hidden
) O, yes, let's not forget the survey.

TOM

Sad story, but sure. New baby died, couldn't've seen it coming. Wife said it was the crib death, something infant death syndrome, crazyass thing I never heard of. Thought that up on her PMS and plus she was half stupid from losing the baby on top of being half stupid to begin. But a doctor said no doubt about it, H12. A professional said. Wife and me at risk, he said, and we can't afford the surgery, not the real thing. But I was at the bar watching the Little League World Series and got lucky and heard about you all, so here I am.

LEV

We're the real thing.

TOM

Are you, now. They said a mobile center wouldn't hit this neighborhood for another couple months. Maybe I need a new calendar, hnn?

DH

What about your wife?

TOM

What about her?

LEV

Lie down already.

 

Tom gets on the table and shuts his eyes as DH pulls down a Hallaxor tank, attaching a tube to a mask.

TOM

I can drive home after?

LEV

More or less.

 

Tom laughs.

DH

What?

TOM

Forgot I sold the shit car to get the money to bet.

 

Lev rolls his eyes, fits the mask over Tom's nose and mouth. DH twists the tank valve.

LEV

We aren't responsible if you're allergic, but we'll dump you at a hospital if anything happens.

DH

You've got to breathe deep. You're going to feel sleepy, but you will not be asleep.

LEV

Sure won't.

 

They roll Tom onto his stomach, and DH draws an incision line with a marker. Lev pours half a bottle of water over his lucky scalpel and slices the back of Tom's neck open as DH watches with growing unease, knowing he's already cut too deep.

AIDAN /// IVYLAND, NEW JERSEY /// THIRTEEN YEARS AGO

Henri swings stubby legs under the bench, ratty catcher's mask locked in the raised position so he can chew and spit sunflower seeds. He musters inhuman gobs of saliva'n'shell fragments that absorb dugout sand, clotting into putrid buttons you can feel through cleats. Henri playing catcher not because he's the best at it; Stanley just figured that's where the fat kid goes.

“Kilham! On deck!” Stanley yells from the other side of the dugout.

Coach Stanley. A next-level alcoholic. Guy who clarified what it meant to be one right as his species went extinct. Never without this shiny film on his face, as I only saw him in Jersey's swampy late spring and early summer, and the sort of gnarled gray hair and creased cheeks a Jack London fur trapper would sport in his twilight years, squinting beneath the brim of a crappy mesh hat. Yes, Stanley, pride of our suburban little league circuit, was the inevitable byproduct of volunteerism. Henri'd finally put his foot down on the hide-his-flask trick we always played, saying the man's life is already too sad, an excuse that annoys more than a flat refusal.

“Sean's using it.”

Stanley does like he's having an idiocy-related aneurysm.

“Well take it away fromm'im!”

“But he's batting now …” The protest disintegrates.

“Use mine,” Henri wheezes through a repellent mouth, seeds sliming out. Sean hits the kind of pop fly that's an easy out for anyone but little leaguers. It's caught, though, and a lone Hawaiian-shirted weirdo in the bleachers claps twice. I take a few cuts with Henri's monster bat.

“Ou godda behd yr deez,” Henri garbles, mouth even fuller than before.

“Bend my knees. Don't act like you made that advice up, butt nugget,” I tell him. Henri guffaws, seeds chuckling forward. I laugh, too. “You have like an infinite number of seeds in your mouth! Your head is just a sack of sunflower seeds! Look at you!” Now we're in hysterics, headed toward full-body laughter I won't be able to shake by the time I reach the plate.

*

“There's one.”

Game's over. I struck out looking, team lost again, Stanley urinated on the pitcher's mound and thereby salvaged a kernel of pride. We're trolling the neighborhood on bike after ditching equipment in my mom's minivan. The house I have in mind is a sad shade of mustard and sits atop a hill cluttered with trees and overgrown bushes. Henri pushes sweat-laden bangs away from his eyes, panting softly as I jump off my bike and prop it against a telephone pole.

“I don't want to.” I find and throw a pebble, which can't help hitting him somewhere in the chest. “I told you to stop. They're home, anyway.”

“O my God, Henri. Like anyone cares.”

“Easy for you to say. Not all as skinny and agile as you. Someone
did
come out, you'd be a block away in no time. Whereas I'd have to bend over and rest after running like ten feet.” He swings a leg over his bike's crossbar and puts down the kickstand with his hand, a dumb method in my opinion.

“I'd stay with you.”

“BS.”

“
You're
the BS.” I toe a crack in the sidewalk and attempt to pry the concrete slabs apart with my foot. Henri has his hands in his pockets. “Are you coming or not?”

“It's weird.”

“What is?” No answer. “Nothing else to do.”

“Get some bottles and play Submarine.”

“I'm bored of Submarine. “Come on, wienie-puff.” I absently karate-kick at the waist-high grass along the curb, pausing every few seconds to tear crumbly caps off of the blades and flick the powder at Henri.

“Would you stop!” he pleads, unable to suppress a giggle.

“Weenie-puff, weenie-puff,” I chant, like he's stepping up to the plate. He really can hit.

“You can't make me. So far, too.” He's not exaggerating: probably about seventy-five steps to the top, and steep ones. “This is so stupid.”

“That's why we do it. Stupid kids. Weenie-puff.”

“Pish-posh.”

“Pish-posh? Are you, like, the Queen of England now?”

“‘Pish-posh' is a perfectly acceptable term.”

“You saying ‘pish-posh,'
that's
the pish-posh.”

“I'll go up if you stop saying ‘pish-posh.' “

“Deal. After you.” I jab my index finger into his spine to get us going. The steps have wooden frames but are filled in with gravel. I occasionally grab a handful and toss a gentle spray at Henri.

“What is it with you and throwing things?”

The lawn is drier and pale as the hill stretches upward. When I start to listen to him, Henri is saying something about how human waste that ends up in septic tanks is sold as fertilizer once the solid waste and pathogens and stuff are filtered out.

“That why you're always shitting on your lawn?”

“Said you have to
filter
it.”

“Could you walk any slower?”

“Told you this hill would suck.”

“Fine, stay here.”

I shove Henri aside and bound up the remaining steps, leaving him next to a fat pine near the top. When I arrive at a crumbling brick stoop, I notice all the creepy paraphernalia of a person who tried to fit in but failed spectacularly: a battalion of lawn ornaments dot the crest of the hill, many with parts designed to spin in the breeze. They're motionless, rusted in place. Wooden wind chimes, maybe a dozen sets, bonily chatter from freestanding steel rods. The first floor windows are caked with dust on the inside.

“Henri?” I turn to hiss. There's only a rustling. Out of a desire to get it over with, I tiptoe up to the door and find the mailbox off to one side, turn the old-fashioned red flag thing up to the ‘got mail' position. Pointless, really. I start back down two steps at a time.

Behind me, from the house, comes a definite thump. I veer off the path, twist my ankle on tilted ground and go down in a cloud of limbs. Scrambling with hands and feet, I get behind the pine Henri had been waiting near and peek around it at the front stoop. There's a screech as the screen door swings out savagely, then a snort as the man who opened it steps outside.

Wet, yellowish skin: looks like he sweats potato-chip grease, but every third day it's gasoline instead. He rocks side to side on filthy feet while surveying the property from his stoop, dressed only in a stained tank top and boxer-briefs the color of old paper, with a pistol jammed in the elastic waistband.

The raised red lever on his mailbox registers at last; he flings the tin thing open and slams it shut in one motion. He stares at the closed mailbox like he's trying to meld minds with a higher life force. Then he punches it, leaving a crater. The sound coaxes a woman's voice from inside the house—can't be made out, but the inflection is of casual worry.

“Supposed to get a check today,” he yells in. “Dickhead mailman is playing
games
.” He wrenches the red flag off and hurls it down the hill, then brandishes the gun, asserting its realness, and disappears inside to answer a follow-up question from the female voice. I crawl under the low-hanging pine branches and find Henri a few feet away. He's sitting between two pricker bushes and pulling up grass by its roots.

“What happened?”

“Shut up and go. Not the stairs.”

“Fine.”

“And shut up,” I remind him.

Henri shrugs, gets up and starts threading his way through the overgrown vegetation with the expediency of a dying turtle. I can't leave him. I kick him hard in the ass instead, and he wheels around with an expression of silent indignation.

A gunshot punctures the air above us. I shove Henri to the ground next to the shrubbery lining the stairway and topple onto him in the process. We roll apart and tense up. A drop of sweat bleeds into my eye. Henri's heartbeat mingled with mine. Mine faster. We keep our eyes on the one stair visible through the brush. Two bare feet drop onto it and shift around anxiously.

“Still here, aren't you,” the guy shouts. “Good. Long as you're trespassing I can still kill you.” We wait a long minute and hear him spit. “Fuck it,” he says quietly, and the feet withdraw.

“I think that's old man Clafter,” Henri whispers.

“Listen to you with the old man shit.”

“You know, Leo's dad.”

“You didn't even see him.”

I raise my head and spot the man up near our pine, parting its branches with his gun to look for a climber. We get to our feet and move as silently as boys could ever hope to, slinking through the last clusters of bushes toward the street.

“You know why he went crazy, right?”

“How would I?”

“Cause their other son got all messed up from VV when he was little. You know, the gas? He was allergic—stopped his brain from developing.”

“Such a liar.”

“Yeah-huh, Leo never got VV, the gas is too risky if there's a family history. And his older brother—”

“Leo doesn't have a brother.”

“Then why'd he beat up Jack for saying it? Anyway they bought him twenty years guaranteed at Harvey House and that's why Leo's too poor for school lunch.”

I glance back up the hill in time to notice that Mr. Clafter or whoever is crouched like a spider on the front stoop and calmly training his gun on us. A shot goes wide, burying itself in the lawn with a queasy
thunng
. I gasp as though it passed clean through me.

We drop into a gravity-assisted sprint. Every breath stabs at shredded lungs. Joints are pumped fluid. Another shot. Henri, a few feet in front of me, is running like he's forgotten his body, running so fast that he can't compensate for the last bush in our way and catches the side of it with his shoulder, knocking a whitish football-shaped bees' nest out of its niche within.

Buzzing dots unfunnel from the papery ball as it tumbles downhill with us. Tearfully I barrel through the swarm, taking dozens of stings in my forearms, the only shields I have. The sound gooey terror, a living chainsaw. Henri tramples the nest as it rolls into his path. Pop and hiss of two more bullets. One for each of us. Bone grinds. Vision is a stain. This is what it's like to regret something, I have the weird coolness to reflect. We should have played Submarine.

We make it to the street, but it's not good enough: I look back to see Clafter struggling to reload atop the stairs. Red welts flame out like mutant chicken pox. Henri's giving his kickstand a rapid-fire series of kicks to get it to swing upward, too panicked to realize that he's kicking from the wrong side.

“I knew he was crazy!” he shrieks. “I knew it!” He gives up and starts riding with the kickstand still down. My hands grip rubber, igniting bolts of pain from stung palms. We ride, Henri's bike limping is how you might describe it, kickstand periodically catching the road and grating along asphalt till he regains his balance. I pedal furiously, not slowing even as I pull needle after tiny needle out of my skin.

When we reach my house, I coast straight into the backyard. Instead of slowing down, I simply let myself fall sideways onto dry, sun-beaten grass, the bike toppling onto me. The chain grease is cold on my leg. Henri stops, pushes his bike aside and crumples.

“I hurt everywhere.”

“Same.” Could count, but it's easier to call myself one giant sting.

My mom's semi-concerned alto floats out of a window, across a sky silver and veined like a dragonfly wing.

“What are you boys doing?”

“Nothing,” is the answer, in unison.

We lay there, reptile-still, replaying action and reaction with awe. Some spoken, some drifting through brains. Through mine, anyway. Leaves overhead ripple at a calm boil. The waves of surreal memory crash without direction. To and fro. In and out. Points of debate are exhausted. Certain blanks fail to be filled. One or two tortured what-ifs haphazardly examined. Apologies come, awkward and quiet. Our stings quietly throb, but the breezes are balms. Blankness creeps up on us.

At last, Henri, attempting a conclusion, offers:

“We should've played Submarine.”

“Should've played Submarine.”