Lost Boys (5 page)

"Sure."

"Where'd you learn that technique, from How to Win Friends and Influence People?"

Gallowglass giggled. "I just like to see how people react to it. You took it just fine. In fact, best ever. You actually listened to a kid with glasses and a pocket protector and you didn't know me from shit on the sidewalk."

"What did Duncan do?"

"Well, let's just say that Doug Duncan is the kind of guy who never, ever forgives anybody who dares to suggest that anything he ever did was somewhat less than perfect. He actually got me kicked off a panel at a conference six months later. Said he'd leave and not do his thing there if I was given a microphone at the conference.

He never forgives and he never forgets."

"Maybe that would have taught you not to criticize strangers."

"Hey, it's my flaming-asshole test, and Duncan leaves a trail of ashes wherever he goes."

Step had to laugh. He liked this kid. Maybe a lot. Though if Dicky had overheard their conversation about royalties and credit for programmers, both of them would probably be in trouble. "Hey, uh, how soundproof is this office?" asked Step.

"How the hell should I know?" asked Gallowglass. "But with all these games on, who do you think can hear us?"

Step thought, but did not say, that the games in the room made them talk louder, while the noise they made wouldn't interfere half as much with someone outside the room who wanted to listen in.

Someone knocked on the door.

"Come in!" yelled Gallowglass.

It was Dicky, and for a moment Step felt that rush of guilt that comes when you've just been caught. Dicky had been listening.

"So there you are," said Dicky. "I've been looking all over for you.'

"Me?" said Step.

"I wondered if you wanted to go for lunch with me."

"He can't," said Gallowglass immediately. "He's going to lunch with me, so I can get him up to speed on the new features in Scribe 64."

"And I have to get him up to speed on everything else," said Dicky, looking a bit stern.

"Hey, leave me out of this," said Step. "This is my first day I'll go wherever I'm told."

But Dicky and Gallowglass gazed at each other for a few long moments more, until at last Dicky said,

"Come see me after lunch."

"Sure," said Step. "But you're my supervisor, Mr. Northanger, so my schedule is yours to command."

"Call me Dicky," said Dicky.

"Not Richard?" asked Step.

"Is there something wrong with Dicky?" asked Dicky.

"No," said Step. "I just thought-"

"Dicky is not a nickname for Richard," said Dicky. "It's the name I was christened with."

"I'm sorry," said Step.

"And meeting with you after lunch is what I prefer." Dicky closed the door behind him.

"Man, you're a champion suck-up," said Gallowglass.

Step turned on him. "What are you trying to do, get my supervisor permanently pissed off at me on my first day on the job?"

"Don't take Dicky so seriously," said Gallowglass. "He can't touch a program without introducing a bug into it. The guy's worthless."

Apparently Gallowglass had no concept of the kind of trouble that Dicky could make for a man in Step's position. This kid's relationship was with the owner, and he was the programmer of the bread-and-butter program that was paying everybody's salaries, so he really could treat Dicky however he liked. But that didn't mean Dicky liked it. In fact, if this had gone on very long, by now Dicky probably seethed at anything Gallowglass did or said. And he'd take it out on whoever was closest to Gallowglass who actually needed his job.

"Do me a favor," said Step. "Don't do anything to get Dicky any more ticked off at me than he is."

"Sure," said Gallowglass. "Don't get mad. It's really OK, I promise you. You're in like Flynn around here, everybody's really excited you're actually here. You'll see, it'll be great."

"No sweat then," said Step, though Gallowglass was probably wrong.

"And I really would be glad to tend your kids for you."

"Thanks," said Step.

"I'm really good at it. And I'm not afraid to change diapers."

"Sure," said Step. "I'll talk to DeAnne about it."

"OK. Squeet."

"What?"

"Squeet. It's just a word we use around here. It means Let's go eat, only the way you say it when you say it real fast. Squeet."

"Sure, fine," said Step. "Squeet."

This is why DeAnne, a westerner all her life, was unpacking boxes in the family room of a house in Steuben, North Carolina: Her earliest memories were of growing up in Los Ange les, in a poorer part of town back in the fifties, when gangs did not yet rule and blacks were still colored people who were just starting to march and had not yet rioted. Her neighborhood and school friends were of an array of races and nationalities. She barely noticed this until she left.

Her father got his doctorate and went to teach at Brigham Young University-the "Y." She was eight years old when she first went to school in Orem, Utah. All the children in her class were white, all of them were Mormon, and many of them were the same children she saw at church on Sunday. This was the fall of 1962, and the conversation among the children turned, eventually, to civil rights and Martin Luther King. Deeny was stunned to hear some of the other children speak of "niggers," a word she had thought was like any other word written on walls-one knew it existed but never said it where God could hear.

When they saw how upset Deeny was, they laughed, and some said things that were even nastier-that all colored people stank and were stupid, that they all stole and carried razor blades. She furiously told them that it wasn't true, that her best friend Debbie in Los Angeles was colored and she was as smart as anybody and she didn't stink and the only kid who ever stole anything from them was a white boy. This made them angry. They said terrible things to her and shoved her and poked her and pinched her, and she came home from school in tears. Her parents reassured her that she was right, but she never forgot the ugly face of bigotry, and how angry the other children got when someone stood up against them.

It was no accident that when Step decided to go on for a doctorate in history, they didn't even apply to a school west of the Mississippi. DeAnne was determined that her children would not grow up in Utah, where everyone they knew would be Mormon and white, and where children could come to believe terrible lies about anyone who wasn't just like them. Step agreed with her-as he put it, they didn't want to raise their kids where Mormons were too thick on the ground.

That was fine in theory, but the reality was this depressingly dark family room in this shabby house in Steuben, North Carolina. And Stevie had to walk into class today as a complete stranger, with no sense of connection.

In Utah, Stevie would have known all these children already, from the neighborhood, from church. He would share in the same pattern of life, would know what to expect from them. We've given our children a wonderful variety of strangeness, just as we planned, thought DeAnne, but at the same time we've deprived them of a sense of belonging where they live. They're foreigners here. We are foreigners here.

I am a stranger, and this is a strange, strange land.

Robbie and Elizabeth were down for their naps. For Elizabeth that meant serious hard sleeping; for Robbie, it meant lying in bed reading the jokes and puzzles in his favorite volume of Childcraft. Enough that they were pinned down and quiet. It gave her a chance to be alone, to empty the boxes, one by one ... to brood about her life and whether she was a good mother and a good wife and a good Mormon and even a good person, which she secretly knew she was not and never could be, no matter how she seemed to others, because none of them, not even Step, knew what she was really like inside. How weak she was, how frightened, how uncertain of everything in her life except the Church -- that was the thing that did not change, the foundation of her life.

Everything else was changeable. Even Step-she knew that she didn't really know him, that always there was the chance that someday he would surprise her, that she would turn to face her husband and find a stranger in his place, a stranger who didn't approve of her and didn't want her in his life anymore. DeAnne knew that to hold on to any good thing in her life-her husband, her children-she had to do the right thing, every time. It was the selvage of the fabric of her life. If only she could be sure, from day to day, from hour to hour, what the right thing was.

The doorbell rang.

It was a thirtyish woman, slender as Jane Fonda, a bit shorter than DeAnne. She had three kids in tow, the oldest a boy about Robbie's age, and somehow-perhaps because of the kids, perhaps because of her practical cover-everything clothing, perhaps just because of her confident, cheerful face with hardly a speck makeup on it-DeAnne knew that this woman was a Mormon. If she wasn't, she should be.

"Sister Fletcher?" said the woman.

She was Mormon. "Yes," said DeAnne.

"I'm Jenny Cooper, spelled with a w as if it was cow-per, only it isn't."

"Like the poet," said DeAnne.

Jenny grinned. "I knew it! I've lived here six years, and no when I've only got three-and-a-half months left before we move to Arizona, now somebody finally moves in who's actually heard of William Cowper."

Wouldn't you know it, thought DeAnne. I'm already starting like her, and she's moving away. "Come in, please. My kids a napping, but as long as we stay in the family room-"

"Your kids nap? Let's trade," said Jenny as she strode in. S gave no sign of noticing or caring whether her kids followed he inside or not. "I know you're busy moving in but I brought a razor knife and I fed and watered my herd before we came, so show me where the boxes are."

"I'm doing books today," said DeAnne, leading her into the family room. "But you don't really have to help."

"Alphabetical order?"

"Eventually," said DeAnne. "But it's enough if you sort of group them together. Jenny, how in the world did you know my name? We didn't even go to church on Sunday."

"I noticed that," said Jenny. "A few weeks ago the bishop says that he got a call from Brother Something-or-other from Vigor, Indiana, who was going to move into a house in the ward on the first weekend in March. I figure, they'll need help moving in, so I waited for you to show up at Church, only you didn't come.

So, this is what I thought: If they were inactive, Brother Something wouldn't have called. So either they didn't actually move on schedule, or they're the kind of proud, stubborn, self-willed, stuck-up people who wouldn't dream of asking for help and so they skipped their first Sunday and plan to show up next week, with everything all unpacked and put away, and when people offer to help, they'll say, 'Already done, thanks just the same."'

DeAnne laughed. "You got us pegged, all right."

"So, I had the Sunday school hour-I don't go to gospel doctrine class, the teacher and I don't see eye to eye-and I ducked into the clerk's office, looked up the Vigor Ward in the Church directory, and made a long distance call to your home ward. Talked to your ward clerk, and asked him if they had any ward members who had just moved to Steuben, North Carolina, and he said, Yes, of course, the Fletchers, and they were the most wonderful people, Sister Fletcher had been the education counselor in Relief Society and Brother Fletcher was the elders quorum president and conducted the choir, they had three kids and a fourth due in July, and they were great speakers, we ought to get them both to talk in sacrament meeting as often as possible."

"Oh, that was Brother Hyde, he was just being sweet." DeAnne could not believe that Brother Hyde had actually remembered when their baby was due, or that he had given that information to a stranger. But then, they were all in the Church, weren't they?

And that meant that they were "no more strangers, but fellow citizens of the saints," or however it went in Paul's epistle to-to some bunch of Greeks. Or Romans or Hebrews.

"Yes, well, I'm sure," said Jenny. "He also gave me your address, and then I remembered that I had driven right by your moving van last Friday or whenever it was that you moved in and it never occurred to me that a Mormon family would move in only around the block from me. I mean, to have a Mormon neighbor. That just doesn't happen in Steuben."

Even if Jenny hadn't been meticulous about shelving the books alphabetically by author and in the right groupings, DeAnne would have enjoyed having her there, just to have relief from her own brooding. Somehow, with a completely different upbringing, Jenny had managed to acquire a similar attitude toward the Church. The difference was that Jenny was willing to say right out things that DeAnne would never have dared to admit to anyone but Step.

"I had to get here first," said Jenny, "or your introductio n to the Steuben First Ward would have been Dolores LeSueur, our ward prophetess."

"Your what?"

"She's in the vision business. She has revelations for everybody. She's been dying of cancer for fifteen years only she keeps getting healed, but with death breathing down her neck she has become so much closer to God than ever before-and I'm sure that she was so close to God before that they probably shared a toothbrush.

She can't say hello without telling you that the Spirit told her to greet you. You'll just love her."

"I will? I don't think so, if she's the way you describe her."

"Oh, you will, because if you don't that'll prove you're a tool of Satan and an evil influence on the ward.

Don't worry, as long as she gets her way about everything she's harmless."

"Are you serious?"

"Absolutely. If she's in charge of a ward activity, everything will go her way. If she decides how you ought to run your ward organization, then your organization will run that way."

"You mean she claims inspiration?"

"Oh, she claims inspiration every time she has to use the john. No, if you don't agree with her, she just gets all her disciples to nag the bishop until he makes you do it her way just so they'll leave him alone. And if the bishop doesn't give in to her, she goes to the stake president, and if he doesn't give her what she wants, she calls Salt Lake until somebody there says something she can use to bludgeon you into submission. But don't let me bias you against her."

DeAnne said what she always said, because she knew it was right to reject malice. "I'd rather form my own opinions."

Jenny cocked her head and studied DeAnne for a moment, as if to see just how judgmental DeAnne might be. "Oh, I know this sounds like gossip. It is gossip. But I promise you, that's all I'll ever say about Dolores until you mention her again yourself. I just happen to know from experience that about six weeks from now, you'll be really glad to know that somebody else in the ward sees through her act. Nuff said. I'm probably too blunt, I know, but I grew up on a ranch in Santaquin where manure was a word we only used at church on Sunday, so I just speak my mind. For instance, I've noticed that you keep watching my kids and shooing them away from things and that means that your kids must be well-behaved and trained not to break stuff. Our strategy was to make sure we didn't own anything that we cared if it got broke.

But I'll tell you what, we've about done with the books so let me finish this box and I'll get my monsters out of here so they can go back to tearing up my house."

"I really wasn't thinking..."

"We're careful of our children about the things that count," said Jenny. "A friend of one of the secretaries where my husband works had a cousin here in town who lost her little boy. Only she didn't even realize he was missing for ten hours. Can you believe that? I may not know what my children are doing every second, but I know where they are."

"Jenny, I like your kids, they're not a problem."

"Good. So do I. This evening you bring your family on down to my house for supper. We're two blocks up Chinqua Penn that way, turn right on Wally- that's a street, not a bum in the road -- and we're five doors down on the right."

"I really couldn't put you out for supper- my kitchen is put together now, so-"

"I'm sure you're really looking forward to thinking up some kind of supper and stopping your unpacking long enough to prepare it," said Jenny.

DeAnne couldn't pretend that Jenny wasn't right, and besides, her mind was still back on what Jenny had said before. "That woman whose little boy was missing. Did they find him?"

"I don't know," said Jenny. "I never heard. By the way, in case you're wondering, I don't cook southern, I cook western. That means that there won't be nothin' deep- fried or even pan- fried. And I cook western ranch, not western Mormon, which means you won't be getting some tuna casserole and a jello salad, it'll be an oven roast and baked potatoes and gravy, and I already bought enough for your whole crew so don't make it go to waste, just say yes and show up at six."

That was that. Jenny finished the box, called her kids, plunged out the door, and the kids straggled along behind her. DeAnne felt invigorated by Jenny's visit. Even better, she felt at home, because she knew somebody now, she had a friend.

She looked at her watch. It was two-thirteen. She was sup posed to be at school to pick Stevie up in two minutes.

She bustled into the bedroom and dragged the kids out of bed-Robbie was actually asleep, today of all days- made them carry their shoes and socks out to the car and managed to get to that parking lot on the top of the bluff overlooking the school by twenty after. There were still a billion cars and parents there, or anyway more than the parking lot was designed to handle, and tons of children around-but no Stevie. He must have come up the hill and looked around and then, following her instructions, headed back down to wait for her in the principal's office.

She managed to get both of Elizabeth's shoes on her at the same time, and Robbie got his own on with the velcro straps fastened down-thank heaven for velcro. It was almost two-thirty when she finally herded the children into the front of the school. The last of the buses was just pulling away. Stevie was sitting in Dr.

Mariner's office. The second he saw her, he was on his feet and heading out the door.

"Just a moment, Mrs. Fletcher," said the secretary.

DeAnne turned back to face her.

"If you aren't able to pick up your child on time, may I suggest that you have him ride the bus? Or arrange for the after-school program?"