Lost Boys (51 page)

It wasn't a weapon after all. It was the Book of Mormon that the missionaries had given him.

The autumn wore on, the routine changing but not in any important way. Jerusha brought along a physical therapist on her October visit, and he told Step that what he was doing, stretching out Zap's muscles and moving his limbs through their full range of motion, was not only good but essential. "It's like his brain doesn't have the normal connections to his muscles. When he shoots off a command, it does too much, which is why he kicks so hard, but then it disappears, just like that, and so he can't sustain anything. By himself he can't keep his limbs limber, so to speak. So you have to keep his tendons from tightening up on him. Same thing they do for coma patients."

"We'll have to do this for how long?" asked Step.

"Till he finds some alternate neural pathway to let him do it for himself. He will, you know. Just give him time."

It was encouraging, and now DeAnne and Step took turns twice a day, flexing and extending all of Zap's joints. Robbie and Stevie even picked up on it-Stevie silently, wordlessly doing exactly what he had seen Step and DeAnne do; Robbie far too rough and ne ver quite correctly, so that they had to insist that he only do "Zap bending" when they were there.

DeAnne's hardest job with Zap was bathing him. Zap didn't cry much-only when he was in real pain, which happened mostly when she fed him formula and he didn't burp enough. However, bathtime was torment for him. For some reason the water terrified him. Maybe, Step speculated, because gravity was the one constant, the one thing that felt in control in his life, and in the water the gravity just wasn't there the same way. DeAnne only answered, Maybe, but who can know? What mattered was that bathtime was the only time that Zap ever got really upset, and then he was frantic, and his desperate cries just tore DeAnne apart, because she couldn't help him feel better and yet she couldn't give up bathing him, either. Finally what she evolved was a song that she called "Tubby Time for Jeremy." It was completely absurd and the first time she realized Step was listening to her she blushed and stopped, but he insisted she teach him the words and he sang along with her, so she wasn't embarrassed anymore.

Tubby time in the city.

Tubby time in the town.

Tubby time for Jeremy, It's tubby time right now.

So Tubby-dub and scrubby-dub, It's time for your nightgown.

It's tubby time all over the world, So please don't frown.

As she explained to Step, the song didn't really help Zap at all. But it helped her,- it soothed her so she could endure his desperate sobbing and keep on bathing him without going to pieces inside.

Around the middle of October, Step and DeAnne both became aware that Stevie's behavior was changing just a little. He was no longer being quite as obedient as before. In fact, at times he seemed almost rebellious.

The rule in the house now was that no kid could go outside without one of the parents, and Stevie knew that-in fact, he had several times caught Betsy going out and brought her back in. But one day DeAnne came into the family room from the back of the house just as Stevie was coming inside through the back door.

"Stevie, what were you doing outside?"

"Looking," said Stevie.

"Good heavens, young man, you're filthy! Where have you been?"

"Under the house," he said.

She remembered the latticework skirt around the base of the house and immediately flashed back to her imagined picture of what it was like under there, all the bugs and webs and mud and filth. Having crickets come up through the closet last winter hadn't done anything to change that image in her mind, either. "That's just incredible!" she said. "You know what the rule is about going outside, and to think you pried open the latticework and went under the house, that's just unspeakable! I'm going to have Bappy come over and nail it all down. Now get into the laundry room and strip off your clothes while I get a bath running."

Later that night DeAnne and Step discussed what had happened, and they realized that because of Stevie's hard adjustment and their worry about these invisible friends of his, they had been slack with him. They may not have held him to a firm enough standard of discipline.

"But when you think about it, when would we have disciplined him?" asked Step. "I mean, till now he hasn't done anything wrong."

"Well, now he has, and I don't know what to do about it. I can't start deadbolting the back door and taking the key out because what if there was a fire? I can just see the headline: FAMILY HAD PLENTY OF TIME TO

ESCAPE BUT DEADBOLTS WERE ALL LOCKED AND KEYS COULD NOT BE FOUND IN TIME."

"They don't write headlines that long," said Step.

"Oh, good, so we'll die and no one will even know why."

"Less embarrassing that way."

"I think we need to show him that this is serious. I mean, there's a killer somewhere in Steuben, and Stevie's cutting out of the house without even telling us. Not to mention crawling under the house, I mean that's disgusting."

"Not really," said Step. "Not when you realize that my younger sister and my younger brothers used to eat dirt."

"Oh, gross!" cried DeAnne. "Did you have to tell me that?"

"They'd come into the house with flecks of mud all around their mouths and then try to act innocent when Mom said, 'Have you been eating dirt again?' And they'd open their mouths to say, 'No, Mom,' and the whole inside of their mouths was black with mud."

"I'm going to throw up, Step. I mean it."

"I'm just saying, kids like to mess in dirt. I always liked to dig in it, and maybe Stevie would like to, too, only there's just no place for it."

"It's a rental house. We can't just tear up a section of lawn for him."

"Oh," said Step. "That's what I was just about to suggest."

"And it's October, it's not going to get any warmer out there. And most important, that has nothing to do with him going out side in the first place without permission. He has to know we're serious."

"OK, so we confine him to the house."

"Step, that's not a normal life, being confined to the house. Besides, I want him outside."

"So we cut off his computer privileges. Tomorrow, no Atari."

"Oh, that really will hurt. He's always playing that Lode Runner game."

"Oh, he is? I've never seen him play it. I thought I was the only one who ever played it-I thought it had turned out to be a real lousy birthday gift for him."

"No, he plays it all the time. In fact, a couple of times I've thought that I'd really like it if you'd teach me how to run it."

"It's not hard. You just make sure there aren't any cartridges in the computer, put the disk into the drive, close the door, and turn the machine on."

"Right, that's easy for you and Stevie."

"Let's do it right now."

They went into the family room and Step showed her each thing to do and then he switched on the computer and the game came up and he said, "There it is. You just move the little guy with the joystick and try to get the treasures without the bad guys getting you."

"That's not Lode Runner," said DeAnne.

"Yes, it is," said Step.

"No, that's the little- man game that I saw you playing that time."

"Right, and the little-man game is called Lode Runner."

"No," she said.

Step popped open the disk drive and pulled out the disk and showed her. "Look! A miracle! The disk says Lode Runner, and yet what comes up is the little-man game!"

"No, I mean, of course you're right, I just thought that Lode Runner was a different game."

"What, then?"

"That one that Stevie always plays. The pirate ship game. It really looks beautiful sometimes, when they're just sailing along, the sails snapping in the wind. And the sailors climbing all over—I've never seen any other game like it. No offense, Step, but I kept thinking, If only Step could do a game that looked like that."

"Oh, no offense, right," said Step. He was a little miffed, but what mattered was that she, too, had seen the pirate ship game, only she saw it all the time, and she had watched it long enough to see different aspects of the game. "He must switch it off whenever I'm around," said Step. "I've never caught more than a glimpse of it."

"Oh, no, he plays it for hours," said DeAnne.

"In front of you?"

"Yes."

"Talking to his friends the whole time?"

"Well, yes," she said. "That's how I've picked up their names. Hearing what he says to them."

"Have you noticed what he does with the joystick when he's playing the game?"

"Oh, I think he moves it now and then, but it doesn't seem to be that kind of game."

"No, I'd say not," said Step. "Does he ever type anything? Ever use the keyboard? Or the paddle controllers?"

"Not that I remember," said DeAnne. "Why?"

"Only because if he's not doing anything with the joystick or the keyboard or anything, then how is it a game? What is he exactly doing?"

"Does he have to do anything?"

"DeAnne, if he causes things to happen onscreen, it's a game. If he doesn't, it's a movie."

"Well, people go to football games and watch them, and they never throw the ball or anything and it's still a game."

"Because there are human beings down on the field playing. But what human being is playing this pirate ship game? Not Stevie."

DeAnne frowned. "You know that I don't know anything about computers, really, except how to boot up your Altos and get Wordstar so I can do things for church."

"Take my word for it. The reason I've never programmed a game that had all that wonderful animation is because it can't be done."

"Well it can," said DeAnne. "I've seen it."

"There's only 48K of RAM in that machine, and the disk doesn't even have a hundred kilobytes on it. Three seconds of that ship sailing along with the sailors climbing all over the rigging would chew up every scrap of that memory. And yet the ship moves all over the screen, right?"

"Two ships, sometimes three," said DeAnne.

"And sometimes they're bigger or smaller?"

"They get big when they move closer, I guess."

"It can't be done. It certainly can't be done fast enough to be smooth animation."

"Well, I've seen it, Step, so don't tell me it can't be done just because you don't know how!"

Step held his tongue.

"This whole discussion is about how to let Stevie know we're serious about him going outside, remember?"

"Right."

"So we'll tell him that tomorrow he can't use the computer at all, OK?"

"OK."

It was not that simple after all. When they told Stevie this the next morning at breakfast, before he went to school, he looked positively stricken. "You can't," he said.

"Actually" said Step, "we can."

"Please," said Stevie. "I'll be good."

"We know that you're a good boy," said DeAnne. "But we have to help you understand how serious it is that you not go outside without permission."

"Please don't make me not use the computer." He was in tears. It had been months since Stevie had cried about anything.

"It's not like we're taking it away permanently," said Step.

"It's just for a day," said DeAnne.

"You can't," said Stevie.

"Why not?" asked Step.

Stevie slid his cereal bowl away, laid his head down on the table, and sobbed.

Step looked at DeAnne in consternation.

"Stevie," said DeAnne. "This reaction of yours actually worries me as much as your having broken the rule and gone outside. I had no idea you were so dependent on using the computer. I don't think that's healthy.

Maybe you need to stay away from the computer for a lot longer than a day."

At that, Stevie shoved his chair back and staggered into the corner of the kitchen near the window. He looked savagely, desperately angry. "You can't! That's the only thing they're staying for! If I can't play they'll go away!"

DeAnne and Step looked at each other, both reaching the same conclusion. Has it been that easy to get rid of the imaginary friends all along? Just turn off the computer?

"You've got no right!" Stevie screamed at them. "I've been trying so hard!"

Stevie's words were so strange that Step couldn't help but flash on his conversations with Lee during his madness. No, Step thought, rejecting the comparison. I just don't understand the context of what Stevie is saying. It'll be rational if I just understand the context.

"Calm down, Door Man," said Step. "Calm down, relax. Your mother didn't say that we were definitely going to take the computer away. But look at yourself. You're out of control. That's really pretty scary, and it makes us think maybe you've been spending way too much time on the Atari."

"Not as much as you spend on the IBM in there," said Stevie.

"That happens to be my work," said Step. "That happens to be what pays for our house and our food and for Zaps doctor bills."

"Are you the only one in the family who has work to do?" Stevie demanded.

The question took Step aback. "Why, do you have work to do?" he asked Stevie.

"Please don't make me stop playing the game. I'll never be bad again ever, please, please, please."

"Stevie, you weren't bad, you were just—"

"Then I'll never be whatever it was that I was, only don't make me stop playing with them, they'll go away and I'll never find them again. It was so hard to get them all together, it was so hard."

Suddenly a picture emerged in Step's mind. This game with the pirate ships had become, in Stevie's mind, the whole world of his imaginary friends. He used to play with them in the back yard, but it must have all moved indoors so that now he could only find them when he was playing with the computer. That meant that maybe Stevie wasn't hallucinating them anymore. Maybe the only time he could actually see them was when they were pixels moving on the screen, and he was afraid that if they slipped away any further, they'd be gone.

Well, wasn't that what Step and DeAnne wanted? They had thought that Stevie wasn't showing any progress, but without their even knowing it, he had stopped having hallucinations. It was gradually getting better by itself, and so they didn't need to push it, didn't need to force the issue. He had made up these boys to fit the names that were forced on him, to give them substance, and then he had built his whole life around them.