The Absolute Value of Mike (4 page)

The TV was off. Poppy hadn't moved. The fly was still on his arm. “When exactly was the last time he ate scrapple?”

“Breakfast this morning. He never eats lunch and hardly touches dinner. But I always fix him scrapple for breakfast because he can really put that stuff away. I think it's the only thing that keeps him alive.”

I finally exhaled fully. At least he wasn't dead. But he wasn't exactly lively, either. And then it hit me. Holy crap! “Moo? What about the artesian screw?”

Moo sighed and shook her head, plodding into the kitchen with Junior.

What did that mean? I followed her, my backpack banging against the wall phone to my left and knocking the receiver off. I put the receiver back in its cradle after untangling the old cord that was duct-taped together in three places. I thought about calling Dad. He'd said to call only in a “dire emergency.” Since Poppy wasn't actually a corpse, there was no dire emergency. And I sure didn't want to admit that the artesian screw might be a bust. He'd just send more math problems. And he'd be more determined than ever to send me to the math and science school. Which meant more failure. More disappointment.

“So, Moo, where's the artesian screw, anyway?”

Moo shook her head and whispered, “Poppy and his helpers haven't even started.”

“Oh, great.” I dropped my bags on the floor. “I'm only here for six weeks, you know.”

“I know.”

“Is that going to be enough time?”

“I certainly hope so, dear. This is very important.”

“No kidding.” I glared at Poppy through the pass-through. He hadn't moved, as far as I could tell, but the yellow yardstick was now on his lap.

“Mike, why don't you try talking to Poppy? Maybe he'll listen to you.”

“Me?”

She nodded, her big owl eyes looking sad yet hopeful.

I walked slowly into the living room and made myself look at the creepy figure with hair horns. “So . . . dude . . . how about that artesian screw?”

Poppy's eyes narrowed and he turned away from me to look at the cat clock on the wall. I'd seen one like it on eBay. Although it was early afternoon, the clock was stuck on ten minutes after eight and was as motionless as Poppy.

“Your clock's broken,” I said.

Poppy's jaw clenched and his head dropped so far that his devil-horn tufts of hair stuck straight forward.

Moo's voice came from the kitchen. “Felix is fine. He just needs new batteries.”

“Felix?”

“Felix the Cat was a cartoon character Doug loved. He used to drive Poppy crazy singing that theme song.”

“Do you have any batteries? I'll put them in.”

Moo beckoned to me through the pass-through and I went into the kitchen. “That's sweet of you, Mike.” She glanced through the pass-through and lowered her voice. “Poppy doesn't want anyone else to put the batteries in.”

“Then why doesn't he do it?”

“He doesn't want anyone but Doug to put them in. You see, Doug gave Poppy that clock for Father's Day many, many years ago. It was the first present he could actually buy for Poppy. He saved up a long time for that clock.”

I looked at the grinning cat, wondering if Dad would feel that way about anything I gave him. I knew how Dad would feel about no artesian screw. “Listen, Moo, is there anything I can do to get Poppy's project started?”

Moo chewed her lip and looked through the pass-through at the Poppy lump. She leaned toward me and whispered, “I'm afraid the workshop is a mess. The first step would be to pick that place up.”

“Okay, let me at it.”

“Poppy doesn't like anyone going into his workshop. It's his man-cave. But maybe we should make an exception?”

She padded into the living room, stopping at the row of keys by the front door. She checked to make sure Poppy wasn't watching, snatched a key off the wall peg, and ran back into the kitchen, shoving the key into my hand.

“Side door of the garage,” she hissed, and then, obviously for Poppy's benefit, said, “Oh, Mike, WHY DON'T YOU GO OUTSIDE AND SEE MY VEGETABLE GARDEN?” She gave me a big wink.

I headed for the garage. The door of the white frame building had a window in it, but it was so dark inside, I couldn't see a thing. I stuck the key in the rusted lock, and after pushing against the door a few times, it opened. The smell of wood chips and shellac hit me and I breathed in deeply. It was a good smell and took me back to shop class at school. As I stepped into the garage to find light switches, my feet almost slipped out from under me. I skidded on something, or lots of somethings. I grabbed a workbench to stay upright.

When I looked down, I saw that the floor was covered with nails. All different sized nails. Black ones, shiny ones, large ones, small ones. It was a sea of nails. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw the rest of the mess that Moo had mentioned. Saws and files and hammers were spread out on surfaces like they'd been thrown there. Chunks of wood were strewn everywhere. If the walls hadn't been standing, I would've thought a hurricane had blown through.

There were great power tools, though: Delta Unisaw, Powermatic lathe, DeWalt drill press. Man, you could make anything in here! Against the far wall I noticed he had a ton of boards, sorted by type. Maple. Walnut. Cherry. Maybe he was trying out different woods for the artesian screw to see which one performed best. How did you make an artesian screw, anyway?

I stumbled over the nails on the floor to get to the radial arm saw and brushed off some of the sawdust. It was my favorite tool. With a radial arm saw you could take a plank of wood and make it into a simple bookshelf. That was the project I got an A on. Mr. Barron, my shop teacher, even put it on display in the school lobby. Sasha asked what my dad thought of it. “Are you kidding?” I asked him. “Dad doesn't know about this. It's too . . .
vocational.
”

I took a piece of the maple and laid it on the table just to slice the very edge off, just to see how the saw worked, just to feel the wood and the power in my hands. It was still kind of dark but the big red button was obvious. I reached up, took a deep breath, and pressed it on.

Nothing happened. I felt my shoulders slump. Then I remembered Mr. Barron saying to always unplug power tools when not in use. I felt behind the saw and found the cord, following it all the way to the wall. Where it was plugged in. Shoot! I finally found the light switches and flicked them up and down. I stood in darkness. Nothing in this place worked!

I stormed back to the kitchen. “Where's the circuit breaker?”

“What, dear?”

“The garage is completely dead!”

She held up her forefinger in front of her mouth to quiet me down, and whispered, “Workshop, dear. Poppy doesn't like it when people say
garage.
We don't want to upset Poppy.”

I didn't care if Poppy was upset or not. “I need to turn the electricity back on.”

“Oh,” she said. “That. I—I didn't pay the electric bill.” She pulled her hoodie strings and sniffled like she was going to cry.

Okay, that was a problem. “Look, I can set up electronic payments for you.” Then I remembered they had no computer. “Or I can write the checks and you can sign them. I take care of the bills at home. We'd never have power if it were up to Dad. He always forgets.”

“I didn't forget,” she said quietly. “Mike, would you check the mailbox?”

“Okay.” Sure, whatever it took to get this show on the road. I walked the obstacle course of water buckets in the front yard to the Harley-Davidson mailbox.

There was a Love Connection dating survey, a flyer from a local shoe store, and two envelopes stamped Past Due from Penn Telecom and Allegheny Power.

I walked slowly up the steps to Moo, who was standing at the front door, tugging her HOLY COMFORTER hoodie around her. “Are the Social Security checks there? They both should've come yesterday.”

I shook my head and handed her the pile. I knew what
Past Due
meant. We'd gotten enough of those before I set up electronic payments for Dad.

She took the mail and walked into the kitchen.

I was slowly starting to figure it out. Collecting water in buckets in the front yard? Running out of gas? Watching imaginary movies in Tyrone? Why hadn't Dad told me they were poor? Probably because he was clueless. Then I realized something else. Dad had forgotten to give me the emergency money he'd promised. Now I couldn't even help! I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and checked inside. Only twenty-seven dollars. I looked at Moo, helpless.

She held the opened electric bill in one hand and patted my back with the other. “It's all right, Mike. We have flashlights and a camp stove. We can go for quite a long time without power. We've done it before.”

“How long?”

“Oh, weeks at a time.”

“Weeks? We don't have weeks! We've got to get this artesian screw off the ground—or into the ground—or wherever it goes.”

She stared up at me through her big owl glasses, her eyes cloudy.

“We need power! Power tools don't work without electricity!”

“True.” She looked through the pass-through at Poppy. “But he's not working so well, either.”

She was right. We had two problems: powerless tools and powerless Poppy. I could handle getting electricity for the workshop, but I wasn't sure how to get Poppy plugged in.

I took the electric bill out of her hand and looked for a phone number. There it was, next to their slogan, You Have the Power! “I'm calling the electric company and seeing if I can negotiate a deal to get them to turn on the power.”

“That won't work, dear.”

“Sure it will.” I picked up the phone. “Every power company has an assistance program to help people who can't pay their bills.” I shook the handset. “What's wrong with this phone?”

“That's what I mean, dear. It doesn't work.”

I stared at her.

“The phone always gets cut before the electricity.”

I slowly hung up the receiver. How long had they lived this way? I thought about what to try next. I really wished Dad had let me bring my phone. “Okay. Here's what we'll do. We'll drive over to the electric company—”

“But Tyrone's out of gas, remember?”

I groaned. “What about that Suburban in the driveway?”

She shook her head. “That's Poppy's. It doesn't work.”

Like Poppy. “Look. I'll make you a deal. I'll go take care of the electric bill if you'll work on . . . giving Poppy a little charge.”

—numbers that group together easily and are easy to work with

 

 

I
t was a great plan, except I forgot one thing. I'm lousy at remembering directions, even in a small town like this. That's part of my dyscalculia. I couldn't find Allegheny Power. I did find a Shop 'n Save, though, and remembered what Moo said about scrapple being the only thing that kept Poppy alive, so I bought some. I had to. It was my only hope.

It took a while to find the scrapple, though, because I combed the cereal aisle before the manager asked if she could help me, and then busted out laughing when I told her. How was I supposed to know that scrapple is meat? I bought five pounds of the stuff. That was another bad plan, because whoever said rural Pennsylvania is cooler than D.C. must not have been here during a June heat wave. Sweat was running down my arms and legs like I'd been in PE for the last hour. I could only imagine what was happening to the scrapple.

Finally, I saw a sign of hope at the next corner. You Have the Power! Yes! It was the power company's slogan. I ran down the block, the bag of scrapple banging against my leg. I wheeled around the corner and saw the rest of the sign. You Have the Power! Build a Family, Adopt a Child!

What? I looked closer at the building. It was a warehouse or something. I looked down the street. No sign of anything like an electric company. Across the street was a park.

I put my bag down and groaned. The only other person on the street was a homeless guy, digging around in his shopping cart. I wondered if he knew where Allegheny Power was. Why would he? It wasn't like he had electric bills to pay.

I couldn't help staring at him, though, because I've always kind of identified with homeless people. I know that sounds weird. I have a home. I even have a family. Although Dad's more like a widower who happens to have a son. A son whose face he can't picture and whose name he can't remember.

Maybe I think about homeless people a lot because of what Dad always says.
If you can't solve the simplest problems, you'll end up on the street.
I often wonder if that's where I'll end up. What's it like to have no home? And no family?

The man looked up. He had dark bushy eyebrows and his face was bony and had stubby hairs on it like he hadn't shaved. But he had kind of a rock-star face, the type girls would chase after. Except that he was a homeless dude. And old. Probably forty.

He eyed my Shop 'n Save bag. “Is that food for the soup kitchen?” He pointed to the building I'd thought was the electric company and I saw another sign: Soup Kitchen 12:00-2:00 P.M. “Because it's after hours.”

I shook my head. “I'm trying to get to Allegheny Power.”

“Corner of Bartlett and Main.”

“Right, but how do I get there?”

He gave me a whole list of directions, and as usual, they all left my brain as fast as he said them. I wished I'd brought a pencil and paper.