The Freak Observer (18 page)

There is a little box on the kitchen table. It is addressed to me. It is from Europe, and I don't want to open it. I suppose I should trust that Homeland Security would have caught it if it were a bomb. It doesn't buzz, so it isn't killer bees.

The phone in the kitchen rings.

“Aloha, Loa. Hey, you better not go to the University of Hawaii, because that would be really irritating. Aloha, Loa. Aloha, Loa.”

“Jack, is that you?”

“Who else?”

“Well, lots of people use phones, Jack. For example my mother usually answers this one. She would find your behavior confusing, and she would probably hang up right away.”

“Good to know, but you really shouldn't go to Hawaii. Unless you use your middle name. Do you have a middle name?”

“It's Elizabeth, Jack, my name is Loa Elizabeth.”

“That would work. It isn't as cool as Loa. Aloha, Elizabeth. Maybe it wouldn't work. Does your mom call you by both names when you screw up? Because Aloha Elizabeth could make you feel like you screwed up.”

“Jack, did you have some reason for calling me? Other than warning me about Hawaii?”

“Want to see a movie? Want to see
Mah Nakorn
? It's playing at the campus theater.”

“Monocorn? Is that like a unicorn?”

“No.
Mah Nakorn
. Two words, with a
K
. It's from Thailand. In English the title is
Citizen Dog
.”

“I don't know. . . .”

“Well, it has amputation, nosepicking, and a zombie taxi driver—it's a romantic comedy.”

“OK, Jack. OK.”

. . .

It is a good movie, actually.

. . .

Little Harold has opened the box. I had left it on the table, in plain sight. It's not like anyone told him not to open it.

There is some crumpled up bubble wrap beside the open box.

I can hear Little Harold in his room.

He is sitting on the floor playing. He probably doesn't admit to his friends that he still plays with his action figures and Happy Meal toys, but he does. He is just sitting on the floor playing.

He looks up at me in the doorway.

“Hi Loa, look what you got. It's cool. What is it? I was just playing with it a little bit.” He holds it out to me.

“It's OK. I'm not mad. You shouldn't open other people's mail though, alright?” I say.

The thing is surprisingly heavy. And weird.

It is solid, like a sculpture, not an action figure. It looks like a hunchback bird with a funnel on its head. It has long floppy ears or wings drooping almost down to the ground. It is holding something, a letter probably, speared on its twisty beak.

“What is it?” asks Little Harold.

“I don't know. What do you think it is? Was there anything else in the box?”

“Just this,” he says and handed me a folded-up postcard. “It's cool. That thing. Can I play with it again sometime?”

“Sometime, maybe, after I look at it.”

“Cool,” he says, and then he resumes the story in progress with the rest of the action figures and stuff.

. . .

I take the little figure and the postcard with me to the library. I typed in “jheronimus bosch,” like it said on the bottom of the bird. The library catalog likes “Hieronymus Bosch” better and burps up twenty titles to consider.

I learn a few things about my weird bird. He appears in a painting, in the left panel of
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
made by Hieronymus/Jheronimus Bosch about 1550. He is wearing skates. Nobody knows for sure what the word on the letter in his beak means. And as far as weird goes, a hunchback bird on ice skates is not in the Hieronymus Bosch top ten. A walking stomach, for example, with what looks like Cubone the lonely Pokémon's ancestor riding on its back playing a harp: that's weird. A guy with feet, wings, tentacles, and hands wearing glasses. That's weird.

When I open some of the art history books, I feel like I'm reading one of those dumb dream-symbol dictionaries. Ice skates are equal to folly. Funnels are equal to the deceits of science.

It just bugs me, the idea that there is a simple answer. Maybe that's because I want simple answers. I want to know why Corey sent me this thing. I want to know if Esther knew the truck was coming. I want to know if the little lights that were Asta blinked out one at a time like stars behind a moving cloud or if they all went dark like twinkle lights as soon as one failed. I want to know she wasn't a lonely little chick brain floating without a shell.

But I don't know shit.

. . .

When I get home, I find messages for me on the table: one of those green sticky notes Mom loves to leave around and an envelope from my old high school addressed to me.

The green sticky note says, “Your friend Jack called, and your duck is ready to cook. Be at the studio tonight around seven. I hope you know what that means. Little Harold and I are swimming. Make dinner, please, we are going to be starving when we get home. Little Harold says not to cook duck—or chicken, either. Love, Mom.”

I open the envelope and unfold the sheet of paper inside.

It is my extra-credit essay.

It doesn't have a score on it, but there is a note in Mr. Banacek's square-printed letters, just like he used on the whiteboard in class.

Loa, Sometimes the theory side of physics seems a little loony to me. You were an outstanding student and a pleasure to have in class. I have a lot of confidence in you. If you ever need a letter of recommendation, let me know. T. Banacek

. . .

“So what do you know about Hieronymus Bosch?” I'm helping Arno build a kiln door while I wait for Jack.

“I make pots. I don't study history,” Arno pauses and looks carefully at a brick. Then he puts that brick down and chooses another that looks exactly the same as far as I can tell. “Nobody knows anything about Hieronymus Bosch. Not really.”

I pull the weird bird out of my coat pocket and hand it to him. Arno holds the figure at eye level and looks at it, “Well, one thing I can say about Hieronymus Bosch is that this image works. Whatever the hell this thing is, it's interesting.” He hands my gift back to me.

“I'm glad I make pots,” says Arno, “I think clay is easier to work with than nightmares.”

“I read today that the town he lived in burned down when he was thirteen. Do you think that was the problem?”

“What problem? The guy was a genius. But maybe he just ate spoiled rye bread. It was full of LSD. That explains a lot about the Middle Ages. They were all hallucinating. Here, let me show you something really important.”

He goes into the main studio and comes back with a fistful of sloppy clay. It stinks. It smells just this side of organic. It smells of rot and damp earth. Arno holds the ball of mud in his hand, just as he had held the bird figure earlier. He looks at it carefully. Then he pinches it and flicks it and runs his thumbs along it like his hands are looking for something.

Then he stops and plops the clay on the top row of bricks on the kiln door. It is a little wet clay gargoyle all of a sudden: a thing with expressive eyes and stooped shoulders and a fat gut.

“Kiln god,” says Arno. “Put your faith in the kiln god, at least until we open the door and see how the pots came out.”

. . .

I've been staring at the fluorescent lights on the studio ceiling for two and a half hours. I understand now why the place is dotted with decrepit couches. People do a lot of waiting in this place. I, for example, am waiting for Jack. He should never be a paramedic or a delivery guy or . . .

“Hey, wow, it got late,” says Jack. “Maybe we should do this tomorrow, the raku. ‘Cause, like, it got late.”

So we walk home, and my naked unfinished duck stays where it is, pale and grainy on the shelf, waiting to be changed into something else. Its little blobby bathtubduckie shape is starting to grow on me. Sure it looks a little inert next to Jack's ducks, but it is patient and looks more like a duck than a doorknob.

Jack and I walk across campus. The stars are out so I start naming them. Jack seems interested. At least he points his nose in the right direction and cocks his head.

Sometimes Jack reminds me a little of my old dog, Ket. Like now, when he tips his head like he is listening for the stars. I still miss Ket and the way he used to look at me like he wanted to know what I wanted him to know. It is the sort of look that can easily be mistaken for love.

“Can you really see pictures when you see the constellations?” asks Jack.

“What do you mean?”

“Can you really see pictures? Or is it more like just a shape? An abstract shape?”

“Well I guess it's more like just a shape. I guess that Cassiopeia, the Queen in her Chair, looks more like a
W
than a queen or a chair.”

“How does it feel, to know them? To see them as particular stars like that?”

“I don't know. A little consoling, I guess. I never really thought about how it feels.”

“Can you
not
see them, the constellations, can you just see the sky?”

I look up. There are stars I have no name for; there are stars up there that are invisible to the human eye, stars that can only be seen in the Hubble telescope mirror or heard as radio waves. But I can't “not see” the constellations that I know.

“It is sort of like reading, once you learn to read, you can't look at a word and not read it. Even if you leave out letters, your brain will fill in the places and make a word and make it make sense. The constellations are like words I know how to read. I can't ‘not see' them.”

It's a little surprise: Jack can be quiet. He never says another word until we get to my building and he says good-bye.

. . .

I have a French test on Monday. It hasn't gotten any easier. French makes me feel stupid. It's like I don't even have a place in my brain for
l'enfantin langage
much less
le dérèglement du langage
. I write the stupid stuff down over and over like Bart Simpson writing
“Je ne parle pas Français”
and it doesn't help. By this time, my hands should know it; it should be embedded in my muscle memory even if my brain is a lost cause.

. . .

I'm trying to buy a ticket. I don't know if it is for a movie or a trip, but I can't get the attention of the person on the other side of a glass window. I think the little speaker device is broken or something. I start banging on the glass.

The ticket agent gestures to the side of the window. There's a tube there with a screw-on lid, like they use at the bank drive-through for deposits of cash. I want to put a note in there to explain what I need, but I don't have a pen or paper. I start rummaging through my pockets looking for something to use.

I find the letter that the messenger bird was carrying, but it is the real letter. I'm torn between using it for scratch paper and knowing that it is very valuable. Someone might know how to read this message. I shouldn't destroy it.

The lights in the lobby start to flicker out, and I realize that the ticket agent is leaving. I start banging on the glass. I need help. I need to buy a ticket.

An announcement comes on over the PA system. I can't understand it. It's in French. I can only understand the day of the week, “
Lundi
.”

The ticket agent looks right at me and shrugs. Then the last of the lights go out, and I'm standing there in the dark holding a letter I can't read.

I look out the window, and I can see stars in the sky, they are all very bright and beautiful, but none of them is familiar.

. . .

It's nice actually, to wake up in the middle of the night and not be terrorized. It's nice to just wake up and wonder, “Wow, what was that?” and then feel OK about flipping the pillow over and going back to sleep.

Believe me, it's even bigger than being able to have pizza delivered.

It isn't quite so nice to wake up and find out that first period starts in less than half an hour. I never slept in before. Maybe I need to buy an alarm clock—a wind-up one with a big clanging bell on top like they have in old cartoons. How cool is that?

We are doing expository presentations—a.k.a. speeches with props—in English. Mine is next week, and I've just realized that my plan to bring in a freshly cooked raku duck might not pan out. I hadn't figured Jack into the equation. He isn't exactly dependable in a where-andwhen sort of way. But I'm weirdly unconcerned about next week. For one thing, I could take off my boot and use it as a visual aid to explain Freak Observers. I could do that right this minute, but I don't have to. I can just sit back and be a member of the respectful audience.

Yesterday one guy explained how to make a drum out of a propane tank. That was followed by the story of Nintendo's shift from sex hotels to video games. I'm fairly confident that I would never have discovered those things on my own. I'm learning things in school.