Theo (18 page)

Adrian squints at Theo – sunglasses, where’d they go, Theo didn’t notice when they came off. I suppose you do some time. Can’t really avoid that now. You’ve got to be tamed, you little savage. Adrian lunges again, grabs Theo around the waist and both sink, Adrian trying to tickle. Theo’s pushing and coming up for air, out of the water.

I don’t want to die.

Hey, I’m the one in danger here, you’re a menace. Look at my lip.

I don’t want you to die.

I’m not going anywhere, you’re going to have to put up with me for a long time.

I don’t want my mother to die.

You’re mother’s strong as a bloody ox, I wouldn’t want to be the grim reaper that comes for her. What’s bringing all this on here on this lovely and amazing day here on planet earth, the most amazing place I know of. None of this now: Adrian tickles again, Theo squeals and ducks.

Is it school. We’ll figure that out, mate, the three of us. Your mother let you stay away for a long time. We’ll need to come to a meeting of the minds, you and your mother and I.

She’s sick. And you’re always gone.

Sorry, love. It’s tough to hang on for the ride if you’re a family in this band.

Adrian reaches out to rub Theo’s head. Theo barks, dives and swims away, a dog, a seal. An eel. He wriggles in the cold water, which feels good. He’s a diver, he tries to stay in one place but the water moves him. He pushes up.

Adrian stands staring out to sea, watching a boat with a lady skiing behind it on a rope. She’s wearing a bikini. Adrian’s splashing water up on himself now, on his face.

Well this woke me up alright. I feel invigorated and full of sap now.

Theo’s father dives under, while Theo watches waves, looking for one to ride.

When his father’s head floats up, slowly, and the head shakes and looks around, Theo yells: Let’s ride waves.

Sure mate.

There’s yelling. A group of men and ladies on the beach charging into the water, Colin and the bass player and the sound man and someone’s yelling Adrian. A couple behind lug an umbrella and tug on the wagon from the gardener’s shed. Somebody’s pushing a wheelbarrow with a person in it over the sand, and someone else is pushing a wheelbarrow with a person. Maybe they’re racing but they’re hardly moving, and one spills sideways.

Colin’s holding up a bottle. He’s got a cigarette in his mouth, one of the ones he makes himself.

Adrian’s staring at them, head barely above the water, and his face is weird. He looks angry. Then he shakes his head, flings water around, and stands up. Adrian yells, but not words, his head tilted back. Then he looks at the beach and the people and smiles, looks at Theo, smiles, looks behind him
as a tall wave curls. This might be the one, Adrian yells. He begins swimming, more like thrashing, and Theo does also, his head down, trying to get on top of it, holding his arms out straight and feeling it lift him, the feeling when you get it right and he rides over the water pulling at him but not sucking him down and then it bends like it’s diving and crashes and he’s tipped into the sand on his shoulder and turned over, and he’s struggling up and into a crouch and sputtering and stumbling onto his feet and in shallow water and his dad’s nowhere and then Adrian’s poking up much further in toward the beach, crouching and sputtering and laughing. Good one, eh, Adrian’s saying back at Theo and Theo’s grinning too.

His dad up now and slogging through the water, toward Colin, and others move their way, and Mingus is there now, digging: he’s got a shovel and wood and steel pails; Theo remembers them from the gardener’s shed, full of spiders, the shed and the buckets, the shed wet and dry and dark.

Theo’s dad drinks from the bottle now, someone brings him sunglasses, and along the water men and ladies wade in, or plop in the shallows and let the water wash over their legs. The lady Gina bends with Mingus, they’re piling up sand, Mingus using the wood and a ball of twine to measure something or straighten something, and it’s hot now that Theo’s kicking out of the water, he thinks about turning and jumping back, at a desert and has to cross and there are giants to avoid, and his dad laughing really hard, and the bass player’s there now, and they’re passing the bottle and a cigarette and starting to walk up the beach, away, Colin with them wearing one of his skirts, it wraps around and has flowers.

On the desert Theo kicks past the men and ladies and there are chairs and towels, and a rug from somewhere, and
an umbrella and a cooler, and giants and Theo on a quest has to be invisible, he moves through them and no one notices, telling himself the story
past the guards and at the castle
and Mingus is there guarding it with a lady guard, and they’re the enemy but they’re secretly good and Theo’s moving over the sand letting his hair hang in his face kicking up to Mingus and Gina, and they’re building a tower that spirals up, it has flat parts that circle up, and it’s about knee-high on Mingus and he’s really sweating in a cape and one of his helmets and wraparound glasses, and Gina’s in someone else’s bathing suit, it’s too big and Theo doesn’t look but he can’t help it, and she’s bending over to dig.

Hey how’s the water.

It’s good. What are you making.

Mingus looks up: Stick around and find out.

It doesn’t look like anything.

Not yet. We’re going to make a fountain.

A fountain.

Yeah, you can help.

How are you going to make a fountain.

Well, stop asking so many questions and help.

It’s too hot.

Suit yourself. You can cool off in it later then.

Theo wonders what he should do; his dad is here, but. Is the house empty. A lot of people are here. Where is the Seal. Is he in the house. Does he have clothes on. Theo walks on the desert, the sand scalding his feet, squeaking so dry. Air watery when he looks to where the land disappears. Both directions.

Theo is a spy. No one knows who he really is. Two people squeeze something from an eyedropper onto their tongues, a man and a lady, tilting their heads back, tongues out like
dogs, eyes closed. Another man plops beside them. Theo hears something about Adrian, see if he wants in on this. They laugh.

Theo runs, down to his dad, thinking about kicking a soccer ball. Maybe his dad will play football. Adrian holds the bottle by the neck, at his side, and lifts it between his fingers like a cigarette, spills some on his face. The label is black.

Theo’s standing there and looking up, kicking sand on his father’s leg. Adrian notices eventually: Hey mate.

Can we play soccer.

You mean football.

Yeah, football.

Right now.

Yeah – I’ll get a ball.

I’m trying to figure out some work things here, love. Maybe in a bit. Adrian puts his hand on Theo’s head, fingers still warm even under the sun, warm enough to be warmer, his father’s palm like a hat.

You’re making me hot, Theo says and spins out from under it and runs into a lady who bends in the middle and backs away, hey, easy, you might make me miscarry, and Adrian and the other man both cough out laughs. Theo keeps running, being chased, has to get away or he’ll get caught and then the rescue will be ruined,
have to get the golden owl from the dungeon
and he’s dodging and running, away, and he wonders if those two boys are somewhere, maybe.

He remembers a tire swing, he doesn’t know where it was, a big tire on a long chain under a giant tree, with plastic around the chain so you could swing and hold on to it, and swinging back and forth, the wind, and looking up through the branches where the sun broke in and right into your eyes and you had to close them and just swing, feeling weird and dizzy and warm,
no earth down there just air and swinging, and then a voice, and he remembered where it was, at the house in Jamaica and it was Ada the housekeeper saying, Theo, your father says to come inside now, it’s time to go. Go where, Theo said, eyes closed. Ada laughed: Time to go home, boy.

This is home.

Child, you going to New York and you got to get on a plane to do that, and planes don’t wait. So come on now.

I’ll do it if my dad tells me.

Theo, your dad cannot come right now. He loves you and wants you to be happy, but he cannot come right now. You need to get down and get ready to leave.

Theo opened his eyes, the tree like an umbrella keeping the sky off, and at the tree’s edges was everything. The house was blinding white, the shutters blue, a red roof made of tiles. Flowers big as plates, red and white and yellow, and a lady inside with his dad. The air smelled like salt and something sweet. Last night the house was singing, men with really long hair they called locks – dread was what the Europeans called them, dreadful looking locks, so the men called them locks but dreads sometimes and his dad and a man with a tape recorder, and one lady singing. Theo went to sleep hearing them, the singing like when you don’t quite run, and you don’t quite walk, like a dance. The house cats trotted with tails in the air, only their legs moving, like bumper cars with the rods at the back that ran to the ceiling and sparked, and the birds sounded wild and angry, and crickets and tree frogs. Outside the gate, from up at the road came high horns of motorbikes and jitneys.

Ada, will you be here when we come back.

I don’t know, Theo. Maybe.

Theo swung, not pulling or pushing the chain anymore, just hanging on, swinging lower and lower, slower. She stood with arms on her hips, and he looked at her, back and forth.

You want some fritters before you go.

Theo loved conch fritters, loved tearing at them with his teeth. Even his dad told him to cool it. The clean strong taste and the rubbery toughness. He thought about animals, and eating them. Sometimes it bothered him. His mother was a vegetarian for a while, and in the hotel they only had vegetables and fruit. Then one rainy Sunday his mom finally came out of her room, and called room service and asked for a steak, and said, I need blood. Yes ma’am, Theo heard from the phone, him holding on to her leg.

Ada stood until the swing slowed and became completely still. Theo hung for a minute, not moving, and then hopped down. Okay, he said, giving up.

Theo now kicks sand on the beach, thumping among people, pounding the sand with his feet, stomping. He’s flattening; he stomps over toward Mingus and Gina, and others now there, digging and piling sand.

It looks like a cake, Theo says.

Mingus wrestles with wood planks he’s brought in the wagon, along with some stepladders, stuff from one of the rooms full of junk Theo figures; Mingus is sweating and drinking from a big glass bottle – Olde English 800. Mingus says it clears out the poisons, drinking that. Mingus drinks a lot of them. Sometimes he brings bottles in a suitcase, along with the arrows.

Gina’s burying one of the other adults in the sand so only his head and shoulders stick out of the cake.

Mingus laughs, gleaming. Everyone’s gleaming, or dull with sand. Theo’s feeling dizzy. His stomach hurts.

Mingus and two men are setting up stepladders to hold planks flat, four that stick out like helicopter blades. Two ladies sit on the first two planks, and two men are struggling up onto the other two.

There’s a trench around the cake with pail-shaped mounds of sand at its edge. Mingus and Gina are giving out straws and bottles of beer and Olde English. One man has one of the black bottles his father likes.

Some strangers not from the house stand now watching, old people in big hats and shirts and shorts, but not too close.

Make a wish, Mingus says to them, smiling big. It’s a fountain.

Mingus stands in front of it and lifts his arm like an orchestra conductor, and moves his arms, and the people suck liquid into their straws and spit it back out, up in the air, on each other, on Mingus. One lady squirts toward the people watching but it’s not close; they still move backward.

You people are at the wrong beach, one man says.

Baby, you are so right.

Mingus takes a big swig from his bottle and walks toward them, holding his cape out with his free hand. They stumble backward but not fast enough. He sprays Olde English, them swatting at the air as if it were insects, and he drinks quickly and sprays again as they stumble and back away. The fountain whoops and yells, some spray from their planks toward the old people.

Alcohol’s illegal here. We’ll be back with police.

Mingus waves his bottle around, points down the beach at tents and chairs. Yeah, nobody drinks on the beach here, they serve cocktails. Mingus points the bottle at one of the ladies.
Come on back when he gets in his coffin for his nap, baby. Mingus winks. I bet you looked good when you were alive.

Adrian’s here now, grinning. You’re the reason I pay a fortune for this place.

Mingus turns, spits at the sand. He grins, then guzzles and spits at Adrian, who ducks: Bloody idiot, and runs at Mingus and staggers him, both are grinning, Adrian shorter and skinny getting pushed around by Mingus, Adrian in his underwear and Mingus under his cape. The bottle hits the sand and spills, a spreading brown.

Adrian, huffing, stumbles over to one of the fountain people, takes the black bottle. He has something in his hand that he swallows, then he takes a big pull at the bottle. Then he seems to notice Theo.

Hello mate, what do you think of the fountain. We can cool off in this.

Adrian walks closer and everyone sprays him, and he shakes like a dog. Come on in, he grins. Theo moves over, into the sticky warm spray. He’s next to his dad, who’s got his mouth open, like catching snowflakes. Theo closes his eyes, and he’s hot and his stomach feels like something sharp’s poked into it.

Dad, I don’t feel good.

Well. You don’t feel well. Good is an adjective and well is an adverb. Let’s do something about that, eh. What have you eaten. You look a little shaky.

You were going to make me something and you forgot.

Sorry, love. I’m falling down on the job. You need a better dad, or at least a better cook. Let’s get Leslie in on this, come on.

Theo ducks away from the people still spraying, which is weird. It’s spit. His dad’s wet and greasy looking; Theo notices
he needs to shave and he looks tired and patchy. His dad motions at one of the other adults, a man with a cigarette and shades and a mohawk, who slowly gets up from the sand and tilts his head. Theo thinks a mohawk would be cool but his mother keeps saying no.