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The Cheery-O tavern had these two bartenders, Lucille and Fatty. Lucille asked Daddy what he wanted to wet his whistle, and Daddy said, “How ’bout a root beer for my buddy here, and I’ll have a root beer without the root. And maybe you can get that good-for-nothing husband of yours to cook us up a couple of his fried egg sandwiches.”
“Coming right up, Ace,” Fatty said. Everyone at the Cheery-O was calling Daddy “Ace.”
I ate my sandwich neat, but Daddy got yolk in his beard. He kept making me sing “Inka Dinka Do” for everybody. Then he started playing cards and drinking these drinks called Wild Turkeys. Fatty kept filling up my root beer mug without me even saying anything. I had to show some man with watery eyes how, when you press Silly Putty onto the funny papers and peel it off again, it makes a copy. “The Japs must make this gunk,” he said. “Because when you copy it, the words come out Japanese.”
“No, they don’t,” I said. “They’re just backward.” And the man laughed and called over to Daddy. “Hey, Ace! There’s no flies on this one.”
“No, but there’s flies all over you, you piece a shit!” Daddy called back. I thought the man was going to get mad, but he just laughed. Everyone laughed.
At first, the Cheery-O was kind of fun, but then it got boring. Daddy kept playing cards, and then Lucille yelled at me because I was hula-hooping on my arm, and I started doing it faster and faster, and it flew off and almost hit the bottles behind the bar. “One more hand, Buddy,” Daddy kept telling me. “This is my last hand.” For a long time, I just stood at the front window and watched the cars go by, slipping and sliding in the snow.
“Okay, let’s make like a tree and leave,” Daddy finally said. We were almost out the door when he grabbed my shoulder. “Hey, how would you like to be my lookout?” he said. He got down on his hands and knees and stuck his hand up inside the cigarette machine. My job was to tell him if either Fatty or Lucille was looking. Then Daddy said some bad words, and when he got up off the floor, his hand was bleeding. When he kicked the front of the machine, the glass smashed. “They’re looking!” I said. We ran.
The problem was, all those root beers made me have to go. Daddy took me to the alley between Loew’s Poli and Mother’s bank. “Go piss down there,” he said. “Go on. Hurry up.” His blood was dripping on the snow.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Sure you can. No one’s gonna see you. This is what guys do when they get caught short. It’s what I do.”
I started crying. “I want to, Daddy, but I can’t.”
He looked mixed up, not mad. “All right, all right. Come on, then.”
Whenever Mother and I went in the Mama Mia Bakery, the Italian lady was nice. But she was mean to Daddy. “Drunk as a skunk, and with a little boy, no less! You ought to hang your head in shame!”
“He just needs to use your toilet,” Daddy said.
“Get the hell out before I call the cops!”
Daddy said the Esso station would let us use their restroom, if his friend Shrimp was on and the boss wasn’t around. Shrimp and Daddy were friends, from when Daddy used to work there, before he got fired.
“Harvey comes back from the bank and sees you here, he’ll probably shitcan me,” Shrimp said. The other mechanic stopped working and came over.
“Jesus Christ Almighty, Shrimp,” Dad said. “You’re gonna let the kid have an accident?” Shrimp gave Daddy the key, and Daddy unlocked the door. “I’ll wait right out here,” he said. “Make it snappy.”
I was all shaking at first, and I got some on the seat and the floor. I kept peeing and peeing and peeing. The flusher didn’t work. There were dirty words on the wall and someone had drawn a picture of a man’s pee-pee. The sink had a spider in it. I put on the faucets full blast and watched it get caught in the tidal wave. It was dirty in there, but it was warm from this steamy radiator. I wanted to leave, and I didn’t want to. I didn’t like it when Daddy got drunk.
He wasn’t waiting right outside. He was in where Shrimp and the other guy were fixing the cars. He was talking louder than everyone else. “What do you mean you don’t want to dance with me, darlin’?” he said to some lady in a mink stole. “Sure you do!” He kept trying to waltz, and the woman kept trying not to, and when Shrimp tried to stop it, Daddy shoved him away. Then that Harvey guy got back from the bank.
It was a dirty fight. Three against one, plus Harvey kept hitting Daddy in the face with a bag of change. The lady’s stole got ripped, and she got rippy stockings and a skinned knee. Dad’s mouth was all bloody, and one of his front teeth was just hanging there. Stop crying, kid, everyone kept telling me. It’s okay. Stop crying. And I wasn’t even crying. I was just choking.
At the police station, we had to wait and wait. The blood on Daddy’s hand and his mouth turned rusty-colored. He still had egg yolk in his beard. When he reached up and pulled on his hanging tooth, I looked away. “My name is mud,” he kept saying. “Alden George Quirk the Third Mud.”
“Yeah, but don’t forget,” I said. “You invented the maze.”
And he laughed and said no, he didn’t. All’s he did was copy the idea from some farm he seen when he was hitchhiking through New Jersey. Then he touched my cheek with his sandpaper hands and told me I was his California kid. “How come I’m that?” I asked, but he didn’t answer me.
Later, one of the policemen who arrested us at the Esso station came over and said they finally got ahold of Grandpa.
“What’d he say?” Daddy asked.
“That he can’t come pick up the boy because you have his truck. But that’s okay. We can run him back out there.”
“What did he say about me?” Daddy said.
“That we should lock you up and let you dry out, same as we do with all the other bums.”
The cruiser had a radio, and a siren, and chains on the tires because of the snow. The policeman told me to sit in the back. “Did I get arrested?” I said. He said I didn’t because I didn’t do anything wrong. “You know what you need for the ride back home?” he said. He pulled in front of the Mama Mia Bakery.
I don’t think the Italian lady recognized me, because she was nice again. “Which would you like, sweetheart? A sugar cookie or a chocolate chip?” I took a chocolate chip and it was free. The policeman got a free cruller. He was going to pay for it, but the bakery lady said, “Oh, go on. Get out of here. Your money’s no good in here.” She said it nice, though. Not mean.
On the way home, I remembered about my hula hoop and my Silly Putty: I’d forgotten them back at the Cheery-O. I didn’t eat my cookie. I just held it, all the way back. Even with the snow chains on, the police car kept wiggling back and forth on the snowy road. The cows were out in the pasture still, not in the barn. They had smoky breath and snow on their backs, and when I saw them, I started crying.
One time, I had a scary dream that Daddy was giving me a ride in a helicopter. We were flying over our farm, and he said, “Hang on. Something’s wrong. We’re going to crash!” And then I woke up.
In this other scary dream, Mr. Zadzilko grabbed me and put me in that dark space under the stage where the folding chairs go. He locked that little door and nobody knew I was there. When I tried to scream, nothing came out.
Mr. Zadzilko told me he killed a dog once, by tying a rope around the dog’s neck and throwing the other end over a tree branch, and then yanking. “You oughta have seen the way that dog was dancing,” he said. “You got a dog. Don’t you, Dirty Boy?” he said.
I said no, I didn’t.
“Yes, you do. He’s brown and white. I seen him that time my mother and me drove out to your farm for cider. Maybe if Dirty Boy tells certain secrets, his dog will get the Stan Zadzilko rope treatment.”
“How come you have a mother but no wife?” I said, and he got all red, and told me that was his business.
I DUCK UNDER THE KEEP-OUT rope and take the shortcut to the middle of the maze. That’s where Daddy meets me. His tent’s somewhere in the woods, past the gravel pit. Sometimes he’s by himself and sometimes he’s with that kerchief lady who always stares at me and smiles. He’s trespassing.
I hide the ham and the cookies and potatoes in the baby carriage, under the Quirk baby, the way he says to do when he’s not here. I’m glad he’s not here this morning—him, and that lady, and his stupid jack-o-lantern missing teeth.
Back at the farm, there’s trouble: a big fight, Hennie and Aunt Lolly on one side, and Zinnia and Chicago on the other. “One little raggedy-ass jug of cider—that’s all I ever snitched from here, so help me Jesus!” Zinnia says. “So that later on down the line, I could sip me a little applejack.”
“Then why’s half a ham missing?” Hennie says. “Why is it that this morning a package of icebox cookies was unopened, and now it’s half-gone?”
“I don’t know about no icebox cookies!” Zinnia says. “Ax him!” Her finger’s pointing at me.
“Caelum?” Aunt Lolly says. “Did you eat some of the cookies that were in the pantry?” I shake my head. And I’m not lying, either. I took them but I didn’t eat them.
“Come on, Zinnia,” Aunt Lolly says. “I’m escorting you back. You’ve broken a trust, so I can’t have you working here anymore.”
“Then take me back, too!” Chicago chimes in. “You can crank your own damn apples. Haul your own damn slop barrel down that hill.”
“Don’t you realize that it’s a privilege to work here?” Hennie says.
“Privilege my black be-hind!” Chicago says. “What’s so ‘privilege’ about me breaking my back all day for no pay?”
I can’t tell Lolly and Hennie that it was me who took the food, because then Grandpa will find out Daddy’s trespassing and get him arrested. And it’s a secret. I promised him I wouldn’t tell. And you know what? I think Lolly’s wrong. I think I can love and hate Daddy. Because now Zinnia and Chicago are in trouble, just like Thomas Birdsey got in trouble that time when it was me who was the secret spitter. And tonight, if I die in my sleep like the prayer says, I’m probably going to hell because getting other people in trouble for something you did is, I think, a mortal sin, not a venial sin, and probably hell is going to have a hundred million Mr. Zadzilkos with devil horns.
BUT THAT NIGHT? WHEN I’M lying in bed, thinking about Mr. Zadzilko and getting scared again? I put my light on, and take my pen, and do what Zinnia did: I write “Jesus” on the palm of my hand, and the S in the middle of Jesus becomes the first S in “saves.” It’s not a tattoo, but maybe it’ll work. I kept staring at it and staring at it, and saying, “Jesus…Jesus.” I don’t feel his arms around me, though; I don’t feel anything. Maybe it’s because I didn’t prick myself with a pin, or because every time I say “Jesus,” all’s I can see is Mr. Mpipi, up on the stage, dancing his crazy dance.
On Monday morning, Miss Hogan makes an announcement. “We have to be extra tidy for the next several days,” she says. “Poor Mr. Zadzilko’s mother died over the weekend. He’s going to be absent all week.”
She shows us the sympathy card she’s going to pass around and says to make sure we sign in cursive, in pen not pencil, and neat not sloppy. When the card gets to me, I write “Caelum Quirk,” but Mr. Big Fat Glasses Face probably doesn’t even know my name. All’s he ever calls me is “Dirty Boy.”
All day, I keep thinking about Mr. Zadzilko being absent. And after school—after I empty our wastebasket and wash our board and I’m still waiting for Mother—I go up to Miss Hogan’s desk. “What is it, Caelum?” she says.
“I’ve got a secret.”
“You do, do you? Would you like to tell me what it is?”
“Miss Anderson smokes,” I say. “When she sits on the toilet. I seen her from Mr. Zadzilko’s peeking hole.”
For a long time she just looks at me—like I said it in Japanese or something. Then she gets up, takes my hand, and has me show her.
And you know what? The next morning, when I wake up? The egg case on my windowsill has hatched. There’s tiny little praying mantises scrambling all over the sill, and on the floor, and even in my bed.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
Millions, maybe.
Chapter Five
LOLLY’S CAT WAS CAUTIOUS AT first, watching me from doorways, scooting from the rooms I entered. But half an hour into my homecoming, she sidled up to me, brushing against my pant leg. My aunt had given her some goofy name I couldn’t remember. “Where is she, huh?” I said. “Is that what you’re asking?”
In the pantry, I found a litter box in need of emptying, an empty bag of Meow Mix, and a note in Lolly’s handwriting: “Get cat food.” There were a couple of tins of tuna in the cupboard. “Well, whatever your name is, you’re in luck,” I told the cat. With the first twist of the can opener, she began bellowing. We were probably going to be friends for life.
Thinking I should call Maureen, I flopped down on Lolly’s sofa and grabbed the remote. The Practice was on. Okay, I thought. Not my favorite, but watchable. I stood up and brushed the grit off the sofa, sending cat fur flying. My aunt had many talents, but housekeeping wasn’t one of them; that had always been Hennie’s department. I pried off my shoes and put my feet up. Lolly’s cat hopped aboard, walked up my leg, and nestled against my hipbone. Gotta call Maureen, I thought. Soon as the commercial comes on….
WHAT? WHERE…? I stumbled toward the ringing telephone, realizing where I was: back in Three Rivers, back at the farmhouse.
“Hey,” I said. “I was going to call you. I must have conked out.”
Except it wasn’t Maureen. It was some doctor, talking about my aunt’s stroke. Yeah, I know all this, I remember thinking. That’s why I’ve come back. But somewhere in the middle of his monologue, it dawned on me that he was talking about a second stroke. Lolly hadn’t survived this one, he said. They’d pronounced her dead ten minutes earlier.
I went outside. Sat on the cold stone porch step. The sun was rising, coral-colored, over the treeline. Higher in the sky, the moon was fading away.
I went back inside. Called Maureen and woke her out of a sound sleep.
“Caelum? What time is it?”
“I’m not sure. It’s sunrise here…. She died, Mo.”
I waited out the silence, the sigh. “How?”
“Another stroke.”
“Oh, Cae. I’m so sorry. Are you at the hospital?”
I shook my head. “The farmhouse. I sat with her for a couple of hours last night, but then I came back here. They said when they checked her at four, she was stable. But then, twenty minutes later…Maureen, I don’t feel sad. I don’t feel anything. What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing, Cae,” she said. “You just haven’t been able to take it in yet. Absorb the shock of it.” She said she’d talked to Lolly’s doctor the day before, while I was en route to Connecticut. More of the test results had come back; the damage had been massive. “She might not have been able to walk, or talk, or even swallow food. Lolly would have hated living like that.”
“They asked me did I want to come in and view the body. I said no. Is that something I’m supposed to do?”
“It’s a personal decision, Cae. There’s no ‘supposed to.’”
“I should have stayed with her last night. Slept in the chair or whatever. God, I hate that she died alone.”
Mo said should-haves weren’t going to do Lolly or me any good.
“Last night? I got up and started combing her hair. More out of boredom than anything else, I guess. I’d just been sitting there, watching her sleep. And her hair was all smushed down and I found this comb in her drawer and…and when I stopped combing? She opened her eyes. Stared at me for a few seconds.”
“Then she knew you’d come back.”
“No. Uh-uh. Nothing registered.”
“Maybe it did, Cae. Maybe knowing you were there, she could let herself die. The hospice team at Rivercrest always used to say that the dying—”
“Yeah, okay. Stop. I doubt it, but thanks.”
“How did it feel?” she asked.
“What?”
“Touching her? Combing her hair?”
“It felt…it felt…” The question made my eyes sting and my throat constrict. Trying to stifle tears, I uttered a weird guttural noise that caught the cat’s attention.
“It’s okay to feel, Caelum,” Mo said. “Just let yourself—”
“What’s her cat’s name, anyway?” I said, cutting her off. “I fed her tuna fish last night and now she’s like my shadow.”
“The black and white? Nancy Tucker.”
“Oh, yeah. Nancy Tucker. Where’d that name come from?”
“Some folksinger Lolly likes,” Mo said.
I stood there, nodding at the cat. “Liked,” I said.
Maureen asked me if I’d thought about what I needed to do that day. Should we go over stuff? Make a list? I told her what the hospital had said: that I had to let them know ASAP which funeral home they should contact to arrange for the transfer of the body. “I guess I’ll tell them McKenna’s,” I said. “We used them when my mother died, and my grandfather. My father, too, I think. Or did we? Jesus, that’s weird.”
“What?”
“I can’t remember my father’s funeral.”
“Well, you were so young.”
