The Crossroads

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Maybe they’re getting up a game,” his dad said eagerly.

  A tough-looking boy stood in the center of the others. He pounded a ball into his mitt and glared at Zack. Toughie smirked, then snorted. Zack knew what that meant: Another bully already hated his geeky guts.

  “You guys need another player?” Zack’s father asked.

  “Not really,” said the tough guy.

  “Okay,” said Zack. “We’d better go home, Dad.”

  Zipper barked in agreement.

  “Just a minute,” his father said. “Boys, I’m George Jennings. We just moved in—down the street. The Victorian there.”

  “What’s a Victorian?”

  “A famous style of architecture.”

  Another snort from Tough Stuff. “Looks like a dollhouse.”

  “That’s right. Most dollhouses are fashioned after Victorian homes. What’s your name, son?”

  “Kyle. Kyle Snertz.”

  “Do you live around here?”

  “Duh.”

  Zack’s father chose to ignore Snertz’s sarcasm.

  “This is my son, Zack. Zack? Say hi to Kyle.”

  “Hey,” Zack mumbled.

  Kyle Snertz snorted back some more wet stuff. The guy seemed to have a ton of snot stuck inside his nose.

  “Say, guess what?” Zack’s father said to Kyle.

  “What?”

  “We’re going to build a tree fort!”

  “We are?” The news flash surprised Zack.

  Kyle was suddenly interested. “Cool. You gonna steal wood and junk from the construction sites?”

  “No.” Zack’s father chuckled. “We’re not going to steal anything. I thought we’d run out to Home Depot. You guys are welcome to come along with us if you’d like.” The cell phone clipped to his belt started chirping. “Excuse me, fellas.” He walked away to take the call.

  The other boys moved in behind Kyle. Zack could tell he was their leader. The alpha dog.

  “So, four-eyes,” Kyle sneered low so Zack’s dad couldn’t hear. “You live in a dollhouse?”

  Zack didn’t answer. Kyle was big. The boys who wanted to beat him up usually were. Big and moist.

  Kyle moved closer. Close enough that Zack could smell his sweat and know it stank like rancid chicken soup. “Seeing how you live in a dollhouse, maybe we should call you Barbie from now on.”

  Great. A nickname. Like Stinky or Ratfink, only worse.

  “My name is Zack.” He mumbled it to the dirt.

  “No, it’s not, Barbie.”

  Zipper snapped at the boy’s ankle.

  “Hey! If your stupid dog bites me, I swear I’ll sue!” Kyle used both hands to smack Zack hard in the chest.

  “Hey, hey, hey.” Zack’s dad saw the shove, closed up his cell. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “Stupid dog tried to bite me.”

  “Whoa,” said Zack’s father. “Take it easy there, Kyle.”

  “Ahhhhh, bite me, old man.”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Bite me, old man.’ What’s the matter? You deaf?”

  “Okay. I’m going to have a word with your parents. Where exactly do you live?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out!”

  “Dad?” Zack tugged at his father’s arm. “Let’s go home.”

  Kyle Snertz spat on the ground. Zack knew what it meant: “Don’t come back unless you want trouble.”

  “So who called?” Zack asked when they were a couple hundred feet up the street.

  “Work. About my business trip next week.”

  “Malaysia?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool.”

  “Hey, Barbie,” Kyle Snertz yelled after them. “Have fun in your tree fort!”

  The way Snertz said “tree fort” made it sound like the sissiest thing any boy could ever do.

  It also made Zack wish he could fly away to Malaysia with his father.

  Either Malaysia or Timbuktu.

  As the sun goes down, he sees an old man sitting on the stump of what used to be his tree.

  He doesn’t wish to be seen, so he isn’t.

  He would like to kill the geezer who long ago tried to chop down his tree. But he can’t. He can’t do much besides make noise and, if he tries real hard, rattle things.

  Now something draws him toward the house. Something strong. He drifts out of the trees.

  No one sees him because he doesn’t wish to be seen.

  Not just yet, anyway.

  The plumber had never seen such a mess in a bathroom.

  He uncoiled his motorized snake and worked the long, flexible wire down into the toilet. He flipped the power switch and the steel cable rooted its way farther down the drain. It spun and ground and churned. A minute later, he felt the far end hit something. The clog.

  “Bingo! Got it!”

  The cable cut through whatever wad of muck was blocking the sewer line, and the toilet bowl sucked itself dry.

  That’s when the plumber smelled something. Not sewer gas. Something oily and minty.

  Like Brylcreem. Billy had tried that goop once. When he was a kid, Mee Maw had slicked down his hair with the stuff on the day he’d posed for his sixth-grade class picture, the same day his name went from Billy O’Claire to Billy O’Greasy Hair.

  He’d never forget that smell—like someone had rubbed his head with a peppermint stick made out of Crisco.

  All of a sudden, Billy had an incredible craving for a big juicy burger. Plus a side of fries. And a chocolate milk shake. Maybe two or three of each.

  Billy dropped his sewer rooter with a clunk and a thud on the tile floor. He didn’t bother packing up his wrenches. He’d come back later for his tools.

  Right now he had to have a hamburger.

  He walked out of the bathroom like a zombie. A very hungry, burger-crazed zombie.

  And then—just as suddenly—the urge passed.

  Good, he thought. I’ve always been more of a nachos kind of guy.

  “You ought to grind down the stump,” the tree man suggested to Judy.

  It was after dusk, but the big oak was finally chipped and mulched.

  “Grinding costs extra, but I’ve got this machine that’ll chew right through it.”

  “No,” Judy said gently.

  “All right. How about we dig it out? We bring in a backhoe and—”

  “No. We should save the stump. It’ll give Miss Spratling someplace to hang her descanso.”

  “Des-what-so?”

  “It’s a Spanish word. Means ‘memorial.’”

  “All right. Suit yourself. But if you change your mind, give me a call.”

  “Okay,” said Judy. “Zack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you nail everything back up? Hang the cross and flower bucket on the highway side of the stump?”

  “Now?”

  “No, honey. It’s dark. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” Mandica said. “You’re right. We should all knock off for the night.” Mandica looked around the backyard. “Anybody seen Pop?”

  A chain saw roared to life out in the woods.

  “I know, I know. I heard you the first time. I heard all of you!”

  The old man was shouting at the darkness between two birch trees. His thrumming chain saw hung limply alongside his leg. Its sharp teeth rattled and chugged and slid around the tip of the blade.

  “If I finish the job, will you leave me be?”

  No one answered because no one was there.

  The old man goosed the saw’s throttle. The throaty engine rumbled and roared. He pressed its spinning teeth against the jagged wood.

  Sparks flew as if he were trying to slice into a steel I beam.

  He drifts back to what is left of his tree.

  The burger will have to wait because he sees what the old man is trying to do. Sees him attacking the stump with a chittering chain saw. Sees red sparks and chunks of wood flying from the snagg
letoothed stump.

  He knows he can’t stop the old man.

  But it is dark now, so he can show himself.

  He does.

  Sweat pouring down his face, the old man finally cut a smooth edge across the top of the stump.

  “Pop?”

  He could hear his son off in the distance, near the house, but didn’t answer.

  A young man in blue jeans and a leather jacket appeared in the small clearing near the stump. A man with slicked-back hair. Pasty flesh. Cold and evil eyes. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The old man dropped his chain saw and clutched his chest. Tried to breathe. The saw’s razor-sharp blade chewed through the toe of his work boot.

  Mr. Mandica toppled sideways.

  Clint Eberhart laughed and vanished into the soft night air.

  The next day, Zack and Zipper went out into the woods ringing the backyard to check out the stump.

  Judy said maintaining the memorial was even more important now that Mr. Mandica had died so close to the old tree. So Zack had a claw hammer looped through his belt and a pocketful of nails scratching against his thigh as he set off to make the repairs.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said to Zipper. “I don’t think the Wicked Witch will be back here today. Not on a Sunday.”

  Zack examined the stump. It was gigantic. At least ten feet across. The ground around it had heaved up some, but the rooted base was still intact. Zack saw the white cross and rusty bucket lying on the ground.

  “Come on. We’d better fix it.”

  While Zack hammered, he studied the depression Mr. Mandica’s body had made in the damp dirt when he died. It looked exactly like the indentation his mother had left in her hospital-bed mattress.

  Zack straightened the cross and pushed a new nail through an old hole near its top. Next he nailed in the bucket.

  “Okay. Where are the stupid flowers?”

  Zack looked around on the ground.

  “Make ready the way of the Lord!” cried a stern voice behind him.

  Zack spun around and saw an angry man in a sweltering black suit. The man was tall and pencil thin and wore a black hat the size and shape of a pizza pan. Some sleepy-eyed kids stood behind him in single-file lines. They looked miserable.

  “Why dost thou undo what the Lord hath done?” the man shouted. He held a black book with colored ribbons streaming out from gold-edged pages. A Bible.

  The children behind the man looked weird. The boys all wore identical short-sleeve shirts. The girls had on dresses that swung out like bells. The boys had buzz cuts. The girls, pigtails. All their lips were tiny O’s—like they breathed only through their mouths or were posing to be Pilgrim candles for Thanksgiving.

  “Heed my words! Clear away this stump!”

  “Howdy, folks!” someone yelled from off to the right.

  Zack spied a boy about his own age dressed in bib overalls but with no shirt on underneath the shoulder straps. The boy was barefoot and held a slingshot aimed at the man in black. He let loose a small stone that whacked the skinny man in his shin.

  “Gotcha!”

  Zipper wagged his tail. He liked this boy with the slingshot.

  The man in the pizza hat shook his fist. “Scallywag!”

  “Sir, I think it’s time you and the kiddies headed back to camp. So make like a tree and leaf.”

  Zack smiled. Nodded at the boy.

  “Galdern Bible campers,” the boy said, shaking his head.

  “Yeah.” Zack acted like he knew what the boy was talking about. He turned back to face the man in black.

  But he was gone. So were the children.

  “Where’d they all go?”

  “Back to where they come from, I reckon.” The boy tucked his slingshot into the front flap of his overalls. “I’m Davy. Davy Wilcox.”

  “I’m Zack. Zack Jennings.”

  “Pleased to meet ya. Where d’ya live?”

  “Right here.”

  “The new house?”

  “Yep.”

  “Swell!”

  “You live around here?”

  “Sure do. Moved up from Kentucky a few years back.”

  That explained why he talked so funny.

  “We’re right across the highway. See? On the farm over yonder.”

  Zack looked across the highway and saw patches of a brown field filled with dead cornstalks.

  “That’s our field. We keep the cows out back.”

  “In the barn?” Zack asked.

  “That’s right. You ever work on a farm, Zack?”

  “No. But I had this Old McDonald farm set once.”

  “With plastic animals and such like that?”

  “Yeah,” Zack said, immediately wondering why he felt compelled to tell this boy about his baby toys.

  Tell him about your G.I. Joes, too, why don’t you? Then he can make fun of you for playing with dolls just like all your other new neighbors.

  “I had me one of them toy farm sets, too,” Davy said. “I thought it was all kinds of swell. Did you have the tractor?”

  “Yeah. I chased the cows with it.”

  “Hey, that sounds neat. Chasing cows with a tractor? Sounds real neat. So you and your folks just moved in?”

  “Yep. Last Monday.”

  “Swell. Not many cool kids live around here. Just a couple jerks. Didja meet Kyle Snertz yet?”

  “Yeah. Kind of.”

  “What a dipstick. He can’t play baseball, neither. Swings that bat like a galdern girl.”

  “Really?”

  “Does he ever!”

  Davy flung his arms around in crazy circles like a blindfolded baboon swatting at a piñata.

  “He’s all show and no blow!”

  “He doesn’t scare you?”

  “Snotty Snertz? Heck no.”

  Zack spun around in circles, imitating Davy Wilcox imitating Snertz. Zipper sprang up on his hind legs and spun around in circles, too.

  When they saw that, the two boys started laughing.

  “Dang! Even your dog swings better than Snertz!”

  Zack laughed even harder and realized he might’ve just found his first real friend.

  That night, Clint Eberhart sought out the plumber.

  The one to do all the things I can’t do myself.

  Eberhart was slowly adjusting to his new “condition.” By day, he was vapor invisible to all except children with very vivid imaginations. By night, he could freely roam the earth in his former body and car. But in both instances his physical abilities were severely limited.

  In fact, he couldn’t do anything.

  He couldn’t eat.

  He couldn’t fight.

  All he could do was materialize, prowl in the shadows, and make noises.

  Of course, at night he could scare the pants off just about anybody. Why, he could give an old man with a chain saw a heart attack if he timed his fade-in just so.

  But if he wanted to take care of any unfinished business, Clint Eberhart would need a good pair of human hands.

  So he picked the plumber.

  The pickup truck was parked on the soft shoulder of the highway near the crossroads.

  Billy O’Claire sat up front, staring at the blinking red light. Listening to the crickets. Swatting the mosquitoes nibbling at his neck. After a solid smack and a squish, he checked his watch.

  It was almost exactly the same time as it had been that night when he’d seen the motorcycle cop standing in the crossroads. Billy took a sip from a two-liter bottle of soda. He wanted to be wide awake when the mystery man reappeared.

  He knotted his eyes and stared straight ahead. “I double-dog dare you to show your face again!”

  Well, not his face. He hadn’t really shown it that first time, since the cop didn’t have a face. Billy wondered how he kept his sunglasses in place without a nose for them to sit on. He also wondered why he wore sunglasses in the middle of the night.

  Somebody pulled in behin
d Billy.

  He turned around, looked out his rear window. He didn’t see any headlights, but he could make out the shadowy silhouette of a wide-bodied convertible. None of his friends drove classic convertibles with tail fins.

  Goose bumps exploded on his arms. It felt like somebody was outside his truck looking in.

  Slowly, barely moving, Billy turned to his left.

  A man with slicked-back black hair was staring at him. Grinning.

  “Hey there,” the man said, his voice raw and raspy.

  “Who are you?” Billy asked.

  “Someone just passing through.”

  Billy looked into the guy’s eyes. Man—they were so blue. Like the plates at the diner.

  “So, plumber—what’s your name?”

  “Billy.”

  “Billy what?”

  “O’Claire.”

  That seemed to startle the man.

  “You from around here?” he asked.

  “Lived here my whole life.”

  “And you say you’re an O’Claire?”

  “Been one of those my whole life, too.”

  “What’s your father’s name?”

  “Tommy O’Claire.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He died a long time ago. Maybe you know my Mee Maw.”

  “Your what?”

  “My grandmother. Mary O’Claire.”

  Now the strange dude looked angry.

  “Mary O’Claire? Is her family from up near Spencer?”

  “I don’t know. I could ask her, I guess.”

  “She’s alive? She didn’t die in 1958?”

  Billy laughed. “Well, uh, no—I don’t think so. I just saw her the other day and she didn’t look dead.”

  The man with the plastered-back hair leaned closer to the door.

  “You’re a wisenheimer, hunh?”

  “A what?”

  “Where can I find her? Where’s young Mary O’Claire hiding?”

  “Young?” This guy was cracking Billy up. “I told you, dude—she’s my grandmother. She lives in the old folks home. Guess what? That means she’s old.”

  The guy made the pupils floating inside his eyes go wider, turned them into hypnotic sinkholes. Billy felt drowsy, like he needed to take a nap.