Nickel Bay Nick

by Dean Pitchford

  My whole world is crumbling. Now with Mom married . . . and living in Little Rock . . . with that man, Phil . . . there’s no chance that things will ever get better.

  A sheet of newspaper blows across the empty lot and wraps around my leg. I peel off the front page of that morning’s Nickel Bay News and read the headline:

  WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, NICKEL BAY NICK???

  As far back as I can remember, every year starting twelve days before Christmas, this Nickel Bay Nick character—nobody knows if it’s a man or a woman, old or young, midget or monster—passes out hundred-dollar bills all over town, like a Secret Santa. At first, the newspapers and TV reporters called him—or her—Saint Nicholas . . . or Saint Nick . . . of Nickel Bay. Finally, it became simply Nickel Bay Nick.

  Nick began showing up eight years ago, not long after the oldest and biggest company in the county, the Nickel Bay Furniture Works, burned down and never reopened. Without jobs to keep them here, hundreds of people moved away and tons of businesses closed. The businesses and people who stayed are still struggling to hang on.

  Every year (until now), when that first hundred-dollar bill of the season shows up and everybody realizes that Nickel Bay Nick has returned, this town cheers up like you wouldn’t believe. People greet each other with hugs and wave at complete strangers in the street.

  But this year? No Nick. The twelve days of Christmas came and went, and with every passing day, the mood got gloomier. People walked around with slumped shoulders and scowls on their faces. Finally everybody shrugged and accepted the sad truth that even Nickel Bay Nick had deserted Nickel Bay.

  I didn’t think that I could feel worse than I already did. But seeing that newspaper headline reminds me that I’m not only miserable and forgotten. I’m miserable and forgotten in the most miserable and forgotten place on earth.

  Then I hear the police siren. Somebody . . . maybe the headlights that drove by five minutes ago? . . . somebody must’ve ratted me out. I take my last shot, but my heart’s not in it anymore. My chunk of asphalt flies too high, thumps against the eaves and drops with a thud into the snow.

  I flip up the hood of my sweatshirt and start running.

  THE MONSTER IN THE WINDOW

  Cutting across the abandoned train tracks, I pass the charred remains of the Nickel Bay Furniture Works. On the night the fire tore through the main factory and leapt to the warehouses, I was home asleep, but Dad—who was still a fireman then—got the alarm. He raced down to join the rest of the Nickel Bay Fire Department in trying to stop the blaze, but with high winds spreading the flames, there wasn’t anything they could do to save the Furniture Works.

  What a waste! I think as I race past the skeletons of the snow-covered buildings. All this time gone by and the town still hasn’t cleared the lot. Or tried to start again.

  But there’s decay everywhere in Nickel Bay. The WALK/DON’T WALK signs are burned out at almost every corner. Playgrounds are chained up and there are vacant storefronts on every block. Even in what used to be the fancy part of town, over where a lot of the big, modern houses with their swimming pools sit empty, the potholes in the streets keep getting wider and deeper.

  When I zig onto Sherwood Avenue, I’m only a block away from our dead-end street, Pegasus Lane. If I can just get that far, I’m thinking, if I can just disappear around that corner, I’ll be okay. But when that wailing squad car squeals onto Sherwood, flashing its red and blues behind me, I panic and take a detour I’ve never taken before.

  I jump the fence at Mr. Wells’s house.

  Mr. Wells lives alone on the corner of Sherwood Avenue and Pegasus Lane. Some folks think he’s a snob because he doesn’t wave to his neighbors, but every Christmas he strings lights all over his big old house and the two fifty-foot evergreens in his front yard. Under the trees he stacks giant, brightly wrapped boxes. The Nickel Bay News actually put a picture of Mr. Wells’s yard on its front page once.

  Using a garbage can as a springboard, I vault over Mr. Wells’s wrought-iron fence and land in a crouch on his front lawn. Careful not to make footprints, I slink to the edge of the front porch and climb up on the railing, from which I’m able to reach a low-hanging branch of one of the evergreens. Christmas lights twinkle all around me as I climb until I’m level with the third floor of the house. Then I tuck my body into a tight ball and hang on for dear life.

  The police turn down Pegasus Lane, but I know they’ll be back. After all, it is a dead end. A minute passes. Another minute. Sure enough, here they come.

  Screech! In front of Mr. Wells’s house, a cop jumps from the squad car and switches on his flashlight. Even from up where I am, I can tell it’s Officer Evan. He’s slapped me in handcuffs a few times. His flashlight beam rakes across the lawn and begins climbing the front of the house. When the ray of light cuts through the branches and brushes across my left shoe, I hold my breath and squeeze closer to the tree trunk.

  Just then, a switch gets flipped and the front yard lights up like a ballpark. Luckily, the floodlights are shining down from the second floor, so I’m up in the shadows.

  From my position, I can’t see Mr. Wells below me on his front porch, but I can hear him asking something like, “. . . problem, Officer?” Talking through the fence, Officer Evan gestures in the direction of the train station and toward the dead end of Pegasus Lane. Scattered words like “broken windows” and “act of vandalism” drift up to me. As they talk, Officer Evan continues to run his flashlight over the yard and the house, never coming close to my hiding place. Finally he tips his hat to Mr. Wells and drives off.

  The front door shuts. Porch lights and floodlights snap off. Up where I am, the world is weirdly quiet. It’s only then that I realize my legs, wrapped around the tree trunk, are shaking with cold, and my fingers are frozen in the shape of a claw. To restore blood circulation, I move slowly, twisting, unfolding. Over one shoulder I notice the string of Christmas lights nailed along the third-floor eaves. You’d never be able to tell from down on the ground, but up this close I can see that each light is an angel with a halo and wings.

  Leaning away from the trunk, I stretch out a hand to take hold of one and get a better look at it. This little guy’s wearing a choir robe, and his mouth is a perfect circle, like he’s singing the “O” in “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I know it sounds lame, but holding that glowing angel in my hand is the first thing that makes me smile all day. Then I look up.

  What happens next is like something out of a nightmare.

  One moment I am seeing my reflection in a darkened third-story window, and in the next moment . . .

  RARARARARARRR! RAAR! RAAR! RAAR! RAAR!

  A huge, furry monster slams up against the glass, snarling just inches from my face, his jaws dripping with saliva, his black tongue lashing out! I scream and recoil. As I lose my grip on the tree trunk I’m straddling, my hand clamps tightly around the angel light, and I start to fall.

  Down, down, down, I bounce from one snow-covered limb to another, dragging the string of Christmas lights with me. From above, I hear the ri-i-i-ipping noise of metal scraping against wood, and somewhere along the way, I let go of the angel. Every branch I drop onto breaks my fall a little, and then what really saves me from a crash landing on the cold, hard ground is that stack of fake Christmas presents.

  Fortunately, the boxes are all empty, so they just collapse under my body with a big ooof! I roll off the pile of crushed cardboard and out from under the tree. For a moment I lie there under the starry sky, covered in snow and pine needles. I’m stunned that I’ve fallen so far but don’t seem to be dead. The silence that follows my landing is abruptly broken by a rattling, clanking, smashing noise. I look up, and my heart leaps to my throat.

  The glowing choirboy I hung on to was attached to a long string of his angel buddies. And that cord, until just seconds before, had been hammered into a wood beam supporting the steel rain gutter
along the roof’s edge. Now all of that—the holiday lights, the broken tree branches, the wood beam and a ten-foot section of gutter—are falling.

  And the only thing between them and the frozen ground is my head.

  I don’t even have time to scream before I roll aside. A split second later, the beam harpoons the exact place my head had been. A few more crashes and bashes follow as more branches fall, and clumps of snow shower down over the wreckage. I lie panting on the front lawn, disoriented and terrified. I slip a hand into my jacket and am relieved to find that my heart is still beating. Suddenly, the porch light flares. Locks unlatch—one! two! three!—and the heavy front door swings open again.

  Flipping over onto my stomach, I try to stand, but my sneakers slip all over the snow-dusted earth. Suddenly, two powerful hands clamp on my shoulders and squeeze. Like a rag doll, I’m spun around to face Mr. Wells’s front porch.

  Where Mr. Wells sits. In a wheelchair.

  His right leg is covered—hip to ankle—by a white plaster cast that’s supported by a metal brace extending from the chair. His square jaw clenches as he whips off a pair of black-rimmed glasses to glare at me with piercing gray eyes. In his left hand he holds the collar of a large, bushy dog—the same monster that lunged at me in the upstairs window. The dog is black and gray, with a massive head and an army of really white, really sharp teeth, which he’s snapping in my direction.

  RAAR! RAAR! RAAR! RAAR!

  The sight of them both is so startling that it takes me a few moments to wonder, Hey! If Mr. Wells is sitting in front of me in a wheelchair, who’s holding me from behind? I swivel my head to see a hulking stranger pinning my arms back. Six feet, maybe six and a half feet, tall. Jet-black hair. Almond-shaped eyes. Shoulders the size of a refrigerator.

  “Lemme go!” I demand, but he only squeezes harder. So I yell louder, “LET ME GO!” My words die in the night air. I stop struggling and turn back to Mr. Wells, thrusting my chin out defiantly.

  Slowly, Mr. Wells leans forward. “It seems,” he says quietly, “that you’ve broken my house.”

  THE WEIRDO ON THE CORNER

  I stand panting in the cold, waiting for Mr. Wells to say something else. That’s when I realize that the hulk behind me is running his hands down my back, squeezing my arms, inspecting my fingers.

  “Hey!” I snap, pulling back. “Cut it out!”

  “Sakata-san,” Mr. Wells says. He nods, and the goon drops my hand.

  “You will refer to this gentleman as Doctor Sakata,” Mr. Wells says. “He is trained in many healing arts and deserves your total respect.”

  “I don’t like people touching me,” I say. “Especially doctors.”

  “Dr. Sakata is merely checking you for broken bones or any other injuries.” He rolls his wheelchair to the edge of the porch and glances up the side of his house. “After all, you fell from a great height.”

  “Okay, lookit!” I flap my arms and legs like a spastic scarecrow. “See? Nothing broken. Can I go?”

  “Go?” The word explodes from Mr. Wells’s mouth. He waves a hand at the pile of mangled tree branches, crushed boxes, Christmas lights, rain gutter and roof shingles scattered across his front lawn. “You’re not going anywhere until we discuss this.”

  He says something in a foreign language to Dr. Sakata, who steps around me, climbs the porch steps and enters the house. With him gone, I realize I could make a break for it. Glancing back, I try to calculate the distance between me and the fence.

  “Don’t even think about it, Sam.”

  I whip around. “How do you know my name?”

  Mr. Wells snorts. “I’ve lived here, what? Seven or eight years? Don’t you think that in all that time I would learn the names of my neighbors? Especially the neighbor who bashed in my mailbox with a baseball bat, not once but twice?”

  I blink in surprise. How did he know that was me? Both times?

  “Wouldn’t I know the identity of the neighbor who shot out my porch lights with a BB gun? Or threw the carcass of a skunk into my yard on Halloween?” Mr. Wells shakes his head and surveys the mess I’ve made. “Sam, let me ask you something: Do you really enjoy being such a screwup?”

  Before I let loose and tell Mr. Wells where he can shove his question, my cell phone rings.

  “Hold on,” I order Mr. Wells, and I flip open my cell. I already know who’s calling. “What?” I bark.

  Dad only has me carry a cell phone for one reason. Twice a day—at seven thirty in the morning and seven thirty at night—I have to take my pill. The pill I’ve been taking ever since I got my new heart. The same pill I’ll keep taking for the rest of my life.

  Dad asks a single question, and I totally lose it. “Where am I? I’m right where you told me to stay!” And before he can respond, I announce, “I know. Seven thirty. Gotta swallow,” and I snap the phone shut.

  As I’m talking, Dr. Sakata comes out of the house carrying a steaming mug. Now he stands beside me in silence. I look to Mr. Wells and point to the cell phone. “My dad.”

  “Mm.” Mr. Wells nods. “You always speak to your father like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Lying about where you are? And so rudely?”

  “That’s how we talk.” I shove my hand into my jeans and dig out the tiny plastic baggie holding the pill. “I gotta take this.”

  “Right now?”

  “Twice a day.”

  Mr. Wells nods.

  “You got any water?” I ask.

  “Dr. Sakata has prepared a special tea for you.”

  “I don’t drink tea.”

  “I’m not being sociable,” Mr. Wells says. “It’s an herbal mixture, specially blended to work on muscles and joints. You may not feel like anything’s wrong right now, but unless you drink the tea, you will wake up tomorrow morning and be shocked to discover what you’ve just put your body through.”

  “I really only need water.”

  Mr. Wells’s eyebrows shoot up. “Do you realize who you’re talking to? You’re speaking to the neighbor whose property you have just vandalized. The neighbor who has the Nickel Bay Police Department on speed dial,” he says, picking up a phone from his lap. “And I am telling you to drink the tea!”

  “Okay, okay, okay. Jeez.” I hold up both hands. “Don’t have a coronary.” Taking the mug from Dr. Sakata, I blow on the hot liquid. It smells like dishwater.

  I want to gag.

  Mr. Wells and Dr. Sakata watch me intently. Even the big bad dog has stopped snarling and is staring at me with beady black eyes.

  “We can wait all night,” Mr. Wells says smoothly.

  With a groan of disgust I toss the pill to the back of my throat and take a quick sip of the stinky tea. It may smell bad, but guess what?

  It tastes even worse.

  “BLECCCCH!” I choke, twisting my face into about a thousand wrinkles. “Are you trying to poison me?”

  “Poison you?” Mr. Wells seems amused by my question. He turns to Dr. Sakata, says something in that foreign language, and they both laugh. I don’t like the sound of their laughter.

  “If I wanted to poison you, Sam Brattle, I wouldn’t do it on the front lawn of my home, in full view of my neighbors. If I wanted to poison you and be absolutely certain you’d keel over far away from my property, I would do it correctly. Cleanly.” He folds his hands and speaks in low tones. “There’s a flowering vine found only in one rain forest on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. From the root of that vine, the natives extract a deadly syrup they call ‘dragon’s kiss.’ It’s a slow-acting poison, so it’s very hard to trace.” He pats his hands together happily. “Yes! I could feed you some dragon’s kiss tea and send you home, where, after an hour or so, you’d start to experience excruciating stomach cramps. Blinding pain would pierce the base of your skull like a serrated knife. You’d be dead within seconds
. That is if I wanted to poison you. But, no, that’s not my intention tonight.” He sits back in his chair and smiles. “And, Sam, for goodness’ sake, close your mouth.”

  I realize I’m standing there with my jaw flapping down like a busted mailbox door.

  “Wait here,” Mr. Wells orders. He turns to his dog and says something like, “Hoko! KO-ra!” and immediately the mutt sits. With that, Mr. Wells spins around and wheels into the house.

  Dr. Sakata’s big mitt closes around the cup in my hand. He climbs the front steps and stands at attention next to the dog. We stay like that—them glaring at me, me glaring back—for what seems like ten minutes. Finally Mr. Wells rolls out the front door and up to the edge of the porch. He looks down at me and says, “Be here tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.”

  “For what?”

  “This yard isn’t going to clean itself.” Mr. Wells waves a hand in every direction. “You don’t walk away from this kind of destruction. Or do you? Because if you try, I can make a call.” He wags his phone.

  “I’ll be here,” I mumble.

  “And bring your father.”

  “Why?” I cry out. “He doesn’t have to know.”

  “Oh, Sam.” Mr. Wells shakes his head. “Did you think that you could pull something like this and not tell your father?” From his lap he lifts a large brown envelope. “And when your father wonders who this neighbor is who wants to meet him, have him open this.”

  I reach for the envelope, but he pulls it back. “Only your father is to open this envelope. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Crystal,” I snap.

  He lowers the envelope within my reach and I grab it.

  “Now go home. Only this time, please use the proper exit.” He points a remote control across the yard at the iron gate on Pegasus Lane. I hear a click! and the gate swings open. “And please have your father bring that envelope back with everything in it,” Mr. Wells adds. “The contents have enormous sentimental value.”