The Folks

by Ray Garton

  Amanda turned to me again, took a few steps toward me but kept a distance.

  “Just stick around for a little while longer. I think Daddy’s upstairs, he should be down any minute.”

  My heart would not slow down. Telling a lie did not make it any better, because I have always been a terrible liar. “I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “Give me my keys, and I’ll have a cup of coffee with you and wait for your dad to come down.” I smiled, tried to look relaxed. “Okay?”

  She studied my face, frowning. “Well…if Daddy found out—” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “—he’d be pretty upset.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not gonna tell him.”

  “You promise to stay?”

  I smiled. “Sure. I mean, I’ve seen this house a million times from the road. I’ve always wondered what it was like inside.”

  When Amanda came toward me, I resisted the urge to turn and rush out of the kitchen. She moved close, until her body was just an inch or so from mine, put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m one of the people who live here. What do you think of me?”

  Just enough to get the keys, I told myself as I rested my hand on her hip. Her skin was cool, still slightly damp from the rain. “I think you’re beautiful,” I said through my forced smile.

  “Mmm, that’s better. That’s much better.”

  She kissed me. I responded, but kept my lips together, even when the tip of her tongue—

  It went down my back! Between my shoulder blades!

  —pressed against them. When she pulled back, frowning, I said, “I’m sorry, but…what if your dad comes in?”

  Her face relaxed. “Yeah. You’re right. He’d probably get jealous.”

  Jealous? I thought with a frown. “How about my keys? And a cup of coffee?”

  “All right. Have a seat.” She gestured toward an oval table of dark, scuffed-up wood in front of a large antique hutch that stood against a wall. The hutch was filled with a few ancient-looking plates and cups, and more junk like the odd items on the shelves in the other room. The table was piled high with old yellowed newspapers and magazines and old phone books. “Just push some of that stuff out of your way and clear a space.”

  I went to one of the six chairs at the table, pulled it away and turned it so I could watch her. Sat down and set my flashlight upright on the floor, pushed some of the newspapers and magazines back with an elbow to make room for my coffee.

  Amanda went back to the counter, where the coffee pot was almost full. She pulled open the drawer beneath it, removed my keys and held them up so I could see them. I smiled again. She put the keys on the counter and opened the cupboard overhead. It was empty. She searched the stacks of old dishes and pots and pans until she found two coffee mugs, went to the sink and washed and dried them.

  I tried to make small talk. “How old is your little brother?”

  “Thirty-eight.”

  I blinked with surprise. “Thirty-eight? But…how old are you?”

  “It’s impolite to ask a lady her age.”

  “Oh, I-I…I’m sorry, I was just—”

  She laughed. “I’m kidding, silly! You know I’m not a lady. I’m thirty-one.”

  “But…you just said he’s thirty-eight. That makes him older than you.”

  “Mm-hm. But he’s still my little brother.” She went back to the counter with the mugs. “How do you like your coffee?” she asked.

  “Black is fine.”

  “A man who takes his coffee black,” she said as she poured. “I like that.”

  With the pinky finger of her left hand hooked through my key ring, she came to the table holding each mug by its handle. I watched the keys on her left hand as she set a mug before me with her right. It was chipped on the bottom edge and on the side it read, Don’t talk to me until I’ve finished my coffee! She put the other mug into her right hand and I reached out for the keys.

  Amanda dropped them into my coffee and giggled. She went to a chair across from me and sat down, put her coffee on the table. “Now you’ll just have to sit there and drink your coffee first.”

  I clenched my teeth angrily and dipped my fingers in the coffee, scooped the keys off the bottom of the mug. It was very hot, and as I pulled my hand out, I stood so suddenly, I knocked the chair over. “Son of a bitch,” I muttered to myself, shaking my hand, wiping my burned fingers on my cold wet jeans. I leaned down and grabbed my flashlight.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, surprised, confused. “You said you would—”

  “I lied,” I said as I turned to leave the kitchen, slipping the keys into my pocket.

  A wheelchair zipped through the doorway with an electronic hum and headed straight for me. In the chair sat what appeared to be a very small old man with a large head and a deeply creased and rugged face that seemed to hang from the skull.

  “Andy Sayers!” he said loudly. He was not shouting, he simply had a very loud, booming, gravelly voice.

  My mouth dropped open when I realized he was not small at all. His legs ended where his knees should have begun. He wore a dirty, white sleeveless undershirt and dark green pants that had been cut and sewn shut at the ends of the legs. From each side of his face, skin hung all the way to his round belly—two long, wrinkled, milk-pale jowls that fell over his chest like the scrotum of a great bull.

  I bit my lower lip to keep from crying out in horror.

  The wheelchair stopped abruptly just a few feet in front of me and the man hopped out, landed with a loud thump on the ends of his leg-stumps. He waddled toward me and held out his left hand to shake. His right arm was not an arm at all. It was the size of a toddler’s arm, but twisted, resembling a large plucked turkey wing that came to a dull, flabby point with no hands or fingers. I backed away without realizing what I was doing, but he kept coming. He didn’t even notice—or care—that I didn’t want him to touch me or get near me. My back bumped against the side of the hutch and he grabbed my left hand with his, huge and knobby and liver-spotted, and shook it.

  “I’m Matthew Bollinger,” he said, and his voice vibrated through my bones. He dropped my hand, backed up. “But you can call me Matt, hell, ever’body calls me Matt.”

  Amanda stood and said, “Hello, Daddy.”

  Bollinger grinned at her and showed small teeth that were spaced apart. He climbed onto the chair I’d been sitting in, got on the table, and waddled unsteadily but aggressively over the newspapers and magazines to Amanda. She put her left arm around him. Her right hand fondled and caressed the wrinkled sacks of flesh that hung from his face as they kissed. For a long time.

  I turned to leave, but Bollinger said, “You have fun with m’girl at that party, Andy?”

  He did not give me a chance to answer. “We’re not the partyin’ type in this house, y’know. We’re Christians, and Halloween parties don’t ’zactly fit into our way a life, ’cause they don’t fit into God’s plan. But I told her t’go an’ bring y’back here ’cause I figgered it was time we met and had ourselves a li’ll talk.”

  The top of his large head was bald, speckled with liver spots. Thin, stringy, yellowed gray hair grew around the sides and in the back. His right ear was about an inch higher than the left, and both were large and gnarled.

  “I’ve been wantin’ t’talk to you,” he said as he got off the table.

  “Muhme?” I croaked.

  “Yeah, you!” He smiled around all those tiny teeth, laughed, and the flesh hanging from his jaw jiggled and swayed. “Siddown, drink your coffee, don’t stand on my ’count.”

  I went to the chair and slowly lowered myself into it. Set the flashlight across my lap as he returned to his wheelchair, settled in, still smiling.

  Amanda returned to her chair, still naked but apparently comfortable with it, not at all self-conscious.

  “Tell me, Andy,” Bollinger said. “Why’d you quit? How come?”

  My mouth was dry, so I sipped the coffee. “Quit? I…I’m not sure I know what you—”

  �
��College!” he boomed. “How come y’dropped outta college, huh?”

  “Well, I…I-I-I…I’m not a religious person,” I stammered.

  “What? I thought your gramma was a good God-fearin’ Christian.”

  A chill went through me. How did he know? “She is, but…I’m not.”

  Bollinger looked at me with concern, stroked the dangling skin like a beard. “Well, son…what about your soul?”

  “My…soul?”

  “Yeah! Your eternal soul! Don’t you worry ’bout what’ll happen to it when you die? Hell, you almost died once already in that fire, what about when it really happens, huh?” He turned to Amanda. “Cuppa coffee, sugar?”

  As he continued, she got up and washed a mug for him, hurried to the coffee pot and poured, took it to him, then returned to her chair.

  “The soul’s all we got in the end, boy,” he said. “Gotta make sure we know where it’s goin’ when we check out. That’s all religion is, really—soul insurance. Take me, for example. I’m a bidnessman. Gotta lotta money, a whole lot. Betcha didn’t know that.”

  I nodded slightly. “I’ve heard.”

  “I gotta protect all that money, and the things I buy with it. I got so much insurance, it’s comin’ outta my nose like milk when I laugh too hard.” He laughed. “But they don’t sell insurance for the soul, boy. Y’can’t get a piece a the rock for your eternal soul.

  Gotta get that from God. From religion. Y’ do believe in God, don’t cha?”

  Thanks to the alcohol I had consumed, I was not thinking clearly, so I was hardly in the mood to start mulling over weighty issues like God and my eternal soul. “I…I guess so,” I lied.

  “Y’ guess?”

  “Yeah, I believe in God.”

  “Okay, then, here’s the deal. When you go back to school, y’listen to what them Bible teachers have to say, y’hear? They’s a lot to learn from the Bible. See, I never had no schoolin’. My momma taught me to read with the Bible. Learned a lot. Made me the man I am today. My momma taught me to read it, and my uncle-daddy taught me how t’interpret it.”

  Uncle-daddy? I thought. For a moment, I wondered if I was dreaming and would wake up soon, dripping with sweat in my bed but immensely relieved. But I could still smell the house’s odor, and the coffee—I had never smelled anything in a dream before.

  “But, um, I don’t have any plans to go back,” I said. My voice had withered and become very quiet. “I plan to leave the Village soon.”

  His broad face darkened as his bushy eyebrows huddled together over the bridge of his flat, broken nose. “Leave? Where ya goin’?”

  “I don’t know. Yet.”

  “Well, don’t even think about it no more. You stayin’ put.” He grinned, but his frown did not go away. “I got plans for you, Andrew Sayers.”

  They were probably the most terrifying words I had ever heard in my life. I could not speak.

  Bollinger sipped his coffee, then put the mug on the corner of the table. “I been watchin’ you since you came to the Village.”

  He seemed to expect me to be happy about that. “Wuh…watching me?”

  “Oh, yeah. Hell, I know ever little thing goes on ’round these parts. Nobody comes an’ goes ’round here I don’t hear about it. When you came…Well, you caught my eye.”

  “I did?” I swallowed, and it made a clicking sound in my throat.

  “Sure ya did. A boy like you?”

  I turned to Amanda. She was watching her father, listening closely. When she saw me turn, she smiled at me for a moment. It was a happy, thrilled smile that seemed to say, Isn’t this exciting?

  “When you came here after your, uh, accident,” Bollinger continued, “I kept a close eye on you. Sumpin tol’ me you was worth watchin’. And I was right. You was smart beyond your years when y’got here, and you got nothin’ but smarter.”

  There was an explosion of activity and sound in the hall outside the kitchen doorway that startled me enough to make me jump in the chair. Three young, shrill voices—two of them shrieking and the third laughing—drew closer, until two children ran into the kitchen, one chasing the other.

  “Hey, hey kids!” Amanda called, getting up and going to them, arms outstretched.

  “Whoa, quiet down, okay? We’re trying to talk in here.”

  The children stopped running and fell silent as they turned to Amanda.

  I watched them for a moment, then reached up and rubbed my eyes hard with a thumb and two fingers. When I looked at the children again, nothing had changed. My eyes were fine.

  “Come here, come here,” Amanda said, taking their hands. She led them toward us. “We have company. A very special visitor.” She smiled at me as she got down on one knee between the children and put an arm around each of them. “Andy, this is my son, Daniel. And these are my nieces, Sharon and Karen, my sister’s daughters.”

  They were just children, and I wanted so much to smile at them as if I were happy to meet them, as if there were nothing at all wrong with them. I wanted to smile at them the way so many people had never smiled at me since I was burned, to make them feel good. To make them feel normal. I think I even tried to smile, stretched the corners of my mouth out and up, and tried to speak, to say hello, to tell them it was nice to meet them. But whatever was on my face, it was not a smile, and the closest I came to speaking was an abrupt choking sound in my throat.

  Judging by the way they stared at me and tried to back away—Amanda held them in place—they seldom if ever received visitors. Maybe they found me as shocking as I found them.

  “Kids, this is Andy Sayer,” Amanda said. “Can you say hello to Andy?”

  Both of the girl’s heads said, “Hello, Andy.”

  The boy made a sound that resembled the word “hello.” It was difficult to tell how old he was. Maybe eight, maybe ten, maybe even older. His body was bent—possibly a curved spine—and he was slightly hunched. His oversized head was misshapen as well, and his vacant eyes were narrow and slanted. He was naked except for a diaper that hung on him heavily as if it needed changing. After he’d stood in front of me for several seconds, I realized that was the case because I could smell it. His arms were at his sides, and at the end of them, instead of hands, were two curved protrusions of flesh that came to points. Like lobster claws, but of soft, flabby flesh.

  The girl wore a nice red dress. She was about ten years old, with a thick body.

  The heads were pressed close together and looked uncomfortable. Identical dark brown hair with braided pigtails, identical blue eyes, identical pug noses. Two voices that spoke almost simultaneously.

  Amanda laughed. “Well, Andy, aren’t you going to say hello?”

  Somehow, I pulled myself together. “Hi, kids,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

  To the children, Amanda said, “Why don’t you go give Daddy a kiss, now, okay? Then it’s time for bed. In fact, it’s past your bedtime.”

  I expected them to leave the kitchen then. Instead, they went to the wheelchair.

  Bollinger leaned forward and let them kiss his cheek. Two children, three kisses.

  Daddy? I thought. I began to tremble then as I wished I were home in bed.

  Where I belonged.

  “Daniel, go have your aunt Maggie change that diaper,” Amanda said.

  Bollinger sipped his coffee. “Now, where was I? I was talkin’ ’bout your smarts, yeah. You was smart. That was plain as day. After you graduated from Mount Crag High, I figgered you’d go to college. If not here, then somewheres else. When you didn’t, I was a li’ll worried, gotta admit. Boy as smart as you needs a good education, some direction and guidance. See, most a my family—we’re a big family, the Bollingers, but never been too big on learnin’. We’re…differnt. Like you. Differnt, unique. People don’t unnerstand us, so we don’t mix with ’em much, if y’know what I mean.”

  I didn’t know what he meant. They were not like me. I was “differnt” because of an accident, a fire. I had not been born with my sc
ars.

  “Anyways, I decided you needed a good college education,” Bollinger continued.

  “So I sent you to Hand of God. Bet you din’t know that was me.” He smiled.

  I saw no point in telling him it had crossed my mind, and simply shook my head.

  “But then you quit.” He frowned again. It made him look dangerous. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I gotta tell ya, Andy, that din’t make me very happy.

  “No, sir. You need that learnin’, boy. You’re smart as a whip, but for what I got planned for you, you gotta have some schoolin’.”

  Ice water coursed through my veins and goosebumps rose beneath my wet clothes. Until that moment, I had been scared because of them, because of what they looked like. But Bollinger’s words made me realize I was in real trouble, that I had been brought to that massive house on the mountainside for a reason and whatever it was, it wasn’t social.

  I took another swallow of coffee, then stood, holding the flashlight in my right hand. “Um, I really appreciate the coffee, but I’ve got to get home and—”

  “Now, just hold on a second, boy,” Bollinger said, raising his hand. “Sit, sit, just sit back down, you can go when we’re done talkin’.”

  “Daddy, I think he should meet Dexter,” Amanda said.

  “Sure, honeybuns, he will, soon as we’re done talkin’. Whyn’t you go on upstairs and check on Dexter, make sure he’s ready for comp’ny.”

  Amanda went to her father’s side, leaned down and wrapped her arms around him. She whispered something into his big ear as she ran a hand over his chest and stomach, down to his lap, then back up again, slowly, fingers moving, exploring lovingly.

  Whatever she said made Bollinger laugh a deep, rumbling laugh, and then she laughed, too, before leaning down to kiss him again. It was a wet, noisy kiss, and Bollinger reached around to caress, then squeeze, his daughter’s shapely bare ass.

  The coffee burned inside me as it rose dangerously close to my throat. I looked away and swallowed hard several times.

  When Amanda left, I sat in the chair again, but on the very edge, ready to go.

  Bollinger rolled his wheelchair close to me, leaned forward and stared at me for several long seconds, smiling.