Rex Zero, King of Nothing

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  And it isn’t.

  Cassiopeia is waiting for me, guarding the front door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she demands. Her arms are crossed on her chest. She looks just like a grownup. Actually, I can’t ever remember her being a kid.

  “Mum said I could go out,” I say, trying to push past her.

  “You know the rules,” she says. “No playing on Sunday.”

  I wish she’d get married and have kids of her own to boss around.

  And that’s when I remember Mr. Odsburg. He works with her at the jewellery store and now they’re dating. I step up close to her – so close her perfume almost knocks me out.

  “You try to stop me and I’ll tell Mum about last Friday.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “On the porch. After midnight.” I pull my arm up to my mouth and start smooching it until she gasps.

  “What were you doing up?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You were spying – “

  “I’ll tell her everything.”

  “You are despicable,” she says, but I can hear the quavering in her voice. She’s going to cave in. And sure enough, she slouches against the doorjamb. It’s as if she is Superman and I just waved a big fat chunk of kryptonite in her face.

  I fly down the porch steps, scooping up my bike.

  I’m free.

  3

  The Little Black Book

  IT‘S LIKE VISITING A NEW country. The country of Sunday. It looks mostly the same on my street but there are more hats. Churchgoers in hats, holding them down against the November wind.

  It’s cold. I’ve got a sweater on but I wish I’d grabbed my jacket. I put my Raleigh into third and pump hard to keep warm. I turn south off Clemow on to Bank Street. It’s almost empty of traffic.

  So this is what Sunday is like.

  I stop at the phone booth at First and check for nickels. None. I stop again at Third. I do this all the time and I’ve found one dollar and thirty-five cents since we moved here in July.

  Taking money someone forgot doesn’t seem like stealing most days, but it does on Sunday. And here’s the thing. Where am I going to spend it? Nothing is open. Nothing except church.

  Anyway, all these thoughts are going through my head as I reach the phone booth at Fifth. I dump my bike and pull back the accordion door. I pull down the change thingie.

  Empty.

  Then I see the book.

  It’s a little black book sitting on the shelf beside the phone. An address book with gold tabs for every letter of the alphabet, even X.

  I thumb through to X. Nobody named X. No X men. But that makes me think of something else and I flip back to M: Manderley, Mathers, Morrison, Mumford. There are two pages of M names but no Mxyzptlk. He’s Superman’s archenemy. So, obviously, this isn’t Clark Kent’s address book. He didn’t leave it here when he stepped inside to transform into a superhero. What happens to his everyday clothes when he does that? What a great discovery that would be: stepping into a phone booth and finding the suit of a mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Planet lying on the floor.

  I flip through the address book and then close it quickly, feeling guilty, as if I were reading one of my sister’s diaries.

  What am I supposed to do? It’s a dilemma. Leave it or take it? I lean my forehead against the phone and think hard. I look at the book again. Open it to N, just to see if by any chance the person who lost this book knows us. Nope. No Norton-Nortons. But that gives me an idea. The address book is bursting with clues. In fact, every page is a clue!

  All of the people in this book know the person who owns it.

  I bet if I sat down and really looked it over carefully, like Sherlock Holmes, I could figure out who that mysterious person is. That would be unbelievably great! I can see myself knocking on a door and handing the book to Miss X.

  “How did you ever do it!” the woman cries in amazement.

  “Deductuation, ma’am,” I say. “No, no reward necessary. A dollar? Well, if you insist. Thank you.”

  “No,” says the woman, her face aglow with happiness. “Thank you, Rex Zero.”

  Rex Zero is the name Buster and James gave me the first day we met, last summer. Buster thought the hyphen in my name was a minus sign, which meant I was Rex Norton minus Norton – Rex Zero! It’s a good name for a hero – or for a detective who deductuates dilemmas.

  Bang, bang, bang.

  I almost leap out of my skin. I turn around and gasp. There’s this freckly red face with a red flattop and a yellow peewee football clenched between its teeth pressed up against the glass door.

  It’s Buster! I pocket the address book and pull back the door.

  “I was just thinking about you,” I say.

  He takes the football out of his mouth.

  “What are you doing out on a Sunday? Did you run away from home? Was your family all gassed in the night and now you’re an orphan?”

  I smile mysteriously. I’m Rex Zero. I’ll never tell!

  It turns out there’s supposed to be a game down near the canal on this abandoned field across from Lansdowne Park. We ride over. The field is next to an old-folks home with a huge vegetable garden. No one’s there.

  “Oh, right,” says Buster. “The game’s not until one.”

  So we head south over the Rideau Canal, past the library, past the Mercury dealership where there’s a brand-new gold Mercury Monterey convertible in the window. Varooom!

  Finally we come to the Rideau River. It’s way bigger than the canal. I’ve never gone this far before. We stop on the bridge and throw stuff in the water – twigs, rocks, a dead running shoe. Then we cross over.

  “Are we still in Ottawa?” I ask.

  Buster shakes his head. “Nope,” he says. “This is West Dakota.”

  I guess he means South Dakota. Buster isn’t good on geography.

  We take off up Riverside Drive until Buster’s not sure where we are anymore, which is a good time to head back. It’s uphill all the way but that’s no problem when you’ve got a three-speed.

  When at last we get back to the field, there are some guys chucking a peewee football around.

  I see James, Sami, Walli – Sami’s younger brother – and some other kids from school. Eight guys in all. Little Donnie Dangerfield is there. He’s in my class – the class clown. Right now he’s standing on his head. He wants James to throw the ball at him so he can catch it with his feet.

  Then I see the new guy. He arrived from Hungary just a few weeks ago. He has this great name, Zoltan Kádár. Some guys have all the luck.

  There were troubles in Hungary – a war of some kind. Something to do with the Reds. Figures. Everything bad these days has to do with the Reds. But Zoltan’s family escaped, which makes him pretty interesting.

  “I don’t believe it!” says James when he sees me. “You’re out on a Sunday. What happened?”

  He throws me the ball and I catch it, no problem. I’m pretty good at football. I don’t look like I’d be good at anything athletic because I’m so skinny. But I’m fast and I’ve got soft hands.

  They put Zoltan guarding me. He’s older than us, I think, and pretty tall, but he’s just learning about our kind of football.

  James is the quarterback of the other team. He takes the snap and steps back in the pocket. We all have to count to six steamboats before Walli can attack.

  James’s teammates run around in circles, jumping up and down and yelling for him to throw the ball.

  “Jimbo, Jimbo!”

  “Here, here, here!”

  Zoltan doesn’t yell. In fact, he hasn’t left the line of scrimmage.

  At first I figure he doesn’t understand. Then I realize that he’s looking for something. His key? Or maybe a precious piece of jewellery his dying father gave him back in Hungary before the Reds blew up their house? He’s patting his pockets and his eyes are sweeping the brown and stunted grass. I start looking, too, and the
next thing I know – he’s bolted!

  James tosses a little squib of a pass and Zoltan goes for big yards. It was a play! They tricked me. Zoltan smiles like a wolf as he heads back to the huddle.

  It won’t happen again, Boltin’ Zoltan!

  I get the chance to pay him back about four possessions later. I stumble making a catch. It’s not a big deal but Zoltan grabs on to my arm to stop me from falling.

  “You good?” he asks.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  And then I take a step and wince with pain. He reaches out again to take my arm. I wave him off.

  “It’s just my ankle,” I tell him. I lift my right leg and slowly turn my foot a couple of times both ways. I wince a little more and then hobble back to the huddle.

  The next play I take off on a down-and-out but I pull up lame and the ball sails over my head.

  “Sorry, guys,” I say as I limp back to the huddle and give Ernie, our quarterback, a sly wink.

  He doesn’t throw the ball to me again for two possessions. Every time I go out on a pattern I hop around a bit and never get free.

  Then we’re about thirty yards from the end zone.

  “You ready, Zero?” mutters Ernie.

  I nod.

  Everybody goes wide right and wide left, I run a post pattern, slowly at first and then –

  Fwooop! I take off.

  I’m a stock car smoking up the pavement. I hear Zoltan behind me yelling something in Hungarian. It sounds like a swear word! He’s after me, but I’ve got the jump on him and Ernie’s got me in his sights. It’s a bomb, all right, but a little short. I turn to meet it and then realize the wind is giving it some lift. I have to run backwards – fast! And all the time Zoltan is getting nearer and nearer, yelling things in Hungarian.

  I leap, arms stretched, and come down with the ball, but I’m going backwards so fast I fall.

  Right into the end zone.

  Touchdown!

  Zoltan comes up, breathing hard, and stands over me with his fists on his hips. I just lie there catching my breath, not sure what he’s going to do.

  Then he grins.

  “Good trick.”

  He offers me his hand. I reach out and he snatches it away so that I tumble over again on my backside.

  “Good trick,” I say.

  And he laughs as he heads back to the gang.

  I feel good. Ottawa may have lost the quarter-finals yesterday, but the pride of the city has just been saved by skinny but oh so crafty Rex Zero.

  When I’m on my feet, I see that the little black book I found in the phone booth is lying on the ground. I pick it up and stick it back in my pants pocket.

  I’m facing the garden of the old-folks home. An old man is in the garden, wearing grey pants, a blazer and a beret. Apart from the beret, it’s exactly what Mum had set out for me to wear.

  The old guy is standing, facing north, and he’s saluting.

  Maybe he’s crazy.

  Then it hits me.

  Hits me like a truckload of frozen pumpkins.

  I don’t have a watch. But the old man knows what time it is. He’s holding his breath and facing in the direction of the National War Monument up near Parliament Hill, as if he could see it two miles away.

  It’s the middle of the afternoon, but it’s the eleventh hour for me!

  4

  The First Clue

  I ENTER THE HOUSE by the basement stairs. I’ll have to face the music some time but I want to lie low for a while and try to get a sense of the lay of the land. If I hear screaming and yelling upstairs, maybe I’ll just stay in the basement until I’m old enough to get a place of my own.

  I head straight for the House of Punch. That’s this bomb shelter my sister Annie Oakley built out of Punch magazines that she piled up around a huge table in the middle of the room. Now there’s this little room inside the big room. She lets me hang out there sometimes, and between us we’ve made it pretty comfortable with an old carpet and pillows.

  She’s there.

  “Boy, are you in trouble,” she says. Even in the dull light under the table, I can see her eyes gleam with satisfaction.

  “I didn’t mean to miss it,” I say. “I lost my watch.”

  “Oh, well then, I’m sure Dad won’t be mad.”

  She’s right. I’m going to have to come up with something better.

  “So Dad went anyway?”

  “Of course.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yep. I asked if I could go but it had to be number one son.” She sounds angry, but she’s angry nearly all the time. “I told Daddy I want to be a soldier one day. He didn’t even care. It was Rex or nobody.”

  I try to imagine Annie in uniform, fighting in hand-to-hand combat against some huge Nazi stormtrooper. The Nazi is looking pretty worried.

  “What do you think Dad will do?” I ask.

  I must sound really scared because she takes pity on me.

  “He’s not so mad as he is sad,” she says.

  “Oh, great.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “But it’s more than that. He’s always sad around Armistice Day. Didn’t you ever notice? He goes into a genuine A-one blue funk. He’ll be quiet as a mouse one minute and yelling the next.”

  I think about it. She’s right.

  “I guess he’s remembering friends who got killed,” I say.

  She shrugs her shoulders. I can tell there’s more she wants to say but I bite my lip. You can’t press Annie Oakley – not unless you want an arrow up the nose.

  “Last year,” she says, “he was napping on the couch, right around Armistice Day. He looked like he was having some kind of a nightmare. I watched. I went up really close. I was just going to wake him up when he said something – not to me – but I almost thought it was, because his voice was so clear. He sounded like he was yelling a warning. Like he was saying don’t do that or don’t go out there, or something.”

  “But you couldn’t understand what he was saying?”

  She shakes her head.

  “No,” she says. Then she looks right into my eyes and wraps her hand around my wrist. Her fingers are icy cold. “I couldn’t understand him,” she whispers, “because he was talking in German.”

  * * *

  Mum is at the sink when I go upstairs. She doesn’t turn around but she knows it’s me.

  “Wait in your room until your father comes home.”

  I don’t answer. I turn towards the hall and leave. I want to say something like “See how good I’m being, not arguing or making up excuses or anything?” But I can’t say that. When you’re trying to act mature you’re not allowed to point it out.

  In my room I think about Dad talking German. Where did he learn German? Maybe Annie got it wrong. He could have been talking Welsh. He knows Welsh because he was born there. But Annie knows what Welsh sounds like. And she knows what German sounds like, too.

  I sit on my bed with my pillows piled up behind me. As soon as I sit down I’m aware of the secret in my pocket because it pokes me.

  I dig it out and start reading through it, looking for clues. Whenever I see a phone number that starts with CE, I look especially hard. The CE stands for Central. Our number is CE 5-6334.

  In the E section, I find Harold Ermanovics on Percy Avenue. There’s a Sandy Ermanovics at school. I don’t know where he lives but it might be on Percy.

  I look at the number. It’s worth a try. I know I’m supposed to stay in my room but I’m dying of curiosity. Besides, sitting in your room is like waiting for the jailor to come with the last supper before they fry you in the chair.

  What if I phone Sandy, and his dad just happens to know somebody who was complaining about missing his address book? The mystery would be solved, just like that. And then I could tell my father that I was really sorry about missing Armistice Day, but I had made somebody very happy. Maybe then I’d only get ten years of hard labour instead of the electric chair.

  We have two phones now, whic
h gives me some options. One phone is in the front hall and the other is in Dad’s study. I’ll need privacy for this mission. If Mum catches me, I’ll get the electric chair twice!

  I sneak down the stairs.

  Cassiopeia and Letitia are in their shared bedroom – probably making up the names of the men they are going to marry. Annie must still be in the House of Punch. Mum is in the kitchen. She’s turned up the stereo and is listening to her latest LP from the Columbia Record Club. Dinah Shore, A Swingin’ Tour of the Sunny South. The music is loud enough to cover the noise of me sneaking down the stairs.

  I peek into the living room. Flora Bella is trying to hula hoop to Dinah singing “Mississippi Mud.” She is concentrating hard, which is good. The last thing I need is Flora Bella around when I’m trying to make a secret phone call. The Sausage is playing on the living-room floor with a piece of raw spaghetti. He loves raw spaghetti. He’s talking to it. Telling the spaghetti his problems.

  I slip into my father’s study and gently close the door behind me.

  I go straight to his desk and before I lose my courage altogether, I pull out the little black book and dial Sandy’s number.

  “Hello?”

  It’s a girl – a sister, I guess.

  “Is Sandy there?”

  She goes to get him.

  “Hello?”

  “Sandy?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Hi, it’s Rex Norton-Norton.” No response. “From school?” No response. “Remember I traded you Kenny Ploen for Sam Etcheverry?” Still nothing. “They’re quarterbacks, one with the Blue Bombers – “

  “I know who they are. I’m just not sure who you are.”

  “I’m a friend of Sami Karami’s.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. Everyone knows Sami. “What do you want?”

  “I found an address book and your father’s name was in it.” Another pause. “I’m trying to find the owner and the only clue I’ve got so far is that your father’s name is in the book.”

  “So?”