The Summer of Owen Todd

by Tony Abbott

  The front part of the man’s head is bald and scabby, but from about his ears back, these great waves of gray hair are pulled into a knot on the top of his head that looks like some sort of dangerous growth. His long beard is split in the middle like in pictures of Moses. He wears a T-shirt that says “Don’t Ask Me.”

  He shuffles slowly over to us. “Can I help you?”

  “But, your shirt … uh, no, thanks,” Sean says. “Just looking.”

  “All right,” the man says, “all right.” Except he doesn’t step away so much as stare over our shoulders at the other customers.

  We squirm off through the tables.

  “I think he thinks we’re stealing,” I say. “Or going to steal. Or used to steal. I feel his eyes following me.”

  “His scent is, too. He smells bad.”

  “It’s that man bun. Probably infected.” I glance across the street. Miss Glum is still fooling with the dresses. I wonder how much she gets paid.

  Sean goes over to a strip of icy blue neon crawling up the wall like a snake, and he touches it. “Warm. Who knew?” I think the snake is supposed to be art for sale, but it’s set in the middle of a web of dusty fishing nets, ships’ rigging, and buoys made of thick green glass, so it’s hard to tell.

  Suddenly, Sean’s limbs tense, and he stiffens. “Owen. Behold.”

  I follow his eyes to see the submarine that was foretold to me. It is pretty small, a two-seater, if that, but it has a conning tower, prop blades coming out the back, and fins along the side. It’s hung from the ceiling at a diving angle.

  “I want it,” I say.

  “We’ll need your dad’s pickup, but it should fit.”

  “I want it.”

  “Maybe my new best friend, the go-kart guy in Chatham, will let us take it out in his pond.”

  “I want it.”

  “Do you want it?”

  I turn to him, nodding. “I do.”

  All in all, we must spend at least two solid hours in the store. The people that run it have got to be used to people just gaping and browsing and not buying anything at all, although some stuff is dirt cheap. There are hundreds of ratty, rusty remnants of junk left over from wars or seriously demented camping trips. Tents, canteens, strings of cartridges, leather bags, gas masks, military knives under glass, hiking sticks, canvas belts, brass boat instruments. There is also a life-size mermaid figurehead from an old sailing ship.

  “Dude,” I say, “she’s got—”

  “I see them.”

  Wooden buoys, tin buoys, baskets, harpoons, lobster traps, lanterns, old street signs, bells, models of ships, barrels, coats, cots, hammocks, cartons. There is even a display of, no kidding, pirate cutlasses. And all the time the gray guy with the smelly man bun is tracking us with his beady, old-man eyes. Finally, I catch sight of someone worming through the racks and tables directly toward us.

  I nudge his shoulder. “Your mom.”

  “Ugh. I know that face,” he says. “She’s mad. Pretend we’re innocent.”

  “We are innocent—”

  “Something’s wrong,” she says sharply, her eyes flicking distractedly at all the junk. “We’re missing some money and merchandise. Small stuff, but yesterday’s totals are not coming out right. The day before, either. Miranda’s on the warpath.”

  “Is it Goth Girl?” I ask.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. There’s another girl on weekdays after school. We had a little bit of an argument, Miranda and I, but she’ll take care of it. How about some lunch?”

  The afternoon drags. Shay and I are in and out of the dress shop. I use my talent at spritzing to go over the front windows. Mrs. Huff beams. Sean sweeps whatever floor space isn’t covered with displays and racks, which isn’t much. We rest in a couple of metal chairs angled on the blazing sidewalk, watching over the merchandise, the people that go by, the dogs. Finally everyone feels better when Gee clocks out for the day. In fact, Miranda starts whistling, like my dad, only more in tune, and loves how I join her in some of the old songs I picked up listening to him. I think Mrs. Huff is surprised I know so many of them.

  By the time we get back to my house, it’s just about suppertime. I hop out of the minivan. “Thanks, Mrs. H. That was awesome.”

  She smiles at me from behind the wheel. “It was.”

  I lean in Sean’s window. “The sub should be delivered tomorrow, so keep an eye out. In the meantime, I’ll dream of cutlasses.”

  “I’m diving for mermaids.”

  “Sean!”

  He laughs. “See ya.”

  SEVEN

  Two excellent days old, and the summer is on track. Literally.

  Because the weather is good, the next couple of days I’m at J&D’s a lot. On Sunday we skip church and I go straight to Harwich with my dad to clean seats (mostly) and race (only once). Monday the same, until Mom and Ginny swing by with homemade lunch, then bring me home in the afternoon for yard work. Tuesday, I forget. Same stuff? No. Before I get up, Dad’s already off to Hyannis to get parts to rebuild the karts we bought, so the rest of us spend a couple of hours at the Brewster Bookstore, where my mom has friends from when she used to handle their publicity at the newspaper.

  “It’s summer-reading time,” the white-haired lady behind the counter reminds me and Ginny. Mom smiles and says, “Pick something, each of you.”

  Ginny tears off into the corner with the big floor pillows and sacks out. I spin the racks. She gets a picture book about vampire bats playing baseball, and I find a novel about a boy who disappears. Then food shopping, then Ginny and Mom at ballet. Sean is with Paul all those days. That night he calls.

  “We went to a museum,” he tells me. “Not a museum with paintings, though. Glass.”

  “Glass?”

  “Glass. Paul’s mother collects old glass. Apparently there’s glass old enough to put in a museum. They display it behind glass. Silly me. I thought you just throw it away—”

  “Or sell it at Marine Specialties.”

  “But no. People go there to see it. The old glass. She has tons of it, Paul told me. She met us there.” Shay’s voice is low, not whispering, but shaky.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. He has a limp, did you see that?”

  “No.”

  “It’s little. Anyway, it was a regular field trip.”

  “What’s his mother like?”

  “She’s okay. Nice. Used to be a teacher in Sandwich.”

  “She probably ate them, too.”

  “Her students?” Shay laughs. “Yeah. She said she did.”

  He gets his voice back somewhere during this. “So, you?”

  “The usual. Dad’s working on the blue car first. I can’t wait until it gets on track. Your mom should let you come again. You helped us get it, after all.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  The first time I actually see Sean after our trip to P-town is at practice on Wednesday afternoon. It’s as lazy as usual, no matter how Coach tries to electrify us for the game on Saturday. Except this time, Kyle Mahon drops a bomb.

  “I’ll be gone for a few days,” he announces as we sit on the bench waiting to bat.

  “What? No,” I say. “Does Coach know?”

  “He cried. Seriously. Cried. Now he’s mad. The two stages of coaching. But I told him I can’t do anything about it. It’s my family’s summer vacation and they want me to come with them. Odd, I know, but families.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Sean mumbles.

  Kyle’s face flickers into a frown, then he stands. “Sorry. But what can I do?”

  “Not go?” I say. “Where are you going, anyway?”

  “Virginia Beach.”

  Sean snorts. “Uh … they have those here, you know. Beaches.” He points over the trees.

  Kyle laughs. “But my parents are high school teachers. You can’t vacation in the same town as your students. Dad in swimming trunks? He’d never get over it.”

  “That makes strange sense,” I say. “It�
�s just for one game, right? Tell me it’s just for one game.”

  “It’s just for two games.”

  “Bury us! We’re dead!” Shay says.

  Kyle smiles. “Not so much. Owen, you’re good in the field. Real good. And Sean, I hereby appoint you my designated hitter.”

  “I’ll be your designated sitter,” he says. “I’ve been training for eleven years.”

  “You’ve got it down now,” Kyle says, chuckling.

  “Yeah, down,” I say. “His butt on the bench.”

  “Not that it matters, but I may not be here either,” Shay says. “I might go to my dad’s.” His father lives in Connecticut, in the middle of the state somewhere. “He works for Colt, you know.”

  Kyle shakes his head. “Colt? What is this Colt?”

  “Colt. The Colt .45. The handgun that won the Wild West!”

  “Scary,” Kyle says. “Coach is waving at me. I guess I’m up. Don’t want him to weep again. Or froth at the mouth.” He trots off to home plate, swinging two bats.

  Sean’s never really told me what happened at home, but I almost don’t remember a time when his dad was living with him and his mother.

  “Mom wants me to like my dad, but it’s strange,” he says. “I think she wants me to like him, but maybe not too much.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He shrugs. “Your guess. I think he’s just lonely. He was lonely when he lived with us, too. How, I don’t know. I don’t really get it, but he didn’t get us, either. Maybe that’s why, you know, we’re all split up.”

  “Cut the chatter and get over here, everybody!” Coach yells. “I need to talk.”

  Groaning, we hustle over to home plate.

  Coach takes a deep breath before he starts. You can tell that Kyle being out two games has crushed him. “It’s going to be an uphill battle these next we—weeks, without—without a full team,” he says, barely getting it out. “But then, it’s always uphill. And why?”

  John Pelosic raises his hand.

  “Because you don’t care!” Coach shouts, ignoring the hand and getting some steam back. “You just stand there and do nothing while the other team scores!”

  I listen, I try to look serious, but I’m not sure Coach has it right.

  We care. We do. But we care about other stuff, at least I do. I move on the field. Some. I’m ready to bolt off right or left to scoop up a grounder. But for me, it’s the not-moving I really love. Just standing in the grass under the slow gold sun. It’s like the air goes still around you, like a skin, and you’ll break it if you move. So why would you want to move? It’s why I love baseball. Not as much as karting, but nearly. Karting is all about moving. Baseball is all about staying still.

  But to Coach, it amounts to not caring. Finally, he claps his hands louder than anyone I’ve ever heard. “Now, you half on the field. Others on the bench. Kyle, you’re up. Pay attention, everyone. Play ball!”

  As our half huddles behind and around home plate, Sean returns to the first-base bench. He plunks down at the end, his head in his hands. Glancing at Coach, who’s concentrating on Kyle, I trot over.

  “Shay, what’s going on?”

  His answer is to suddenly slide off the end of the bench and fall to the damp grass as if all the air has gone out of him.

  “Whoa … dude!” I say, laughing.

  “Shh.” He looks behind me to see if anyone is listening. No one’s near. He leans over so his forehead almost touches the ground. Rocking right back up, he says, “Paul was there. Yesterday.”

  “I figured.”

  “No. Not yesterday. This was Monday.”

  I watch him rocking and staring at his shoes. “What was Monday?”

  “He’s showing me a picture on his phone of a boat he might buy, right? No, wait. It was yesterday. Anyway, he’s flipping through his photos and ‘accidentally’ flips past something so gross I can’t even tell you.”

  He’s serious. I can see it in his eyes. His lips are pinched in disgust. Coach is still busy. Sitting on the end of the bench, I try to be funny. “What was it? Vomit? Except why would you take a picture of vomit? Was it a dead body?”

  He takes a while. His head bobs up and down over his lap. “It was a body,” he says softly. “But it wasn’t dead. It was naked.”

  The quiet word cuts the air around the bench.

  It’s the k in the word that cuts, and it hacks into the humid, slow air around us. You just don’t say that word outside. I feel as if somebody just stood on my chest. I gulp in a breath, turn to see if anyone hears, but I’m the only one there.

  “Why does he have a picture of … a person with no clothes on?” Then something tingles in my groin. “Is it a woman? He’s showing you naked women on his phone? Completely naked? Was it his girlfriend? Whoa.”

  He shakes his head. “No. I mean, yes. Completely naked. But no, it wasn’t a woman.”

  “A … girl?”

  Sean keeps shaking his head. “A boy.”

  It seems like the bench is shaking under me, but it’s me who’s shaking. I have to stand up. The bench is suddenly too dirty to sit on. “What do you mean ‘accidentally’? You said he ‘accidentally’ showed you the picture?”

  “It was, like, a fraction of a second, but if it was what I think it was, I can’t get it out of my head.”

  “Just like I can’t. A boy with no clothes on. What the heck? First naked peeing. Now this? Where was he?”

  “Sitting right next to me!”

  “I mean the boy in the picture.”

  I don’t even know why I ask, except that I find I need to imagine it. Why? I don’t know that, either. “A naked boy doing what? Where?”

  His voice is very low, soft. “He was in a room, like a living room. He was lying down on a couch with his face turned away.”

  “Sleeping?”

  “Uh … no.”

  “Where were you when you saw it?”

  “Sitting on my couch. Paul came over and plopped down and opened his phone. He was all, ‘I have to show you this boat I’m thinking of buying,’ and he opens his photos, and there it is. He flicks it right away and says, ‘Oops, my little brother.’”

  “His brother?” I say. “Who knew he had a brother. Is he ever at church?”

  “Jeez, I don’t know! Then he said sorry about the other day with the open door. It’s no big deal, he said. He said he grew up that way and lots of people do.”

  “What, they strip down naked when they pee?”

  “Shhh!” he says. “I don’t know why he has it on his phone for. I couldn’t see the kid’s face, but he looked like maybe he’s in high school. I mean, you could tell. He was older than u-us.” He chokes a little on the last word. I can’t see Sean’s face at all now. He hangs his head low over his lap.

  “Sean Huff, you’re up next,” says the coach, who is hovering by the batter’s box with Kyle, who smiles at me and shrugs.

  Sean looks up, raises his hand to the coach, but doesn’t get up from the ground.

  My shoulders turn cold, icy. The skin on my arms itches. Again I feel like I’m covered with insects. “Then what happened?”

  Shay wiggles his fingers. “Nothing. He showed me the boat he wants to buy and I went to my room to play a game and then my mom came back and he was gone. That’s it.”

  “Did you tell her? I mean, that’s two naked things, right? It’s super weird…”

  He snorts at me. “Do you tell your mom stuff?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I tell my dad.”

  “Leaves me out.”

  The truth is I don’t tell either of my parents everything. The wasp attack, for example. That was behind the Fish House. I had run out to get something from the car while we were eating, a phone charger maybe, I forget. And, I don’t know, I saw this papery nest swinging loose under the eaves, and thought wouldn’t it be cool to throw a rock at it like it was a target. It was ragged and just hanging there empty, I thought. Well, the first rock missed and hit
the gutter. But the second one didn’t. What was I, eight? No, nine. I should have known better. The swarm shot out on me faster than I could run and stung my neck and shoulders and arms. Mom screamed and rushed me to the doctor, while I made up a story about how the nest was on the ground and I accidently stepped on it and wasps attacked me. Only Sean knows that I caused it, and he’s never blabbed.

  Now he’s all sucked into himself and sitting still on the damp ground, not rocking. He looks either like he’s going to turn into stone or bolt right off the field into the trees and never come back.

  “It’s really weird, Shay. You have to tell your mom.”

  “I’m telling you because I’m not sure. He was flipping through his pictures so fast it was like a fraction of a second. I don’t even know what I saw.”

  “You know what you saw.” I listen to myself talking to him like a teacher.

  He shrugs. “It was so fast. Plus my mom tried so hard to get a sitter who could do her exact hours. She needs this job at the shop. We need it, she says. She’s been out of work for months. I’m not saying anything to her. It’s okay. Forget about it. It was a mistake.”

  I know the coach will call for Sean again, but when I look over he’s dancing behind the plate with Austin Wien, showing him a different grip. I try to put it together in my head. Sean’s babysitter, Paul Landis, is in charge of coffee hour. He’s an EMT. He has a girlfriend and a mother who collects glass. And there’s naked stuff going on. I think about telling my dad, but the words don’t form in my mind.

  How do you say this stuff?

  But I remember that I’ll be at the kart track with Dad all day again tomorrow and maybe some perfect time will come up and mistake or not I’ll think of the right words to say.

  Kyle takes the bat from Austin. This is going in slo-mo. Austin has long red hair that curls down and up out of the back of his batter’s helmet. Kyle crouches. The ball comes, Kyle swings, and the ball cracks against the bat and flies out to the scrambling fielders.

  “Ha! Good one!” Coach calls. “Real good. That’s how it’s done.” Then he glances back at our bench. “Sean Huff, you’re up.”

  But Sean is still folded into himself on the ground next to the bench. The slats of the bench shadow the back of his shirt. He seems smaller than he usually does.