by Chris Lynch
Ling-Ling shrugged again, a gesture that seemed to mean many different things to him. He took off his coat and hung it on top of Jerome’s coat next to Lady Snap-On. Which, by the way, was my special coat hook, but I’d address that later.
Ling-Ling then took a walk around the car, checking it out. He just kept nodding his great amazing head. Then he dropped to his hands and knees, looking under the car.
“Frame rot,” he said, like I had something trailing out of my nose.
“I’m working on it,” I answered defensively.
“Not necessary,” Wolf shot. “I’ll do it. I’ll fix it. I’ll make it run. I’ll drive it for you. I’m dedicating the rest of my life to this machine.”
Since he was Wolfbang, and since he was a wiseguy, you’d figure he was pulling my leg big-time. But his voice and his face said not. We finally found something Wolf liked. The key seemed to be that he just didn’t care much for live things.
Ling-Ling then took the liberty of getting into the driver’s seat. The driver’s seat. We all know who the driver is and who he isn’t, don’t we? The Lincoln’s old springs cried when Ling squashed them down.
“Jerome,” I said as I carefully approached the car to address the problem before it got totally out of control. “What exactly did that little Internet posting say?”
“Um, you know, all the stuff we talked about when we first thought up the club, something like, ‘Want to be a real man, hang around with real men, do man stuff? Do you feel like other clubs like the Boy Scouts and the swim team and the Green Berets just don’t offer the manly challenges you need? Do you feel like there’s a Johnny Chesthair kind of a guy inside you just dying to claw its way out, but you don’t even know where to begin? Do laughing girls’ voices keep you awake at night? Then come see Steven, and join the He-Man Women Haters Club. No dames, and lots and lots of discipline.’”
I listened to this description of my club. I replayed it in my head. I replayed it again.
“Sounds about right,” I said. “But you didn’t print an address, just like that, did you?”
“What do you think, I’m a fool? I just posted my Internet address, and fielded responses.”
“And?”
“And it was unbelievable. Like, hundreds of responses in the first fifteen minutes. The system crashed.” Jerome shook his head, smiling like wasn’t this all so cute. “These crazy cyberguys…”
“That’s just what I was thinking. Jerome, what did you get us into?”
He waved me off. “Stop worrying. When it seemed to me that most of them were a little too…excited—you do have to read people carefully out there on the ’Net—I pulled the ad. Ling-Ling was the only normal one, so I gave him the location.”
“The only normal one…” I said, turning back to my sinkin’ Lincoln.
I went to the driver’s door, and I got right to it.
“Ling-Ling, the first thing is, this is a club of rules. You gotta have rules if you’re gonna have anything at all, and we have rules. Second, the rules are made mostly by me, because this is my club, my uncle’s garage, and my Lincoln. So, one of the biggest rules is, only Steven sits behind the wheel of the Lincoln. You can’t sit there.”
I automatically took three steps backward, before he even moved anything more than his eyes. Then he turned his whole big face up to me. Then he lifted the great burden of himself out of my poor suffering car. He stared down at me silently, and I did my very best to show him nothing but cold steel eyes in return, even though if he did nothing more than fall on me, I was in deep sneakers.
Then his round chin got all pocked with quivering little wrinkles, and water-balloon tears blobbed from his eyes, up and over his vast cheeks and onto the cement floor.
“All right then,” Ling-Ling sobbed. “I’ll go.”
And go he did, almost. Jerome rushed up beside me, started elbowing me and nudging me after the big baby. Wolf, from the other side of the car, was mouthing, “Go, go.”
“What?” I hissed in Jerome’s ear. “Am I gonna be spending all my club time chasing members down the street and hauling them back inside? Oh right, fun club you got there, Steve-O.”
Of course I went anyway. I caught him as he removed his great big jacket from the special hook where it wasn’t supposed to be hanging. “It’s just a rule, Ling. You don’t have to leave.”
“No?”
“No. Ain’t you ever belonged to anything before?”
He shrugged.
Wolfbang tried to help, in his way. “Ya, Ling. Like, in my residential facility where I’m a resident, they got millions of rules, rules on everything, posted on the walls, in this little handbook—so many rules, you could choke. No biting the staff…Clothes must be worn in the hallways at all times….No hanging yourself in the stairwell…It’s like, no freedom. This is nothing.”
I stared at Wolf without saying anything. Back to Ling. “You know, like anything where they had rules or dos and don’ts or whatever? Ever been in anything like that at all?”
“Um, like with a lot of other people, you mean.”
“Ya, like that, only it doesn’t even have to be a lot.”
“No? How many then, minimum, would you mean?”
I tipped a glance toward Jerome, feeling that the strangeness of the conversation would fall into his club jurisdiction.
“Two, Ling,” Jerome said. “I think two, anyway, would be the minimum of what we could call a group.”
He nodded his head. “Well then, no, I’ve never actually belonged to one.”
I hot-stepped right over and grrred into Jerome’s ear. “You’re responsible for this. We couldn’t even get rid of him now if we wanted to, because he’d probably kill himself.”
Jerome smiled at Ling, then whispered, “Or us.”
“That’s it,” I said. “You are officially club vice president in charge of Ling-Ling. Congratulations.”
“Fine,” he said. “I like him.”
I almost clipped him. But I supposed if I could work on old Ling, he could turn out to be mighty useful. Or, at least, mighty. Ling was some serious bulk to add to our troops.
“So okay then, Ling? Don’t sweat it. You can sit in the backseat of the car. It’s not like the cars they build today; this is a huge, comfortable backseat. Go ahead and try it out.”
Silently, he agreed. He pulled a rolled log of superhero comic books out of the inside pocket of his parka, then went to hang the jacket back on the nail.
“Oh, and by the way,” I said, perhaps not at the best time, “that hook is also off limits. That is my hook, and you have to find another place for your—”
He started crying again.
This time it didn’t make me feel bad or nervous. Now it was making me angry.
“Oh, please, could you do that in the corner or something?” I actually started pushing him from behind, like a car stuck in the snow. “There ya go, back there somewhere. Ya, in the car, take your magazines…there you go.”
When Ling was safe and soggy in the back of the car—I dumped Wolf in there to keep him company and slammed the door behind them—I turned on Jerome.
“See? Computers. They stink. Only ginks and bizarros use computers and I’m passing a no-computers rule right now. I’ll come to your house and smash that computer with my head, if you do that again.”
“Like you could do better. At least my way we get members who can read.”
“Ya, well, that’s not important in this club,” I said. And meant it.
7.
Right All Along
“GET OVER HERE,” MY uncle said to me, and pulled me off to a neutral corner. “Just exactly what kind of a club you got going here, anyway?” I had my back to the guys and as he spoke Lars kept shooting looks at them over my shoulder, as if he feared they were going to make a move on him if he didn’t watch it.
I shrugged. It was all a little hard to define. “It’s a guy thing,” I said.
“I can see that,” he said harshly. �
��It’s what kinda guys, and what kinda things, I’m curious about. ’Cause when I seen that new one come strollin’ in the other day—Ling-Ling, for cryin’ out loud?—I says to myself, I says, whoa now…and in addition to that Jerome kid who I had my doubts about from the get-go, when the Girl Scouts kicked the livin’—”
“Uncle Lars, do you think you could put this in the form of a question?”
“Is this a Sally Sweetboys’ club you got here, or what?”
I should have seen, from the funny way he was pronouncing his words at me, to the way all the color had drained from his already light-gray face, to the violent way he was looking at Jerome….I should have seen where he was headed. But I didn’t. I didn’t because…because it was just so far from the planet reality. Me? ME? Me? I was floored.
“Course not, stupid. It’s a Johnny Chesthair kind of a club.”
He stopped, stared at the guys some more. Torqued his head like dogs do when you give them commands they don’t understand.
“All right then,” he said cautiously. “If you say so, Steven. It’s just they look…and I’d still like to see youse get yourselves into a fight or somethin’, somethin’ wholesome.”
“We’re working on it,” I said.
In fact, we were working on it not five minutes later. But I don’t think it was the kind of fight he had in mind.
The doorbell in the garage clanged like a thousand electrified cowbells, making everybody jump and putting every one of us in a nasty mood. Lars said the bell had to be that loud to be heard over the power tools. Nobody ever used it anyway. Almost nobody.
“It’s open, ya fool,” Lars screamed, louder than the bell.
The door creaked open, and as I looked up, it was as if my Haunts had split wide open and spilled into my regular, formerly-well-ordered daytime life.
But this was not a Haunt. It only played like one.
Monica, in her Girl Scout outfit—did she sleep in the thing, or what?—came strolling in, wearing a smile as wide as the grille on an old Cadillac. Her hair, which was usually so wild and ferocious that it couldn’t fit inside one of those Cat-in-the-Hat hats, was pulled into two hard braids framing and taming her face. Like when the devil fools everybody by hiding his tail inside a nice suit. She was carrying a shopping bag with her two hands joined together in front of her, with those fuzzy white alpaca mittens that make her look harmless.
See, this is exactly what I’ve been talking about. No rules. No rules whatsoever. Monica is here, in my space, in my place, the very spot on this earth that is dedicated to the defense of decent guys like me against the dark-hearted, unpredictable, sweet-smelling, evil empire of the likes of Monica and her ilk. She was not supposed to come here. And she knew that. She knew it. She knew it. That’s why she came.
“Code red, guys, code red!” I yelped as I tore for the front of the shop.
Wolf was lying on a dolly, rolled completely underneath the car. Jerome was passing him tools and flashlights and Fig Newtons. Ling was inside the car reading X-Men. None raced to my side.
Lars was slumped over a Subaru and didn’t look up.
“Watch out!” I hollered at Lars as I ran to help him with the Red Menace.
He leaped, froze himself into tae kwon do readiness. Then he looked down at Monica. Went back to work without addressing her.
“I think you can handle this crisis on your own, Steven,” he said.
Sweating, I almost blurted the truth, which was: I think I can’t.
“What are you doing here?” I said to her.
“I’m selling cookies,” she said sweetly.
Grrrrr.
“Ya, well, we don’t need your kind of cookies around here,” I said.
By then, my trusty clubmates had reached the scene.
“Ya,” Jerome said. “We don’t need your kind of cookies.”
Monica refused to stop smiling.
“I like cookies,” Wolf said.
I turned on him, to shoot him a withering stare that would bring him back in line. He never even noticed.
“Hey, Steven,” Wolf said, still looking at Monica. “What do we got in petty cash? Can we swing a box of cookies?”
“No,” I snapped.
Ling returned to the car when I ruled out the cookies.
“Why do you come all the way over here to sell those stupid cookies anyhow?” I asked. “I heard you…people were selling your rotten cookies by mail and over computer and stuff. And even if you weren’t, nobody ever comes here to sell nothing.”
“Hey,” Lars snapped.
Somehow, Monica managed to widen that smile. “I heard there was a new club or something on the premises, so while we have never been able to sell anything at this location before…”
“Heh-heh-heh-heh,” chuckled Lars proudly.
“…I thought there might be some hungry young men here who might like a snack.”
“I might like a snack,” Wolf chimed in.
“A smack, did you say?” I answered. Then I turned to my second-in-command. “Jerome, wheel this guy out of here.”
Jerome circled around behind Wolf and started pulling on the handles of the wheelchair. Nothing. Wolfbang held on to the wheels, and Jerome was no match. Wolf barely noticed, smiling away at Monica, as Jerome sweated and grunted and climbed all over the chair trying to carry out his duty, like he was trying to pull Excalibur out of a rock.
“Wow, this is impressive,” she said to me. The little troublemaker. “You really are the general around here.”
Wolf cut in, which was fine, since all I could do at that point was blush so hard I reflected pink off the ceiling.
“Ooooohh, I don’t know about this, General. Are the rules that we gotta hate all women, or can we make exceptions? Can we get a ruling on this, ’cause I just don’t think I’m gonna be able to hate this one. Nope, just don’t think I can manage it. I’ll just have to pay the fine or whatever.”
“You’re sweet,” Monica said to the rat in our midst.
At that instant, something started bubbling up in my stomach, and I had never felt anything like it before. Like I’d eaten live bees. I looked at Wolfbang, and the bees tore the lining out of my belly.
“Can I have a free box of cookies, if I’m sweet?” Wolf asked.
Buzzzbuzzzbuzzzbuzzz. I didn’t even know why this should bother me. What did I care if he talked to her?
She shook her head no.
The buzzing quieted.
He shrugged. Then, as Jerome was about to give up, his asthma inhaler hanging out of his mouth like a cigar, Wolf let go of the wheels, and the two of them shot in reverse toward the Lincoln.
“I will see you to the door,” I said sternly, in my General voice.
I pushed the door open to let her out, and boosted myself slightly up on my toes to narrow the difference in height as she brushed by.
“Perhaps your club and my club can get together sometime,” she said, stopping right there, inches away, with the two of us squashed in the doorway. Touching, practically. “I think that might be fun, don’t you?”
Wicked, wicked, foul evil thing. She’ll spring her tail as soon as the door shuts behind her.
“Hnnn,” I said, which wasn’t exactly clever but did end the conversation.
Then, just before stepping out into the street, Monica slipped one fuzzy mitt down into the bag, shoved a box into my hands, and dashed off.
The door slammed behind her. I looked at the box.
Tagalongs.
Wicked, wicked, foul evil thing. No rules for them. They’ll do anything. Can’t take your eyes off them for a second.
I cracked the door open just enough to check her out as she went back to her own self and sprouted her tail. Instead, I saw her gang, three other savage, bloodthirsty girls who had been lying out there in their snipers’ nest, and now were laughing and squealing, and pulling on Monica’s arms, demanding, “More. What happened then? What did he do? What did he say?”
So, I was right
all along. It was a conspiracy.
8.
Johnny Junior
“GIVE IT SOME MORE gas, Dad.”
He raced the engine. The fan nearly cut off my brand-new Adam’s apple.
“I didn’t say to race it,” I hollered over the noise.
After I had adjusted the idle on the carburetor for the hundredth time, and got the engine running high enough so that it could sustain life on its own without me under the hood, I closed it and circled around to the window. The old man handed me a dollar. Sport.
“You know, Dad, you might want to invest in a new set of spark plugs, distributor cap, oil change, instead of just having me keep turning the engine up higher.”
“C’mon,” he said. “Why would I do all that when I got you? You love doing this stuff.” He punched me in the chest, knocking me four feet away. I walked back to where I was.
“Don’t be hitting him all the time, Buster,” my mom said from her seat next to him. “I think his chest is sinking in from it.” She wasn’t getting tough with him—no, no, nobody does that. Buster is really his name. At least that’s what he’s always called himself.
“Pfffft,” he said, thumping me in the very same, hollow-sounding midpoint of my chest, sending me back again. I walked the long walk back to him, like one of those inflatable Bozo dummies that keep bouncing up for more beatings. “Boys love this stuff. I could hit him all day, and he’d just laugh.” He hadn’t noticed that I never actually did laugh at it.
The car started wheezing, fading again. I shook my head as Buster responded by abusing the gas pedal some more.
Vrrrroooom! said the desperate car.
“I love that sound,” said the driver. “Don’t you love that sound, Steven?”
“It sounds like you’re breaking it,” my mother accurately observed.
He thumb-jerked at her. “Don’t listen to the driver’s side airbag over there. She’s just a girl. She don’t understand what we understand.”
As he began backing down the driveway, he called me with a wagging finger. Like I was on a leash, I followed the car down to the street as he kept right on backing. There he stopped.