“Stay away from him,” he screams, shaking my head in time with his words. His face is bright red, and little bubbles of spit stretch into sticky strands at the corners of his mouth.
“I found him.” I pull at Ryan’s forearms, but he sits down harder on my chest so I can hardly breathe. “He’s mine,” I gasp.
Ryan pulls my head and shoulders even higher from the ground and shakes me again. My neck muscles strain to keep my brain from being jolted out of my head. “He’s not yours.” He lets my head drop to the floor.
“Owww.” The pain circles out from the back of my head like ripples in a pond.
“Just. Leave. Him. Alone.” Ryan jabs his finger at my face with every word.
I tug my head to one side, sure he’s going to punch me, but when Ryan finally moves, it’s to hide his face in his hands. His shoulders shake. I take my chance, flip my hips, and tip him off my chest into the stall. He sinks against the door and stays there like a heap of laundry.
“Dude, if this is all about the project, then you’re taking it way too seriously,” I say as I get up.
Ryan pulls my library book out from under his leg and kicks it hard as he can across the floor of the bathroom. The spine bends right open. The pages catch and crumple against the tiles. Then, changing his mind, he throws himself forward as if he’s going to rip the book to shreds so I can’t use it for my project. I snatch it up before he can reach it.
“That’s mine, too,” I shout as I run outside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I’m so relieved to see Grandpa again. He’s just getting up from the lunch tables and saying goodbye to the moms. He beckons me with his stick. “Come on Mikey, or we’ll get wet. It’s gonna rain hard any minute, and you know how I feel about rain. Heh, heh.”
I have to tell Grandpa. My wrist hurts, my head hurts, my legs are shaky, and I’m completely mixed up. I don’t get what Ryan was doing. Yes, he wants to use my Celt for his interview, and I’m not about to let him. I can see why he might be mad, but crying…over a school project? That’s so not Ryan.
“What’s up, Mikey Boy?” Grandpa asks as we meet halfway. “You OK?” The weird thing is, the minute I have the chance, I don’t want to tell him a thing. Grandpa calls it your gut feeling, when you kind of know something, but don’t. He says it saved him a whole bunch of times during the war. “Always listen to your gut, Mikey,” he says, “and I don’t just mean when it’s growling for food. Though that’s important too.”
There’s a feeling in my gut that says, “Don’t tell on Ryan, not yet.” I’ve no idea why I feel that, but I do. So, I lie. “I tripped on the way back from the library,” I say. “I hurt my wrist.”
“Must run in the family.” He flexes the wrist that he hurt when he fell, then takes a look at mine. “I’m no expert,” he says, “but I think you’ve just sprained it. Let’s get home before we get soaked, and we’ll ice it.”
The janitor pushes his mop cart out of the gym toward the boys’ bathroom. I catch myself hoping Ryan’s already gone. I just want this over with. I’ll tell Kyler, though. He’ll know what to do.
I tuck the battered library book under my arm. “Come on, Grandpa,” I say. “Let’s get back, quick.”
At home, Grandpa scrabbles around in the freezer for an icepack. Bags of peas and tubs of ice cream tumble onto the floor. He insists I have milk and cookies. I say yes to keep him happy. Grandpa believes milk and cookies solve every problem known to man. I’d rather have ice cream.
I end up icing my wrist in the living room. While I’m there, I start on the book. There are twenty names in the first paragraph, and they’re all impossible to read. I try to sound them out, but it doesn’t work. I nearly give up, until I remember the cookies: plenty of crunches to fire my brain. If Miss O’Brien wants me to read this book, and Ryan doesn’t, there must be something to it. I grab a cookie and my concentration improves immediately.
I work out that I can remember how the names look without trying to sound them out, and pretty soon I’m skipping over them and still understanding what’s going on. A few pages later, I’m so into it I can’t stop.
The first story is about how Cuchulain killed the giant dog that Miss O’Brien told me about. As a boy, he’s taken to a place called “The Boys’ House,” where he learns to become a warrior so that one day he can serve Conor, the King of Ulster. I so wish I were him. Every day the boys learn sword skills, riding, wrestling, hunting, and they get to play a game called hurling, which is a mix between soccer, lacrosse, and hockey. It sounds great.
At the Boys’ House, he makes a friend called Laeg who becomes his charioteer, and, get this, Laeg has red hair and freckles just like me. The Celt called me Laeg. Maybe he thought he recognized me. Then I remember what I read about the Celtic Otherworld; that the Celts believed they would be reborn and meet their families and friends time and time again. That’s so cool. Maybe that’s what he thinks about me—that I’m a reincarnation of Laeg. Perhaps that’s why the Celt chose me. But I don’t feel like a reincarnation. I just feel like me. I carry on reading.
One day the young boy is playing in a hurling match so he’s late for a feast with this guy, Cullen. By the time he reaches Cullen’s fort, it’s already closed. When he tries to get in, he’s attacked by Cullen’s fearsome guard dog. He has to kill it to defend himself, but he feels really terrible afterwards because he would never have killed the hound if he didn’t have to. Knowing how proud Cullen was of the dog, he offers himself as a guard dog in its place. He promises to stand outside every night, to defend Cullen’s fort like the dog did. He kind of turns a bad situation into an honorable one. The other warriors are so impressed by his noble gesture, and his bravery, that they rename him Cuchulain. It means “the Hound of Cullen.” And here’s the thing—they all chant his name, “Cuchulain! Cuchulain!”
Shivers tickle the back of my neck, like someone is running their fingers through my hair. In my mind’s eye, I see the Celt at the hospital. I see him waving his fist at the car. I see him under the twinkling stars. Miss O’Brien is right. It’s not “Cuckooland” he’s yelling but “Cuchulain.”
I read all afternoon and finish the book in bed with a flashlight. The stories are exactly the ones the Celt has been telling. There’s one where Cuchulain is trained by the greatest warrior ever, a Scottish woman named Skatha. He learns to leap over the bridge to her house like a salmon leaps up river. She gives him a special spear and he uses it to kill a dragon. The Celt relived all that the night with the raccoons.
Then there’s the Cattle Raid of Cooley. Queen Maeve of Connacht tries to invade Ulster to steal a brown bull on a night when she knows all the Ulstermen will be under a sleeping spell. Only Cuchulain and Laeg are untouched by the magic. So Cuchulain stands guard over a ford on the border of the two lands, and he fights Maeve’s champions every day until the men of Ulster awake. He gets no rest, and Maeve cheats and tricks him all the time. At one point Cuchulain is so tired that his own father, the god Lugh, makes him fall asleep for three days because he needs the rest. While he’s asleep, the boys from the Boys’ House wake and fight. They’re all killed. When Cuchulain wakes and finds out, he’s so angry that he’s seized by a fierce battle frenzy. He goes berserk and slaughters hundreds of Maeve’s men. No one can stop him because in his anger he turns into a monster, a true monster.
I read this bit about Cuchulain going berserk carefully two or three times. Those Celts loved their fighting, but even they were afraid when Cuchulain saw red.
The last chapters in the book creep me out. Cuchulain kills his own son by mistake. A boy sails into Ulster all by himself and challenges the King. As Ulster’s champion, Cuchulain has to fight him. It’s a really intense duel, but Cuchulain wins. It’s only when the boy is dying that Cuchulain recognizes the ring on the boy’s finger. Cuchulain hadn’t seen his son since the child was a baby. He says sorry, but it’s too late. The boy dies. The book says that Cuchulain was never the same again.
I
take a deep breath and stare at the light from the hallway fanning across my bedroom floor from under my door. I can’t keep this from Kyler any more. It’s too massive—seventy-times-bigger-than-the-sun incredible.
My Celt is Cuchulain himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“You weren’t gonna tell me?” Kyler hasn’t touched a thing in his lunch box and we’ve only got five minutes till the end of recess. He sits next to me and shakes his head.
“I thought you wanted to interview Grandpa,” I say. “I didn’t think you’d mind.” It’s not the truth, but it makes me sound nicer. “I mean it’s tons better that we have our own guy to interview.”
“You’ve been staking him out and listening to his stories without me.” Kyler takes a slug of water and bangs the bottle down on the table. “I’m your best friend.”
“I was going to tell you,” I say. “Look, his stories are the same.” I push The Hound of Ulster across the table.
Kyler pushes it back. “We were doing this together—partners, you and me—and you ditched me.” Kyler picks up a piece of sushi and throws it down again. “When were you going to tell me? The day of the presentation?”
“I’ve told you about him now, haven’t I?”
Kyler doesn’t look at me. He pushes his food back into his lunch box. This isn’t going so well. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but this is terrible.
It’s one of those moments when Mom would tell me to say I’m sorry, but it’s as if hot goop has been poured between my ribs. I know I’m wrong, but it stings so much I don’t want to admit it.
Kyler waits. I guess he thinks I should say sorry, too.
I decide to change the subject a little. Kyler will love this. It’ll win him over for sure. “You gotta tell me, Kyler, how is Cuchulain living in a sort of parallel dimension? Like how come I can see him, but I can’t see the world—”
“Ryan’s right.” Kyler gets up and swings his lunch box at me, not hard, but enough to make his point.
I duck. “Hey,” I say.
“You deserve to be beaten up.” Kyler walks away.
I’m first at the gates when the last bell rings. Grandpa’s just arriving. “What’s the big hurry? Oh, I know! It’s Halloween decoration night!”
I’d forgotten all about that, but the thought cheers me up a little. At least I’ll be busy and I won’t have to think about Kyler so much. He’s really mad at me. Madder than when I dropped his best model spaceship. I took it home and mended it, but it took me a whole week. I don’t know how I’m going to fix this fight. There aren’t any instructions for how to patch up a friendship when you’ve tried to keep a Celtic warrior to yourself.
“You seem pretty quiet for someone who’s supposed to be excited,” Grandpa says as we head home.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“Hmmm.” That’s Grandpa’s magic word. Even when you’re determined to say nothing, the way he says “hmmm” always charms the truth out of you.
“Kyler and I had a fight,” I say. “He’s really mad at me about our Veterans Day project.”
“Oh yeah,” Grandpa says. “I was wondering when you were going to talk to me about that. Seems like Kyler’s doing all the running so far. He called the other night, and he’s coming over on the weekend. Your mom says she’ll cook dinner and he can interview me afterwards. Are you planning on doing yours at the same time?”
“Not exactly,” I say. “The thing is…” I hesitate, because after lying to Mom about going out at night and to Kyler about interviewing the Celt, I don’t want to lie to Grandpa, too. “I think it’s better if we do a different person. He can do you, if he wants, but…” I don’t want to hurt Grandpa’s feelings either. “Maybe I should do someone else. I can talk to you anytime, right?”
Grandpa looks surprised, but says, “Yes, I guess that’s true, Mikey.” We carry on walking for a while, then he says, “Are you thinking of one of the poker guys? Gerry has some great stories… Or Jim? We still can’t figure out how he ever made it through in one piece. More lives than a cat. He’d give you a great interview. You gonna ask him?”
“Maybe,” I say. “Or I was thinking maybe someone from the VA.”
“One of the doctors?” Grandpa asks. “Because I’m not sure—”
“No. One of the guys I’ve seen there,” I mumble.
As we reach the steps to our house, Grandpa asks, “Anyone in particular? Because you can’t just go around interviewing anyone you meet, Mikey. It’s a tough subject for some of us old guys. Even tougher for the new guys from Iraq and Afghanistan. I tell you, it took me years to work out some of the things I experienced during the war. I can talk about them now, but right afterwards…well, that was different.”
Grandpa gently lowers himself onto the steps and pats the place next to him. I sit down.
“Mikey, this is hard for me to admit, but I wasn’t such a nice guy when I came back from Vietnam.” Grandpa puts his hand up to stop me speaking. I remember the photos and shoes in Mom’s closet and clamp my mouth shut.
“Listen, I know you love me and the poker guys telling our tales about the war. We can do that now, son, and, I have to say, we do it really well. We tell the same stories over and over, always bigger and better than the last time. We all know how close Gerry was to that bullet; how the helicopter medevaced Jim out at the very last second; even how that darn can of peaches exploded in the canteen and nearly took off my nose. Heh, heh, heh. We’ve practiced those stories, Mikey. Told them so many times, it’s almost like they’re not our stories anymore, just tales we tell.
“And then there are nights when we remember one more detail that we’d forgotten: how the ditch smelled of gas; the exact James Brown tune the guy next to us was humming when he got shot; the color of a girl’s skirt, in a village, before the firing started. Then we’re right back on the battlefield, feeling exactly the same way we did when we were there. We hear the bullets hissing over our heads, we smell the mud, and it’s like we’re living it again. And those are only the stories we choose to tell. There are still things we don’t talk about… Well, you get what I’m saying, don’t you?”
I shake my head.
Grandpa sighs. “I’m not good at this, Mikey. What I’m trying to say is that no matter how old you are, you don’t escape some memories. You tie them up in a story and you think you’ve mastered them, but the next time you tell your tale, the memories run away from you. They drag you right back into the thick of the fighting, just like you were there again. It’s like a dog on a leash. Most of the time you’ve got it all tied up, and then one day it runs off pulling you right along behind.”
I’m not sure where Grandpa is heading with this, but I stay quiet.
“When you first get back from war it’s even worse because you can’t tie that dog up in the first place. You don’t want to talk about the war at all. You had to do hard things, bad things. Things that, in a war, have to be done. But when you get home, you don’t feel so good in your soul, Mikey. You don’t want people who’ve never been to war to judge you and think you’re a bad person, yet you judge yourself every day. Most of the time, even when you do tell other people, they don’t want to hear it or they don’t understand. So, you stay silent and you fight the memories by yourself. That dog runs off with you five, ten times a day, but only you can see it.
“I was like that when I came home from Vietnam, Mikey. Your mom was young, and I couldn’t explain what I was feeling so I just kept quiet. That’s what we did back then: kept quiet and drank a lot. I’m not proud of it, Mikey. It dulled the memories, I guess. But I was impatient with your mom. I shouted a lot. I couldn’t deal with all the small stuff that happens every day. It all seemed so stupid, you see. When I’d seen people die only months before, I didn’t care that a pair of shoes didn’t fit. I didn’t fit anymore. I was difficult to live with and difficult to love.”
He shakes his head. “For a while there, I was closer to my buddies than to my wife and kid. How do
you admit that to the people who’ve loved you, missed you, and prayed for you? I’d gone away to war, and for a while I was still away from my family, even though I’d come back. And your mom kept hearing people say we shouldn’t have been fighting there in the first place, until she wasn’t even proud of me. It was hard for your mom. Really hard. I see that now, but at the time…” Grandpa turns away and rubs his face. When he turns back his eyes are glistening with tears.
“But you’re the best, Grandpa,” I say.
Grandpa clears his throat. “Thanks, Mikey, and your mom’s the best too. She doesn’t mean to be grumpy when your dad’s away, but she’s afraid. Nigeria is a dangerous place—nowhere near as dangerous as war, of course—but they have political problems and that scares her. Look what happened last time someone she knew went to a dangerous place.” He taps his leg.
“You don’t think—”
“Don’t worry,” Grandpa says quickly. “Your dad is very safe, but your mom’s afraid that when he comes back, it will be as hard between him and her as it was between me and her when she was a kid. That’s how people think when bad things have happened to them in the past. If you spend years listening to bombs explode, when you get home, every loud bang makes you throw yourself on the floor and cover your head. It’s how you survived, Mikey, and your body and brain won’t let you forget it. Guess that’s what they call PTS now. Post-traumatic stress, I think it is. We didn’t call it that in my day, but we had it just the same.”
That evening, I help Mom and Grandpa set up the Halloween decorations. It’s always a big deal at our house. Mom says it’s because my grandma, whom I never met, loved Halloween. That’s why, even when Grandpa and Mom aren’t getting along, they make up while decorating for Halloween.
The Lost Celt Page 12