by Warren Read
“He’s a little younger,” she’d said, as if it was Rodney who had brought up the wide gap in their ages. “Things like that shouldn’t matter,” she went on, picking at her bangs. “People are people.”
What else would they be? he wanted to say. Rocks? Squirrels?
“People are people,” he repeated, and she smiled at him and said, Yes they are, as if they had come to some kind of agreement at last.
It wasn’t much longer until Otis’s green Bonneville claimed the driveway as its home, and a greasy path was worn between the car’s trunk and the garage—Otis moving armloads of power tools and stereo equipment and small appliances, microwave ovens and blenders, and toaster ovens, some still in boxes with price tags attached.
“There’s deals to be had,” he’d say to Rodney, waving him from the sofa or porch, or his bedroom, to walk him through the growing inventory, maybe enlist his help in carrying more crap into the garage, into storage. Otis would not say where he happened to find these treasures, other than vague references to rummage sales and swap meets. There were outlets for this sort of venture, he explained—pawn shops and auctions where if you knew what you were doing, you could double your money and come away twice the man you were going in.
Otis waded deeper into their lives, and the subject of Rodney’s father came up less and less in that house. He had phoned twice since that first month of being gone, and though Rodney caught himself watching the wall phone for hours most nights, there hadn’t been a single call in two weeks. It was as if the man didn’t give the slightest shit about his family, about Rodney. In time, Rodney simply gave up mentioning him to his mother at all. The labored sighs, the shrug of her shoulders, sometimes simply ignoring him altogether like he wasn’t even there. It was almost as if he had never been real to begin with.
And so it had to be. There was, now, this strange new world of his mother and the slick Otis Dell and what a pair they made, and this was a world in which she smiled warmly and shut her eyes as Otis touched her hair or stood behind her with his arms layered over her stomach, things Rodney’s father almost never did, not that he’d seen, anyway. Otis tried toward Rodney as well in his own way, the kind of sad gestures that the mother’s new man will do, things that hinted of friendship: asking for the names they might both know, trotting him around town in that loud car of his, to the grocery store, or on generic errands where Rodney waited in the car by himself while Otis disappeared into trailers or strip mall offices, or into the cab of an eighteen-wheeler parked at the truck stop just outside of Hope.
Rodney’s mother stood in the doorway to his bedroom. She was wearing the bathrobe she’d always worn, even before, in the days when he curled up with her on the sofa when he was little. It was a powder blue thing, long to the floor, with little white butterflies stitched on the front. It was not velvet, but it had felt like it.
“Look at you. The little student.”
Rodney lay under the low light of his desk lamp, in bed, an oversized book perched on his chest, something about Presidents. Hidden inside was an old House of Mystery issue, one he was rereading for the third or fourth time. A woman had just turned herself into a giant spider and was about to eat her unfortunate new husband. He closed the book.
“I was just going to bed,” he said.
She closed the door behind her and went to him, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “You need a haircut,” she said, running her fingers over his head.
“Not yet.”
“You’re getting so big.” Her eyes roamed his face, and over that hair of his that she wouldn’t leave alone. “Some days I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. If she didn’t know him, whose fault was that? He wasn’t the one sneaking off someplace, staying out all night. He wasn’t the one changing the game.
“Do you remember that lake we went to?” he asked. “Where I found the fishing lure?”
She looked at him as if he had drawn out something from one of his comics, some odd story that she couldn’t begin to imagine, not in a million years. Her eyes searching his, her brow collapsed into layers under that short, chopped hair of hers. Moments like this, his mother was not his mother at all. She could be anyone, just another shopper in line, holding a basket of soup at CJ’s Grocery. Maybe, when all was said and done, that’s what she wanted—to start over.
“I’m sure I would if I thought for a while about it,” she said finally. And then she kissed him on the forehead, told him she’d see him in the morning.
“Maybe he’ll come back,” he said, just as she was opening the door.
She stopped, looked back at him over her shoulder. “I don’t think so.”
He might, Rodney thought. Why was she so quick to say otherwise? “What if he does?” he said. “What happens if he just shows up and wants to move back in? What about Otis then?”
“That’s a lot of what ifs. We could make a list of what ifs to last from here to next month. Sometimes, honey, a person has no choice but to just go on.”
“You mean give up.”
She pushed her lips together, that brow of hers folding again. “Don’t confuse acceptance with giving up.” And with that, she gave him a feeble smile, clicked off the light and slipped out of his room.
Rodney broke from a heavy sleep with a sudden jolt. In that moment it seemed as if there had been a kind of sharp push from below, and he sat up quick and felt down into his covers, starting at his waist and moving to his feet. There was nothing there. He slid from his bed and walked to his door, where he could see the light from the television washing out into the kitchen alcove. He crept out into the hallway, to the edge of the wall where he could see Otis sitting on the sofa watching something on the television, his arms stretched over his head in that way police will want you to do before they snap a handcuff on your wrist. He stayed like this for some time, the television flickering blue and gray in the darkened living room, the rolling credits of the late movie just starting up. Rodney couldn’t make out what it was. The numbers on the clock radio read 11:39.
Otis leaned forward to get up, and Rodney shuffled back to his room, to the safety of his bed. Through the open door he watched Otis lumber to the bedroom that he and Rodney’s mother now shared equally, and he stood next to the door, his head dipped toward the floor. She had turned in long before; the line along the bottom of the door had gone to dark a good hour or so earlier. Otis touched the wood with the palm of his hand, then he backed away and went into the kitchen, and Rodney caught the flash of a lighter, the roll of cigarette smoke tumbling into the hall.
The floorboards in that house creaked no matter where you walked, but there was something about the darkness that amplified everything. Otis moved on past Rose’s room to stop at Rodney’s door, and he pushed it open all the way. A runway of light from the hall lamp widened onto the bed.
Rodney remained quiet and still with eyelids open to slivers. Otis continued to stare at him, at the bedspread that was pulled neatly up to Rodney’s chin. The scene was a curious one, the way Otis held onto that door and leaned into the room, his head drifting from side to side like a drunk man.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey what?” Rodney screwed his face and looked up into the glare, cupping a hand over his eyes. He stretched under his blankets, putting on the show of having been pulled from a deep sleep.
“I seen you the other day,” he said. “At Val’s.” When Rodney didn’t say anything he added, “I bet you thought you were hiding pretty good. Casper the ghost.”
“I wasn’t hiding.”
He laughed softly and looked back over his shoulder, toward Rodney’s parents’ bedroom. “I imagine your feed store money don’t last long in a place like that,” he said.
“No.”
“Well get dressed, then,” Otis said. “I got a job for you.”
Rodney sat up on his elbow. “Yeah, right.”
“God damn it, I’m not screwing with you,
kid.” Otis kept his voice low, and closed the door a sliver more. “Use the back door and meet me at the car. And don’t wake up your mom.”
By the time Rodney got out to the Bonneville, Otis was already in the driver’s seat, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and staring at the back door to the house. He waited until Rodney was in his seat before starting up the engine. The air blasted stale and humid from the dashboard, blooming a haze of fog over the windshield. Otis pulled from the curb and drove on down the road anyway, hunching over the wheel and wiping clean a space in front of him as he drove, before finally opening up the accelerator and pushing on down Smith Street. It was late, and there were no lights on in any houses, not a single one.
It was a good distance before the windshield finally started to clear up, and in that time neither of them spoke—not even when Otis raced a yellow and missed it by a mile. Rodney sat with his head against the window, not looking at him. They were about a mile and a half off the highway, onto Airport Road, when he finally turned to him.
“Otis,” he said. “What are we doing?”
Otis sighed, and ran his fingers through his mop hair, like this whole thing was an inconvenience for him, exclusively. “There’s this guy,” he said. “He took out a loan from somebody and he ain’t paid up. I’m just bringing in the collateral.”
Rodney did not know what collateral was, but he understood plenty about unpaid loans and the bad things that could come with that.
“Who does he owe money to?”
“None of your business, that’s who,” he said, short and hard.
It was after midnight on a July Wednesday, and they were coasting up to a closed, fenced-off storage yard, when Otis suddenly turned off the headlamps. He hit the brakes just before the chain link, shut down the engine and turned to Rodney.
“I want you to just sit here in the car,” he said, his voice pushed down to barely a whisper. “Keep your eye on that road behind you. If you see any headlights coming down, you give a little tap on the horn.” He sniffed, and wiped his wrist over his nose. “Notice I said tap. Don’t lay on it.”
Otis took a pair of bolt cutters from the back seat and went on over to the chain-link fence and scaled it like it was nothing, dropping to the ground on the opposite side and breaking into a jog, over to the long row of paneled doors closest. He moved quick, quicker than one would have imagined he could, letting the flashlight sweep over the storage containers from one side to the other before disappearing around the corner.
Rodney sat there dumb and did exactly as he was told, shifting himself to see out the rearview. He kept his eyes squarely on that mirror, making sure not to fiddle with anything inside the car, to give Otis any reason to accuse him of messing with his stuff, one tic away from leaning on that horn each time he saw or heard even a hint of movement or noise. The distant yap of a dog. The rush of a passing semi-truck, somewhere on the other side of the trees, near the highway. The blur of Otis drifting in and out of view, among the shadows of the storage huts. And after what seemed like hours he finally showed up at the fence, an armload of boxes and bags falling all around him. A long, leather sheath, one of those Japanese swords with straps and carvings up and down the handle, was strapped to his side.
He waved Rodney out and climbed up that fence with one hand holding at the top and dropped what he could down to Rodney. The heavier things were tricky, and Rodney hovered near the fence with his hands upstretched like he was catching a baby from a burning building. There was a shoebox-sized wooden case, half-filled with gold and silver coins, and a collection of old magazines, mostly comic books kept in a bulging cardboard box, each magazine secured in its own plastic bag. A few of the thicker magazines had pictures of women on the front, almost completely naked, hands laced over breasts, legs raised just enough to cover what was sure to be on full display inside.
“Don’t dig through it,” Otis said. He climbed up and over once more and landed hard next to Rodney. “Move it,” he snapped, and kicked the box of magazines into Rodney’s shins.
Otis kept to the side roads most of the way back, taking streets parallel to the highway when the route allowed for it. Rodney fingered through the magazines, stealing glances at Otis here and there.
“There’s a lot of comics here,” he said.
“People pay good money for the right ones. That’s why they keep ’em in plastic.” He looked over at Rodney and grinned. “But I guess you know that.”
“What do you mean?”
Otis echoed him, repeating the words in a droning, nasal tone. Mocking. “I been in your room,” he said. “I’ve seen your little collection of books.”
There was what felt like a knife in Rodney’s gut then, a sense of sharp sickness at the whole thing. That Otis had been in his bedroom, when Rodney hadn’t been home to see it. His dirty hands digging through dresser drawers and the shelves of his closet, and in boxes he’d closed up and stacked away long ago. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to smash something against Otis’s face, and tell him what nasty scum he was and then—he didn’t know what.
“That’s my room,” he said, his throat clenched like it was choked. “It’s my stuff.”
“Relax,” Otis said, swiping his hand over Rodney’s hair. “You’re hiding a hell of a lot less than I did when I was your age.” He nodded to the box. “Check ’em out.”
Rodney shook his head, sliding his hands under his legs. Otis just laughed at him then and slid a comic book out of the box, tossing it into Rodney’s lap. Reluctantly, Rodney picked it up. It was an issue of Soldier Comics, brown-helmeted men crouched under a stream of warplanes overhead, explosions lighting up the distance.
“It’s old,” he said. “Pretty rare I think.”
“Oh shit. Probably the most expensive one in there, then,” Otis said. “Put it back.”
They drove the rest of the way without talking much more, or at least not about what they’d just done. Otis said that it felt like they were due for rain anytime now, and Rodney mentioned plans with some friends that he thought he had in the morning, though there were neither plans nor friends. What happened at the storage yard or the things that sat between them on the bench seat remained unspoken, at least until they were almost to Garden Street.
“I don’t like doing this, Otis,” Rodney finally said. His voice measured a tremor, as if they were driving over gravel, and it bothered him that Otis might think he was scared at that moment.
“You’re not doing a whole hell of a lot, kid. Riding along.”
Rodney shook his head. “It feels like I did something wrong. Something I could get in trouble for.”
“Shit. You don’t know what you don’t know.”
Rodney looked over at him, at the downturned grin and the dark eyes that bore straight ahead, through the collage of spattered insects.
“You’re just a dumbass kid,” Otis said. He chewed on his lip and looked to Rodney, a throwaway glance. “Helping me with something that had to be done. As long as you keep your mouth shut about it, nobody will know a damned thing.”
He turned down Smith then and hit the lights, taking the last two blocks with only the streetlamps to guide. Right at the end, just before reaching their house, he killed the engine and let the tires scrape up against the curb. Leaning to one side, he pushed the box of magazines into Rodney’s thigh. “Take a few,” he said. “Your choice.” When Rodney did not move, Otis reached in and pulled a half-dozen out, a thick, glossy one among them. “There’s probably fifty bucks here, maybe more.” Still, Rodney remained where he was, gazing over the prize in Otis’s hand. “Take ’em, god damn it,” he said, dropping the batch in Rodney’s lap. “It’s an investment. Payment for your help.”
Rodney reached down and fingered the plastic spines, one by one. There was money in there. He knew it, probably better than Otis did. More than fifty bucks for sure.
“Leave ’em in those sleeves,” Otis said.
“I know that.”
“And by t
he time you’re my age they’ll be worth a fortune.”
Rodney knew this too, but still—he didn’t answer. He wanted the silence, to make Otis simmer maybe. If he wanted Rodney to get pulled into his mess, he was going to have to wait for it.
Otis finally said, “Jesus Christ,” and he pulled his wallet from his pocket and drew out a twenty and tossed it onto Rodney’s lap. “There,” he said. “Do we have a deal now?
Rodney took the bill and nodded.
Otis added, “Be best if you went in the same way you came out. If your mom asks, tell her I needed a hand pulling a buddy’s car out of the ditch.”
“What’s his name?”
“Who?” Otis screwed his face at Rodney.
“The guy. She’ll probably ask.”
“Jesus, I don’t know.” He rubbed his chin and stared out the window, a little curl growing at the edge of his mouth. He peered at Rodney, as if the two of them were playing some kind of game. “Lester Fanning,” he said. He clapped his hands together. “If she asks, you tell her this crazy old sonofabitch Lester went and drove his Studebaker straight into the ditch.”
“Lester.”
Otis began to laugh then, a wheezing, sickly sound that caught up in his throat. “Tell her he was crying when we got there,” he coughed. “Like a little baby.”
Rodney wanted to say that he didn’t want any more details, that he already knew he would never remember the name of the guy or his truck. But he nodded at Otis anyway and left him in the driveway there, slipping in through the back door and into his room, closing the door behind him to let the room fall into near complete darkness. He slid the magazines under his top mattress, all the filth of anticipation and hunger, and yearning, over the wonders that surely lay in those pages. He fished his flashlight from his desk drawer and sat on the bed. Pulling the twenty from his pocket he dropped it into his lap like a soiled bandage, and with it the smell of Otis filled room, the sourness of his sweat and stale cigarettes and sweet cologne. Outside in the hallway the old floorboards groaned, and with a snap the stripe of light beneath his door disappeared.