He wasn’t what you’d call limber and he had a steel plate in his back from his war injury so I knew he wasn’t going to stay long in that position. He liked to be on the move, anyway. “I have to take you out of here,” he said. “Home isn’t an option yet. Do you have any suggestions?”
He was very business-like, so I tried to be. “Mrs. Stoa is at her nephew’s house now,” I said.
“I know that,” Frank said.
“She invited me to stay there.”
He raised his bushy eyebrows. “I thought she was driving you crazy.”
“She is,” I said. “Or she was, but I guess I could handle her. I have to stay in town now, anyway. I . . . something’s come up.”
Since Frank had quit smoking he chewed gum a lot. He liked a kind called Chewsy U that came with individual pieces wrapped in silver paper. He unwrapped a stick then and put it in his mouth. Then he rolled the paper into a tight little pellet and put it in his shirt pocket. Sometimes I found a handful of them there when I did his laundry.
“You planning on busting someone out of Metal Springs?” he asked. He didn’t bring up the subject of perjury.
“I was getting ready to talk to you about that, but I guess Marsh already has.” Frank nodded. “Did he tell you everything?”
“I believe he did.”
I took a deep breath. “Then you know we didn’t get in to see . . . the guy at Metal Springs so we don’t know if it’s — ”
“The person you’re calling Dan — ”
“Or not.”
“And if it is?” I didn’t say anything. “He’s a human being you know, Matti. It’s not like taking home a lost animal.”
“I know that,” I said.
Frank stood up and stretched until something popped. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to get Marsh any further involved in this,” he said. “There are things you don’t know. It’s hard enough for him being in town with all these people.”
“But what if it really is Dan at Metal Springs and he’s being tortured? What if they strap him down and shoot him full of electricity? They do that there. I heard you talking about it one time.”
“It isn’t considered torture. It’s called electro-convulsive shock therapy. And it helps some people.”
“Frying their brains?”
“There’s no cooking involved,” Frank said. He looked pretty stern when he said it. “But why don’t you ask Marsh about it? He had it done there. He’s the one you heard me talking about.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Marsh had this shock therapy on his brain at Metal Springs? Why?”
Frank rubbed the spot on his back where the plate was. “He needed some help turning the war off after he got home.”
“And that worked?”
“When nothing else would.”
So much for my theory about Marsh’s heart. The more I got out into the world, the less sense anything made. If there was a story that could clear up the confusion I felt in every direction, it wasn’t in any book I knew about.
10
BILLY
MRS. STOA CAME BY THE SCHOOL in the morning and I filled her in on what had happened when Marsh and I went to the hospital. I even mentioned how nervous I was about what I’d see when I went there again. I said, “I don’t think I can make it through the next two days.”
“Of course you can,” she told me.
We took the bus to King Koffee and walked up the hill from there to her nephew’s place. It had two huge white pillars out in front with red double doors between them. Kind of like a palace, you could say.
I tried to imagine walking out that door with books under my arm and catching the bus to school. I couldn’t make it happen. Mrs. Stoa wanted me to come inside and have a look around but I wasn’t ready to do that yet.
Looking at it like I lived there was enough for one day.
After lunch, I watched the football team practicing out on the field behind the school. They warmed up by crashing into dummies and running up and down through rubber tires. Then the cheerleaders came out and I finally got what their main job was.
They threw each other up in the air and came down in the splits. They did somersaults and handstands. Then five girls held three other girls on their shoulders and they held one on their shoulder to make a pyramid. It was really something.
They also clapped and yelled and sang so they weren’t just there for people to look at, either. Somebody should have told the guys on the football team. After the cheerleaders arrived, they gawked at them and then began crashing in to each other instead of dummies. They wore so much equipment that when they collided they sounded like bull elk locking their antlers.
It reminded me summer was almost over.
The next morning I walked around and around the inside of the school, just killing time. Finally I stopped by the railing at the top of the front stairs to tic-off and watch the tops of people’s heads as they came into the building and went out again. When I turned to leave Billy Butler was coming toward me. He’d moved away when we started junior high and I hadn’t seen him since.
He was smaller than I remembered. Kind of puny actually. I could have snapped him in two like a dry stick, which made me wonder why I took him seriously enough once to run him up a tree. And why even then, my tics got worse with him standing next to me.
“What is the thing you’ve got, Matti?” Billy said.
“Tourette’s Syndrome,” I said. “T. S., for short.”
“I know that’s what you call it. But I mean what’s it like when you have it?”
I looked at him. As far as I could tell he wasn’t making fun of me. “You know what it’s like when you have to sneeze?”
“Sure,” he said.
“And you know how you can try not to sneeze, but in the end you have to go ahead and let it happen?”
“Yes.”
“That’s how it is with my tics,” I said. Then I changed the subject. “Are you going to school here next year?”
“I guess,” Billy said. “We’re burnt out. My dad’s down there talking to the principal right now. Are you?”
I shook my head.
A man waved down below and yelled, “Get down here, Billy. If you can spare the time.” I guess it was his father.
“See you sometime,” Billy said, like we were two normal kids saying good- bye. Then he ran down the stairs.
11
THERE ARE NO ANGELS
MARSH AND I WERE ON THE road to Metal Springs early that afternoon. The receptionist said we could find Dan in Building 3B. She also told us how to get there. “Show the guard at the door this slip of paper,” she said, “and he’ll let you in.”
I took the paper and we started walking. The closer we got to Building 3B, though, the slower Marsh walked. Finally he stopped completely.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“I can’t, Matti,” he said. His face was grey and he had beads of perspiration all over his forehead. “It’s a secure building. They’ll lock us in on whatever ward Dan’s in. I’m sorry, but I just can’t go in there.”
I didn’t ask Marsh how he knew so much about the hospital. After what Frank told me, I could pretty much figure that out.
“I’ll go in by myself,” I told him. “There’s a guard there. What could happen?”
Marsh tried to convince me to go back to town and wait until Frank could come with me but I dug in my heels.
I was done with waiting.
The door to 3B was heavy, without any glass in it. Marsh stood beside me while I rang the bell and waited for the guard to come. “I’ll be waiting for you right here,” he said.
In a minute we heard a click. Then a voice came through the door asking what we wanted.
“I want to see Dan Iverly,” I said. “I’m his cousin.”
“Iverly?” I heard paper shuffling. After what seemed like forever the voice asked, “He that John Doe?”
“No,” I said
. “He’s . . . ” but the door opened then and I went inside.
“Ward C,” the guard said. “Up the stairs. Ring the bell again.”
I went up where he pointed and then stopped at another locked door. I was reaching out to ring the bell when someone on the other side of the door began to howl.
There was something wild and lonely about the sound, like the call a mountain lion made when he hung around our place a few summers ago.
I thought it was Dan.
And I thought I was too late, they’d already done something to him. I wanted to scream myself and then run away. But I didn’t. I pushed the bell and waited.
The howls started again just before someone came to the door. He was big, like a mountain that moved on white rubber-soled shoes.
“I want to see Dan Iverly,” I said. My voice was higher than I wanted it to be.
“I know,” the nurse said. “The guard phoned up.”
When I went through the doorway I saw an old lady in her nightgown standing in the hall. She opened her mouth to scream again. “Enough now, Betty,” the nurse said. “This visitor is not for you.”
The woman turned and walked down the hall.
“I’ll bring Iverly out to you.” The nurse unlocked the door to what he called the coffee room and let me inside. “He’s walking today, but I can tell you he was flying when he came in.”
I would have had some coffee while I waited, except there wasn’t any in the coffee room. There wasn’t any tea, either. Also no cups, plastic or paper. Not even a drinking fountain. Just two tables and altogether, five chairs with the legs wrapped in plastic foam.
I sat down at one of the tables. Two men were sitting at the other and arguing. Then the one that was older started to cry.
I didn’t have the greatest feeling about being locked in with them.
The doctor said it would be upsetting to see Dan when we were here before. That he would look better if I waited a few days. But if how he looked was better, I couldn’t even imagine what worse would have been.
The guy that shuffled in to the coffee room a few minutes later just stood in the doorway. His eyes were only halfway open. He held his head off to one side. I wouldn’t even have known he was Dan, if the nurse hadn’t led him over to a chair at the table where I was sitting.
“This is your cousin,” he said to Dan.
Dan slowly swivelled his head around to look at me.
All I really needed him to do was say my name. That would have been enough.
Instead he said, “You tricked me.” And then he added, “You’re not Bee.”
He might as well have punched me in the stomach. “No,” I said. “I’m Matti. Remember? I’m your angel.” I’m embarrassed to admit it, but it’s what I said.
“There are no angels,” he told me.
Then he put his head down on the table and let his eyes close all the way down.
12
ANOTHER WEIRDO
MARSH WAS WAITING JUST WHERE I’D left him. He wasn’t the colour of old newspaper any more, which was good because I probably was. “What’s wrong?” he said. He came over and stood beside me. “Wasn’t it Dan?”
“Yes,” I said. “It was.” I started walking toward the parking lot. “I’m not coming back here again. And don’t ask me why.”
“Wait up, Matti!” Marsh said. “That building over there’s the cafeteria. Let’s get something to drink.”
I didn’t feel like doing that. I needed to get someplace dark and private where I could let myself go. My legs wouldn’t hold me up though. I sat down on a bench and waited while Marsh went into the cafeteria.
While I was sitting there alone, a guy walked by wearing baggy jeans held up with rainbow suspenders. His hair came to a point in the middle of his head, and not because he combed it that way. Not combing it at all was more like the problem.
In some ways he could have been Dan’s age. In others he was younger and older at the same time. “The sky’s falling,” he said. I hoped he’d keep on walking if I didn’t pay any attention to him, but he stopped and came back. “I wouldn’t sit here if I were you.”
“Another weirdo,” is what I thought. Then it dawned on me that people probably thought the same thing about me at times and I was ashamed.
“I’m waiting for someone in the cafeteria,” I told him. “I can’t leave.”
“No one takes Howard seriously,” he said.
“Howard?” I asked. I looked both ways but there wasn’t anyone near us. “Is he . . . like someone you know?”
“You should move,” he said again, but he smiled. It made him look a lot younger — almost like he was a little kid.
Marsh came out of the cafeteria about then. I stood up and started toward him. “Good bye,” I said to the suspenders guy.
“Good bye,” he said. “Be careful.”
“Who was that?” Marsh asked when we met in the middle of the green space.
“Somebody different.” I took the can of coke Marsh handed me. I drank it very fast and then belched two or three times. I only felt a little relieved.
Marsh and I walked slowly back to the parking lot. “I was in 3A once,” he said. “I thought I could go back in that building again but . . . ”
“Frank told me about the electric shocks you had. Did they help you?”
“I’m still here,” he said.
When we got to the truck, I finally told him that Dan didn’t recognize me. I left out his comment about Bee. I could drink ten cans of pop and belch a hundred times and that would still stick inside me.
“He’s medicated,” Marsh said. “He could probably look at his own hand and not know what it was.”
“He said there are no angels. Then he put his head down on the table like I wasn’t there.”
“Matti, it’s just rambling. These drugs they put you on to straighten you out can be brutal. You don’t want to give up yet.”
“You told me not to get my hopes up.”
“Well,” Marsh said, “maybe I was wrong.”
I did want to give up, though. Bee had been out to the hospital to visit Dan. Her mother must have checked with Search and Rescue and then with the police and found out where they’d taken him. They’d talk to her since she’s the one who had Dan picked up. Then she went to visit him and took Bee with her.
It didn’t really make any difference how Bee got there, though. Dan had met her and now I was toast. He couldn’t even remember my name.
I suppose he was bound to meet a beautiful girl eventually. They were everywhere. Now that I’d seen the cheerleaders, I knew that.
I also knew I would never be one of them.
13
THE PALACE
I MOVED IN WITH MRS. STOA the day after the visit to Metal Springs. I think it was a Monday. The house was large enough for three or four families to live in full time and not bump into each other. The kitchen was especially amazing.
The appliances were all silver coloured and the counter tops had silver flecks in them. And instead of a normal table and chairs, there was something called an island in the middle of the room with high metal stools around it.
The odd thing about having a kitchen like that is there was never anybody home to cook in it — except for Mrs. Stoa, of course, and she’s no gourmet. The King was off travelling with his girlfriend the whole time I was there. And the Prince was always at work.
I didn’t mind all the space, though. I had a big room upstairs. I was in it moping when Frank came to see me just after I’d moved in. He knocked on the door.
“Not bad,” he said when he came in.
“I guess not.”
“A little small, maybe.” After that hilarious joke he got serious. “We won’t have the power back on in the village for several weeks yet, so Mrs. Stoa has you registered for the distance program. You can start tomorrow, if you want.”
“Maybe day after tomorrow,” I said. “I’m pretty tired.”
“Meeting your cousin wear
you out?” Frank asked.
“Maybe you should have me put in jail for impersonating a relative.”
“It wouldn’t be any use, Matti. You’d just find a way to break out again.”
That was true.
“What I want you to do,” Frank told me, “is start the distance work so we can see how it goes. Stay out of Mrs. Stoa’s hair and . . . what day is this?”
“Monday,” I said.
“On the weekend, you and I and Marsh are all going out to the hospital to sort things out there.”
“Whatever,” I said. And then I asked, trying to sound casual, “Where is Marsh, anyway? Is he still staying in the high school parking lot?”
“He’s back in the village. There’s a lot of work for him to do there, but he’ll drive back down. Are you changing the subject?”
I was trying to. “I can’t go out to Metal Springs,” I said.
“I thought you promised to save your cousin’s life.”
“That was quite a while ago,” I said, “before I found out certain things.” I started to cry a little.
“There’s no expiry date on promises.,” Frank said.
That got me going. “He doesn’t remember me, Frank,” I wailed. “I’m not beautiful enough. And . . . and you know he isn’t really my cousin.”
I was actually bawling by then. My nose ran. Big, fat tears rolled down my cheeks and plopped onto my shoulders.
Frank put his arm around me like before, only tighter. It felt good and fatherly. I leaned into his chest for just a minute.
As soon as he left, Mrs. Stoa came to the door. “Let me in, please, Matilda,” she said. When I didn’t, she barged right on in. Technically it was more her room than mine, but I still didn’t appreciate it.
She perched on the end of the bed. “I heard what you said to your father about Dan,” she said.
“Don’t you know it’s not polite to eavesdrop?” I rolled over and turned my back to her.
“I don’t give a fig about politeness at this time in my life. It’s the truth I’m after,” Mrs. Stoa said, like she was Batman, the Caped Crusader.
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