"Okay." Weasel smiled back at her. He started to leave, but stopped when he reached the doorway. "Miss Stephanie?"
"What is it, Weasel?"
"Were you dreamin' about Xeno?"
"I'm not sure what it was about, but it wasn't about Xeno." She watched as Weasel nodded and closed the door behind him.
Stephanie stood and stretched. Every joint in her body felt sore from yesterday's fall at Xeno's cabin and the fight with Randy. She hated to miss a workout, but she knew she would be risking further injury if she tried to run.
It was eight forty-five, the latest she had slept in months. Although she wouldn't be going to the office, she knew she had a full day ahead of her with Weasel. As she was putting on her robe and slippers she heard him laughing in the living room. When she went out she found him sitting on the floor watching TV with his face less than two feet from the screen.
"What's on?" she asked.
"Pee-wee Herman, Miss Stephanie, and boy is he funny! Watch this. Pee-wee tied a rope to this guy's bike and he doesn't know it. He's going to ride off and go kersplat!"
Stephanie watched for a few minutes and then went into the kitchen. Her amusement with Weasel vanished when she saw the aftermath of his culinary catastrophe. There were skillets and pans everywhere, broken eggshells, and charred rectangles that were once slices of bread. A glob of oatmeal was permanently bonded to one of her saucepans. A trail of milk ran over the edge of the butcher block counter top and down the side of the cabinet to the floor, not stopping until it formed a souring delta at the base of the refrigerator. Eye's Odd was contentedly lapping milk from the puddle. Stephanie shook her head in exasperation and then laughed. What the hell, she thought. She then went about the task of fixing breakfast and reconstructing the kitchen.
As she worked she could hear Weasel cheering Pee-wee's evasive maneuvers. "Hey in there, how many eggs would you like?" she asked.
"How many chickens you got?" Weasel called out. He came into the kitchen and stood by the table. "Just kiddin'."
"You can have as many eggs as you want. Well, at least as many as you didn't break."
"I'm sorry. I guess I did mess things up in here."
"Just kidding you, Weasel," she teased back with a smile. She parted the ruffled curtains to let in more sunlight. "You know, I'm really sorry about Randy and what happened last night."
"Aw, that's okay. It's none of my business, but you deserve better than that fella. A man's got no right to be hittin' a lady or sayin' the things he said to you."
"Don't worry, he won't be coming back here again. That was the first and last time he will ever lay a hand on me." Stephanie started fixing some scrambled eggs. "I want to thank you for standing up to him the way you did. That was a pretty brave thing to do."
"Shoot," Weasel shrugged, "I wasn't scared of him none. Besides, when I was a kid my aunt used to knock me around a lot harder than he probably would have."
"Are you serious?"
"Sure am. Looky here." Weasel put his fingers in his mouth and stretched his lips wide. "See there?" He pointed to a gap in the row of crooked, carious teeth. "My aunt knocked those two out when I was about fourteen. Hit me with the back of a scrub brush."
"Why?"
"Because I went fishin' without askin' her first."
"She knocked out your teeth because you went fishing?"
"Yep. I snuck out to go fishin' and catch somethin' for our dinner. I didn't tell her because I wanted it to be a surprise. When I got home she hit me for leavin' without tellin' her. Then she told me to get out of her sight. And that's just what I did. I left and I never went back. I haven't seen or heard from her since, and she's probably dead now for all I know. She didn't care about me none and if she's still alive she's probably glad I never came back. She used to beat me real hard. A lot. She'd tell me she needed to beat me because I didn't have a momma or daddy to do it and a boy needed a beatin' every now and then."
"Where were you living when that happened?"
"Mill Creek, West Virginia."
"Is that near a city I might know?"
"There weren't no cities close. Biggest town around there is Elkins, if you call that big. When I was a little kid I thought Elkins had the most people you could ever get in one place, but you got more people in a shopping mall out here than ever lived in Elkins."
"So you were raised by your aunt?"
Weasel shook his head. "Nah. I lived with her awhile, but I can't say she raised me. She was my momma's sister but she wasn't nothin' like my momma. She was mean and hateful. But my momma...my momma was a dreamer, Miss Stephanie. We never had much when I was a kid, but she'd always tell me these great stories about how wonderful things would be once our luck changed. She didn't have much education but she was real smart. She had a cousin she never met who lived out here, some big important businessman. She wrote him a letter askin' for a job and he gave her one, as a secretary. We moved out here when I was twelve. We was really doin' all right, too. We had new clothes and new shoes and plenty to eat. I was even goin' to school every day. My momma always dreamed of livin' in a little pink house, and she found one we could rent. It was the first time we ever had an inside toilet. Things were really lookin' great." Weasel's eyes lowered and he looked wistful. "Then one night our house burnt down. My momma died and I guess I almost did, too. My lungs got really messed up and I was in the Children's Hospital a long time. The doctors said they'd never be the same again and they were right. Anyway, after my momma died I was sent back to Mill Creek to live with my aunt. I put up with her for as long as I could, then after she knocked my teeth out I just took off. I hitchhiked and hopped trains to get back here."
"But why California?" Stephanie asked.
"Because this is where my momma's buried. I didn't really have no other place to go. I'd stay on the streets until I got picked up for breakin' curfew or somethin', and they'd put me in detention or a children's home for awhile. I'd take it for as long as I could and then I'd run off and be back on the streets again."
"Wasn't there anyone else you could have lived with?"
"Huh-uh. It was always just me and my momma. She told me my daddy was killed in the war while she was still carryin' me, but when I got older my aunt told me there wasn't no war goin' on when I was born. I asked her about him a few times but she wouldn't say much. I used to have dreams that one day my daddy would show up in this big new pick-up truck and take me fishin', but he never did. Truth is, my daddy was probably a no-good bum who left my momma to raise me on her own."
"I'm sorry, Weasel..."
"You don't have to say nothin'. That's just what happened, that's all. But I did okay. I found The Family and that's all I ever needed." The thinness of Weasel's voice betrayed the emotions he was trying to hide. "Except I don't even have them anymore." He raised his head and tried to smile. "How about you, Miss Stephanie. Tell me about your family."
"I was an only child, too. I grew up in Iowa City. My father still teaches at the university there."
"Wow, he must be real smart."
"He is, and very nice, too."
"Tell me about your momma."
"She was very kind, like your mother," Stephanie replied. "She was a homemaker, and she was active in P.T.A. and in our church. And she was always helping others, like visiting sick people in the hospital. I was twelve when my mother died. She had cancer of the pancreas. I remember that all of a sudden she started feeling real weak and sick, and six weeks later she was gone."
"So your daddy raised you?"
"Yes. He was very busy with his job, but he made a point of spending a lot of time with me. We were always close, but after my mother died we grew even closer. He saw to it that I learned how to get along without a mother." For a moment she tried to imagine what her life would have been like if she had been forced to live with an aunt who didn't want her, who abused her. Stephanie looked down at the stove. "Oh, no!" She slid the skillet off the burner. "I've ruined your eggs."
"That's okay. I wasn't real hungry anyway."
"You have to be hungry. Let me fix you some more, and this time I'll watch them." She took the last two eggs from the carton and dumped her first effort into the wastebasket.
When Weasel had finished eating they moved to the living room. Stephanie stretched out on the floor with a note pad in front of her. Weasel took a seat on the couch with Eye's Odd parked on his lap. The book was still on the coffee table.
"What are we goin' to do, Miss Stephanie?"
"I want to go through the book and pick out Family members to interview. You probably knew some of them quite well, so I thought you could help me choose the ones you think might talk with me."
Weasel shook his head. "I'll do what I can, but I haven't seen them in such a long time. People have a way of changin', you know. They might not be anything like I remember."
"Don't be so sure. People change their circumstances but not their personalities. At least that's what we're hoping, right?"
Weasel tilted his head. "What do you mean?"
"Remember what you said to me the day we met at Severman House? You said that most of The Family members were good people. I'll bet that hasn't changed. They aren't living like hippies anymore, but the ones you remember as good people should still be the same."
"Oh, I see what you're gettin' at. You're sayin' that they're livin' different than they were back then--all successful now and everything--but that they're still the same as I remember them."
"Exactly."
"I sure hope so. I hope all of them are just how I remember. If you think they haven't changed, then I can sure help you pick out the right ones."
"That's what I wanted to hear. Let's start at the beginning." Stephanie turned to the first page in the book. She read over the typed entry and then looked at Weasel. "Do you remember a Mary Jane Adams?"
"Mary Jane? Sure do! She was a real sweetie pie. She'd be a good one to get. I know she'd talk to you. She was from someplace in the South. Nebraska, I think. What's it say she's doin' now?"
"She's a first grade teacher in Lancaster."
"Teacher, huh? It figures. Mary Jane always did love little kids."
Stephanie turned the page. "How about Tony Joe Akers? Says here his nickname was--"
"Wags! They called him that because he was always waggin' his tongue. You should have heard him, Miss Stephanie, he just never shut up. He'd talk your ears off. I really liked him, though."
"He's an attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas."
"An attorney? Wow! Imagine that, ol' Wags turnin' out to be an attorney. Bet he's rakin' in the dough. Is he married?"
"It doesn't say."
"I'll bet he's not. He was too much of a ladies' man to get married, if you know what I mean." Weasel gave her a shy grin. "Keep goin'. This is fun."
Stephanie turned several pages. "What about this one--Arnie Fischinger? His nickname is Pokey. But there's a big red X through his name. What does that mean?"
"Pokey. Poor Pokey." Weasel was silent for a moment. "He's dead, Miss Stephanie. The red X means he's dead."
"I'm sorry, Weasel. Was he a friend of yours?"
"All of them were my friends."
"But why doesn't it say here what happened to Pokey?" It seemed to her somehow inconsistent that Xeno would go to great lengths to obtain addresses, phone numbers, and information about jobs and families, but not even record the cause of someone's death.
"Because Xeno don't think death is important, that's why. He told me once that death isn't what everybody thinks it is, that death is just a different form of life. He told me all kinds of things about death, made it sound like it wasn't bad at all. I guess it helped me feel better about my momma. Xeno said that she didn't die, she just went on to the next stage. At first I wasn't sure, because I believed that dead was dead and that's it, but it's not. Xeno doesn't write down that you're dead because you won't be dead for long."
"But if he believes that a person returns to life or whatever, why does he put an X through their name? Why would he bother, if he thinks they're coming back?"
"Because we don't come back the way we were before. We come back different. Pokey might already be back, but no way is he still Pokey. Since he's not Pokey no more, he's not Family. Understand?"
"I understand what you're saying, but--"
"You don't believe it, do you?" Weasel grinned smugly at her.
"Well, it's not that I don't believe. It's just something that no one knows for sure."
"Xeno knows."
Chapter 11
They had worked nearly three hours without a break. With Weasel's help, Stephanie had picked twenty-four people to contact. All of them lived in California, which was important because she wanted to interview them in person and not over the phone. She hoped at least one in four would agree to an interview, which meant she'd have to call as many as forty people to get ten Family members for the series. She wanted a good cross section of people, but there had to be something intriguing about each of their lives. She mostly avoided the clerks, guards, bakers, and housewives--Family members now in positions of power and prominence would make much better copy. Weasel's recall after all the years amazed her. He remembered nicknames, what the people looked like, and little stories about nearly every one. Stephanie thought of her own family and how there were aunts and uncles and cousins whose names she could never remember.
Stephanie put down her pen and stretched. "I say it's time for a break. How about a sandwich and another Pepsi?"
"That'd be great. You're sure one fine host."
As Stephanie was making the sandwiches she noticed Weasel amusing himself by trying to catch a fly. It would alight with tiny legs flexed, then spring into flight milliseconds before his hand swished after it, grasping only air.
"I got him, I got him!" Weasel held out his clenched hand and started to open his fingers.
"No, no, that's okay, Weasel. Why don't you just kill it."
Weasel frowned. "I can't kill him, Miss Stephanie. He's not hurtin' nobody. I'll let him go outside."
Stephanie watched him head for the door. She knew most people wouldn't believe that this gentle soul who literally wouldn't hurt a fly was once a disciple of Mother Earth.
Weasel came back into the living room with a smile on his face. "You know what I said when I let him go, Miss Stephanie? Fly away! Get it?"
Stephanie laughed obligingly. "You're too much, you know that?" She tore off a corner of her tuna salad sandwich and gave it to Eye's Odd. Weasel picked up the book and sat down on the couch. Stephanie liked to watch him handle it. Although the book didn't belong to him, it contained the names of the only family he had. He held it as reverently as a monk might hold a missal.
Weasel stopped turning pages and stared at the open book. "It's a...it's a..." He stammered as though each syllable took excruciating effort. "It's an X."
"An X? What's an X?"
Weasel's right index finger shook as he pointed to the page in front of him. When Stephanie looked down over his shoulder she saw the bold red X drawn over the name of Eddie Messina.
"I don't understand," she said. "You told me an X means the person's dead."
"Xeno knows."
"He knows what?"
Weasel swallowed. "He knows I told somebody about the book." He cradled his head in his hands. "What am I going to do?"
"So the X means he..."
Weasel, his face still buried in his hands, nodded.
"We'll stop," Stephanie said. "Right now. I can't risk anything happening to you. I'll take the book back to Xeno and tell him it was all my fault."
"You can't do that, Miss Stephanie. Besides, it wouldn't do no good. Xeno doesn't forget and he doesn't forgive. What's done is done."
"We'll go to the police and tell them everything. They can protect you."
"They won't do nothin' for me." There was a grim look on his face. "Don't worry about it, Miss Stephanie. I'll just have to be extra careful from now on, that's all. Bu
t there's no reason for you to call off your story just because of me."
"Well, maybe not. But you have to promise me one thing, Weasel," Stephanie said. "You've got my number. If there's any sign of trouble, if you need me, you're to call right away. Promise?"
"I promise."
By the time they finished, they had gone through the entire book and Stephanie had the list of Family members she would contact about an interview. Weasel wanted to get back to Severman House. On the way he said very little. As she pulled her Toyota up to the curb she turned toward him.
"You've been awfully quiet," Stephanie said. "What are you thinking about?"
"Oh, I was just thinkin'...aw, never mind."
"No, come on. Tell me."
"It's silly, Miss Stephanie, but goin' through the book made me realize how much I miss those people. It brought back a whole lot of good memories. I was just wonderin' what it would be like to see them all again."
Weasel's words repeated themselves in Stephanie's mind...what it would be like to see them all again. She looked at him. "Weasel, maybe you can see them again!"
"How, Miss Stephanie?"
"What would you think of a Family reunion?"
Chapter 12
Stephanie looked in the mirror at the dark crescents under her eyes. She had not yet written the first word of The Family series and already she was losing sleep over it. On most mornings her exercise routine made her feel energetic and ready to face the day, but the run she had just finished had left her even more tired.
Over the weekend she had given a lot of thought to the possibility of a Family reunion. She saw no reason why it couldn't work, as long as the people were willing to come. But she knew she would have to approach Hal carefully. He wouldn't take a chance on anything that might hurt his future with the paper.
She was smiling when she walked into the office and took a chair by his desk.
"Morning, Steph." Hal reached for his cigarettes. "I want you to know you have my full support on The Family series. And I think your idea to write about what they're doing now is the way to go. We've really got to move, though, before the Times or somebody else gets wind of it."
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