Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance

by Ruth Emmie Lang

  Weylyn perused the illuminated menu. “Um … hamburger.”

  “Excellent choice. You want fries, too?”

  Weylyn looked confused but nodded, anyway.

  “That’ll be three burgers and three medium fries, please,” Daddy told the cashier. “Oh, and Cokes, too.”

  Daddy and I sat down at a table with our trays, and Weylyn sat on the dirty carpet, cross-legged, with his tray in his lap. “You don’t want to sit up here with us?” Daddy pulled out a chair for him.

  Weylyn shook his head and pulled the burger patty out from between its buns.

  “Weylyn. In our family, we sit together during meals,” Daddy said sternly.

  Weylyn looked up at him, uncertain.

  “So, come on now. Scoot over.” Then my daddy, the most respected man in Paris, sat on the floor of the McDonald’s. “You too, Lydia,” he instructed, and I scrambled off my chair. I could feel people staring and whispering, but I didn’t care, and neither did Daddy. I only wished Mama and Caroline had been there to see it.

  * * *

  When Mama met Weylyn, she was as sweet as syrup, which didn’t surprise me because she was raised in the Deep South, where hospitality is only second to Jesus. She used to live in one of those huge, white plantation homes that was musty with old money.

  When Grandmama died, she left half her fortune and the Sycamore Estate to Mama, and we all flew to Mississippi to pick the stuff we wanted before Mama auctioned it off. As my sisters looted the crystal, I found a rusty, old harmonica with the words SOMEONE LOVES YOU inscribed on the underside. I showed it to Daddy, and he said it probably belonged to a Confederate soldier—a gift from his sweetheart. At the Sycamore Estate Luncheon and Historical Auction, I told Mama’s Mississippi friends I was going to learn how to play the harmonica so the soldier’s ghost could hear it and it would reunite him with his long-lost love. Mama told them I was ill and sent me outside so I wouldn’t scare any more guests.

  Weylyn was her guest, even if he was a little “rustic,” as she put it. When we arrived home, there was a feast waiting for us: pork shoulder, creamed spinach, biscuits with cinnamon butter, potatoes au gratin, and three different kinds of pie. Daddy looked at me and put his finger to his lips. I wouldn’t say anything about McDonald’s, but I couldn’t promise I’d be able to fit any more food inside me.

  Mama had her apron on for show—we knew Lizbeth, our maid, had cooked everything. It was part of Mama’s humble persona that she tried to cultivate after marrying a reverend, but it was never quite genuine enough to stick.

  “Hello, Weylyn!” she cooed, dripping with buttery Southern charm. “We’re so glad you’re here!” When Daddy went over her head like this, she pretended like it was her idea. It was the only thing she could do to feel in control. She looked Weylyn up and down. “Heavens! You look like you’re swimming in those clothes! Come with me.”

  When they came back downstairs, Weylyn had on a blue blazer, bright white shorts, and fancy leather loafers. He wriggled with discomfort. “Doesn’t he look handsome?” she announced.

  I snickered. Daddy shook his head. “What were you thinking, Clara? Buying white shorts for a twelve-year-old boy? He’ll get them dirty in two seconds.”

  “My mama used to say, ‘There’s no better way to teach a boy manners than a pair of pressed, white slacks,’” she said evenly.

  “You were an only child. What boys was she talking about?”

  “Remind me to take your white shirts to the dry cleaners, Thomas. They’re in a ghastly state,” she said pointedly, then dragged Weylyn into the dining room, where he promptly grabbed a piece of pie, plopped onto the floor, and decorated his white shorts with gobs of gooey cherry filling. I watched a knot form in the middle of Mama’s face as Daddy roared with “I told you so” laughter.

  * * *

  I may have had some positive memories of my mother. Maybe she took me to the zoo or taught me to ride a bike, but if those memories existed, they were in some dusty, yellowed volume in the back of my mind along with everything I had learned in piano lessons.

  Secretly, I hoped I was adopted. I imagined my real mom—a doughy, sarcastic woman who drank her booze out of coffee mugs and let dogs lick her face. She operated a forklift at a factory and earned a modest living. Her house was small, but she had worked hard to afford it and only filled it with things that were special to her. She had never been married, but she had so many friends that it didn’t matter. Her socks had holes in them, her white shirts had stains in the pits, and she never, ever flossed. Her flaws were in plain sight, not buffed out with salt scrubs or hidden under layers of Mary Kay.

  When she gave her baby up for adoption, she didn’t pretend she was okay. She cried in front of the nursing staff until her lungs ached.

  I knew she wasn’t real. I had an exact replica of Mama’s tiny, up-turned nose that reminded me of it every day. Someday, I’d have a surgeon replace it with a Cyrano de Bergerac–esque honker, and I could pretend that somewhere, there was a chubby, sweaty, wonderful woman that had a nose just like it.

  * * *

  Daddy gave Weylyn the room next to mine. It used to be Mama’s sewing room until she had a meltdown over one of Caroline’s pageant dresses. After that, it was used for storage, then became a sewing room again after Mama promised not to attempt any more silk chiffon. I was personally thrilled when Daddy moved Weylyn in there because it meant I wouldn’t have to turn the TV all the way up to hear it over the incessant whirring of that goddamn machine.

  After Weylyn had turned in for the night, I found Daddy curled up in his armchair reading the Wandering Wizards series. We had started it together—he was on book four, and I was on five. It followed a young wizard named Finneas Frog who saved the world from a race of evil dragons. The series had been banned from schools by the same group of troglodytes that called Dr. Seuss a heathen, folks my dad felt sorry for because they had no sense of wonder.

  “Hi, Daddy,” I said, sitting on the leather ottoman by his feet. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  “I thought parents told their kids to go to bed, not the other way around.” Daddy laughed and placed the receipt he was using as a bookmark on the page he had open. “You’re right, though. I am tired.”

  I waited for him to head upstairs, but he continued to sit with the book open in his lap like a napkin at a fancy restaurant. He was clearly avoiding something.

  “Mama’s mad about Weylyn, isn’t she?”

  Daddy stared past my shoulder at nothing in particular. “She’s … adjusting.”

  Adjusting. That’s the word he used anytime Mama took issue with a decision he’d made. The problem was, she never really adjusted to any of them.

  “What about you?” Daddy asked. “What do you think about Weylyn staying with us?”

  “I like him,” I said. “He’s weird, but in kind of an awesome way. What happened to him, anyway? For him to end up here, I mean.”

  “His parents died when he was little. Since then, he basically lived on his own out in the woods. The social worker said she had no idea how he was still alive.” Then Daddy frowned, strangely. “He says he lived with a wolf pack.”

  “Whoa.” Suddenly, Weylyn’s odd behavior made perfect sense. “Did he?”

  “Probably not. It’s more likely that his story is some kind of coping mechanism that helped him deal with the death of his parents,” he said sadly, and he glanced out the window. “He must have been really lonely out there.”

  No wonder the kid was messed up. It was also no wonder why Mama didn’t want him sitting on the “good” sofa. “Poor Weylyn,” I said, mostly to myself.

  Daddy finally closed Wandering Wizards and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I’m counting on you, Lydia. He could use a friend.” It felt good being the one my dad turned to in times like these. I could tell it was important to him.

  I said good night to Daddy and headed upstairs. On my way to my room, I paused in front of Weylyn’s door and listened, half ex
pecting to hear him whimper like a dog as he slept. Instead, I heard a funny squeaking noise, like something scraping against the window. It only lasted ten, fifteen seconds at the most; then everything went quiet. It’s probably just a tree branch, I thought, even though I was imagining a wolf running its long claws along the glass.

  I had once asked my dad if he believed in magic. He’d said he believed in “possibilities.” That year, Weylyn Grey showed us all just what kind of things were possible.

  * * *

  The next day was July 4, also known as George Washington’s birthday, according to Angelica. It was the most important secular holiday in the Kramer household. Our house had a perfect view of the fireworks, so every year, Mama would invite practically the whole town to picnic on our lawn. Every able-bodied Parisian man would bring his grill, and we’d pig out from sunup to well after sundown. It was my favorite holiday, because it was the only time I could eat five hot dogs in front of Mama without a commentary track.

  “You’ll like this ’cause you get to sit on the ground while you eat,” I told Weylyn, who was busy watching the fish in my aquarium, holding that book of his like a teddy bear. The outfit Mama had laid out for him that morning was a navy-blue polo with brown plaid shorts, the perfect shade to hide any stains from the chocolate cake she—or rather, Lizbeth—was making. He still hadn’t said a word since he arrived at the house, and I was getting bored just listening to him breathing.

  “Weylyn? Hello! Don’t you know how to talk?”

  He pressed his nose against the glass, his eyes crossing as he tried to focus on a guppy hovering on the other side.

  “It’s okay if you don’t. My friend Doug didn’t learn to talk till he was seven. ’Course, he wasn’t all that smart to begin with.”

  Weylyn twitched.

  “I like you all the same. Even if you are dumb—”

  “I’m not dumb!” he shouted. The guppy zipped back into its pirate ship.

  “Then why don’t you talk?” I shouted back.

  Weylyn pouted and rested his chin on the book that was clamped between his crossed arms and his chest.

  “What’s that book you’re always carrying around, anyway?”

  “To Kill a Mockingbird,” he said warily.

  “Never heard of it. Must be one of those books they banned from the schools.”

  “Banned?”

  “It means it’s against the law. I’d hide it if I were you, before someone burns it or something.” His eyes widened with panic. “You can hide it under my bed if you want. That’s where I keep the stuff I’m not supposed to have. See?” I pulled a box out from under my bed that was lined with VHS tapes. “Mama would have a fit if she saw these! I’m not a big reader, but I love movies. Copied most of ’em from the TV, so they have commercials and stuff, but I can fast-forward through those parts.”

  Weylyn cautiously approached the box and picked up a tape labeled Land of the Lost. “That’s my favorite TV show,” I said. “It has dinosaurs in it.”

  Weylyn looked confused. “What’s a dinosaur?”

  “This!” I popped the tape into my VCR and pressed Play. On the screen, Will and Holly were being chased by Grumpy, the tyrannosaur.

  Weylyn’s jaw dropped. “Is that … real?”

  “No, it’s fake. But they were real millions of years ago. The school board doesn’t want you believing that ’cause of the Bible and stuff.”

  Weylyn nodded like he understood, then hesitantly handed me his book. “Somewhere safe?”

  “The safest,” I assured him and tucked the book between Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Young Frankenstein. “No one will find it there.”

  Weylyn nodded and went back to watching the fish. I sketched him on my arm, staring down a giant guppy. “So, what’s your story? Where’re you from?”

  “The woods,” he said.

  “What woods?”

  “Twelve Pines.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Then I must be pretty far away,” he said, distant.

  I gave him some shading under the eyes to make him look sad. “You wish you were back there?”

  He nodded, tracing his finger across the glass of the aquarium. The guppy followed, its little suction-cup mouth opening and closing.

  “With the wolves?” I added. I know Daddy said it was probably just a story he had made up to make himself feel better, but it didn’t seem like that to me.

  A small, involuntary whine escaped Weylyn’s lungs. I drew a wolf’s tail and ears on the cartoon of him and held out my arm. He smiled at me for the first time.

  * * *

  Weylyn had one of those maniacal smiles that could make a person nervous, especially if that person was one of Mama’s book club friends. It was ten in the morning, and the party was already in full swing. Mama’s friends had taken over one of the picnic tables for their gin rummy and were tipsy on Bloody Marys and gossip. They weren’t talking about books—they never did—but were making up their own scandalous fiction about the people they knew.

  I tried to hurry Weylyn past them but was paralyzed by a familiar yodel. “Yoo-hoo! Lydia!” It was Bonnie Grace Campbell. We called her the Town Crier, because she liked to run through town telling everybody’s business. Bonnie Grace was Mama’s best friend and helped organize the Miss Paris Competition every year. She’s the one the girls of Paris have to thank for the contestant weight requirement and the unspoken virginity rule. There’s no hard evidence, but all I’m saying is that Shay McNeil was a shoo-in for Miss Paris two years ago before prom night. After that, she mysteriously rescinded her candidacy.

  “Miss Lydia! Who’s that handsome boy you’re with?”

  I reluctantly approached the table. “Hi, Mrs. Campbell. This is Weylyn.”

  “Oh, yes! The poor soul your mother took in. The one who was savagely taken hostage by wolves!”

  So, not only was Mama taking credit for it; she had also turned it into one of her party stories.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Weylyn!” Bonnie practically screamed.

  “He can hear you fine, Mrs. Campbell.”

  “Does he speak dog?” she said earnestly. “Ask him if he can tell my Buster to stop getting up on the couch.”

  I could hear a very faint growl coming from Weylyn’s throat. “I don’t think so, Mrs. Campbell.”

  “I suppose he doesn’t speak much at all after the trauma, poor thing.” Bonnie’s chorus clucked, “Poor thing,” as they fanned themselves with playing cards.

  “Nice to see you, Mrs. Campbell. Ladies.” I tugged Weylyn by the arm, and we made our escape.

  “Sorry about that,” I said as we sat under the shade of the giant oak, eating cake with our shoes off. “She’s had a lot of Bloody Marys … and she’s a bitch.”

  “Wolves and dogs don’t speak the same language,” he said defiantly. “It’s like a person trying to talk to a frog. It doesn’t work.”

  “So, you can talk to them?”

  “Who?”

  “Wolves.”

  “Sort of.” Weylyn chewed while he thought. “We just kind of … understood each other. I don’t really know how to describe it.”

  “That’s so cool! The closest I’ve got to a wild animal is my sisters at a shoe sale. They’re avoiding you, by the way.” I pointed to a large group of girls sunbathing by the pool. “Emily is convinced you’re going to chew her new Pucci pumps. I told her Poochi sounds like a shoe for dogs, anyway, and she threw her curling iron at me. It was totally worth it, though. My favorite person to mess with is Mama. It’s just so easy. Well, you know that already.”

  Weylyn stared back at me blankly, chocolate smeared all over his face. Just then, Mama came running around the side of the house chasing a fat raccoon with a broom. “Shoo! Git! Filthy animal!”

  “That’s Marcel. He lives in the chimney. I gave him a chicken bone once, and he keeps coming back for the buffet. Mama hates him.”

  Then I had an idea. A good one. “Hurry up and
finish your cake, Weylyn. I need your help with something.”

  * * *

  Mama had joined the other hens at the picnic table and was dealing new hands when Weylyn walked up, scratching his scalp furiously. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? The mosquitoes get you?” she said with insincere kindness.

  He shook his head and continued to scratch.

  “He must have allergies,” she explained to the other women. “Do you want some cough medicine?”

  Weylyn shook his head.

  “Hey, Mama!” I flanked her on the other side, also scratching my head.

  “Lydia? What’s wrong? Why are you and Weylyn scratching like that?”

  “Weylyn said he’s always itchy. Now, I’m itchy, too.”

  Bonnie Grace Campbell started scratching her head, also. “Now you mention it, I’ve been kind of itchy today.”

  Mama’s perfectly lined eyes went from round Os to almost straight lines. “Lydia, what are you up to?”

  “Nothing, Mama! I’m just so itchy.”

  The women at the table started scratching phantom itches, too. Then Bonnie Grace gasped, “The boy lived with wolves. He must have … fleas!”

  The women jumped out of their seats. Cards and Bloody Marys went flying. “Fleas! Fleas! Fleeeeas!” they screeched and nearly wriggled out of their housedresses.

  Mama’s face was as red as her favorite lipstick. She grabbed both of us under the arms and dragged us toward the house. “Both of you are going to your rooms!”

  “It was just a joke,” I protested.

  “That’s the problem!”

  Mama escorted us to our rooms, making a point of slamming our doors behind us. Once I heard her footsteps descending the stairs, I opened my window and leaned on the sill. I was laughing at Mama’s friends checking each other for fleabites when I saw Weylyn open the window next to mine and lean out into the sweaty, summer air. He didn’t look as amused as I was. In fact, he looked genuinely disappointed. Here I was, supposed to be making him feel welcome, and instead, I had ruined his first Fourth of July.

  I was about to call out to him and apologize when his face suddenly fell into shadow. I turned and saw that the sun had been blotted out by a dark mass of cloud. It moved with astonishing speed, polluting the blue sky with roiling gray plumes that sagged with rainwater. Seconds later, the cloud burst and heavy rain was wreaking havoc on the party below. The flames that flickered beneath Daddy’s pineapple-glazed chicken wings were snuffed out. My sisters ran screaming into the house, holding magazines over their heads and slipping on the wet grass. Mama tried in vain to rescue a water-logged potato salad before giving up and following the rest of the partygoers into the house.