“It’s like hide-and-go-seek,” I said.
“A great party game, much underrated,” he replied.
*
Cocooned in the rubberised silence of the earbuds, I checked the phone for music on the off-chance that Molly might have downloaded some of her favourite ’80s hits. No such luck.
Then I scrolled back to the address book. Before ‘Maguire, Molly’ was ‘Macready, Shona, Attorney-at-Law’. It struck me that she needed to know my mobile phone number. She needed to know right now.
Shona picked up after about thirty seconds. She was out of breath and didn’t sound too pleased.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said.
I found myself about to apologise for interrupting her, but held my tongue.
“You got a phone, then,” she said.
“Yeah. I thought you should have the number.” I told her that Sergeant Maguire had given me the handset to help bring Eileen back home.
“The application’s gotta come from you, honey, not your police friend. You’re the primary carer, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then it’ll be you who has to prove that you can take care of Eileen. Tell you what, Scout, you’ve probably got internet on your phone?”
I thought I did.
“Okay, what you need to do is send me an email with all the details. A précis of your mom’s medical history, her doctor and prescriptions. And add to that your plan of care – your argument, if you like, as to why you think she would be better taken care of on Brighton Avenue than in Bethesda. Can you do that for me, hon?”
I don’t think I had been called ‘honey’ as often since I was five years old and sitting with Mom in a diner demolishing a tower of pancakes and syrup. The waitress in the diner fussed over us, and she sounded just like Shona. I had this flash of Shona working tables but operating an attorney’s office from the staff payphone. Every time the phone rang she had to drop the waffles and run into the back corridor. She kept her files on a shelf alongside catering-sized cans of tomatoes and vegetable oil.
The phone trilled in my ear as soon as I had finished with Shona.
It was Mike, voice bubbling with excitement.
“Come and get me!”
*
At first there was nothing.
Rephrase that: at first, second and third, there was nothing.
I stood on the apron, under the Doughy Doughy Boy’s improbably-sized appendage, and scoured the asphalt. Of Mike and his car, I found not a trace.
I slipped off my trainers and sports socks. Ran my toe along an arc from the point at which he had last been standing. The cracked paving was cold but nothing more.
I gazed at the orange horizon. It would be getting dark soon, and any chance of following a physical trace would be lost. I lowered myself to my knees and touched the scarred surface. There were stripes of black, where the hot rubber of customised wheels had burnt in great drifts of smoke. These were the evidence of hot rods, not of Mike’s sensible Toyota.
Nothing, and more nothing.
Frustrated, I started to jog towards the mill. There were three vast buildings, windows smashed. I could see though their skeletons to the machinery inside. Chutes plunged down from giant hoppers, which once fed grain into mixing tubs the size of swimming pools. Conveyors ran the length of each floor. The rubber had perished into dried strips, and the winter snow had worked its magic over the years, cracking paint and mottling steel with rust.
Still no sign of Mike.
I ran to the far end of the factory. A row of loading bays stared like vacant eyes.
I wondered if I should call Mike and ask him to set me an easier task. But the thought of admitting defeat made me furious.
I could find things. That was why I was called Scout.
I ran back, following my nose. I thought that if I got closer, then I might pick up some sign of the missing car. I wove in between the second and third buildings. Barefoot, I had to pick my way with care, the ground scattered with smashed components and shards of broken glass. The last thing I needed was an emergency tetanus jab. I had one as a child, and the nurse had stuck a huge needle into my gluteus maximus, which is probably the last place you’d want a needle, except in the eye.
Building number two was a washout. I couldn’t see how Mike could have hidden his Toyota amongst the machinery. This second building would have to remain unremarked by history, except as host to the world’s biggest Doughy Doughy Boy boner.
I slipped my trainers back on. Ten years of vandalism had left the service road at this side of the factory as booby-trapped as a North Vietnamese jungle. There were pits lined with razor-sharp stanchions, and rills of oxidised iron poked through the concrete.
On to building number one. I had given up trying to channel my talent. Disconnected from an emotional link, the gift was lying dormant. Mike had said that we were playing a party game, and maybe that’s all my tracking talent would become – a party trick. I’d be like some freak autistic kid who could tell you in a flash the fourth root of 390,6252. Apart from Rain Man, no one ever made anything of their life by being an autistic savant. I could make a living in a carny tent, alongside the bearded lady – come to think of it, my facial hair was concerning enough to suggest that at some time in the future I could take on that role as well.
I trudged to the base of the easternmost building. It was getting cold now that the sun had slipped out of view.
The cops were out looking for Marcus. They had swamped the municipal parking lot, talking to employees, checking up on anyone who might have been a witness that Saturday afternoon. I prayed they would find him by nightfall.
*
A ramp of reinforced concrete rose into the upper reaches of building number one. It was a skaters’ paradise, and on summer evenings this is where the dudes gathered for their flips and ollies.
I decided to climb to the top and then throw in the towel. It was too dark to search anymore, and I was disheartened by failure.
Just before I reached the summit, I caught a whiff of auto exhaust – that sweet potpourri of gasoline and carbon monoxide. It didn’t take a super-sense to tell that a car had driven up here, and not so long ago.
I ran to the upper storey.
The floor opened before me, the western wall stripped out, and - sure enough - silhouetted against the twilight was Mike and his car. Mike pumped the air in triumph.
“Yes!” he shouted.
“No,” I grunted. “I found you by a process of elimination. It was just luck.”
“It was nothing of the sort, Scout.”
He had a kind of evangelical look on his face.
“I searched every building,” I objected, wanting to get into the car and go home. “I was going to find you eventually.”
“Scout – look.“ He took my arm and led me to the edge of the floor. From this vantage point, every quarter of the mill could be seen. Gaping holes in the brickwork gave a perfect view along the length of the other two buildings.
“I watched you, Scout. You went to the far building, stopped, and turned around. You then threaded through the gap and came round the back.”
“I was taking a random route, that’s all.”
“It wasn’t random. You were following the trail I left for you. I drove that exact same route. I backed up along my trail, snuck behind the buildings and then came up this ramp. I knew it was here because I used to ‘board.”
“Really?” I asked. “I can’t see you with the baggy shorts and baseball cap.”
“I had the works – floppy hair, the Prodigy T-shirt.”
“Not the hemp bracelet? Please, tell me not that?”
“Guilty as charged.”
I tried not to be embarrassed for him.
“Anyhow, I drove up here,” Mike continued, “and you followed me.”
“Wasn’t luck – you followed my route step for step.”
“Then I was subconsciously following the trail of your car. There’s no wind, so maybe it was the exhaust fumes. I caught a trace of them on the ramp.”
“No way. Scout – it’s a Prius! I was running on battery the whole time!”
His eyes shone, and from that moment I began to believe.
Cue music: ‘Eye of the Tiger’ by Survivor.
Chapter 19
‘Lox n creamcheez r salt beef n mustard?’
‘Lox :)’
‘Hahaha. Glad that UR not vegetarian. BRB.’
So ran our texts before lunchtime the next day. I’d spent all morning working on the email to Shona, and it wasn’t until the phone buzzed that I realised how hungry I was.
Mike arrived promptly at one for the coaching session. He shoved a brown paper bag in my hand, and without much preamble we bit into soft bagels.
“You got something against vegetarians?” I asked between mouthfuls.
“Not really,” he replied, just as he started his third bagel.
“Which means?”
“It sucks cutting yourself off from one whole food group.”
*
We walked down the path towards his car.
“I want you to find the Prius,” he said.
“It’s right in front of me.”
“It is now. But twenty minutes ago I came and parked in the self-same spot and then drove off on a route that took me around town.”
“Past the bagel bakery?”
“That’s an inadvertent clue. But apart from that I took a random route, curving back on myself to arrive sharply at one o’clock.”
“You’re punctual - I have to give you that.”
“It’s the soccer training. We have a fierce coach – if you’re late more than twice in a semester it’s a red card.”
Rather than admit to not knowing what that meant, I eased myself up to the side of the car and looked down Brighton Avenue. It was one of those brilliant November days, very cold but without a wind. The trees had been stripped of their leaves, and all I saw were bare skeletons marching into the distance.
Mike had been soccer training. Thankfully he wasn’t one of those guys who sprayed himself with cologne. Mike carried the soccer field with him, all mud and sweat.
He’d been hungry.
For a boy as big a Mike ‘Woody’ Forrester, hunger was a primal emotion.
And, as simple as that, I tuned in to Mike’s hunger. Along with scuffs from the tyres, and an indistinct Toyota smell (mainly plastic), I could see the beginning of a trail.
“It was that way,” I said, pointing away from town. “You headed off in the wrong direction to begin with.”
He shrugged.
“Maybe.”
I could feel my stomach groan. It wasn’t hunger, because I had just wolfed down two bagels. It was an empathetic memory of hunger. I could taste his anticipation of the salt beef.
“Let’s try it in the car,” I said. “It might be warmer.”
I kept my eye on the trail as I sat down, but as soon as the door slammed it was gone.
“Shit.”
“What is it?” asked Mike, sliding into the driver’s seat.
I peered through the windshield, but I saw nothing more than was obvious to the naked eye. Trees, sidewalk, road. A gully full of damp leaves.
“Maybe the car’s shielding you,” suggested Mike. “Like a Faraday cage.”
That was an advanced scientific concept for a soccer jock, and not for the first time did it strike me that there was more to ‘Woody’ Forrester than was immediately apparent. However, now was not the time to probe the hidden depths of the varsity star – I had to steel myself for the ordeal to come.
I would have to follow the trail barefoot.
I kicked off my trainers. They weren’t the most appealing shoes but, since I’d lost my heels at Halloween, they were my only footwear.
I walked into the middle of the road, facing south east, the cold biting into my bones. Sitting in the car had weakened my vision. The trail wavered on the periphery.
I concentrated on the impression of Mike’s hunger, his dream of salt beef. I let that emotion draw me on, and I started to jog along the road.
I followed my stomach.
*
After half a mile, Mike called a halt. He’d been keeping up with me without so much as a ragged breath. We’d built up to a steady rhythm, me setting the pace much as I’d done when I was in the Middle School track team. It was a while since I had stretched my legs in a run, but feeling the wind flow past, and the ground flying beneath, reminded me of how good it was to be alive.
Just after we passed the Vision Car Wash, Mike called “Whoa!”
I slowed down, jogging on the spot so as not to allow my muscles to cramp.
“What is it, soccer boy?” I asked. “Running in a straight line tiring you out?”
“I’m feeling like a pussy,” he said, sitting down on a low wall. He started to unlace his trainers. “You not noticed any of the stares we’ve been getting?”
“What of it?”
“It’s your feet. People’re wonderin’ where your shoes’re at.”
“I left them in the footwell of your Prius.”
“I know that,” he said, slipping off his trainers and socks. “The thing is - I can’t let you run around like a Victorian orphan whilst I slum it in Air Maxes.”
Historical allusion as well as scientific knowledge, I noted. This boy is getting more interesting.
Trainers in hand, Mike nodded to the route ahead.
“Lead on.”
“Is that the right way?”
“That’s for you to decide.”
“Can you give me a clue? How am I doing? You will tell me if I’m way off, won’t you?”
“It would prejudice the results if I told you.”
So the jock had an understanding of scientific method. Curiouser and curiouser.
*
We skirted Main Street, keeping well away from The Bean Counter. The hunger trail led me on. Behind Main Street was a row of bijou stores. The road was clogged with foreign SUVs and sports models. At the far end was the Prestige Mall.
It was inevitable that we would come across someone we knew, and ironic that it would be Brianna, shopping with her girlfriends.
“My God – it’s the freak!” she called, dropping her bags. She made a cross with her fingers, as if trying to ward off the Devil.
“What the hell happened to your shoes, Woody?” shrieked Brianna as we passed. “She put a hex on you?”
“You should try it sometime,” suggested Mike, jogging backwards so that he wouldn’t break eye contact. Must have been the training on the soccer field, because he could run as fast going backwards as he could going forwards.
“It’s good for the soul!” he shouted, before turning to join me.
We pounded away from the girls, their laughter drifting after us.
“It’s good for the soles,” I said.
“You reckon?”
“Uh-huh. Shoes cramp the foot, bend the toes inward. That’s why the Kenyans always win the marathon. They train barefoot.”
“They do it in hundred-degree heat.”
“You cold, Forrester?”
“No, but Dinkel’s is up ahead. They do a pretty amazing chocolate brownie torte.”
As I said, for a boy as big as ‘Woody’ Forrester, hunger was a primal emotion.
Chapter 20
“So – ’Faraday cage’. Explain.”
Mike was right – the chocolate brownie torte was worth dying for. Quite what a Jewi
sh bakery was doing in a town with a small Jewish population, and no synagogue, I do not know. But I am thankful Mr Dinkel and his family moved here back in the 1960s. The interior of the bakery hadn’t changed much since those days – heavy wood and glass display cabinets, and a row of booths with Formica tables. The cool coffee crowd shunned the place, but a steady trade catering to weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, funerals and the odd bar mitzvah kept Dinkel’s going. That and Mike’s appetite for salt-beef bagels.
I took a bite of chocolate brownie layered with cream, and raised my eyebrows expecting an answer to my question.
“A ‘Faraday cage’ is a hollow conductor,” said Mike, getting into his stride. “Any charge applied to its surface flows around the outside, cancelling itself out. Anyone inside the cage is isolated from the electricity.”
“I know what a Faraday cage is, Mike. What I wanted to know was why a soccer jock is conversant with the physical sciences? Don’t you spend your days kicking a ball about?”
“Yes, but that’s simply an expression of Newtonian mechanics applied by human physiognomy.”
“Whoa, whoa,” I said. “Wait a moment! Is this ‘Woody’ Forrester speaking?”
“My brain got swapped last night,” he explained.
“And the scar’s so small you’d hardly notice it. Whose did you get – Neil deGrasse Tyson’s or Sheldon Cooper’s?”
“Sheldon Cooper is not a real person.”
“He is to me.”
Mike leant forward, conspiratorially.
“I got a stack of Scientific American under the bed,” he whispered.
“That’s disgusting!”
“It’s a private hobby,” he said defensively. “Doesn’t hurt anyone.”
“Don’t let your jock friends know. That’s the last thing they’d want in the locker room. A scientist. That sort of thing could weaken the morals of the team.”
“I was thinking of coming out of the closet,” he confided.
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. Have to eventually, when I have to admit I’m taking a soccer scholarship but majoring in science. I’m proud of who I am. I’m not going to pretend anymore. I am going to stand on the high-school steps and proclaim – ‘I am a scientist!’.”
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