33 Snowfish

by Adam Rapp

  But then Seldom would kinda hum like he was remembering something, and that lonely train feeling would go away.

  I think my time on the Itty Bitty Farm’s been some of the best days I’ve ever had. Even better than when me and Boobie and Curl was living back in the woods.

  There’s always plenty of food to eat and there ain’t never no driving and you always wake up in the same place every morning. Even if it’s under a kitchen table sometimes, it’s still the same place.

  I guess the Itty Bitty Farm became the most official crib I ever lived in.

  And them migration headaches didn’t come once.

  Sometimes in the middle of the night me and the baby would creep into Seldom’s room and sleep next to him on the floor. He started leaving one of his pillows and a extra blanket for us. I liked the smell of the pillow. It was kinda like a old coat that gets left in the closet.

  After the morning chores we’d stick them tennis rackets to the bottom of our shoes and go looking for sticks together. It wasn’t too easy cuz of all the snow, but I got used to it.

  Seldom made a pouch for the baby out of a pillowcase. He poked four holes in it — two for my arms and two for the baby’s legs; that way I could carry him on my back when we was stick collecting. The baby didn’t give no shit. He would just squeak and wiggle and play with my ears.

  At first I thought we was collecting sticks for firewood, but Seldom said he had enough firewood in the shed to last for like a year and shit. He said we was collecting sticks cuz we was gonna make a raft. I was like, “A raft?” and he was like, “Shoo, you’ll see.”

  He said we needed a raft cuz one day the sun was going to come out burning like crazy, and he said it would burn so hot that all of the snow around the Itty Bitty Farm and all of the other snow over by the van and the Crow Wing River and all the snow from like skeighty-eight miles around was gonna melt all at once and start a flood and that the Itty Bitty Farm would just get drowned in it.

  He said we was gonna build a raft big enough for me and him and the baby and Deuce. He said we was gonna have to build it on top of the house cuz once the snow started melting everything was gonna flood so fast we wasn’t gonna have much time.

  At first I thought he was crazy, but then I started looking at all the snow around the house and how it was higher than some of the windows. And I looked at how that shit was still coming down; how even though it wasn’t sideways no more that it was still falling.

  So we started putting all them sticks and tree branches on top of the roof and Seldom would stay up there for hours, joining them parts together with rope and twine and this skanky waterproof stuff that smelled terrible.

  It even started to look like a real raft after a while, too; the way a raft looks if you see it on a cartoon or in a comic book or some shit.

  Sometimes I would bring the baby up to the roof with me and all three of us would sit on the raft like we was practicing for the flood.

  Seldom would tease Deuce and go, “Hey, Deucey, we leavin’ without you. Watch your buttons,” and shit like that. Deuce would just kind of peck at the roof and walk around in these funny little circles.

  One day me and Seldom and the baby was all just sitting there on the roof, watching the sunset and how them colors was kind of melting through the sky. I had a big spool of twine between my legs and the baby was kind of pulling on it from his pillowcase when Seldom went, “Hey, Jimster, can I ask you somethin’?”

  I just nodded and kept watching them colors falling through the sky.

  He was like, “Who’s Tiny?”

  I was like, “Who?”

  And he went, “Big Tiny.”

  I went, “Big who?”

  “You heard me.”

  “I don’t know no Big Tiny.”

  “You did last night. You was talkin’ to her in your sleep.”

  “Sounds like you was trippin’.”

  “You was talkin’ to her like she was layin’ right next to you on the floor. Goin’ ‘Yes, ma’am, yes ma’am, I promise.’ Real quiet. Like you was whisperin’ in her ear. You was dreamin’.”

  “You was dreamin’.”

  A few days later we was in the kitchen. Seldom was washing dishes and I was rolling pennies and watching the baby at the table.

  The night before I creeped into his room and slept on his floor again and when I woke up, Seldom’s bed was all made up and the sun was shining through the window and you could see the colors of the balloons in the cheeks from that clown picture, and you could see dust sliding in the light. My back was all sore from sleeping on that hard-ass floor.

  When I came out to the kitchen Seldom had just got done feeding Deuce. He was whistling this song and wiping some dust off the shelf over the fireplace. He was in such a good mood I thought he was gonna fart balloons and shit.

  Then he grabbed the baby out of the TV and started singing this old wack song about how nickels sound like rain when you got enough of them in your pocket and he was holding the baby over his head and kinda dancing with him and you could see the baby kinda smiling and you could see the muscles muscling around that seam in his forehead.

  For some reason I started feeling that fist going hard in my stomach again, and all of the sudden I was like, “He ain’t yours.”

  Seldom stopped and turned to me. He went, “I know he ain’t mine, Jimster. But I can play with him, can’t I?”

  He was holding the baby in front of him now. The baby looked like the whitest baby in world. He looked like a snow baby and shit.

  Then Seldom went, “He likes me,” and turned the baby so he could look at him and went, “Don’t you, Little Jimster?”

  I just sat at the kitchen table for a minute and watched how that light was pouring in through the window. It was real bright that morning, like the sun was out for revenge or some shit. You could see dust sliding through the light in the kitchen, too.

  Seldom shifted the baby to his other side like he’d been practicing that shit and went, “Come on now. I’m makin’ pancakes.”

  But I still wouldn’t move. I was getting pissed off for some reason and I think Seldom knew cuz of how I was all still.

  Then Seldom went, “You can have him back,” and held out the baby, and the way he was holding him made it look like the baby was going to fall and I pictured that old bone in Seldom’s arm crumbling or breaking or some shit, so I got up and took the baby.

  I didn’t even look at Seldom.

  I just went and sat back down at the table.

  Then one day when we was picking sticks, out of nowhere, Seldom goes, “What about Scooby?”

  “Huh?”

  “Scooby.”

  I was like, “Whooby?”

  “Last night you was talkin’ in your sleep again. You You was goin’ ‘Run, Scooby, run!’ and stuff like that.”

  It was kinda funny how Seldom was asking me all these questions but he wouldn’t look at me. It was like he was trying to be slick and shit. Like he was one of them private investigator pigs you see on TV.

  I just kept walking in the snow with them sticks I’d picked. The baby was playing with my ears and I think he shit his pants cuz you could smell it.

  Then, all of the sudden while we was walking in the snow, the dream I had from the night before came back to me:

  I was in the backyard looking at the woods behind the Itty Bitty Farm. I was burning garbage and watching the smoke curl over the roof. Seldom was building the raft. Them woods looked all black and dead and skanked and then all of the sudden Boobie came out of the trees and just stood there looking at me. His hair was white like the snow and he just stood there with his hands in his pockets. That white hair made his eyes look blacker than ever. I could feel his stare inside of me pretty crisp, but he didn’t say nothing, he just stood there. And for some reason, with my dream mind I had this thought that it wasn’t like he walked through the woods or was living in them. It was like the woods imagined him there or Boobie imagined the woods or some shit lik
e that; like Boobie was the woods. I started to raise my hand to wave to him, but when I did he disappeared. I woke up feeling all sad and lost.

  Seldom went, “Jimster?”

  And I was like, “It ain’t Scooby, it’s Boobie.”

  “Boobie?”

  “Yeah, Boobie.”

  “Well whatever his name is, it sounded to me like he was in trouble. Like they was chasin’ him.”

  “It don’t mean nothin’.”

  “Sure sounded to me like it meant somethin’.”

  Seldom bent down and picked up this big long tree branch.

  He went, “You was wavin’ to him, too.”

  “I was?”

  “Wavin’ to him like he was leavin’ on a train.”

  I could still feel that floor from Seldom’s bedroom all locked up in my back. I bent down and picked up this little wack stick. I knew Seldom probably wouldn’t use it on the raft cuz it was too small, but I picked it up anyway.

  Then Seldom picked up another stick and went, “Big Tiny. Scooby. Waving your arms all crazy. You must be having some crazy dreams, Jimster.”

  I was like, “I must,” and threw that little wack stick I picked. I threw that shit far, too.

  Then Seldom handed me one of them big sticks he picked and went, “You ever wanna talk about them dreams you keep having, you just let me know, okay?”

  But I didn’t say nothing back, I just kept looking for sticks.

  That’s when I decided to skate.

  It was like stuff between me and Seldom was getting too wack. He was getting all private investigator pig on me, asking me about my dreams and who was who and what was what and it started to feel like he was trying to bust me, like he was one of them Rockdale vagrancy pigs.

  So the next morning I told him to go pick sticks without me cuz I wasn’t feeling too good — I told him I had ass failure or my toe hurt or some shit and he was like asking me did I need anything, but I told him I was cool.

  When he left I put my puffy red coat on and sacked the baby on my back and wrapped that long yellow scarf around my neck and pulled that cinnamon roll hat over my head and stuck them tennis rackets to the bottoms of my Pro Flyers.

  Then I made some jelly sandwiches and grabbed a few cans of pinto beans from the cupboard.

  When I stuffed them sandwiches and them canned beans in my pockets some wack shit happened. I forgot I had my gat in my pocket. It was like it disappeared for all them weeks I was at the Itty Bitty Farm.

  So I was stuffing all that shit in my pockets and I got my fingers all tangled in the trigger, and then — BLOWWW! — that shit went off! I shot a hole through all three of them sandwiches and through my pants, and the bullet busted right on through the kitchen floor. And that shit was loud, too!

  The baby started crying and my frostbite hand started shaking and you could see a bunch of old skanky dust climbing through the light that was sliding through that hole in the floor.

  We skated right after that. You can’t just stand around after your gat goes off. You gotta start running or else them gat pigs will start breaking down the door; even them gat pigs in Nimrod, Minnesota.

  At first I thought we should make a run for the forest, but I kept thinking about that dream I had about Boobie and how he just stood there staring at me and how his hair was all white and spooky and shit.

  Then I thought about that train whistle and how if we heard it I could just follow it to where the tracks was and make a jump for it, but then all them pictures of me and the baby starving to death and catching lung frosts started getting all stuck in my head, so we didn’t do that, neither.

  So what we did was we headed back toward the Crow Wing River where the Skylark was hid.

  I figured we could hitchhike somewhere and maybe I could make some money by getting a paper route or some shit, but nothing too serious. I figured we’d need a little money to buy pinto beans and diapers and some food for me every once in a while.

  I was walking with those tennis rackets pretty good. All that stick collecting with Seldom gave me lots of practice. I could feel my heart drumming in my chest and my blood pushing through my heart and my breath was smoking out all white and thick and that yellow scarf was all wrapped around my neck and the baby was like steering me by my ears.

  When we got over by where the van was, some freaky shit started happening. Instead of walking past it, we went back inside of it, right up them little rickety stairs.

  It still looked the same as when me and Seldom came and got Curl, with them snowfish on the walls and that frost crawling over everything and them newspapers hanging off the windows all yellow and skanky.

  Then I started thinking about Curl and Boobie and how at the end everything got all wack and cold and desperate and about how Curl caught her lung frost and kept talking about that big black turkey and how she spray-painted them snowfish on the walls and how she just kept getting sicker and sicker.

  And I thought about Boobie and how he drew that fish on Curl’s face and how he disappeared through the snowing trees all backwards and how now the only place I seen him was in dreams where his hair wasn’t even the right color and how those dreams was making me feel all sad and lost.

  And I started thinking about Seldom picking them sticks and going back to the Itty Bitty Farm and climbing up to the roof with his old creaky bones. And I started thinking about him wondering where me and the baby was and him just sort of figuring that I decided to try and meet up with him to pick sticks.

  And then I thought about how I wasn’t really doing that, how I wasn’t picking shit, and how I was just running again, and how my whole wack life felt all skanky, and for some reason that made me think of the Christmas tree laying in the backyard and how the popcorn was still on it and them flames sawing in the fireplace and how sometimes when they’re tall enough they saw in the window so there’s double-sawing, and I even pictured Deuce and her little hooker walk and how I kinda liked watching her coming into the house on her own like she had them special powers.

  And then I thought of that little picture of Seldom and his wife on that box next to his bed and how it was so old and yellow in the corners and I thought of that wack little baby crib in the other room and how all them old coats was stacked in it like it didn’t mean nothing no more and I thought of that picture of the clown with the balloons in his cheeks and all of that shit was spinning around in my head like a bunch of bees.

  Then I practically ran through the van and down them rickety steps and as soon as I got outside I fell to my knees and started doing the second-wackest shit I’ll probably ever do in my life:

  I started picking up sticks. And I picked about skeighty-eight of them joints. I couldn’t even control my hands. I didn’t even feel the baby on my back or all that snow sliding through the hole in my pants that that bullet made. I just picked sticks all the way back to the Itty Bitty Farm and I picked them till my hands was raw.

  What’s funny is that when I got back to the house, Seldom was on the roof just like I thought and he was joining the new sticks to the raft, and when he saw me and the baby walking through the snow and how my arms was all full of sticks he was waving, and he was standing up all lopsided and crooked and he did almost fall off the roof. He even had to grab onto the chimney.

  When he got balanced he put his big old hands up to his face and shouted, “I was wonderin’ where you two was.”

  The sky behind him was turning purple.

  Through the living room window you could see the fire going and the light was all yellow and warm-looking.

  I put my sticks down and headed inside with the baby.

  ADAM RAPP is the acclaimed author of several novels for young adults, including Punkzilla, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. In addition, he is an accomplished playwright whose plays have been produced by the New York Theatre Workshop, the Bush Theatre in London, and the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Adam Rapp is also the author and director of Winter Passing, a movie
starring Ed Harris, Will Ferrell, and Zooey Deschanel. He lives in New York City.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2003 by Adam Rapp

  Illustrations copyright © 2003 by Timothy Basil Ering

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  First electronic edition 2011

  “Hushabye Mountain” by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman copyright © 1968 (renewed) EMI Unart Catalog Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Rapp, Adam.

  33 snowfish / Adam Rapp; Timothy Basil Ering, illustrator. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: A homeless boy, running from the police with a fifteen-year-old, drug-addicted prostitute, her boyfriend who just killed his own parents, and a baby, gets the chance to make a better life for himself.

  ISBN 978-0-7636-1874-8 (hardcover)

  [1. Homeless persons — Fiction. 2. Child sexual abuse — Fiction.

  3. Babies — Fiction. 4. Sick — Fiction. 5. Middle West — Fiction.]

  I. Title: Thirty-three snowfish. II. Ering, Timothy B., ill. III. Title.

  PZ7.R1765 Aae 2003

  [Fic] — dc21 2002031156

  ISBN 978-0-7636-2917-0 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-7636-5424-5 (electronic)

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