Harry Sue

by Sue Stauffacher

But there would be no more verbal harassment from Granny today. Carly Mae’s mother, Wanda, opened the door without knocking.

  “Where’s my girl?” she said. Wanda drove a delivery truck and suffered from heaving boxes around all day long. The way she walked, you could see her mind was not so much on her child as on her own aching back.

  “Oh, dear,” Granny said, sighing heavily and fixing her hair back into place for Wanda’s benefit.

  “No more duck, duck, goose today, children.” She smiled sweetly.

  No more duck, duck, Granny today, children.

  “Will you look at the time? We finished our art project just in time for the paint to dry.”

  This was by far the part of the day I hated most, though I had to admit Granny had the routine down pat. That slightly harried, loving-grandmother accent, full of sugar and spice. Most of the parents fell right into her trap, wanting so bad to believe they could get down-home love for their kids at Granny’s quantity-over-quality prices.

  But Carly Mae’s mother wasn’t one of them.

  “Cut the bull, Granny,” she said as she walked into the room. “Let’s see your hands, kids.”

  The crumb snatchers dutifully held out their hands.

  “Just like I thought. Not a drop of paint. Not even under the fingernails.” Carly Mae’s mom squeezed Hammer Head’s hands before she dropped them. She was one of the few people he would let touch him. Old Hammer Head had a soft spot for Wanda.

  She took the painting in Carly Mae’s hand and shoved it back at Granny.

  “Keep it,” she said. Then she took hold of the fist Carly Mae didn’t have shoved in her mouth and scooped up her daughter’s precious teddy bear, Oswald.

  “And next time, try a little harder,” she called before slamming the door.

  Sink and Dip cringed again, but Granny wasn’t troubled. Wanda might take Carly Mae out of Granny’s Lap as soon as she moved up a pay grade, but there were more where Carly Mae came from. Always more.

  Granny ordered Dip to microwave the apple cider spices. Sink combed the kids’ hair.

  “Now, what did we do today?” Granny quizzed them.

  “Uhhh, finger playth?” asked Wolf Man.

  “Dress up?” Beanie said, catching on quick. Granny rewarded her with a tight-lipped smile.

  “Baked bread,” Hammer Head said, smiling up at Granny.

  She looked at him with suspicion.

  “With a nail file in it.”

  Way to go, Hammer Head, I cheered him silently. If anyone could lead the prison break, it would be Hammer Head. When the day came, he was my right-hand dog.

  There’s a saying about how you grow old quickly in the joint. Though he was only five, Hammer Head was double that age on account of the things he’d seen and done. Not that he let on about it. His face was what showed the score.

  All in all, they made good cons, I thought proudly. They lined up carefully for R & D. They knew how to grease a deal.

  And every single one of them had their fingers crossed behind their backs.

  They understood about the mask.

  “Don’t forget story time,” I said, speaking up for the first time. “And little Red and Granny and all the wonderful things Granny has stored under the sink.”

  We locked eyes, Granny and me. For the second time that day, I used my look that said,

  Somewhere, somehow, when you least expect it, I will exact my punishment.

  But Granny was a hog, not at all like Ms. Lanier or Violet. Granny didn’t look away. Her upper lip stayed dry as toast.

  One by one, I watched them go, until all the crumb snatchers were accounted for. Wolf Man’s mom showed up at last.

  “Knock, knock,” she said timidly. He dropped rank and threw himself into her arms.

  “Now, I don’t want anyone to hold supper on account of me,” I said to Sink and Dip, breezing past them on my way to the door. The first shift was safe for another day, and the third shift didn’t come on until eleven. For the next six hours, I was on home release.

  Chapter 6

  At this point in the story, you may have questions. You may wonder things, things like, just where is my mom? How come I know so much about the joint when I’ve never done time? Why don’t I report Granny to some kind and caring social worker and just be done with her? Here’s your next rule, Fish. Don’t get personal.

  If a conette wants you to know something, she’ll tell you. Otherwise, leave it alone. Don’t look at her personals unless she invites you. That’s right. Don’t pick up a photograph, don’t touch a letter, don’t ask about her mother or her boyfriend, don’t even look her in the eye unless you want to lay it down.

  And if you value your life, don’t ever, ever ask about what happened to her father.

  As a fish, you should know that every piece of information you give to another con or conette can be used to hang you. Be straight, but don’t offer up any more rope than you have to.

  So if you got questions, just hold your tongue in your hand. Squeeze it if you have to. Anyone headed for the joint needs to learn to be patient. Time is the one thing a con has too much of. You’ll find that cons will waste time, kill time, just spill it on the ground.

  I still had time on the outs, so this was a concept that got me tangled. But Homer knew all about con time, and that’s where I always headed when I was sprung from Granny’s place. Right to the tree house of Homer Price.

  Course, I’d have to get past Homer’s mom, and that was no easy prospect. But Homer and me were road dogs from way back, so I made the effort. Homer’s real name, as I have mentioned, was Christopher Dinkins, but I gave him his nick after the crack inventor in the book. Homer’s nick came from his habit of dreaming up inventions, and, before the accident, building them, too.

  But that was all before he got slammed with, not a deuce, not an eight ball, not a dime, but an all day…. Yes, it’s true, Fish. Homer Price maxed out with a life sentence for the crime of diving off the Grand Haven pier.

  I didn’t bother with the front door, just went around back. Through the kitchen window, I could see Mrs. Dinkins standing with a coffee cup in her hand. She was staring in the direction of the tree house. I’d seen Beau’s old beater at the curb, so I knew Homer wasn’t alone.

  Even though he was a home health aide for Ottawa County, Homer said Beau was part of the crew.

  “I don’t think you can get much closer to a person than when he gives you a sponge bath” was how he settled it.

  Whatever. I liked Beau. He taught us how to get along on the inside as well as on the outs. We felt comfortable with Beau—Homer and me—so I thought maybe I could get away with just a wave to Mrs. Dinkins, haul myself up the rope, and spend some time with Beau and Homer, learning how to handle life on the inside.

  I made a big circle with my arm as I ran past the window. I guess I knew it wouldn’t work, and I was dead on with that guess. The screen door slammed before I could grab the first knot of rope.

  You see, after the accident two years ago everybody pretty much figured old Homer was a goner. His lungs kept filling up with fluid and there were other parts that stopped working, too, right along with his arms and legs. When the Shooting Star people came around to grant him a wish, he didn’t ask for an expensive trip or anything. What he wanted was a tree house, way up in the most ancient oak in Marshfield, which just so happened to be in Homer’s backyard.

  He wanted a tree house with a lift and a big picture window cut in the roof so he could concentrate on where he was going and not so much on where he’d been. Homer wanted to spend his last days in the sky.

  For real? He mostly wanted to get away from Mrs. Dinkins, who had started to look like one of those statues with parts of her worn away from too much touching. Mrs. Dinkins was always worrying some piece of her own self, rubbing and rubbing like she was trying to erase the body that made the boy who caused so much grief on account of his foolishness.

  Getting away from his mother was a full-time occ
upation, especially after Homer refused to go to the school for the handicapped over in West Olive. After that Mrs. Dinkins was both his mother and his homeschool teacher. The very thought of Homer laid out flat with Ariel Dinkins at his side trying to puzzle through cell biology made Trench Vista Elementary seem almost bearable.

  Now she hurried after me, pinching her side like she’d been running and got a cramp.

  “Harry Sue,” she said, all breathless. “Stop in after, won’t you? And visit a minute?”

  What she really meant was, Stop in and tell me: Is it a bad day?

  She wanted to know his mood always. After he came down for the night, would he talk with her about the books they’d been studying the evening before? Would he care about the gossip she brought back from her daily walk?

  I had tried to explain to her about letting Homer do his own time.

  Poor Mrs. Dinkins was crazy with sadness over what had happened to her boy. Christopher Dinkins had been a great athlete, a classroom mastermind, a streetwise con. Now he was as wobbly as a beat-up con, laid out on a stretcher, watching birds through a hole in the roof.

  “These books you been bringing him,” she said, rubbing her thumb and her pointer finger back and forth on her jaw. “I don’t think they’re doin’ much good.”

  “I just get what he asks me to,” I said quietly, backing away. I didn’t want to get her going.

  She kept stepping forward to keep us in talking distance. Just my luck, Beau must have finished wiping and turning and airing out Homer, because right then he started climbing down the rope. We both studied his tall lean frame like it might tell us something important. I don’t know what.

  Beau nodded to me after he touched down, breathing as steady as if he’d just walked across a parking lot. I didn’t know his nick from the joint as that was something he chose not to share. But if I could give him one, I think it would be Tin Man. After eight years and change, Beau had learned to live without a heart. He wasn’t mean. Far from it. He just didn’t seem attached to anything, didn’t get flustered or upset. He was a master at controlling emotion.

  I wanted to be like Beau was, just before he left for Chicago, looking off into the distance and talking to us as if he were talking to himself.

  “There’s some trouble back home, and I’ll be gone at least a few days,” he said slowly, running his hands up and down the length of the rope. “My brother called. Gangbangers gone and marked the house where my Mama lives. Homer says he’ll be fine till I get back.”

  Mrs. Dinkins sucked in air and started with the questions.

  “Have they assigned a replacement? Who’s gonna be able to climb that rope? Homer don’t take kindly to people who pry in his business….”

  Beau silenced her with a look.

  “Said Homer’ll be fine till I get back.”

  Mrs. Dinkins stopped in mid-sentence and began to iron the sides of her dress with her palms.

  “You say so, Beau, then I know it’s true.”

  I got another short nod before he walked over to his car, got in, and drove off, all in that slow dignified way that said he wasn’t afraid of nothing, wasn’t in a hurry, wasn’t even angry with whoever marked his mama’s house, just needed to take care of business.

  “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” Mrs. Dinkins said, looking after him. “For his mama.”

  “That’s for real,” I said under my breath, and started to haul myself up hand over hand. “See ya, Mrs. Dinkins.”

  She was like a ball and chain, I thought as I climbed, happy to be rid of her.

  No, her sadness was even heavier than that. It was so big it pushed Mr. Dinkins out of their home and back to his brother in Indiana. It grew like one of those yeast experiments we performed in school, consuming all the sugar in its path. Homer was hiding out from it high up in this tree. But he knew and I knew there was no getting away from Mrs. Dinkins and her pain. Mrs. Dinkins was just the kind of person the Wizard had in mind when he tried to talk the Tin Man out of his plan to get a heart. You see, some folks are so tenderhearted, they have no business with having a heart.

  Shaking Mrs. Dinkins always made me feel lighter, so light I didn’t even use my legs as I hauled myself up to Homer’s tree house. Being built was part of my plan.

  While most of his so-called friends couldn’t see their way clear to visit Homer, I found being with him the most relaxing part of my day. Homer was my road dog. Unlike the crumb snatchers at Granny’s Lap, who were fish and new to the system, Homer was thirteen and he’d been in the joint for two years and change already. He knew what it meant to do time. And he understood why I had to do it, too.

  It was Homer who got me started with my notepad, just a small seventy-nine-cent pad of lined paper with a spiral binding at the top. Besides my toothbrush and an old paperback copy of The Wizard of Oz that Mrs. Mead had scored for me at a garage sale, it was my only personal. It had to be small, due to the fact that Granny regularly tossed out the little room I slept in at the top of the stairs, looking for I don’t know what. Usually, I left it in the tree house for safekeeping.

  Homer said I should collect evidence, like a scientist, to figure out just where my mom was and to prove she was doing her best to find me. There wasn’t a lot in my notebook, but there was enough.

  One time, for instance, I heard Granny say, “No, I will not accept … not from that party!” And then the phone was slammed down. Beau says only way a con or conette can call out from prison is collect. Said it might very well have been Mary Bell looking to connect. Or another thing I put in my notepad was the day I ear hustled on Sink and Dip as they talked about a lady who’d been by the house while I was at school.

  “Said she was just a friend, looking in on her. Since when does Harry Sue have friends with dragon tattoos?”

  What I held out for was something real: an envelope with a stamp, maybe a colored square one postmarked just before my birthday. My pudding heart hoped that if Mary Bell couldn’t connect with her baby girl by telephone, she would still try to write me some letters.

  I admit that what I had in my notepad didn’t add up to much. But like Homer says, “Even crumbs look good to a starving man, Harry Sue.”

  I let him say things like that because, in a very deep way, Homer knew just exactly what I was going through. He still had a mom to fuss over him, but other than that, Homer had lost just about everything else that mattered.

  Chapter 7

  Planning his tree house was about the only thing that kept Homer alive in the year following his accident. You can bet it was a pretty big design challenge. He needed a fully equipped hospital bed complete with an emergency alert system and a control panel for all the functions. Since Homer was alone most of the time, he had to be the one to operate it. All he had was a head and shoulders, a chin, and a tongue.

  Every morning when the weather was fine, Mrs. Dinkins or Beau or some other home health aide from the county would lower the bed on a hydraulic lift and strap Homer in. They’d pin the emergency alert button onto his T-shirt so he could just reach it if he stuck out his jaw. If you want to know what I mean, stick your bottom lip out as far as you can until your bottom teeth are in front of your top lip. Then push your chin down. That far away was where they put the alert button. Otherwise, Homer would set it off when he coughed or yawned.

  With the flip of a switch, that bed was raised up, up, up, until it clicked into place in Homer’s tree house. It looked just like a tree house, too, except for the bed. Mrs. Dinkins wanted to decorate, use a ladder to climb up there and put some calendar pictures on the wall from her Heavenly Highways AAA calendar. Glossy places like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Park, but Homer would have none of it. Busters, monkeys, T-Jones, rats—none of that in Homer’s tree house. That’s why he made it so if you couldn’t climb the rope, you couldn’t visit.

  It’s a wonder Mrs. Dinkins didn’t build herself a home gym and start yokin’ up, but even she has a teaspoon full of sense. />
  The bed was directly under the picture window, the one I was regularly recruited to keep free of bird poop and wet leaves and even the occasional flattened spider or nestling. Homer thought of the window as the viewing deck of a spaceship and he didn’t appreciate me, his captain at arms, letting my duties slide.

  He always knew I was coming before my head popped through the hatch because the rope creaked on its metal hinge like the bellpull in a vampire movie.

  And I knew as soon as I pushed open the hatch that it was without a doubt a bad day. I knew because I could smell Homer’s tears. At least to me, they smell like hot pavement after rain. And I knew because his bed was flat and not raised.

  “Harry Sue,” he said in a whisper as I came up to the bed. “I think it’s gonna rain tomorrow.”

  As a rule, I don’t touch anyone. My heart, as you know, is in boot camp. But since Homer can’t feel me, I figure touching him is the same as touching a statue or maybe better yet a tree since that, too, is a living thing that can’t feel, and I don’t have any special rules against touching trees. I stood up and took his hand. It was so cold that I started rubbing it. And then I brushed his hair out of his eyes. Yes, he could feel my fingers there, but would you have left a damp red-and-brown curl tickling at his eye and him with no defense but an eyelid against it?

  “Let me get ‘Metamorphosis,’” I said quietly, reaching for the book we were reading.

  It was about a guy named Gregor Samsa and how one morning he woke up to find he’d been turned into a cockroach. Just like that. One day he was a man working some boring job trying to sell pieces of fabric and the next day … cockroach.

  Homer thought that was funny. But he felt for the guy, too, you know?

  “I wish I could get him a bed like this right next to mine,” he said, “so we could be cockroaches together.”

  I never answered statements like that, just kept quiet, looking down at Homer.

  I wish teachers would test you on the things that were most important. I want Ms. Lanier to test me on Homer’s face. He had the lightest sprinkle of sand-colored freckles across the top of his nose and the same golden sand flecks in his green eyes. His mother called them hazel, but she didn’t know what she was on about. They were green. Not bright green, like Magic Markers or the first leaves of spring, but an old green, like tall grass in August or dry moss on the edge of the woods. His hair was always shining with loose red-brown curls. When the sun came through the skylight, those little bits of burnt red danced all over his face, in his eyelashes and his eyebrows.