Through his bit Barnes sang, “And God, I know I’m—”
The machine’s surge arched Barnes’s body, heels to head, like he was being electrocuted. A Vitruvian Man test pattern appeared before his closed eyes, overlaid with the words Please Stand By. A female voice from within his mind said, “Prepare for transmission.”
4
The scent of pine, the sound of droning insects and labored breathing. His own. Barnes’s lungs burned. He found himself walking through a forest in the late afternoon, struggling over fallen logs and up and down little hills covered with crispy leaves and waving ferns. The inside of his mouth was coated with saliva and the remnants of a Slo Poke caramel sucker, or maybe a Tootsie Roll. He was tired and hot and sweating. The straps of his backpack cut into his shoulders. The weight and bulk of Freddie Cohen’s body was disorienting. Barnes felt as if he were walking underwater.
“Come on, Freddie!”
Cohen looked up to find the source of the voice. Ricky. He was standing on a ridge thirty yards ahead, sporting jeans and a white T-shirt, holding a shoebox against his hip. He smiled widely, showing front teeth that seemed too big for his mouth. Barnes felt the sensation of Freddie’s unfocused gaze. Time seemed to slow, and there was a flutter in his belly to see Ricky, alive and happy, still running through the woods, still on an adventure.
The nostalgia soon turned over to nausea. Tears pressed at Barnes’s eyes as he thought, I’m so sorry, kid.
At the sight of Barnes’s kid brother, Cohen’s pounding heart seemed to spread inside his chest, sending a tingling sensation to the extremities. It felt good to be the reason for Ricky’s smile. He quickened his pace up the ridge, smashing through the undergrowth, taking scratches and scrapes along the way.
When Barnes looked up again, Ricky was gone.
Freddie redoubled his effort to finally make the top of the ridge. He stooped over, hands on his knees, and sucked big breaths. Drops of sweat tickled his brow.
“Put your hands on your head.”
Freddie looked down the back side of the ridge to find Ricky with his fingers laced together on top of his head, mimicking breathing heavily. Barnes followed Ricky’s advice, lacing his fingers over Freddie’s greasy hair. Sure enough, the big kid’s hot lungs opened up and let in more air.
Ricky stood next to a weeping willow near the riverbank. Barnes recognized the tree; it was the only willow for a half mile in any direction in Whitehall Forest. He and Ricky would know—they had walked, ran, or stomped through every bit of these woods. Mom used to tell her grass-stained, mud-coated sons, standing happily at the trailer’s back door after boomeranging home, “You two have covered every foot and furlong of that jungle, and I’ll be damned if you don’t bring it all home with you.” The boys would snap off the willow’s flexible branches and whip the shit out of each other, running in circles, screaming and laughing, until one of them caught a face shot and claimed temporary blindness. Barnes felt the memento burn on his cheek, recalled sneering at Ricky with one eye closed, his brother pulling an oh-my-God-I’m-sorry face with clenched teeth.
Freddie started down the ridge toward Ricky’s position, stepping carefully over loose rocks and moss-covered waterlogs that crumbled underfoot. Once he reached the bottom, Freddie playfully slapped the younger boy’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “You’re so fast.”
“Let’s do this,” Ricky said. He produced a gardening trowel from his back pocket and showed it to Freddie.
Barnes recognized Mom’s trowel. It had a worn wooden handle with CB etched into the end—Cassie Barnes. She tended her patio pots with the tool along with the patch garden she had planted in their scant yard. She also used the trowel’s back as a paddle. Just seeing it made Barnes’s butt sting.
Ricky dropped to his knees and started digging at an open spot between the willow’s thick roots. To Freddie, he said, “What’d you bring?”
Freddie came down to Ricky’s height one knee at a time. He slid the backpack off his shoulders, reached inside, and pulled out a folded edition of that morning’s Detroit Free Press. “First thing is today’s paper. It proves the date.”
“That’s real smart, Freddie,” Ricky said. Their eyes met for a moment. Freddie Cohen felt dizzy about it.
“What else?” Ricky said.
“Giant-Size Fantastic Four, number four,” Freddie said, displaying the comic book wrapped in cellophane. “Don’t worry. I have another one at home. Let’s see, I’ve got this week’s TV Guide, Destro, a menu from Mancino’s, a picture of Rufus, and some duct tape.”
Ricky laughed. “You brought a picture of your dog?”
Barnes felt Freddie’s cheeks burn.
“Hey, man,” Ricky said, chuckling, “it’s all right. I’m just crackin’.”
Freddie shrugged.
“So crazy that you brought that menu,” Ricky said.
“Well, what’d you bring?” Freddie said.
Ricky opened the shoebox. “I’ve got Zandar to go with your Destro, a Twinkie, plus a couple of my dad’s smokes, but those aren’t for the time capsule.” He plucked the two Merit Ultra Lights out of the shoebox and put one behind each ear. He then pulled out a manila envelope looped closed with red string. “The rest is stuff for my brother.”
“What kind of stuff?” Freddie said.
“Aw, he’s real good at thinking things out, ya know? I figure if he finds this time capsule, I’ll give him some clues to follow.”
“Follow for what?”
Ricky winked and smiled. “That’s for me to know . . .”
Freddie rolled his eyes. “. . . and for me to suck an egg about.”
Ricky handed Freddie the shoebox. “Get it all in there and seal it up.” He went back to digging between the roots.
Freddie padded the bottom of the shoebox with the newspaper. He delicately placed the comic book on top of the paper, curling it up against the side walls. He picked up Ricky’s manila envelope and sniffed it. Barnes found the scent of his family’s trailer, plus the smell of Magic Marker from where Ricky had written “Johnny” on one side. Freddie placed the envelope over the comic book, added the TV Guide and the menu, and then piled on the G.I. Joe action figures, the Twinkie, and finally the picture of Rufus, his Maltese. In the picture, the dog was sitting on the couch in the Cohen family living room, its jaw lowered onto its paws.
Freddie closed the shoebox top. He picked up the duct tape roll and sniffed at the edge, found that pleasant little glue scent. He carefully sealed the shoebox edges. He then wrapped the tape all around the box, turning it into an impenetrable gray fortress.
“Ready?” Ricky said. He’d dug the hole a couple of feet deep, having chopped through a wrist-size root with his trowel.
“Won’t the roots grow through the box?” Freddie said.
“Not this close to the tree,” Ricky said. He looked up. “Look at the canopy. It goes all the way out.” He pointed to the edge where the great willow’s branches ended, but Freddie never turned his head. He studied the movements of Ricky’s arm and his shoulder, the pulsing veins near his neck. “Any new roots will grow out there.”
The boys buried the time capsule and tamped the dirt flat above the hole. Afterward, Ricky picked up the duct tape and turned his back on Freddie. He pulled a Magic Marker from his back pocket.
“What’s up?” Freddie said.
“Hold on a sec,” Ricky said. He peeled off a long strip of tape and began wrapping it around something small that Barnes couldn’t see. He stopped for a moment, wrote something on the inside of the tape, and put the marker back in his pocket before he kept wrapping. Once he was done he threw the tape roll into the open zipper of Freddie’s backpack and began climbing the willow.
“Be careful,” Freddie said. He stepped beneath the tree and looked up as Ricky climbed. Ricky was quick from branch to branch, holding whatever he’d wound in tape between his teeth. He got so high up that Freddie lost him in the mix of branches.
For several mi
nutes Freddie was alone, the time capsule beneath his feet and only the sound of the rushing water to keep him company. He felt sweaty. He wondered if Ricky might be up for taking a dip to cool off but pushed the thought away when he imagined that Ricky would bust his balls if he kept his shirt on. He recalled his family trip to Virginia Beach earlier that summer. He’d kept his shirt on while wading in the ocean because Dad said he had bitch tits. “Take your shirt off, Freddie. No one cares about your bitch tits.”
“Leave him alone, Don!”
Ricky came down the tree. The duct-taped item was gone. They went down to the riverbank and sat on two boulders, shoes dangling perilously close to the water. Ricky popped the cigarettes into his mouth and produced a mini Bic lighter. He lit both and then handed one to Freddie.
Freddie puffed without inhaling. He tasted the acrid smoke, felt the heat of the orange-hot cherry. Barnes’s throat burned. Freddie blew out, casual as can be.
“You never smoked before, eh?” Ricky said.
“Of course I have,” Freddie said. He took another short puff and blew it out.
Ricky nodded. His cigarette was lipped, eyes squinting like an old pro. He took a drag, scissored the cigarette between two fingers to pull it from his mouth, and drew his knees up to his chest. “This is the spot me and my brother come to sometimes,” he said. “Used to catch fish around here. Brook trout and little chubs, ya know?”
Yeah, Barnes thought. They used to cook those brookies on sticks, skin on, over a little campfire and eat them like corncobs. Just a little salt and pepper was all they needed. The packets stolen from Mancino’s earlier that morning.
Freddie nodded.
“Last summer one of those chubs swallowed a hook and we couldn’t get it out. The fish died, and now Johnny doesn’t want to fish anymore. He’s sensitive, I guess.”
Barnes harrumphed. The little liar. It was Ricky who’d cried over that dead chub. They’d tried like hell to pull out the hook as the damn fish gasped and twitched, but its guts just came out with the hook, turning it inside out.
Freddie said, “It’s okay to be sensitive, ain’t it?”
Ricky offered no reply.
Silence wedged its way between them like an uninvited guest. The two boys smoked and stared until Ricky took a final drag from his cigarette and flicked it into the water. It sizzled at the surface, bobbed under, came back up, and was carried downstream. He stood and dusted himself off. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Freddie said. He threw his cigarette into the water and struggled up from his boulder to a standing position.
“What’s up?” Ricky said.
“I just . . . I just want to stay a little longer, if that’s okay?”
“It’s Thursday, man,” Ricky said. “Mom’s making tacos.”
“Just a little longer,” Freddie said. “Come on over here.” He took Ricky by the hand. Barnes noted how cold his brother’s hand felt. All the time, no matter what, Ricky’s hands were cold. Mom used to tell him, “Cold hands, warm heart.”
Ricky yanked his hand from Freddie’s grip but followed the older boy back to the willow.
“I want you to stand with your back against the tree, okay?”
“Why?” Ricky said.
“It’s a game,” Freddie said. “Just trust me.”
Ricky rolled his eyes. He went to the tree and stood with his back against the trunk. He spread his arms and raised his eyebrows. “Now what?”
Barnes’s palms were suddenly clammy. Freddie rubbed them against the front of his shorts, felt the lump of the coin purse he carried in his front pocket. “Close your eyes, okay?”
Ricky’s hands fell back to his sides. His eyebrows knitted. “No way, dude. You’re gonna sock me.”
“I swear to God I won’t.”
“Gimme the duct tape.”
“What?”
“Gimme that duct tape so I know you won’t tape me to the tree.”
Freddie rummaged through his backpack, found the tape, and handed it over.
Ricky held the roll with two hands in front of his waist. He closed his eyes. “Okay, so what’s this game?”
Freddie Cohen moved close to Ricky. He stood for a moment, just watching the younger boy’s face, watching him swallow, watching his eyes move beneath the lids. He smelled of cheap fabric softener, something like grapefruit. Waves of fear pulsated through Barnes’s body. Freddie’s hands shook, his knees trembled. Barnes’s mouth still tasted of smoke.
Freddie leaned in and kissed Ricky’s lips.
When it was done, the older boy stepped back.
With his eyes still closed Ricky said, “You shouldn’t have done that, Freddie.”
“I’m sorry,” Freddie said.
Ricky opened his eyes. “You should have asked me.”
“You would have said no.”
“You’re right. I would have said no. And you wouldn’t have had to trick me to find out I’m not gay.”
“Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
“I’m mad at you.”
Freddie produced the coin purse from his pocket. It was a black plastic purse with a Batman logo on the outside. “Here,” Freddie said, “take it. It’s all I’ve got.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Then what do you want? You can’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t tell anyone.”
“Promise me,” Freddie said.
“No.”
Ricky pushed off from the tree and started to walk away, but Freddie grabbed his arm and stopped him.
“Promise me!”
“Promise not to tell anyone you’re a fag? Is that what you want?”
Freddie threw Ricky back against the tree. “I’m not a fag!” His heart pounded crazily inside Barnes’s chest.
“Then what am I not supposed to tell anyone?” Ricky said. He offered that half-cocked know-it-all smile Barnes knew all too well. That smile that made you love him and want to smack him at the same time. Freddie felt that pang of love, that desire to smack. “You’re going to tell, I know it.”
Ricky stared off.
“Please, don’t.”
Ricky pursed his lips.
Freddie punched him.
Ricky’s head slammed back against the tree. His body slumped and then toppled forward, face-flat in the leaves.
“Oh no,” Freddie said. “Oh God.” He turned Ricky over, found he was breathing, saw the mouse forming above the younger boy’s eye. He lightly slapped Ricky’s cheek. “Ricky. Come on. Wake up.”
Ricky stirred but didn’t open his eyes.
Freddie stood up and backed away. He collected his things and stuffed them into his backpack. He threw it over his shoulders and began to walk off. He turned back for a final glance and saw his Batman coin purse on the ground near Ricky. He ran back, picked it up, and started back toward the ridge.
Barnes’s breathing was strained when Freddie reached the top. He headed back the way he came. It was dusk now, and the woods looked different. A red hue on everything. Crickets chirred. Freddie made his way down the ridge and stuck close to the river as he had on the way in, still clutching the coin purse. The breeze picked up, carrying a scent that seemed out of place. Something plastic-y, like the Bondo auto body repair kit Dad used on that old Camaro he was always working on. There was a coppery, oily scent, too.
A cracking branch stopped Freddie cold. The crickets went silent. Leaves rustled as something moved through the trees. The sound had come from across the river.
Barnes looked over to find a six-foot Eddie Able standing at the riverbank.
Freddie blinked. His jaw fell open. He dropped his coin purse.
Eddie Able was dressed as a plumber, but he was a monster, Freddie knew. Not the kind of monster with fangs and claws and scaly skin. Not the kind that might howl or scream bloody murder in the night. No. This was a thinking monster, one smart enough to disguise the horror that it really was, clever enough to wrap itself in a vision that appealed to the innocen
ce of its prey. Its blond hair was shellacked on top of a big fiberglass head. Its pupils were black mesh designed to be seen through from inside out. The evening sun caught a glint of the human eyes set deep within. A little red patch above the breast read EDDIE in stitched white. It wore big brown work boots the size of clown shoes. A brass zipper trailed down the front of the monster’s outfit, and its gloves were those puffy, four-fingered deals cartoon characters wore. Only these gloves weren’t white, but red.
But then again, no. The gloves weren’t technically red. They were white gloves that’d been splattered red.
And they were dripping.
The Eddie thing raised one of his splotchy red gloves to its fiberglass mouth, extended a thick finger, and mimicked Shhh. When it pulled the finger away it left behind a sticky red line from its button nose to its dimpled chin.
Freddie ran.
Darkness and silence.
“End of transmission.”
The Vitruvian Man test pattern.
Please Stand By.
5
Barnes lay on the table beneath Ziti’s, eyes still closed. His body was overwhelmed with fright. He felt reduced to a child, felt the urge to run and hide, to find a blanket and crawl under it. He recalled the only other time he’d been frightened by Eddie Able. The doll had recently been introduced to the public, and with so much sales success there was an afternoon TV show quickly slapped together. To add to the excitement, it was announced that the show would be taped at WXON studios in Detroit, where Eddie Able’s regional sales had gone off the charts.
After weeks of waiting for the premiere, Johnny and Ricky sat through the first episode on the edges of their seats, eyes riveted to the seventeen-inch screen in their trailer living room. The show’s format was similar to that of Bozo the Clown or Howdy Doody. A life-size Eddie played games and interacted with an audience of children as well as his campy counterparts. When the show was nearly over and it was time to sign off, Eddie turned to the camera and the stage lights dimmed, leaving him alone in the spotlight. The camera panned closer and closer while he spoke. “So long, kids,” Eddie said. “See you next time.” He waggled a finger as his head began to take up the entire screen. “Don’t grow up too fast, and hey, come to think of it”—he tapped his lips to mimic thinking, tilted his head, and then looked directly into the camera with those blacked-out eyes—“wouldn’t it be bliss if you never got old, like me?”
Machine City: A Thriller (Detective Barnes Book 2) Page 4