Flyers (9781481414449)

by Hayes, Daniel

  Bo thought about that. “Maybe it’s more like this. Say you’re a runner and you strap on ankle weights because you know it’ll make your legs stronger. And then as soon as you get out on the track, you forget you did it. You look around at everybody else running around without ankle weights and you start thinking how unfair it is. Why should you have to wear ankle weights when nobody else does? And then you start using up energy feeling sorry for yourself, and maybe even blaming other people for your predicament. And it’s all because you don’t remember you’re the one who put the weights there in the first place.”

  “And if you did remember . . . ?”

  Bo shrugged. “You wouldn’t feel bad about them anymore,” he said. “You’d start to see how they were making you stronger.”

  I have to admit this kind of thinking appealed to me—the idea of each person being in his own driver’s seat. It was what I liked about Emerson and the whole “Self-Reliance” thing. It seemed like this could turn into one of our all-night discussions, so I figured I might as well get a glass of water. “You want some?” I asked Bo.

  “With a twist,” he said, and cocked an eyebrow.

  “How about I twist your head,” I said, giving him a jab on the way out.

  As I padded down the hall toward the upstairs bathroom, I thought about Rachel some more. If Bo was right, then Rachel’s real battle was with herself, not with her father. I wondered if that were true of all of us, if all our battles were really with ourselves.

  I was coming out of the bathroom and lost in this line of thought when I heard something from downstairs. At first I thought maybe Pop was down there putting on the Pogues or something. But as I stood there listening, I could make out the faint sound of snoring coming from his room. I froze for a second, trying to decide if I should investigate on my own or go back and get Bo first. Then, figuring it was probably just Ethan, who had a habit of sneaking out late at night to check on Cappy, I set down the glasses and headed for the stairs, but tiptoeing, just in case. When I reached the bottom and rounded the corner, I saw some light coming from the kitchen. I crept forward, slower and more careful than ever. Before I was halfway there, I heard a little thunk and the kitchen went dark. From years of personal experience I recognized that thunk as our refrigerator door closing and it explained why the kitchen went dark as well. I picked up my pace a little.

  Just before I reached the doorway to the kitchen I heard the back door close. Figuring that Ethan had grabbed a snack and left to visit Cappy, I flicked on the light, planning to scoot across the kitchen and go out to the barn with him. I hadn’t gone even a step when I ran head-on into him.

  We both almost had heart attacks on the spot.

  Sixteen

  Between almost having that heart attack in the kitchen and then staying up half the night discussing karma and dharma and reaping what you sow, it’s not surprising that I woke up late and on the wrong side of the bed. Running might have helped but I didn’t really feel like it, and Ethan already had Cappy out, which probably meant he’d given up on the idea too. I started the day feeling off balance—a little antsy, edgy, and thinking more than ever that something wasn’t as it should be. One of the things that kept replaying in my head was how Ethan had acted when I ran into him. Not the way he’d jumped, which was understandable, but how he’d behaved afterward: not looking me in the eye, and acting like he was in a big hurry to get back to bed. Of course I probably came across as the Grand Inquisitor, wanting to know why I’d heard the back door close if he hadn’t been going outside, and if he’d just raided the refrigerator why he wasn’t carrying any food. I never did get any answers.

  Bo had left early for the country club, and Pop—after serving up his usual Sunday brunch—had loaded Ethan into the car and headed for the hospital to check in on Mr. Lindstrom. I could have gone with them, or I could have gone and hung around the pro shop with Bo, but I thought at the time it might be nice to hang around the house alone. It wasn’t.

  I tried studying a little biology until I couldn’t take it anymore, and then decided the lawn could use mowing and charged into that. After I’d bounced around the yard on our Cub Cadet for an hour and then spent another fifteen minutes trimming with the push mower, the whole yard was in tip-top shape and I was as antsy as ever. As I was putting the push mower back into the barn, I saw Ray McPherson roll by slowly in his old Buick. I waved and he waved back. Ray had been driving by more than usual, it seemed to me, since Rosasharn had done that deranged-seal act on the hood of his car. I figured he was hoping to catch a glimpse of what he probably thought was some kind of missing link running loose in these parts. That might have been funny if I hadn’t been busy wondering what the deal was around here myself.

  I went upstairs and took another shot at studying biology, which lasted all of about two minutes, and then tried reading my Emerson book, which lasted about fifteen. Next I took a walk over to the pond, hoping that being out in nature might help me to unwind a little. After sitting on an old log staring out across the water and fidgeting for a half hour or so, I continued on down the lane and circled around until I was standing in front of Mr. Lindstrom’s house. I scanned the upstairs windows for a minute to see if everything looked the way it had been when I was there with Jeremy the day before. The shades were all up, and the house sat looking bleached-out and sad in the afternoon sun. It seemed like a place that had been deserted for months, not just days.

  When my eyes came back to the ground, I noticed that Mr. Lindstrom’s lawn was looking pretty sad and neglected too, being about three times more overgrown than ours had been, so I decided to take care of that while I was there. I went into the storage shed that was attached to the side of his house and found his old Toro mower—power, but one of the antique jobs with a roll of curved blades that turn over a stationary cutter bar. It was crude, but I’d seen it work, which it did pretty well, at least for clipping, although it didn’t chop the grass at all so it wasn’t great for mulching. Not that Mr. Lindstrom gave two hoots about that. I checked to make sure it had enough gas, then wrapped the old pull rope around whatever the thing you wrap it around is called and gave it a yank. It sputtered a few times but didn’t really catch until I found the choke and flicked it closed. Then one more pull and it started up and ran like a charm.

  It took me a few minutes to get the hang of the thing. The rotating blades and the wheels weren’t geared separately, so there was no moving the wheels without the blades going too. That meant if you wanted to cross the driveway you had to raise the handle up high to get the cutter bar out of the dirt or you’d be firing rocks and dirt into your shins, not to mention the damage you’d be doing to the blades and cutter bar in the process. And when you went into heavy grass and it started to plug, you played it just the opposite, pushing down on the handle, which raised the drive wheels off the ground and gave things a chance to clear. Before I learned this I’d stalled it out a couple of times.

  By the time I’d made a couple of swipes back and forth in front of the house I felt like an old pro, really booking through the lighter patches of grass and letting it feed more slowly where the grass turned to something more like hay.

  As I was in the middle of a U-turn after my third or forth swipe, I took one of my many glances up at the house, and what I saw, or at least what I thought I saw, sent a jolt straight up my back. I could’ve sworn I’d seen a figure in an upstairs window. I hadn’t seen it dead-on, so I wasn’t left with any clear image of it in my mind. It was more of a sense of something being there as my eyes flicked over the side of the house; first it was there and then, as my eyes flicked back, it was gone. And to make things even eerier, the window in question was the one to Andy’s room.

  My first thought, if fear can be considered a thought, was that I should leave the mower right where it sat and make serious tracks out of there, and I almost did just that. But when I looked at the window again, sitting there so still and innocent in the middle of that desolate house, I began t
o question whether I’d actually seen anything in the first place. Imagination can be a funny thing—even while my heart was still racing, I knew it could have been nothing more than the way the afternoon light had hit the window as I was making the turn or some kind of reflection of the big box elder. Finally I convinced myself that the whole thing was just my imagination working overtime and decided to hold my ground. It may have been a matter of pride. It’d been one thing running home from that place like a scared rabbit at night—I didn’t feel like doing the same thing in broad daylight. I kept mowing, but I felt good and creepy all while I was doing it, and with the noise of the mower making it impossible to hear if anybody was approaching me, every second I was half expecting something to come up and tap me on the shoulder, which, if it had happened, probably would have done permanent damage to my nervous system. I kept a sharp eye on the house, and in doing so, managed to start plugging up the mower again on a regular basis. A half hour later when I finished, I was drenched in sweat, and it wasn’t entirely from the work.

  I put the mower away and closed the shed door. Then, feeling that I’d done my duty, I started down the lane toward the road. Halfway there, I turned and studied the house again. Now this would be the kind of scene in a movie where the person would get the idea to go back and check things out and the audience would all be thinking, “No, you idiot! Get out of there while you can!” Only in the movie the audience knows there’s something strange and deadly going on, and I didn’t—not the deadly part anyway. So my curiosity got the better of me (the same as it always does everyone in the movies) and within two minutes I found myself standing at the front door trying to decide whether to go in. Looking down, I noticed the key was already in my hand. Since I hadn’t even remembered pulling it out of my pocket, I took this as some kind of a sign. Before I could talk myself out of it, I opened the door.

  Daytime or not, I had to admit it felt pretty spooky being in there, and I wished Bo or Jeremy or Pop or somebody had been with me. As I headed slowly toward the staircase, I thought of Clutzy’s ghost again—only this time I wasn’t laughing.

  At first I was kind of tiptoeing up the stairs, and then I decided I might better make a little noise. In case somebody (or something) was there, that’d give him (it) a chance to get out of my way. Any way you looked at it, what I was doing didn’t make sense. There I was, searching the house to see if I’d find anything, and at the same time making noise so that whatever might be there would hide or sneak out before I found it. Of course, I kept telling myself the place was empty except for me, but the way my heart was racing proved I just wasn’t buying it.

  I made it to the closed door of Rachel’s room without seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary. I thought about going inside, but decided Andy’s room was the one I needed to look at first. Until I’d checked it out, I knew, my heart would continue trying to beat its way out through my rib cage.

  I moved down the hall slowly, tiptoeing again for some reason even though I’d just decided making noise was safer. The door to Andy’s room was closed, which is the way we’d left it. I reached for the knob and turned it in slow motion. Pushing the door open gradually, I scanned the room without stepping into it. Then, by sheer force of will, I leaned in and checked behind the doorway, letting out an audible sigh of relief when I didn’t find anything lurking there.

  Once in the room I started to feel a little better. Everything looked just the way we’d left it. I went over and looked out the window at the newly mowed lawn. I smiled as I pictured myself down there shaking in my boots, thinking something was watching me from where I now stood. I smiled even more as I thought about the ghost noises Jeremy would have been making if he’d been there with me.

  A few minutes later I found myself back at Andy’s desk studying his school picture again. This was the third time I’d seen it, and I was really starting to feel as though I knew this kid, and not only just knew him, but kind of liked him too—thinking that if I’d been around when he was growing up we’d probably have been good friends. And even though I’d never even met the guy, I started feeling a little sad—as if I missed him, missed having him around.

  I reached again for the picture hanging on the bulletin board above his desk, the one taken out by the old Rexleigh Bridge, and I had the same feeling of sadness all over again, thinking how it would have been nice to have had this pleasant-faced kid for a neighbor, and how he could have shown me about working on cars and like that, and how if he was around now he could have been in our films, and then his life—the way he sounded and looked and reacted to things—would have been somehow preserved. I had a strong feeling he would have fit right in with us and would have gotten a kick out of Rosasharn’s antics and Jeremy’s sarcasm. I had no reason to believe any of these things except for the few pictures I’d seen and the nice things Pop had said about him, but I believed them nonetheless.

  I set the Rexleigh Bridge picture down next to his school picture the way I’d done the day before, and as I compared them one last time a sudden thought hit me like a jolt out of the blue. It dawned on me I’d never put the picture back on the bulletin board the day before. I’d studied it, set it next to the other picture, and then Jeremy’d started talking to me and we’d left. I was sure of that. And yet when I showed up today the picture’d been hanging up again. As if someone felt it belonged there!

  I turned quickly and looked around the room again. Everything still looked the same but . . . I thought for a second. Hadn’t Jeremy left that car magazine he’d dug out of the closet on Andy’s bed? If he had, it wasn’t there now. My eyes went over to the closet, which was open just a crack. That’s probably the way it was when I’d walked in, probably the way Jeremy’d left it the day before when he finished scrounging around in there, but I couldn’t be sure. All I was sure of was that the snapshot had been moved, and probably the magazine, and that meant I might not be alone. I started to back out of the room, never once taking my eyes off that closet door, ready to take off like a shot if I even suspected I saw it move.

  Once out in the hallway, I picked up my pace considerably, took the stairs two at a time, hit the door, and was gone.

  Seventeen

  I was halfway home and still moving at a pretty good clip when Ray McPherson pulled up next to me. “Hey there, Gabey,” he said, leaning out his window. “How’s she goin’?”

  Being called Gabey wasn’t high on my list of concerns at the moment. Besides, Ray had called me that my whole life, and it was head and shoulders above Jeremy’s “Gabe-boy.”

  “Not bad,” I answered. “How about you?”

  “Can’t complain,” he said, and then followed with, “Don’t do no good anyhow. You know what I mean?”

  Our conversation continued at about this caliber for a few minutes, and then Ray pulled it around to what he really wanted to talk about. “Tell me something, Gabey. You notice anything squirrelly going on around here lately?”

  The question didn’t take me totally by surprise, but I still didn’t know how to answer it. Ray obviously had in mind Rosasharn’s performance on the hood of his car, and as far as I was concerned the further we stayed away from that subject, the better. And as far as opening up to Ray and sharing all the troubling things I’d been noticing lately . . . well, I wasn’t up for that either.

  “Like what?” I said lamely.

  Ray looked up and down the road and off to both sides before saying anything more. “Get in,” he said finally. “You heading for home?”

  I told him I was and walked around to the pas senger side and climbed in. Ray just wasn’t the type you said “Thanks, but I’d rather walk” to.

  “You hear what happened to me a few weeks ago?” Ray said, kind of making a question out of it and kind of not, as he dropped the shifting lever to “drive” and gave the car some gas.

  I nodded, not daring to offer any more than that. For all I knew, he could have already found out that I was one of the ones involved in that whole fiasco a
nd had been cruising my road hoping to catch me alone so he could settle the score.

  “Huh?” he said, giving me a poke. At first I thought maybe it was a “You lying to me, boy?” kind of “huh,” but then I realized he’d been looking out the window and hadn’t seen me nod.

  “I heard,” I said.

  “That sonavabitch was on my car like a cheap suit,” he told me. “Ya see the friggin’ dents it made up there? Check ‘em out.”

  I took that as an order and leaned forward to get a look. You’d have to be more familiar with the various dents scattered around Ray’s car than I was to know which were the ones Rosasharn had contributed. Even so, I didn’t feel like being implicated in causing any of them. After I’d studied the hood for what I thought was the proper amount of time and with the proper look of commiseration, I nodded again.

  “Huh?” he said, and gave my arm another poke.

  “Yeah,” I answered. I sincerely hoped if he was leading up to the notion that those dents would have to be paid for, he was thinking in terms of money, not some kind of physical atonement. I looked over and studied him with quite a bit more interest than I’d studied the hood with. His eyes were still out on surveillance, sweeping across the fields and woods on both sides of us.

  “There was two of them sons-o’-bitches,” Ray said finally after he’d pulled his passenger wheels onto the lawn in front of my house and for the first time turned his full attention to me. “One of ’em jumped in front of me and then landed on my hood and did that.” He jabbed a thumb out toward his hood. “The other one run off into the trees. And with two-to-one odds I figured it was time to barrel-ass outta there, which is exactly what I did, and you’da done the same.”