The Schwa Was Here ab-1

by Нил Шустерман

  As I brought back the last of the dogs, I caught him in a rare moment. He was petting Charity, and talking to her gently, lov­ingly saying all those sweet, stupid things we say to pets when we think no one’s looking. He caught me watching him and abruptly stopped.

  “Don’t you have some dogs to walk?”

  “All done.”

  “Then why are you still here? It’s not payday.”

  I shrugged. “I thought I’d wait until the new nurse got here. Maybe eat some of my dad’s focaccia.”

  “It’s gone.”

  “You ate it all?”

  “It was too good for you anyway,” he said. “You’d just wolf it down without tasting it.”

  “Maybe we should call you Gluttony,” I said. At that, Glut­tony came over to me, hope in his eyes.

  He laughed. “Now he’s your problem.”

  I decided to take a chance. I had seen a moment of tender­ness rise to the surface a few moments ago. I thought that maybe I might be able to ask Crawley something and actually get a thoughtful answer.

  “Do you remember him?” I asked.

  “Remember who?”

  “The Schwa.”

  “Why would I want to?”

  “Because,” I told him, “I really think he’s starting to disappear.

  Crawley just stared at me coldly. I sighed.

  “Forget it,” I said. “You probably think I’m an idiot.”

  “That’s beside the point,” he said. Then he stood up out of his wheelchair and grabbed a cane that was leaning against the wall. I had never seen him get up from his wheelchair before. It was like watching one of those faith healings. Crawley strode toward me slowly, holding the cane tightly. He was taller than I realized. He took about five or six steps, then stopped right in front of me.

  “I don’t recall his face,” Crawley said. “But I do remember him being here.”

  He took one more step, and then had me help him sit on the sofa.

  “I didn’t know you could walk.”

  “As I said when you so rudely broke into my home two months ago, the wheelchair is only temporary.” He got himself comfortable on the sofa, and I sat in the plush chair across from him.

  “I’m sure you think it’s a miracle that I can walk,” he said. “Well, I believe we make our own miracles.” He leaned his cane gently against the edge of the sofa. “I also believe we make our own disasters. If your friend is disappearing, as you say, then he’s doing it to himself.”

  A pack of Afghans frolicked past, knocking down the cane. I picked it up and gave it to him again. “He’s trying not to. He’s trying to be visible.”

  “Then he’s not trying the right way. The universe has no sym­pathy, and we’re never rewarded for doing things the improper way.” Prudence came over for attention, and Crawley began to scratch her behind the neck. “If your friend continues on his path of self-destructive anonymity, you should minimize your own losses. Cut him loose. Forget about him.”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “Spare me your sentimentality,” said Crawley. “Friends can be replaced.”

  “No, they can’t!”

  Instead of answering me right away, he looked down at the dog, which was so utterly content to have a fraction of his at­tention. “Four years ago,” he said, “Prudence was hit by a car and killed.”

  He said it so bluntly, the news actually made me gasp.

  “So,” he continued, “I fired my dog walker, and I contacted a breeder. Prudence was replaced within three weeks, and life went on. As I said, friends can be replaced.”

  I was so horrified by this, I couldn’t say a thing.

  “All of my dogs are second generation,” he told me. “Some even third. All sins, all virtues. It’s the way I like it.”

  “That’s wrong,” I said. It was twisted in some basic way—like those people who have their pets stuffed and stick them in front of the fireplace like a piece of furniture. They don’t even have real eyes anymore. How could you stand looking at a stuffed pet with marbles for eyes? And how could you treat pets and people like objects to be replaced? “More than wrong—it’s kind of sick.”

  “Think what you want, but it’s the way the world works.”

  “What do you know about the world? You’re not a part of it—you live outside of it, in your own weird little universe.”

  He grabbed his cane, reached across the table, and poked me in the chest. “You’re nervy,” he said. “I used to like that about you, but now it’s rubbing me the wrong way.”

  I stood up. Suddenly I didn’t feel like being in the same room with him. I didn’t feel like being on the same continent. “Now I know why you’re so afraid of dying,” I told him just be­fore I left. “Because you know when the time comes, you won’t be rewarded for living your life 'the improper way.’”

  As I left, I thought about Lexie’s plan to traumatize him for his own good, and took a twisted kind of pleasure knowing that some sort of suffering was in store for him. I had a suspi­cion, though, that Crawley would be a hard egg to crack.

  ***

  I knew I wasn’t going to sleep much that night, so I didn’t even try. If the Schwa Effect was hereditary, then the key to every­thing was finding out what happened to his mom. The thing is, if the whole problem revolved around not being noticed, how could we find an eyewitness? If the Schwa Effect led to being universally forgotten, how could I hope that anyone would re­member?

  Our little dowsing session with Ed Neebly and our conversa­tion with the supermarket manager had been about as helpful as a New Jersey road sign, and if you’ve ever been there, you know the signs don’t tell you the exit you’re coming up to, they only point out the exits you’ve just missed. It puts parents in very foul moods—and since you’re probably there to visit rela­tives, their mood was pretty touch and go to begin with. As for my own parents, I’m sure they would have blown a gasket if they knew what I was about to do.

  I had never been the kind of kid to sneak out late at night. I was more the kind of guy who would come home ridiculously late and suffer the consequences, but once I was home for the night, sneaking out was never an option. I’ve got this screen saver that I don’t use very much, on account of how lame it is. It’s a cartoon of a computer wearing a nightcap and snoring. But if you darken the screen so no one can see the picture, and you set the volume just right, you’d swear there was a real per­son sleeping in the room. The pillows I had shoved under my blanket weren’t very convincing, but add the snoring from my computer and suddenly it was like I had a roommate. I quietly slipped out, to catch a bus toward Canarsie.

  The butcher had looked away.

  At the time I was so involved with what Ed Neebly was do­ing I didn’t think much of it, but my mind kept coming back to that moment. The butcher hadn’t just turned to look at some­thing else, he had purposely avoided my gaze. He knew some­thing. The chances of me finding him at this hour of the night were slim, but then I wouldn’t have much luck during the day either, because of the manager. The manager had gotten so paranoid by the end of our questioning that he sent all the stock clerks to get rid of expired dairy products, in case we were taking notes for some major expose. He had banned Lexie and me from the store—even though Lexie threatened to sic the 4-S Club after him.

  Waldbaum’s was a twenty-four-hour supermarket, I guess so if you had a sudden need for hair gel or Haagen-Dazs at three in the morning, relief was only minutes away. That also meant that I could avoid the manager during the off-hours—and chances were, if the butcher knew something about the Schwa’s mother, other people who worked there knew something, too.

  It was almost midnight by the time I got there. I walked down the frozen-food aisle and turned left, heading toward the meat department. The little counter where the butcher took custom orders was unlit—but that didn’t necessarily mean no one was there. Supermarkets had whole back areas like they’ve got at airports, where employees hang out, rummaging through lost
luggage and stuff. Not that lost luggage would be in a su­permarket, but considering how airlines work, it wouldn’t sur­prise me to find socks from yesterday’s flight to Cleveland in with the veal chops.

  In the dark display case, the unpackaged meat was arranged like perfect works of art. Pork chops were layered in a left-right alternating pattern. Rib-eye steaks were neatly pushed together like interlocking floor tiles. Someone had taken great care with this meat. It was weird to think that a butcher would care enough to be so particular. When you think about it, being a butcher has got to be one of the most unpleasant jobs in the world, except for maybe those ladies who cut toenails. I mean, who’d want to spend all day chopping and grinding animals into little pieces? But then, on the other hand, it probably gives guys that would otherwise be ax murderers a healthy outlet. As it turned out, this theory was about to be proven.

  I heard a noise coming from one of those “employee-only” back rooms. It was a high-pitched whine, like a vacuum sucking helium. I followed that sound through a pair of floppy double doors and found myself in a white tile and stainless-steel room, full of meat-cutting equipment. The place had an unfriendly fermented smell, like an old refrigerator crossed with my brother Frankie’s feet. A guy in goggles and a stained white smock stood at the far end of the room at a stainless-steel table, cut­ting up a side of beef with what looked like a band saw. He did it with such concentration, you’d think it was brain surgery.

  This was the last guy in the world you’d want to see near a sharp object. He was tall but hunched, his neck sticking for­ward at an angle that made my own neck hurt just watching him. His hair was thin and unkempt. I couldn’t tell if it was white or just very, very blond. I could see patches of red scalp through his hair.

  “Excuse me,” I said, but he didn’t hear me. He just kept on cutting the meat. The machine let off a grating whine whenever it hit the bone.

  “Excuse me,” I said again, a bit louder this time.

  Without looking at me, he turned off the saw, and it buzzed itself silent. “You are not supposed to be here!”

  He had a strange accent. Almost German, but not quite.

  “I just want to ask you a few questions. You’re the butcher here, right?”

  “I am the night butcher,” he said.

  Okay, now here’s the part of the movie where a kid with any brains gets out of there, unless he wants to end up in neatly arranged portions in the display case, because no kid with any brains is gonna stand alone in a room full of knives, saws, and grinders with anyone who calls himself the “Night Butcher.”

  “You come to taunt me more, eh?” he said, raising his voice. “You and your friends. Letting the air out of my tires, scribbling rude words on my windows. This I know! You think I don’t?”

  “I can see it’s not a good time. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  I backed up, but missed the door and knocked over a broom. The handle hit the floor with a nasty thwok, and my heart ran to hide somewhere in my left shoe.

  “No!” he said. “You have business with me, you tell me now. We settle this here!”

  He came toward me. I could see that his neck was scaly, and red as raw meat.

  “We have nothing to settle,” I told him. “I didn’t let the air out of your tires, or anything. Trust me, I’ve got better things to do than mess with the Night Butcher.”

  He scratched his neck thoughtfully. “And I should believe you?”

  “Yeah.”

  He took off his goggles to get a better look at me. His eyes were as wild as his hair. Then he said, “I believe you. For now. What is it you want?”

  “I’m trying to help a friend,” I said. “How long have you worked for Waldbaum’s?”

  “Flemish!” he shouted.

  “Huh?”

  “You are wondering about my accent. It is Flemish. I come from Belgium. All you know from Belgium is waffles and chocolate. Now you know me.”

  “Great, got it—waffles, chocolate, and you. So how long have you worked for Waldbaum’s?”

  “Nineteen years. I was here when cuts were thick, and you could still get a lamb chop with a nice big fillet, back when meat was meat.” He looked off for a moment, nostalgic for the good old days, then said, “Gunther!”

  “Huh?”

  “You are wondering what is my name.”

  “Well, not really, but thanks for telling me.” This was the only human being I’d ever met who had more trouble than me stay­ing on the subject. “Did you always work in this store, or did you get moved around?”

  “Always here,” he said.

  “Good. So you were here about nine years ago when a little boy got left in a shopping cart.”

  Suddenly his whole attitude changed. “No.” He turned back to the beef he had been cutting. “I was not on duty yet. I do not remember.”

  “If you don’t remember, how could you know you weren’t on duty?”

  He scratched his peeling neck. Little flakes fell to the cutting table. I’m never eating meat from Waldbaum’s again.

  “Eczema,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “You are wondering about my neck. Why I scratch.”

  “What you do with your neck is your business.”

  He stopped scratching and looked at me for an uncomfort­ably long time. “You are this little boy from the shopping cart?” he asked.

  “No, but I’m his friend.”

  Gunther nodded, then went to remove his smock and washed his hands. “This friend of yours. He is okay now?”

  “Not really,” I told him. I thought of what story I could make up to get Gunther to spill his guts, and then I figured the truth would do the job just fine. “He thinks his mother disappeared into thin air, and he never got over it.”

  Gunther sighed. “I am very sorry to hear that.” He pulled up a chair and sat down, then pulled up one for me. “Sit.”

  Although I really didn’t want to, I knew I might finally be onto something. I sat down, and Gunther took his time before he spoke again.

  “You have to understand, this was none of my business. I had nothing to do with it, I only saw.”

  Bingo! “So you saw what happened! She didn’t disappear after all, did she?”

  Gunther sighed. “She did disappear, in a manner of speak­ing,” he said. “And she was not the only one who disappeared that night.”

  I waited for more, but then he sat back, thought for a moment, and said, “No.” He stood and returned to his meat cutting.

  “What do you mean ’no’? You can’t start and not finish.”

  He slammed the side of beef back down on the cutting table. “I tell this story only once. Your friend should be here when I do. Bring your friend and I will tell you both about that day.”

  Then he gave me four pork chops, cut thick like they used to in the days when meat was meat, and he sent me on my way.

  17. A Traumatic Experience I’ll Live to Regret, Assuming I Live

  Just as she had promised, Lexie sprung a top-secret trauma attack on her grandfather. It came without warning (without me being warned, that is) the morning after my visit to the Night Butcher. It was Saturday. A day I should have been able to sleep late. As I was tossing and turning all night with unpleasant dreams about meat, I was dead to the world when the phone rang. My mom practically had to use heart paddles to wake me up.

  “She says it’s important,” my mom said, shoving the phone into my hand. “I don’t know what could be so important at seven in the morning.”

  “Hewwo?” I said, sounding more like Elmer Fudd than I truly want to admit.

  “Today’s the day,” Lexie said excitedly on the end of the line. “Everything’s set for noon.”

  “Huh? What everything do you mean?” I croaked out.

  “Trauma therapy,” she whispered. “My grandfather—remem­ber?”

  I groaned, and Lexie got all annoyed.

  “Well, if you don’t want to help, you don’t have to come. It’s not
like you’re under any obligation.”

  “No, no,” I said. “I want to help,” which was true. Traumatiz­ing Old Man Crawley was actually pretty high on my list of Things I’d Most Like to Do. “What do you need me to bring?”

  “Just yourself,” she said, “And Calvin. Tell him I want him to come, too.”

  “Why don’t you tell him?”

  Lexie hesitated. “I haven’t spoken to him since the day we all broke up.”

  After Lexie hung up, I dialed the Schwa. It rang once, and I hung up. My encounter with the Night Butcher was still fresh in my mind, and I knew if I talked to him, he’d hear something funny in my voice. I wanted to tell him about it, but a sensitive matter like this had to be handled carefully, at the right time and place.

  The phone rang, and figuring it was Lexie again, I picked it right up.

  “Hi, Antsy, it’s Calvin.”

  “Schwa?” He caught me completely off guard.

  “Yeah. You rang a second ago. So what’s up?”

  He had star-sixty-nined me. Curse telephone technology. “Uh ... so whatcha up to today?”

  “I’ve got big plans,” he said. “The biggest! Of course I can’t tell you about it just yet.”

  He was so excited, I knew he was itching to talk about it as much as he wanted to keep it a secret. I should have asked him about it. That’s what friends do, right? They nag you until you tell them the secret they’re pretending they don’t want to tell. The Schwa needed that kind of friend now; one who would lis­ten, and yell at him, “What, are you insane?” And maybe stop him from doing something he’d regret. I should have been that kind of friend.

  “Cool,” I said. “Guess I’ll see you on Monday.” And I hung up. I didn’t ask him what he was planning, I didn’t tell him about the Night Butcher, and I didn’t invite him to traumatize Crawley with us. You never realize when you make little choices how big those choices can be. I can’t really be held responsible for everything that happened next, but if I had made the right decision, things could have turned out differently.