What could I say to that? I remembered Mom’s face when we rode with her in the back of the ambulance, that day I first saw Zoey. All that orange padding, all mashed around her head like a vise, pressing her cheeks into doughy lumps. In spite of it all, I remember how nothing could stop her from smiling.
“But still,” she said, “you’re right. Let’s see if we can plan a trip to New York. The least I can do is see what this doctor has to say. Even if we can’t afford it, I owe you that much.” She reached over and squeezed my hand in hers, pressing Zoey’s tooth deep into my palm.
76
Echoes
Dave Mizra never came back for his CD. One morning, the windows at Fire & Ice were pasted over with newsprint. Dave Mizra was gone. I don’t know if he went back to his wife, or if he opened another shop somewhere else. I never saw him again.
Then, in the middle of August, three cop cars pulled up just below our apartment. The lights flashed but there was no siren. My first thought was that they had found them, Zoey and her father. I figured they had recovered my money. But when I went down to the street, I saw that the Brothers were locked in the back of one of the cruisers. They looked pale and tired, but every bit as stone-faced as ever.
They brought Mr. Rodolfo out in handcuffs. He cursed and kicked and hollered at them, but the moment he saw me, it all stopped.
“What’re you looking at?”
I shook my head. “What’s going on?”
Mr. Rodolfo looked down at the pavement. “I was just trying to get by. What’s so wrong with that?”
I figured Zoey had been right. Mr. Rodolfo really had been running illegal gambling games, operating some sort of money-laundering scheme. But no, that was yet another thing I was wrong about.
It turned out the Brothers had been dumping dry-cleaning chemicals into the lake rather than paying to dispose of them in the proper way. Some people living nearby had gotten sick, and there was a good chance all three of them would serve time in jail.
By the end of summer, it seemed like the only ones left were A-Man and B-Man. They still wandered the streets, rolling their die and muttering almost-comprehensible babble about machines and pinions, wheels and echoes.
B-Man found himself a new dog. It was a different breed of mutt, less threatening, with a smaller head and a slack mouth that always hung open in a goofy grin. Nevertheless, he gave it the same name. Razor. When I asked him why, he told me to look into the dog’s eyes.
“See what I mean?”
I didn’t.
“The eyes. They’re the same.”
“As … ?”
“Razor’s!” He crouched down and yanked the dog’s head to put himself face-to-face with the mutt. “Can’t you see it? He’s the old girl’s ghost. He’s her echo.” He closed his eyes, rubbing the dog’s skull. “You can hear it. Can’t you?”
Maybe I could, but the echo I heard was a different one.
I ripped the Shain Cope CD onto our computer and put it on my phone, too. I listen to it sometimes, just staring at Zoey’s tooth, which sits on the shelf above my desk, right where A-Man’s die used to be. Every week, it turns a little more gray.
“Colt’s-Tooth Blues” is still my favorite song. Every time I hear it, I notice things in the lyrics. My brain picks out little coincidences behind the words. I know it’s impossible, but sometimes it seems like Shain Cope was trying to send me a message. A warning. Sometimes, I can’t help thinking that he wrote his most famous song especially for me.
77
A Person of Interest
Just after school started again, a package came in the mail. It was a brown paper envelope, padded with stuffing and mummified in clear packing tape. There was no return address, but the sloppy collage of stamps were from England. When I tore it open, it was full of money. Soft, wrinkly British pounds. A lot of them.
“It’s from her,” Mom said when she saw it, and I knew she was right.
Inside was £810, a lot of money, but it fell far short of what I had lost. There was no note, nothing to identify the sender. The only other thing in the envelope was a clipping from another paper in the Chronicler chain: The Over-the-Rhine Chronicler. I thought “Over-the-Rhine” sounded like it might be somewhere in Europe, but when I looked it up, it turned out to be in Cincinnati. The headline was Grifter Comes to a Violent End, and it said:
* * *
Philip Alan Konig, 48, a career criminal with a history of theft and fraud, was found dead last night in a rented apartment on West Liberty. Konig had been shot twice in the chest. The weapon, possibly belonging to Konig himself, was recovered at the scene. Police believe the fraudster may have been murdered by one of his former victims or by someone he was actively engaged in swindling. They are currently seeking the whereabouts of his daughter, Zoey Konig, 19, as a person of interest.
* * *
I don’t know why, but something about the package made me want to start again, to do things in a completely new way. Not that I ever had a system of doing anything at all. I hadn’t. I didn’t. That was my whole problem. I could have sat around, watching the mail slot, hoping and praying for another bundle of money to come tumbling through, but somehow that seemed wrong. I had to do something.
So I got on the bus.
Mr. Dearborn lived in the suburbs. It took an hour to get out there. He answered the door in cargo shorts and a faded apron that said, Sometimes I’m off in my own little world, but that’s okay, they know me there. His beard was thicker than I remembered.
He was a short guy, a couple inches shorter than me, and his face was creased all over, but not from age—more from smiling so much. He was in pretty good shape, too, apart from a pot belly. He looked like a jolly, domesticated elf, but one who worked out.
“Nice apron,” I said.
“Kaz? What are you doing here?”
He looked worried. I wondered if other students had visited, too, come to tell him how they’d been traumatized by the alt-porn he had shown us in health class.
“I need your help,” I told him.
Alana had told me Dearborn wasn’t teaching anymore. He was doing private tutoring instead, which was exactly what I needed.
“I’m not sure what I can do for you.”
“I heard you were tutoring.”
He laughed. “At an ESL school in a shopping mall. I’d say your command of the language is a bit more advanced.”
“Oh, I heard that … ” I didn’t know what to say.
“Did you come all the way from—”
“Evandale. Yeah.”
“My wife and I were just about to eat. Why don’t you join us.” He rubbed his paunch. “As you can see, I have this tendency of making too much.”
Mr. Dearborn’s house looked the way I thought Zoey’s apartment should have looked. Every wall was lined with bookshelves. There were novels, dictionaries, photography books, books about art, books about architecture, old magazines, even comic books and manga. We followed the smell of bacon into the kitchen.
Mr. Dearborn’s wife was taller than him, with insanely long limbs, at least in my opinion. Two black pugs were curled around the legs of her chair. They started yapping at me.
“Who’s this?”
I thought Dearborn’s wife might be wary of me, but if she was, she hid it well.
“This is Kaz,” Dearborn told her. “A former student. He’s gonna join us for brunch. Kaz, this is Mrs. Dearborn.”
“Call me Valerie.” She reached out from what seemed like miles away and shook my hand.
“That’s Sal and Dean on the floor. Would’ja please shut up, guys?” He bent to pat them, and the dogs licked his forearm like he was sweating gravy.
As we ate, I explained why I was there. With my money troubles, my only chance for college was to bring up my grades and shoot for a scholarship. I couldn’t do that a
lone. Of course, when I told Dearborn how far my grades had slipped, he wasn’t optimistic.
“Sounds like an uphill battle,” he said.
“My mom really wants me to get into a decent school, and I want to make her proud.” It was true. I was being honest, for once.
“You think you can do all this in one year?” Mrs. Dearborn asked me.
Mr. Dearborn shook his head. “Val’s right. One year’s not a lot of time.”
“I can do it.”
“Maybe. But why me? Last I checked, I hadn’t really made it as a teacher.”
“Are you kidding? You’re the best one I ever had. Trust me, I learned loads from you.”
“I’ll bet you did!”
Dearborn grinned wickedly, first at me, then at his wife. That set us off. All three of us lost it, cracking up around the tiny breakfast table. Even Sal and Dean joined in, hopping and yapping around my feet. We just couldn’t stop.
78
“Colt’s-Tooth Blues” by Shain Cope (1981)
He heard there’s rain in Paris
Gotta wonder if she’s there
She always looked her prettiest
With drizzle in her hair
The sky’s got nothing in it
Just the flapping of the crows
The sun’s as bright as butterflies
Or so the saying goes
You wish that she were still around
You wish that she were here
I thought I was a poet once
I’m just a profiteer
If only I were beautiful
Like something rotten on a beach
That stuff has got a kind of grace
No one ever sees
There’s a woman out in front of here
Selling pictures of the saints
Here’s a wandering of pilgrims
Come to maunder their complaints
They dream about the good old days
They want a little fun
No one told them youth
It’s only wasted on the young
Bet you wonder where she got to
Bet you wish that she was here
I could’ve been a poet once
I’ll prob’ly disappear
Wishing I was pretty
In a way nobody sees
The way the dirt’s as pure as gold
To the toes of any tree
Now the chimney pots are crumbling
The walls are caving in
You can always count on me
To take it on the chin
It’s darker now, it’s going gray
Hey look, here come the crows
That moon’s a wicked stick of bone
Or so the saying goes
I wonder what she’s doing now
If only she were here
I thought I was a poet once
Full of bourbon, full of beer
If I could get the words to bloom
I bet you I could sing
Without the mud of autumn rain
There’s never any spring
She waltzed around, she beat her drum
She had her own guitar
All the time I used to think
The girl could be a star
Then she up and went away
Felt like I was cursed
Get it wrong or get it right
There’s gotta be a first
If only you could see her now
If only she were here
Songs like this are all we got
These little souvenirs
I hope you think it’s pretty
Like something forgotten on a beach
That stuff has got a beauty to it
No one ever sees
Acknowledgments
This book would not be possible without the efforts of many wonderful people. My sincere thanks to my family and friends, for their endless refrains of support and encouragement; to Lynne Missen, whose friendship and guidance made this story hum; to Jackie Kaiser, without whom I would lose all rhythm; to Mitch Kowalski and the chorus of voices at the Toronto Writers’ Center, where I wrote the majority of the book.
I would also like to thank the Ontario Council for the Arts, for the generous grant that allowed me to complete the initial draft. Finally, as always, my thanks to Machiko (who knows exactly where the laundromat is).
About the Author
Robert Paul Weston is the author of several internationally award-winning novels for children and young adults, including Zorgamazoo, Dust City, and The Creature Department, written in collaboration with the British special effects firm Framestore (Gravity, Avatar, Where the Wild Things Are). His novels have won prizes in Canada, the United States, and Germany, including the California Young Reader Medal and German Audio Book of the Year. In the past, he has been a baker’s assistant, a computer programer, a trampoline coach, a magazine editor, and a production coordinator for film and television. Born in Great Britain and raised in Canada, he now lives with his wife in London, England. For more, please visit www.RobertPaulWeston.com.
Blues for Zoey Page 20