The pupils’ jaws drop. Even the fat man can only stare and mouth, “I’ll be goddamned.”
Mannheim stares back at them. The expressions on their faces are the same.
Disbelief.
He sighs, lets his arm fall to his side.
The train rolls on.
Alison breaks away from the crowd; her bloody tissue falls to the ground, and she runs toward the tracks, ecstasy in her heart. When she reaches Mannheim, she will throw herself at his feet and promise she will never doubt him again. But when the train has passed, there is no trace of him.
Later, when the police come, some of the pupils will say the train rolled over him like he was a blade of grass. The lieutenant will concur—despite the absence of a body or blood, these trains have been known to drag a person for hundreds of yards before leaving the pulped remains on the tracks. The rest of them will never be completely certain.
But Alison knows what she’s just seen. She runs toward the buildings across the field, searching for footprints, but finds nothing. She stops, closes her eyes, reaches out as she’s been taught. She feels everything: the tracks, the snow, the concrete, the splintered telephone poles. The cold air fills her lungs; she has never felt more alive. At the edge of her senses, she feels his footfalls in the wet snow, quickly moving beyond her reach, to some other place. Then they stop, and she senses only stillness. Her elation quickly fades, replaced by a heaviness in her being as she comes to understand she has once again been left behind.
The Nefarious Plot of Mr. John J. Johnson
September
Bonnie and I are in the three-seasons room drinking iced tea and enjoying the warm breeze when we see the big moving truck pull in front of the white Cape Cod across the street. It’s been empty since Kip and Ellie Stodge moved down to Florida six months ago, and Bonnie’s been missing her afternoon coffee with Ellie ever since. A couple of minutes later this big black Mercedes—one of the classic boxy ones from the 70s, but in pristine shape—pulls into the driveway, and out comes a man big enough to wrestle a bear. He’s six-foot-six on the lowball, with shaggy red-orange hair and a deep tan, in white pants, two-tone white and brown wingtips, a red paisley shirt a size too big. He’s got a wide-brimmed white fedora with a red band covering his face, and dark square glasses over his eyes.
“Well, would you look at that?” I say to Bonnie after a long sweet sip of tea. “Don’t see a guy like that around here every day.”
“Like what?” she says without looking at me, like I’ve already said the wrong thing.
Only one way to find out. “Looks a little light in the loafers,” I say.
She sips her tea, takes her time answering. “Like you’d know.” Bonnie can be a little uptight, and since Ellie moved, she’s gotten worse.
“I got the gaydar,” I tell her. That’s what our granddaughter Elsie calls it.
Bonnie sighs. “Sure you do.”
We watch for a minute with the plastic binoculars Bonnie got at an outdoor concert last spring as the big guy opens the door and gives some directions to the movers, then goes and fishes a pet taxi out of the sedan. Something that looks like a furry snake pokes its head out.
“What the hell was that?” I say, and hand the binoculars to Bonnie.
“I don’t know,” she says. “A ferret, I guess. People have them.” She looks for a little while longer, then puts the glasses down. “We should introduce ourselves,” she says. “Welcome him to the neighborhood.”
“At least wait ‘til he’s settled in,” I say, but she’s not listening.
The movers haul in a few boxes and a lime-green couch and loveseat, but mostly it’s big contraptions, stainless steel and copper boxes covered over with sheets.
“Think I’ll bake him some blueberry crumble,” she says. Then, a flash of bleach-blonde hair and she’s gone.
A little later, when the movers are gone and the house smells like blueberries and brown sugar, she wraps the crumble up in a brown wax-paper box with a little red ribbon on it. “Let’s go be neighborly,” she says.
So we go.
The name on the mailbox has already been covered over with fresh decals and reads “John J. Johnson.” Sounds like a porn star.
“This is an awfully big house for just one person,” she says as I ring the doorbell. “Did you see anybody else come in?”
It does seem big for one man, but it sits right on a little lake and there’s a big deck out back that’s perfect for looking out at the water. I’m about to say no and reiterate my working theory that he’s gay, when the front door opens. I have to crane my neck just to look at his face. He’s still got the sunglasses on.
“Hello?” he says, in a soft lilty voice that makes my skin crawl.
Bonnie takes the lead. “I’m Bonnie Peet, and this...” she points the box toward me, “is my husband Charlie. We live across the street, and we wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood.” She hands him the wax paper box. “It’s blueberry crumble. My specialty.”
He gives us a big smile, and it’s terrifying. “Oh, thank you,” he says. “Won’t you come in? I can’t offer much, but my teapot’s unpacked.”
He opens the door and Bonnie ushers me in. The furniture’s all lime-green leather, and there are stacks of boxes everywhere, most unopened. The furry white thing, a cross between a cat and a snake, comes running out from under the couch and winds its way between our ankles. It looks about to crawl up my pant leg, but when he snaps his fingers it comes to him like a dog and sits at his feet.
“Is that a ferret?” Bonnie asks. “I’ve never seen one like that before.”
“Ermine, actually,” he says. “Quite tame, if you take the time. His name’s Copernicus.”
“He’s cute,” Bonnie coos in its direction. The thing sniffs the air like it’s sizing her up for lunch.
Johnson makes tea, and it’s not bad, even though I’m a coffee man myself.
Bonnie asks him what he does.
“Retired machinist,” he says. “Moved here from Indiana.”
“So what’s the allure of this little hamlet?” Bonnie asks.
He leans back, smiles, and just for a second his square glasses tilt down over the bridge of his nose and I get a good long look at his face, those deep-set, pale blue eyes staring right at me. “I’m a bit of a weather buff,” he says. “I’d heard the summer storms out here are spectacular.”
“We get some beauties here,” I say, because if I don’t speak up, I’ll be completely shut out of the conversation. “Last spring we had a storm that knocked Nola and Fred Beasley’s big birch tree down, fell right through the roof.”
He wrings his hands together. “Splendid.” Then he notices his glasses have fallen down his nose and pushes them back up. “Light-sensitive,” he explains. “Macular degeneration.”
I’ve seen that face before, somewhere.
We stay there and talk for a while. He seems to like Bonnie’s stories about the neighborhood, which Bonnie’s eager to provide. Then I tell him about the time my brother got his left nipple bitten off by a raccoon out by the lake. At first he just stares at me, like I’ve told a bad joke, but in a second his upper body starts to quake and he laughs, a loud, high cackle that just about makes me shit my pants right there in his dining room.
Finally, Bonnie gets up. I usually let her decide when it’s time to go. “Well, welcome again, John,” she says. “Let us know if you need anything.”
He looks at us sort of thoughtful, like he’s not sure whether to trust us, then smiles. “You know, I could use some help picking out patio furniture once I’m done unpacking.”
She smiles back. “It’s a date.”
October
Ellie and John are a little late getting back from picking up Halloween decorations, and I’m about to crank up the grill and eat my chicken without her when his old Mercedes pulls up in his driveway. She stumbles out of his car with a tub full of petunias dangling from her hand, turns around and waves at him, then at me
before she wobbles through the patio door. They do this at least once a week—if I didn’t know better, I’d worry.
“Have fun?” I ask, in that way that she knows I’m not happy. Not much light left for grilling now.
“I did,” she says. “I got a great haul.” Her breath smells like margaritas. She opens the bag and shows me all the cardboard skeletons and pumpkins I’ll just have to pack away on the first of November. I don’t really see the point, but it gives her something to do.
“What kept you?” I ask, though I don’t have to.
“We went to Champs’ afterwards,” she says. “I might’ve got a little tipsy.”
“Did John?” I ask. Light in the loafers or not, I don’t take well to anyone drunk-driving Bonnie around.
She shakes her head. “He doesn’t drink,” she says. “He just orders a club soda and we talk. Mostly I talk. He just listens.”
“Oh,” I say, putting the chicken on with a sizzle. “Dinner’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes. Best go dry out.”
“I have to pee,” she says, and goes inside.
I’m waiting to flip my chicken breasts when I look over and see John stepping off his porch with that ermine on a leash and a harness. The way it skitters around is just damned creepy. He’s wearing a black paisley shirt this time, with black and white wingtips—seems to have the same shirt in about ten different colors. He walks the thing around a little and heads down the block, when he passes Cora Welling walking her old shih-Tzu Jasper. For a minute Jasper and the ermine circle one another and touch noses, then the little white devil goes at Jasper like a snake striking. Little Jasper tenses up, then keels over. There’s some commotion, and I hear John tell her he’ll take her to the vet, and he puts the little weasel thing under his arm to put it inside. It’s agitated, and he’s petting it to calm it down.
And that’s when it hits me.
I yell for Bonnie to finish off the chicken because I’ve got to use the little boys’ room. I take her laptop in with me. I search a few different names because I’ve forgotten how it’s spelled, but after my third try, there he is, a picture of him on the cover of Newsweek from ’78, bald as a stone, wearing a high-collared black jacket and round wire-rimmed sunglasses, holding another ermine—this time a black one. Doctor Zaz, he’d called himself then. Built those weather-control devices, and once held all of New York City for ransom, threatening to level it with tornadoes if the government didn’t pay him some ungodly sum. It was quite the scare for a while—preempted the network shows for three days, and Dan Rather made his reports right outside Zaz’s big black tower in the Adirondacks. I’d been in the Navy back then, and I remember there was talk of sending some planes out there to blow his base all to hell. Didn’t need to, though—some masked fella stopped him, just like always. For an evil genius you’d think this guy would have a better win-loss record. When the feds locked him away everybody thought he’d just escape and do it all over again, but I guess that last time knocked the wind out of his sails.
The only other news story I can find is a two-year-old article from an Indiana newspaper, one that said he’d been paroled. In the interview, he said he’d found Jesus and was going to live a quiet life.
Then I hear Bonnie cursing up a storm and run out to find her trying to pick a charred chicken breast from between the grill grates.
The chicken’s crusty and black and tastes like propane. I wait until after to tell her about John.
“Hmmm,” she says, looking at the laptop. “Nope. I don’t think so. John’s thicker than that. And he has eyebrows. You’ve never been good with faces, dear.”
“So you think I’m crazy?”
She shrugs. “Paranoid, maybe. John would never do something like that.”
“If you say so,” I huff, and let it lie.
November
John sits next to us in church, but when he sings it’s in a deep baritone that doesn’t sound anything like his speaking voice. He buys Girl Scout cookies. He sits out there on his back patio feeding them to the furry little snake and lets the neighborhood kids toss stones off the little boat dock in his backyard. Jasper, the shih-Tzu, died at the end of October—heart failure, Cora said. I know it’s his fault, and the furry snake’s, but Cora’s already forgiven him. He goes to every city council meeting, and he and Bonnie volunteer at the homeless shelter every Tuesday.
And I don’t buy it. Not for one damn minute.
At night, I hear low whirring sounds coming from his garage. Not loud enough to disturb anyone, and he’s careful to stop by ten every night. I’ve tried to sneak across the street once or twice to get a peek, but the windows are covered over and I can’t see a damn thing. Bonnie says he’s probably building himself a little boat to tool around on the lake.
Finally, one day when Bonnie has him over for shandy, I ask him what he’s making in there.
He gives me this coy little smile and says, “Something I hope I’ll never have to use.”
My hands start shaking.
Bonnie notices I’m out of sorts after he’s gone home and asks why. I tell her.
She just rolls her eyes. “You think John’s building a doomsday device in his garage. Try repeating that and listen to how it sounds.”
I do. It sounds positively batshit. But it’s still true.
About a week later, Bonnie invites him for Thanksgiving dinner without asking me first. Lucky for us, he politely declines. “I’m meeting up with an old friend in Chicago,” he says.
“A lady friend?” Bonnie asks.
“An old flame.” John shrugs, pulls out an old picture of her from his wallet. The picture’s old, maybe from the mid-70s. It’s a woman—tall, muscled and put-together, in a red leather jumpsuit and a crimson scarf, long curly black hair falling over her shoulders. She’s got on a little too much eye shadow.
“She’s...interesting,” Bonnie says, and for a second she looks a little disappointed. “But very pretty.”
John smiles, takes a good long look at the woman. “She’s definitely unique. I was into edgier fare when I was young.”
Probably his hag, before Bonnie.
The day before Thanksgiving, when his Mercedes pulls out of the drive, Bonnie stands at the edge of the yard to wave goodbye. I take a deep breath and relax for once.
December
Christmas is a few days away, and it’s about fifteen degrees warmer than usual, so the ground is muddy and wet. But Bonnie and her friends are going out caroling anyway. One of her traditions, though I wish she didn’t drag me along. If even one person doesn’t have some egg-nog ready for them, I’ll hear about it until New Year’s.
So the girls show up at his house and start singing “White Christmas,” when he shoots them an odd little grin. “Wait a moment,” he says, stopping them in the middle of the song. “I’ve got an idea.” He runs inside for a second, and I hear him clanking around in the garage. When he comes back, he asks them to start singing again. Before they get to the chorus the weather drops a good twenty degrees and the drizzle turns into snow.
It keeps falling all that night and into Christmas Day, a layer just thick enough to cover the ground and all the spruce trees. But it only snows here in town; everyone else in the county gets rain. Bonnie says it’s a Christmas miracle. She’s a good woman, but sometimes a little dim.
Come Christmas night the lake is frozen solid, a good eight inches of ice even though it’s just above freezing. Kids come from all over the neighborhood to skate. John turns on the floodlights, puts out buttered rum for the parents and hot cocoa for the kids. He’s got the whole neighborhood out there in his backyard.
Nobody asks why the lake is frozen. I look around while the kids are skating; in one unlit corner of the lake, just beyond the lights, is a copper rod with little blue rings lining it, sticking about six inches out of the ice, making a soft, high-pitched squeal I have to strain to hear. I don’t touch it, of course. I’m no idiot.
I feel a big, beefy hand on my shoulder,
hear that high-pitched nasal voice behind me. “Charlie,” John says, and I turn around. He’s standing there in a big white leather coat and black scarf, holding a cup. “Come join us. Be merry.” He reaches out and puts it between my fingers. It’s warm and smells like butterscotch.
“It’s called a buttery nipple.” He whispers the last two words like he’s saying something dirty. “You’ll like it.” I’d think he was coming on to me, but he and Bonnie talk that way all the time.
“Thanks,” I say, and leave it for now. If he’s planning to level the town, he isn’t doing it tonight. And I have to admit, he’s a damn fine bartender.
February
I look out the window while the big black Mercedes pulls up along the curb and Bonnie climbs out. She leans in for a minute after she closes the door. She’s all smiles. I’ve got some corned beef in the crock-pot that’s been waiting for her for about two hours. It’s dry now, and the potatoes have disintegrated in their skins.
I hear her key turn in the door; I’ve got Field of Dreams on the TV and I don’t turn from it when she comes in.
“Dinner’s in the crock-pot,” I tell her. “Help yourself. Not very good anymore, though.”
“Sorry,” she says, peeling off her coat. “We went shopping and lost track of time.”
I still don’t look at her. “You ever think you spend way too much time with that guy?”
“He listens to me,” she says, scooping a hunk of meat out of the pot. “Why? Are you telling me you’re jealous?”
“Nope,” I say. “I just think it’d be nice if you spent some time with me, too.”
She sits down at the table instead of on the couch next to me. “It’d be nice if I you’d give me a reason to.”
Feral Boy Meets Girl Page 8