The Secret Life of Sam

by Kim Ventrella

  “Come on up here,” Pa said, real quiet, and he gripped Sam’s arm and half pulled him up so his legs weren’t dangling over the side.

  “Is that the Colonel?” Sam said, a combined jolt of fear and excitement lighting up his chest. The Colonel was a legend in Bayou St. George. People said he was a demon gator, on account of him living over sixty years without ever being caught. People said he could leap straight up in the air and snatch an owl out of a tree if he wanted. They said he’d once snapped a tour boat in half with a single bite, and no bullet or arrow could kill him.

  “Sure looks like him, only . . .”

  Pa didn’t finish, and Sam thought he knew why. He’d seen glimpses of the Colonel before, four or five times, since hunting down the Colonel was Pa’s second-favorite pastime, after fishing, but he’d never seen him like this—the crusty sores around his eyes or the deep cuts along his snout or the arrow shaft sprouting from his skull like a unicorn’s horn, only covered in blood.

  The Boy on the post hissed and bared his teeth as the Colonel swam closer, stopping right in front of the dock. Pa tightened his grip on Sam’s arm, looking from the strange boy to the gator and back again.

  The swamp went dead quiet, their bobbers still rocking on the eerily calm surface.

  Then, without warning, the Colonel lunged, water spraying, his massive body surging through the air straight toward them. Wood cracked, two-inch-long nails scrabbled on the decking, and Pa thrust Sam back behind him quick, shouting, “Stay away!”

  But in the end, it didn’t matter, because the Colonel changed direction at the last second, jerking to the right in midair, his jaws aiming not for Sam or Pa but the Boy.

  “Watch out!” Sam shouted. The Boy might be a total creep, but Sam still had to warn him. It was no use. In the split second it took the Colonel to change direction, the Boy had gone. Disappeared. The Colonel’s jaws clamped down on the empty post, splinters flying.

  Without warning, a force even stronger than the Colonel’s jaws wrenched Sam free from Pa’s grasp.

  “Sam!” Pa lunged, grabbing hold of Sam’s arm, but the force was too strong. It picked him up, like an invisible tornado, and for one frozen moment, he was floating, Pa’s grip the only thing stopping him from flying clean away. He could see Pa screaming and hear the Colonel scraping at the dock, and then Pa got hold of his other arm, and he started to reel Sam in like the world’s biggest fish, but then the tornado flexed its muscles and ripped Sam free.

  “Come back!” Pa called, but it was too late. Sam was hurtling across the water and onto the far shore, his body slapping into vines and tufts of Spanish moss. Before he could scream, the same invisible force pulled him back into the tree, and he was shooting up a dark tunnel, raw wood cutting his skin, dark shapes speeding past, leaves slashing his face.

  Flying up and up.

  And then, suddenly, light sliced open his vision and he hit the ground hard, his brain ringing in his ears. He struggled to his feet, spinning around, reaching for Pa, but all he found was grass and a gravel road and a grape-soda tree covered once again in dead bark.

  “Pa!”

  He thrust his head into the hollow only to crack his skull on solid wood. “No!” He tore at the back of the hole with his fingernails, wedging splinters deeper and deeper under his skin. When that didn’t work, he kicked the tree and didn’t stop.

  He was so busy kicking and clawing that he didn’t hear tires crunching over the gravel. Strong arms circled around him and squeezed him tight, and even though he turned around and kicked Aunt Jo hard in the shin, she didn’t let go.

  7

  “AUNT JO, HE’S IN THERE. It’s Pa. He’s . . .” Sam couldn’t finish, and Aunt Jo gave him a look like he’d reached down deep in her gut and squeezed.

  He freed himself from her death grip and looked out at the tree and the dirty gravel road, brain reeling. He saw the remnants of his plane lying on the grass, just the way he’d left them. He slid numb fingers into his pocket and felt the edge of the broken propeller blade.

  “Come on. Let’s get you home.” She picked up the pieces of his plane and stood there looking small for maybe the first time in her whole life. She opened her mouth, like she wanted to offer him some comforting words, but then closed it again.

  Behind them, wind rattled the dead branches. Sam didn’t want to leave; he couldn’t. But the hollow was sealed. He could see the back of the hole from where he was standing, and the plane . . . But it had been real. It hadn’t been like one of Pa’s stories. And Pa had held on, trying to keep him there. He had to go back.

  What was it the Boy had said? That the doorway wouldn’t stay open all night. Maybe that meant it would open again. He shook his head hard, trying to organize his thoughts, but they wouldn’t connect. None of it made any sense.

  He wanted to fight, to punch Aunt Jo for real if he had to, but suddenly he was more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life. He let Aunt Jo lead him to the car. As soon as they got inside, it started to rain. The rain came up fast and sudden, pounding the little car so hard they could barely move against the force of all that wind and water. So much for the purple-haired girl’s story about Holler never getting any rain. Aunt Jo had her positive affirmations cranked all the way up, but she turned them down and they listened to the rain instead.

  After a rough drive, they pulled up to the yellow dollhouse and sat in the car. The wind rocked them back and forth, like they were on a boat instead of dry land. Sam turned around and saw his bag in the back seat, which meant that Aunt Jo knew about the fight. For the first time since it had happened, Sam looked down at his right hand. His knuckles were bloody and the back of his hand was one big purple bruise, even worse than yesterday’s fight with the dumpster. He stretched out his fingers and made a fist, sliding it in his pocket so Aunt Jo wouldn’t notice. Inside he winced, but it wasn’t because of the pain.

  It’s because it never happened, said a slithery voice inside his head. It was all a dream. Your pa’s dead, or did you forget? Worms are crawling out of his eye sockets, not dangling from the end of his lure.

  “Shut up.”

  “What’s that?” Aunt Jo snapped him out of his ugly thoughts, looking like maybe he really had punched her in the face.

  “Nothing.”

  They sat in silence for a while longer, waiting for the rain to die down. It wasn’t the comfortable kind of silence, like when he was out fishing with Pa. It was the kind of silence that made him itch under his skin.

  “Strange, us getting all this rain,” Aunt Jo said. “I don’t remember anything on the weather reports.” Silence. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, I bought cake.”

  Of all the pointless things in the world to say, Sam thought that was probably the most pointless. He could tell it was his turn to speak, because the itching under his skin got so bad he half wanted to peel it off, but what could he say to something pointless like that? Especially when Pa was out there somewhere, waiting for him.

  “Caramel Dream from Gina’s Diner. That was your pa’s favorite.”

  Her words sucked all the air out of the car. Sam opened the door and made a run for the porch, the broken plane parts still cradled in his hoodie. Aunt Jo got out too, but she stopped for his backpack, which was heavier than it looked, and by the time she made it to the porch she looked more like a fish than an old lady.

  He couldn’t help it. He tried the cake. Even though he hated himself for doing it, and even though the box was one big, soggy mess, the cake actually turned out to be pretty good.

  It had this gooey caramel filling, big globs of frosting, and chocolate caramel candies on top that melted on your tongue. He ate it real slow, the whole time thinking he shouldn’t, but he knew Pa wouldn’t turn down cake even if the world ended and the zombies started eating people’s faces off. That thought made Sam feel a little better. Not the world ending, but the thought of Pa telling another one of his stories about zombies or swamp monsters or chasing down the Colonel.
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  “How is it?” Aunt Jo said. She had barely touched her piece, but Sam’s was nearly finished.

  “It’s all right.”

  “That’s good.” She pushed her cake around on her plate, and that was when she noticed the cuts on Sam’s hands.

  “Mr. Redding said you got in a fight, but I didn’t know it was that bad.” Sam tried to resist her, but she marched him to the sink and refused to let go until she’d washed and bandaged both of his hands. “When did you plan on telling me about what happened at school?”

  Sam didn’t answer, and it was clear Aunt Jo wasn’t about to budge, so instead he asked, “Can I go up to my room?”

  Aunt Jo took a long time considering, puffing herself up and giving him some serious evil eye that might have worked okay in the army, but it wouldn’t work on him.

  “Fine, if that’s what you want.”

  He stood up too fast, and the chair would have toppled over if he hadn’t caught it.

  “Don’t worry about the dishes.”

  “Okay.” He looked over at the pieces of his plane. He’d dumped them under the hall table when he came inside. He thought about picking them up and taking them to his room, but what was the point? “Thanks for the cake or whatever.”

  Aunt Jo didn’t say anything until he’d already started climbing the steps. “Sam, wait. I think we need to talk.”

  Great, here it was. The big speech about not fighting, even though that kid he’d punched was obviously some blue jay who totally deserved it. And he was the one with a broken plane and fingers that could barely hold a fork and, besides, who cared, because Pa was dead, but he wasn’t.

  He walked back down the steps and stared at his shoelaces. The worst part was, even though he was staring at his shoelaces, he kept seeing Pa’s face, and Pa was giving him the same look he’d given Sam the day he’d laughed at the neighbor kid for crashing on his bike. That kid ended up becoming Sam’s best friend, until he moved away, and the reason he’d crashed was because he had an inner ear infection and couldn’t help it. Sam had felt like the jerk of the world when he found out, and he hadn’t even meant to laugh, not really, but the worst part had been the crinkly look of disappointment on Pa’s face when he’d done it. That look made him just about melt on the spot and never want to get up again.

  “I want you to know why I was gone all those years.”

  Sam looked up at Aunt Jo and their eyes met. It was maybe the first time he’d really looked at her since everything that had happened. She drew in a deep breath, and now she was the one who looked away, staring at her hands that lay palms-down on the table. “I never wanted to stay away, but the truth is . . . your pa asked me to. He had every right to do it, but I want you to know that I would have come around more often if I could have.”

  Sam let the words sink in. “So it’s Pa’s fault that we didn’t see you for four years?”

  “No, listen. I want to explain, it’s just not the type of thing that’s easy to talk about.”

  “You’re lying.” Heat crept up the back of Sam’s neck, making the edges of the room go blurry.

  “Sam.” She sat there looking small, and Sam wondered again what it would be like to punch her for real, in the face.

  “Pa wouldn’t do that. You didn’t know him at all. Just because you grew up together, you think you know everything, but you don’t. I bet he hated that gross cake.”

  “Just listen.”

  “I’m going to bed.” Sam pounded up the stairs before he really did hit something or someone, shaking away the image of Pa’s crinkly, disappointed face.

  “It’s not even five o’clock,” Aunt Jo called, and he heard her chair squeak just before he slammed his bedroom door.

  He didn’t mean to fall asleep. He wanted to go find Pa, despite the pounding rain and the closed-up hollow and every grape-soda thing that had happened since he’d left Bayou St. George, but the long day dragged him down. Soon, he was snoring into his pillow. He didn’t notice before closing his eyes that it was covered in cat hair, and he didn’t hear later when cars began to pull up outside and the front door opened and closed, letting in the smell of moldy air.

  In his sleep, Sam was busy struggling against a monstrous gator with hooks for teeth and a devil’s horn sprouting right out of his skull. He’d managed to pin him on the dock when his shape changed and he was Pa, then he changed again and he was the Colonel.

  They rolled over the edge of the dock, dropping into the murky, green water. A moment later, Sam shot up in bed, sputtering.

  It took him a minute to figure out where he was and that the gator wrestling had been nothing but a dream. Slowly, his breath calmed down. Sweat stung his armpits and dripped down the front of his shirt. He rubbed his temple, trying to remember more about his dream, but all he could see when he closed his eyes was the disappointed look on Pa’s face.

  Great.

  Even though he didn’t want to, even though it wasn’t his fault Aunt Jo had gone missing all that time and then tried to make it up to him with total grape-soda-flavored cake, he knew he had to go downstairs and say something. It’s what Pa would have wanted. He wasn’t ready to call it an apology, not yet, but he’d say just about anything to wipe that look of disappointment off Pa’s face, even if it was only in his head.

  He’d already tiptoed to the end of the hall before he noticed the voices down below. He couldn’t see anybody from where he stood, just the front door and part of the kitchen, but he heard someone talking like they were giving a speech and chairs creaking and someone else coughing and clearing their throat.

  He leaned over the railing to try to get a look in the living room, but this guy in overalls and a ball cap walked past. The guy stopped and stared, like maybe Sam was the one who shouldn’t be there.

  “Hey,” the guy said, but he was too late because Sam slipped into the first room he found and shut the door.

  The room smelled like Aspercreme and flowery air freshener. He was in Aunt Jo’s bedroom.

  He tested out the edge of her pointy mattress. It wasn’t really made of wood, but this weird foam that formed to the shape of his butt. Gross. Listening for footsteps on the stairs, he studied the picture frames on the dresser. Lots of him and Pa, going all the way back to when Sam was a baby. A few of Aunt Jo posing in her military uniform next to the planes she used to fly. Sam remembered sitting with his chin on Aunt Jo’s knees when he was little, listening to her describe what it felt like to fly a plane as it broke through the clouds.

  She was the whole reason he liked planes in the first place. Her and Pops, who had once been a real-life flying ace in World War II. When he was little, he’d wanted to be a pilot when he grew up. And now? Now he didn’t want to be anything at all.

  Other than the bed and the dresser, the room was pretty much empty. She had her own bathroom, with deodorant and lotion and toothpaste all lined up in a row. There was the chair in the corner with the stack of scratchy blankets and an old rug that was starting to unravel.

  He knew Pa didn’t approve of snooping, but somehow his fingers found the knob on the top dresser drawer, and since he was already there, he figured he might as well open it. It was filled with white tube socks and huge granny underwear. He closed that one up fast and tried the next one. He found piles of loose photos, rolls of pennies, three army medals in wooden boxes, a stack of Christmas cards Sam had drawn with these ugly red-eyed Santas, and a tin full of poker chips, just like the one Aunt Jo wore around her neck. Except these weren’t regular poker chips, like the kind Pa brought out whenever his buddies came over for a game. They had dates on the front—thirty days, sixty days, three months, all the way up to one year.

  Sam closed that drawer and opened the big one below it. Even though he knew what it was, it still took him by surprise. It was a leg. There was this hard plastic part on top, where the end of your leg would go, and then a metal hinge for a knee with two plastic sensors and a piece of curved, bouncy plastic instead of a foot, like the ones
Olympic athletes sometimes wore on TV. Maybe this was the leg Aunt Jo used for running. It even had a charger so you could plug it into the wall. Sam touched it and shivers ran up his fingertips. Suddenly he thought about the feeling he’d had seeing that blue jay of a kid touch his stuff. He was doing the same thing, only maybe it was worse because touching that artificial leg felt kind of like touching a real one.

  He shut the drawer and slipped back out into the hallway. The people downstairs were applauding. Sam had started back to his room when someone said, “Hi.”

  The purple-haired girl was staring up at him from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Hi,” Sam said.

  “You got your stuff back.”

  It took him a minute to realize that she was talking about his backpack, which was still sitting in the front hall where he’d left it.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s good. Those guys were total jerks.”

  “Yeah.”

  She adjusted her glasses, which was a thing he noticed she did a lot, and he had this weird urge to tell her she looked pretty with her glasses on, but he didn’t, because that would be weird and, besides, why would he?

  “Are you coming downstairs?”

  He came downstairs. There were maybe fifteen people sitting on folding chairs in the living room. Aunt Jo stood at the front, and she was busy saying something about surrendering to a higher power and living life one day at a time, so she didn’t see him.

  “There’s cake,” the girl said. They went in the kitchen and sat at the table, where Aunt Jo had not one but four different cakes, each with a few slices missing. And here he was thinking she’d bought the cake just for him. “That’s the best thing about these meetings. The desserts.”

  They sat at the table and she cut herself a slice of Caramel Dream. “You want some?”