Spy Runner

by Eugene Yelchin

  “Thank you, honey,” said Mrs. McCauley. “Mr. Shubin’s just being silly.” She went to the sink and shut off the running water and said over her shoulder, “Why don’t you boys go sit in the parlor, where it’s cooler? I’ll bring you two Coca-Colas in a jiffy.”

  “Much obliged, ma’am,” Shubin said, grinning, and brushed past Jake on his way out. Jake leapt aside.

  “Why are you so jumpy, honey? Go sit with Mr. Shubin. I’ll be right there.”

  Instead, Jake went back to the counter and lifted a jar of strawberry jam. He was about to set it on the shelf in the cupboard when his mother snatched the jar out of his hand. “Please, Jake, go to the parlor,” she said, and set the jar down in the wrong place, beside the canned pea soup.

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I’m asking you, okay? You should get to know Mr. Shubin.”

  “I know plenty about him already.”

  Mrs. McCauley gave him a suspicious look. “What do you mean, you know plenty?” And before he could tell her what he had found below the attic floor, she said, “You don’t have to make it complicated, you know.”

  “I’m not the one who’s making it complicated.”

  “Fine! Suit yourself, Jacob McCauley!” she said, and began frantically looking for something in her purse. “Why should you care what your mother might need?”

  Jake stood beside her, watching her yank things out of the purse and fling them on the counter until she swung the purse upside down and slammed it down hard. Loose change bounced off the tiles. He looked at her thin fingers, white from grasping the purse; at her small, delicate ear; at the side of her face; and at a thread of her hair the color of roasted chestnuts, shaped like a question mark hanging upside down. He felt angry with her and sorry for her at the same time, and he wanted to tell her that, but he did not know how, and so he turned away and went out of the kitchen to do as she had asked him.

  22

  To be alone with Shubin made Jake feel sick with dread, and although it could not have been thirty feet down the hallway from the kitchen door to the door of the parlor, he took plenty of time covering the distance. When at long last, he reached the parlor, he halted in the doorway, stunned at the sight of Shubin rocking in the rocking chair, as if such a thing were perfectly natural.

  To be fair, Shubin could not have known the unspoken rule that prevented Jake and his mother from rocking in that chair. That creaky old rocker, with elbow-polished armrests and the rocker tips gnawed off by some long-gone Labrador retriever his dad had owned, used to be Jake’s dad’s favorite seat in the house. The rocker was waiting for him to return, and it was unthinkable for anyone else to use it.

  “Don’t just stand there, kid,” Shubin rasped. “You’re making me nervous. Come in and sit down, will you?”

  Jake shuffled in and dropped onto the sofa as far from the rocking chair as he could. He sat half turned away from Shubin, listening to the chair squeaking under his weight. Each squeak stabbed into Jake’s heart like a knife. He could not look at Shubin directly, spying on him instead in the old murky mirror hanging on the wall opposite the sofa. Shubin’s reflection moved in and out of the frame in which his cracked spectacles flared each time he rocked back toward the quarter-shuttered window. Jake waited anxiously for him to say something about what had happened in the attic, but Shubin kept rocking in silence, as if Jake were not even in the room. When Shubin spoke at last in that voice of his that grated Jake’s ear like a rusty nail scratching a piece of rusty tin, he said not at all what Jake expected him to say.

  “What grade are you in, kid?”

  “Who? Me?”

  “Who else? Me? You go to school, right? What grade?”

  “Seventh.”

  “Already?” He seemed amazed. “Got a girlfriend?”

  Jake glared at him.

  “Okay, okay, don’t get mad now. Just kidding.” He shifted in the rocking chair, forcing such a pitiful squeal out of the aged timber that Jake winced in pain. “You’ve got pals though, right? Who’s your best pal?”

  Jake shook his head. Listen to him. Best pal. Duane Armbruster was until a certain Commie spy showed up and ruined everything.

  “What about that neighbor kid? Armbruster, is it?”

  Jake quickly glanced at Shubin. Can spies read people’s minds?

  “Oh, yes,” said Mrs. McCauley, sweeping into the parlor with two Coca-Cola glasses and a kitchen towel slung over her shoulder. “Duane. Duane Armbruster. Nice boy. Jake and Duane are inseparable. Right, honey?”

  She seemed to be talking to Jake, but she was looking at Shubin. She handed him the Coca-Cola first, too.

  “Jake is very popular at school. Eddie Cortes is a good friend, and Tony Gonzales, and Dean Wheeler, and that new boy, what’s his name, Vernon something. Isn’t that so, honey? You have many friends.”

  Jake felt again Eddie Cortes’s small hard fists kneading his belly in the classroom today, but he said nothing. And neither did Shubin. Mrs. McCauley stood halfway in between the two of them, smiling and twisting the towel in her hands and waiting for Shubin to speak, but he kept rocking in silence, and the rocker squealed under him, and the ice cubes rattled in his glass.

  The shutters were down to keep the parlor cool, but even in the semidarkness of the room, Jake could see the changed expression on his mother’s face. Shubin was clearly a jerk, not to mention an enemy of the United States, but for some unknown reason, his silence seemed to be upsetting to his mother. Jake watched her closely. By all signs, she had made up her mind to make Shubin feel nice and cozy in their home, and Jake knew that if his mother had something on her mind, she was not the kind to quit trying.

  “What am I standing around for?” she exclaimed cheerfully. “It’s near dinnertime. What do you boys want to eat? Mr. Shubin?”

  She asked him first.

  “I ain’t particular, ma’am. Whatever’s less trouble.”

  “But I love cooking, Mr. Shubin,” she lied without blinking an eye. “Jake, honey, what would you like for dinner?” And without giving him any time to think of something, she added, “It’ll be a surprise, then,” and turned to go.

  “I’ll give you a hand in the kitchen, ma’am,” Shubin called after her, pushing up to his feet.

  “No!”

  She had all but screamed that no. Seeing that both Jake and Shubin were gaping at her in amazement, Mrs. McCauley blushed. “Please stay where you are, Mr. Shubin. You too, Jake. Try to make Mr. Shubin feel at home.” She stepped into the hallway and twirled back to face them, adding brightly as if it were a joke, “If you run out of things to say, boys, there’s a wireless in the room. Why don’t you tell Mr. Shubin about your favorite radio program, honey? What’s it called again? I Was a Communist for the FBI, right?”

  23

  Keeping his eye on Shubin’s reflection in the mirror, Jake was frantically searching his brain for something clever to say when Shubin asked him about his favorite radio program. He could not come up with any clever insults in answer to Shubin’s question, but it made him furious that Shubin did not even bother to ask.

  The radio set, an old Zenith left over from Jake’s dad, stood on the rickety chiffonier beside the window. Reflected in the mirror, Jake saw Shubin trying to reach the on and off knob on the wireless without getting up from the rocker. He leaned far back, stretching his hand farther and farther behind him until his pointy knees rose higher than his spectacles. The rocker was just about to crack under his gymnastics.

  The reflection of Shubin’s knees cocked up toward the ceiling gave Jake a very bad idea. He knew it was a bad idea, but he had no time to talk himself out of it. He scooted along the sofa toward the rocking chair, slid his foot below the rocker blade nearer to him, and gave it a slight push upward. He missed seeing Shubin go down because he was scooting back to where he sat before, but he did hear the crash. Only when his mother rushed in shouting, “What happened?” did Jake look in Shubin’s direction.

  Shubin wa
s on the floor, still in the sitting position, L-shaped, with the soles of his socked feet stuck up in the air and his back flat against the spindles of the chair pressed to the floorboards. He looked ridiculous. Mrs. McCauley clapped her hands and burst out laughing.

  Startled, Jake looked at his mother. He had not expected such a reaction from her. With all her annoyingly predictable flaws, Mrs. McCauley could really surprise Jake sometimes, surprise him in such unexpected ways that he often wondered if there was more to his mother than he could ever possibly know. But this time, it was the neat little trick Shubin pulled next that surprised Jake even more than his mother’s laughter. In fact, it left him openmouthed.

  Wedged in the overturned rocker, Shubin doubled over, bringing his knees to his chest, and all at once, as if a wound-up spring had released within him, leapt into a backward flip. His socked feet arced below the ceiling, just missing the overhead fixture, and—wham!—he landed on the carpet like a circus gymnast.

  Mrs. McCauley shrieked with pleasure and began clapping. With one hand pressed to his heart and the other hand making a grand gesture, Shubin took a deep bow, first to Mrs. McCauley and then to Jake, trying to look very serious, but soon grinning ear to ear.

  Jake loved Shubin’s trick, he loved his bow, and to be honest, he loved that he was not angry about falling off the chair. Instead, Shubin was smiling and ogling Jake’s mother, as if she were the most terrific thing he had ever laid his eyes on. That part Jake did not love. Watching Shubin looking at his mother that way gave Jake such a sick feeling, he had to do something about it quick. He dashed to the wireless and twisted the on and off knob all the way up.

  “Our Washington correspondent reports,” a radio voice bellowed, “that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, issued the following statement…”

  His mother and Shubin did exactly what Jake wanted them to do; they quit looking at each other and turned to the wireless.

  “We can successfully defeat the Communist attempt to capture the United States by fighting it with truth and justice. Further, Mr. Hoover said…”

  “Oh, what baloney.” Shubin stepped up to the wireless and snapped it off.

  Mrs. McCauley glanced uneasily at Jake. “But, Mr. Shubin—”

  Shubin flipped the rocker in the upright position and eased himself into the seat. “Justice and truth have nothing to do with fighting Communism, and J. Edgar Hoover knows it better than anybody.”

  “What is he saying, Mom?” Jake said, stunned. “He doesn’t believe in truth?”

  “Whose truth, kid?” Shubin said. “There’s more than one.”

  “Mom?” Jake moved closer to his mother, turning his back to Shubin. “We have only one truth in America, right? Tell him, Mom, tell him.”

  “Please, Jake, Mr. Shubin is joking again.”

  “No, Mom, he’s not joking,” Jake whispered, glancing over his shoulder at Shubin. “Something is either true or untrue, right? And as for justice, maybe they don’t have any in Russia, Mom, but in America there is liberty and justice for all like in the Pledge of Allegiance.”

  Shubin burst out laughing.

  “Please, Mr. Shubin,” said Mrs. McCauley nervously. “Jake is still very young, and perhaps—”

  “No, ma’am, he’s old enough to know that these days lies are sold as truths, and as for liberty and justice for all, there are plenty of suckers in this country who get neither.”

  “What is he talking about, Mom?” Jake said, horrified.

  “I’m talking about your fellow Americans, kid, those who choose to think differently than J. Edgar Hoover wishes them to. They get their share of spying and snooping same as they would in Russia. It could make your head spin, kid, plus it’s perfectly illegal, so don’t you talk to me about justice.”

  “Mom?” Jake pleaded. “I don’t understand.”

  “What’s there to understand?” Shubin said, rocking faster and faster and smirking a nasty, menacing smirk. “If you’re ever suspected of being a Communist, kid, you’ll understand just fine. It won’t be pretty, I guarantee you that.”

  Everything that happened today at school, the note tossed at him, and the beating he got, and the hatred with which everyone stared at him rose so vividly before Jake’s eyes that he instantly verged on tears. He spun around to face Shubin and screamed at the top of his voice, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

  Mrs. McCauley pulled Jake away from Shubin and held him tight in her arms. “Please, honey, please.”

  “Who does he think he is, Mom?” Jake shouted. “Sitting in my dad’s favorite rocker!”

  24

  At Duane’s house, Major Armbruster’s face was everywhere, beaming from every wall and out of dozens of neat little frames crowding the side tables, but Jake had only one tiny snapshot of his father. About a year ago, he found it in the attic, stuck between the pages of the atlas from which he had torn the foldout world map. In the snapshot, Jake’s dad in his air force dress was standing in their backyard. Behind him, a portion of the fence and a limb of a hackberry tree were in sharp focus, but his dad’s face was a little fuzzy. The camera must have clicked when he looked down at a baby wrapped in a blanket he held in his arms. The baby was Jake.

  Now under the cover of the night, Jake kneeled before the dresser in his room, slid out its bottom drawer crammed full of spy comics, and noiselessly set it down on the floor. He trained the beam of his Eveready into the open space at the back of the dresser, flashing out of the gloom the very baby blanket from the snapshot, carefully folded. He reached in, pulled out the blanket, and shook it open. His dad’s snapshot fluttered to the floor. Jake took the blanket and the snapshot to his bed and sat, propped against the pillows, studying the picture under the Eveready’s light.

  Jake could explain neither why they had no pictures of his dad nor why Jake had never told his mother about the snapshot he had found. Somehow he had a strong suspicion that it was his mother’s fault Dad’s pictures were missing from their home. Once, a terrible thought came to him that maybe there were no pictures of his father because his mom had stopped loving him. It frightened Jake so much that he had never thought about it again. Not at least until Shubin showed up in their house.

  Jake was so absorbed in studying the snapshot that he nearly missed the sound of the opening door. He clicked off the flashlight, dived below the covers, and faced the wall, covering his head completely. His mother must have been walking without shoes again, because he could not tell if she had come into the room until he heard her voice beside him.

  “I know it must be awfully confusing, honey,” she said, as if she knew that he was only pretending to be sleeping. “But please, Jake, I beg you, try to be patient. Mr. Shubin is—”

  “He hates America, Mom,” Jake said from under the covers.

  “Oh, honey, but he doesn’t.” She sat at the edge of the bed, and he felt her hand on his shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it? About what he said in the parlor?”

  Jake flung the covers aside with such force that his mother leapt to her feet and backed away from the bed. He sat up and, trying to make her out in the dark, shouted, “Know what he’s hiding under the floor in the attic, Mom? A whole bag full of photo cameras! He’s got a Minox. A spy camera! Don’t you get it, Mom: he’s a spy!”

  “I wish you’d stop reading those spy comics, Jake,” she said calmly. “You’re beginning to imagine things. And please keep your voice down.”

  “Why, Mom? So he won’t hear? I don’t care, okay? I cut up his suitcase. Duane said it would have a false bottom, but it didn’t. I hid the suitcase under the back porch with all his stuff in it, but you know what? The G-men knew it, Mom; they knew about the suitcase. They must be watching our house! We have to get rid of him! Ever since you took him in, bad things have been happening. Really bad things. You don’t even know!”

  “You went into Mr. Shubin’s room without his permission?”

  “It’s not his room, Mom! It’s Dad’s
! Why do you always defend that Russian? What, are you in love with him or something?”

  He sunk his teeth into his lower lip until it hurt, terrified of what had just come out of his mouth. His mother was silent, and he strained to see her in the dark, a slight shape against the dimly lit hallway. She lingered inside the door frame, neither out of his room, nor still in it. Her voice came to him flat, without any feeling.

  “I love your father, Jacob. You shouldn’t worry.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why don’t we have any pictures of him, then?”

  “He didn’t like pictures, Jake. The one you’re hiding behind the dresser is the only one we have in the house.”

  Stunned that his mother knew about the snapshot, Jake watched her disappear into the hallway.

  “As for Mr. Shubin,” she said before the door behind her softly closed, “at least try to be civil, that’s all I’m asking. Good night, honey.”

  And then she was gone, while he, with the baby blanket and his dad’s snapshot held tightly to his chest, remained still and speechless and overwhelmed with confusion. The window in his room was open, and for a long time he listened to the drone of crickets outside. The sound rose and fell in evenly timed waves. Each time a wave of sound rose, its pitch seemed louder and higher than the one before. Soon, the pitch was so high that it began to hurt his ears. Pained, he let the blanket and the snapshot fall into his lap and slapped his hands over his ears. There was a momentary quiet, but when he moved his hands away the crickets’ shrill was louder; its pitch was higher. He covered his ears, waited for a moment, then opened them. This time, the noise pierced his eardrums, as if some supersonic jet were roaring through his head. He fell onto his sheets, folding the pillow twice over his ears to escape the terrible sound.

  25

  The muffled shrills of the telephone ringing in the hallway reached Jake through the pillow crushed over his ears. Who could that be? His mother rarely had anyone calling the house, certainly not in the middle of the night. The phone operator must have made a mistake; such things often happened.