Flyers (9781481414449) (19 page)

A few minutes later I found myself back at Andy's desk studying his school picture again. This was the third time I'd seen it, and I was really starting to feel as though I knew this kid, and not only just knew him, but kind of liked him too—thinking that if I'd been around when he was growing up we'd probably have been good friends. And even though I'd never even met the guy, I started feeling a little sad—as if I missed him, missed having him around.

I reached again for the picture hanging on the bulletin board above his desk, the one taken out by the old Rexleigh Bridge, and I had the same feeling of sadness all over again, thinking how it would have been nice to have had this pleasant-faced kid for a neighbor, and how he could have shown me about working on cars and like
that, and how if he was around now he could have been in our films, and then his life—the way he sounded and looked and reacted to things—would have been somehow preserved. I had a strong feeling he would have fit right in with us and would have gotten a kick out of Rosasharn's antics and Jeremy's sarcasm. I had no reason to believe any of these things except for the few pictures I'd seen and the nice things Pop had said about him, but I believed them nonetheless.

I set the Rexleigh Bridge picture down next to his school picture the way I'd done the day before, and as I compared them one last time a sudden thought hit me like a jolt out of the blue. It dawned on me I'd never put the picture back on the bulletin board the day before. I'd studied it, set it next to the other picture, and then Jeremy'd started talking to me and we'd left. I was
sure
of that. And yet when I showed up today the picture'd been hanging up again. As if someone felt it
belonged
there!

I turned quickly and looked around the room again. Everything still looked the same but . . . I thought for a second. Hadn't Jeremy left that car magazine he'd dug out of the closet on Andy's bed? If he had, it wasn't there now. My eyes went over to the closet, which was open just a crack. That's probably the way it was when I'd walked in, probably the way Jeremy'd left it the day before when he finished scrounging around in there, but I couldn't be sure. All I was sure of was that the snapshot had been moved, and probably the magazine, and that meant I might not be alone. I started to back out of the room, never once taking my eyes off that closet door, ready to take off like a shot if I even
suspected
I saw it move.

Once out in the hallway, I picked up my pace considerably, took the stairs two at a time, hit the door, and was gone.

I was halfway
home and still moving at a pretty good clip when Ray McPherson pulled up next to me. “Hey there, Gabey,” he said, leaning out his window. “How's she goin'?”

Being called Gabey wasn't high on my list of concerns at the moment. Besides, Ray had called me that my whole life, and it was head and shoulders above Jeremy's “Gabe-boy.”

“Not bad,” I answered. “How about you?”

“Can't complain,” he said, and then followed with, “Don't do no good anyhow. You know what I mean?”

Our conversation continued at about this caliber for a few minutes, and then Ray pulled it around to what he really wanted to talk about. “Tell me something, Gabey. You notice anything squirrelly going on around here lately?”

The question didn't take me totally by surprise, but I still didn't know how to answer it. Ray obviously had in mind Rosasharn's performance on the hood of his car, and as far as I was concerned the further we stayed away from that subject, the better. And as far as opening up to Ray and sharing all the troubling things I'd been noticing lately . . . well, I wasn't up for that either.

“Like what?” I said lamely.

Ray looked up and down the road and off to both sides before saying anything more. “Get in,” he said finally. “You heading for home?”

I told him I was and walked around to the pas
senger side and climbed in. Ray just wasn't the type you said “Thanks, but I'd rather walk” to.

“You hear what happened to me a few weeks ago?” Ray said, kind of making a question out of it and kind of not, as he dropped the shifting lever to “drive” and gave the car some gas.

I nodded, not daring to offer any more than that. For all I knew, he could have already found out that I was one of the ones involved in that whole fiasco and had been cruising my road hoping to catch me alone so he could settle the score.

“Huh?” he said, giving me a poke. At first I thought maybe it was a “You lying to me, boy?” kind of “huh,” but then I realized he'd been looking out the window and hadn't seen me nod.

“I heard,” I said.

“That sonavabitch was on my car like a cheap suit,” he told me. “Ya see the friggin'
dents
it made up there? Check ‘em out.”

I took that as an order and leaned forward to get a look. You'd have to be more familiar with the various dents scattered around Ray's car than I was to know which were the ones Rosasharn had contributed. Even so, I didn't feel like being implicated in causing
any
of them. After I'd studied the hood for what I thought was the proper amount of time and with the proper look of commiseration, I nodded again.

“Huh?” he said, and gave my arm another poke.

“Yeah,” I answered. I sincerely hoped if he was leading up to the notion that those dents would have to be paid for, he was thinking in terms of money, not some kind of physical atonement. I looked over and studied him with quite a bit more interest than I'd studied the hood with. His eyes were still out on surveillance,
sweeping across the fields and woods on both sides of us.

“There was two of them sons-o'-bitches,” Ray said finally after he'd pulled his passenger wheels onto the lawn in front of my house and for the first time turned his full attention to me. “One of 'em jumped in front of me and then landed on my hood and did that.” He jabbed a thumb out toward his hood. “The other one run off into the trees. And with two-to-one odds I figured it was time to barrel-ass outta there, which is exactly what I did, and you'da done the same.”

I sat there. As much as I wanted to, it just wasn't the right moment to say “Thanks for the ride” and get out. I looked over and noticed Pop's car wasn't back in the yard yet. No cavalry to the rescue.

“You wanna know what I'm thinking?” Ray said, and looked for all the world as if he were staring right through me.

I nodded—reluctantly.

“I'm thinking them sonavabitchin' things are the same sons-o'-bitches that come charging out of the woods last Saturday at that stupid-assed drug day they was having at that tax drain they call a school.”

“Yeah?” I said—not so brilliant, maybe, but then I hadn't had time to plan for this conversation.

Ray wasn't through making connections. “That ain't all,” he said. “You know what else I'm thinking?”

I held my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Ray continued solemnly. “I think John Lindstrom seen 'em too, and that's what give him his stroke. I come prit' near having one myself seeing that numb-nut-looking thing staring down at me . . . nothing between us but a friggin' windshield. I'm telling ya, Gabey, you never seen nothin' like it!” He wore a
vague but undeniable look of pride as he studied me—the look of a survivor.

“He told Pop he saw his son,” I said, hoping to steer the conversation a little.

“And what's
that
tell you?” Ray said. “You're supposed to be a smart guy. What's that mean in
your
book?”

I shrugged, not having the slightest idea what he wanted me to say.

“College,”
he said, kind of disgusted. Not meaning that I'd gone, but that I was the type who
would
go, and already I'd lost my common sense. I didn't get all this out of that one word, but from a whole lifetime of living in Wakefield.

“It
means,”
Ray continued in what I took to be his remedial voice, “that he's crazier than a outhouse rat.” He studied me to see if I was getting his drift. It must be he didn't think I was because he rolled his eyes and continued in that same remedial voice. “I've known John Lindstrom my whole life, and he may have been missing a few cards, I'll give you that, but you know as well as I do, most of his friggin' deck was still there. Until that night.” He leaned in toward me. “So you tell me. What did that sonavabitch see that night that knocked him over the edge? He
seen
one of them sorry-assed . . . whatever the hell the friggin' things are. You can't
tell
me he didn't.”

He waited to see if I had any intention of telling him he didn't.

“And that ain't all,” he continued. “There's other donkey dookie going on around here.”

It suddenly came back to me why I'd been trekking down the road at such a good clip. “Like what?” I asked, this time genuinely interested.

“Like at that friggin' house you just left,” he said.

He definitely had my interest now, and I figured he knew it and was playing it for all the drama he could.

“You see anything in there?” he wanted to know.

I shrugged. “Like what?” I said again, dying to know what he was getting at.

He looked at me and nodded knowingly. “Let's just say that God forsaken dump of a place ain't as empty as it's supposed to be.”

I sat up straighter and looked at him. “Yeah?” I said.

“I've seen things,” he said importantly. “More than once.”

“You've seen things in the house?” My heart started picking up the pace again just from remembering the feeling I'd had when I left there.

He nodded, playing it for all it was worth. “Damn right.”

“Pop's been in there,” I said, thinking that might be what he saw. “And I've been over a few times with my friends. We cleaned the place one day.”

He shook his head. “I ain't talking about your old man, or you and your squirrel-bait friends. Things friggin' happen when you ain't even
close
to that place.”

“Yeah?” I said. Guys like Ray always seemed to have a pretty good handle on where everybody is at any given time, which always amazed me since I wasn't even sure where
I
was half the time.

Ray nodded. “At first I thought maybe that pill-faced daughter of his had come back and was staying there. You ever see her? She's scarier than the sonavabitchin' thing that was on my friggin' hood. But I didn't see no car around. And then I find out from Clutzy
today that she ain't been here and you couldn't get her here if you wanted to, even though I don't know why anybody'd friggin' want to. So if
she
ain't been here, how do you explain some of the hocus pocus I been seeing? Lights on, then off, shades down, then up, you name it. Then one friggin' afternoon I seen something moving around the living room. And it wasn't you and your brother 'cause you were out in the yard draggin' around that fur ball calf, and your old man was at his office, and young Rosa was cleaning motel rooms and young Wulfson mowing hay and young Michaelson out at the damn country club. So I pull up and look through the friggin' windows, but whatever it was I seen has already made itself good and scarce. I shoulda kicked the sonavabitchin' door down, but at the time I was still thinking it mighta been Rachel and I didn't feel like ending up face-to-face with that. But come to find out it
wasn't
Rachel, and it wasn't Rachel any of them other times either. So I seen you over there again today and I wanted to find out if you knew what in God's green friggin' earth was going on at that place.”

I shook my head and probably looked just wide-eyed enough to be believable. “I wish I did.”

“I'll tell you something, Gabey—just between you me and the sonavabitchin' man in the moon. I'm about done
wishing
I knew what was goin' on there. Tonight I'm gonna find out for myself.”

I looked at him. “Whaddaya gonna do?”

“You ain't gotta worry,” he said. “I ain't gonna break into your pal's precious friggin' place. Not unless I have to anyway. But I'll be there watching, you can bet your hindquarters on that, and I'll stay all sonavabitchin' night if I have to.”

“And if you see something?”

Ray snorted and reached into his backseat. “Depends. But I might just play me some baseball.” He pulled out a beat-up old baseball bat that looked like it might have belonged to Babe Ruth's grandfather and waved it in my face. “This here's Betsy,” he told me, “and I wouldn't wanna be some sorry-assed, numbnutted, green sonavabitch when old Betsy's open for business.” He nodded solemnly and looked down at Betsy like a proud father and then back to me. “No sirree, Gabey. I would not.”

I hurried in
to the phone, hoping I could get hold of everybody before it was too late. We'd planned to meet at the pond to do some more filming that evening, but that no longer seemed like such a bright idea. With Ray and his pal Betsy lurking in the shadows, just itching for action, the last thing we needed was for Rosasharn and Jeremy and Ethan to be running around Mr. Lindstrom's property decked out as creatures from the underworld. Knowing Ray, by evening he'd have downed a few beers, and even if he didn't start clubbing them on sight, we still wouldn't be out of the woods. When it dawned on him that we were responsible for the original attack on his car, it could have a serious impact on his pride, which, in turn, could have a serious impact on
our
well-being—especially mine, since I was the one who'd sat right next to him and listened to him tell the whole cockamamie story without saying a word. And if I didn't call ahead, it'd be just like Rosasharn to put on his stupid costume and go driving down the road right past Ray and then wave to him for good measure. It'd be
Rogue Nun
all over again.