Майкл Коннелли - The Best American Mystery Stories 2008

Waiting for Billy got to be more and more on my mind. Not that I especially enjoyed his company. But I did wonder what he had up his sleeve, not leaving me to burn up with the rest of them. When I thought about Mama and Daddy and Johnny, I could sort of understand how Billy got sick of them. The way they were, they really didn’t amount to much. I couldn’t even recollect what Johnny looked like, except he always had green snot coming out of his nose no matter what time of year it was. That, and he smelled bad, from some brown cream that came in a white jar. Mama said it was Resinal, but Billy called it monkey puke and made like he was gonna throw up whenever Johnny got within smelling range. Johnny wasn’t much younger than Billy but when you stood them side by side, Johnny looked like a plate of leftovers that needed throwed away.

When Vivian wanted to tell me something hard she didn’t put any polish on it. She’d say it straight out — to Jake, like going through him first would soften up whatever it was she had to say. “Dog,” she’d say. She never did call him by his real name, and after a while he’d answer to Dog, same as to Jake.

“Dog,” she said one day after we’d been there most of a month, “Mrs. Clarke doesn’t want you living with her. I said you may as well stay with me.”

I put my hands over my face and made like I was trying not to bawl. “She never wanted me and Jake. We were just a cross to her.”

That made Vivian laugh, which she probably hadn’t done more than a couple of times in her whole life.

We lived with Vivian near two years before we heard from Billy. That first year I didn’t go to school. Truth is, I never did go to school after the fire, but I don’t tell folks that, so they won’t think I’m some kind of retard. How I happened not to go to school was, one morning Juris came to see Vivian, and after he left she sat me down and started talking to Jake.

“Dog,” she said. “Mrs. Clarke says she’ll quit teaching if they let you back in school.”

“Mrs. Clarke says. Mrs. Clarke wants.” I said this real mean, sort of under my breath. “I guess if Mrs. Clarke wanted all of you to jump off a cliff you’d do that too.”

Right away I could see Vivian wasn’t finished talking to Jake.

“I told you in the beginning, folks wouldn’t know what to do with you. The less they see of you the easier they are with themselves.”

I knew she was meaning me, not Jake.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t much care one way or the other.”

All year long we ran around in the sage and scab rock that was behind Vivian’s house. Sometimes we’d go down to the willows that grew thick beside the river and catch tadpoles. We’d bring them back in a jar and put them in a pail until they turned into frogs. I never got tired of watching how something that looked like a fish could end up being a frog.

There was an old rabbit hutch in her backyard that had been burnt some. “You may as well use it for a playhouse,” Vivian said. “The rabbits aren’t coming back.”

Mama tried to leave once and Daddy put her head in the slop bucket and said she better never pull a stunt like that again.

“What happened to the rabbits?” I said.

She just shook her head and walked, sort of stiff like, back to the house. One thing we learned about Vivian. Once she made her mind up not to answer a question, no amount of asking would get a good result. And it wasn’t until later we found out what happened to those rabbits.

It took me and Jake most of two days to clean and fix up the rabbit house. Vivian watched a bit then came out dragging a board she had stuck under her porch for some reason or other. After that she hauled out a saw and a hammer and a can of nails. We sawed and hammered until we had most of the burnt-out places covered up, which made Vivian smile and me and Jake took some enjoyment from that.

We went pretty near all over, which Vivian let us do. She said, “As long as you’re back at a decent hour.”

We got a kick out of her saving that. Since she never said what hour she was talking about, we were never late. And when we showed up looking like we’d rolled around in some fire pit — which was all that was left of my family’s house — she never made a fuss.

Me and Jake went there and poked around. I never did find anything I remembered. Then one day we were partway there and got sidetracked by a bird, looked like a robin or something, flying around and squawking to beat the band. Jake got to nosing around in the weeds and turned up its baby. It was big enough to have some feathers, which was why it wasn’t already dead. I figured it must have jumped out of the nest thinking it could fly. I spotted the nest way up in one of the elm trees that were all over town. The mama bird just kept on screeching and flying around. Me and Jake could see no good result — birds having no hands or arms — was gonna come of all her hollering. Seemed like she should have been watching closer in the first place, which not knowing about the way of birds, it’s not my place to cast stones. I picked up the little bird, mindful not to squash it, and looked it square in the face. Its mouth was too big for its head, and it was opened real wide, which looked like it was yelling or hungry. The mama was still flying around, just not making so much noise. Jake was sitting in the dirt, waiting for me to make up my mind what to do with it. Being so little, it didn’t amount to much. I could have throwed it away. Jake was pushing at my arm to pet him, which I did. Then real gentle we carried the bird back to Vivian. By the time we got there it was still warm but not moving.

Vivian looked real sad and said it was dead. That made Jake and me feel bad, not so much about the stupid bird but about making Vivian sad. She wrapped the bird in a piece of old shirt I’d outgrown, and we buried it, which made us feel some better. Jake did a couple of tricks, like roll over and shake hands, so Vivian would stop being sad. And I quit thinking so much about poking around the old house.

Vivian knew the names of all the stars, and at night we sat on the porch with her big star book, the one with all the pictures, and we’d look at them in the book and then find them in the sky. Some nights they seemed so close I figured if I was on a mountain, I could touch them. Vivian said it didn’t matter how tall a mountain you climbed, the only way you could touch a star was in your mind. She talked like that. Mostly, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of these conversations, but me and Jake liked the quiet way of her.

At the end of summer that second year we were with Vivian, it was hot as a pistol. Folks said that instead of hello. Jake and me stayed inside, and I was down to my underwear. We laid out on the kitchen linoleum, which was cool, and ate ice cubes Vivian made out of orange Kool-Aid. And that’s where we were when somebody knocked at the front door, which wasn’t usual. Most folks just stood on the porch and hollered out a couple of times to see if Vivian was home or not. Sometimes, if she didn’t want company, she’d just not answer and no one thought much about it. But whoever was out there knocked again. Me and Jake could tell Vivian was thinking. We were used to her ways so it wasn’t a surprise to see her get all red in the face when, whoever it was, started to pound with something heavy, like a rock. That seemed to settle it for her and she sort of stomped to the door, which tickled me and Jake, on account of her being no bigger than a dwarf. And then, right before she grabbed the knob she stopped, like she just thought of something. Then cool as a cucumber she opened the door.

There stood Billy. He’d gotten big, like Juris. Just seeing him made me near too scared to breathe. Jake went crazy, barking and growling.