Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

After two weeks of flagellation, nearly quitting hundreds of times, Will was able to ambulate somewhat safely on his board without cracking a kneecap, and Jonah agreed to set off on their first investigation.

“We need to make sure Marcus isn’t back at his foster home, hiding out,” said Will while they rolled toward County Park on the asphalt footpath.

“Was there anything else you remember about the dude who grabbed you?” Jonah asked.

“Like I said,” Will replied, “he wheezed like crazy, like he could barely breathe. But he was fast and strong, and didn’t make any sense when he talked. It was like a junk drawer of words. I don’t even remember half of them. But I’m sure I felt hair on his head, so it wasn’t the Bald Man.”

“And the Butler’s pretty frail,” Jonah added, “so that rules him out. Must’ve been that scavenger who bought their hoses. Marcus said he was hard to understand.”

“Could be. Oh, and when I got home, my coat was covered in this dust that was really hard to get off,” Will said. “But the Wheezing Man is definitely our prime suspect.”

The boys kicked up their skateboards (Will’s struck him painfully in the knee) in front of Marcus’s foster home — a box of mildewed stucco with a ratty, slumping tin roof. They heard a miniature wailing and realized it originated from the burgundy minivan angle-parked in the driveway. They peered inside. A little Indian toddler was strapped in a car seat, his mouth a perfect O.

“Are you my new boys? Where’s your paperwork?” called a woman’s voice from the doorstep.

“Sorry?” said Will in an embarrassing sonorous voice he used to employ for deliverymen. “No, we’re friends of Marcus, and we have a few questions.”

She invited them in with a solemn finger wave. They removed their skateboard-chewed shoes and ambled to the living room. Will spotted a few little Indian kids peering shyly from the rooms down a dim hall. The air in this particular Inside was viscous with dust vapor, and small plastic bits of toy paved the moldering carpet like autumn leaves. Sad-eyed collectible Eskimo dolls peered down from high shelves in tiny fur coats with plastic harpoons in their hands. The boys sat on a toy-laden couch, and the woman thrust fruit punch — flavored juice boxes upon them without asking. Marcus’s foster mother was White, with a heavy, pale face, both the hue and shape of an uncooked turkey.

“Sorry if this is hard for you,” Will said. “The police must’ve asked you lots of questions already.”

“Police never asked me nothing,” she blurted. “They came and searched his room for drugs and alcohol. Was about it.”

“Okay,” Will said, extracting his notebook from his kangaroo pocket. But he didn’t know what to write, so he began doodling a skateboard ramp. Jonah watched him and shook his head. “Did Marcus have any enemies?” Will said.

“Only anybody with ears connected to half a brain,” she said. “That boy’s mouth soured about every last person in town in the few years I had him. Except most didn’t stay ticked. He has a way like that. Mine was the sixth foster home he been through.”

“Did you say sixth foster home?” Will said, scribbling notes he knew instantly would prove worthless because his cursive was still awful.

She nodded gravely. “The second wasn’t kind to him. Some pastor and his wife, his worker told me. Kept him in homemade chicken-wire shackles at night. Took a curling iron to him. A cordless drill. Worse things best not said.” Will remembered the lacework of scars on Marcus’s hands and torso when he’d offered his shirt that first day Outside. “ ’Course he didn’t want to talk to nobody about it, certainly not me.”

“Do you have any idea where he is now?” Will said, as Jonah turned away to peekaboo with a little girl with huge eyes and dancing pigtails who’d crept to the edge of the room in a filthy purple leotard.

The woman shook her head. “He was always staying out, sleeping outside in forts he’d built all over. He brung things back for the other children here: toys and candies and such, roasts and potatoes for me to cook. I pitched most of it ’cause I knew he didn’t have no money.” Suddenly her breathing thickened. She touched her tear duct with her finger as though to manually press it closed but a tear slipped past.

“At first I thought he’d gone up north to look for his mother,” the woman continued in a sputter, “he always claimed she was alive, said he saw her in visions. Used to draw these pictures of her, all these colors swirling around her — you know how the Indians draw, with those energy lines? Except his worker was certain she was killed hitchhiking just after he was born. Still, that boy could see to himself. That’s a true fact. His uncle taught him to hunt and fish before he was murdered by his best friend — one of those liquored fights over some misunderstanding. I know one thing: Indian boys go sideways staying inside. Marcus was the same. Gets worse as they grow. They don’t care for the indoors the way the White ones do.”

“Don’t they ?” Jonah said, annoyed. “Is that why you made Marcus stay out of the house from nine to five every day? Even if he was sick?”

Will shot Jonah a wide-eyed, imploring look.

She was sobbing openly now in her pouchy armchair, and Will’s mind flashed to his own mother. “He was driving this house half-crazy,” she wept. “Teaching the young ones to light campfires and carve little wood sculptures with knives. They worshipped him. I needed to protect them .” Then her voice sharpened. “Maybe you’ll have kids yourself someday and find out how there’s no way to keep certain boys from jumping off cliffs.”

Ignoring her, Jonah plucked an Etch A Sketch from the toy-drecked floor and after a quick flurry of knob twisting, showed the little girl a delicately rendered horse in full gallop. She squealed and clapped with delight.

Will leaned toward the woman and spoke calmly, realizing that if his time Inside had taught him anything, it was how to soothe. “Ma’am, did Marcus leave anything suspicious behind? Phone numbers? Papers?”

“Why, did he swipe something of yours?” she said, dabbing her sludgy mascara.

“No, I don’t mean—”

“—Alls he came to me with was an old shopping bag of hyperactive pills he refused to take and a chocolate bar his social worker had bought him because she was done with him. That was it. Not even pictures of his kin. Plus, I mean he shared a room here with three other boys, sometimes four, and to tell you outright, I’m not sure what’s his and what ain’t. Mostly a slew of boy things in there: bits of slate and amethyst, wood swords and slingshots, skateboards, and dead things they find. Broken things they keep and want to fix but don’t know how.”

After draining his juice box with a gurgle, Will thanked her and stood. Out front they found the child in the minivan fast asleep, its little eyes smashed shut in the seat as if it were preparing for some kind of impact.

“One more thing,” she said, taking Will aside while Jonah practiced kickflips on the sidewalk. “An old, white-haired fella came by a while back asking about Marcus. Said he was a social worker. Seemed real official. A right good talker. But he was lying.”

“How do you know?” asked Will.

“He had an old hockey helmet he said he wanted to return to Marcus. That boy never wore one of those things in his life.”

“So we know Marcus has either been kidnapped or he’s back hiding out,” Will said, pacing New York with his hands behind his back like a lawyer. “But where? Another shack? Or if the Butler or his henchmen did get him, where’re they keeping him? And why?”