Chris Grabenstein - The Crossroads

“This is my son, Zack. Zack? Say hi to Kyle.”

“Hey,” Zack mumbled.

Kyle Snertz snorted back some more wet stuff. The guy seemed to have a ton of snot stuck inside his nose.

“Say, guess what?” Zack’s father said to Kyle.

“What?”

“We’re going to build a tree fort!”

“We are?” The news flash surprised Zack.

Kyle was suddenly interested. “Cool. You gonna steal wood and junk from the construction sites?”

“No.” Zack’s father chuckled. “We’re not going to steal anything. I thought we’d run out to Home Depot. You guys are welcome to come along with us if you’d like.” The cell phone clipped to his belt started chirping. “Excuse me, fellas.” He walked away to take the call.

The other boys moved in behind Kyle. Zack could tell he was their leader. The alpha dog.

“So, four-eyes,” Kyle sneered low so Zack’s dad couldn’t hear. “You live in a dollhouse?”

Zack didn’t answer. Kyle was big. The boys who wanted to beat him up usually were. Big and moist.

Kyle moved closer. Close enough that Zack could smell his sweat and know it stank like rancid chicken soup. “Seeing how you live in a dollhouse, maybe we should call you Barbie from now on.”

Great. A nickname. Like Stinky or Ratfink, only worse.

“My name is Zack.” He mumbled it to the dirt.

“No, it’s not, Barbie .”

Zipper snapped at the boy’s ankle.

“Hey! If your stupid dog bites me, I swear I’ll sue!” Kyle used both hands to smack Zack hard in the chest.

“Hey, hey, hey.” Zack’s dad saw the shove, closed up his cell. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Stupid dog tried to bite me.”

“Whoa,” said Zack’s father. “Take it easy there, Kyle.”

“Ahhhhh, bite me, old man.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Bite me, old man.’ What’s the matter? You deaf?”

“Okay. I’m going to have a word with your parents. Where exactly do you live?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out!”

“Dad?” Zack tugged at his father’s arm. “Let’s go home.”

Kyle Snertz spat on the ground. Zack knew what it meant: “Don’t come back unless you want trouble.”

“So who called?” Zack asked when they were a couple hundred feet up the street.

“Work. About my business trip next week.”

“Malaysia?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

“Hey, Barbie,” Kyle Snertz yelled after them. “Have fun in your tree fort !”

The way Snertz said “tree fort” made it sound like the sissiest thing any boy could ever do.

It also made Zack wish he could fly away to Malaysia with his father.

Either Malaysia or Timbuktu.

As the sun goes down, he sees an old man sitting on the stump of what used to be his tree.

He doesn’t wish to be seen, so he isn’t.

He would like to kill the geezer who long ago tried to chop down his tree. But he can’t. He can’t do much besides make noise and, if he tries real hard, rattle things.

Now something draws him toward the house. Something strong. He drifts out of the trees.

No one sees him because he doesn’t wish to be seen.

Not just yet, anyway.

The plumber had never seen such a mess in a bathroom.

He uncoiled his motorized snake and worked the long, flexible wire down into the toilet. He flipped the power switch and the steel cable rooted its way farther down the drain. It spun and ground and churned. A minute later, he felt the far end hit something. The clog.

“Bingo! Got it!”

The cable cut through whatever wad of muck was blocking the sewer line, and the toilet bowl sucked itself dry.

That’s when the plumber smelled something. Not sewer gas. Something oily and minty.

Like Brylcreem. Billy had tried that goop once. When he was a kid, Mee Maw had slicked down his hair with the stuff on the day he’d posed for his sixth-grade class picture, the same day his name went from Billy O’Claire to Billy O’Greasy Hair.

He’d never forget that smell—like someone had rubbed his head with a peppermint stick made out of Crisco.

All of a sudden, Billy had an incredible craving for a big juicy burger. Plus a side of fries. And a chocolate milk shake. Maybe two or three of each.

Billy dropped his sewer rooter with a clunk and a thud on the tile floor. He didn’t bother packing up his wrenches. He’d come back later for his tools.

Right now he had to have a hamburger.

He walked out of the bathroom like a zombie. A very hungry, burger-crazed zombie.

And then—just as suddenly—the urge passed.

Good, he thought. I’ve always been more of a nachos kind of guy.

“You ought to grind down the stump,” the tree man suggested to Judy.

It was after dusk, but the big oak was finally chipped and mulched.

“Grinding costs extra, but I’ve got this machine that’ll chew right through it.”

“No,” Judy said gently.

“All right. How about we dig it out? We bring in a backhoe and—”

“No. We should save the stump. It’ll give Miss Spratling someplace to hang her descanso .”

“Des-what-so?”

“It’s a Spanish word. Means ‘memorial.’”

“All right. Suit yourself. But if you change your mind, give me a call.”

“Okay,” said Judy. “Zack?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you nail everything back up? Hang the cross and flower bucket on the highway side of the stump?”

“Now?”

“No, honey. It’s dark. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Mandica said. “You’re right. We should all knock off for the night.” Mandica looked around the backyard. “Anybody seen Pop?”

A chain saw roared to life out in the woods.

“I know, I know. I heard you the first time. I heard all of you!”

The old man was shouting at the darkness between two birch trees. His thrumming chain saw hung limply alongside his leg. Its sharp teeth rattled and chugged and slid around the tip of the blade.

“If I finish the job, will you leave me be?”

No one answered because no one was there.

The old man goosed the saw’s throttle. The throaty engine rumbled and roared. He pressed its spinning teeth against the jagged wood.

Sparks flew as if he were trying to slice into a steel I beam.

He drifts back to what is left of his tree.

The burger will have to wait because he sees what the old man is trying to do. Sees him attacking the stump with a chittering chain saw. Sees red sparks and chunks of wood flying from the snaggletoothed stump.

He knows he can’t stop the old man.

But it is dark now, so he can show himself.

He does.