Chris Grabenstein - The Crossroads

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Zack and Zipper both turned and ran.

He fully expected the giant oak tree to start swinging its branches and tossing acorns at him. Maybe it would tear down the power lines and electrocute him. Maybe it would try to kill him with a pointy-tipped branch.

Maybe this was the King of all the Killer Trees in New York and Connecticut.

Zack ran faster.

The next morning, Zack stumbled out of bed and slogged across the soft carpet to his own private bathroom. Zipper, who had spent the night curled up against his legs, hopped off the bed and trotted after him.

“Good morning, Zipper.” Zack yawned.

He opened the bathroom door and heard gurgling.

He also smelled something foul. Like a three-week-old hard-boiled egg soaked in vinegar.

He wondered if maybe he had given Zipper too much bologna yesterday. Maybe he shouldn’t have let the dog lick his ice cream bowl after dinner, either. Maybe Zipper was lactose intolerant because, frankly, the bathroom smelled like somebody or something had spent the night in there farting.

Zack heard more gurgling. Maybe the whole house was farting.

The toilet seat chattered up and down and looked like the flapping bill of a porcelain pelican. With every flip of the lip, Zack heard more sloshing and bubbling in the bowl.

Then he saw brown chunky stuff come flowing out over the sides.

Gross.

Fortunately, there were two more bathrooms down the hall.

Zack just hoped those toilets weren’t puking, too.

About once every month, Billy O’Claire, the plumber, went to visit his grandmother at the nursing home.

Billy called his grandmother Mee Maw. He called the place where she lived the Smelly Old Folks Home because both were true: The home smelled and so did the old folks living inside it. The home smelled like mashed potatoes mixed with mop water. The old folks smelled like dirty diapers.

Billy pulled into the empty parking lot. This was no assisted-living retirement village. This was a cinder-block dump with weeds and cigarette butts in the gravel pits that used to be gardens. But it was the best the twenty-five-year-old plumber could do for his sixty-seven-year-old grandmother, even though the crazy old coot had raised him since he was a baby.

Billy had picked up a box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies. Mee Maw loved them because they were soft and spongy and easy to eat without putting in her dentures.

Billy knew Mee Maw would be sitting in the cafeteria, so he headed that way. The vast room was quiet except for an old man plunking sour notes on a battered upright piano.

Billy saw Mee Maw sitting at a table far from the window. Mee Maw hated windows. She always thought somebody was on the other side, waiting to smash the glass and grab her.

“Hey, Mee Maw.” His grandmother’s white hair was flat across the back of her head, plastered in place by her pillow. Billy knew she spent most of her days in bed, staring up at the ceiling. She had lived that way most of her life. Alone and afraid.

“Who are you?” Mee Maw looked up from her tray when Billy sat down across from her.

“I’m your grandson. Billy. Remember?”

“Who?”

“Billy O’Claire.”

“That’s my name. O’Claire.”

“I know, Mee Maw.”

“My name is Mary. Mary O’Claire.”

“That’s right. I brought you oatmeal pies, Mee Maw.”

“How sweet. Be a dear and open one for me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Billy pulled out a plastic-wrapped pie and tore into the wrapper with his teeth.

“He was here again. Last night.”

“Who, Mee Maw?”

“The man at the window. He says he’s going to kill me for what I meant to do.”

“Is that so?” Billy said it with the enthusiasm of someone who had heard the same story over and over, every day, his whole life.

When Billy was a baby, barely three months old, he had been sent to live with his reclusive grandmother. Maybe she wasn’t so bad back then. Maybe she even went outdoors. Billy couldn’t remember. He went to Mee Maw’s after his parents had been killed by a cop in what the newspapers called a “bungled blackmail scheme.”

“How’s your baby boy?” Mee Maw asked.

“Don’t know,” Billy answered sheepishly.

“You don’t know?”

“No, ma’am.” After the divorce, the judge gave Billy’s ex full custody of their baby boy.

Mee Maw shook her head. “Like father, like son.”

“I brought you some candy, too,” Billy said. “Bag of them mints you like. Maybe you can fling ’em at the window if the bad man comes back tonight.”

“Like father, like son.”

Billy rose from the table. It was time to go.

“I’ll see you next time, Mee Maw.”

He kissed his grandmother on the top of her head. He sometimes wondered why he bothered coming out to visit the old woman, but the answer was simple: Mee Maw was the only family he had.

Except, of course, for my son.

But his ex-wife, Sharon, wouldn’t let Billy anywhere near Aidan—no matter how many times he went over to where she worked to beg.

And Billy hated going to that place.

Spratling Manor gave him the creeps.

Tuesday afternoon, Judy drove to the North Chester Public Library. It was a two-story redbrick building with a small schoolhouse steeple. It looked like it had been built sometime after the war. The Revolutionary War.

Judy loved the aroma of libraries: the scent of copy-machine toner peppered with just a pinch of plastic from crinkly dust jackets.

“Ms. Magruder?” A sweet little lady with curly white hair and bright purple reading glasses was standing behind the front desk. “My, you look exactly like the photograph inside your book jackets!”

“Are you Mrs. Emerson?”

“Yes, dear. Kindly wipe your feet.”

Okay. Maybe she’s more feisty than sweet.

“I’m Jeanette Emerson,” the librarian said. “No relation.”

“To Ralph Waldo?”

“Is there another? I was delighted to hear that you and Georgie have moved back to town.”

“Georgie?”

“That’s what I called him when he was a bluebird.”

“Georgie was a bluebird?”

“Yes. Four straight summers. The bluebirds always won. Read far more books than either the sparrows or the parakeets. That’s why I wanted to meet you.”

“You want to talk about birds?” Judy asked.

“We could do that if you like. I, however, was much more interested in ascertaining whether you might be available to read your latest book to this year’s flock of Summer Library Campers.”

“I’d love to.”

“Excellent. We start up in a few weeks. July, actually.”

“My July is wide open.”

“Wonderful. So, where are you and Georgie living?”

“Rocky Hill Farms. We’re right near the intersection of these two highways.”

Mrs. Emerson nodded. “Route 13. Highway 31.”

Judy remembered George’s little landmark. “We’re in the corner where the tree is.”

“I see. But as you may have noticed, there are several trees on all sides of that particular intersection.”

“We’ve got the one with the white cross.”