33 Snowfish (16 page)

I didn’t even look at Seldom.

I just went and sat back down at the table.

Then one day when we was picking sticks, out of nowhere, Seldom goes, “What about Scooby?”

“Huh?”

“Scooby.”

I was like, “
Whooby
?”

“Last night you was talkin’ in your sleep again. You You was goin’ ‘Run, Scooby, run!’ and stuff like that.”

It was kinda funny how Seldom was asking me all these questions but he wouldn’t look at me. It was like he was trying to be slick and shit. Like he was one of them private investigator pigs you see on TV.

I just kept walking in the snow with them sticks I’d picked. The baby was playing with my ears and I think he shit his pants cuz you could smell it.

Then, all of the sudden while we was walking in the snow, the dream I had from the night before came back to me:

I was in the backyard looking at the woods behind the Itty Bitty Farm. I was burning garbage and watching the smoke curl over the roof. Seldom was building the raft. Them woods looked all black and dead and skanked and then all of the sudden
Boobie
came out of the trees and just stood there looking at me. His hair was white like the snow and he just stood there with his hands in his pockets. That white hair made his eyes look blacker than ever. I could feel his stare inside of me pretty crisp, but he didn’t say nothing, he just stood there. And for some reason, with my dream mind I had this thought that it wasn’t like he walked through the woods or was living in them. It was like the woods
imagined
him there or Boobie imagined the
woods
or some shit like that; like Boobie
was
the woods. I started to raise my hand to wave to him, but when I did he disappeared. I woke up feeling all sad and lost.

Seldom went, “Jimster?”

And I was like, “It ain’t Scooby, it’s Boobie.”

“Boobie?”

“Yeah, Boobie.”

“Well whatever his name is, it sounded to me like he was in trouble. Like they was chasin’ him.”

“It don’t mean nothin’.”

“Sure sounded to me like it meant somethin’.”

Seldom bent down and picked up this big long tree branch.

He went, “You was wavin’ to him, too.”

“I was?”

“Wavin’ to him like he was leavin’ on a train.”

I could still feel that floor from Seldom’s bedroom all locked up in my back. I bent down and picked up this little wack stick. I knew Seldom probably wouldn’t use it on the raft cuz it was too small, but I picked it up anyway.

Then Seldom picked up another stick and went, “Big Tiny. Scooby. Waving your arms all crazy. You must be having some crazy dreams, Jimster.”

I was like, “I must,” and threw that little wack stick I picked. I threw that shit far, too.

Then Seldom handed me one of them big sticks he picked and went, “You ever wanna talk about them dreams you keep having, you just let me know, okay?”

But I didn’t say nothing back, I just kept looking for sticks.

That’s when I decided to skate.

It was like stuff between me and Seldom was getting too wack. He was getting all private investigator pig on me, asking me about my dreams and who was who and what was what and it started to feel like he was trying to
bust
me, like he was one of them Rockdale vagrancy pigs.

So the next morning I told him to go pick sticks without me cuz I wasn’t feeling too good — I told him I had ass failure or my toe hurt or some shit and he was like asking me did I need anything, but I told him I was cool.

When he left I put my puffy red coat on and sacked the baby on my back and wrapped that long yellow scarf around my neck and pulled that cinnamon roll hat over my head and stuck them tennis rackets to the bottoms of my Pro Flyers.

Then I made some jelly sandwiches and grabbed a few cans of pinto beans from the cupboard.

When I stuffed them sandwiches and them canned beans in my pockets some wack shit happened. I forgot I had my gat in my pocket. It was like it disappeared for all them weeks I was at the Itty Bitty Farm.

So I was stuffing all that shit in my pockets and I got my fingers all tangled in the trigger, and then —
BLOWWW!
— that shit went off! I shot a hole through all three of them sandwiches and through my pants, and the bullet busted right on through the kitchen floor. And that shit was loud, too!

The baby started crying and my frostbite hand started shaking and you could see a bunch of old skanky dust climbing through the light that was sliding through that hole in the floor.

We skated right after that. You can’t just stand around after your gat goes off. You gotta start running or else them gat pigs will start breaking down the door; even them gat pigs in Nimrod, Minnesota.

At first I thought we should make a run for the forest, but I kept thinking about that dream I had about Boobie and how he just stood there staring at me and how his hair was all white and spooky and shit.

Then I thought about that train whistle and how if we heard it I could just follow it to where the tracks was and make a jump for it, but then all them pictures of me and the baby starving to death and catching lung frosts started getting all stuck in my head, so we didn’t do that, neither.

So what we did was we headed back toward the Crow Wing River where the Skylark was hid.

I figured we could hitchhike somewhere and maybe I could make some money by getting a paper route or some shit, but nothing too serious. I figured we’d need a little money to buy pinto beans and diapers and some food for me every once in a while.

I was walking with those tennis rackets pretty good. All that stick collecting with Seldom gave me lots of practice. I could feel my heart drumming in my chest and my blood pushing through my heart and my breath was smoking out all white and thick and that yellow scarf was all wrapped around my neck and the baby was like steering me by my ears.

When we got over by where the van was, some freaky shit started happening. Instead of walking past it, we went back
inside
of it, right up them little rickety stairs.

It still looked the same as when me and Seldom came and got Curl, with them snowfish on the walls and that frost crawling over everything and them newspapers hanging off the windows all yellow and skanky.

Then I started thinking about Curl and Boobie and how at the end everything got all wack and cold and desperate and about how Curl caught her lung frost and kept talking about that big black turkey and how she spray-painted them snowfish on the walls and how she just kept getting sicker and sicker.

And I thought about Boobie and how he drew that fish on Curl’s face and how he disappeared through the snowing trees all backwards and how now the only place I seen him was in dreams where his hair wasn’t even the right color and how those dreams was making me feel all sad and lost.

And I started thinking about Seldom picking them sticks and going back to the Itty Bitty Farm and climbing up to the roof with his old creaky bones. And I started thinking about him wondering where me and the baby was and him just sort of figuring that I decided to try and meet up with him to pick sticks.

And then I thought about how I wasn’t really doing that, how I wasn’t picking
shit,
and how I was just running again, and how my whole wack life felt all skanky, and for some reason that made me think of the Christmas tree laying in the backyard and how the popcorn was still on it and them flames sawing in the fireplace and how sometimes when they’re tall enough they saw in the window so there’s double-sawing, and I even pictured Deuce and her little hooker walk and how I kinda liked watching her coming into the house on her own like she had them special powers.

And then I thought of that little picture of Seldom and his wife on that box next to his bed and how it was so old and yellow in the corners and I thought of that wack little baby crib in the other room and how all them old coats was stacked in it like it didn’t mean nothing no more and I thought of that picture of the clown with the balloons in his cheeks and all of that shit was spinning around in my head like a bunch of bees.

Then I practically ran through the van and down them rickety steps and as soon as I got outside I fell to my knees and started doing the second-wackest shit I’ll probably ever do in my life:

I started picking up sticks. And I picked about skeighty-eight of them joints. I couldn’t even control my hands. I didn’t even feel the baby on my back or all that snow sliding through the hole in my pants that that bullet made. I just picked sticks all the way back to the Itty Bitty Farm and I picked them till my hands was raw.

What’s funny is that when I got back to the house, Seldom
was
on the roof just like I thought and he
was
joining the new sticks to the raft, and when he saw me and the baby walking through the snow and how my arms was all full of sticks he
was
waving, and he
was
standing up all lopsided and crooked and he
did
almost fall off the roof. He even had to grab onto the chimney.

When he got balanced he put his big old hands up to his face and shouted, “I was wonderin’ where you two was.”

The sky behind him was turning purple.

Through the living room window you could see the fire going and the light was all yellow and warm-looking.

I put my sticks down and headed inside with the baby.

A
DAM
R
APP
is the acclaimed author of several novels for young adults, including
Punkzilla,
a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. In addition, he is an accomplished playwright whose plays have been produced by the New York Theatre Workshop, the Bush Theatre in London, and the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Adam Rapp is also the author and director of
Winter Passing,
a movie starring Ed Harris, Will Ferrell, and Zooey Deschanel. He lives in New York City.