A Plague Year (28 page)

“Is that what you do?”

“Yes.”

I interjected, “No. We do more than that.”

Mom said, “Well, how about if I just set up a table, away from you, and serve the food?”

I decided. “Yes. That would be fine.”

Lilly just shook her head.

The Hungarian church has a real name, St. Stephen’s Catholic Church. We learned that from Mom on our drive to the Food Giant. Mom then went on in great detail.

“Most of the coal miners around here were Catholics. Some
came from Eastern Europe, like the Hungarians and the Poles; some came from Western Europe, like the Irish, Italians, and Germans. They all had their own little churches. But now all the Eastern Europeans go to St. Stephen’s, and all the Western Europeans go to St. Michael’s.”

Lilly muttered, “I wonder where the Puerto Ricans go. I’ll have to ask John.”

She was trying to be funny, but Mom answered seriously, “They go to St. Michael’s.”

When we arrived at the Food Giant, Dad was in a frazzled state. He told us, “I’ve got nobody to run the register. I’ve got nobody to bring back shopping carts. I’m getting robbed blind here.”

I figured that meant I would have to stay, but Lilly volunteered. “I’ll take a register, Dad, until closing if you like. And I’m sure John will help with the carts. That way, Tom can go to group.”

I really did want to go. “Are you sure?” I asked her.

“Yeah. But tell me what happens. I want to know everything.”

“I will. Thanks.”

So Mom and I filled a bin with lunch meats, cheeses, and bread products that had reached their sell-by dates. Then we loaded it into the car.

Once we started driving again, Mom hinted at why she wanted to attend the meeting. She said, “Tom, I just had a scare with drugs, too. I hope and pray that it’s over. I understand now that it can happen to anybody.”

“Yeah, it can.”

“That ‘Not Even Once’ slogan is true.”

“It definitely is. And you’ll hear stuff like that at the meeting.” I added, “But you’ll have to stay away from the small groups. The kids won’t want you listening. It’s all confidential.”

“I wouldn’t repeat anything.”

“You might. You might not be able to stop yourself from telling a parent what his or her kid said.”

“Well, if I thought the child was in danger—”

“There you go! This is why you need to stay far away.”

“Okay. I said I would. I’ll set up the food and serve it; that’s all.”

We didn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. Instead, I found myself staring at the full moon rising over the mountains and thinking how beautiful it was. Then I found myself thinking about that beautiful moon and a beautiful girl.

But the girl was not Wendy Lyle.

It was Jenny Weaver. Jenny, with her nice-smelling hair and her pretty eyes and her … righteousness, as Arthur, or Jimmy, or Warren might say.

When we arrived at St. Stephen’s, I had to shake my head to get back to reality. We turned into the driveway and continued back to a narrow parking lot. Mom pulled into a space next to the Weavers’ Explorer. A bright light was pouring out of the basement level of the church. I grabbed our big plastic bin and followed Mom down a wide flight of stone steps, right into that light.

The basement was huge. The right side of it seemed to be for storage. It had neat stacks of wooden chairs and folding tables. The left side had a long cork bulletin board attached to a wall that was, to my surprise, totally blank. I looked around and saw that all the white block walls were blank, too—no crucifixes, no holy icons, no church announcements.

I saw two old refrigerators in the far left corner, so I headed that way. Mr. and Mrs. Weaver, Jenny, and Mikeszabo were arranging rows of wooden chairs, but they stopped when they saw us.

Jenny gave me a shy, waist-high, limited-movement wave,
which I found really cute. I thought about her again—with me, in the moonlight.

She and Mikeszabo went back to arranging chairs, but Mrs. Weaver hurried over to help Mom sort out the Food Giant donations. Mr. Weaver and I dragged over two wooden tables. Ten minutes later, those tables held plastic trays of ham-and-cheese and turkey sandwiches; small vats of coleslaw and potato salad; and pint-size containers of regular milk, chocolate milk, and orange juice.

Mrs. Weaver was delighted. “Look at this bounty! This is so generous of you.”

“It was all going into a Dumpster if we didn’t take it,” Mom explained.

The high school kids started to arrive, either solo or in groups. Some had driven themselves, and some had carpooled together. (Only the junior high kids, like me, still depended on their parents for rides.)

Ben Gibbons walked in with his father. I had expected his dad would be a big guy with amazingly strong teeth, but he wasn’t. He looked kind of scrawny, and his teeth were discolored and broken. He had red splotches on his face, too. So of course I thought,
Oh no. Is he a user?

Suddenly other people started walking in, too, but they weren’t parents or students. They were not like anybody in our group. They were meth zombies from the streets of Blackwater.

One man asked me through a broken smile, “Is this the AA meeting?”

“Alcoholics Anonymous? No, sir. This is a school counseling group.”

His pockmarked face dropped. “Is it open to the public?”

“No. Not really.”

His arm rose toward the table. “We can’t eat any of that?”

I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t the leader; no one was. I said, “Why don’t you take a seat. We’ll start the meeting, and we’ll talk about it.”

I watched the man as he sat down. He was, to say the least, underdressed for the weather. He had on a pair of filthy white sneakers with no laces, thin blue jeans that were ripped and stained, and a Blackwater U sweatshirt so worn that the letters were barely visible. It was about thirty degrees outside, and that’s all he had on. Bizarrely, he would be one of the better-dressed zombies in the room.

Dozens of desperate-looking people appeared at the door and walked timidly inside.

Jenny whispered to me, “Where did they all come from?”

“I guess they saw the light and figured it was the AA meeting.”

“We have to let them in.”

“Sure. I think we should give them food, but I want to put it to a vote.”

Jenny said, “Okay, good plan.” Then she squeezed my arm. I loved how that felt.

Arthur was the last of the Haven students to arrive. He stopped inside the door and stared at all the zombies. There must have been forty of them at that point. He spotted me, smiled, and raised his eyebrows.

Every wooden chair was now full. I stepped forward with Jenny. She whispered to me, “What should we do?”

I heard myself say with total confidence, “I am going to speak to them.”

Jenny looked surprised. But then she lifted up her hand, touched my shoulder, and gave me a light push. “Go for it.”

I have to admit, I was terrified. All the moisture was sucked
right out of my mouth. I started to stammer, “I’d … I’d like to welcome you here tonight. This … this is a meeting of a student group that was formed in September. Our purpose was to talk about different drug issues. Well, maybe back in September, there were different drug issues. Now there is only one, and that is the meth issue, the meth plague that is destroying our town.”

I looked at the lost, ravaged faces before me. “Those of you who wandered in here tonight are welcome. You are welcome to talk to our group members about meth. Maybe we have learned something about it that will help you. Maybe you can help us to understand some things, too.”

I cast my eyes over toward the food table. “I realize that you came here for something more than talk.” I looked at the first zombie guy I had met. “We don’t have a leader in this group, so … well … the passengers on flight ninety-three took a vote before they acted.”

The zombie guy nodded at me. He said quietly, “They were brave people.”

“Yes. So let’s do what they did. I’d like to ask the group members to vote about the food. If you think we should offer the food to everybody here, raise your hand.”

Every group member raised his or her hand. Some, like Ben and Mikeszabo, raised two hands. It was immediate and unanimous. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Weaver and Mom raise their hands, too.

I put mine up last, joining the sea of hands that remained upraised. We were going to help the meth zombies. We were going to feed them, at least.

As the hands slowly dropped, I said, “Okay. We’ll pass out the sandwiches in a minute. I just want to say a few words first about the meth plague.

“You know … people can live with a drinking problem, and join Alcoholics Anonymous, and maybe get over it. My dad is an example of that, and maybe some of your loved ones are, too. But meth isn’t like that. There is no meeting place for Meth Addicts Anonymous.” I paused to look out. They were all listening to me. “No, actually, there
is
a place where meth addicts meet. It’s down at Good Samaritan Hospital, on the slabs in the morgue.”

I felt myself channeling the voice of Mrs. Smalls. “We have a gigantic problem here. We need to do something to solve it. If we don’t, nobody else will, and it will destroy our town. We need to fight back. We need to counterattack. And I think it could start right here, in this place. It could start right now.”

Unfortunately, I had no ending to this speech, so I just stopped talking—right in the middle like that.

Everyone continued to stare at me.

I stared back.

Ben Gibbons’s father looked so intense that I thought he might pitch forward off his seat and fall. I finally asked, “Does anyone else want to speak?”

Mikeszabo hopped right up. He addressed the audience from the back row. “I do! I had this idea. I was thinking that we could bring winter clothes next week. But now I’m thinking that next week might be too late. Some people here might freeze to death before next week. So I’d like to come back tomorrow with a bunch of coats and sweaters and blankets. If the church is locked, maybe Mr. Weaver would let me hand them out from his truck.”

Mr. Weaver assured him, “It won’t be locked. I’ll see to that. We can distribute the clothes from here in the basement.”

Mikeszabo unzipped his lined windbreaker and pulled it off. “For now, who needs a coat? I don’t really get cold. Let me give this to somebody.”

None of the zombies moved, so Mike draped his coat over a woman in front of him. It hung down over her frail shoulders.

Arthur pulled off his black hoodie. “I know what you mean, bro. I don’t get cold, either. Never. Not Arthur Stokes. Somebody else can use this.”

Other Haven kids stood up.

Soon a dozen more had pulled off jackets and hoodies and sweatshirts and had pressed them into the hands of the zombies.

I took off my own down coat and placed it in the lap of a man in the front row. His hands clutched it, but otherwise he didn’t move.

Mom was now crying her eyes out. She spoke up. “We’ll bring more food back tomorrow, too. The Food Giant throws food out every day. We should bring it here.”

I spoke directly to the zombies. “So, there will be food and clothing here tomorrow night. Tell anyone who needs those things to come here.” I looked over at Mom. “Okay, so, I guess we’re ready to eat.”

Several of the zombies were unable to deal with a food line, so group members shuttled food and drink to them in their chairs. In one case, Jenny actually fed a shaky, toothless lady. I don’t think any of the Haven kids ate or drank, but soon all the food was gone. The zombies got up shortly after that and walked back out. Those who could talk said thank you.

Ben Gibbons’s dad came up to me. I expected him to sound gruff, but he was soft-spoken, humble even, when he said, “Thank you for doing this.” Then he hurried out so fast that Ben had to run to catch up to him.

We never did form our Catherine Lyle discussion groups. Everyone got involved in breaking the room back down—returning the chairs and tables to their storage spots. Mom,
Mrs. Weaver, and Jenny did some cleaning up in a small kitchen off the refrigerator area.

I grabbed the Food Giant bin and lugged it back outside. I popped open the trunk of Mom’s car, slid it in there, and turned around with a start.

Jenny was standing in front of me, very close. She said, “That was a great speech, Tom. Really moving.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re a good speaker. I really wish you were in the play.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

Then she just stood there, and so did I. Though neither of us had on a coat, and it was freezing.

I decided to seize that moment. I blurted out, “I was thinking of you on the drive here tonight.”

She cocked her head, still dangerously close. “Oh yeah?”

“I had a vision, I guess you’d call it, of a great thing that I wanted to do.”

“The speech?”

“No. The speech just kind of happened. This was something private. Personal.” I looked up at the moon. “I saw myself with a beautiful girl, and that girl was you.”

She blinked once. I could see her trying to process my words. She looked surprised, but not totally so. And, more importantly, she did not move away. She did not slap my face; she did not knee me in the groin.