B.u.g. Big Ugly Guy (9781101593523) (16 page)

And then he thought:
Probably better than being a teapot or a bowl
. But he wasn't sure he entirely believed that.

“Kids,” Sammy's mother called down the stairs. “It's after nine and you all have school tomorrow.”

So the first practice was over as quickly as that. Julia loosened her bow. Sammy disassembled his clarinet. Skink latched his case shut over his guitar. Gully tucked his drumsticks into a pouch that hung from the snare.

“Tomorrow night?” Julia asked. It was barely a question. She was back to her old self and no longer sounded shy.

“Like, yeah!” Skink said, and held his fist out. Everyone bumped it, even Gully who had to stand and lean out over the drums.

18.

Practice Makes . . .

“Julia's getting a glass of water and her mom is on her way,” Sammy's mother said, “and I'll run Skinner John home. Your dad is working in his studio so don't bother him, Sammy. Oh—and does Gully need a ride?”

“Um . . . can he stay over again?” Sammy asked, suddenly frantic, thinking quickly,
What do I do if Mom says no? Where will Gully go then?

His mother shook her head, and Sammy's thoughts raced on.
What if Gully breaks into another store? Or what if he goes after James Lee again?

“It's a school night, Sammy,” his mother said, and that was that.
It's a school night
was mom-speak for “Speak no more. Brush teeth. Get in bed.”

“Okay.”
Only it's far from okay,
he thought
.
“He doesn't need a ride.”

Sammy's mother nodded as she shooed Skink out the front door. Then she turned and waved at the other kids. “Good night, Julia. Night, Gully.”

“Good night, Mrs. Greenburg,” Julia said, and Gully echoed her a half dozen octaves lower in his booming voice. “Good night, Mrs. Greenburg.”

As soon as his mother was gone, Sammy pushed Gully out the door, and then they both watched from the front step as the car drove off.

“Gully,” Sammy whispered, “stay close. Stay out of sight. And meet me at school tomorrow morning. Think you've got it? That's three things.”

“Stay close. Out of sight. School tomorrow.” Gully smiled. “Got it.” He walked into the darkness.

Sighing, Sammy called after him. “And don't steal anything more!”

“Anything more,” came Gully's echo back.

Sammy didn't know if that meant Gully understood, or if he let off the
don't steal
part on purpose. Either way, it didn't make Sammy comfortable. He thought about running after Gully but just then Julia came out to the porch with a glass of water in her hand. Sammy suddenly realized they were alone. His father was in his workshop and wouldn't have noticed a bomb falling on the house.

Sammy waited a moment for his stomach to do flips. But it felt . . . okay. Well, maybe not okay, but not as if he was going to throw up in front of Julia, a vast improvement from earlier in the evening.

“Good practice, Sammy,” she said. “I think we've really got something.”

“I was thinking exactly the same thing earlier.”

Julia cocked her head to one side and smiled at him. “Really?”

Whoops, there goes my stomach.
“Um . . . yeah.”

“Did you like my song?”

Loved it.
“Um . . . yeah.”

Julia frowned and Sammy's stomach dropped through his shoes.

“Oh,” she said.

Apparently, “um . . . yeah” wasn't ringing praise.

C'mon Sammy! Where's that astounding vocabulary of yours?
Sammy thought.
Astounding. That's a good word. And the perfect one, as well.

“I thought it was . . . astounding,” he managed.

Julia's lips turned ever-so-slightly upward.

“Amazing.”

She cocked her head again.

“Astonishing,” he said, and she broke into an outright grin.

“Thanks, Sammy,” she said. “Three A's! That's A-OK. I think the song's pretty good, too.” She scrunched her eyes up a little. “Needs some more verses, though. But you've got a real way with words. Think you could work on it some?”

“Sure.” Sammy grinned. He gathered his courage. “We'll work on it together. I'll see if I can come up with something for tomorrow. For . . . for us to work on.” Saying
us
out loud made his stomach do flip-flops.
Out go the butterflies, in come the acrobats.

Headlights flashed before she could answer.

“There's my mom,” she said, handing Sammy her empty glass.

How can she be so cool about this?
Sammy thought, standing with the glass pressed against his chest. He could feel the warmth where Julia's fingers had touched it.
Did she even notice the
us
, and the
together
parts?

But Julia showed no sign of noticing his distress nor seemed to entertain any of her own. Going back inside the house, she scooped up her violin, then scampered out and down the drive. As she opened the car door to get in, Julia called back to him, “Yeah, we'll work on it together.” Then she hopped in the car and rode away.

Sammy waved after them. The glass of water was still eerily warm in his hand.

The telephone's loud ring shattered the mood, and Sammy almost dropped the glass. No one . . .
no one 
. . . ever called the house at that time of night. He went into the kitchen to pick it up, but his father was there before him.

“Yes, Rabbi,” his father was saying. “Right now? But Sammy needs his beauty sleep before school . . . All right.” He hung up and turned, saw the drawn look of horror on Sammy's face.

“Reb Chaim?” asked Sammy, all the while thinking,
Like I know any other rabbi up close and personal.

“Yes. He wants to come over to talk with you. Now. And it's after nine on a school night, Samson. Is this about . . .”

“We'll be fast, Dad. I promise. Just bar mitzvah stuff, I'm sure.” The lie felt like glue on his tongue.

Before his mother returned from taking Skink home, Sammy saw low-slung headlights and the rabbi pulled up in front of the house in a battered old Mustang.

Thinking it best to speak with Reb Chaim without the intervention of his father, Sammy ran outside.

The rabbi rolled down the window. “I want to know if it's done.” Sammy wondered that the rabbi hadn't even started with “Shalom” or “Hello,” or even a “Sorry to be doing this so late at night.”

“Not yet,” Sammy said, his voice breaking between the two short words. “I didn't think tonight . . .”

“That's the problem, Samson. You didn't think before and so you have to think
now
. Where is that creature?”

“Gully?”

“Who else?”

“I don't know where he is.”
And that,
thought Sammy,
is the truth
.

The rabbi got out of the car and, though he wasn't much taller than Sammy, he seemed to tower over him. He put a hand on Sammy's shoulder. It felt like a lead weight. “Then find out, Samson. Before someone,
anyone
, gets hurt.”

Sammy opened and shut his mouth several times, then said, “He's not a creature. He's a . . .”

“A what?”

“A . . . drummer,” Sammy said. “The drummer in my band. And you know, Rabbi, he's pretty good, too.”

“So you have a mindless monster in your band, beating on things, and you think that's good?”

“How is that bad?” asked Sammy, wanting to shrug off the rabbi's hand and not daring to. “My parents like him. My friends like him . . .”

“Have you not listened to a thing I've said?”

Sammy drew in a deep breath. “I think you're wrong, Rabbi.” He wondered if that sentence had ever been spoken in all of history.

Reb Chaim withdrew his hand. “I am often wrong about things, my boy, but not about this.” He seemed to stand a little taller, showing a bit of military bearing. “I studied golems. I made golems. I trained golems. I probably know more about golems than anyone living.” He stared hard at Sammy. “You cannot reason with them. You must destroy them. And destroying them was the second-hardest thing I've ever done.”

Sammy didn't want to ask but knew it was expected of him. “What was the hardest?”

“Burying all my friends in the desert.” Reb Chaim turned abruptly and got back in his car. “I will give you another few days, but the creature must be disposed of. And that's that. No one else can do it for you—not me, not the police. Not the army. Not your parents. Not your friends. Only you, Samson. Only you. If they try, they can . . . no, they
will
be seriously hurt. And it will be
your
fault and
your
guilt and
your
enduring sorrow. Trust me on this.”

“He's a
good
drummer,” Sammy started to say as the car began to move away. It was then he saw a dark shadow running swiftly toward them.

The car started up and for a moment it looked as if the golem and the Mustang were about to collide.

“No, Gully,” Sammy shouted, running toward the shadow and waving his arms. “He's a
good
one.”

The shadow skidded to a stop, and a small voice came threading across the grassy verge. “On . . . the . . . right.”

“Come here, Gully.” Sammy put as much authority in his voice as he could.

The shadow came forward, dropping something dark behind, as if a bit of the shadow had detached from his hand.

“Why are you hanging around the house? What if Mom and Dad see you?”

Gully hung his head and mumbled something. It sounded like 

My first breath
.

Sammy couldn't be sure. He wondered if Gully had begun to actually breathe. “You need to hide, big guy. Maybe down by the river. Just be careful. Don't get caught. Keep breathing.”

“Be careful.” Gully grinned, and in the dark, with just the house light on him, his teeth were even grayer than before. “Keep breathing.”

“Go,” Sammy said. “Go.”

“Don't get caught,” Gully said as he walked off into the dark.

Sammy turned, went inside the house without looking back. But the breath thing was nagging him. What
had
Gully meant by “my first breath”? Was he becoming more and more human as the days went on.
Because,
Sammy thought,
if that's true then I can't kill him. It would be . . . wrong.

Only as he walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water for his nightstand did Sammy finally realize what Gully had really said. Gully never invented anything new, just repeated things, though in interesting and surprising ways. But Sammy knew with a sudden chill that Gully had not said
breath
. He'd simply repeated a line from Julia's song: “My first death.”

It was a chilling thought
.
He'd no idea what death meant to Gully.

For a brief moment he thought about getting a flashlight and going outside to find the piece of shadow that Gully had dropped. Then he shook his head. Nothing on earth was going to take him outside again. Not tonight.

“Did you talk to the rabbi?” his father called from the studio.

“Everything's fine, Dad,” Sammy called back. But of course everything wasn't.

It might never be fine again.

19.

The Principle of the Thing

In the morning, after a night of horrible dreams in which a phalanx of gray goblins marched in and out of his house, Sammy got dressed quickly and went outside. The dawn sky was pearly, the street empty of cars. He stood at the edge of the driveway, desperately telling himself that he didn't have to walk out to where the golem had dropped a shadow from its shadow hand.

But I have to know.

With a sigh, he stepped off the pavement and began kicking through the high grass. Moments later, his sneakers starting to soak through with dew, he found what he hoped he wouldn't: a coyote's bedraggled tail—minus the coyote body.

Sammy stared down at it, wordless for once. The gray and white fur was flecked with red, the stump end covered with flies. It stank. A few feet away, he noticed the coyote's head, crushed, its teeth set in a horrible grimace and a single eye staring out of a nest of bone shards.

There wasn't a body anywhere close by. He didn't look any farther for it.

Turning back, he shuddered and it felt as if worms were tunneling through his entire body.

But, he told himself, Gully isn't fast enough to catch a coyote.

Though to be honest, the golem could move quickly.

But a coyote? Even a dog might have trouble doing that.

Sammy got to the porch, looked over his shoulder at the tract of land that sloped down to the little river, and shuddered again.

Was the coyote coming after me? He'd never heard of a coyote doing that. Unless . . . unless it had been rabid. That was a small comfort. But the truth was, he didn't actually know for sure if Gully had caught and crushed the coyote or a car or truck or bus had. And if something else had, why did Gully pick up the carcass, and carry it around like . . . like a talisman. He liked the word talisman which was a kind a magical amulet. Maybe Gully had been hauling the awful thing around as a child would a blankie. That made Sammy giggle uncomfortably.

But then he thought: What matters is that Gully called it “my first death.”

Sammy tried to remember whether the golem had emphasized the word first. And if he had, was he planning a second? Sammy couldn't bring up the actual whisper from his memory; it was all shades and shadows now. Shadows and shades.

The next two weeks Sammy felt as if he were two people, one safe and happy, the other fearful and watching. Some of the time watching out for the Boyz, part of the time watching out for another visit from Reb Chaim, and all of the time watching out for Gully.

The four band members met in school, exchanged ideas about songs in the hallway, did their homework in study hall together, tried out new verses at lunchtime, before assembling after dinner for band practice at Sammy's.

At those times Sammy thought—no, he
knew
—that he'd never been happier. He had three actual friends who were as smart as he was.
Well, maybe smarter,
he thought generously. Then considering Gully, amended that.
Some who are smarter than I am
. He had a best friend, a girlfriend.
Well, a friend who's a girl,
anyway.

And a protector.

Best of all, they had a band.

In the early days, they simply played the four songs they'd already written—“Speaking with Chaim,” had turned out to be a rocking success, with a kicking solo for Skink. “To Life!” gave Sammy a place to really shine on the clarinet. And when they got to “Shiva,” Julia's fiddle sang so sweetly, Sammy had to blink quickly so as not to cry each time they played it. Especially when she told him how much she loved the verse he'd added.

As for Gully, he kept a good beat. Nothing fancy. But solid. Except on “Power!” and then he really let go, banging on the drums with such abandon, Sammy was afraid he'd break them and have to go back to the music store to steal another kit.

Those were the good times. But when he was alone or in bed or having to lie to his parents about why once again he wasn't going to bar mitzvah class, the words “Two wrongs . . .” kept running through his head. Not for a song, but as a warning. He could almost hear Reb Chaim saying, “Finish him off. And do it soon.” Then the shivering would start again, the coyote's broken head figuring in his dreams.

Almost hourly when he was awake, Sammy had arguments with himself:
Gully's not bad. He's a band member. A friend. A protector
. He'd sigh aloud, theatrically, still making the counterarguments to the rabbi in his head.
Isn't a coyote—maybe a
rabid
coyote—small payment for that?

Sometimes his answer was no. But more and more often, it was yes.

After the two weeks of band practice, Sammy's parents surprised him with a present: a small PA system made up of two speakers, three microphones with stands, a four-channel mixing board, and enough cords to run among them all—if the cords didn't get all tangled up when Gully “helped” set the PA up. It was nothing big, but plenty loud enough to let them hear their vocals over the drums.

“You've been working so hard,” Sammy's mother said, “we thought we'd help. Skink's parents and Julia's chipped in, too. I tried to find Gully's family, but they're not in the phone book or online.”

“They . . . they don't speak English and are living on . . . on . . .” he couldn't think of the word. “On very little,” he said. “They had to stretch to get the drum kit and . . .” And then he ran out of invention.

“Well, we won't say a word,” his mother assured him.

“I can't wait to tell the others. About the PA system, I mean,” Sammy said, hauling the conversation off Gully's family and back on track.

His father tried to look stern, but the obvious joy the gift had given Sammy was causing a smile to creep onto his face. “And as long as your schoolwork doesn't suffer, you can practice all you like.” He gave up trying to frown and grinned fully. “And we get backstage passes to your first gig!”

A gig!
Sammy bit his lip. Were they even close to being ready? But then he grinned. “You remember what Gram used to say?”

His parents said together, “From your lips to God's ears!”

And at the moment of saying it, Sammy got an idea for yet another song for the band.

Along the way, the band wrote two other songs. One was “God's Ears” and the other was called “Bar Mitzvah,” that Sammy began this way:

Today I am a man, I am a man today.

I think of many manly things, I have no time to play.

My voice is very deep, my thoughts are quite deep, too.

I am a man today. I have no time for you.

Skink started the next verse with a single line:

 

I've put down childish things, I've taken up the sword.

 

Then he kind of backed away from it. “Er, the ‘childish thing' line comes from the New Testament, not the Jewish Bible. One of my dad's favorite lines. I could, like, take it out . . .”

“No, no, it's great!” Sammy said. “We're not a Jewish band after all. We do klez, we do jazz, and rock and pop and soul and . . .”

The others agreed.

“It's GREAT!” Gully's drumsticks crashed onto the cymbals. As always, his enthusiasm was over the top.

Then Sammy came up with:

 

I skewer with a phrase, I pinion with a word.

 

“I like that,” Julia said. “Especially pinion.”

“What does that, like, mean?”

Julia leaned forward. “Shackle.”

At the same time, Sammy said, “Tie someone's arms.”

Then they laughed and sorted out the meanings.

Gully thought a minute.

 

Today I am a man; I have two feet of clay.

 

This startled Sammy for two reasons. First, he'd never heard Gully say anything he hadn't already heard. And second, it was so . . . so . . . darn appropriate!

Then, almost as if in a waking dream, Sammy realized that he
had
said just that phrase—“feet of clay”—sang it actually, when he'd been feverish, and making the golem. He couldn't remember if this had been before or after he fashioned the head, before or after he put in the ears. Maybe the clay itself had heard and remembered. He started to giggle out loud.

“Well,
I
think it's a grand line,” Julia admonished, then winked over at Gully who actually blushed a slight grayish red.

“A grand line,” Gully replied.

“A
very
grand line,” Sammy said quickly. “Great going, Gully.”

Gully did a quick taradiddle on the drums and said over and over again, “Great going, Gully! Great going, Gully,” grinning all the while.

Sammy thought suddenly,
If Reb Chaim could see how good and fun Gully can be, he wouldn't . . .
but then he let the rest of that thought dribble away. He didn't think any such argument would convince the rabbi.

Skink said, “But we, like, need a last line to the verse.”

For a moment, they all were solemn, thinking. Then Sammy repeated the three lines:

 

I've put down childish things; I've taken up the sword.

I skewer with a phrase; I pinion with a word.

Today I am a man; I have two feet of clay.

 

“Feet of clay,” Gully shouted, raising one drumstick, and then added, “Power!”

“Wait a minute . . . wait a minute,” Skink said, his pointer fingers making circles around each other, “how about repeating the line:
I think of manly things; I have no time to play.”

Julia shook her head. “Too easy. Too slick. Too . . .”

“Not if we tweak it a bit,” Sammy said.

“Tweak it a bit,” Gully parroted. “I am a man, I . . .”

“No!” Sammy stood up. “I am a grown-up now, I have no time to play.”

Ta-boom!
went the big drum.
Crash!
went the cymbal. Gully grinned so hard, all his gray teeth showed.