Jonah Havensby (28 page)

“Alright, Hell Kat, I’ll be there in a while,” Eric replied after a moment. The message was received and understood.

“Yeah, me too,” Jonah said to himself as he dropped the walkie-talkie back in the bag. He got back on the bike and started off down the road towards town as fast as he could.

A half-hour later he pulled up at the corner of Taylor and Main. Eric was waiting for him. Jonah pulled up right beside him. Jonah held out his fist, Eric reluctantly punched it.

“You know I really thought you had just taken off with my bike,” Eric said. “Like you finally got a way to travel around so you just left town. Maybe moved to Clapton on my bike.”

Jonah looked at him and saw that he was serious. “Eric, you know I’d never do that, right?” He asked. “You know you’re my best friend. You’re, like, the only friend I’ve ever had.”

“And then when I got here and you weren’t here, I totally thought you were messing with me.” Eric answered.

“Alright, listen,” Jonah started. “You’re my best friend and I’ve told you everything about what’s going on with me. Every single thing!” Jonah got off the bike and dropped it to the ground. “There’s so much more, Eric! I didn’t even know I was out for two days. I didn’t!” Jonah had begun to crack. He knew he wasn’t particularly mad at Eric, but Jonah was such a mess of emotion at the time, Eric seemed to be the straw that broke him.

“You don’t even know… yet!” Jonah’s voice cracked. “And I don’t even know if I should tell you! I don’t know if I
can
tell you! You’re never going to speak to me after anyway!” Jonah was now frantically pacing around the bike. “Oh my God, I’m such a freak!”

His knees finally gave out and he fell to sitting on the curb. He buried his head on his knees because he felt like an idiot breaking into tears in front of Eric, but he couldn’t stop it.

Eric got off his bike and laid it on the ground. “Jeez, man, take it easy. I didn’t really believe you’d actually do anything like that, it’s just…” He trailed off and sat down on the curb next to Jonah. The fact was, after some years of people taking advantage of him, he actually half-believed Jonah was long gone.

“You’re not that much of a freak anyway, dude,” Eric said, trying to lighten the mood. “Bad stuff happened to you. That doesn’t really make you a freak.”

“No, it’s just…” Jonah raised his head, but didn’t look directly at Eric. Instead he looked down Taylor Avenue toward the farm far away. “I’m sorry. It’s not about you. It really isn’t. There’s so much stuff. And even if I tell you, you won’t believe me.” He wiped away his tears and wiped his face across his coat sleeve. “Will you come with me? I can show you.”

Eric stood up and picked up his bike, conspicuously trading Jonah for his mother’s bike. “Like you said, I’m your best friend right? Who else are you gonna tell?  Saddle up, Hell Kat.”

Jonah picked himself up, his knees were still a little wobbly. He still hadn’t looked directly at Eric. He wiped his face across his coat sleeve again and then went to the bike. He got on it and then looked across at Eric. “If you tell anyone I cried, I’m going to kick your ass.”

They back tracked down the two-lane highway for forty-five minutes, with Eric asking where they were going every fifteen minutes.  In between that, Eric recounted the tale of the devil at the school. He thought it was odd that Jonah seemed distracted and didn’t seem to question the story about a devil in the schoolyard.

They finally came to where the river ducked under the overpass. Jonah explained that this is where they had to cut into the woods. Eric was completely unsure, and took some convincing, but eventually gave in saying “Alright. But if Logan Oswald and five of his friends are in there waiting for me and this is just some death trap so you can have my bike, I’m never speaking to you again.”

They road for another ten minutes into the woods, the afternoon light scattered by the thickening canopy overhead. It sometimes caught the river water and reflected off of wet rocks. There was a heavy smell of earth and wood. It wasn’t exactly an easy path, since there was no clear path to follow, but the terrain near the river was not as thick with brush as the rest of the surroundings, so it wasn’t impossible.

All of a sudden, Jonah stopped and got off his bike. It seemed to Eric like a completely arbitrary place to stop in the woods. There were some thick-trunked trees here and the ground was covered with both moss and patches of grass. The canopy seemed to darken in the already fading light. Eric assumed it was because the trees were thicker here. The river here took a pretty steep, sloping turn, which created some bubbling rapids. The slope was caused by a rise in the terrain which was supported by some pretty sizeable rocks.

That’s when his eye caught the letter J scrawled across one of the rocks.

“Okay, so this is what you wanted to show me?” Eric asked. “I don’t get it.  What’s this have to do with…”

Jonah cut him off. “Not yet. This isn’t it.”

Eric got off his bike and followed Jonah around one of the large trees that had seemingly long ago been covered in moss and vines. Jonah stopped and put the kickstand up on the bike, but it wouldn’t stay up in the soft underbrush of the woods, so he laid it down. Eric followed suit.

Jonah reached in through the curtain of vines and pulled one out. At least, Eric assumed it was a vine. It took him a moment to realize it was a black cord of rope, and, as he watched Jonah pull the length of it from behind the vines, it was an awfully long rope at that.

Jonah pulled on the rope and the length of it sped through his hands. Eric didn’t even think to look up until Jonah said, “watch out.” And a rope ladder fell just inches in front of him.

“This is it,” Jonah said. When the ladder was all the way down, Jonah took the remaining rope and pushed it back into the tree behind the vines. At this point, with the ladder fully extended, the long cord stopped at just waist level, so Jonah tied it to a vine by the trunk. “Do you want to go first?”

“Um, no.” Eric answered, trying to see where the ladder ended.

“Alright. Wait until I’m up. I don’t know how much this ladder can take,” Jonah said, and then started up.

Eric watched him. It was certainly high, and then Jonah all but disappeared into a thicket of branches. It took Eric a moment to find him again.

“Alright. All yours,” Jonah called down from above.

Eric blew out a breath that would normally have moved his bangs out of his eyes, but he had just had a haircut, so he just succeeded in fogging his glasses a little bit. He stood on the first rung of the ladder to test it and then slowly went up a few more. He had just watched Jonah climb the ladder, so he knew it should be safe, but the back of his mind told him he should be careful.

As he became more comfortable with it, he took the rungs a bit faster. He finally reached the thicket of branches and, just above those, he saw what looked like a darkly painted floor. He continued climbing and found that the rope ladder ascended all the way passed the floor, so once he was up, it was easy to step off the ladder.

Jonah was there, leaning on the patio railing. He had watched Eric climb up through the branches.

“This is it,” Jonah said. “Or, part of it, anyway.”

“Dude,” Eric said, clearly impressed. “This is a tree-house!”

As Jonah ushered him inside, he had forgotten that Grouchy was caged right next to the door. As the door opened, the unhappy raccoon went into a frenzy of hissing followed by the squealing bark-like noise. The activity startled them both.

“What’s he doing here?” Eric asked.

“I don’t have any idea.” Jonah said. It occurred to him that the raccoon probably hadn’t eaten in days. As a matter of fact, it struck him that he couldn’t remember the last thing he had eaten, but he knew whatever it was now resided on the tree at the park. He wondered if one of the others had eaten anything. Then he wondered if one of the others ate, would that mean anything to him? Before he got too caught up, he had to push all of it aside. He couldn’t get too deep into his own questions before he explained everything to Eric.

He went to the shelf next to the microwave and opened up the loaf of bread, taking two pieces out. Without getting too close, he maneuvered the two pieces of bread through the wire front of the pet carrier. The raccoon stopped silent, and then sniffed at the offering. Judging it safe, he picked up the first piece and began nibbling.

With the raccoon finally quiet, Jonah figured the next step was to give Eric a tour. He pointed out the things that had been brought from the caves. He tried to ignore the stolen goods, but that was next to impossible, since there was a generator humming in the corner that gave power to the Christmas lights above them and showed four blinking zeroes across the microwave, since no one had set the time. Eric remained duly quiet as Jonah showed him around, sure in the fact that Jonah had to do this at his own pace. Besides, this place was so cool it was epic.

As Jonah showed him around, he described waking up and finding the extra items here, having no idea where he was or that he had been out for two days.

Eric was incredibly impressed that the place had running water. Jonah showed him how the hose turned on and off and how the hotplate underneath the large pot would heat the water before draining to the bathtub. Eric even corrected Jonah and told him the pot was supposed to cook pasta. He’d seen his mother use one when she provided a spaghetti dinner for a pot-luck at school.  But this was certainly a larger version of that.

The bathroom was the last stop on the tour. Jonah kind of fumbled for what else he could show Eric, so Eric decided to jump right in. “So that’s the tub that was stolen from Clapton, right? I remember cuz they made such a huge point of how weird it was that someone would take one.”

“Yeah,” Jonah answered quietly. “I think it is.”

“So the people who brought you food made all this?” Eric asked. “They made you a tree-house? Or were they keeping you here? Is it that woman from Clapton?” Eric started machine-gunning questions that he’d been holding at bay, and now that he’d created an opening, it didn’t look like he was going to stop.

Jonah put his hand up. “Okay, stop.” And Eric went silent.

Jonah went past the aloha-patterned shower curtains, which he secretly liked, but in spite of everything going on just seemed really silly to him. The left side was opened, but to stave off the story for another few minutes, he pushed the right side all the way to the wall. He put his hand out and pointed towards one of the camping hammocks. “Sit,” he ordered.

Eric went and sat down. Jonah took the hammock in front of him, the one that he had woken up in today. He got back up and took off his coat and then plugged in the electric blanket. It was cool in the tree-house, but it was certainly warmer than the warehouse. Eric took off his coat as well. Jonah looked for anything else he could do to keep from telling the story, spreading out the electric blanket on the floor, then balling it up and putting it between the two hammocks, then beginning to fold it.

Eric pointed at the hammock. “Sit,” he mimicked.

Jonah dropped the blanket between them and sat down. Without looking at Eric he began the tale. He told all about the bus rides – the drivers, the people he’d seen, the scenery. Eric swallowed every snarky comment that came bubbling up towards his mouth. He was eager for the real details, and he could tell Jonah was trying to avoid them, but he let him drone on, because Jonah would run out of descriptions of hills and trees eventually.

When he did get to the meat of the story, Eric listened with rapt attention. He didn’t ask if Athena Stapleton’s grand-daughter was pretty, he didn’t ask anything. That was, until Jonah mentioned Mars and the Martian rovers.

Eric hadn’t been old enough to fully appreciate the first two rovers, but when he found out about the third, the idea fascinated him and he learned absolutely everything he could about all three of them. The third was the most expensive rover ever built and launched to another planet. It had a laser that could break open rocks and enough gear on board to analyze the chemical makeup of the remains. It could also move only about one hundred yards per day.

Jonah let him go on, happy for the distraction, except Eric caught on too quickly that he was purposely side-tracked by his nerdy scientific fascination. He shut down almost immediately and gave Jonah a sideways glance that told him to hurry up and get to it.

So Jonah did. He moved through the rest of the story without stopping. Sometimes almost talking too quickly. But he told it. All of it. Ending with the tree bursting into flames and running at top speed away from the scene. Then waking up in the tree-house. He hadn’t skipped a detail.

Eric listened to the whole thing without so much as shifting his feet. Jonah stopped talking and just stared at him. Waited for him to run. Waited for him to freak out. He hadn’t really anticipated Eric’s actual reaction.

“Shut up!” Eric said, and then laughed. “What really happened?” And then he added, “you’re an idiot.”

“I told you, you weren’t going to believe me,” Jonah said.

“Come on,” Eric retorted.

“I’m telling you the truth. Why would I start lying about stuff now?” Jonah looked at him without a shred of a smile. He was white as a ghost and had begun to sweat nervously. He looked so solemn that Eric was almost swayed.

“Seriously, dude. You’re not an alien. Someone’s messing with you.”

Jonah stood up and pulled the hammock he was sitting on to just in front of the television. “Sit,” he ordered.

Eric stood up and moved. He sat down as Jonah picked up the recorder on the floor and started it from the very beginning.

Eric listened, as patiently as he could. The new information was overwhelming him almost as much as it did Jonah, but, as Jonah knew somewhere deep inside that everything he learned was true, Eric was pushing it away, making it harder and harder for him to believe the whole story, or even pieces of the story for that matter.

As the man on the screen talked, Eric thought he looked a little bit like Albert Einstein. He saw the same subtle hints of Einstein that Jonah had recognized earlier. Something about the wild hair and the accent. Eric was familiar with the scientist from his advanced science class, but ninth graders didn’t exactly study physics, so he was really barely familiar with what Einstein actually did. “That guy looks nothing like you,” Eric noted.