Not-Just-Anybody Family (2 page)

“I think that they were looking for Pap to arrest him,” Vern said finally.

“Why? What do you think he did? Could it be because his license plate’s no good?”

“They don’t arrest you for that. They give you tickets.”

“Maybe they know that Pap’s been making booze in the basement.”

“Maybe.”

“What are we going to do, Vern?”

Vern scratched his head. When he was six years old, he blew off half of one finger. He had found a dynamite cap, an interesting black cylinder, and, not knowing what it was, had tried to break it open to see what was inside.

He took a sort of pride in his finger, and was glad when some kid asked him what had happened to it. His happiest moment in school had come on the first day of second grade.

The teacher had explained second grade and all the interesting things they would be doing, and then she had said, “Any questions, boys and girls?”

The boy next to Vern raised his hand.

“Yes?” the teacher asked.

“My question is, What happened to that boy’s finger?”

“Dynamite,” Vern answered.

“What are we going to
do?
” Maggie asked again. She knew that when Vern scratched his head with his dynamited finger, he was thinking hard.

“I’m not through thinking,” he said.

“Wait!”

From his desperate perch atop the barn Junior watched them go.

“Wait for me! You guys wait for me!” he cried. “Wait!”

His brother and sister disappeared into the trees, and Junior’s heart sank like a stone.

His heart felt so low, he wanted to put his hand on his chest to make sure it had not actually dropped into his stomach, that it was still in his chest where it was supposed to be. He would have done this if it had not been for the wings.

The police car was out of sight now, driving through the stretch of pine trees by the creek. Junior heard the rattle of boards as the car drove slowly over the old board bridge.

Black crows called a warning and flew out of the trees toward the barn. They glided so close, Junior could hear the rush of their wings.

Suddenly, in a panic, Junior swirled and dived for the door to the loft. His wings stopped him at the sill. He fell back with a cry of frustration and fear.

He began tearing at his wings, trying to grab them through the cloth that covered his hands. It was as if the wings were actually part of his body. They wouldn’t move.

The strings! He got one in his teeth and pulled so hard, he got the first loose tooth of his life, something he had been waiting for for years. He did not notice.

His brother, Vern, had tied all the knots and spit on them. “Now,” Vern had said, “there’s no way those are coming loose.” Vern knew what he was talking about.

“Get off my arms!” Junior begged the wings. He was beginning to cry now. “Get off!”

He was more desperate than he had been the time the hornets got after him, only he had been able to outrun them. He was fast enough to outrun anything in the whole world, but he couldn’t do a thing with these horrible wings on his arms. They were like traps.

And, he went on, tears filling his eyes, he would rather have hornets after him any day in the week than the police.

“Get
off
!”

The police car was coming around the curve now, pulling into the clearing by the barn. Junior could see it, and he dropped to his knees. He crouched against the side of the barn, hiding behind his wings.

The car passed the barn and stopped in front of the house. Junior could hear the doors slam as the police got out of the car.

Tears were running down his cheeks. He was choking silently on his sobs. He was so full of tears, he thought he was going to drown. It was worse than the time he almost did drown down at the creek, trying to stay underwater longer than Vern.

“Anybody home?” one policeman called. He tried to ring the door bell, but it had not worked in ten years. He rattled the screen door.

“Don’t let them see me,” Junior pleaded. His head was buried beneath his wings. “Please don’t let them see me. I’ll be good for the rest of my life if you just don’t let them see me. I’ll give you a hundred million dollars if you don’t let them see me.”

“I’ll check around back,” one policeman said.

“I’ll check the barn.”

Barn! As soon as the word was spoken Junior’s wings began to flutter.

“Nobody back here,” the policeman called as he rounded the house. His voice was comfortingly far away.

Then, from inside the barn, right below Junior’s trembling wings, the policeman called, “Nobody in here either.”

Junior could hear the policeman walking around, kicking old straw as if he hoped to find somebody hiding underneath. Junior felt he knew the exact second the policeman looked up at the loft, deciding whether to climb the ladder.

Junior held his breath. Then the policeman walked out and stood exactly where Vern had stood, waiting for Junior’s flight.

“Well, what do you think? Think we ought to wait?”

The other policeman joined him, standing in Maggie’s place. Across the yard the patrol car’s radio sputtered with sound, and Junior pleaded silently,
Somebody’s calling you! Go answer!

The policemen stayed where they were, by the barn, one in Maggie’s place, one in Vern’s.

And, Junior thought with another anxious flutter of his wings, the reason Maggie and Vern had picked that spot was because it was where they had the best view of him on the roof.

“We can come back later.”

“Right.”

Still they stood there. Why didn’t they go? Junior wanted to peer around his wings, but he was not going to do that until they were a million miles away. No, a billion miles away. If he just stayed absolutely still …

“What’s that up there on the roof?”

Junior’s heart stopped beating.

“Where?”

“Up there.”

Maybe they meant the house roof, Junior thought, his wings trembling so hard, it was as if they were real. His thoughts bounded frantically in his brain. Please let them mean the house roof. Please—

“Up there.”

“On the barn?”

“Yes.”

“Is it some kind of kite? What is that thing?”

“That’s what I was asking you.”

At that moment, the worst moment of his life, Junior felt himself begin to slide. He tried to catch himself. He gave one frantic lurch, but somehow this left him doubled over, his wings pinned beneath him.

He picked up speed. He might as well have been on a sled. He began a long, high-pitched scream. He was sliding facedown, and somehow this made it even scarier.

Another frantic lunge flipped him over, and he looked up into the blinding July sun. He was now on the very spot where he had stood with such hope only moments before.

He was at the edge of the roof, his legs dangling in space. He tottered there, as if on a seesaw, and then he went over.

As he fell his arms rose from his sides, and he began desperately to beat the air with them. He had a brief startlingly clear picture of himself taking flight, soaring over the policemen’s heads to the grassy clearing and then beyond, actually skimming the sky like a bird.

Good-bye, World.

The beautiful vision ended as he hit the hard ground at the feet of the startled policemen.

Vern and Maggie were creeping up on the house in the darkness. They were on their stomachs, edging forward on their elbows like soldiers.

The only sounds were the chirping of the crickets and tree frogs and the occasional whine of a hungry mosquito.

They paused in the shadows. Ahead of them the moonlight turned the clearing white.

“Well, their car’s gone,” Maggie said.

“Maybe it’s parked in a different place.”

“There are no lights on in the house,” she said, trying to make things better. “Wouldn’t they put lights on if they were inside?”

“Not if they were trying to catch us off-guard.”

“Oh.”

This exchange and Maggie’s soft “Oh” gave Vern a feeling of manliness, of being in charge. He felt he alone understood the wiles of policemen, the tricks they played on the innocent. It was going to be up to him to save them all.

He paused to give their secret whistle, to alert Junior they were in the yard.
Bobwhite! Bobwhite!
The whistle hung on the air like the actual song of a bird.

They waited.

There was no answering call from Junior.

“Stay here,” Vern said.

In a crouch he ran through the moonlit clearing and into the bushes around the house. These bushes were as old as the house—seventy years old; and they were so overgrown, a four-door car could disappear in their branches.

Vern ran around to the front of the house behind the bushes. He went up the steps silently, taking them one by one. From the top step he slipped across the porch.

The porch swing had been raised last fall. Pap stored it by pulling it up to the ceiling so it couldn’t bang against the house during winter storms. This spring he had not gotten around to letting it down.

Vern paused under the swing, listening.

Then he lifted his head and peered into the room. Everything was still.

He duck-walked to the door and paused at the screen door. Nothing looked out of order. The house smelled the way it always did. At this point he almost felt he could, like his grandfather and his grandfather’s dog, Mud, smell a stranger if one was inside.

In a soft voice he said, “Junior?”

There was no answer.

Vern opened the door and went inside.

Like a shadow he moved through the rooms. “Junior,” he said softly in each one. Junior might have hidden himself in a closet or under a bed.

It was too dark to see, but Vern knew every stick of furniture in every room. He could have gone through this house blindfolded. In his lifetime not one single piece of furniture had been bought, nothing had been recovered, nothing had been painted, no new curtains had been hung. He felt the comfort of the familiar, almost—it seemed—friendly sofas and beds and chairs.

He opened the basement door. “Junior.” There was the familiar smell of warm, fermenting mash, but no Junior.

In the back of the house Maggie waited with her chin resting on her hands. A mosquito, whining, landed on her cheek. She slapped it away.

It was too dark to see her green Magic Marker nails, but if she could have, it would not have brought her one bit of pleasure. She was going to scrub the green off as soon as she could get to the kitchen sink. Green nails were stupid and childish, and she somehow felt she had matured enormously just in the space of that afternoon.

Vern came through the darkness so silently that she gasped out loud when he dropped down beside her.

“I think they’re gone.”

“But where’s Junior?”

“I don’t know. He’s not in the house.”

“Do you think they caught Junior?”

The way she choked on the word
caught
made it sound like the worst thing that could happen to a person.

“Let’s check the barn. Maybe he got inside and hid in the straw. That’s what he should have done—that’s what I meant for him to do when I yelled ‘Hide!’ ” He added with a sigh, “Only, you know Junior.”

“Yes.”

“And keep quiet.”

“All I said was ‘Yes.’ ”

“Well, don’t say it so loud. Those policemen could be anywhere.”

“Anyway, I don’t think he could hide with those wings on his arms,” Maggie whispered.

Since this was the exact thing Vern was thinking, he said, “I asked you to be quiet.”

In silence they crossed the yard to the barn, running through the moonlit clearing. They slipped behind the old sagging door.

This door hadn’t been closed in five years. Even when their mom was home from the rodeo with her horse, Sandy Boy, they didn’t close the door. The patch of weeds that grew behind the door was stiff and thorny and reached to their waists.

“Ow,” said Maggie.

Vern looked at her in disgust, and she said, “Well, I stuck myself on a thorn.” She put her knuckle into her mouth to ease the pain.

Vern peered out around the barn door. “Come on, let’s go in.”

They slipped around the barn door and stopped short.

“Oh, Vernon,” Maggie said, using his full name for the first time in years.

She reached for his hand. He reached for hers, but they were so upset, they did not touch. Their hands grabbed the air.

For in the moonlight, just beneath the spot where Junior had stood poised for flight, lay two broken, twisted, ruined objects, the saddest objects either Maggie or Vern had ever seen.

“Wings,” they said together.

Pap was in the corner cell of the city jail. It was one o’clock in the morning, but Pap was not sleeping. He was sitting on his bunk, leaning over his knees, staring at nothing.

His brows were pulled low over his dark eyes. The blood was pumping so hard in his head, the blue veins were throbbing.

Pap was seventy-two years old, and this was the first time he had been arrested. It had been so upsetting that at first he had had to hold himself back from jumping up and actually trying to tear the bars off his cell. If he had been a younger man, at the peak of his strength, that is exactly what he would have done.

Now he sat without moving, except for the veins pumping in his head, and his elbows, which trembled against his legs. He had been sitting like this for five hours.

The arrest had happened so fast, it still bewildered him to think about it.

He had been coming up Sumter Avenue, minding his own business, stopping for stop signs, red lights, and pedestrians. He had to do this because he had an expired license plate, and he did not want to call attention to himself.

He also had 2,147 beer and pop cans in the back of his truck in see-through plastic bags. This was the biggest haul Pap had ever made—the result of a July Fourth weekend bonanza.

It was such a mountain of cans that it caused heads to turn all up and down Sumter Avenue. Pap was proud of it. He got five cents for every can he brought in, and so in the back of his truck was $107.35 cold cash. He had multiplied it out on a brown paper bag. He couldn’t wait to get to the station and reap his rewards.