The Five Pearls (16 page)

Leaves long gone and branches bare, the cold, black Cottonwood still stood its ground defiantly in the snow. It leaned below as if to listen as the boy everyone called Speed Racer appeared, running towards the Shooks Run bridge. He was carrying a white rag on a stick and waving it.

Julio was the only one down by the creek this early in the day.
“What you got punk?”
“That man that was here before. You know the guy that walked with the limp?”
“What about him?”
“He’s dead,” Speed Racer said almost proudly as he stepped up on a cross rail of the bridge.
He tossed Julio down a section of newspaper wrapped in plastic. Julio snatched the bag from the air and unwrapped the article.
Speed Racer’s voice went thin. “Was that him? The man that was here?”
After he read the story, Julio dropped to his knees in the snow.
“Was that him?” Speed Racer persisted.
Julio stared up at the boy, a strange madness in his eyes. “Kid, you got about five seconds to disappear,” Julio said sternly.

In less than an hour, the Tadpoles were gathered at Shooks Run, passing the article about Mr. Battle’s accident between them. No one could stop crying.

“Now we got nothin' again,” Toby realized, wiping his eyes with his sleeve.
“It ain't our fault he died,” Julio rationalized. “So they can’t lock us up, you know? They'll have to get a new teacher...”
“I don't want another teacher,” Marie said blankly. She looked at Amber. “You?”
“No,” Amber said softly.
“Why did that bastard have to go for a hike?”
“He abandoned us, man.”
“He didn’t abandon us!” Amber snapped. “He died! Okay? People die all the time.”
“Not our people,” Julio snapped back.
“Whatever. You guys are unreal. The
only
teacher we ever cared about in the history of our lives is dead and all you can think about is yourselves!”
“Now we got consequences!” Julio said.
“He wasn’t supposed to die!” Matt shouted at Amber. “He was supposed to look after us!”
“Grow up!”
Marie shot up from her perch on the old log, screaming. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! All of you please stop! I can’t take this!” She collapsed on the snow-soaked log. “This is too hard!”
“What do we do now?” befuddled Julio asked. “Is there a funeral or what?”
“Newspaper doesn’t mention anything,” Toby said, staring at the article.
“He lived in an old mansion over on Cascade Street, you know.”
The others looked at Matt. “How do you know that?”
“I saw his pay stub once. When he took us to the restaurant that time. He lived at the old Loomis House.”
“Loomis House? Isn’t that haunted?”
“Beats me.”
“See?” Julio said. “I knew that dude was rich! We were just an exercise in giving back to the community for him. Help the poor kid, help the black and white trash… Way I see it? He owes us for up and dyin' like that…” He grabbed Marie by the arm and fiercely pulled her to her feet. “Get up off that log. You look like a lost child.”
“I am lost.”
Julio crossed to the stream and cracked the surface ice with a stomp of his foot. “I guess I'll go rob me that ol' house… Mr. Battle won't be needin' nothin’ now.” He started up the trail and looked back. “Anybody else?”
“You’re not serious?” said Amber.
“Dead serious.”
“You want to go rob a dead man’s house?”
“I know he won’t be home! Besides, if we don’t rob it, somebody else will. You know how many criminals read the obituaries every day? And when the official obituary comes out, then everyone will have the address. We gotta strike while the fire’s hot!”
“He was our teacher!” Amber cried out.
“Was. He
was
our teacher. But now he’s dead and we got to take care of business!”
Toby and Matt nodded in agreement.
“Besides,” Julio said. “I know we’re all curious about who or what he was. We don’t even know if he had a wife and kids. This stuff needs looking into.”
Amber and Marie could rationalize that. They followed the boys out of the park towards the Old North End.

Thirty minutes later, the Tadpoles stood outside the fence facing Loomis House.
“That’s a big ass house,” Julio said with surprise.
“Old money,” Toby figured.
Matt returned from scouting the rear of the property. “Nobody home. No cars in the garage, No dogs, either. Easy access to the back door through the alley.”
“What about a security alarm?”
Matt smiled, pulling out his jack knife. “I cut whatever dangled.”
“Let’s do it,” Julio ordered.
The Tadpoles went around the block and cut up the alley to the house. When they reached the back gate, the girls stopped. Marie lit a cigarette, looking up and down the alley for cops and neighbors.
“You comin’ or what?” Julio asked.
“Do we really have to do this?”
“We ain't doin' nothin' wrong.”
“We’re stealing from a dead man!”
“He died! Okay? So he don't need his big screen TV or his stereo, now does he?”
“Hell no!” Matt laughed, getting giddy from the spiraling events.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” Toby said doubtfully. “I mean, he was a nice guy.”
“If he has some good stuff in the house, I'll forgive him.” Julio sounded mean.
Julio and Matt laughed as they high-fived each other. Julio brashly swung open the back gate and swaggered on to the property with the boys right behind.
“What do we do?” Marie asked Amber.
“Follow the idiots,” she shrugged, snatching the cigarette from Marie and smoking it.
“What about the baby?”
Amber blew out a smoke ring. “Mom’s just a little bit upset right now.”
The entire group drifted up the steps to the back porch. At the door, Toby wrapped his hand in his jacket and punched out a pane of glass. He reached inside and unlocked the door. The five Tadpoles hurried inside. Matt closed the door behind them.
“Wow!” Matt said as his eyes took in the long straight hallway that ran all the way through the house from the front to the back door. “It’s longer than a freakin’ bowling alley!”
The teens drifted along the polished wood floor through the downstairs rooms together, glancing up at, but not appreciating, the aged pictures and oil paintings that told a story. They hurried into the kitchen and found the pair of snapshots of their dead teacher attached to the refrigerator door.
“Well, we know he lived here,” Toby said.
“Nothing here but cooking utensils, “ Julio said, sifting through a drawer.
Amber scooped the pictures off the refrigerator and kept them.
The boys moved to other rooms.
“This house is old money,” Matt confirmed. “Mr. B definitely came from old money.”
“It’s a regular museum,” said Julio. “I’m gonna see if he had any liquor...” Julio turned right.
Toby and Matt entered the library on the left.
“Nothing but books.” Matt was disappointed. “If it isn't digital, leave it,” he advised Toby.
Marie and Amber exited the kitchen and crept down the hallway to the staircase, shaking their heads and staring after the boys.
“Something's wrong here,” Amber seemed dissatisfied. “This isn’t how he lived. It doesn’t have his personality. You think?”
“Something is definitely missing,” Marie agreed.
The girls stared up the flight of stairs.
“Wanna go up?” Amber said.
“Only if you go.”
They slowly climbed the staircase to the second floor.
“Catch me if someone leaps out and grabs me,” Amber said.
“I’ll be halfway home by then,” Marie said.
The girls did a quick inspection of the upstairs rooms from the hallway, relieved not to find anyone home. On their second round, Marie threw caution to the wind when she laid her eyes on a hat rack in Mrs. Powell’s bedroom.
“Hats!”
She dashed up to a hat rack overflowing with hats and scarves and started dressing herself in front of a pedestal mirror.
Amber shook her head and moved further down the hallway. When she saw textbooks and a few photographs of the Tadpoles from their Christmas dance stacked neatly on a nightstand in one of the bedrooms, she knew she found where Mr. Battle had slept. The bed was made and tucked, a small assortment of personal hygiene items laid out on doilies on the dresser. She entered the bathroom and poked around in the medicine cabinet, returning with a few prescription bottles. Her face contorted with a million unanswered questions as she tried to pronounce the drug names on the labels. She pocketed the bottles and began opening and closing several dresser drawers.
“Practically empty,” she discovered. “You don’t live in a house forever and have empty drawers. There’s a mystery here.”
Ever curious, Amber knelt down and peeked under the bed. She fell flat and reached in, pulling back a shoebox. She sat on the bed and opened it. Inside was a stack of letters and a few small diaries wrapped together with a rubber band.
“For later,” she decided.
She looked under the bed again and saw what looked like a briefcase. Before she could reach for it, Matt’s voice rang from downstairs.
“Car coming down the driveway! Everybody out!”
Amber tucked the show box under her arm and hurried for the door. Marie was ahead of her, hats and scarves stuffed in a pillowcase. They reached the bottom of the stairs, not sure if they should run out the front door or the back. The boys arrived in the foyer. Julio had a case of assorted liquor. Toby carried a small television set. Matt had a stuffed bag.
“Everybody out the front!” Matt instructed.
Someone flung the door wide open and they hurried onto the porch.
“People will see us!” Toby said.
“We run or we go to jail!” said Julio.
All the kids but Amber scrambled down the porch steps and ran towards the front gate.
Julio looked back at Amber. “Amber! Let’s go!”
“I have to close the front door,” she said.
She turned to close it behind her and caught the worried face of Mrs. Powell all the way down the hallway at the other end of the house. The old woman’s head was tilted to the side. She didn’t seem afraid or even upset, just disappointed.
Amber closed the door and ran for her life.

It was late in the afternoon at Shooks Run. The three boys sipped from the liquor bottles, pretending to watch a program on the stolen dead television.

Matt sifted through his bag. “Got me some jewelry!” He held up a ring and read an inscription on the inside of the band. “For my one and only.” He pulled out an old pocket watch and read the inscription on the back. “As we pass through life...”

Nearby, Marie sipped from a wine bottle and danced around, wearing one of her new hats and scarves.
Amber leaned against the old tree. She pried open the shoebox. She picked up one of the diaries and was about to open it
“What you got there?” Julio asked.
She quickly closed the box and hurried away from them up the hill towards the bridge.
“What did you steal?” Julio called out.
“A pair of shoes,” she said.
“A pair of shoes? What’s with chicks anyway?” Matt laughed. “Hats and scarves for Marie and a pair of shoes for Amber. Chicks are so stupid. Ha!”
“Don’t leave now, Amber!” said Toby. “Scooby Doo's about to start on Nickelodeon!”
Amber stared down at them. They were all drunk. Drunk and stupid. The Tadpoles were back to their usual juvenile antics. She shook her head.
“You children make me sick!” she scolded.
“What did I do?” Matt asked with a stupid grin.
“That bag of stuff you stole? That's somebody else’s life!”
“Mine now.”
“You didn’t just steal rings and watches. You stole someone else's memories!”
Matt put the jewelry back in the bag and tucked it between his legs. He felt like a jerk.
“Have you no shame?” she asked them all. “Does anyone here feel shame for what we've done? We loved him and he loved us and this is how we pay him back? This is how we relive his memory? We rob his house?”
“Dude’s dead,” Julio pointed out.
“Just like your mother, Julio! Would you do this to her? How would you feel if a bunch of teenage trash broke into your home and robbed it?”
“My old man would shoot them.”
“
My old man would shoot them
,” she mimicked with a silly voice. “You’re all weak. You’ll all be losers until the day you die. Mr. Battle was wrong about you. You’re nothing but garbage. Garbage in, garbage out.”
Julio took an angry step towards her, slipped in the muddy snow and fell on his face.
“And you’re the worst of us, Julio. You have no heart, no soul.”
“Get lost before I make you disappear,” he said from his knees, a fist raised.
“Go ahead, fat boy. Talk your big man talk, but inside? You’re just a lost little kid.”
“Get out of here, zero,” Julio shouted.
“With pleasure.”

After Amber left, the rest of the little gang sat around Julio’s box of liquor. Matt pulled out a bottle of champagne.
“Dom perig nom camp ane!” He popped open the bottle and sprayed his friends with foam.
“Not on the television!” Toby cried.
Julio kicked at the television screen and smashed it in. “We got nothin’ but junk,” he complained. “Who taught you people how to steal?”
The remaining Tadpoles dropped on the log in a buzzed bliss.
Toby raised a bottle of brandy.
“A toast… to Mr. B… Wherever he is.”
No one else committed to the toast. Everyone just sat there in silence, thinking of what they had done that day, secretly regretting their misguided transgressions and the pillaging of the home of a man they considered a friend.

When Amber arrived home, she hurried towards her bedroom past Miss Feely, the shoebox tucked firmly under her arm.

“How’s the baby?” Miss Feely followed her down the hallway.
“How should I know?” Amber snapped as she flung open the bedroom door. “I can't see inside myself!”
“I almost forgot. Your school called.”
“Of course they called!” Amber sounded snotty. “They want to congratulate me on having a dead teacher!” She broke into tears and tossed herself on the bed.
“What are you talking about?’ Miss Feely asked.
“Don’t you read the newspaper?” Amber cried. “Mr. Battle died. The paper says it was a hiking accident.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t bring him back!”
Amber tore open the shoebox and spilled the letters and diaries on the bed.
“What are those?”
“I don’t know, but I want to know. Help me, Miss Feely. Please help me make the sorrow and anger go away!”
Miss Feely sat on the bed and held Amber in her arms. “Calm down, child. Slow it down.”
Amber picked up a letter. “I can’t read these alone. Will you help me, Miss Feely?”
“Sure,” said the counselor. “Where did you get these letters?”
“I stole them. I wish I didn’t but I did. So there.”
Miss Feely rose and shut the door so they wouldn’t be interrupted.
It seemed like hours had passed. Miss Feely sat on the floor at the foot of the bed with Amber, sharing a box of tissues as they finished reading the last letter from the box.
“You liked him, didn't you?”
“More than anyone can ever know.” Amber blew her nose for the hundredth time.
“Sometimes, strangers enter our lives for no apparent reason only to change us here…” She touched Amber’s heart with her hand. “Change us forever, maybe.”
Amber grasped at a handful of opened letters. “He was a good man, Miss Feely. With a terrible secret that he kept inside. And like a fool, I said ‘wait until the New Year’. I feel so sorry for him. He tried telling me so many times. He came here to fix things before he died but there was no time! Why would God do this to him? Now he’s gone.”
“Don't let him leave,” Feely said. She piled wet tissues together from the floor. “You should find a way in your heart to keep his spirit alive.”
Amber gathered the letters and wrapped them together with the rubber band. “Mind if I read these again? On my own this time?”
“Sure,” said Miss Feely. She rose from the bed and put the tissues in a trashcan. “I’ll keep a plate of spaghetti on the stove for you.”
“Thanks, Miss Feely.”
The woman bent over and kissed her on the head. “You’ll get through this, Baby B. You’ll see.”
“Thank you, Miss Feely.”
Miss Feely opened the door, about to leave.
“Miss Feely?”
“Yes?”
“For what it's worth? I’m ready to grow up now.”
“You’re already grown, Baby Beulah. You just don’t see it yet. As for those letters and diaries? Think of them as new pearls. They’ve revealed your past, and I hope, offer you a new hope for the future. What do you think?”
“For the first time in my life, I think I’m blessed,” Amber smiled, pressing the private papers to her breast.