Lost Boys Part 22

"How can I put this, Brother Fletcher? Let's just say that he was first contacted by Brother and Sister LeSueur, and he took all the lessons in their home."

"I'm not sure I know what that means," said Step. Of course, he knew exactly what Freebody meant-the kid had been exposed to the strangest, most self-servingly charismatic version of the gospel that could be imagined. But Step was already getting into the spirit of the way things worked in the Steuben 1 st Ward: You know that certain people are difficult, but you just work around them as best you can and try not to put the nastiness right out in the open. As a westerner, Step was used to a more direct way of doing things. But if this elaborate effort to avoid hurting anybody's feelings or provoking any conflict was the southern way, then Step would learn to act southern.

So Step wasn't surprised when Freebody's only explanation was to say, "You'll see. He's a good kid, though."

Step wrote down Lee Weeks's name and phone number. "Does he live at home or will I maybe get a roommate when I call?" he asked.

"Lives at home. His mom's a shrink. Divorced, so I haven't met the father. She approved of Lee joining the Church, though, so there's no problem with hostility."

"So she'll deliver messages."

"Heck, she'll probably push him out the door to go home teaching with you. She even drives him to church on Sunday."

"He doesn't have a license?"

"I guess not, or maybe he cracked up the car once too often or something. She drives him, anyway."

That was that. Step said his good-byes and hung up the phone and sighed as he sat back down at the kitchen table.

"Home teaching, right?" said DeAnne. She was loading the dishwasher.

He got up and started helping.

"No, Step, I'm almost done, and you've already been the hero of the day. I just want to hear the tape."

"The kids are all bathed?"

"I'm real fast now," said DeAnne. "Splish-splash and I pop 'em in bed. And Stevie takes his own bath. Done in record time. I'm a wonder"

"You are, you know," he said.

She smiled. "Let me hear the tape."

So they sat in the family room and listened as Step copied the tape from the microca.s.sette recorder to the cheap little Panasonic that clearly wanted to be a boom box when it grew up but would never, never make it. The quality of the recording wasn't that good, especially when Step had been across the room from her, but it was certainly good enough to hear pretty much everything, and even the copy was OK.

"Oh, Step," said DeAnne when the tape was finished. "You are sly."

She meant it as a compliment, but to Step it had a hollow ring. He didn't like thinking of himself as a sly person.

"You should have heard me later," said Step. "I stopped being sly, and turned into a bully." Then he told her in some detail what he had done after he stopped recording. And how Mrs. Jones had called it blackmail, and he wasn't sure but what she was right. At some level, anyway.

DeAnne slapped him playfully on the arm. "There, I hereby punish you. Case dismissed."

"I just thought it would feel better than it did."

"Come on, didn't it feel just a little bit good when you pulled out the recorder and showed her?"

"Yes," said Step. "But afterward ..."

"Afterward you found a way of making yourself the villain of the piece," said DeAnne. "But you weren't. You were rescuing your little boy."

"Yeah," said Step. "When I remember that, I feel better. But I don't always remember it."

"Then I'll remind you," she said. "Again and again and again." To his surprise, she kissed him long and soft and deep, and he realized that she was going to make love to him tonight.

"Maybe I should bully defenseless teacher ladies more often," he said, when the kiss was finally done.

"Shut up, Junk Man," she said, and kissed him again.

"Step! Step!" He dreamed that DeAnne was very, very upset and she was calling to him, softly so she wouldn't wake the kids but her voice was full of fear. Then he opened his eyes and looked at the clock and at the same time heard her call his name again and he realized that it wasn't a dream at all, it was three in the morning and something was wrong and DeAnne was calling out for help, she needed him to help her.

He threw back the covers and got up and realized that he was naked; he must have fallen asleep as soon as they were through making love. I hope I stayed awake long enough to actually finish, he thought. And then remembered that yes, he had. DeAnne had not been left unsatisfied tonight, as she had so many nights before.

He inwardly slapped himself for the churlish thought and went to get his bathrobe out of the closet. The only light in the room was what spilled in from the kids' bathroom, which was around the corner and down the hall, so he could hardly see anything; but he found the robe and put it on. She called again.

"I'm coming," he said, trying to be loud enough and yet soft enough at the same time.

"Put on your slippers first," she said.

"I don't need them," he said.

"Yes you do!" she said, and her voice rose almost to a scream at the end, and so he put on his slippers and then went to the door into the hall and just as he was turning on the light he realized that he had just stepped on something, and something had just b.u.mped against his leg, and now the light was on and he saw that the floor was jumping with crickets. Dozens of them, hundreds of them.

"Holy s.h.i.t," he said. "I mean good heavens."

"Where are they coming from, Step?"

"What an excellent question," he answered. He bent over and brushed several of them off his legs. It was almost impossible to take a step without crushing one under his feet while others jumped at him, landed on him.

DeAnne was standing there holding a can of Raid. "I don't think I should be breathing insecticide fumes when I'm pregnant," she said.

"There isn't enough Raid in a can to kill them all," he said. "We'd asphyxiate the children long before we got the crickets."

"What, then? Sweep them up into garbage bags?"

"Sounds better than trying to stomp them all," he said. "Where are the seagulls when you really need them?"

"I'll get the garbage bags," she said, heading for the kitchen.

While she was gone, he tried to find the source. The hall was the worst place, it seemed-there were only a few in Betsy's room and in the bathroom. But when he turned the light on in the boys' room, it was even worse. The crickets were so thick on the floor that in places he couldn't even see the carpet. The crickets jumping on him made him want to scream, and walking was very slow when he had to keep brushing them off, and finally he just stopped brushing them off, even though he couldn't stand the way it felt to have their feet on his naked legs. He couldn't brush them off because they were here in his children's bedroom and he had to get rid of them and so what did it matter whether he was comfortable or not?

They were coming up from a small gap in the back of the boys' closet. He could see them crawling out, first the antennas and then their black, mechanical bodies, their legs like pistons. Robot crickets, that's what they are, he thought. Somebody made them.

And then he thought, 1 made them. Crickets from h.e.l.l. A plague of crickets. A sign to me that G.o.d saw the way I bullied that woman today and he knows that I secretly loved doing it, that I loved the power I had over her. So just like Pharaoh, I get a plague.

DeAnne was in the room now, holding several garbage bagsand a broom and dustpan. "You'll have to hold the dustpan while I sweep," she said. "I can't bend over that far these days."

"Forget the dustpan," said Step. "They'd just jump off. I'll hold the bag open for you. But first we've got to stop them from coming in."

"You found the place?"

"A crack between the floor and the wall in the back of the closet. Do we have any rags?"

"All the old socks," she said.

"Get them wet and we'll jam them in," he said.

"Wet? Why?"

"Oh, please, DeAnne, I don't know, just do it." He wasn't really sure why. He just had some vague idea that if the socks were wet then he could jam them in tighter and they'd stay in place better and it would do a better job of keeping the crickets from coming through.

It took all the socks DeAnne had been saving for dustcloths, but when he had jammed them in, no more crickets were able to come through.

Then the hard part started. The crickets were not inclined to hold still, and so it seemed an almost sisyphean task. Step would keep the bottom of the garbage bag flat on the floor by holding down two corners with his feet, and then hold the top open as far as he could with his hands, while DeAnne tried her best to sweep them in. All the while, of course, they were jumping up at Step's head and onto his arms and legs; yet he couldn't let go of the bag to brush them off, he could only shudder and shake his head. The boldest of the crickets seemed to enjoy this, and hung on for the ride until Step finally asked DeAnne to sweep them off.

Gradually they began to make progress, especially after Step figured out that by spraying Raid into the garbage bag itself from time to time, he could convince the ones they had already caught to stay put. It took an hour before all the visible crickets were collected and the bags tied tightly and carried out to the garage. Then began the hunt for the strays.

They pulled the kids out of their beds, one by one, and perched them sleepily in Step's and DeAnne's room, where there were no crickets remaining; then they closed the door. Since the kids had slept right through the time when ma.s.ses of crickets were moving around, there was a good chance that they wouldn't see any of the crickets at all, and therefore wouldn't have nightmares about them later.

I hope we're so lucky, thought Step.

They found three crickets that had crept down into Robbie's sheets, which meant that DeAnne would not think of anything less than stripping down all the beds and changing the sheets-even the top bunk, Stevie's bed, where no cricket could possibly have reached. But finally it was done. All the crickets were gone, or at least if there were any left they had the sense to stay out of sight and not chirp. DeAnne proposed bathing the kids again but Step told her to forget it. "These weren't dung beetles, honey, they were crickets, and let's let the kids get back to sleep."

They already were asleep, sprawled in a tangle on top of Step's and DeAnne's bed, but one by one Step carried them back to their rooms and DeAnne tucked them into bed. In moments they were sleeping again.

"Wouldn't it be nice," Step said to DeAnne as she tucked Betsy into her clean sheets, "wouldn't it be nice if all the bad things in life could happen in their sleep and we could make them go away without them ever knowing what happened?"

"I've got to wash," said DeAnne. "I can still feel cricket feet all over me." She shuddered. "I'm surprised I didn't go into labor."

Now that she mentioned it, he still felt the tickling of those tiny feet, and it got worse the more he thought about it. "You get the first shower," he said, "but make it snappy."

She didn't make it snappy, but he understood. When it was his turn, he had to soap himself up and rinse himself off three times before he finally felt clean enough to dry off and go to bed. And even then, he inspected the sheets, though no cricket had jumped on their bed and he knew it, he knew it, but he still had to look. He had to be sure.

"Tomorrow, the exterminators," he said as he finally pulled the covers up over him.

"Yes," she said, "I already thought of that. I'll call Bappy to find out if they have some kind of contract, like with Terminex or somebody."

The next morning he was late to work, of course, later than usual, because he had lost so much sleep the night before. He came in to find a memo sitting on top of his desk. It was from Ray Keene, and even though it was addressed to everybody Step knew that it was aimed at him.

It has come to my attention that some employees have been abusing our relaxed att.i.tude toward work hours. Therefore a new policy is inst.i.tuted beginning tomorrow. All employees must be at their work stations promptly at eight-thirty. Lunch is to be taken from twelve noon to twelve-thirty, the only exceptions being that those who must work the telephones will be a.s.signed half-hour shifts between I 1:30 and 1:00. Anyone arriving even five minutes late in the morning or taking a lunch even five minutes over thirty minutes will be dismissed on the spot. The only exceptions are for medical reasons or genuine, doc.u.mented family emergencies.

Step wanted to storm into d.i.c.ky's office and call him every name he could think of. But he couldn't. If only Arkasian had come through. If only Step had a contract with somebody else, a way to get out of this place. It would be such a joy to tell d.i.c.ky Northanger exactly what he thought of him. Instead, Step put the memo into his attache case, locked it again, and then headed for the pit.

The pit was silent when Step came in, and for a moment he thought that they all blamed him for this. But their silence, he realized, was because d.i.c.ky was in the room, leaning over the shoulder of one of the programmers. Since d.i.c.ky rarely came into the pit, this was in itself significant-but then, perhaps d.i.c.ky was doing it in order to stifle the outrage that they were all no doubt feeling. Well, that was fine with Step. The longer d.i.c.ky hung around in the pit, the more their anger would focus on him instead of on Step.

"Gla.s.s," said Step. "I need you in my office, if you can. I'm having some trouble with the way hyphenation is handled and I think there's a system to it that you can explain to me." They had worked all of this out the week before, but d.i.c.ky certainly wouldn't know that.

It didn't matter. "Gla.s.s will not go into your office right now," said d.i.c.ky. "And there is no reason for you to be in the pit. Gla.s.s is helping me work with my programming staff, and that takes precedence over anything the manual-writing staff needs. In fact, you should make a list of your questions and leave them on my desk, and I will get the answers for you. The programming staff has been inclined to goof off, and I am not allowing any further distractions."

"Doc.u.mentation is not a distraction, d.i.c.ky," said Step.

"No, it's not," said d.i.c.ky. "But people walking into the programming center and talking loudly are a distraction, and I won't have it. Leave your questions on my desk."

Step stood there a moment, looking at him, and then he thought: We didn't get all the crickets last night. There's one left, waiting to jump on me the second he thinks I'm not watching. Well, d.i.c.ky, I'm a champion cricket killer. I'm an expert at it. And if I can slaughter those crook-legged hordes, I can handle one lone whining fiddler like you.

Step went back to his office and wrote a memo.

Dear Ray, d.i.c.ky has barred me from the pit, and wants me to funnel all my questions for the programmers through him. If that's the way you want it, fine with me. But if that isn't the way you want me to do my job, then the change will have to come from you.

Step signed it and carried it to Ray's secretary, Ludy. "Is Ray in?" he asked.

"Yes, but he's not seeing anyone," she said.

"Does he have anyone in there with him?"

She looked a little startled. "Step, I can't see that that's really any of your business."

"I just wanted to know if, when I walk in there and lay this memo on his desk, I'm going to be embarra.s.sing him in front of someone else or not."

Ludy didn't blink an eye, and her smile didn't fade. "Compared to barging into his office, Step, embarra.s.sing him in front of somebody else is hardly going to be a problem. I really advise you against it."

"Well, then, tell me what else I can do to make sure he gets my memo. I've written him a couple of dozen memos about different things since I've been here, and as far as I know he's never got them. He never answers them anyway, and the only time he ever phoned me was yesterday when he knew perfectly well that I wasn't in."

Ludy reached her hand closer to him across her desk; if he had been sitting by her, the gesture probably would have been a touch on the arm. "Step, he gets all your memos."

"Cross your heart?"

She smiled. "And hope to die."

He handed her the memo. "And you might tell him that if he doesn't answer this one, he's going to be looking for a new manual writer."

"I'll tell him," she said, "that you'd really appreciate an answer as soon as it's convenient. That way, if he does want to send an answer, you'll be around to receive it." She winked at him.

"You've got a twitch in your eye." Then he winked back. Ludy rolled her eyes, and he left.

When DeAnne called Bappy to find out about what exterminator to call, he seemed almost excited. "I do that myself!" he crowed. "I worked for one of them companies way back and I've kept up! I'll be right over, and you just make sure all the containers in your kitchen is closed up tight."

"The kitchen?" she asked. "Do you have to spray stuff in the kitchen?"

"That's where the bugs like to be best, where the food is," he said. "And you best get the kids out of the house while I'm doing it."

She had plans for today. And Step had taken the car, since he was so late to work. Maybe she could take the kids over to Jenny's house. And most of her work could wait. Mostly checkbook balancing, not that there was much to balance. She could do it after Bappy was done. And her little hope of perhaps taking a nap at the same time as the children, to make up for last night's lost sleep-well, she had scheduled naps before, but she didn't often get to actually take them, and that was OK, it was part of the territory. Part of the never-ending struggle to get organized. When she finally got organized, there'd be time for naps. "How long will it take?" she asked.

"Couple hours," said Bappy. "Got to get under the house and up in the attic, you know. Do it right. You said you already got the place plugged where they came up through?"

"With old socks is all," said DeAnne.

"'Bout what I'd use myself, anyway," said Bappy. "Just so it's plugged. Anyways, two hours after I'm done the stuff will all be settled and then y'all can come on back into the house and open up the windows and air it out. But don't you be thinking of coming back too soon. Got to take care of your precious burden."