Lost Boys Part 30

"Make them happy."

"Make who happy?" asked DeAnne.

You know who he means! Step wanted to shout.

"Jack and Scotty and David," said Stevie. The imaginary friends. Only now there were three.

"Stevie," said DeAnne. "Who is David?"

"Just another kid we play with," said Stevie. "Me and Scotty and Jack."

Stevie might have been confirmed, and the Lord may or may not have given Step words to speak in his confirmation, but the fact remained that Stevie was still living in a world where invisible friends came to play with him. And today he had added another. Or was it today?

DeAnne asked, "Did David just ... move in or something? I don't remember you talking about him before."

Move in, yes, that's a good one, thought Step. Let's pretend that these friends actually live in the neighborhood and have families and new ones just "move in" from time to time.

"He's been around for a while," said Stevie. "I think he was born in Steuben cause he talks southern and I can't understand him all that well yet. I mean I can, but I have to listen slower."

All right, DeAnne, thought Step. You were right. He needs to see a psychiatrist or somebody, anyway. I've never heard him talk about his imaginary friends this way. As if they had real lives. He must be spinning out their biographies faster than Step was coming up with code for Hacker Snack on the 64. You knew this, DeAnne. You've heard this sort of thing before. No wonder you were so upset. No wonder you insisted. This is too much for us alone.

When they pulled into the driveway Bappy's pickup truck was out front. "On Sunday?" asked Step.

As if he had heard the question, Bappy came around from the back yard. "Y'all at church?" he asked. "I come by at about four thinking you was bound to be back from church but n.o.body was here."

"We had a special meeting," said Deanne. "Stevie got baptized today."

"Well that's something," said Bappy "That's really something. So y'all don't baptize babies either, eh?"

"Are you Baptist?" asked Step.

"Well, my daddy was a Pentecostal minister, and he was a real dunker, he put 'em all the way under and held 'em down till the sins were all drownded and so were the ones who found Jesus, I'll tell you. Why, some of 'em came up with a mouthful of mud, he pushed 'em down so far!" DeAnne and Step joined in Bappy's laughter, but Step was thinking, I don't like making light of baptism, not today, not in front of the kids.

"Well," said Step, "anyway I'm sorry we weren't here. Have you waited long?"

"Oh, I didn't wait at all," said Bappy. "I figured, I know I oughta ask 'em first, but here I am and there's the tent flies in the back yard and I gotta do something about 'em, and it's not like I'm gonna make a mess that I don't clean right up."

"Is that what those cobwebby things on the trees are?" asked DeAnne. "Tent flies?"

"Them eggs hatch and the worms can eat every leaf right off the tree," said Bappy. "So I bag 'em up and prune 'em off. Got my truck mostly filled now, and you won't have any more of them wormy things dropping off on your kids under the trees."

"Yay!" shouted Robbie. "Those are really icky!" He charged around back, Betsy hard on his heels.

"Well I got 'em all," said Bappy. "Or almost. I will have 'em all by the time the day's over."

Step wasn't comfortable having Bappy doing yardwork on the Sabbath. But he knew that it really wasn't his business. Bappy wasn't his employee, he was the landlord's father, and if he chose to do yardwork on Sundays, well, it wasn't Step's job to control it.

"Step, would you go round the kids up out of the back yard?" DeAnne asked.

Step headed into the back yard and found Robbie and Betsy circling the tree like the tigers in Little Black Sambo, though they would never know the reference because somewhere between Step's childhood and his children's, that story had been discovered to be a monstrously poisonous thing that would turn otherwise innocent children into bigots. I guess there's no hope for me, thought Step. I see kids running around in circles, I think of tiger b.u.t.ter.

Bravely Step stuck a hand into the circle of children and emerged with a child attached to it; then the other hand, and the other child. "Come on into the house," he said, "if you want supper."

"He got the webs!" shouted Robbie.

It was true. The tree had been pruned back, and now was missing all but two of the branches that had been covered with a ma.s.s of white web; even those were now wrapped in large plastic garbage bags, waiting to be cut off and disposed of. It wasn't hard to imagine Bappy's wiry body climbing around in the trees. He's in better shape than I am, thought Step. But then, he doesn't have to work around the corner from a candy machine.

When Step got the kids into the kitchen and DeAnne had sent them off to change out of their Sunday clothes, she asked him, "Where's Stevie?"

"He wasn't in the back yard," said Step. "I thought he came in with you."

"I thought he took off when the other kids did."

"He's in here somewhere."

"No he's not, Step. I unlocked the back door, and he'd have to come in past me, and I know for a fact that he didn't. So he's still outside, and I don't like it that you didn't see him with the other kids."

She had good reason to be worried. This morning's paper had told of another kid who had turned up missing last night at a Weavers baseball game. It was a minor league team, of course, but there were a lot of loyal fans in Steuben and so the games were crowded. Kid just disappeared. Scary times. He'd be on a milk carton soon, no doubt. Or turn up at a neighbor's house. Or dead. Where was Stevie?

Step went out into the back yard again. Bappy was up in the tree, sawing away at one of the limbs wrapped in plastic. He waved, and Step waved back. "You seen my oldest boy?" asked Step.

"No sir!" shouted Bappy. "You lost him?"

"Oh, he's around here somewhere," said Step.

"Keep your eyes on your kids, young man!" shouted Bappy. "It ain't safe these days. The devil is loose in the world!"

"Oh, I have no doubt of it!" Step called back.

Stevie was around in the front of the house, sitting on the doorstep.

"Stevie, we've been looking for you," said Step. "Your mom and I were worried, we didn't know where you were."

"Sorry," said Stevie. He got up.

"You can't go running off without saying anything."

Stevie frowned. "I was right here, Dad."

"You weren't in the house, and you weren't where we could see you, and so we were scared. That's just the way it is with parents, and you have to humor us and make sure we know where you are all the time or we'll end up putting you on a leash or locking you in the house or something, and you won't be very happy with that."

"Sorry," said Stevie again.

This wasn't how it should be on the day a kid was baptized. Off by himself, and then having to apologize for it. "What were you doing here in the front yard, anyway?" What were you thinking about? What was going through your mind?

"Sitting," said Stevie.

Step knew when he was defeated. "Well, come on in, it's time for supper."

Dutifully, Stevie followed him inside.

The next morning should have been the first weekday of summer. Stevie out of school, a chance for DeAnne to get a little more sleep in the morning, get things moving a little later. But DeAnne woke up before her alarm anyway, and not just because the baby was pressing so hard on her bladder that it held about a half an ounce these days. She lay there for a moment and then knew why her stomach felt like it was tied in a knot. She was taking Stevie to Dr. Weeks at ten.

DeAnne and Step had decided not to tell Stevie about the psychiatrist until the morning of his appointment. Why have him worry unnecessarily for days in advance? Why spoil his birthday and his baptism?

Stevie wasn't so young that they could play the "this is just a different kind of doctor" game that might have worked with Robbie. Stevie knew that there were crazy people in the world, and doctors who treated them, and places where they were shut away from everybody else. It was the child's version of mental illnessall the old prejudices about madness survived in the subculture of children, pa.s.sed from nine-year-olds to eight-year-olds, year after year. The loony bin. The nuthouse. Shameful, terrifying. Somehow Step and DeAnne had to make Stevie understand that that was not what was happening here. It would be especially difficult because DeAnne was afraid, deep inside, that that was exactly what was going to happen somewhere down the road.

DeAnne showered. Step had installed a handheld showerhead, which was a lifesaver when she was pregnant-not so much bending and reaching while standing on a slick, wet surface. It felt good to be clean. There were times, late in her pregnancies, when she felt like she was permanently ugly and vile; her hair seemed to get oily faster during pregnancy and it matted to her head, and she felt awkward and b.u.mptious and her back hurt, and her legs, and she got charley horses and she was tired all the time, too tired to want to clean herself up, and there was always this belly between herself and anything she was trying to do, and there were times when she just didn't want to go through the bother of getting out of bed. Yet if she just stripped off her clothes-a lot of trouble right there, of course-and washed herself, letting the water beat on her body, scour her all over, then she felt better, invigorated. She felt like maybe it was worth dragging herself around for another day.

Step staggered out of bed and into the shower as soon as she got out of the bathroom. Twenty minutes before his usual gettingup time. He had remembered, too. She watched him as he stripped off his nightclothes and pitched them into the plastic laundry basket in the closet. His body was definitely going to seed at this job. His old regimen of bike-riding back in Vigor, along with some serious attention to what he ate, had kept him trim for the past few years, but the belly was coming back again, the thickness in the b.u.t.tocks, the softness in the face. He had been pasty and overweight when she fell in love with him, of course; she hadn't really minded, but he minded so much that she knew he wasn't happy with his body that way. So when he got himself under control a few years back and shed the weight and built up his strength in a way he had never done in high school or college, she loved it mostly because he was so much happier, so much more confident. Looking at him now, she thought: Eight Bits Inc. has been destroying him in every way it could.

She wanted to say Quit your job today, Step. Get back on the bicycle. Join a health club. Get away from the candy machine.

If only we hadn't moved to Steuben.

It had felt like the right thing to do at the time. Even though she was already pregnant before Step even thought of applying for jobs, it felt right. Almost inevitable. We just have wandering feet, she supposed. We can't stay rooted anywhere for long. Pioneer spirit. It was built into Mormon culture, to be ready to pick up and move to a new land every couple of years. And maybe there was some genetic component to it. People who were born to be nomads.

Then she thought of chopping down trees and building log cabins and sweeping a dirt floor and cooking at a hearthfire and never being able to bathe and having to use an outdoor latrine and giving birth alone in the dark, squatting over the straw, and she decided that she had no desire to be a pioneer. Wanderl.u.s.t was fine, as long as you could wander from one place with flush toilets, electricity, and a good local hospital to another.

She headed for the kitchen to fix herself a bowl of raisin bran, but when she had the fridge open, getting out the milk, it occurred to her that it was awfully dark. Most mornings the sunlight streamed into the east-facing kitchen window.

The plastic gallon jug of milk in hand, she turned around and glanced toward the window to see what the weather was. Weather had nothing to do with the darkness of the room. Most of the gap between the window and the screen, up to about six inches from the top, was filled with June bugs, their translucent bodies glowing a ruddy brown as the bright sunlight tried to get through into the room.

It was so startling, so repulsive, all those bugs tumbled onto each other, that DeAnne screamed. Then she felt something cold spatter on her legs, and she screamed again. Only then did she realize that she had dropped the milk jug and the cap had burst off, spattering milk everywhere. Now it was lying on its side, gurgling out the remaining milk. She squatted down as quickly as she could to pick it up before it all poured out, but she moved so slowly that before she could get it the flow had reduced to a trickle. About a third of the milk remained inside, but most of the nearly full jug was all over the floor.

I can't deal with this, she thought. This horrible house. The bugs in this place, the milk all over the floor, the cupboard that still smells like coffee after all these months, I hate this place.

She struggled to her feet and used paper towels to wipe the milk off her legs and her bare feet, and then she went back to the linen closet in the hall and got out the old towels, which she then dropped onto the milk to soak it up. Then she laboriously squatted again to pick them up, dripping with milk. "d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n," she said.

"And good morning to you," said Step. He stood in the kitchen doorway.

"I dropped the milk," said DeAnne.

"What a relief. I thought maybe you had poured it out. The world's largest bowl of Grape-Nuts Flakes."

"I was going to have raisin bran this morning."

"Well that explains everything."

She hated it that he was joking when she felt so awful, but then he helped her stand up again, saying, "You shouldn't be doing that, Fish Lady" and she was able to sit down by the table and watch as he picked up the towels and rushed them into the laundry room. While he was gone, she dared to look back at the window, hoping that she had exaggerated the quant.i.ty of June bugs. She hadn't.

Step came back, heading for the paper towels to finish wiping up the milk, when he finally noticed the window.

"Oh," he said. "Now I know what you meant by d.a.m.n d.a.m.n d.a.m.n."

"d.a.m.n d.a.m.n d.a.m.n was for the milk and being pregnant," said DeAnne. "For the bugs in the window I screamed, only you must have been in the shower so you didn't hear me."

"Too bad, it must have been a doozie." Step leaned over the sink to look closely at the bugs. "How did they get in there?"

"I don't know," said DeAnne. "Maybe some bug entrepreneur sold tickets." He laughed, and she laughed too, though it wasn't that funny.

"They're all dead," said Step. "Not one of them even twitching. Weird, isn't it? Like all the June bugs who knew their number was up came here last night to die."

"So we have the world's largest bug collection, only it's all one species."

"Well," said Step, "good thing we woke up early today. This roll of paper towels is nearly out, do we have any more?"

"Yes, but we still have to speak with Stevie," said DeAnne. "I want it to be when you're still here. I can mop the floor later."

"It'll only take me a minute to finish wiping it up," said Step.

"You can't just mop up milk," said DeAnne. "I have to scrub the floor."

"Pregnant?"

"I've done it before, you know," she said. "That's what Bendectin is for. To allow pregnant women to keep scrubbing floors while their men watch mud-wrestling on ESPN."

He looked at her, his eyes narrowed in a mockery of a glare. "Feminist b.i.t.c.h," he said.

She pretended to glare back. "Male chauvinist pig."

"Let me guess," he said, looking at the window again. "You don't want these guys to be up here all day."

"It's more important to talk to Stevie."

"He's not in here yet." Step went to the laundry room and got out a green plastic garbage bag. "This time it's your turn to hold the bag," he said.

"Oh, Step," she said, shuddering.

"It's either that or you climb up on the counter to open the window."

"Can't you do it outside?" asked DeAnne. It made her sick to think of those bugs inside her kitchen.

"I don't have a ladder," he said, "and I don't want to fuss with uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the whole screen when I can just slide this window up. It's not like I have time for a half-hour job this morning."

"I can call Bappy," said DeAnne.

"And have him spray again?" asked Step. "I can do it, and I don't like Bappy doing jobs that I can do. That we can do, if you'll just help me."

She was already up. Step had anch.o.r.ed the bottom corners of the bag on the windowsill using the big red salt and pepper shakers from beside the stove. "Don't use those," she said. "If they get bugs all over them I could never stand to use them again."

"Well, unless you have four hands, Fish Lady, we've got to anchor them with something."

She squatted awkwardly to reach inside the cupboard under the sink and came up with two large wrapped bars of hand soap.

"Excellent work, my beloved a.s.sistant," he said. "That's what I keep you around for, your extraordinary resourcefulness."

Now, with the bottom corners anch.o.r.ed, DeAnne held the bag open against the window as Step slowly opened it. The bug bodies rattled out of the bottom of the window, tumbling into the bag like popcorn. The sound of it, the vibration of the bag, knowing what was falling into it, it was all too much for DeAnne. A bug-loathing instinct far deeper and more powerful than her common sense took over, and for a moment she lost control. She moaned, her body was racked with a huge, irresistible shudder, and she let go of the bag.