Lost Boys Part 7

She went to the front door, opened it and stepped out onto the porch. Then, in spite of the scoffing of her rational mind, she had to leave the porch and walk across the lawn and stand at the curb and look at the storm drain up the street. The yucky hole. Just to see if the kitten had come out.

Of course it had probably come out while she was in the house and so it was absurd to stand here, watching. She would go back inside. Right now. This was foolish.

A movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She turned toward the house, and there in the side yard between the house and the neighbors' fence was a grey rabbit. Robbie had told her he had seen one, but she hadn't believed that a wild rabbi could really be living in their neighborhood. It looked at he steadily for a moment, then loped off into the back yard.

She followed it, hoping to see where it went. Rabbits might cute and furry, but they were rodents, like rats and mice, and the could carry diseases. She had to get some idea where it lived or least where it came from. But when she got to the back yard it was gone.

She walked the wood-slat fence, to see where it might have gone under, but she couldn't see any rabbit-sized gaps. She also examined the latticework skirting around the base of the house, though the thought that the rabbit might live under her own house made her shudder. She hated the way that southerners built their houses up off the ground instead of putting in a ma.s.sive concrete bas.e.m.e.nt the way houses were supposed to be built. Anything could get in under the house-it must be filled with spiderwebs and beetles and who knows what other disgusting creatures, right there where all the waterpipes and wiring and heating ducts were. It made her feel naked, to know that her house was completely exposed on its soft underbelly.

But it didn't look as though there were any place where the rabbit might have slipped through or under the skirting. It was just gone. Probably went across to the driveway and back out into the front yard while I was walking around the other way, she thought.

DeAnne walked back around the house and was horrified to realize that she had left the front door standing wide open. She had never done that-she was an inveterate door locker. But this time she had forgotten. I was just stepping onto the porch, she remembered. I didn't plan to go into the back yard chasing a rabbit.

That was no excuse.

As she hurried toward the door, a man stepped through it. A man had been in her house! A stranger! With her children! She screamed.

He looked at her, startled and abashed. An old man, white hair sticking out like tiny feathers under a baseball cap. "Ma'am, I'm so sorry- "What were you doing in my house!" Somehow she had covered the gap between them and now shoved past him, to stand in the doorway between him and the children.

"Ma'am, the door was open and I called and called-"

She yelled over her shoulder. "Robbie! Robbie, are you all right?"

"Ma'am, please, you got to understand-"

"Get away from here before I call the police," she said. "If you have harmed my children in any way, I-"

"Ma'am," he said, "I used to live here. I just haven't shook the habit yet of walking in. I shouldn't have done it, I know, and I am so ashamed of myself, giving you a scare like that, I was plain wrong and I apologize, sometimes I think I still live out in the country I guess where a open door means come on in, folks is to home."

Robbie came up behind her. "Did you call me, Mom?"

"Is your sister all right?"

"We got a fuzzy channel on the TV and she's watching this guy who hits people in the head."

"Thanks, Robbie."

"Can I go back now, Mom?"

"Yes, please, thank you."

The old man resumed his explanations. "My boy Jamie owns this house."

"That doesn't give you the right," said DeAnne.

"I know it, like I said, I was plain wrong and I'm sorry, I won't ever do it again. But ma'am, you ought to be careful and not leave your front door open like that. Folks don't do that in the city. So when I saw it open, I did like country people and didn't even think twice. If it was closed I would've knocked and waited."

"I shouldn't have left it open," said DeAnne. "That was careless of me. Stupid of me."

"Well, now, not stupid. I'd say it was trusting of you and kind of sweet. Though I guess I hope I'm never on the wrong side of you again, cause you got a scream like to wake the dead."

DeAnne looked around, embarra.s.sed. But apparently n.o.body had heard-at least, n.o.body was charging out of their houses to see why a woman had screamed at this hour.

"Ma'am, all I came by to do was to tell you that I been looking after this house for fifteen years now, ever since my boy built it for me and my missus, only she's dead now and my boy's wife sort of left him and he was lonely in his place and he wanted me for company and he needed the rental money on this place to help pay the child support and you know how it is. I moved. Spent the loneliest Christmas of my life here this winter, and so I suppose I'm glad to be moved out of it and I know I'm glad to think of a family here. Why, next Christmas Santa Claus will come to this house, will you think of that!"

Now that the fear was wearing off, she could see that there was no harm in this old fellow.

"My name's Bappy Waters," said the old man.

"Pappy?" asked DeAnne.

"Bappy, with a B. Short for my real name, which is Baptize."

"Not really" said DeAnne.

"Oh, yes. My papa was a Holiness preacher and he believed in baptism the way other folks believe in air. It was the cure for whatever ailed you. Other folks might hold with doctors or even with laying on hands, but Papa, he just pushed you down in the water and held you there till the devil come out of you. He was a deep baptizer, my papa was, and I was the firstborn in his family. And what with our last name being Waters, my name was sort of bound to happen, if you think of it. In fact he was set to name me Baptize All G.o.d's Children in the Holy, but Mama put her foot down on that and said that if he named a child that he'd deserve it if the boy grew up and shot him dead, and not a jury but would call it justice. Not that I was there to hear the conversation, mind you, but I heard reports of it, you may be sure."

DeAnne couldn't help but laugh. He was a charmer, this old man. And she could see how a country boy, a preacher's son, might act differently around an open door than a city man. How his stepping in like that meant nothing at all. In fact, it was kind of nice to imagine living in simpler times, when you could just leave your door open and a pa.s.sing visitor would poke his head in and find you maybe in the kitchen baking bread or scrubbing the floor and you get up and serve lemonade and chat awhile. In the days before television and telephones and urgent errands. Bappy Waters was a visitor from a simpler time.

"What was it brought you by?" asked DeAnne.

"Well, I know this house inside out, you see. I done all the handiwork here for fifteen years. So if anything goes bad, like a pipe gets bust in the winter or your cable needs hooking up or whatever, why, I'm equipped and qualified and I know where everything is. Why have some stranger go crawling up in the attic or under the house looking for what I know right where to find it, and besides, when you call me it's free."

"Oh, I couldn't ask you to-"

"Just protecting my son's investment in the property, ma'am."

"Call me DeAnne, please."

"Why, so I will. I knew a DeAnne when I was a boy, she was the prettiest little thing in the county. Died when she was just a slip of a girl, though, got herself drowned when her boyfriend was driving drunk and took them off into the Dan River in spring flood. There was only a half dozen cars in the county in those days, it being the Depression and all. Though truth to tell in Gary County the Depression started about halfway through the War between the States and it hasn't let up since." He laughed, and DeAnne laughed with him.

"For instance, ma'am, your kids are watching television, and I wonder if you know that I can just hook you right up to cable."

"We haven't paid for cable."

"Well, you just go down to the cable office and give them your money and you'll be just fine. They give you your box, then, if you want any of the extra channels. But the house is all wired, is what fm telling you, and you just connect up to the wall, and it was their decision to leave it connected when I turned my box in at the end of December, so you won't be stealing a thing."

"Well, then, I'll have my husband connect the TV to the wall," she said. "When he gets home, which is any second now."

Bappy nodded and touched the brim of his baseball cap. "I understand, ma'am. After seeing me in your house like that, of course you aren't about to let me inside, and I don't blame you a bit. Tell you what, here's my number. I wrote it on this card for you already. Anything goes wrong with the house, anything at all, you give me a call. That's the home I share with Jamie now, and fm always there, and when fm not a machine picks up, if you can imagine. If it's something I can't fix myself, I'll call whoever can."

"Thank you," she said, taking the card.

"Times are tight, ma'am, and rent's high enough without y'all having to worry about paying for repairs and such. Think of me as a sort of free discount on your rent." He grinned again, touched the brim of his cap again, and then walked to the driveway and went left, around the house. That put another little scare into her-where was he going?

But by the time she got to where the front walk joined the driveway at the corner of the house, he was already backing down the drive in a little pickup with garden tools and a couple of big metal tool chests in the back. He was leaning out the window to see where he was backing, and of course he saw her as he slipped by. He stopped the pickup near the foot of the driveway. "Nice to meet you, ma'am," he said.

"Nice to meet you too," she said, though it had not been nice.

Or, well, in fact, it had been nice, once she got over the first scare, only it still bothered her, even though she understood the whole thing now, it still had her heart beating so hard that she could feel her own pulse in her head.

"Um, I don't know how to say this, ma'am, but it looks like you got yourself a habit needs breaking just like I do." He pointed behind her.

She turned. She had left the front door open again.

She turned back around, furious with herself, intending to explain-she'd just been walking to the driveway to see what he was doing. But he was already backing out into the road, laughing a little, it looked like. And then he waved a jaunty little wave and drove off.

As soon as she got inside she had to lock the door, then go through the whole house, looking behind all the furniture, checking all the closets, the bathrooms, the cupboards to see if he might have taken something or moved something or left something behind or just - just touched something. She wanted to take everything out of the cupboards and wash it all. And in the back of her mind there was also the question-what if someone else went through that door besides old Bappy, maybe before he did, and was now hiding somewhere in the house, waiting for them to go to sleep tonight?

Even as she moved through the house, she knew it was irrational of her to check everything like that, but this was exactly the way her mother had always checked over the house when they got home from a trip, and besides, once DeAnne thought of the possibility of someone sneaking into the house, she had to know. She could not just put it out of her mind. Her mind didn't work that way.

I screamed, right out in the front yard, and it was loud, and not one neighbor came out to see why.

Step called at 5:30 to say he was going to be late, but one of the guys he was working with would take him home. Don't wait dinner for him. When she told him about supper at the Cowpers', he said, "Take a picture of me and tell them fm a miserable rotten husband who has never made it home in time for dinner in the whole time he's worked for Eight Bits Inc."

"Very funny," said DeAnne.

"And it's true."

"Please get home before eight, will you? Stevie had a terrible time at school today and he isn't talking to me about it."

"Ah, a father-and-son moment."

"I've never seen him like this, Step."

"I'll be home."

She took the kids to the Cowpers' and it was a circus. The Cowper kids were so undisciplined, running around and screaming, that Robbie soon joined in, and Elizabeth only refrained because DeAnne kept a firm grip on her. Stevie, however, sat at his place and quietly, dutifully ate whatever was put before him. He answered questions in a low voice and volunteered nothing. DeAnne had a sneaking suspicion that whatever had made Stevie upset at school was no longer the reason for his behavior. That what she was seeing now was sullenness, spite. Anger, pa.s.sively expressed. Stevie was hurt at school somehow, but now he was just mad.

The Cowpers, however, had no notion that anything was wrong. Because they seemed not to care at all what their kids did, they were able to stay at the table and converse for a while after supper. But DeAnne could not bring herself to adopt their att.i.tude toward child care. She felt an unceasing need to know what Robbie was doing and whether he was safe. Who knew what kind of insane games the Cowper children might decide to play? Hadn't she seen them climbing on the car this afternoon? All through the after-supper visiting she got more and more anxious until finally, using Elizabeth's bedtime and the possibility that Step had come home as an excuse, she headed home at seven-thirty.

It was dark outside, and all the way home Robbie told Stevie about the adventures of the walk earlier that day. Robbie took a wide berth around the yucky hole and begged the others to be just as careful. But Stevie just plowed straight ahead, walking as close to the hole as he could, which drove Robbie to fits of anxiety.

"Stevie," said DeAnne. "You may be angry at me, but Robbie hasn't done anything to you."

After a moment, Stevie said, "I'm sorry, Robbie. I'll be more careful next time."

It mollified Robbie-in truth, Stevie could do no wrong, as far as Robbie was concerned. Robbie seemed to have been born with the gift-or perhaps the curse-of empathy. If Stevie or Elizabeth or Step or DeAnne was hurt, Robbie got almost frantic in his sense of urgent helplessness. He had to do something to help, and yet at the age of four had no notion of what that might be. His life was almost entirely focused on others. And it made DeAnne wonder if a compa.s.sionate, Christlike character might be something you were born with, rather than something you acquired. Maybe all of Christianity was devoted to making normal people believe that they should live and feel and think the way that a few, special people just naturally did. In which case most believers would end up either frustrated at their failure to measure up, or frustrated because they did measure up but got no joy from suppressing all their natural instincts.

Nonsense, she decided. We are what we choose to be. Robbie is so profoundly compa.s.sionate because his spirit is that way, and always was that way, long before he was born. And if I'm not as good a person as he is, that doesn't mean that I can't learn to be. To believe anything else would be to despair.

To believe anything else would mean rejecting every other choice she had made in her life.

Step didn't get home by eight o'clock. DeAnne put Elizabeth and Robbie to bed, but she let Stevie stay up a little while longer, waiting for Step. "Here, sit and read a book to me."

He sat next to her, but then he said, "I don't feel like reading."

"Then let's see what's on TV."

But with the cable not yet hooked up, there wasn't anything watchable-too much fuzz, and only three VHF channels, with a maybe on a fourth one. And two channels on UHF, one with a dingy-looking old western, and one with a screaming used-car salesman. She should have let the old man hook up the cable. Baptize. Bappy. What a name. Of course she would have to tell Step about what she did today. Leaving the door open like that. Or maybe she shouldn't, so he wouldn't worry. But no, she had to tell him, because they didn't hide things from each other, especially things that made them look stupid. Only this wasn't about whether DeAnne looked stupid, this was about whether the children would be safe. Step couldn't be worrying all the time about whether she was keeping them safe, he had to concentrate on work. Besides, if she told him he wouldn't blame her, he'd blame himself for not being home, for not having been a good enough provider so that now he had to go away all day and leave her alone to take care of everything. No, that would not be a good story to tell him. But she couldn't leave it unconfessed, either. She would write it in the family journal, and tell him later, much later, when she had gone for several weeks-no, months-without leaving the door open like that.

"I want to play Kaboom," said Stevie.

She sighed inwardly. He'd rather play a videogame than sit with her. A game that he could not win, a game that always made him so frustrated that he used to hit the computer or throw down the joystick until Step had to ban him from the computer several times, to help him learn to control his anger.

Anger was the mode he preferred tonight, apparently. "Go ahead," she said. "I don't know where the cartridges are."

"Right here," he said, going straight to a cardboard box and pulling out a plastic case with slots for all the Atari cartridges. Step had set up the computers the moment all the beds were together, and of course Stevie knew right where everything was.

It was nearly nine and DeAnne was about to send Stevie to bed when Step finally got home. He knew he had let them down and felt terrible about it. "I'm so sorry. Is he still up?"

"Playing Kaboom," she said.

He went to the family room and knelt down beside Stevie. "Son, fm so sorry I was late. It wasn't my car, and we kept finding new bugs in the program, and I kept saying I had to get home, but he'd say, 'Let's just fix this one thing and try it,' over and over again, and it was his car, what can I say? Even as it is he's mad at me for leaving the thing unfinished."

Stevie said nothing, just kept swinging the paddle left and right to catch the little bombs as they dropped from various points along the top of the screen. Then he missed one, and all the bombs on the screen at that moment exploded.

"Stevie, your mom said you were upset when you came home from school today. Do you want to tell me what happened?"

Stevie just stared at the screen, until finally he said, "I don't want to talk to you about it."

That slapped Step hard, DeAnne could see it. "Well, then, who are you going to talk to?"

"Mom," said Stevie.

DeAnne could not believe what she was hearing.

Step stood up. "He's punis.h.i.+ng me for not getting home soon enough," he said. "And probably for not taking him to school this morning." Step did that-stating out loud how he interpreted the kids' actions, so that they would see that he wasn't fooled, or correct him if he was wrong.

Stevie didn't correct him, so Step went on. "As long as you'll talk to one of us, that's all right. And if you were trying to hurt my feelings, then you've succeeded. I really am sorry that I wasn't here when you needed me, but we explained to you that this is the way it's got to be for a while. Most fathers have to go to work, and when you go to work, you can't always be home when your kids need you. That's the way it is, if we're going to have food on the table and a roof over our heads."

Stevie said nothing. DeAnne had never seen him so unforgiving. In fact, she had never seen him act unforgiving at all. Maybe what happened at school today really was awful, so awful that Stevie couldn't forgive his father for not being there to protect him.

Well, she'd find out soon enough now. "Come on, Stevie," she said. "Let's go to your room and you can tell me what happened."

"Not in front of Robbie," he said.

"OK, we'll go to my room," she said. "Step, if you can't wait for supper, fix yourself something, but if you wait I'll poach some eggs or something."

Step nodded, leaning against the bookshelves. As she followed Stevie out of the room, she thought she had never seen Step look so bent, so broken, in all the years she'd known him. It made her want to go to him and hold him and comfort him ... but she knew that Step would understand, would agree that it was more important for her to be with Stevie. The child's needs always took precedence over the adult's. That was the way it had to be, when you had children. That was the contract you made with the kids when you chose to call their spirits from heaven into the world, that as long as they were young and needed you, you did whatever you could to meet their needs before you did anything else for anybody else.

They sat next to each other on her side of the queen-sized bed that Step's parents had given them as a wedding present. "What happened today, Stevie," said DeAnne.

Almost immediately, his face twisted up and the pent-up tears flowed again as they had flowed in the car. "I couldn't understand them, Mom!"

"What do you mean?"

"I couldn't understand what they said! To me, I mean. I could understand them mostly in cla.s.s, when they were talking to the teacher, but when they talked to me I didn't understand hardly anything and so I just stood there and finally I said, I can't understand you, and they called me stupid and r.e.t.a.r.ded."