Lump (4 page)

 

*****

Buzz left the neighborhood and set out along Cheney Highway to find Mr. Bittermaker.
He ended up taking Route 1 to the north e
nd
of town.
It was a long ride by bike, but he didn't have a choice;
he figured it was his last chance
to find out
what nice thing he'd
supposedly
done.

After a half-hour or so, he rolled up to the Whispering Palms Nursing Home
, a sprawling brick building near the Parrish Medical Center
.
He threw his bike down under the one palm tree in the dry brown yard and marched up to the front door.

Pulling the door open, he walked inside...and immediately came face to face with a cluster of old people in wheelchairs. There were six of them, all gaping at him with wide eyes and big smiles (except one old man who was sound asleep and snoring).

Buzz smiled back, already imagining the mischief he could get up to in this place. So many wheelchairs, so little time.

Then, one of the old folks spoke. "Well aren't you sweet?" She sat at the front of the group, wearing giant dark-rimmed glasses and a pink button-down sweater over a green blouse. Buzz thought she looked younger than the others, but her face drooped a little on the left side. "Come to visit your grampa, have you?"

Instinctively, Buzz snapped right into con artist mode. "Yes, ma'am. Can you tell me where to find him
? His name's Max Bittermaker."

The old woman frowned and nodded. "Good for you, child. God bless you."

Buzz kept smiling. "Because I'm visiting?"

The old woman reached out and took his hand. "Because he might not be with us much longer."

Buzz frowned. "You mean he's moving again?"

She gave his hand a squeeze. "I mean he's very, very sick."

 

*****

As Buzz walked down the hallway,
following the
directions the old woman gave him
,
he stopped thinking about mischief for a change. He was too distracted by the
sights and sounds and smells that flowed around him.

A black man with a crazy look in his eyes lunged out of a room in front of Buzz, staggering toward him and lurching away at the last second. An old man moaned in a room that he walked past; further down the hall, a woman wailed incoherently. The ammonia-like odor of urine filled the air,
mingled
with the smell of Lysol.

It was not a nice place to be. If Mr. Bittermaker didn't tell Buzz what he wanted to hear after forcing him to come here, Buzz swore he'd make him pay.

When Buzz reached the end of the hall, he finally came to Room 42. The door was wide open, so he stepped inside and looked around.

There were two beds in the little room. Buzz was surprised to see a young man
sleeping
in the one closest to the door. He looked like he was in his twenties or thirties; his hair was blond stubble,
and
he wore a white V-neck t
-shirt and gray sweatpants.
Buzz wondered why his wrists were strapped to the bed rails in padded restraints.

The bed on the other side, closest to the window, was partly obscured by a tan curtain pulled midway across the room. All Buzz could see at first was the lower half of a body underneath a white sheet, ending in the peaks of two feet pushing up the sheet like tent poles.

Slowly, he walked past the first bed with the sleeping young man.
As he eased past the curtain and looked at the full length of the bed by the window, he saw the rest of Mr. Bittermaker--belly, chest, shoulders, arms, head. His eyes were closed, his hands folded on his stomach.

But what interested Buzz the most, what really caught and held his eye, was something on the bedside table.
There, beside the phone and a little gr
ay-green pitcher of water in a S
tyrofoam shell, was a glittering black object.

It was then that Buzz knew he was onto something. He'd come to the right man at the right place. Because the black object was what he'd been searching for all along.

A lump of coal.

Buzz stood there, unable to take his eyes off it, trying to process what it meant. He knew one thing for sure: its presence couldn't be a coincidence.

"Well...well...
well." Mr. Bittermaker's voice, which was usually deep and resonant, had been reduced to a hoarse
, halting
whisper.
"Look what...the cat...
dragged in."

Buzz
had a shock when he
turned to look at him
.
For as long as he could remember, Bittermaker had been a beer-bellied man, short and slight but endowed with a huge bulb of a gut. Now, it was like a dinosaur had bitten it off in one giant bite. The belly was gone, the
bed sheet
pooling in the cavity left behind.

The rest of him was similarly reduced. He was nothing but skin and bones, like
twigs wrapped in tissue paper. His head was so emaciated, it looked like it was skinless, as if someone had just dipped the skull in flesh-colored paint and dabbed on a few patches of wispy white hair.

His bloodshot eyes, like deflated balloons, had retracted into sockets
that seemed to grow deeper by the minute
. His cheeks were as hollow as if someone had dug them out with an ice cream scoop.
A pair of thin plastic tubes ran from his scabby nostrils and wrapped around his gauzy ears, leading to a machine on the floor beside his bed.

He looked awful.
"Come to...
play
a
prank
on me
...
Buzz?" After he said it, he took a deep breath through the tubes in his nose.

Buzz wasn't sure what to say first. "Hi, Mr. B-M." The words
flew
out before he could stop them--his own special nickname for Mr. Bittermaker, guaranteed to rattle his cage
...though
it
didn't
feel quite right this time.

If the nickname made Mr. Bittermaker
mad, he didn't show it. "Ca
ll me...Max." His
trembling lips formed a weak smile. "So let me...guess. You've come...to gloat."

Buzz frowned. "Why would I do that?"

"Because the neighborhood...is all yours
now
.
You
win
."

Buzz shook his head.
For once in his life, the snarky quips weren't flowing freely.

"Well...if you've come to...get your last digs in...better make it snappy." Mr. Bittermaker's chuckle became a deep, wet cough.

Again, Buzz found himse
lf at a loss for a wisecrack. As he r
estlessly
scrubbed his fingers through his rat's nest, his eyes drifted back to the black lump on the bedside table. It glittered and gleamed in the sunlight streaming in from the window.

"Ah." Mr. Bittermaker nodded. "I should...have known." He lifted one bony, shivering hand and gestured for Buzz to come closer. "Go ahead. Pick it up...if you like."

Buzz hesitated, then walked to the table. As he reached for the lump, he wrestled with the questions rolling around inside his head. Why was it that all of a sudden he was having so much trouble talking to one old man...an old man he'd taunted and ridiculed
to his face
so many times before?

"So, uh..." The coal felt hard and light in his hand. "What's with this?"

"It used to be...a tradition." Mr. Bittermaker breathed deeply with his eyes closed, then opened them halfway. "But I had to stop...this year...when I got sick."

Black dust stuck to Buzz's fingers and palm as he turned the lump over and around. "What kind of tradition?"

"Every Christmas Eve...I'd leave it in the mail...for a certain holy terror." Mr. Bittermaker opened his eyes all the way and grinned. His false teeth were out, leaving only bright red gums behind quivering lips. "Care to guess...who that terror...might be?"

Buzz gaped at him
in surprise
. He'd always thought Santa Claus was the one
doing the
lumping; his mom and dad had let him go on thinking it, too. Never had it crossed his mind that Mr. B-M might be the lump-leaver.

"But why
?" For once,
Buzz's
wide-eyed
look of innocen
t puzzlement
was
for real. "
Why did you do it?"

"When I was young...someone did the same...for me." Mr. Bittermaker managed a smirk. "I was...a holy terror...myself. Worse than
you
...probably. But the lumps of coal...made me stop...and think."

Buzz
tipped his head to one side
. "Think about what?"

"All the terrible things...I was doing." Mr. Bittermaker rolled his head away on the pillow and stared out the window
. "Maybe it wasn't...so fun
ny...to hurt other people...after all."

Buzz tossed the coal in the air and caught it. "You got all that from a lump of coal?"

"At first...I thought Santa...was leaving them. Later...I found out...it was a neighbor." Mr. Bittermaker rolled his head back to face Buzz. "Eventually, I realized...whoever was doing it...was doing me a favor."

Buzz tossed and caught the coal again. "How so?"

"Because...he could have done...much
worse
...if he knew...where I lived
...and what I'd done
." Mr. Bittermaker took a long, wheezing breath, then let it out slowly. "But instead...of
taking
revenge
...he sent me a message...and it
changed
me.
"

Buzz stopped tossing and scowled. "That's why you left all those lumps? You were trying to
change
me?"

Mr. Bittermaker shrugged and smiled. "I know...right? How dumb...was
that
?"

Buzz's scowl turned into a wicked grin. "Pretty dumb, Mr. B-M."

"See what I mean?" Mr. Bittermaker jabbed a finger at Buzz. "You
know
...I hate...that name! It stands for...'bowel movement'...not 'Bittermaker!'"

The two of them laughed until Mr. Bittermaker lapsed into a coughing jag. Just when Buzz was starting to think he should call the nurse, the coughing finally stopped.

"Oh...well." Mr. Bittermaker raised his shaking hands a few inches and turned them palms-up. "Can't blame a guy...for trying.
And failing.
"

Buzz chuckled and reached out to rub the coal on the
bed sheet
, leaving a black smudge. "You really did fail, Mr. B-M.
I'm even wrecking your nursing home.
I'm getting coal dust all over the place
."

Mr. Bittermaker looked at the smudge and shook his head. "Do you really...have to vandalize...my
deathbed
?"

Buzz laughed and made another black smudge. "Can I have this
lump of coal
? Since you didn't leave one in my mailbox this year?"

"No...actually." Mr. Bittermaker met his gaze. "But maybe you can...help me with it."

"Help you how?" said Buzz.

"You...can't be changed. I see that...now."

Buzz nodded
firmly
. "Right."

"But there are other...holy terrors...who might benefit...from a lump of coal...on Christmas." Mr. Bittermaker breathed in, then out, with effort. "It might help...keep them...in line...don't you think?"

Buzz shrugged. "Maybe."

"But I need...some help...from someone on the front lines," said Mr. Bittermaker. "Someone who knows...all the players...and all the tricks. Someone...like you."

"What kind of help?" said Buzz.

"Making a list...of the up-and-comers. The ones who could use...a good lump." Mr. Bittermaker's shaking finger pointed at the coal in Buzz's hand. "Maybe making...a few
deliveries
...even."

Before he said another word, Buzz did a reality check. Was he the kind of kid who'd hang around an old folks' home with a dying
fogy
? Didn't he have better things to do--geeks to pound, houses to vandalize, doughnuts to shoplift?

The Buzz he knew would never consider hanging around with Mr. B-M for even a minute. The Buzz h
e knew would never care that the old man was dying, or lonely, or sad. That Buzz would never get a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach when he thought about some of the things Mr. Bittermaker had said.

But there was
one
thing that
all
the Buzzes could agree on: how
cool
it would be to be the one
giving out
the lumps of coal instead of the one
getting
them.

Even if it meant keeping this one old fart company in the process. Even if, technically, that constituted doing something nice.

"
What's...the verdict
?" Mr. Bittermaker looked at him expectantly.

Buzz tossed the lump of coal in the air and caught it. "Got a pen and paper?"

So what if he did something nice?
He'd just have to ho
pe no one was paying attention.