The Pricker Boy (8 page)

“So that doesn’t really help us, does it?” I say.

She glares at me, but thankfully she ends her story about the ring and her big adventure at the Eastern States Expo.

“Anyone?” I ask. No one has any ideas. “Come on—someone has to know who this belongs to. We didn’t do a widow’s walk unless we were giving up something important. Last chance.” When no one says anything, I flick the ring into the air with my thumb, catch it again, and slide it into my pocket.

Vivek asks, “So what about you, Stucks? What did the evil Santa of the forest leave you?”

I reach into the pile and pull out a small statue. “It’s the Empire State Building,” I tell them. “I got it on a trip to New York City in the fourth grade.” I don’t tell them that Pete had bought it for himself at the gift shop, and that when he saw how upset I was he gave it to me.

I toss the statue back on the pile.

“So what now?” Robin asks desperately. “Something isn’t right here. What do we do?”

Vivek nods his head and furrows his brow. “I think the polite thing to do is to go and say thank you. We go find his little gingerbread house and knock on the door and say, ‘Hey, you know what? You’re okay after all, bud. Let’s have tea.’”

“It’s not a gingerbread house,” Ronnie mutters. “It’s a pit. He lives in a stone pit.”

Emily rubs the locket with her thumb. “That’s not a bad idea. We go say thank you.…”

“I was kidding,” Vivek says. “Hey! I was kidding! Remember me? I’m the guy who kids!”

Emily ignores him. “Fear …”

I can almost see the wheels turning in her head. I don’t have to say anything, just sit back and let her do the work.

“We face the fear,” Emily says. “We’re all afraid.” She points at the package. “This is unsettling—interesting, sure—but unsettling nonetheless. The best way to get it out of the way is to face it.”

Robin looks at Emily as if she’s lost her mind. “Are you saying we should go back there? Into the woods beyond the Widow’s Stone? Where? To a, uh, a gingerbread house? What would we be looking for?”

“A stone pit,” Ronnie mutters again, but this time it’s not to correct her, it’s to answer her. “Deep in the woods, past boulders larger than Whale’s Jaw.”

“A stone pit deep in the woods past boulders larger than Whale’s Jaw,” Emily repeats, confirming our destination.

“So, Vivek,” I say. “Will you go, or do you just want to make silly jokes?”

“I can do both!” he says, smiling. Then he takes a breath and drops the smile. “Bud, if you all want to romp through the woods, then I’ll romp through the woods with you. Just so long as we all go together.”

“I’m not going,” Robin says flatly.

Vivek throws his arm over her shoulder. “Would you
rather play ring-around-the-rosy? Wanna play ring-around-the-rosy with me, baby?” He wiggles his eyebrows and winks at her.

“Jerk,” she replies, then pushes him away.

Vivek claps Ronnie on the back. “What about you, bud? Ring-around-the-rosy or a stroll through the forest of damnation?”

Ronnie shakes him off but doesn’t answer. He hangs his head down, darting his eyes back and forth because he knows that we’re all watching him.

“Look, Ronnie,” Vivek adds, “it’s creepy either way. Ring-around-the-rosy was written about the bubonic plague. People would carry posies in their pockets to hide the smell of their pus-laden sores.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Emily says. “In actuality, the song has many interpretations. For instance—”

Vivek wags his finger at her. “Oh no you don’t. As much as I love your encyclopedia stories, Emily, that’s not the point here. What I’m saying is that if we’re going to freak ourselves out, we might as well do it like big kids, not babies.” He gently places his hand on Ronnie’s shoulder. “We do it as friends. No practical jokes. No hiding or leaving someone behind. No tricks.”

“Okay,” Ronnie says. “I’ll go.”

Vivek squeezes Ronnie’s shoulder, then turns to Robin. “What about you, hoochie mama?”

“No.”

“If you don’t go, I don’t go.… But then I’ll call you ‘Robin the Spoilsport’ for the rest of the summer.”

Robin sighs and nods her head. “I hate you, Vivek.”

“Naw.” He smiles. “You just don’t like me. Right now, anyway.”

“Vivek is right, though,” I add. “For now, just in case, we keep to the old stories. We pretend that all the stories are true. Amanda Yearling and Willie Wilson died because they were in the woods alone, right? So we’re going to stick together. We don’t separate for any reason. We go in together, and we come out together. Understood?”

Everyone nods.

“Let’s go!” Vivek shouts. “All for one and one for all, especially me!” They all turn and start up the path.

“No,” I say.

Emily turns to me, confused.

“I need a day. I have something to do.” They all stare at me. “Isn’t it … I think that it’s going to rain. Isn’t it supposed to rain this afternoon?”

Emily shakes her head no.

“Look, I just need a day, okay? We’ll go in the morning.”

She shrugs and walks back down the path. “Okay, Stucks. We go in the morning.”

“N
o,” Pete says.

He and I are following the edge of the pond where the shore hooks around the cove. Pete’s wearing his jean jacket, even though it’s a little too muggy to be wearing a jacket. I suppose that makes sense. He wears that jacket even when it’s too cold for something so light, so it’s only logical for him to wear it when the weather gets too warm.

“Why?” I ask him. “I don’t get it. Why don’t you just come with us? I asked them to wait so you could come.”

“I told you, I’m never hanging out with those kids again.”

I’m following along behind him, placing my feet exactly where he places his. I know the rocks along the shore as well as he does, well enough not to stumble, but if I just
follow his exact steps then I don’t even have to think about it. “We don’t have to make a big deal out of it,” I tell him. “You just come along.”

Pete steps across the pile of rocks in the shallow water in front of Hank Paulding’s place. Hank collects rocks each fall, claiming that one day he’s going to build a stone dock twenty-five feet out into the pond. “Rocks don’t rot!” he once told me. Pete and I told him that when he finally gathered enough rocks we’d help him make his dock. Hank’s never going to get enough rocks to build a dock, but our offer was sincere. If by some miracle he ever did get around to doing it, we’d jump into the water to build with him.

One of Hank’s rocks wobbles under Pete’s foot and then mine, but we’re ready for it and compensate by leaning out slightly over the water. “You think that Ronnie’ll be happy to see me?”

“I’ll take care of Ronnie,” I say.

We reach Pete’s backyard and walk up to the house. We sit under the overhang that serves as their back porch.

“What’s the point?” Pete says, putting his feet up on the woodpile and lighting a cigarette. “This place’ll sell before the summer’s half over. I’ll be gone. It’s a waste of time. I don’t want to see them, they don’t want to see me, so there’s no point in starting something that was finished a year ago.”

“Come on, please!”

“No.”

“As a favor to me? I don’t want you to go without at least … hell, I don’t want you to go at all. It’ll suck around here in the wintertime without you to hang out with.”

Pete doesn’t say anything.

“Please,” I ask.

“Have you forgotten the English language? Do you know what the word ‘no’ means?”

I don’t respond.

“Look at me!” he shouts. “What does ‘no’ mean, Stucks? What does it mean?”

“‘No’ means ‘no,’” I say meekly.

We sit quietly for a while. Pete doesn’t even smoke his cigarette. He just lets it dangle between his fingers. We watch the pond. Emily was right. It isn’t raining, but it is overcast. The water is still and gray. Gray above and gray below.

“How about you come with me?” he asks. “I’m heading out tonight, catching a ride with Craig and Dean. There’s a party down in the sandpit behind Thorwall’s far cornfield. Dean’s picking up a keg.”

“I dunno.”

“You don’t have to drink. It wouldn’t hurt you, but you don’t have to.”

“How would we get home?”

“Craig. Or if we had to we could walk it, cut through the woods. It would take a while, but that might be cool too. It’s not like your parents would notice. You get home at dawn,
flop down in the bushes somewhere. They wouldn’t know shit about it.”

“Dean doesn’t like me,” I say. Dean scares me, but I don’t tell Pete that.

“Forget about Dean,” Pete says, waving his hand. Ashes fall onto his jeans, and he brushes them off. “I can handle Dean. He’s a lot harder to handle than Ronnie, that’s for damn sure, but I’ll handle him.”

“I dunno,” I say. I don’t want to go, but I want to go. I want to hang out with Pete again, but I’d rather we do it in the woods with the others, not at a drunken kegger with people screaming and falling all over each other. “I’ll think about it.”

“No you won’t,” he says. “You’ll hang out with the kids in the woods and go looking for the bogeyman.”

I stand up. “Dinner’s on the table. You coming?”

“That wouldn’t go over so well. My mother doesn’t want me over there. She doesn’t even want you stepping foot in our yard, so you better duck under the pines if you don’t want to hear her screeching.”

“Come with me. She’ll never know.”

Pete snuffs out his cigarette. “You just don’t get it, do you? Nobody wants me around! Nobody but you!” He stands up and pushes me gently back toward the pines. I don’t say anything else. I know I’ve already pressed my luck. “I don’t care about any of them. I don’t want to see them, and if you don’t stop nipping at my heels like a
puppy, I won’t want to see you either.” I step backward and stumble over their lawn mower. Pete grabs my arm as I fall, lifts me back onto my feet.

“Go home,” he says. I duck underneath the pines and head through to my house.

“What are we eating?” I ask.

The Cricket had been eating happily, and watching him act silly has cheered me up a bit. When I question what is on my plate, he pulls back his fork and eyes it suspiciously. He holds the forkful of dinner up to his ear, listening to it carefully, then cautiously placing it back on his plate as if it were explosive. Silently moving his lips, he pretends to question his glass of milk about its curious neighbor. They converse in mime, but when the milk offers no real answers he turns to his buttered bread with a broad smile and an imaginary notepad, ready to record the facts. My mother is trying not to laugh.

“It’s called American chop suey,” my father says. Upon hearing the name, the Cricket lets a karate chop fall on the table. From now on, that will be the sign for Dad’s cooking, I have no doubt.

My father can be a great cook. When he plans well, he can create gourmet meals that you never want to see end. But it’s a different story when it comes to improvisation. Whenever the fridge becomes overloaded with leftovers, my mother will ask my father to do the cooking, and the
result is always a hodgepodge of the various styles my mother has been experimenting with all week. It’s not unusual to find yourself eating fish-curry goulash, or green scrambled eggs, or the ever popular soup. If it’s soup, you never look at what your spoon brings up, ever.

Inspired by the Cricket’s goofiness, I decide to press my father. “Couldn’t Mom have cooked tonight?” I ask. My mother smiles, and Robin looks uncomfortable.

“Stucks, there is an artistry to what I do,” my father retorts. “One day, when you are grown-up and paying your own grocery bills and are no longer a burden on your mother and me, we will have to change our phone number because you will constantly be calling me for recipes just such as this.”

I take another forkful. It isn’t bad, really, whatever it is. It’s just fun to give my father the business.

“What do you think, Nana?” I ask.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says bashfully, her eyes focusing on me through a haze. “I was having my own conversation … with me.”

The Cricket is sitting next to Nana. He is eyeing her left hand. I can tell that he is about to reach out and touch the finger stub, which has fascinated him since he was a baby. He puts down his fork and reaches slowly forward.

Nana lunges at him, releasing a squeal and grabbing at him with the hand. Horrified, the Cricket leaps back, blank terror in his eyes. He hops out of his chair, then
starts giggling. Nana chuckles—no, in fact she cackles—and as the Cricket sits back down, she reaches over and rubs the top of his head with her four-fingered hand.

“Oh, Stanley,” she says. “Oh, Stanley, you do make me laugh.”

The Cricket blushes, pulls Nana’s hand from on top of his head, and looks closely at her fingers. He runs his hand over the four that are there, touches her wedding ring, and then lingers on the spot where the stub is. The finger is intact up to the first knuckle, and Nana is still able to wiggle it back and forth.

“You think I’m a witch, don’t you, Stanley?” Nana says, wiggling the stub for him. “Stanley thinks I’m a witch.” She reaches over with her right hand and rubs his head again. “And I am. I am a witch, Stanley.”