B.u.g. Big Ugly Guy (9781101593523) (9 page)

11.

Golem

Working on the golem during the day was difficult. His mother kept coming in to check on him. Sometimes she knocked, sometimes she didn't, in case she might be waking him. She was unpredictable. But she always left at least a half hour between visits, so he used that brief window to begin making the golem's legs. He'd no time to pull everything out of the closet, so, kneeling down, he shoved everything but his backside in and began putting clay on top of the feet for ankles.

Measuring with a piece of string he'd found in his desk drawer, he decided the lower part of the golem's legs had to be at least double his own. Quickly forming a rough shape, he then scraped away clay till there was a hint of a shinbone. He took the leavings and packed them onto the back of the calf to form a solid muscle mass, like the picture of the Celtics basketball players he had on a poster over his bed.

Getting ready to carve some detail into the calf muscle, he was startled when his mother knocked.

“Sammy? You awake?”

Sammy hopped back into bed and shoved his dirty hands underneath the sheets.

I'm going to need to change the bed
again
today.

“Yeah, Mom.”

She came in carrying the thing Sammy had dreaded since he decided to fake an illness: a thermometer. It was a cheap electronic one, probably cost six bucks at Walgreens. And it was going to spell the end of Sammy's charade.

“Let's take your temperature,” she said, and popped it in his mouth before he could protest.

He couldn't do anything but think hot thoughts. Couldn't even surreptitiously warm the thermometer in his hands because he'd get clay all over it.

The thermometer beeped and his mother
pulled it out, looked closely, and frowned at the result.

“It's normal, Sammy.” She gave it a little shake like an old-fashioned mercury thermometer, as if that would change the result. “Ninety-eight-point-six. Couldn't be any more normal if you tried.”

Sammy shrugged. Kept his mouth shut.

“You
sure
you're not feeling well?”

“Not really.” It was the least he could say.

Sammy's mother sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed, thermometer in her left hand. Her right she placed on his cheek. She looked directly into his eyes.

“Sammy, dear. I'm not a fool. And you don't have to lie to me. Is this about Skink?”

Sammy shook his head. “No, it's—” He stopped as his mother frowned and took her hand away. “Okay, yes. It is. But I
do
want to go back to school. I just need a few days to figure things out.”

His mother's expression didn't change. “I won't send you back there to get hurt.”

“Mom, I know we can't afford private school. Not that there's any around here, anyway. And moving isn't an option.” Even to himself he sounded like an old man. A
scared
old man.

“Homeschool.” But she didn't look him in the eyes when she said it.

“Really, Mom?” Sammy watched the breath go out of her. “I don't think you want to devote the next five years of your life to
my
education.” He was about to reach out of the covers to touch her hand in comfort, but remembered the clay just time. “I'll be okay.”

“How can we know that?” She squeezed the thermometer till Sammy thought it might break.

“Because I'm no threat to them. Oh, they'll tease me, but they've done that all along. Skink scared them, so they had to do something big.”

“How big?”

“He showed them he knew martial arts and got the younger kids laughing at them.”

“Ah.” Sammy's mom nodded silently, her eyes starting to shine. “You're very brave, honey.”

I doubt that very much
.

Leaning over, Sammy's mother suddenly enveloped him in a giant embrace. Sammy hugged her back through the comforter.

“Just give me a couple of days to get my head together,” he said, “then I'll go back to school.” He felt her nod against his shoulder.

“All right,” she said, the words muffled by shoulder and pillow. She sat up and rubbed at her eyes. “All right,” she said again. “At least this way I won't have to keep coming to check up on you.”

“That'll help both of us.”

She took it to mean Sammy and herself. Or maybe Sammy and Skink.

He
meant it would help him—and the golem.

Standing, his mother ran her hands down her front as if dusting herself off. “Well, I'll call the school and tell them you're sick so we can get your homework for the next few days.”

“Joy.”

That brought a weak smile and she stepped to his door. As she left, she said, “I smell clay. Your father must be working up a storm.” Then she smiled a little bigger and left, closing Sammy's door behind her.

That first day it was all about the golem's legs. Only the knees gave Sammy a bit of trouble—he hoped the golem would walk all right on the knobby things it ended up with.

The thighs were easy, if possibly a bit large. Well, actually,
way
too large at first. They looked like giant hot dogs. He spent most of his time cutting them down, before building them up again. And shaping them. He'd tried looking at his own legs in the mirror. Very quickly he realized they were no help, being short and skinny and frankly underdeveloped.

The men on the poster had legs like tree trunks. Slim tree trunks.

“I'm not making a basketball player,” Sammy reminded himself. “More like a boxer. Or a wrestler.” He hauled his computer out of his backpack and googled wrestlers, settling on the young Arnold Schwarzenegger's legs.

When it came to shaping the spot where the legs joined, Sammy copped out and added on a clay pair of shorts. After all, the golem was not going to eat or drink, so why did he need . . . he didn't let his mind wander any further than that.

He was actually relieved when his mother knocked on the door to deliver his homework.

The next day, the midsection went quickly. Sammy had gotten not one but two bricks, after oiling the kitchen door when his parents had gone off grocery shopping together.

He scraped out a set of abs a prizewinning boxer would have been jealous of. Then he made a chest that was both broad and muscled but strangely nippleless. He just couldn't face any more embarrassment.

The rest of the day, he catnapped and did some of his homework and twice spoke to Skink, who was already home from the hospital.

“My body,” Skink said the second time, “is healing, like, inhumanly fast. Or so the doctor says. And I can go back to school in like two days.”

“Joy!” Sammy said, and then had to explain that he had stayed out of school until Skink was going back. He didn't mention the golem.

But, Sammy knew any further work on the creature would have to be done at night, and he couldn't very well work the entire night through again. Luckily, Sammy's parents decided to go to see an X-Men movie, both of them surprised when he refused to accompany them.

“I've got a big school project due Monday.”

“I don't remember getting any big project assignment for you,” his mother said.

Thinking quickly, Sammy said, “It's a long term thing. Just getting a head start.” Then he had a brilliant idea. “I'm going to need some clay for it.”

His father grinned. “Sure. How much do you need?”

“Maybe three bricks?”

“What are you making—a colossus?”

“Something like that,” he said, determined to look up the word as soon as they were gone.

Suddenly things had become dead easy. Sammy was relieved and—somehow—upset. Sneaking was one thing. All teenagers did a bit of that. But straight-out lying to his parents felt awful. Necessary—but awful.

However, as soon as they were gone, and after he looked up colossus
—any statue of gigantic size; huge and powerful—
he got back to work, no longer worrying about sneaking or lying or anything else but the golem. The colossus. The clay man of the hour.

While they were gone, the phone rang three times. Sammy let the machine pick up the first two times but then, on the third time, he happened to be going back for another brick of clay and automatically picked up the phone.

“Greenburg's residence, Sammy speaking,” he said. It was something he'd been taught early on since this was his father's business phone as well as the house phone.

“Samson, it's Reb Chaim.”

He nearly hung up. As it was, he dropped the phone with one hand and caught it—barely—with the other.

“Um, hello, Rabbi,” he said. “I've . . . I've been home sick this week.”

“Yes, your mother called to tell me. But it's something else I want to talk about.”

He knows . . .
Sammy thought.
He knows . . .

“Is there something you want to tell me, Samson?”

He almost wanted to confess everything. Then thinking about the three-quarters of a golem in his closet, he thought better of anything like a confession. It was way too late for that. “Tell you
what
, Rabbi?”

I am so going to hell,
Sammy thought, for lying to a rabbi.
Even though Jews don't actually believe in hell. At least I don't think we do.

“I meant about whether you were going to be able to study, while being so sick. And how your friend Skink is doing. Your mother told me about that, too.”

“Anything else, Rabbi?”

“Hmmmmm.” It was a sound like the noise a plague of locusts might make. “Study hard. I will see you when you get better.”

It felt more like a threat than a promise. Sammy hung up carefully. He checked the caller IDs for the two missed calls. Both of them were business stuff. Not the rabbi. He didn't know what to make of the rabbi's questions.

Are they really so innocent? Or is he just feeling out the situation.
Sammy shook his head. He had no way of knowing without asking. And
asking
was the last thing he could do.

Instead, he went into the studio to get the last brick of clay for the evening, feeling—for the first time—that he really was beginning to get sick. His stomach gurgled and his heart . . . he could feel it beating so fast, it would have made the perfect drum for the band.