Soul Catcher (17 page)

‘Considerably less than it might seem,’ Peter said.

I said: ‘Two-hundred thirty-seven dollars, on the nose.’

Silvera nodded thoughtfully. Then he said to me, ‘Too bad about Patrick,’ and watched my face for a reaction.

I could feel my eyes watering, the dam breaking. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to run, but couldn’t move. Yet I also felt curiously safe. Without Peter there, I never would have cried in front of the fat man. Then it struck me that maybe he was testing Peter, to see if he could handle being partners with such an emotionally volatile girl.

Peter shifted toward me like a reed leaning in the wind. He said softly to Silvera, ‘We will work every afternoon
during activities and the dome will be completed by spring.’

‘Kate,’ Silvera said, ‘is that schedule okay with you? No problem with it?’

‘I’ll be here, won’t I?’

‘Give me a finishing date.’

‘The twelfth of April,’ Peter said with surprising specificity.

‘Why the twelfth?’ Silvera asked.

‘May I answer with a rhetorical question?’

Silvera waved a hand in the air, and said, ‘Get me a breakdown of cost and suppliers, and I’ll have checks for you tomorrow after classes.’

Peter’s porcelain face cracked a smile. ‘Thanks.’

The next afternoon, when Peter and I were to meet to pick up the checks, I found Junior, a Little Kid, alone in the lobby of Lower Girls. I had always liked Junior. He was eight years old and small for his age, with twiggy limbs, and a large round head covered with short, frizzy black hair. He had the curliest eyelashes, and brown skin as soft as feathers. He was just sitting there, lost in a tattered green armchair.

‘Hi, Junior!’

He didn’t even smile.

‘Have you seen Peter Prentice?’

He shrugged his tiny shoulders.

‘Mind if I wait with you?’

‘Naw.’

I sat on the arm of the chair, and he stared up at me. He was like a magician whose big, sad eyes pulled me down into the chair. I tried to squeeze in next to him. He wiggled into my lap, wrapped his little arms around my neck, and dropped his head on my shoulder.

‘What’s wrong, Junior?’

‘My mama was supposed to call me up.’

‘She didn’t call?’

He shook his head.

‘Why don’t you call her?’

‘I ain’t got no money.’

‘Call collect. That means she pays.’

His head sprang up. ‘You know how?’

‘I’ll show you.’

He hung onto me like a bur all the way to the pay phone in the hallway. When I tried to set him down, he clung. ‘Just stand here for a minute,’ I said. ‘What’s her number?’

He shook his head.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Flower Booker.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘She lives with my daddy’s friend in the Bronx.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Rico Nez.’

I found his number easily through Information. I placed a call collect from Junior, and a nasty man refused to accept charges.

‘Looks like no one’s home,’ I told him.

I took his hand and led him back to the chair.

‘I have to go find Peter,’ I said. ‘Where’s Alfonse or Bobby?’ They were his best friends.

‘They’re at basketball.’

‘Don’t you have an activity to go to?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to bake no cakes.’

‘You signed up for Home Ec?’

‘Nobody told me we be bakin’ cakes. I thought we be goin’ home.’

Ec.
How was Junior supposed to know it meant economics? The domestic arts. What a corny thing to teach Grovers! They should have taught Street Ec, or Running Away Ec, or Addiction Ec — something that would have been useful to our lives. Junior was right: baking cakes wouldn’t help.

I didn’t know how long Peter was standing in the doorway before I noticed him. He had been watching us.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘That will be very good.’

‘What?’

‘Junior will be an asset to the dome.’

Junior sprang up. ‘Me? Me?’ He balanced on the edge of the chair, watching my face, waiting for a reaction.

Peter was right: Junior’s impish spirit would be just right for our quirky dome. Not to mention the fact that we could lord it over him, since he was so much younger than us. He could run errands, bring us nails and sodas.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s go ask.’

Junior waited in the lobby while we went in to see Silvera. He was lying on the floor again. He must have felt our presence, because he immediately said, ‘The envelope’s on the table. Take it.’

‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘But can we ask you a question?’

‘Both of you together, or are you schizophrenic now?’

I rolled my eyes at Peter. He took over. ‘Mr Silvera, sir, we would like to make a special request on behalf of Junior Booker.’

Silvera grunted.

‘If Junior could assist us in building the dome, a double purpose would be accomplished. One, we would have a helper. And two, Junior would get early experience in working on a construction crew.’

‘And three,’ I threw in, ‘he might not miss his mother so much.’

Silvera didn’t like item three. Grove was supposed to be enough for anyone, you weren’t supposed to need your parents at Grove.

‘Junior Booker’s mother is a call girl,’ Silvera said, his eyes still peacefully closed.

Peter and I looked at each other. My first thought was that it wasn’t true. Junior himself had mentioned his father, and if his mother was a prostitute, then she probably wouldn’t even know who the father was. Anyway, so what? All Junior had done was get born — and have the misfortune of landing at Grove.

Finally, the man grunted, ‘Go ahead.’

When we told Junior, he jumped off the chair and went running to his room. He came back wearing a green jacket, a
red baseball cap and a huge smile. He was thrilled. And I was curious (so was Peter, I think) about his parents. I asked him what his father looked like. He said, ‘Well, my daddy has dark light skin, and kind of these nice blue eyes, and he has hair all curly just like mine but it be blond, and my mama she says he plays the blues, and he be a banker in a bank. But me, I always lived with Rico Nez. She says he’s my daddy’s friend. He be ugly.’

That was Junior’s dream, I guess. For him, the dome would provide more real family than he had ever had. And what was my dream? To forget. To capture an old dream, and to forget it.

Waiting in the science field for deliveries, I looked over and saw Gwen standing on the hill looking down at us: me and Peter and Junior. She didn’t wave or nod or shout; she just stood there like a statue, wearing her fencing outfit and carrying a sword. Gwen the warrioress. After a few minutes, she walked away.

I knew that when she found out Junior was helping us, after refusing
her
help, she’d be mad. And she was. And hurt, too. Why did I do it? After all, we’d had fun over winter vacation, reforged our friendship. I wasn’t sure why I was closing her out. But since knowing me, Peter watched Gwen, too. He had a theory. According to him, I had an impulse toward loneliness, which was why I had rejected Gwen’s offer to work on the dome. His theory was that I wanted her to work with us, but had rejected her in an effort to reinforce my feelings of loss over Patrick; that if I let her all the way into my heart, I wouldn’t feel so awful so much of the time; and if I didn’t feel awful, I would be abandoning Patrick. In other words, said Peter, I was rejecting Gwen so I could feel closer to Patrick.

All I knew was that I was drawn to the hard labor of building something. And that I liked Peter: he was my new friend. I was his only friend. There were no demands, just peaceful afternoons, and the rising structure of the dome.

The dome would be built of balsa wood and plastic triangles. The materials themselves were lightweight, but the geometric dynamic of the structure — frame and plastic — was supposed to make it strong as a whole. It was a
holistic
endeavor: structurally, in that the integrity of the whole depended upon the integrity of each part; and spiritually, in that the dome’s success depended on our individual commitments to doing it and doing it right. We did everything slowly and carefully. If the dome wasn’t precise in every way, it would collapse like a house of cards.

First, we plotted the base. Peter had worked out all the measurements long ago and stored them in his head. He used a measuring tape to determine exactly where each joint in the base structure should be, and I would place a stone in that spot. It took a whole afternoon to lay the stones, but when we were finished, we had marked out a perfect circle on the frozen ground. It was like our own mini Stonehenge. The mystery was fun. Kids would stand on the hill, watching. All they knew was that we were building a dome; they didn’t know how or why. A few of them thought I had gone crazy. I know. Gwen told me.

It took two weeks to establish a perfectly symmetrical foundation and customize the pieces of wood. Day to day, I thought more about the perfection of the dome and less about Patrick: where he was, if he was all right, when (if) he was coming back. Sawing a board at a precise angle demanded total concentration. Everything had to be right. Peter and I cut the wood and Junior made neat, organized piles in an empty classroom. Then, during the second week, a snow storm came. By then we had built the base — a web-like circle of triangles — and it rose above the smooth expanse of snow like a jagged ring on a cloud.

Early in February, there were four more storms. Each time, Junior shoveled all around the work area. It was freezing out, and the snow he accumulated off to the side didn’t melt, it just kept building into an ever-larger mound. While Peter and I were busy tapping nails into the joints of
wood, Junior started a snowman. He was supposed to be sorting nails, but he was only eight; I guess he just couldn’t resist. It was a little snowman — a snowboy about eight years old, I’d say, and just Junior’s height. He gave it nuts for eyes, a nail for a nose and two nails in a V for a mouth. The snowboy’s arms were twigs, and to keep his head warm, Junior made a sailor’s hat from a piece of newspaper.

‘Meet my brother,’ Junior said when he was finished. ‘His name’s Senior.’

But for me, he was the Reverend White. He had to be. He watched us like a sentry guarding the rebuilding of a burned-down house, overseeing an important resurrection.

It was around that time that I dreamed of Patrick’s arm. He was sleeping next to me in a bed — I don’t know where — and he was naked, lying on his side, facing me. His arm was stretched over the pillows, as if reaching for me, pale and graceful and speckled with tiny red marks. It was his heroin arm — the other woman — and it appeared beautiful to me. It was like a constellation of stars behind which lay a myth: the meaning was love, and though it was love for something other than me, it was deeply moving. Here was my husband, reaching toward me with great and passionate love, telling me with his arm that intrinsic to his love for me was a threat.

I woke up knowing that it was his love for
her
— for heroin

— that had stolen him from me. The knowledge hit like a knife in my heart. The dream twisted the knife, and all my pain came pouring out like a gush of blood. The one I had vowed to love forever was gone. Vanished into addiction.

I started bumming cigarettes from people that day. It was as if the smoke could cauterize my pain, clog me, numb me from my loneliness for him. Patrick had made a choice. When he stole from the newsstand, even though it was to come and see me, he knew what the consequences would be. He knew he would have to leave. I understood that he felt pain, and that his addiction was a restless drive that had
existed in him before he knew me. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that I had been cheated.

Working on the dome became an obsession: seeing it finished was my only hope. It was a chance to create something special in the place of emptiness.
A dream.
It was almost as if, when the dome was finished, I would live in it, and it would protect me from further loss.

By now, a thick layer of snow covered the ground, and the dome’s skeleton rose in a web of footsteps. A layer of ice preserved Senior the snowboy (my Reverend White), and he guarded the dome and us unfailingly in his frozen paper hat.

Then, one day, Senior the snowboy started to melt. A muddy moat surrounded the dome where we had worn down the snow. It was early, and I was working alone. I heard the slush of footsteps coming down the hill and assumed it was Peter or Junior.

‘Could you do me a favor, Kate?’

I turned around. Gwen’s blue hat was tugged down to her eyebrows. She smiled, but it wasn’t genuine. She was upset.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

She pulled an envelope out of her coat pocket and clumsily withdrew a folded letter.

‘Could you just read this, please?’ she said.

I unfolded it, and read.

Dear Kate,

I would like to point out to you that you’re being xxxxxxxxx unfair. Deep down you are holding a grudge against me for something I didn’t do. If I did you wrong once well everyone deserves forgiveness and I thought you had forgiven me, especially after Xmas (which was a lot of fun). It isn’t my fault if P. is gone, that is, he is gone due to his own mistakes not mine. I would like to remind you that I am true to you. Plus I need you right now. What I’m trying to say is please forgive me, really forgive me (even if I’m innocent) because I am willing to be your ultra best friend 4 ever. 4 real. Gwen

P.S. My father is coming up for Parents’ Day. I think I’ll die.

P.P.S. The dome looks good.

Gwen thrust her hands into her jacket pockets and shivered against the cold. She watched me, and waited.

Peter was right: I had fallen in love with my loneliness. My dream of Patrick had filled me with pain and desire and hopelessness, and I had resisted any bridge back to friendship.

She broke into a big smile. Her whole face glowed at me, and she winked. She was pulling a
Gwen,
making herself more irresistible than my loneliness. I smiled back at her, I couldn’t help it. And without making any conscious decision, I handed her my hammer.