The Trap Page 10
“Mr. McTavish,” I said. “Can you hear me, sir?”
He didn’t respond. He just sat there. The flames leaping from him were the only thing about him that moved, sending up the rainbow of snowflakes. Maybe he could see me right now, but couldn’t respond. It seemed likely, since he had no training on how to wake up out of it like I did. Then I saw something I should have noticed before—what McTavish was wearing. He was in a black suit with a white carnation in the buttonhole. It looked familiar, and I remembered seeing him dressed like this at Alan’s, just after he’d been to Mr. Brody’s funeral.
McTavish shifted, like someone moving in a dream. He stuck out one leg, and there it was—the trap that gripped his ankle—a white, sawtoothed jaw. He’d walked into this in the same way I had.
“Mr. McTavish,” I said. “Rock yourself with your eyes. Rock your eyes left and right.”
A sound came from farther back, in the woods, back where the headstones gave way to the long black trunks of trees. I saw the familiar flare of firelight. Someone was coming, and the snowflakes that coasted through the branches weren’t multicolored—they were white.
I tried to hide, scrambling backwards into the moon shadow of a grave marker, but hiding is more or less impossible when there are rainbows coming out of your head.
The plume of white wound through the trees, closing in, and finally emerged into the graveyard.
It was Carl.
He was wearing the same blue jeans and white T-shirt he had on when I last saw him. He spotted me and started to head my way, but stopped. He looked left and right, and put one hand over his brow to shield out the starlight. I wondered what he was looking for.
The white flakes coming from him disturbed me. I wondered what he’d done to himself to make that happen, to get all white instead of the colors everyone else seemed to have. I didn’t know what it meant, but I remembered that when I’d last seen him he’d bragged about it. That cocky kid, though, wasn’t the one who came toward me now. He glanced around fearfully, ducking and dodging as if each step might bring down a blow.
When he reached me, he crouched. His eyes were ragged, and his subtle breath shivered in his lungs. “Henry,” he whispered, “you gotta help me.”
“Carl, what is happening out here?” I said.
He glanced behind, nervously, at no one I could see. “I don’t know where I am,” he said.
“We’re in Longbelly Graveyard.”
“No, not that,” he said. “Help me, Henry. Help find me.” He kind of glared at me as he spoke. It was weird, because he seemed to not care at all that I might need some help too. That I was a prisoner out here, with a jaw trap around my leg.
Again, Carl seemed to think he heard something. He turned toward Mr. Brody’s grave, eyes piercing the darkness.
“What is it?” I said.
“They’re both out here,” he replied. “I don’t know where. I don’t know . . . I don’t know what they want.”
“Who, Carl?” I said.
“Abe,” said Carl, “and the ghost—the violinist.”
I DIDN’T WAKE UP in a great mood when my alarm went off. I got dressed, went down to the kitchen, and ate breakfast with Helen, who was already at the table. Mom and Dad were home, but asleep, and Helen and I got out on our bikes fast so we could discuss what had happened to each of us during the night.
Outside it was cool, and the sky was just turning from dark to light blue. As we pulled away from the house, tires crunching gravel, I wanted to tell Helen that I was now ready to be rescued. But before I could, she said, “Henry, I saw Dad crying.”
“What?” I said. “When?”
“Last night when I went downstairs,” she said. “Mom and Dad were both home. Mom was in bed, but I heard Dad in the living room, and I went in there, you know, invisibly. He was sitting on the couch. The newspaper was open, but he wasn’t reading it. He was looking at where the TV used to be, and . . . and crying.”
I tried to imagine this. I’d never, in all my life, seen Dad cry. He was not a crier. He’d been in war, for one thing. I mean, what is there to cry about if you’ve already been to war? Why would you cry over a lost TV?
We kept pedaling up the road through the wisps of early fog. I was glad it was so nice out, because it kept me from getting even more scared. Things can only be so bad when you and your sister are riding your bikes at sunrise, cool, sweet-smelling air on your face and red-winged blackbirds chatting on the telephone lines.
“Something else,” said Helen as we crested a rise. After what she’d already said, I could hardly believe there’d be more.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Alan was kind of dressed up last night. Do you think he was trying to impress me, Henry? Do you think he’s going to ask me to the dance?”
I didn’t know about that, but I did learn from Helen what the three of them had done that night in their subtle forms—visited a bunch of Carl’s hangouts around town, to see if maybe he was ghosting around there. They went to Petersen’s Drugstore and Anderssen’s Garage, and even out on Stimson Field, a baseball diamond carved into the corn rows on Roy Stimson’s land. But no luck. It was eerie. One minute Carl was giving me a black eye, and the next minute, he vanished. I hoped I was not going to be the next one to disappear.
There was a TV set in homeroom, which was strange. I’d never seen a TV at school before, and for a second I thought maybe it was ours—that Dad had sold it to the district. But it wasn’t.
A couple of facility people worked to get it all set up against a wall, while McTavish watched them. It was a big set, and they had to lift it off a utility cart.
Helen and I joined Nicki and Alan. “I’ve never seen a TV in a class,” said Helen to Alan. She batted her eyes at him. That was something else I’d never seen before.
McTavish was looking a little tired. I wondered if having his subtle self trapped in Longbelly Graveyard might be troubling his sleep. Because it was sure troubling mine.
The bell rang, and the facilities people left. McTavish stood, and the class quieted.
“Everyone, you may have noticed the TV in our classroom,” he said, joking, since we’d all seen it. “The civil rights march is taking place in Washington today. I know your own families may feel one way or the other, but it’s an important piece of American history, and I want us to see it.”
McTavish walked over to the set and turned it on. The dot appeared in the middle, grew brighter, and then flared into the biggest gathering I’d ever seen. It was an ocean of people, a whole landscape of them standing in the mall by the Washington Monument—black people and white people.
Things were already under way, because it was an hour later in Washington. I recognized the man who was speaking. He was a church leader from Alabama, Martin Luther King, Jr. I’d seen his picture in the paper. He had one of those voices that was like listening to music. It hypnotized you into paying attention. Even though I didn’t know all the words he used, I understood his speech. He said that everyone, all people, have a shared destiny. And for me, what I saw on the screen was an example of that idea, because it was such a huge crowd, all connected by a shared belief.
I glanced at my friends at our little table. I wondered if we were included, in a way, out here in Iowa—part of the destiny Mr. King was talking about. I thought about Carl, lost in the forest somewhere. I thought about Mrs. Brody in her big house, who’d come here because she was fleeing the Nazis before I was born. I thought about my dad returning home from war and losing his job, and about Nicki’s great-grandfather. I thought about Alan’s dad, in his rundown trailer with his bad back, worrying about his missing son and watching baseball on TV.
And I felt sure that Mr. King would include all of this, if he knew about it. That the things he was talking about, in Georgia and Alabama and Tennessee, were part of things here in Farro too. He was saying, I thought, that everyone in the world deserves a chance at life. And deserves help, if they are in need.
AFTER SCHOOL, THE FOUR OF US met at our bikes. As we pedaled down the road, Alan started to turn left where he’d normally turn right. “See you guys,” he said.
“Where’re you going, Alan?” I asked.
“Didn’t I tell you?” he said. “I got a job, part-time, at Johnson High. Mr. McTavish arranged it with Coach Wilson. I’m going to work in the athletics cage.”
“What’s the athletics cage?” said Nicki.
As we talked, we circled in the empty intersection.
“The equipment locker,” said Alan. “Checking out bats and balls and stuff, and bringing them back in after practice.”
“That sounds . . . boring,” said Helen.
“It’s not so bad,” said Alan. “And I’ll get to work with Coach Wilson.”
“The high school coach,” I said.
“Yeah, you know, since I’ll probably play for them,” said Alan. It was true, and there was no need for him to pretend humility. He’d be on the varsity team one day—a great player, like his brother, and like his dad had been. “Well, I should go,” he said, heading off. “Don’t worry, Henry, we’ll be there for you tonight.” He pedaled away, his broken spokes clicking.
“And we’ll be there for Carl, too,” I called after him.
As Helen, Nicki, and I continued along, I said, “Helen, I wonder if we should get jobs.”
“Jobs?”
“To help Mom and Dad,” I said. “Get the TV back. Have you ever thought of having a job, Nicki?” I asked.
“Mom and Dad say school’s my job,” said Nicki. “That’s why I’m doing the Advanced Humanities program. They want me to go to college. But Henry, what are you saying—about losing your TV?”
We told her.
When we got home, Mom and Dad were gone. In their place was a note saying that we (meaning I) should make dinner. I was happy enough to cook. Even though I was mad at them, knowing that things were hard made me want to help.
As afternoon wore into evening, Helen and I sat in the living room and talked over how I should get rescued.
“You said you can touch the chain and the trap, right?” said Helen.
“Yeah, but I can’t break it,” I replied.
“Well, if the four of us try together, maybe we can pry it open. I mean, that’s a lot more leverage.”
“If there is such a thing as leverage in the subtle world,” I said. “I’m at least glad that we know where I am.” I paused. “You know what?” I said. “I’m surprised I didn’t think of this before. When I saw Carl last night, he said, ‘Help find me.’ Helen, I think he’s looking for his body. I mean, his physical body. He’s lost out there. He doesn’t know where his other half is.”
“We looked all over for him last night,” said Helen. “Maybe Abe took him away somewhere.”
I shivered, though the living room was blazing hot.
AS I RECITED the Fibonacci sequence to myself in bed that night, my mind wandered. I was worried about a lot of stuff, which made it hard to drift off, but strangely the thing that stood out most of all was . . . the color white.
If someone had asked me, a few weeks ago, “What’s the first thing you think of when I say the word white?” I’d have said snow. And I’d have thought about Christmas and presents and snowball fights and days off from school.
But this impression was changing. Now if someone asked me that same question, I wouldn’t think of marshmallows and snowmen. I’d think of the white trap around my ankle. And of the deathly white plume flowing from Carl’s head.
I remembered the beginning of the first Airman Crusader story, how Airman Crusader was wearing a white hat. White is a weird color. In some ways, it seems like no color at all. It seems like emptiness.
Slowly, I drifted off. The numbers fuzzed in my head, then continued up along their endless ladder. Now, though, instead of leading me toward a pleasant adventure, they led to a graveyard.
In the distance, I heard the thin creak of branches. I opened my eyes and saw, overhead, the stars shining in a clear sky. I wasn’t paralyzed—I guess because I was permanently unzipped from my body now.
I sat up, and saw the hulking shoulders of gravestones all around.
The white teeth of the subtle trap were sunk as firmly as ever into my ankle, the chain still anchored in the ground. Mr. McTavish slumped nearby, cross-legged, eyes open. Maybe he was staring off into whatever dreams his physical body was having—I had no idea. His head was bright with flames, pulsing out a rainbow of subtle snowflakes.
Mine was too. I was a regular bonfire calling to anyone who had any interest in me.
Which someone did.
“Hello there, young man,” said a voice, thick with a foreign accent.
I whirled around and backed up to the limit of the chain as a figure emerged from the shadows of a tall grave marker. It was a man dressed in a fine black suit. He was old, like a grandfather, with a graying mustache that turned upward at the ends. His white shirt collar was high, and a black tie came down from it, and disappeared under a vest. The flames on his head were full and bright, sending up countless colors. In fact, there were more colors than the usual variety. Where I had maybe seven different ones, he had a whole spectrum, with no clear boundary between one shade and another. It was beautiful to behold.
In one hand, he held a violin case.
He watched me curiously, maybe waiting for me to speak. When I didn’t, he said, “You’re Henry, yes? I believe you know my wife, Maria. My name is Joseph. I’m sorry it has taken me so long.” He glanced around cautiously as he approached. “I find that I tire easily, now that I’m dead.”
“But h-how . . .” I stammered. That was all I could manage. Seeing a ghost walking around in the graveyard where he was buried didn’t put me in a very eloquent frame of mind.
“I’m sure you have questions,” said Mr. Brody, “but I must ask mine first. Do you know the name Abe Møller?” As he spoke, he put his violin case flat on the ground and knelt next to it.
“I do,” I said.
“Have you seen him?” Mr. Brody asked. “Anytime in the past few days? Either physically or subtly?”
“Carl, my friend’s older brother—he was doing something with him out here in the woods,” I said. “And,” I added, “I have some of his books.”
“His science fiction?” said Mr. Brody. I nodded, and he said, “Did you read them?”
“A couple,” I said.
Mr. Brody sat down, assuming a sort of conversational posture, as if we were two farmers chatting by the edge of a field. “What did you think? Did you like them? Were they exciting?”
“Pretty exciting,” I admitted.
“I wrote books also, with my wife,” said Mr. Brody, “but they are not exciting. I’ve been told they’re boring. That’s fine with me. But you enjoyed Abraham’s books?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I said. “I think Airman Crusader wasn’t such a good guy.”
Mr. Brody nodded. “What has been happening out here in these woods, Henry?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I saw Carl last night. He’s scared. I think he’s lost his body,” I said.
Mr. Brody’s good humor evaporated. Very low, he murmured, “It’s as I feared.”
“What is?” I said.
“There are not many ways to lose your body, Henry,” he replied. Just then, across the clearing, McTavish moved in his sleep. Mr. Brody glanced at him. “He wandered in, like you,” he observed, “but he has not trained himself to be aware, as you have. Did you read my book on the subject, or learn elsewhere?”
“I read your book,” I said.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked, gesturing to the white jaws around my leg.
“It’s only here, right?” I said. “It isn’t in the real world.”
“The real world,” Mr. Brody echoed. The term seemed to amuse him. “Did you know, Henry—some people think that the whole universe began in an explosion.”
“The Big Bang,” I said.
“Mr. Brody,” I said, “Carl’s dead, isn’t he? He’s . . . a ghost, like you.”
“We should not speculate on more than we know,” said Mr. Brody. He reached for his violin case and clicked the latches. He opened the case and removed the violin, golden amber in the moonlight, and placed it on the ground. “Henry,” he said, “I’d like to help you and your sleeping friend over there. I have with me a key—a subtle key for unlocking a subtle trap. But it will only work once, you understand.”
“Help McTavish then,” I said, the words sticking in my throat. “He doesn’t know what’s happening.”
“Since you say so, I’ll do it.” Mr. Brody reached into the case and retrieved a small object, which he held up so I could see it. It was shaped like a house key, but was colored shining black. “I’m afraid you must remain here, Henry.” He paused. “You like to read,” he said, half to himself, and then a little louder—“Do you like to write? Your own adventure stories?”
“Er, I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never done it.”
“Why not?” asked Mr. Brody.
“I don’t know,” I said. “No one’s ever suggested it.”
“Well, let me be the first to do so,” said Mr. Brody. “The world can use good stories. Especially from critics of Airman Crusader.” He reached once more into his violin case, and this time produced a small box. I’m not sure how the box fit in there with the violin, but it did. The box looked like leather. It had a metal clasp on the lid, which was shut. Mr. Brody handed it to me. “Put this on your belt,” he said.