Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books) Read online

  “Why was his body molderin’ in a grave?”

  “He was dead.” That was an easy one!

  “Why did he die?”

  That was a little tougher. “Uh, chicken pox?”

  M rolled his eyes, which was about all I could see of him, and resumed his hammering. “Do you know who George Washington was?”

  “Of course.”

  “George Washington Carver?”

  “Yes.”

  M stopped. “Really?”

  “Of course. He invented the peanut.” I held the hammer aloft and spun around. “And Bingo was his name-o!”

  M didn’t laugh. “OK, man, how about W. B. DuBois?”

  I stopped and peered at him in the dimness. “Uh, can you spell it?”

  “Marcus Garvey?”

  “That’s the guy you’re named after, right?”

  “One of them.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Read the book.” He slammed the hammer down. “Look, sparks!”

  As the weeks passed, M and I eventually bored of banging on nails in the basement and hanging from rafters in the attic. My house offered even less excitement. We had already squeezed the neighborhood dry of every last drop of entertainment. We started making regular Saturday trips to the library, ten blocks downtown.

  Sometimes we took detours, exploring sections of downtown. One of our favorite spots was next to the theater, which was in the middle of the block. The parking lot was in the back by the alley, but the entrance was in the front on the street. A long corridor through the building provided a shortcut. It was paved in small, white ceramic tiles, the floor undulating in gentle waves. The sides jutted in and out at sharp angles, with columns against the walls at regular intervals along the way. It was enclosed with a glass door at each end.

  The corridor provided a great setting for reenacting episodes of I Spy, the old spy show with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby. M thought it was amusing and appropriate that Cosby was the intelligent one in the show. I didn’t concur.

  We would traverse the corridor, running and ducking behind columns, shooting at imaginary villains or, sometimes, at each other, an inexplicable plot development for which the scriptwriters had not provided. Before long our territory for spying extended down the alley and out several blocks, past the back doors of cleaners, diners, barbershops, and five-and-dimes.

  Late one Saturday afternoon, as the shadows were stretching to the horizon, I was eluding M, who stalked me down the corridor. In a bold move I rushed the alley door, almost colliding with a couple on their way to see Fantastic Voyage. Their confusion delayed M, allowing me to round the corner before he could see which way I went. I had a plan. I sprinted down a dead-end alley, thinking he would never expect me to trap myself. At the end, I climbed some trash cans and dropped over a dilapidated wooden fence into a neglected area behind an auto shop.

  It was the perfect refuge, one I had discovered the week before when I was the hunter instead of the hunted. I planned to crouch along the back fence, watching for M’s approach. For cover, I had my choice of a fifty-five-gallon oil drum or a large cardboard box that had once held a washing machine. It lay on its side, old rags spilling out onto the ground. I chose the oil drum, from which I could peek through a knothole in the fence. I checked my surroundings. The asphalt faded a few feet from the shop into dry, cracked, packed dirt broken up with weeds and littered with rusted transmissions, wheels, mufflers, and other detritus. A metal door padlocked on the outside broke the brick wall of the shop, which had been painted white a long time ago. The only other access to this area was a two-foot gap between the shop and the liquor store that ran the length from the alley to the street.

  I watched for M’s shadow on the bricks of the alley, the rags in the box rustling in the wind. Then I realized there was no wind. I jerked away from the fence and looked at the rags. From the shadow of the box a raspy voice asked, “What’s yer name, boy?”

  I couldn’t have been more startled if the oil drum had started to spontaneously play “Wipe Out.” I was poised to jump and run when a face materialized among the rags and shadows. A woman’s face. Green eyes burned from sunken wells of eye sockets. A wealth of nascent wrinkles was evident on the leathery skin, skin that had seen many a day in the open sun and more than one night under the stars. Short brown hair, matted and tangled, disappeared into the tattered brown blanket draped around the woman. But what held my eye captive was the large purple-red birthmark that ran from her left eyebrow to her cheek in a meandering splotch.

  “Yer name. What’s yer name?”

  I said, as if in a trance, “Mark.”

  “Ah, the Mark. The Mark. It’s got the Mark.” An emaciated hand fluttered to her left temple and dropped down like a bird frozen and falling from a branch.

  “Well, Mark, do you have anythin’ so much as a fiver on yer?” I shook my head slowly. “I could use a bite to eat, yer know. How ’bout some change?” Her eyes burned even brighter. “I got a powerful thirst.” She looked at my pants pocket, the one with the dollar in it, as if she could see it through the fabric. Her hand twitched.

  As if on its own, my hand dug down and produced the dollar. I held it out, fluttering from my shaking hand in the stillness. Her hand shot out like a cobra and snagged the bill, eyes flaring up and returning to the burning green.

  “Thank ye, thank ye. Mighty white of ye, Mark.” A low, raspy chortle emerged from the depths of her throat. She unfolded from beneath the blanket like a moth shedding a chrysalis. A worn and dirty cotton print dress flapped a few inches above her ankles and the worn brown brogans on her feet as she shuffled to the gap and disappeared.

  I blinked and felt as if I had suddenly awakened. Had I dreamed it? I reached into my pocket. The dollar was gone. I climbed the oil drum and vaulted the fence into the alley, ready to be found by M.

  I didn’t tell anyone about the Creature, but I couldn’t erase her image from my mind. I dreamed about her Saturday night. Her face of creases and splotches haunted me during the Sunday school lesson of the woman at the well. In church I formulated a plan. When the offering plate went by, I held an empty hand low over the plate and thumped the bottom with the other thumb as it passed in front of me, my money still safe in my pocket.

  At home that afternoon I hopped the back fence in pretense of visiting M, but passed his house. Downtown I walked through the tile corridor, turned into the blind alley, climbed gingerly over the fence, and dropped quietly to the ground.

  The Creature was in the box, but she didn’t acknowledge my presence. I crept closer, alert for any movement. As I approached, I heard a steady raspy sound from beneath the bedraggled blanket. Something clinked on the ground—my foot had hit a clear flask. I kicked it over and looked at the label. Gin. I looked at her a little longer, then threaded my way through the gap to the street.

  It took me awhile, but I finally found a place I could buy a sandwich and a bottle of Coke with the offering money. I returned to the box, set the food on the ground, and sat down on a wheel in the shade of the fence. After awhile I got tired of waiting and started throwing pebbles at the box. Three minutes and twenty pebbles later, I was rewarded.

  The Creature stirred, saw the food, and looked suspiciously out of the box. The purple splotch was dark against the pale skin on the left side of her face. “It’s the Mark,” she croaked. She crawled out of the box, snatched the food, and sat on the edge of a transmission housing several yards away, her feet straddling a dirty red stream of transmission fluid.

  She positioned herself so she was facing the gap in the wall, but could see me from the corner of her right eye. I watched in silence while she devoured the sandwich like a wild animal, eating some of the paper wrapping in her haste. Once the sandwich was gone, she picked up the Coke and drank the entire bottle slowly in one long draught, looking at me obliquely with leaden green eyes like the Atlantic on a cloudy day. She closed her eyes and let out a belch that reverberated through the courtyard.

/>   In a sudden movement she hurled the bottle against the liquor shop wall. It shattered in a shower of glass and I jerked like I’d been slapped.

  “The Mark follered me. What’s yer game?”

  “Game?”

  She turned her head slightly in my direction with a jerk, eyes narrowing and darting, sometimes in my direction, sometimes around the littered courtyard, like a bird watching a cat while looking for food. “Meaty, beaty, big and bouncy.” She dropped her chin, lowering her coarse voice until it sounded like a man. “He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce.”

  I looked at her blankly.

  She raised her head, voice returning to its normal level, and peppered me with questions. “Got the drop on me? Got me bang to rights? Flushed me out, five by five?”

  “I just thought you might be hungry. At least, I remember you saying something like that.”

  The Creature grabbed the frayed hem of her cotton print dress and wrapped it tightly around her calves, bunching it up in her hand. Brown legs covered with black hair extended to the scarred brogans below.

  “The Mark was hungry.” She rocked forward and backward on the transmission. “In hunger and thirst,” she rasped in a throaty whisper, “in nakedness and dire poverty, ye will be a restless wanderer on the earth. But the Mark will foller ye.” She twisted the cloth in her hand and turned her head slowly toward me.

  “I was also powerful thirsty.” Her eyes followed mine to the empty gin bottle. “Fancy a drink?” I shook my head. “Got another dollar on yer?” I shook my head again. “Didn’t reckon yer did.” She turned her head back and rested her chin on her knees, keeping watch on me from the corner of her eye. We sat in silence for awhile.

  I finally got the courage to speak. “What’s your name?”

  The Creature didn’t move, or even blink, but I heard a small growl that seemed to echo from the walls enclosing us. It could have only come from her, since we were completely alone.

  “Lilith,” she hissed.

  “Thilly rabbit,” she lisped in falsetto. She jerked upright. “Thufferin’ thuckotash, the Mark follered me!” She looked at me suspiciously. “Yer tryin’ to make me?”

  “Make you what?”

  “Stand and deliver,” she boomed, jumping up and stomping in the red mud at her feet. “The Mark follered me. Which one are ye? Senoy? Where are yer friends?” She reached into the neckline of her dress and pulled out a chain with some kind of charm or pendant hanging from it. It looked like a cross, but the top was a loop. “Sansenoy, Semangelof, show yerselves!” Holding the charm toward the sky, she turned slowly around, looking at the roofs surrounding us. “Yer can’t touch the child. I have the Mark!”

  I looked around apprehensively. Who was she talking to?

  The Creature completed her circle, scowling at the sky. Then she dropped the chain back into her dress, shuffled to the cardboard box, and crawled in, wrapping the blanket around her and facing out so that I couldn’t see the purple splotch on her face. “Who are ye?” she whispered. “What do yer want?”

  “You know my name but I don’t know yours.”

  “Naamah,” she said, hoarsely. “Just call me Naamah.”

  “Naamah? What kind of name is that?”

  “The kind I hand out fer free. I make yer a present of everythin’ I said today.” She was silent for a few seconds. “What do yer want?”

  “I just wanted to find out about you.” I ignored the babble. “After all, I did give you a dollar. And some food,” I added, in an attempt to shame her into answering my questions.

  “And here I thought ye was doin’ yer Christian duty.”

  “Maybe I was. I can still get something for it, can’t I?”

  “Oh, no. Yer supposed to do it expectin’ nothin’ in return.” She cleared her throat, which induced a coughing fit that concluded in her spitting phlegm four feet in front of the box. In a deep, throaty voice she intoned, “Cast yer bread on the waters. Don’t let yer left hand know what yer right hand is about. Ye ask and receive not because yer ask amiss, fer yer own selfish lusts.”

  After this last utterance, she arranged the blanket low on her shoulders like a party shawl and tossed a suggestive leer my way. Her green eyes sparkled from beneath the shadow of her brow. I saw the ghost of a younger woman—attractive, carefree, a hint of playful innocence.

  Then she turned her face full toward me, and I caught sight of the purple splotch. The ghost was exorcised. Her eyes returned to the dull, leaden green I had seen earlier, and she glowered at me.

  “What do yer want, boy?” she demanded in a low, threatening growl.

  I glanced around nervously and looked back at her without a word. She turned, crawled into the recesses of the box, and pulled the blanket over her head. I waited for awhile, staring at her brogans, then got up quietly, circumnavigated the box, and squeezed through the gap toward home.

  CHAPTER FOUR The next Saturday M and I made our library trip as usual. I let M use my twenty-inch Spyder bike with the chopper handlebars and tiger-skin banana seat; I “borrowed” Heidi’s bike. (I would not have normally agreed to be seen in public on a girl’s bike, but it had a large basket convenient for transporting the large number of books we always checked out.)

  I was quiet as we rode along, which didn’t bother M. He chattered, oblivious to my silence. My thoughts were on the Creature and how she was faring. I wanted to check on her, but I didn’t know how to ditch M. As we neared the theater, I made a snap decision, turning down the alley instead of taking the street to the library. It took M awhile to realize I wasn’t with him. He stopped in midsentence. “Hey, man, where you goin’?”

  “This way,” I hollered over my shoulder. He caught up with me at the end of the blind alley.

  “Hey, what . . . ,” he started, but I held up my hand for silence.

  “Wait here,” I whispered, “I want to check on something.” I climbed the trash can by the fence.

  “Where are you going?” he asked in a stage whisper.

  I jumped over the fence. The courtyard was unchanged. I padded silently to the cardboard box, but the Creature wasn’t there. I stood looking into the box’s shadows when M dropped over the fence.

  He looked around nervously. “What are you doin’?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper. “Are you crazy?”

  I could see something in the back recesses of the box, beyond the tattered blanket, and was intrigued by the thought of what the Creature would stash away. I hoped it might give me a clue to who she was and why she lived as she did. I looked around quickly and dropped down, reaching into the box. A miasma of sweat, alcohol, and vomit enveloped my head and I rolled back out, gasping for fresh air.

  M said, “Hey,” but I took a deep breath and plunged back in, so I didn’t hear the rest. My hand reached back and closed on the object. It was a small Bible, bound in limp, black leather with the name Pauline Jordan barely legible in flaking, gold gilt letters. A screeching wail and a startled shout caused me to drop the Bible, and I scuttled backward like a deranged crab.

  M was backing toward the fence, his eyes large and fixed on something behind me. I spun around. The Creature shuffled toward me, a large cabbage nestled in the crook of her arm. The other arm stretched out, forefinger extended toward me like an accusation, trembling.

  “The man who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber,” she screeched, spittle in the corners of her mouth. Then she saw my face. “The Mark,” she breathed. “The Mark follered me.”

  Her gaze drifted from me to M. “Ham,” she said, eyes burning a deep green. “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” She jumped a menacing step in his direction, and he disappeared over the fence without a word.

  The Creature turned to me. “Those who hate me without reason outnumber the hairs of my head,” she said with deep venom and threw the cabbage at me. I dodged it and followed M over the fence. It took me a block to catch u
p with him. He didn’t stop until we were on the steps of the library.

  “What was that?” he demanded between gasps for air.

  “I think it was Pauline.” I told him the story of my previous visits.

  He shook his head. “Don’t mess with her, man. She’s crazy.”

  Once inside the library, M insisted I get something by “my namesake,” so I picked up a copy of Tom Sawyer to go with Treasure Island. M got Homer Price and The Underground Railroad. We got on the bikes and headed back. I suggested a detour by the church to watch Dad work on the furnace, a recalcitrant coal-burning monstrosity in need of occasional rehabilitation. We were halfway down the hill to the church, zipping along at a good pace, when my shoelace got hung in the chain. I couldn’t pedal forward because the lace was wrapping around the center shaft and binding up. I couldn’t pedal backward because the bike had coaster brakes. I had finally figured out that I had to hang my foot out to the side and turn the gears to push the lace through when I heard a yell.

  While I had been preoccupied with the physics of shoelace-from-gear removal, I had traveled the half block to the corner, gaining speed all the while. A flash of tiger skin, black skin, and large white eyes passed under me as I mowed M down and lurched into the street—just in time, as luck would have it, to bounce off the side of a passing mail truck turning right. The rear bumper of the truck snagged the front tire of Heidi’s bike and dragged me back up the half block to the point where my troubles had begun before the driver realized he had a bike attached to him like a lamprey on a shark. He screeched to a halt, jumped out, and ran back to where I sat, dazed. I was still sitting astride the bike, which leaned toward the front of the truck, held up at a forty-five-degree angle by the bumper. I stared at him, my attention riveted to a patch on his shirt that said, “Dotson.”

  “What’s all this, then?” he demanded.

  I was roused from my stupor and leaped backward from the bike. “Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no!” I shouted.