Wild Things Read online

  I took down a few of the treasures from the shelves and sat on the bed to study them: a big turtle shell, a coppery striped snakeskin, a perfect arrowhead, and a tiny bird’s nest no bigger than a plum half with the pit gone. Underneath the quilts, at the head of the bed, I felt something four-cornered and hard. I pulled back the covers and found an old cigar box. I lifted the lid. On top was a worn black-and-white photograph of a homely-looking woman. She seemed surprised by the camera. Her hair was tied up in bun, with wispy strands escaping every which way. Her dark eyes seemed sad. On the back, a child’s hand had scrawled one word: Mama.

  I lifted her picture to see what lay underneath. A miniature wooden menagerie stared up at me. Half a dozen small animals, carved in wood, were nestled in a bed of dry leaves. A squirrel no bigger than my thumb stood up on its hind legs with a perfect miniature acorn in its paws. A field mouse nibbled a single kernel of corn with tiny teeth. A mama possum nursed her three babies. A raccoon sat on its back legs and washed its bandit face with its paws. An otter floated happily on its back in a pool of water. And the last was a sleeping doe exactly like the white deer. Each one was the spitting image of the living animal, down to the smallest ear, tooth, or claw. Each was satiny smooth and polished to a soft shine.

  I marveled at each one and then set them carefully in the box just like I’d found them. I shut the lid and put the box back under the quilt. Surely no one would have left such treasures behind unless they had to. Not unless something sudden or terrible had happened.

  I felt uneasy then. The light was fading fast outside, the sun going down. Once it got dark, I might not find my way back.

  Before I left, I made sure everything was the way I’d found it. I knew I’d be back soon.

  In years past, he’d sensed bad weather before it came: rain in the heft of the air, ice and snow in the steely grayness of the light. Not this time.

  This year it snowed impossibly early, in flurries at first, then thickly in large, wet flakes. The wind cut easily through his coat and chilled his old bones. His head, his ears, his eyes, his whole aching body told him that winter had come, and that this winter might be his last.

  He found his bowls full and waiting for him in the crate at the edge of the man’s front yard. He ate gratefully. The trucks were gone for now, the house dark and quiet. He curled up in the crawlspace, next to the furnace, to get some sleep.

  In the morning, he stared out the crawlspace opening at the white world. A foot of snow had swept in as he slept, blanketed his bowls, buried his crate, drifted to cover the crawlspace opening except for a band of daylight at the top. So what? It was warm near the furnace. He had eaten the night before. Water was everywhere. So it was frozen. It would melt.

  The snow surprised the girl, too. He heard her shriek overhead in wonder and race outside, heard the door slam behind her. She shouted in delight. No school! No school! Uncle Henry! Come see!

  The cat left his place by the furnace, peered through a crack high in the foundation.

  The man stormed sleepily after her. Put some clothes on! Shoes at least! For God’s sake, are you crazy?

  Oh yes! Oh yes yes yes! she cried, throwing armfuls of powder in the air. What will the crazy girl do first? Throw snowballs? Kerpow!

  Hey! the man shouted as one hit him. Hey now! But she didn’t stop, and they erupted into a squealing, shouting duet, a snowy commotion of man and girl.

  The cat watched the girl go wild and hurl snowballs at the man, his arms crossed in front of his face. Zing! Splat! she taunted as snowballs flew and landed, sailed and missed.

  The man rushed her then, lunged, caught her around the waist, scooped her up in his arms, and swept her onto the porch.

  Put me down! she cried. No fair!

  She kicked and screamed an empty kind of scream, like when the cat’s stomach was full and he toyed with his food. The girl could easily have kicked harder, bit or scratched the man if she wanted to, wriggled free, and the man held her loosely, his anger a sham. Both were red, wet, shivering, bickering without meaning it. The man whisked her inside because she let him, because she wanted him to.

  What would that be like?

  7

  Snow! In October! The second I saw it I raced outside in my bathrobe, with killjoy Henry hard behind me, calling me crazy. I got even, though. I hurled snowballs at him till he wore snow from head to toe, before he finally bulled his way to me, picked me up, and hauled me back inside.

  He brushed off his snow coat and frowned at me, shaking his head. “Hot shower, warm clothes,” he said, pointing up the stairs.

  By the time I came back down, he’d made hot chocolate, lit a fire in the study fireplace, and moved two easy chairs in front of the hearth with the ottoman between them. He was settled in the far chair, sipping his cocoa. His face was still splotchy from the cold and he was rubbing his bare head, which he did absentmindedly when he was thinking. He crossed his long legs on the ottoman and wriggled his bare toes.

  I sat in the other chair, cupped my hands around the steaming mug, and stretched out my own legs beside his. His feet were just like mine, only bigger, the toes long, the second toes longer than the others and rounded at the top. “We have the same feet,” I said, turning mine in the warmth. “Only mine are small.”

  He nodded like he already knew. “One of many things we have in common.”

  I looked at him. “Oh, yeah? What else?”

  I waited while he considered. I was no end pleased I wouldn’t be sitting in school today with Hargrove Peters staring a hole in the back of my head. My mind wandered to the cabin in the woods, and I wished I could go see it in the snow. Then I heard a faint mew under the house. I closed my eyes to listen and heard it again. The cat was safe and close by and sleeping somewhere warm.

  “We’re impulsive,” Henry said finally.

  “What?” I snapped, my happy thoughts interrupted.

  Henry turned back to the fire. “And short-tempered.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said irritably.

  “Nothing.”

  “I just heard the cat,” I said in a nicer voice. “He’s under the house.”

  He turned back to me. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  You wouldn’t, I thought, but I didn’t say it. “What else?”

  “Else?”

  “You said we had lots in common.”

  He lifted his eyebrows and looked at me over his glasses. “We’re moody.”

  “Who!”

  “Both of us.”

  “Speak for yourself!” I snapped again. “I just think deep. That’s different.”

  “If you say so,” Henry said.

  “Mama was moody,” I said, stung. It hurt being called something she was. Like being called crazy. Again.

  Henry nodded. “My mother was that way too.”

  “You mean crazy?” I blurted before I thought.

  “I’m sorry I said that, Zo’,” Henry said gently. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  He leaned forward, set his mug down on the hearth, and stretched to take a leather-bound album from the bookcase. He wiped the dust off the cover with his forearm. The spine crackled as he opened it. He set it on the chair arms between us. Yellowed black-and-white photographs were glued to the pages or stuck loose in between. In one, a stringy, sour-faced man stood impatiently in front of Henry’s house. He looked like he wanted to strangle the photographer.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, pointing.

  “That is the sole surviving photograph of Edward Augustus Royster, my father, your grandfather.”

  “He doesn’t look happy.”

  “Happiness wasn’t something he valued or sought.”

  “What did he prize?”

  “Hard work. Discipline. Facts he could prove. He analyzed soil samples for the county.”

  He pointed to another picture, one of a frail, needy-looking woman. She was clutching the collar of her housedress to her throat and staring out as though something scar
y was about to happen.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “My mother.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Like your mother in her own way.”

  I chose my words carefully. “Sick in her mind?”

  “Yes.”

  “What else was she like?”

  He pondered the question. “I really don’t have the first idea what she was like under all that illness.”

  I studied Henry for signs that he might be making this up, but his expression was matter-of-fact. I knew exactly what he meant. I’d known Mama’s sickness, but I didn’t know her. I knew her up times when she’d go out and buy things we couldn’t afford or get all made up and go out to bars to meet men. I knew her down times when she barely talked and shut herself in her room for days or even weeks. Her drugged times when she was woozy and confused. And the times she was trying to quit, when she’d be sickly sweet one minute, mean and spiteful the next. From one hour to another, I never knew what kind of mood she’d be in. I’d learned early to keep to myself, stay clear. My happiest times had been when Mama was in the hospital.

  “Did you love your mama?” I asked Henry.

  He thought for a long minute. “If I did, I don’t remember.”

  “I don’t remember either,” I said, feeling uneasy. “I felt for Mama in my way. When I was real little, I thought she couldn’t help being sick. But as I got older I saw she could help it some of the time. She’d flat ignore the doctors and do as she liked. They’d say, ‘Take your medicine every day, and don’t take too much or drink alcohol.’ But she heard and did what she wanted to, over and over again.

  “She kept bringing home one man after another, even though they all left once they figured her out. She never could keep a job, because when she didn’t feel like working she’d find a reason not to show up. We were always owing money and moving because of it. When we had a phone, it rang all day with people trying to collect. She’d say, ‘Baby, I’m doing the best I can,’ like I didn’t have eyes in my head, like I couldn’t see how she did exactly as she pleased, the heck with everybody else.”

  I suddenly felt like I’d said more than I should. But Henry was just listening and nodding, like we were having any old conversation, like he knew.

  “But I don’t remember loving Mama,” I said. “I worry about that sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  “You know how people are.”

  “What people?”

  Everybody, Hargrove, you, I thought, but didn’t say. “You know, like that lady in the supermarket? The nosy one? People who like to say what you are, when they don’t even know you, and how you ought to be and feel.”

  Henry scowled. “I don’t give a flying flip what Lucinda Wilson thinks, and neither should you. You’re smarter than that. Another thing we share.”

  “But you—”

  “Wanted to get away from her as fast as possible.”

  I stared at him, open-mouthed. So that’s why he’d told me to zip it. “What happened to your mama?” I asked.

  “Her heart gave out, like your friend Mrs. King’s.”

  He remembered. “When you were a kid?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Later, when I was grown and as far away from here as I could get. I left home feeling exactly the way you described.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded.

  “You were angry?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, like any sane person would be crazy not to be.

  “Do you still feel like that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Is that why you curse so much?”

  He laughed a little. “Metal is a cursed medium.”

  We both turned back to the fire then and sat staring at the flames and watching the snowfall while we finished our cocoa. I was turning over in my mind all we’d said about our crazy mamas when suddenly Henry broke the spell, tossed the picture album down with a loud slap, and stood up.

  “I think I’ll go out to the studio for a while,” he said, and just as I was thinking he’d had enough of me, he added, “Want to come?”

  Henry rolled aside the two-story sliding doors to his workshop, and I walked into a space as big as a warehouse. A wonderful warehouse.

  While Henry lit his heaters, I wandered around. Everywhere I looked I saw metal, metal of every size, shape, and kind. Shiny and rusty metal, solid and hollow metal, and metal in chunks, lengths, and sheets. Metal shafts, pipes, and rods; metal gears and cogs; metal circles, triangles, rectangles, spirals, and squares. Metal was leaned, heaped, and hung along every wall. It sagged every shelf, and cluttered every bench, table, and chair. It spanned the steel ribs of the ceiling, dangled from overhead chains. Scraps of it littered the concrete floor like rusty confetti.

  Henry wasn’t tidy. Hammers, screwdrivers, mallets, chisels, clamps, and files lay scattered where their usefulness had ended. Orange, yellow, and black electric cords stretched and coiled across the ceiling and floor, carrying power to Henry’s welders, grinders, saws, work lights, and drills. There were ladders, short, medium, and tall, big fans for ventilation, and motorized hooks for hoisting the heaviest pieces and moving them through the air.

  I knew something about machines and tools from waiting for Harlan to quit work at the gas station, and from hanging around the piddling worktables Mama’s friends had set up when they moved in. But this was no two-bit service bay or basement hobby shop; this was an honest-to-God workshop, where Henry worked from morning till night.

  A large, unfinished piece that looked like an armored elephant filled one corner of the studio. It wore a coppery turban that whirled in the slightest wind.

  “Is that what you’re working on?” I asked him.

  “One of the things,” he said.

  “Where’d you get all the metal?”

  “Scrapyards, mostly. Places that sell all kinds of used metal, acres and acres of it. I take my truck and trailer and see what interests me. A lot of it doesn’t look like much when I first bring it back. See these?” He pointed to a stack of double-decker metal rounds about as big around as dinner plates. “These are old disc brakes.”

  “Car brakes?”

  “Yep. They make nice bases for sculptures. And these,” he said, picking up two smaller rounds with metal teeth around the outside, “these are sprockets, and this”—he took up a rusty four-pronged thing—“what would you say this was?”

  “A pitchfork?”

  “Exactly so,” he said, pleased. He carefully picked up a long sharp-edged rectangle with a hole dead center. “And this?”

  I studied it. “Give me a hint.”

  “Your mother’s friend Charlie would know this,” he said.

  “A lawnmower blade!” I said. “I saw him sharpen one of those once. Using …” I looked around for the tool I wanted, and spied the grinding wheels on top of a red stand. “That!”

  “A grinder. You’ve been paying attention,” he said.

  Henry didn’t talk down to me the way Mama’s friends sometimes had. He showed me the differences between the metals: reddish copper, blackish cast iron (“Cursed brittle,” he said), silvery aluminum, dull carbon steel, and its shinier stainless-steel cousin. He explained that he joined metal by welding, and that the other tools in his shop were used to cut, shape, finish, or move the welded work.

  He chose a length of silver metal about twenty feet long and maybe three inches wide from a stack leaning against the wall.

  “Watch,” he said. “See how this is square on the outside and hollow on the inside?” He slipped on a pair of work gloves. “I’m going to put it through the bender to round the metal into a big circle.”

  The bender looked like a big parking meter with a captain’s wheel attached to the front. Henry worked fast. He fed one end of the tubing into the bender’s left side, then turned the wheel till it came out curved on the right. After that, he took up his welding helmet and handed me one too. He turned a valve on a tank that looked like a s
cuba diver’s and told me how heat, wire, and gas all worked together to make the silvery welds that fused the pieces of metal.

  “Like metal glue,” I said.

  “Welds are stronger than glue, as strong as the metal itself. Welds bind the steel of skyscrapers and bridges together. A good weld almost never breaks.”

  I thought of Bessie. Too bad a strong weld couldn’t fix her heart.

  Henry showed me how to put on my helmet, and with the flip of a switch his welder whirred to life. It was dusty and dark inside the helmet, my breathing loud and strange, and I could barely see through the little window in front. Henry pointed the torch tip where he wanted to weld the two ends of the tubing together to close his circle. His torch crackled and burned a bright, eerie green, shooting sparks like a huge Independence Day sparkler. It was winter and snowing outside, but inside it was the Fourth of July.

  My mind eased as I watched Henry work. Our conversation about craziness seemed a long time ago. Henry turned on his grinder to smooth out the welds, making his circle one seamless round. Working calmed Henry, and smoothed out his rough edges too. He took up another piece of tubing and then another, turning them into perfect circles like the first.

  I tried to ask more questions, but he was concentrating hard and his machines drowned out talk. That was the way he liked it, I thought. Other people weren’t his thing. His conversation was with whatever he was making. We were only a few feet apart, but he got more distant by the minute, till he was in another place entirely, a world he’d escaped to, population one.

  8

  Henry’s admirers were always stopping by, people who’d heard about his work and wanted to meet him in person. Other folks came to hire Henry to make something special. A commission, Henry called it. Sometimes the local farmers brought their broken tractors for Henry to weld, which he did, every bit as carefully as he welded his sculptures. Visitors wandered around and looked at the pieces in the yard, and if Henry’s studio door was open, they might duck in to say hey. Now and then someone came to buy one of the sculptures in the yard, or, as Henry called it, “give a sculpture a job.”