Closer All the Time Page 5

  Mark followed, clawing cobwebs away from his face.

  They crossed the damp cellar and went up the stairs. The cellar door was latched, but Daryl used the knife to flip the hook that held it shut.

  The boys spent the next half hour kicking around the old cabin, smoking cigarettes from the pack of Luckies Daryl had swiped from his grandmother’s stash under the kitchen sink. There wasn’t much to see: two rooms, an old set of bedsprings in one; shards of glass on the floor under the window openings; an old print of Quebec City tacked onto the wall, a faded and torn calendar from 1929. Mark took the calendar down and brought it to where Daryl sat on the springs. He wanted to see what day his birthday had been on in 1929, but March was gone from the pages, and he sent the calendar flapping across the room.

  Daryl bounced off the springs. “Man, I have to piss.” He ran into the other room and after a moment Mark heard him say, “Found the jungle!” and then, “Found the reptile!” He sounded proud, and sometimes Mark felt the same way about himself, not that he’d ever talk out loud about it. He listened to Daryl pissing into the fireplace.

  Finally Daryl came back, took the cigarette pack out of his shirt pocket, and knocked a Lucky partway into his palm. “Want another smoke?”

  Mark looked at his hand. “No, thanks.”

  Daryl stuck the pack back in his pocket. He sat down and made the springs creak. “I know a secret.”

  “Oh yeah?” Mark said.

  “Don’t know if I should tell you.”

  Mark felt like Mr. Man, ears pricked. He wasn’t going to ask, though. Heroes waited, and after a while they always seemed to find out what they needed to.

  “All right,” Daryl said. “Somebody likes you.”

  “Who?”

  “Karin. She’ll come out if we go back.”

  Mark’s face felt suddenly hot.

  “So do you want to?”

  “If you do,” Mark said, as if his heart wasn’t pounding.

  The window rasped like before, and again they held still and listened. Then Daryl hooked a leg over the sill, ducked under the sash, and lowered himself in. Mark followed and started to shut the window, but Daryl said, “Leave it up!”

  “Okay,” Mark said.

  “Wait here,” Daryl said.

  While Daryl was gone Mark looked at the fighter models and another of the Apollo rocket on Daryl’s dresser. He was never any good at models because he just wanted to get them done.

  You could tell Daryl took his time. There was no extra glue around the seams, no missing pieces. Mark ran his hand over the rocket, then went over to the bed and sat down. A couple of minutes later the door opened and Daryl and Karin tiptoed into the room. Daryl was giggling with his hand over his mouth.

  “Shhh!” Karin whispered. Then she said, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Mark said.

  Karin sat on the bed and looked at her brother.

  “Go ahead!” Daryl whispered.

  “No, you go out, Daryl!”

  “All right.” Daryl opened the door and left.

  Karin gave Mark a flicker of a smile. Her eyes were like black marbles and her short hair was very dark and thick. Mark tried to smile back, but he was short of breath, like he’d been swimming underwater, and it made the smile feel crooked on his face.

  “Want to do something?” Karin said then.

  “Like what?”

  “Want to kiss?” Karin whispered.

  “Sure.” Mark barely got the word out. He sort of pushed his face toward Karin, but just as his lips touched hers Daryl opened the door and stuck his head into the room.

  “Not now!” Karin whispered.

  Daryl shut the door again.

  Karin leaned her whole body against Mark. She put her hand on his side and pressed her lips right up against his. He could feel the braces under her lip. She flicked her tongue against his teeth.

  “Huh!” The sound flew out of Mark’s mouth, and Karin jerked away, looking at him wide-eyed.

  Mark couldn’t talk. Everything had gone thick and smoky inside him. He put his hands on her arms and put his lips back on hers. Their tongues touched and then, as if on its own, his hand slid over her stomach to her small breast. She made a sound and her breath came warm against his face. When she put her hand on his knee he cried, “Oh!”

  Karin jumped up, her eyes wide and shiny. She backed to the door and reached behind her for the knob. She opened the door and ran down the hall, her feet thumping softly.

  Daryl came in and shut the door. “What’d she do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I saw you two!”

  Mark didn’t say anything to that. He didn’t want to talk to Daryl just now. He wanted to be alone so he could think about what had just happened.

  “Do you like her?” Daryl said.

  “Sure,” Mark said. “I’d better get home.”

  He went to the window, put his head and arms through, and toppled out, somersaulting and rolling to his feet. His ears were ringing like crazy.

  Daryl stuck his head out. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Okay!” Mark whispered back.

  Daryl shut the window and Mark ran across the lawn and set off down the road. It was very dark and the sky seemed bigger, with more and brighter stars. Thousands, he thought, maybe millions.

  After a while he went back to his hero walk. When he got to his grandparents’, he remembered about Arnold, and without hesitating he ran back to the crab-apple orchard. He picked up a pair of big, smooth apples and held them in his hands, looking down the hill. Before he could chicken out again he whipped one through the dark and a second later heard it thump on Aunt Carolyn’s roof.

  It was louder than he’d expected, and it bounced almost all the way to the old chicken coop behind the house. But he still threw the other one. There was a second loud bang, and he hid behind the lilac and waited.

  After a few seconds Arnold came outside. He just stood there with his hands on his hips until the peepers raised their voices off in the woods. They’d shut up, but now they got louder and louder until his cousin went back in and slammed the door and then they stopped again.

  Mark took his sweet time ambling home.

  It was ten o’clock and he lay in bed listening to the dogs. His father must have gone outside again. He’d been on his way through the shed when Mark had gotten home. He’d had his pipe in his hand and had stared at Mark walking past him to the kitchen.

  “Hold on there, boy,” he’d said.

  Mark had stopped by the kitchen door. He could hear the TV in the living room. He’d already missed a couple of good shows, not that he really cared.

  “Just where have you been?” his father said.

  “Outside,” Mark said.

  “Where outside?”

  “Just outside.”

  “Are you being smart?”

  “No!”

  The dogs yipped and yowled, their voices rising, then trailing off. Mark and his father turned their heads to listen. When the noise stopped, Mark looked back at his father.

  “Maybe you should go right to your room,” his father said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I said to.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Fair’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Mark said. A thrill ran through him.

  Mark’s father grabbed him under one arm and yanked him onto his toes. Mark flinched but didn’t cower, and they stared fiercely at one another until his father’s face softened, as if he’d just remembered who Mark was. He let Mark down. “Ah hell, I’m sorry, old kid.”

  “No you’re not,” Mark said coldly. He saw the hurt in his father’s eyes, but turned away just the same and marched up the stairs. He reached the top and looked down. His father was standing still with his hands in his pockets, and Mark felt another stab of regret. But he kept right on going.

  It was good to be under the cool sheets in the dark. Below, the TV was playing,
and he could tell which show it was, but he still didn’t care that much. He didn’t care about hurting his father’s feelings, either. There were more important things to think about.

  He imagined Karin Sleeper’s dark eyes and how her body had felt in his hands. It was amazing just how solid and real girls were when you actually felt them. It was like touching a deer or something. He got a little short of breath, and reached to open his window wider. It stuck, and when he pushed harder it banged against its stop.

  One of the dogs woofed in the pen. Then another one yipped. Then Mr. Man joined in and quickly they were all in full cry. Mark put his arms on the sill and listened. They sounded different tonight.

  He’d never heard them sound like this.

  The dogs kept at it as if they’d never stop. After a while they didn’t even sound like collies. They could just as easily have been wild animals, out in the woods. Coyotes on the hunt, maybe, or a pack of wolves, loping through the dark, chasing something irresistible.

  Ted

  The summer Ted Soule turned eight, a family of Russians came to Baxter, moving into the farmhouse on the other side of the big hayfield. They kept to themselves, and all Ted knew about them after a month was that someone over there played the piano. When the wind was right he could just hear it from his window, delicate as a memory.

  Lying in bed, listening, he would imagine them gathered around as their father played. There were supposed to be two kids, according to his mother, and Ted wondered if they would become his friends.

  There was something wrong with him that made it hard to make friends. He was generally ignored at school, unless somebody like Arnold Stimpson decided to push him around, but maybe these kids, being from another country, would see him differently.

  One morning early in August he finally saw them. They were in the hayfield: a girl and a smaller boy, running and stooping. He dug his binoculars out from under his mattress but still couldn’t tell what they were up to; finally, he pulled on his clothes and ran downstairs and out to the field.

  He halted a respectful distance away, looking down at his sneakers when the Russian girl glanced over. The blueberry plants were dry and dusty, and he heard them crackling as the girl walked up, and then he saw her saddle shoes.

  “Look at me,” the girl said. “What’s your name?”

  “Ted,” he managed to say, but he still couldn’t look.

  “My name is Nadia Myachin,” she said proudly, “and that’s my stupid brother, Gregor.”

  “Shut up, Nadia.” The boy was on his hands and knees, staring.

  “Why won’t you look at me?” Nadia said.

  Ted finally glanced up. She was beautiful, with high cheekbones, bright blue eyes, and golden hair that fell over her shoulders. The silence grew between them until finally he said, “I live right over there.”

  “Yes, of course,” Nadia said.

  “What are you guys doing?”

  Gregor was patting the bushes with one hand, then the other.

  “Looking for grasshoppers,” Nadia said.

  She explained that the grasshoppers were for their pet bird, Yuri. They had found him with an injured wing and their father had let them keep him, but they’d had to promise he would have plenty to eat.

  Ted was impressed about the bird, but disappointed with the way they talked; he’d imagined them sounding like Illya Kuryakin on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. But he was happy when Nadia asked if he wanted to help, and for the next few minutes he stuck close to her side, moving through the blueberry bushes, grabbing the squirmy grasshoppers, carefully lifting the punctured lid on a coffee can and dropping them in.

  And he was thrilled to be asked to their house to help feed Yuri. It didn’t even bother him that Nadia won the race back. It upset Gregor, though; he ran stubbornly and cried when he couldn’t catch up.

  Mr. Myachin welcomed Ted with a satisfyingly thick accent. He was big and red-faced. His wife was slender and quiet. Yuri, it turned out, lived in a jungle of potted plants on top of their grand piano. He liked the music, Nadia said.

  She put a grasshopper down and Yuri hopped out and gulped it. Nadia wouldn’t let anyone else feed him. You had to aim the grasshoppers just right, she said, or they’d jump off the piano and run all over the house. Gregor growled at this, but still handed Nadia the grasshoppers one at a time. When there were only a few left, he let Ted hold the coffee can, so he could reach in and select a grasshopper.

  Yuri ate all the grasshoppers and then hopped back behind the plants.

  Ted followed Nadia and Gregor into the kitchen, where Mr. Myachin smiled at them and said, “Show hands!”

  Ted watched Nadia and Gregor open their hands, and then did so himself. There were brown stains on all their palms.

  “Tobacco juice!” Mr. Myachin boomed.

  “I call it grasshopper poop,” Nadia whispered to Ted.

  “No swearing!” Gregor hissed.

  “That’s not swearing!” Nadia hissed back.

  “You, boy,” Mr. Myachin said. “Can swim?”

  “A little,” Ted said.

  “Good! Come and swim, wash away tobacco juice!”

  Nadia and Gregor cheered and said, “Come on!” to Ted. They ran upstairs and Nadia darted into her bedroom and shut the door. Gregor took Ted into his bedroom and gave him a red bathing suit from his dresser. He took out a blue one for himself, with a cartoon Road Runner emblazoned on the leg. Ted was impressed with the room’s neatness. There was a world globe on Gregor’s dresser and a map of Soviet Russia on his wall.

  They met Nadia back in the hallway and ran downstairs.

  “Where are we going?” Ted said.

  “The quarry!” Nadia and Gregor shouted.

  Ted wasn’t supposed to go to the quarry, but he figured it would be all right with Mr. Myachin along.

  He trailed them out of the house. Mr. Myachin walked with his shoulders back, swinging his arms. He led the way down the field to the bushes and through to a pine-and-birch wood and through the wood to the quarry. Mr. Myachin talked the whole way about what a great country America was, how lucky they were to live where you could have a big house and make a good living and go for a swim anytime you wanted, and nobody ever stopped you to ask what you were up to.

  It made Ted happy and proud, as if he’d had something to do with it.

  The path led to a rocky stretch of ground that ended in an outcropping over the flooded quarry. Carefully they descended a steep trail to a flat ledge by the water. Mr. Myachin set the towels down, took off his shirt—his belly was big and white compared to his tanned arms—and dove in with a thunderclap of a splash. He swam out into the middle, blowing a stream of water high into the air like a whale. The children laughed and jumped in carefully, chins high to keep their faces dry. The boys dog-paddled, staying close to the ledge, but Nadia swam right out in a proud, stiff-necked crawl.

  After a while Mr. Myachin caught hold of a rope that hung down from the cables that crisscrossed the top of the quarry. The rope was thick and had a thinner line attached that dragged in the water. Holding the thin rope in his teeth, Mr. Myachin swam back to the ledge, then climbed up to the outcropping and, after waving, ran off the edge of the rock, the rope in his hands. The rope jerked him into an arc out over the water, where he let go and hung suspended, twisting slowly, before falling the rest of the way into the drink with another thunderous splash.

  Nadia, Gregor, and Ted cheered.

  “My turn!” Nadia said when Mr. Myachin pulled himself out.

  “No, not for little kids,” Mr. Myachin said.

  “I’m not a little kid!” Nadia said.

  “You are little kid one more year!” Mr. Myachin was vigorously toweling himself off.

  Nadia sat down on the ledge with her chin in her hands. She stayed put when Ted and Gregor jumped in for a last swim.

  When Ted got home he told his mother about the bird and the grasshoppers and the quarry, and she said, “As long as there’s a grown-up alon
g.”

  “Okay,” Ted said.

  “Were they nice people?”

  “Yes,” Ted said. “They liked me, too.”

  Ted went to visit several times over the next few weeks. Once he even stayed overnight, sleeping on a cot in Gregor’s room, listening to Mr. Myachin play lively music on the piano.

  Ted still felt pretty lucky they’d moved to Baxter. Gregor was kind of a pill, and Nadia was five years older, but it still seemed like they were getting to be friends. He pictured them getting off the bus together and walking into school. It was nice, too, to feed Yuri and to go swimming anytime you wanted. Mr. Myachin was always willing, and Mrs. Myachin would walk down and sit on the rocks if her husband was away.

  One day late in August, though—a day so hot that the tar road had gone soft—both Mr. and Mrs. Myachin decided to go into town to shop for a new car. They were going to Cousins Motors, they said, and the number would be by the phone just in case, and there was to be no swimming until they got back.

  “Be good!” Mr. Myachin said as they were leaving.

  It was a Saturday, and after feeding Yuri the children settled onto the couch in the living room to watch cartoons. Ted didn’t mind—it was just a delay—and Gregor loved cartoons almost as much as swimming anyway.

  But Nadia complained and fidgeted. Every time she moved, her skin made a sound like Scotch tape against the leather couch, and finally she said, “Unnhhh!” and jumped up. She put her hands on her hips and said it was stupid to stay inside and boil when she was perfectly capable of being the grown-up, since she would be an eighth grader in the fall.

  “You are not a grown-up!” Gregor yelled, his eyes fixed on the television.

  “Shut up,” Nadia said. “Grasshopper Greg.”

  Ted knew that was supposed to mean Gregor had made tobacco juice in his pants.

  Nadia put her face down close to her brother’s and laughed. Gregor crossed his arms and scowled at the TV, where Wile E. Coyote had just run off a cliff. When he hit there was a puff of smoke and the Road Runner beeped happily and zoomed off.

  “All right, then, I’ll call and ask permission!” Nadia said.