Bones of a Saint Read online

  “Mr. Leguin! Yo, Mr. Leguin!”

  No answer. A breeze flaps the curtains. I walk in and pull the chain on a standing lamp with a fringy shade. Nothing. There’s no bulb. I move from lamp to lamp. Nothing, nothing, nothing. That’s just great. A candle in a silver candlestick that might be worth stealing sits on the coffee table, so I light that.

  I know right away where he’s hanging out. The root cellar. I don’t feel like interrupting that, so I’m just wandering around, scoping the place out, checking for something I could rip off, something I could carry all the way to Camp Roberts and that the old man wouldn’t notice right off was gone. I’m carrying that lighted candle, just like in those old horror movies, except the horror movies don’t tell about that hot wax that oozes over your hand. Maybe I can be in and out with something before he even gets back.

  The house is full of antique furniture, but none of it is rip-off size. Aunty Faith, who belongs to Amy, has so many family photos and ceramic cats in her apartment that I couldn’t set lemonade down on a table without wiping out a whole row like dominoes. Old people are supposed to have all that stuff that stuck to them over the years. This old guy has nothing. Then, as I’m casing the joint, I see that the stuff don’t look as big a deal as it did at first sight. Sofa cushions frayed. Wood armrests scratched. Silver chalice dented.

  Funny I hadn’t seen that the sliding doors to the dining room are closed. I walk over, still holding that candle, and slide the door open. It’s dark like a cave. The candlelight flickers on old, dark wood against the walls. I take a couple steps into the room, aiming at the shadow of the dining table, except instead of a table it’s a high old bed sitting right smack in the middle of the room. No problem. I can handle that. Now, a coffin, that’d be a problem. But a bed sort of makes sense. There’s no way that old man’s bones would make it up the steep old stairs to one of the bedrooms.

  I should back out of here before he gets back.

  I turn to make my escape when the candlelight bounces off a metal picture frame. The photo is all yellow and cracked inside that fancy silver frame. A bunch of soldiers sit staring at me. There’s this one guy in the middle row on the right side, grinning like this is all a sick joke. Smooth Leguin’s wrinkled skin, and it’s his face in the picture.

  “This is most disappointing.” Leguin stands at the door, just outside the candlelight. “Most disappointing.”

  “I was just . . .”

  “Yes. Quite.” He turns and walks out of the room.

  He’s sitting in his chair when I come back out to the living room.

  “Look, Mr. Leguin, I’m sorry. I was just . . .”

  “Spare me your remorse. Light it.”

  “What?”

  “Light it.”

  He nods at an old candelabra with a whole mess of candles that sits on the coffee table. The thing looks like it’s for real silver. But it’s just too big to carry off without him knowing. I’d have to creep back in the middle of the night when he’s asleep. If he sleeps. I cup my candle so it won’t blow out and begin to light the others.

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “Use that.” He nods to a corner.

  There’s this long silver stick like the one I used to carry as an acolyte.

  “You planning to perform some kinda Mass?” I ask.

  He don’t answer. I pick it up and light the wick. It takes forever to light all the candles.

  “Fine. Only next time do it with more care.”

  What next time? I’m thinking.

  “Pour us some sherry.” His face looks red and waxy through that light.

  I walk out to the kitchen and get the sherry and a couple of glasses. They’re crystal. Definitely crystal. I could maybe bundle some glasses in my jacket, slip them outside the kitchen door, and come back later for them. Well, maybe I could. I’ll think about it later. A box of Uncle Ben’s rice and a banana peel lie on the counter. I check the fridge. About the biggest deal in there is a package of bologna. It’s too depressing, so I head back to the living room.

  “So, you got any jobs you want me to do?” I pour us the sherry.

  “Sit.”

  I plop down in the overstuffed couch. We sit staring at each other. There’s a smell from the old man’s suit. It’s the same smell as the plastic can behind the trailer where I kept Peanut’s number-one diapers that needed washing.

  “You forget to pay your electric bill?”

  “I cannot abide artificial light.” Not one wrinkle in that face even twitches.

  “Right.” If I had a mirror, I’d be checking it out for his reflection about now. More quiet. “You were in the army, huh?”

  “That room and its contents are not open to discussion.”

  That kills the talk. I’m starting to feel warm from the sherry.

  “Those appear to be serious bruises on your cheek and neck,” he says.

  “Them? I just got in a fight is all. No big.”

  “Another bully that you vanquished?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Perhaps it is time for another tale,” he says.

  “I don’t feel like telling no stories.”

  “Ah, but you have a gift for storytelling,” he says, with that accent creeping in.

  “Comes with practice,” I say. “I can get so into a scary story that all the sibs end up curled together, their feet away from the edge of their beds so no tentacles or claws can snag their toes, lying there half the night just waiting for Mom to get home from work.” I don’t say out loud how telling a scary story in this place makes as much sense as Buns Bernie telling one of his dead baby jokes in a maternity ward. “Anyway, I don’t feel like telling no scary stories.”

  My head feels a little dizzy from the sherry and it’s getting too late to snag an antique. The Blackjacks are expecting a delivery, only God knows when. Maybe telling a tale will pass time until I can work out a plan to steal.

  “Okay, here goes. One last time. I will call this The Tale of Father Speckler and . . . and My Spiritual Well-Being.”

  I should have thought ahead to how that story ends before I started in on it, but that’s how life goes down.

  The Tale of Father Speckler and My Spiritual Well-Being

  Father Speckler, he was only supposed to be in charge of our spiritual well-being, like he said. He shouldn’t have to worry about no temporal issues. But when they couldn’t find no one to replace Sister Ellen after our fourth-grade class retired her, Father Speckler got stuck with us, like forever. He was a Jesuit, if you can believe it. Always going on about how he should be at some fancy high school like in King City. But no high school wanted Father Speckler and everyone knew it. He was hardly taller than a fourth grader, and he was bird skinny. It made the whole class scratch just watching him ’cause he never stopped moving. He was like those tiny birds that run away from the waves. He even called us that one time. Waves.

  I don’t even remember none of the things I did that got him so POed. He’d hop back and forth in front of us waves, and I just had to see how fast I could get him going. Sort of like an experiment. I’d mess up accidentally on purpose, and he’d hop faster. Then I’d just keep messing up and he’d just keep hopping.

  But I’ll never forget how it always ended. Sometime just after nutrition I’d say my last “Father,” with an edge to it so he’d know I wouldn’t ever want him to be my for real father. He couldn’t punish me for words I was supposed to use. He’d stop. He’d even be shaking. Then he’d just open the door and point into that closet. So I’d step in and he’d slam the door behind me. I’d pull the chain on the overhead light and there’d be the lunches, all lined up on the shelf, the room full with the smell of peanut butter and bologna and mayo and Free-toes. Guys in the class hid comics in their coats so I could kick back on this chair I made out of some gray blankets t
hat were put in there for emergencies like that and I’d just read and munch on Free-toes and Twinkies. It was as close as Our Lady’s got to heaven.

  Well, one day I said my one “Father” too many and he pointed to the closet. When I stepped in and pulled the chain, there was no light. He’d snagged the bulb. There was just this little crack of light from under the door. It had never been so hard to breathe in there before. All the lunches and even the blankets were gone. I just lay on that floor with my nose near the crack under the door listening to Father Speckler hopping back and forth. He was giving his little speech about how they were all God’s children. Of course, me being in the closet, I was like Mother Catherine said, out of bounds to the Lord. The next day, Father Speckler even checked my pockets before sending me in there, and he snagged my M&M’s and spare light bulb. My heart was pounding when that door clicked shut and it was even harder to breathe.

  I knew there was no way I’d be able to live through no more closets. It was either me or Father Speckler. After lunch, he announced that there wouldn’t be no more Bible Story Time. Instead, we’d have something called Science Project Demonstrations. Trust a Jesuit to bust Bible Story Time for something like Science Project Demonstrations. He picked me to go first. It was Friday, so I had the weekend to work on it.

  I couldn’t think of nothing, so Saturday night I headed over to Mr. Sanders’s trailer. I sat in the beach chair and told him about the Science Project Demonstration. Mr. Sanders was quiet so I just listened to the hum of the cante bury sign. He scratched Jack Daniels under the ear like he always did when he was thinking.

  “Have you considered heredity?” he asked.

  “Her what?”

  “Heredity.”

  I said, “I guess I’d consider it if I knew anything about it.”

  He said, “Am I correct in assuming each of you has a different father?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Except the twins. They got the same father.”

  Mr. Sanders started to say something, but stopped and just muttered something like, “Just forget it, RJ.”

  Of course, the more he warned me to forget it, the more my mind was working. I was thinking about my mom and the sibs and their fathers and finally my own father. And then, as I stared out at the cante bury sign, I saw my Science Project Demonstration in that blue glow as clear as a saint’s vision.

  “But I’m done for tonight, Mr. Leguin. Maybe you’ll hear the rest of the story another day. Then again, maybe you won’t.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Stardust

  I’m pedaling home from Leguin’s on my dorky Stingray that’s so small even my short legs bounce up to my chest. The chain is loose and I’m coasting as much as I can so it’ll hold. Moonlight shines on the fields and on the foothills rising behind them.

  What’s wrong with me that I can’t steal from that old man? It means I got to go back and try again. Or maybe it’s not too late to sneak in after he’s asleep and snag that silver candlestick. But he’d know right off I done it. I can’t live with that. And if I go for another face-to-face, he’s going to con me into finishing that story. I don’t ever want to throw down the ending to the one I began today. Not the for real ending, anyway.

  I turn the corner where the towering eucalyptus trees, planted for windbreaks, line the road. Beyond them runs the warped fence of the abandoned Stardust Drive-in. A glasspack muffler rumbles behind me. I look back. The car hasn’t turned the corner yet, but I’m sure it belongs to a Blackjack. I pedal past the crumbling Stardust sign and stare back at a familiar truck now turning the corner, and I veer off behind that broken galaxy. I toss the Stingray down in the overgrown weeds and scrunch behind the sign, shards of fallen stars digging into me. Keating’s old Chevy truck with the big fenders is cruising slowly past. Even in the moonlight, the cherry red and the pinstriping and the chrome are kick-ass. Just like I said they would be. I feel a kind of power that I could turn a guy—a Joker—into making that truck what it should be, even if the stealing of it was wrong. Maybe I’m an accessory after the fact, like they say.

  Don’t the Blackjacks got anything better to do than follow some punk kid? If they catch me, they’ll see I’m empty-handed and know I didn’t take nothing. And then they’ll decide I need another reminder. I don’t feel like one of those, not on top of the bruises I already got.

  “Look out, here come the police!” a DJ shouts from the truck’s radio, a fake siren in the background. My heart jumps for a sec before that dude from the Police screams, “Roxanne . . .” and then the radio is twisted off in midscream.

  “Enough of that shit,” Keating says.

  The Blackjack with the stringy blond hair tied with a bandana, the same dude from last time, laughs. “Freaky, the Police got a song about her, ain’t it?”

  “It ain’t about her,” Keating says. “Just the same name.”

  The truck drifts by, so I dig in behind the sign, peeking through the lattice. Keating is driving, and that greasy-haired Joker is next to him. And then there’s Buns in the truck bed. It looks like his initiation is still going down.

  “I lost my cherry in that drive-in. How ’bout you?” Keating says.

  “Nah. I went for a darker place.”

  Listening to them, I think that evil might always be the same thing, but that it oozes out in different ways. The truck passes but stops at the corner. They know they’ve lost track of me. They turn right. That means they’re going to circle the block and come back around.

  When the truck is out of sight, I lift my bike up, ready to haul ass. The chain drops off and trails on the ground. No time to fix it. I should dump the bike and get the hell out of here. Instead, I grab it and sneak through the unhinged gate, past the tollbooth with its broken glass, and into the remains of the Stardust. I lean the Stingray against the fence beside the gate.

  It has only been seven months since this place closed, but it is already a whole different world, alone and abandoned. The screen looms over me, reflecting moonlight. Panels have fallen, leaving gaps like crumbling teeth. The weedy asphalt, with its checkerboard of speaker posts, rolls down to a collapsed swing set on the playground at the base of the screen. When we were little, Mom would take us to the three-dollar-per-car show. We’d go play in our jammies on that shiny equipment below the towering screen. When we came back, Mom would have the station wagon backed up and the far back seat set up so it was facing the screen. Amy and me would sit there with Charley squeezed between us, waiting for that first cartoon.

  There’s the rumble of the truck coming around again. I check out the boarded-up cinder-block snack shack for a place to hide. Even if I find a way into it, I’ll be trapped. The truck has stopped and is idling outside the entrance.

  I dash for the back fence, where there might be an out.

  “He’s in there. I know it.” Keating’s voice.

  “He needs another reminder,” the other Joker says.

  “Buns,” Keating says, “get your fat ass out of there and check it out.”

  I find where we cut off the top of the fence boards to mark our spot, and I leap and grab the top of the wobbly fence and scissor my leg over until I’m riding the top. Then I stand, balancing myself, the loose boards shaking, and leap to a limb of a tree beyond the Stardust. From there, it’s an easy climb up a few branches to our platform.

  “See anything?” Keating calls.

  Buns has his back to me, staring up at the screen, and don’t answer.

  The floorboards shimmy as I lie down and peek through the branches, sniffing that cough-medicine scent of eucalyptus.

  I can see Buns walking around, looking for me. His jaw is open like he, too, is overwhelmed by the sadness.

  Manny, me, and this kid called Dud built this platform just beyond the fence so we could watch the movies for free. Of course, we could have watched them for free down below, by just jumping the fence a
nd then spending the night running from any snack shack guys they sent out to catch us. For the boring movies, that was more fun than watching. But for more real movies, up here was the place. Fridays we’d fall asleep to the sounds of Star Wars lightsabers humming and then wake up at dawn and sneak home.

  Buns is wandering toward the fence. Does he know about this platform? A few guys had found out. Was he one of them? Can’t remember.

  Now the Jokers come into the drive-in and join Buns. Looking at him next to these Blackjacks, it don’t seem possible I was ever afraid of him. I can sense he’s having second thoughts about joining, and I almost feel sorry for him. Almost.

  “Well, you see him?” Keating runs his hand through his long, gray hair.

  Then Buns turns and glances up into the trees straight at me. The blond dude follows his stare, but Buns looks away and shrugs.

  “Nah,” Buns says. “He probably jumped the fence and ran home.”

  “No, he didn’t. Look here.” It’s the blond-haired guy. “The kid’s bike. The chain’s undone. He wouldn’t leave his bike. He’s probably hiding, waiting until we leave and he can get it.”

  “Hey, kid!” Keating calls. “We know you’re here.”

  Like I’m gonna answer. Will Buns tell them?

  “Check the snack shack, fatty,” the blond says.

  Buns wanders over to it.

  “RJ won’t go in there,” Keating says. “He knows he’d be trapped.”

  Keating cups his hands and shouts: “I know you’re out there! The Ace says you got one week and a day. One week and a day. Noon. You already know where.”

  Well, that is more time than I hoped, but less than I need. No more slippin’.

  “We’re taking your bike!” the other Blackjack shouts.

  “No, we ain’t,” Keating says.

  “The hell. My nephew could use this.”

  “Leave it,” Keating says.

  “You ain’t the Ace.”