Mr. Was Read online

  The argument ebbed and flowed. It had all started over Skoro’s house. My father wanted to sell it right away, but Mom wasn’t ready to do that. I couldn’t figure her out. Why would she want to keep a place like this? I didn’t blame Dad for getting mad, but I wished he would quit yelling at her. I thought about going downstairs to see if I could stop it, but I was so mad at both of them myself I was afraid I’d start yelling, too.

  After a while, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I got dressed, grabbed my blanket, dragged it up to the third floor, spread it out on the old iron bed, and lay down with all my clothes on. The mattress was so saggy my butt nearly hit the floor.

  Even with the whole second floor between us, I could hear them. I forced myself to think about things other than my parents. Pretty soon, I was remembering my dream about the door.

  Now, I was never one of those people who think that dreams tell us the future. I’ve dreamed about lots of things that never happened. I’ve dreamed I could fly, and that I was a dog, and that my mother was made out of cardboard. All kinds of crazy things. But that door dream had me going. I couldn’t stop thinking that it was somehow real.

  When I’d been up there with my dad I’d sort of rushed from closet to closet, not looking all that carefully. Now I thought I remembered something about one of the closet walls. The more I thought about it, the more I had to look. I rolled off the squishy mattress. Was it the closet in this room, or one of the others?

  I opened the door and tugged at the light cord. The old bulb flared yellow. I could see footprints in the dust, from when Dad and I had checked it out earlier. The closet had been empty then, and it was empty now. But I was looking at the end wall. The other walls were plastered smooth and painted gray, but the end wall showed a faint wood grain pattern through its coat of paint. I had seen it before, but I had been looking for a door and it hadn’t really registered in my mind. Now, I recognized it as a piece of plywood. I could see the nail heads where it had been hammered into place.

  I tried to get my fingers around the edge to pull it loose, but the nails held firm. I would need a pry bar or something. Remembering the tool box we’d found in the other bedroom, I ran across the hall and grabbed the hammer.

  When I look back on my life I still have to ask myself whether it is all in my mind. I can see now that I used the door to insulate myself from my parents. In fact, I still wonder if, in some way, I actually created it myself. Was the door real? Am I insane? Did any of this really happen? How do I know I am not sitting in a dark room in a strait jacket staring sightlessly into the convolutions of my own twisted brain?

  But then Andie brings me a cup of coffee and a plate of cookies, and rests her cool hand for a moment on the back of my wrinkled neck, and I know that it was real. All of it.

  I jammed the one good claw under the edge of the plywood and pried. With a satisfying screech, the nails came loose. The board fell toward me. I stepped back.

  Behind the plywood, set a few inches into the wall, was a door. It was not the exact door I had seen in my dream, but it was a door that someone had chosen to conceal.

  My heart was going like crazy. I could hear the blood gushing in my ears. Shaking, I grasped the knob. It was cold, and it turned easily. I pulled, but nothing happened. I tried twisting harder, with no result.

  Part of me wanted to get out of there. Another part of me could not. To abandon the door would be to go back to listening to my parents, to hear the ugly, muffled sounds of their lousy marriage echoing through the dead halls of my grandfather’s home.

  I tried pushing. The door swung open with the gritty creak of long unused hinges.

  Beyond lay a narrow wooden staircase leading down into darkness. A torn spiderweb, its silken threads dusty and brittle, wafted in the opening. Warm air, soft and stale, swirled over me. I could see by the closet light that the stairway turned to the right after about ten steps.

  I started down, still gripping the hammer. I could still hear my parents fighting, but the sound was faint, like poodles barking in the distance.

  When I think of myself entering that staircase, without hesitation, without even a flashlight, I wonder what I could have been thinking. What I remember most vividly is the sound of my shoes on the steps, a soft crunching sound, the dried husks of long-dead insects crumbling.

  I reached the turn in the stairs. The steps continued down into deeper darkness. I moved down slowly, using the last echoes of light from above to reach the next turn. After ten steps I came to another landing. I stopped. The stairs continued to the left, the blackness below so total that I could see nothing but the little gray spots and squiggles in my own eyes. I had to feel with my feet for each new step, keeping one hand on the wall, one probing the darkness with the hammer, sweeping away the ancient cobwebs, counting each invisible, crunching step.

  At the next landing, a faint illumination became visible from below. I could see the bottom of the stairs, and a rectangular shape of some sort. Was it the door? The proportions seemed right, but it was hard to see. I took a step, my foot hit something, and suddenly I was falling, my feet in the air. My butt hit the steps and I went sliding painfully down, following the clatter of the hammer and something else, whatever it was that I’d stepped on. For several booming heartbeats I lay crumpled and still at the bottom of the stairs. My butt hurt, and I’d whacked my elbow pretty good, but mostly everything seemed to be okay.

  The door was right in front of me, soft green light emanating from its metal surface. Its squat shape was as I remembered from my dream.

  I rolled onto my hands and knees and felt for the knob. There it was, high on the door, cold, textured metal, its raised design pressing into the flesh of my fingers. It turned with the same grinding sound I had heard in my dreams. I completely forgot the pain in my rear and my throbbing elbow. A sense of urgency propelled me, as if I knew I had to move quickly before common sense and fear could stop me. I tugged and pushed, but the door remained solid and motionless. Feeling its surface, I discovered a board had been nailed across it. Someone, sometime, had not wanted this door to be found, or to be used.

  I felt around on the gritty floor, looking for the hammer. I found the thing I had stepped on first, a little car or something with four metal wheels. No, it wasn’t a car. It had leather straps, and it was shaped something like a foot. An old-fashioned roller skate, like kids used to strap onto their shoes. The hammer had tumbled off to the left. I found it leaning against a wall.

  It only took a second to rip the board away from the doorway. I grabbed the knob again, and pulled the door open.

  Warm, moist, fragrant air flooded over me. I was looking out through a screen of large, dark leaves into a shadowy garden. A greenhouse? There was no greenhouse on the property. I could hear the buzz of insects, and the peeping of tree frogs. What was this place? I pushed the leaves aside for a better look.

  If it was a greenhouse, it was bigger than any I’d ever seen or heard of. But if it wasn’t a greenhouse, then why wasn’t everything covered by three feet of snow? Where had winter gone? The moon, as full and round and bright as it gets, beamed down on what looked like an overgrown field. Was I still in Boggs’s End? I forced my way through the vines, stepped out into the knee-high grass. To my right, past the crown of the bluff, I could see a body of water glittering in the distance. I looked back at the doorway, at the vine-covered walls.

  It was Boggs’s End all right, but it had changed. The paint was flaking off the sides, the windows were boarded up, the grounds were overgrown with weeds, and I knew, without knowing how I knew, that no one was home.

  Scud and Andie

  It’s difficult to describe the feeling that came over me as I stood staring up at the impossible. I should have been terrified, but I felt no fear stepping through that vine-laden doorway. It was as though I had been pushed too far, as if entering this other world had pushed me beyond shock. What remained was simple wonder.

  I was looking at Boggs’s End, but it was not
the Boggs’s End I knew. Where the rows of apple trees had stood was now only a weedy expanse surrounding a collapsed corncrib. The barn was there, but the other sheds were gone.

  Had I stepped into the future? If so, how many years had passed? A terrifying thought occurred to me. I looked quickly at my hands, half-expecting to see the wrinkled hands of an old man, but they were as I remembered.

  What was this place?

  I waded through the grass, circling the house. The moonlight was bright enough to see the cracked windowpanes, the flaking, powdery paint, the rusted steel gutters. Boggs’s End looked as though it had been vacant for years. A broken-down tractor with flat tires and vines growing over its engine sat parked in the weed-spotted drive. The tall pine trees that had stood at each corner of Boggs’s End were gone, replaced by smaller trees. The front door was sealed with three boards nailed across it. I backed away from the dark house. A jumble of thoughts filled my brain. I wanted to go back through that door, but I also wanted to know where—or when—I was. I started toward the road. The driveway was so overgrown I was sure no one had used it in years.

  The road was different, too. The road I recalled was paved, not a rutted, dirt track. I decided to head down the hill, since it was easier than going up. I’d only taken a few steps when I heard a voice.

  “Hey, kid.”

  I stopped and looked around, then saw a figure standing on the other side of the narrow road.

  I said, “Who, me?” From his size and the sound of the voice I knew he wasn’t an adult, but that only made me a little less scared.

  “Yeah. Who d’ya think I’m talking to? Joe Louis?”

  “Who’s Joe Louis?” I asked.

  “The colored boxer. What’re you, a dummy?”

  I gritted my teeth at that, but let it pass. He stepped forward into the moonlight, showing me a long face with a wide mouth. A strange-looking floppy cap rested atop a pair of large ears. His flannel shirt was rolled up at the sleeves, a pair of baggy bib overalls patched at both knees hung from narrow shoulders. Both hands were buried in his pockets. He was a few inches taller than me, but I guessed him to be about the same age.

  “How come I never seen you around?” he said. “You live around here?”

  I pointed back at Boggs’s End.

  He raised his eyebrows, then laughed. “Yeah, sure. Ain’t nobody lived there in years, not since the Boggses disappeared.”

  The Boggses? Boggs was the name of the man who had built the house.

  “I bet you run away from someplace, didn’t you? I ran away a couple times. One time got all the way to Minneapolis. Where’d you run away from?”

  I didn’t want to explain, so I just shrugged.

  He said, “Well, I guess that’s your business. You want to stay in the old Boggs place, I ain’t gonna tell nobody. Listen, you hungry?”

  “A little.”

  “Andie and me, we’re going to grab some apples off old man Henderson’s place. You want to come?”

  I said, “Sure. Who’s Andie?”

  “Kid, you don’t know anything, do you?”

  “My name’s not kid. It’s Jack.”

  “Okay, then. Jack. Let’s go, Jack.” He started up the road.

  I let him get a few yards away, then followed. What else was I going to do? I called after him, “So what’s your name?”

  He said something over his shoulder. It sounded like “Bud.”

  I caught up to him. “You say Bud?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Scud. They call me Scud.”

  “You mean like the missile? Like they were shooting off in Iraq?”

  He said, “Rack? What rack?”

  I said, “What’re you, a dummy?”

  He turned toward me, his eyes narrow and his lips pulled back against his teeth. I thought he was going to punch me. We glared at each other for about three seconds. Suddenly his face relaxed and his mouth turned up into a smile.

  “Maybe we’re both dummies,” he said. “What do you say we call it square?”

  I nodded and unclenched my fists.

  A new voice came out of the night. “Hey, come on, aren’t you guys gonna have a fight? Come on, Scuddy-poo. He don’t look so big.”

  I made out the shape of someone sitting on a fence rail, a few yards off the road.

  Scud said, “We were just fooling around, Andie. And don’t call me that.”

  Andie hopped off the rail and walked toward us. Dressed like Scud in overalls and flannels, Andie had a long, lanky body, narrow wrists, and an impish, freckled face. It took me a few seconds to figure out that Andie was a girl.

  She said, “What’s that he’s wearin’, Scud-doodle? What kind of shoes are those? They’re really strange!”

  Scud hadn’t paid much attention to my clothes before, but now he frowned at my Nikes.

  “He’s got writing all over his shirt,” she said. “What’s ’Bears’?”

  I’d had about enough. I said, “That’s a pretty stupid question.”

  I never saw it coming. Who’d’ve thought a girl could move so fast? Her sharp fist caught me right in the belly. I staggered back, bent double, trying to catch my breath.

  Scud laughed. “Hey, leave him alone, Andie. He don’t have any other stuff. He’s a runaway. Prob’ly stole off somebody’s clothesline. C’mon, let’s go.”

  “Just a second,” Andie said. “You okay, Jack-o?”

  “My name’s Jack,” I gasped.

  She put a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry I walloped you. You shouldn’t a called me stupid.”

  I stood up straight and looked into her face. I couldn’t see what color her eyes were in the moonlight, but they were big and they were looking right at me.

  “It’s okay,” I said. I still couldn’t believe that this girl had just knocked the wind out of me.

  “You want to come with us?”

  I nodded.

  About half a mile up the road, the woods opened into a field on the right side. I saw a small, run-down house. A dozen or so small apple trees grew in rows near the back.

  Scud said in a low voice, “Keep an eye out, Jack. If he hears us he’ll let that dog of his out on us.”

  “Dog?” I didn’t like strange dogs. “What sort of dog?”

  “Big,” said Scud. “Like a horse.”

  We eased our way across the ditch and into the orchard. The tree limbs sagged with apples. Scud started right in pulling them off and stuffing them into his shirt. Andie did the same. I grabbed one apple in each hand. My T-shirt wasn’t tucked in, so I couldn’t put the apples inside it. How many apples were we supposed to be stealing? I turned to ask Scud when suddenly he wound up and hurled an apple at the side of the house. It hit with a bang, exploding into apple bits.

  Andie let out a yelp and took off running. Scud laughed and threw another apple. I heard a door open and a howl that turned my insides into jelly. Now Scud was running, too. A black shape—big, like Scud said—rounded the corner of the house with another howl. I took off, bounding across the ditch and into the woods, branches slapping across my face, my heart pounding like a jackhammer. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. Finally I whacked my shin on a log or something and tumbled exhausted into a patch of ferns; I had no idea where I was. I could only hear the air rasping in and out of my lungs. I expected the dog to pounce on me at any second.

  Slowly, I got my wind back. The sound of my breathing was replaced by the buzzing of insects. I felt a mosquito on my neck, slapped it, slapped another one that was trying to get into my left ear. I got back to my feet and began to trudge back through the woods, my knee throbbing. I don’t know how long I walked, but eventually a road appeared before me. I was about to step out of the trees when I heard an engine. Thinking it might be old man Henderson and his dog, I lay low. Yellow headlights appeared, and a noisy, beat-up antique pickup truck chugged past. I waited until it had disappeared, then went running down the dirt road, hoping to find Scud so I could punch his face in. If I
found Andie first, I might even punch her.

  The moon had dropped low in the sky, and it was harder to see.

  I found Boggs’s End before I found Scud or Andie. I had come out of the woods onto the driveway and mistaken it for the road.

  I have to explain something here. During the hour or so I’d spent with Scud and Andie, I hadn’t thought at all about Boggs’s End, or the door, or the fact that in the real world—if that’s what it was—snow lay three feet deep over the land. I’d forgotten all of that.

  Actually, it wasn’t so much that I’d forgotten, it was that I had somehow misplaced it in my mind. Seeing Boggs’s End standing dark and dim in the fading moonlight brought it all back in a rush.

  I wanted to go back.

  But would the door work in both directions? Would passing back through that doorway return me to the Memory I remembered?

  Some of the Worst Days of My Life

  The door worked both ways. The next morning I woke up to a silent house. I lay staring up at the yellow ceiling, at a strand of cobweb hanging above me.

  I asked myself, Is it real?

  I remembered climbing the dusty staircase, and the way the fertile scent of summer air gave way to the dry sterility of Boggs’s End in winter. I remembered climbing into bed, my mind buzzing with recent memories. I did not remember falling asleep.

  My shin hurt.

  I pushed aside the covers and found myself still dressed in my jeans and my Chicago Bears T-shirt. An apple, red streaked with gold, perched on the nightstand. I picked it up, felt its roundness, took a bite. Sweet, tart juices flooded my mouth.

  It had been real, all right.

  Mom was sitting in the kitchen staring down at her empty coffee cup. I poured myself some grapefruit juice and sat down across from her.

  “Are we having breakfast?” I asked.

  She moved her shoulders up and down about a tenth of an inch. “Make yourself some toast, Jack.” A big bruise on her left cheek, another one on her chin.