Nicholas
December, 2008. Houston, TX, USA
Sometimes, when it was very late, he would slip from beneath the sheets and tip-toe over uneven floorboards to the naked window across the room. In the summer, the windows would be open but for a patchy screen that did nothing to deter the bugs, and in the winter the glass would be drawn so that his breath would fog against it. The world outside changed, too. Cicadas through the spring to fall; leaves upon the trees or barren, jagged sticks that pierced the skies. Sometimes they had neighbors, sometimes the other houses were abandoned.
The only constant hung far above them, too distant to touch but so bright that their light saturated everything below. Somewhere in the depths of the house a glass shattered, and a woman cried. A wall shook. He covered his ears with his hands and listened to the song drifting from the heavens.
Nick's eyes opened to a beer bottle bursting beside his head. He winced away in time so that the shards and booze only stung his cheek, then peeked between his lashes to see where it had come from.
The drunk standing in the open doorway wobbled in place, his hefty form a blank silhouette against toxic neon light. Nick remained motionless as the man took a step forward, stumbled over the stoop he hadn't realized was there, waved his arms a bit and regained balance. He turned, raised a fist at the bar and yelled something--it wasn't English, Nick thought, but it didn't sound polite. Jeers and catcalls returned fire, and the drunk began to wobble purposefully back toward the door. It slammed in his face, and for a moment he stood there, dazed, as if he weren't sure what had happened.
Like a bear waking from hibernation, the drunk shook his head and turned again. A passing car caught the man's eyes, casting them a reflective yellow. Nick didn't dare shiver; he didn't dare to breathe.
Then the drunk shuffled a step to the left, and another, rotating by degrees to lumber down the alley toward the open street.
When he had gone, Nick let out the breath he'd been holding and climbed to his feet. He skirted around the shards of broken beer bottle and drew his coat tight around him. Not that it mattered--the wind was intent on piercing every hole and thread-bare spot it could find. Raucous laughter from inside the rat's nest bar reminded him of why the open street was better than the dubious shelter of the alley, and he plunged back into the night.
Most people, Nick thought, did not consider southeast Texas to be very cold, even in the dead of winter. Short of the freak ice storm, he remembered from his school years that temperatures never actually dropped below the twenties. Could have fooled him.
This time of night there weren't many cars about. Nick shuffled down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. He ignored the "Do Not Walk" neons attached to the traffic poles. A car whistled just past him, horn blazing, and he jumped--he hadn't even heard it coming. With a quick look for anything else barreling down the road, he jogged the rest of the way to the corner. Nick tripped over his own feet as he reached safety and pitched head-first into the shadow of a tree.
He grunted when he hit the pavement, arms scraped up where they'd extended to catch his fall. With a groan he pulled himself up, and winced as his knees and elbows protested. Everything was dark--damned dark--for a moment, and then a flickering orange light illuminated a nearby gang mark splashed over the corner of a familiar warehouse. Nick cursed and whirled around to look at the street he'd just crossed.
It was gone.
Only a flickering lamp over a long-forgotten phone booth stood behind him, at the head of an alley he didn't remember entering. Nick looked about him, gulped, and approached the lamp.
The only sound to be heard was the whistle of the sharp winter wind, the dull grumbling of a nearby highway, and the erratic flapping of a flier stapled to the lamp post. Warehouses lined the streets, all dark and empty. A few boasted broken windows, and more gristly graffiti. Nick didn't like the markings, they sent shivers down his back that had nothing to do with the wind. Odds were that this was someone's territory, and he would run into them sooner or later.
He stopped at the lamp post and waited, though he wasn't sure for what.
Take it.
Nick jumped (just barely, he told himself) and looked up. A single star glittered brighter than the others in the night sky. There weren't' enough of them visible that he could see the constellation it was apart of, but he thought it was Taurus. Next to him, the flyer seemed to flap more instantly. An icy blast hit him in the face and Nick yelped.
"Okay, okay!" He ripped the paper from the pole and shoved it in a pocket. "Happy?"
The wind died.
For a long moment, Nick remained standing there, waiting for something to spring upon his back. When it didn't seem inclined to do so, he edged away from the pole and walked away at a fast clip. Never run, he reminded himself, and he could have sworn that he heard laughter.
Night faded to day, faded to night. The neon lights of a Mc D's, and parking-lot lamps illuminated the city's forgotten snoozing on grass dividers and benches. The occasional, rabbit-like employee would scuttle from the back door to the trash bin, confident only because of watchful, never-blinking electronic eyes. First pickings of the bags went to the strongest of the Desperates--the ones so misshapen or hard-fallen that begging no longer worked. No one wanted to help you if you looked like you really needed it.
Nick found a half a Big Mac. The ever-present growl of his stomach silenced whatever guilt had thought to surface when he'd elbowed an old man in the face to get it. Survival of the fittest was relative in their world, but it was still relevant. He scuttled away with his prize and shoved it down his throat as fast as it would go.
Still sucking the grease from his fingers, as well as a healthy portion of dirt, Nick crept away from the fast food joint before the employees could call the cops. They would, inevitably, and he didn't cherish the idea of breaking out of another half-way house. Or would it be juvie, this time? He ducked around the corner of a nearby store and into the darkness of a blind alley. A nearby cat hissed and put her back up, but he turned from her and took a look at the far-side of the dumpster. Seemed as good a hiding place as any, he thought. Stomach reasonably appeased, he drew his jacket around him and let his eyes close.
Crumpled fast-food containers formed a mountain range over the beaten and tattered coffee table. She peered over them, painted lips stretched into a cheesy smile; she looked like a street-walker, or so his dad muttered under his breath.
He muttered a lot of other, nastier-sounding things, and Nick pretended not to hear. They sat on the booze-scented couch and watched as she preened for the cameras. Happy kids playing Little League baseball obscured her for a moment, but over their noise she prattled on about seasonal scores and the weather. Everyone around her laughed as if she were funny.
Then, with a practiced pout, she informed the cameras of a mass murder somewhere in the Middle East. Bloodshed neatly sandwiched between sports and celebrity babies--she'd sat on that very couch and complained when her predecessors had done the same.
His dad got up and lurched to the kitchen. Bottles rattled and something fell. A sharp curse, and Nick winced. He dug himself deeper into the reeking cushions and went still.
The note in his pocket crackled as he sat on it. Nick cleared his blurry eyes and fished it out. A yellow scrap of lined paper made his heart flutter, before it melted into highlighter pink. With a frown he uncrumpled the flier enough to read it.
YOUTH LINK HOTLINE
IT CAN BE HARD TO BE A TEEN.
IF YOU'RE HAVING A ROUGH TIME AT SCHOOL, WITH YOUR PARENTS, OR YOU JUST NEED TO TALK TO SOMEONE--PLEASE, DON'T HESITATE. NO NAMES, NO TATTLING, JUST TALKING.
NO ONE IS EVER ALONE.
A sneer tugged at his lips and he rolled the paper into a ball to toss down the dirty back alley. A hand grabbed his wrist as he raised his arm.
Nick jumped away, stumbled, looked behind him... There was no one near him, but the feeling of fingers against his skin remained. He didn't look. Clutching the paper so hard that it hurt, a few sharp edges poking bloody lines into his palms, Nick fled for the streets beyond.
A corner later, he stopped and stared at the flickering lamp post and the graffiti-covered payphone beneath it.
Nick's stomach rolled. Above him, Taurus pulsated in the orange-brown sky.
One step backward, then another. Nick turned once he'd stumbled over the curb and into the deserted street. He jogged across it, ignoring the fingers that tugged at the end of his pants, the tail of his jacket, and locks of his hair. On the other side, he looked again at the stuttering lamplight and gulped. "Leave me alone," he muttered; he didn't wait for a reply.
The shivering freeway blocked the light of the stars, though not the omnipresent, toxic spill of orange streetlight. He laid with his back to the dirt and weeds, eyes fixated on the orange-black concrete far above. Still panting from his run, Nick shuddered at the feeling of fingers running through his hair. With a careful hand he reached above him until his fingers met the base of the concrete column that supported the monolith.
She was sitting behind him on the bed, her fingers playing with his long brown hair. It was one of the things she'd always loved about him, she said--he had her hair.
A freezing wind slammed through the dusty patch of industrial wasteland and Nick jumped. He blinked as his eyes re-adjusted to the lamplight; the wind died and underneath it he heard humming. A quick look about him found a burning oil drum not too far away, with a mound of jackets standing beside it. Nick pulled himself to his feet and shuffled closer.
The woman looked up when he was a few feet from her make-shift furnace; he stopped and their eyes met.
"Here kitty, kitty." She grinned a snaggle-toothed grin, and gestured to him with two gnarled fingers. When another look around them garnered no cat, Nick decided she meant him. Her grin grew wider, were that possible, and she nodded as she returned both hands to warming at the flames. Nick took a place across the barrel from her and lifted his hands to the heat.
The tiny fire wasn't much in the face of a winter wind, but it was enough. After awhile, the woman laid down a safe distance from the barrel. When Nick was certain she was asleep, he settled down to sit across from her and watched the sun come up. His eyes opened when the sun was far overhead and cars screamed murder above him. Nick rubbed his eye with a gritty hand and frowned at the grass in front of him.
The fire was gone, and so was the barrel. A hot-pink flier laid perfect in their stead, not even ruffled by the tugging of the wind. He picked it up with a trembling hand.
After a quick scan of the front, Nick crumpled it to a ball and threw it away. Ignoring the prick of rocks through threadbare soles, he fled back to the safety of the city at large.
Pink fliers dotted the whole of Houston. They were pasted up in the truck stop bathroom where he stopped to scrub himself clean, and tacked to the electricity poles along Westheimer. A few jay-walked across the street where he stopped to pan-handle. Nick wondered if those kind-hearted souls at Youth Link cared at all about how much they littered.
By late evening he'd scraped together enough change to buy a burger instead of stealing one, and bus fare to another side of town. The Value Menu was the best invention of all time, Nick thought, even as the stares and fidgeting of the McDonald's staff sent him scuttling out the door with his bagged prized.
Eating on the bus wasn't acceptable. He plopped down at the nearest bus stop and shoved the burger into his mouth. An old man joined him a moment later, perching on the other end of the bench, and when he didn't make a move to bother Nick, the boy ignored him. Food, after all, was far more important. So long as the man didn't try to take it from him, he was inconsequential.
Yet a glance at the man raised the hairs on the back of his neck. The geezer's skin was the colour of baked leather, and he bore his years in deep rivulets loosely drawn around his bones. There was something familiar in the set of his jaw, the rancid jacket drawn over his wasting frame, but Nick couldn't place it. He finished his burger as a screech of wearing breaks alerted him to the bus.
"He's your son, too!" The shout from the living room rattled the pictures on the walls. He ducked away from the glow of the open doorway and pressed his shoulder to the wall. "Why is everything he does my fault?"
Laughter met that question, as cold and dry as the winter. "We both know it runs in your family, Benjamin. Your father was the same way."
"My father," the man spat acid, "had early on-set dementia, Helen. He does not!"
"You can't tell me that there isn't something wrong with him! Why are you so blind to it?"
"He has an imagination. Since when is that a crime? You should be proud our son--"
"Proud that our son talks to himself? Proud that he draws his classmates in coffins? Proud that he told his teacher her baby was a bastard?" Something shattered against the wall behind him and he winced away from it. Helen reminded him of a bird--her voice was so shrill it hurt his ears. "No, Benjamin, no. I'm not proud of that! Look at my arms, Ben!"
Nick pulled his knees to his chest and hugged them tight. He wanted to scream but he shoved his fist into his mouth. He heard his father grunt, and his mother hiss. She continued, her voice so tight that Nick could imagine the frown lines sealing themselves in between her eyebrows, "He drew blood this time. I don't know what the fuck his problem was--he didn't want to go to school, so he started screaming and biting when he saw the bus."
"Helen," Benjamin began when the phone rang. "I... just a minute."
"Whatever."
Heavy steps came close to the hallway door. Nick scooted away from it as the cries of the phone cut off, "Hello? Yeah, Ma, I... Yes, Nick's at home. Why--..."
"Kid?" The bus driver demanded and spat onto the concrete. Nick rubbed groggy eyes and groaned, turning his head to look at the shoes beside him. Several of the bus's patrons were gathered around--a flash went off and Nick winced away from the camera phone. Goddamn vultures.
"He's comin' to," someone pointed out as if the people around them were blind. Perhaps they had a point, Nick realized.
With a groan, he pushed himself into a sit and stared at the bench he'd fallen off of. The way his side and head were aching, he hadn't thought to catch himself. One of the women in the crowd muttered something about drug abuse with a snotty sniff of her nose. Behind the bus, a car blared it's horn and screamed profanities through thin plate glass and rusted metal.
A meaty hand grabbed his arm. "C'mon kid," the bus driver drawled and tried to pull him to his feet. Nick slapped the man's hand and scrambled backward as he stumbled to his feet. The people he bumped into yelped and swore.
On his feet again, Nick swayed and the on-lookers gave him room. A woman pulled her child to her and edged toward the steps of the bus. The hairs on the back of his neck lifted as their eyes locked.
"Don't get in the bathtub," he muttered. One of the men nearest him moved to grab his again, and Nick danced away, toward the woman, whose back pressed to the door of the bus. Nick stumbled to a halt in front of her, but his eyes went to the blond child in her grasp. His lips were as blue as his eyes and veins lined his chalk-like skin. "Don't. Don't let her."
"Alright, kid, c'mon." The bus driver frowned as he lumbered closer. "You just hit your head. We called nine-one-one."
If he faced the driver, his back would be to the bus. There were people still on the bus--he could hear them whispering. Nick dodged the driver's attempt at grabbing him, feet thumping against the side walk.
"Kid! Hey kid!" The onlookers called after him. Nick didn't listen. All he could hear were the footsteps in his wake, and the urging from the glittering heavens. Onward, they cried, and onward he ran until he felt like his lungs would burst.
He tripped over the loose laces of his shoes and went sprawling against the pavement. Silence enclosed around him; not the distant broken silence of the city, but a purer, breath-held silence that sent shivers down his spine. Nick carefully pushed himself up and looked through his dirty clumps of brown hair at the stuttering lamppost down the street.
The flier-covered payphone still stood there, beckoning to him, and above it Taurus glowed steady in the gathering night.
Two footsteps behind him, then more to his right.
Nick shoved himself to his feet and put his back to the warehouse wall. Behind him was the old man from the bus station. Looking at him directly, he could see the shiner the old man was sporting on his left eye. Distant memories of a McDonald's dumpster woke in his memory and he winced.
"So yer'a crazy," the old man rasped with a rusted laugh. Two other men had appeared from across the street, and Nick heard another set of footsteps to his right. He hunched his shoulders and stared the old man down. "Still. Even a crazy should have some manners. Maybe we best learn you some."
His mouth opened to make some reply, even he wasn't sure what. It didn't matter, though. One of the men's fist met his jaw and the world dissolved into pain.
It could have been ten minutes, it could have been an eternity later, but eventually they left Nick a pile of bruises and blood on the street corner. The old geezer spat on him, muttering about no-good-kids as the gang slipped back into the seedy underbelly of the night. Nick watched the blood drip a long line from his busted lip to the pavement and concentrated on breathing.
Another gust of icy wind slapped his face. He winced, and when he looked back at his feet he found them covered in highlighter-pink.
Trembling, bloody fingers picked up the flier and Nick lipped the words as he read them once again.
He limped his way to the payphone by degrees, but he made it. The phone cradled against his ear, he ignored the silence on the other end and punched the faded number buttons with his thumb. As it began to ring, he dropped onto his butt and put his back to the booth.
"Youth Link Hotline."
Nick sniffled and rubbed his fist against his nose. He could hear the boy on the other end breathing. His lips moved without sound and he closed his eyes.
"It's okay," the voice startled him out of half-doze. The line of the phone was surprisingly clear; not a hiss, not a pop, just the steady breathing on the other end and the boy's voice. Nick was confident he'd heard it before, he just couldn't place where. "If you aren't ready to talk. We're glad you called."
"Y'don't even know why..." Nick rasped and shook his head. He lifted one hand to rub between his eyes.
"It doesn't matter, right now, where you are or how you got there. You called. That's the hardest part."
Three months ago, Nick would have laughed at this hippie bullshit. Even now, he wanted to spit, to cuss, to scream that this kid didn't know shit. Something in the boy's voice kept him from doing so. It didn't feel as though screaming would help.
Or maybe he was just too tired.
"Sure it is," Nick sighed after a moment. "That's the hardest part."
"Care to offer a different opinion?"
His gaze drew upward to the lights of Taurus, still peeking through the fog of pollution. "Yeah, I do."
Morning light was peeking over the warehouses when Nick hung up the phone. He scrubbed the sleeves of his jacket against his dirty cheeks and picked himself up off the ground. Cars were beginning to appear--lawful citizens on their way to work, without a single care for the dirty kid trudging down the sidewalk. He found himself a dark corner in an alley and curled up to sleep his hurt away.
He woke to someone toeing his leg. "Wakey wakey," a amused voice cooed. Nick frowned and rubbed his eyes open. When the world came back into focus, he found himself faced with three guys around his age staring down at him. That they were all dressed in clean clothing was the first thing that registered. The second was the identical handkerchiefs worn in various ways about their persons. Last was the predatory twist to the smiles they each wore.
The one in the middle nudged his leg again. "So kid, the fuck do you think you're doin?"
"Sleepin'," Nick muttered.
"Oh. Sleepin," the boy nodded. The kick he delivered to Nick's side managed to coincide with a bruise from the night before.
With a yelp, Nick curled up on himself and pushed his back further into the corner. "Damn," the boy laughed, his two cronies chuckling in chorus, "You sure gotta smart mouth for a no-good, slacker, sack of shit, cracker."
They slapped their hands together as if that were a witty put down. "You know where you is, boy?"
Nick dared to raise his head enough to see the kid standing over him. Something inside of him rolled over, like the feeling of being seasick, and he fought the bile that wanted to escape his throat.
"You're on our turf, that's where you is," the kid explained with hand-gestured he'd probably picked up from the Fresh Prince. "And we don't take kindly to no-account, bummin' pansy crackers like you hangin' on our property, ain't that right?"
"Yeah," agreed one of his home-boys. The other pumped his fist.
Encouraged, their spokesman bobbled his head like a dashboard toy. "So this is us givin' you our warning, cause we all nice like that and shit. But we see your raunchy bed-head dreads around here again, and we gonna hafta get mean."
The warning was sealed with another kick before the trio be-bopped their way out of the alley. When he was sure they were gone, Nick groaned and leaned his forehead against his knees. As much as he didn't want to move, he drug him himself to his feet with a groan and shuffled out of the alley.
On the warehouse across the street a fresh tag shone in the afternoon sun, reminding him that this was a place he should have known better than to stop at. "Stupid," he muttered at himself and continued on down the street.
Good ol' Denny's. The waitstaff gave him pathetic looks as he scuttled through to the restroom. Nick couldn't help but notice that for all their pity they still made aplenty room for him to get by. He closed the door behind him and gathered up rough paper towels for a quick wash.
When he came out again, he was pretty sure that he looked at least a little better. With his nose still turning various shades of violet, he couldn't smell anything to be sure. Not that he'd ever smell decently clean again; that was a lost cause.
"Hey kiddo," fingers plucked at his jacket and he yelped, startling the old woman in a power-pink dress and apron. She retracted her hand to her bosom, penciled eyebrows lifting toward her blue hairline. When she smiled it was more genuine than not, and she had pink smeared on her two front teeth. "Why don't you sit down for a bit, huh? Got a corner here with your name on it."
Nick edged a step to the side, till his hip touched the edge of a table. "Don't got any money," he grumbled after a moment.
"Sit," the woman flapped a hand at him, indicating the booth he was standing at. "Don't you worry about that. If I never seen a face in need of some dinner..." She shook her head as if to say that the rest of the sentence was obvious. Perhaps it was. Nick sunk into the booth and buried his head in his arms. It hurt like everything other inch of him, but he didn't mind.
Over the cheesy restaurant music and the hiss of actual patrons, he could hear the waitress bossing the cook about in the kitchen.
"Benny, don't you dare."
"He's a bum! He'll probably rob the joint."
"Don't you talk like that about the boy." The smell of peppermints wafted on the air and the carpet under his naked, dirty feet was shag forgotten from the seventies. "It wasn't his fault what happened with that bitch of yours."
"Mother," Benjamin growled. He raked his hand through his salt-and-pepper crew cut and glared at the weathered kitchen table. "Don't talk about Helen that way. Please."
"I'll talk about her however I damn well please, young man. This is still my house and if you intend to live in it, you'll get used to it." The woman sitting across from him was about as ancient as her table and just as weathered. Her skin looked like wrinkled leather drawn taught over sharp bones, and she still dressed in hand-made clothes that had been patched so many times he wasn't certain what the original fabric had been. A thread-bare shawl was draped across her pointy shoulders and she glared around her beak of a nose at the man she'd raised.
Lines of disapproval gathered at the corners of her mouth as her eyes cut toward his hiding place. Nick ducked back around the kitchen doorway, but he knew that she'd seen him.
"Maybe I don't intend to live in it," Benjamin muttered to his palms.
"Don't be a fool," Grandmother Elenore spat, "I didn't raise you like that and nor did your pa. Didn't raise you to beat your child, either."
"I didn't touch him," Benjamin growled. "I ain't never touched him! Get in here, Nick, we're leaving."
The chair clattered to the floor behind Benjamin and Nick winced. He ducked back around the kitchen doorway in time to watch the screen door hit his father's backside. Elenore snorted and shook her head. One beady eye turned toward him and she reached out to run her claws through his hair. It was down to his butt, now, and tangled as ever.
"This'll be the first to go when you two get settled in," she informed him, "Now get after him, boy."
He jolted upright to the clatter of porcelain on wood. A steaming burger and fries sat in front of him, now, complete with a huge glass of milk. His stomach growled a thank you, but his eyes were drawn up to the waitress standing over him.
"Don't you worry your head over it," the woman winked, "Ain't nothin' bad in there, and ain't no tab to go with it. You eat up."
Nick picked the sandwich up carefully, his eyes still on her. One bite told him it was real. The rest followed on instinct, and the waitress left him to attend paying customers. And if she noticed a few tears sliding down his cheeks when she deposited a slice of chocolate cake beside his elbow she didn't say a word.
Over the next few days the incident was never far from his mind. He lurked near that Denny's like one of the stray cats that dug through their garbage. The waitress would always smile and wave when she caught a glimpse of him, but he didn't dare to go in again. Not with Benny's beady eyes peeking from behind the pick-up window.
The bruises on his body faded by degrees. At some point his nose stopped throbbing, and the swell of his lip seemed to magically fade. When darkness fell, Nick would climb onto the roof and sleep. He felt sure that the waitresses knew he was there but the cops were never called. Three weeks passed in a haze; cars and patrons came and went, and the waitstaff became used to him.
Whatever the lamp post had wanted from him seemed to have passed. Nick was glad of that.
When Spring came to the bayou city, it brought with it a fresh surge of storms and clouds of mosquitoes. He sat on the curb across the street and watched the yellow glow inside the Denny's. The waitress was there again, as she was most nights, and every so often she would glance at him. Nick fidgeted when she did that and tugged his jacket a little more over his head. He smelt like a wet dog, even to himself, and couldn't shake the feeling that he looked like a stray puppy in this weather.
Sometime between the late-dinner and the after-club rush, the waitress donned a raincoat and galoshes, grabbed her umbrella and came marching out into the downpour. Nick's shoulder's tensed when he realized she was coming for him. He glanced down each side of the street, but there was no traffic keep them apart.
"You're going to catch your death," the woman announced as she stopped in front of him. "Now I don't know why you sit out here, but you're comin' in tonight."
One pink-nailed hand stretched out to him and a penciled eyebrow rose in challenge. When Nick stared at her hand too long, she curled her fingers in quick gesture and shoved it a little more in his face.
He caught her eyes again, green and vibrant as spring grass, and let his hand touch hers. A smile stretched across her painted lips and she closed her hand firmly around his. "Good boy. Come on in, now. If you're so worried about your meal, you can scrub some dishes."
Nick let her lead him into the restaurant with the barest of balks at the front door. From the kitchen, Benny glared at him but said not a word when the waitress let go of her hand and gave Nick a push toward the restroom. "Get yourself washed up. I know you know how."
"Yes ma'am," he murmured and did as told. The handful of regulars sitting about the dining room didn't look up, this time. Nick took that as a good sign and let the restroom door close behind him.
His reflection wasn't much different from what it had those few weeks ago. A little less purple, a little more yellow and tan. He tugged a lock of his clumped and matted hair; the itching had long ago ceased to bother him, but the sight of crawlers at the roots made him shudder and blush.
A bang of the door behind him made Nick jump, and the man who had walked in gave him a wary eye. Hunching his shoulders together, Nick eyed his hair again and then grabbed some paper towels.
There wasn't anything he could do about it, he realized, short of chopping it off. What would he use to do that, anyway? After a quick scrub to get the top layer of dirt off, at least of what skin was visible, he peeked back into the restaurant proper.
As if she'd been watching for him, the waitress looked up at that moment and waved him out into the open. Nick kept his head down as he crossed back over to her. Measuring green eyes looked over and she nodded, "That'll do. For now."
"Bev, I can't have him back here," Benny grumbled from the kitchen. "You know that."
"Shush, Ben," the woman scowled, then turned another sweet smile on him. "Well, he's right, of course. But we can change that."
Nick ran his teeth over his bottom lip as he watched her. Maybe it was his expression that made the woman--Beverly, said her name tag--nod at him. "Don't you worry. You'll help me sweep and mop the floors later. I'll get you another dinner, you just stay right here."
"Okay, ma'am," he muttered and settled at the edge of the bench seat.
The next few days passed in much the same fashion. Nick loitered in the parking lot until Beverly called him in. Ben would grumble, and his complaints fell on deaf ears as Nick worked off the meal Beverly paid for. His stomach kept the guilt at bay.
"Nicholas," Beverly said a few days into the odd routine, "I have a few things at the house that need to be done. How are you at cleaning gutters?"
He nodded from where he was mopping up a spilled milkshake, and despite the butterflies in his stomach he got into the car with her after her shift.
It was dangerous to ride in cars with strangers, he knew that, but the driver looked like a nice enough guy. Nick chewed on his lip for a moment before the man leaned across the seat and raised one shaggy blond brow at him. "You want a ride or not, boy?"
Overhead the sky rumbled and a cold blast of hair shot off the highway. Nick shouldered his bag and climbed up into the passenger's side of the big rig. The driver smirked as he set the rig into motion. "So kid," he drawled with a heavy southern twang, "ever drive a stick shift?"
"And we know that God will always take care of us," said the radio as it snapped on. "No matter how dark it gets, his loving arms will always keep us safe."
"How nice," Beverly smiled, "I love this station."
Nicholas shut the car door and belted himself in. He kept his hands knotted on his knees, and if Beverly noticed she didn't say anything. At the end of the ride was ranch-style house in the middle of a rotting suburb with packed gutters, knee-high grass and a platoon of mangy cats mewling at the door.
Beverly lead the march up to the porch as she shook out her keys. "I have a mower, just so you know. It's an old thing, and Henry just isn't able to push it anymore. I keep meaning to do something about this, but there just never seems to be enough time."
"I can." Nick stared at the porch as she looked him over. But he didn't miss her smile.
She left the door open and Nick drifted in after the cats had had a sniff at him. The living room was covered in pink and doilies, and thousands of photographs. Nick shut the door behind him and lifted a picture frame from a side table. A girl about his age smiled on the front steps. She boasted a black eye and split lip, but she seemed happy. Nick put it back between the two frames it'd been beside.
A cough across the room made him jump.
In the light spilling from the kitchen--where Beverly was humming to the sound of a cat food on tin--Nick could see the old man huddled like an ancient turtle underneath a lump of blankets. A walker stood beside him, and the chair he was in let loose an electronic hum as it sat forward another inch. The man, Henry Nick wagered, stuck his head out a little further and squinted at him.
"Bev, you pick up another hussy?"
"Henry, you hush," the woman clucked as she returned to the living room. She set her arms akimbo as she gave her husband an amused glare, then turned those sharp eyes onto Nick. "Nicholas is here to help us with our house, aren't you, dear?"
"Yes ma'am," he frowned and hunched his shoulders as Henry glowered at him.
"Nicholas, huh?" Henry snorted. "Too much hair for a boy."
The stench of peppermints wafted upon the air; his grandmother laughed in his ear. The pile of blankets moved and the TV snapped on again. News channel.
Beverly's fingers tugged at Nicholas' jacket and she lead him into a hallway. More pictures lined the walls here, hundreds of different faces and ages. She leaned into an open doorway and clicked on a light switch. "You can sleep here. I laid out some clothes from Henry's old things, and the bathroom is right inside to the left."
Nick's mouth went dry at the sight of the bed laid out with a pair of flannel pajamas on the end. It looked warm and inviting, but his feet stuck to the floor.
Fingers went up to his hair, plucking at the lumps in it. "Mm," Beverly hummed and sighed. "We may have to shave this, dear."
"Do we have to?" he whispered and one hand lifted to clutch at the locks. Beverly's lips pressed to a line.
After a long moment, she shook her head. "No, we'll work something out. Just get it good and washed up, okay?" He forced his feet to lift and hurried toward the bathroom. Behind him, the bedroom door closed and Beverly's footsteps retreated down the hall. Nick locked the bathroom door before he started the shower.
It took three days to get his hair untangled and cleansed. Three days of mowing, and old leaves, and hot showers. He learned anew to itch when he was dirty and of sleep brought by a full stomach. It was heaven.
In the back of the house there was a garden that needed tending and a garage half fallen-in with a tarp over the roof. Nicholas searched through the junk in the garage to find an old, rust-eaten hoe with which to break the winter-frozen soil.
Each tug on the hoe brought up more soil until what had been solid earth was a churned patch of loam and earthworms. They churned through the upturned soil, as though the ground itself were a living creature. The fat, rubber-like bodies were just a few shades lighter than the dirt that caked their naked bodies; they were far more interesting than the fat-jowled priest lecturing over a dozen tiny caskets. A set of dagger-tipped fingers clutched his hair.
Nick winced and looked up to where the sun obliterated his mother's face. Her finger's squeezed again and tugged until he was forced to face the most recent hole in the ground. A fresh-faced six-year-old stared at him from a blown-up photograph across the cherry wood coffin. Beside it, the boy's mother sobbed against her husband's chest.
Swallowing a lump in his throat, Nick winced at another scrape of her nails. He'd told them not to get onto the bus.
The pile of dirt snickered beneath it's tarp.
"Seeds are in the house."
He looked up to find Henry on the porch, walker held before him. One of the cats circled about the old man's feet, and he nudged it with an ancient slipper. "Bev likes her vegetables fresh."
Henry turned, as if to leave, and then hesitated. He eyed Nick through a pair of thick-framed glasses, before his sight turned down to the upturned soil. "Ain't a bad job."
"My grandmother had a garden," Nick shrugged.
"Did she now." Henry shook his head to some unspoken comment and nudged the cat away again. "Come on, I'll show you the bags."
Careful not to step on the worms, Nick followed Henry into the storage and wash room at the back of the house. In the back corner were a few bags of seeds, each labeled with a picture of the grown plant and a few hand-scratched instructions. Nick knelt before them and picked through to find the right ones for the season. Corn, definitely, and potatoes. Henry stood over him, but didn't offer a word.
When he had the ones he needed, Nick lifted them to carry outside. He passed Henry, and stepped carefully over the cat that had sprawled itself in his path. Outside he began to plot out the lay of the garden.
Corn in the back, furthest from the steps, and potatoes in the front. He'd leave room for tomatoes and carrots and lettuce later in the spring. With the butt-end of the hoe, he punched holes for the seeds.
"Each spot gets three," Elenore grated from her chair, and she slurped a sidecar. "One for us, one for luck, and one for the birds."
The screen door swung shut with a screech and Helen huffed, "I want my son." Her neat curls were frizzed and a hair clip swung from the bottom of the mass, forgotten to impatience.
"That's a new tune," Elenore wheezed a cackle, "Should have considered that a year ago."
"You have no right to keep him anymore. Nicholas, get up. We're leaving."
Nick looked to Elenore, who smiled a dragon's smile. He ducked his head and went back to work. "The boy knows where he belongs," Elenore said and he could hear the grin in her voice. "Run away, Helen. It's what you wanted."
"I'm his mother."
"You're a whore," Elenore put a cigarette between her lips and lit it. "And you want to make the boy into a whore. I won't allow that."
"It is not whoring, it's--"
"Television. Same thing, these days." The puff of smoke through her nostrils only furthered her reptilian appearance, and in a curious twist of the light, her eyes seemed to gleam. "How much are they going to pay you, hm? How much is your son's life worth?"
Nick's fingers clutched at the dirt. A crow landed on the ground beside him and pecked at the seeds by his hands. It looked him in the eye and had no fear. "Fine, Ellen. You'll get your cut."
He hissed, staring down at the blood that dripped down the splintered handle.
"What did you do?" Beverly gasped as she trotted down the porch and through the garden, the cats running before her. She took his wrists in her hands, and he dropped the remains of the handle. The scissors clattered to the tile with bits of his hair, but all that he could see was Helen's horrified face.
"What did you do?" She asked once again as the shock melted away. Her hands tightened about his wrists and she jerked him half off the floor. "You little asshole! How could you?"
One hand let him go to smack across his cheek. Nick knew better than to cry out. He bit his lip until he tasted blood, and stared at the hair-strewn floor.
She shook him like an earthquake, calling his name. He jerked his hands away, stumbling backward. He tripped over something sharp and fell. A roar blasted through his head, deafening him to the outside world. Clamping his hands over his ears, he rolled his face into the dirt as the wind whipped around him like a hurricane.
When it stopped there was nothing but cricket song and a morning chill creeping into his bones.
Nick pulled his shaking hands from his ears and listened to the noiseless night. When nothing further greeted him, he pushed himself up to sit in the dirt. The pieces of handle were scattered nearby and there wasn't a cat in sight.
He frowned at the upturned earth, then turned to face the corpse at his feet. Her eyes were milky now, not green at all, and her face a horrified mask. Beyond her, another figure laid upon a blood-strewn porch. Littered around it were smaller bodies; all still, all staring.
Scrambling backward, Nick stared into those accusing eyes, at the clawed fingers that seemed to reach for him even in death.
That place had always smelt of faintly of decay. It was, in its own way, a comforting smell, for it was all he'd ever known. Pushing aside the door, the mountain of bottles behind it made a tinkling noise as they fell and he winced.
But the man on the mattress never moved.
Nick stared through the bedroom door and considered waking his father. It'd been days since he'd seen the man, he realized with a start. Looking at him now, still lying upon the bed in the same state as the morning before, he began to realize the odor was heavier now. It wasn't just must and alcohol and old food. There was something else.
Something like worms wriggling in dirt.
"No," he muttered and squeezed his eyes shut.
"Yes," whispered the corpse. His eyes snapped open to Beverly crouching translucent before him. Still as a rock, she stared from an inch away. Then her lips split apart, achingly slow, into a giant grin filled with thousands of razor-sharp teeth.
Tears streaming down his face, he found his feet and ran.
Through salt-blinded eyes he found himself lurching down a dark alley. It was strangely familiar, he thought, and far too close to Bev--
Nick swallowed hard and scrubbed his hand over his eyes. He blinked hard until they cleared, then looked up at the lighted head of the alley. A phone booth stood there, ringing. Above it was taped a familiar pink flyer.
Ignoring the tags scrawled on the alleyway, he stumbled forward until he fell against the phone booth. He reached up and took the receiver, putting it against his ear. "Help," he whispered to the other side. "I need help."
There was a long pause on the other end, and then a familiar voice replied, "Where are you?"
He didn't know where the address came from, but he rattled it off without a hesitation. Then the line went dead. Nick shuddered as a hand clamped down on his shoulder.
"Lookit what we got here," a mean voice sneered.
He squared his shoulders and turned to face his punishment. Overhead, the stars twinkled. Karma.
That was what they called it, he thought. Helen said that's what happened, at least. Bad people got their punishment; be it from their own hand or another's. Nick had always wondered if she meant his father, but she never said so.
They stood together, staring out at the audience of the talk show she'd booked for that morning, and he wondered what his karma would be like. Would he rot himself to death, like his dad, or sell himself for money like...
He looked up at his mom, her sharp eyes focused on the producer she'd been fucking. There wasn't any flinching for the word anymore, he'd heard them often enough. She didn't love the man, but he got their foot in the door, she said. Nick had to take care of the rest.
Just walk out there and tell the audience what you know, she said. But what did he know?
Looking at them now, he saw nothing imaginative. Fifty people who'd go of aging, two heaps of twisted metal, and one who was wasting as he sat there. Nick shuddered and turned away. It was the middle of the day and there were no stars to comfort him, but he pulled from his mother and headed for the door anyway.
"Bathroom," he muttered at her and she didn't care; she wouldn't until he wasn't there when she wanted him.
Around the corner and out the back door, already open for a smoking stagehand who could care less that his lungs were already filled with tar.
That was what he was good for wasn't it? Running away.
He landed in a sticky black ooze dripping from the dumpster. The boys laughed, the smoker choking a little on his own dying lungs, and the heaviest set of the lot gave his side another kick. Bored now, they turned and walked off and on their way. Nick hunched into the shadow of the dumpster to remain until they'd gone.
Nick roused from a dizzy sleep to the sound of sneakers on pavement. He flinched away and squeezed himself further into the small shadow of the dumpster. The footsteps paused, then moved a little closer.
"Kid?" said that familiar voice. Hardly daring, he leaned forward just enough to see the boy standing near the head of the alley. He was a dark silhouette against the flickering light of the lamppost, but Nick knew at once it was the kid from the helpline. The kid also seemed to see him, for his stance shifted and he edged closer.
Slowly, as though approaching a wild animal, the boy came. He knelt a few feet from him and reached out a mostly steady hand.
"I can save you," he whispered softly, seeming as unsure of himself as Nick was, "If you want me to."
