Chapter 18
STONES OF A RUINED CASTLE
Each day for the next week, after my morning calls with Pops, I went up to the tree house expecting to see Buzzy rocking on the porch, reading a dirty magazine or planning some other dangerous adventure—we still hadn’t been to the Telling Cave, and any diversion from thinking about Mr. Paul’s murder would have been welcome.
However, the rocker stayed empty and the tree house remained deserted. Finally, on a hazy, torpid Saturday, I decided to walk over Kinder Mountain into Fink’s Hollow to find him.
I left Chisold Street after lunch, passed through town, and paused at the alley behind Miss Janey’s. It had been scrubbed clean, as if the town wanted to remove all traces of what had happened there only a week ago. The old rack of empty hangers had been hauled away; the desk with missing drawers had been taken to a dump. Mr. Paul’s blood had been sprayed off the cement, his teeth swept into the gutter to be taken by the next rain.
I continued down Green Street, across the railroad tracks, and up the hill toward the tree house. “Hey, Buzzy,” I called when I got within shouting range. No reply. “Hey, tree house.” Nothing. This time I decided to climb up to the porch in case he had left a message or some sign for me. The front door was locked up tight and the porch was covered with a week of acorns and squirrel droppings, a spiderweb in the seat of the rocker. I cleared the web and sat down to ponder Buzzy’s whereabouts. Was he busy helping out in the hollow? Was he angry at me for accusing him of lying? It had been so long since I’d had a real friendship, the idea of it slipping away made me feel more alone than ever. I had to find out why he was avoiding me. I worked my way down the tree and followed the slight trail up the ridge of Kinder Mountain. A half hour later I was inching my way down the steep track that led into Fink’s Hollow.
The place was quiet as the collection of barnyard animals lazed in the early afternoon heat. Two cats were languidly batting paws; the big pig was eating the tongue out of an abandoned shoe. On the porch of Giggins Hoo sat Esmer Fink rocking back and forth in his hand-hewn rocker. His one tooth glistening white against his darkened gums and the darker porch shade.
“Excuse me, sir, I’m—”
“I know who y’are, I ain’t senile yet,” he said, not breaking stride on his rocking.
“Is Buzzy here? I just came by to say hi.”
“He ain’t here.”
“Is he out of town or something?”
“He’s there,” Esmer said, pointing at Buzzy’s father’s house on the other side of the compound. He grinned at his ready wit and kept on rocking.
I walked over to the house, a simple one-story rectangular structure with gray siding chipped and patched in places. It was the second-largest of the twelve houses in the hollow and appeared as old as Giggins Hoo itself. The front porch was poured concrete with a wrought-iron railing.
I knocked and Mrs. Fink emerged from the darkened room, peering suspiciously through the screen door. The silvery haze of the screen seemed to smooth her hard years in the hollow. She opened the door and aged a generation before my eyes, her face reading like old newsprint: sideways quotations around her eyes, double parentheses enclosing her mouth, and an exclamation point in the folds of her forehead.
“You’re the Peebles boy,” she said in her hollow clip. “Come on in… Buzzy’s in the bedroom with his daddy. You go on back.” She returned to the kitchen.
It is always strange going to a friend’s house for the first time, as if you are invading a secret world they try to keep apart from you. Buzzy’s world was simple and clean. Three old, handmade coil rugs covered the unvarnished pinewood floor. Two tattered sofas, one covered with a patch quilt, the other naked and thin, squared the room. Black-and-white photos of the family and the hollow storied the off-white walls. A large stuffed buck head with a crown of antlers watched the room from its position over the cast-iron woodstove; under it hung a large rifle with a black scope. The buck’s dead eyes seemed to follow me across the room.
Next to the woodstove was an old brown La-Z-Boy recliner. I followed voices into the back room. Buzzy’s father was sitting on the edge of the bed, back straight, collarbones at attention. His skin hung on him like someone else’s suit, as if the pith and marrow of his once powerful frame had been sucked out, leaving a haggard, poorly fitted husk. His blond hair was striped with occasional gray, which made his miner-white skin seem almost transparent. His breathing was ragged, urgent. He looked up at me with miner’s eyes.
Buzzy was clearly taken aback by my arrival. “What are you doin here?” he asked. His usual friendly tone was suspicious, questioning.
“I haven’t seen you around and I was up at the tree house, so I thought I’d just walk over the mountain and see how you are doing.”
“I’m helpin my daddy to his sick chair is how I’m doin,” he said and carefully held his father’s thin upper arms as he tried to stand. Mr. Fink was wearing worn-out blue pajamas; on his long, thin feet were dirty white hospital slippers. He shuffled one foot forward, then another. Buzzy grabbed the handle of an oxygen trolley and pulled it forward—one wheel squealed and shuddered like a bad shopping cart.
I backed out of the room to give them space. Isak Fink’s condition stunned me to silence. I imagined the way he must have been before—the way Buzzy surely would be. Tall and thick; jagged face, powerful arms and shoulders; sturdy legs and a purposeful stride. I saw it all in that single instant the way you can sometimes see the past in the stones of a ruined castle—the glorious battles, the inexhaustible feasts, the confident knights. Now he just seemed old and rubbled. His hands were chiseled and cracked as if years in the dim mines had layered on a translucent yellow film, like old surgical gloves, over his white bones.
Mr. Fink watched each foot slide forward as if walking was some new form of transport requiring extreme powers of concentration. “We’re almost there, Daddy,” Buzzy said gently. “Jus a few more steps is all.”
He paused after every other step and breathed in long and slow through the hose attached to his nostrils. Buzzy attended his father patiently, mirroring his small steps and waiting as he caught his breath. Finally they arrived at the La-Z-Boy. Buzzy positioned the oxygen bottle at the side of his chair, then held both arms as Isak eased his back to the seat. Slowly, with Buzzy guiding him, he lowered himself into the recliner and let out a long, labored breath as he settled into it.
Buzzy’s brother, Cleo, came out of another bedroom holding a football. “Hey, Peebles kid,” he said when he saw me.
“His name is Kevin,” Buzzy said with a splash of anger.
Cleo laughed. “Easy, my man, I’m jus jokin. How are you this fine mornin, Kevin?” he said with an exaggerated bow.
“Good. Just came over to see Buzzy.” For some reason I felt like an intruder who needed to explain his presence.
“Hey, Buzz,” Cleo said and tossed the football to him. “Shag some balls for me?”
“Can’t, man. Kevin an me are doin somethin.”
“Come on, Buzz, I need you to shag. I’ll let you throw some.”
“Why don’t you get Tilroy to shag. Looks like you an him is tight now.”
Cleo stood silent for a moment, looking at his brother quizzically.
Suddenly from the chair came a raspy voice, almost a whisper. “Buzz, you be helpin your brother train, now.” A wheezing cough. “Only thirteen days to camp.”
Buzzy’s face hardened and he followed Cleo wordlessly out to the yard.
In a forty-yard space behind the house, Cleo had set up a makeshift football training ground with white spray-painted lines, old tires hanging from trees, a single lashed sapling goal post. He had fashioned a zip line across the end zone with a pulley system that whizzed an old tire along the line like a crossing receiver. He positioned me on the sideline and put a rope in my hand. “Kevin,” he said. “You pull the line in quick an Buzz’ll shag. You ready?”
“Ready,” I said.
Buzzy nodded unenthusiastically.