they come, Deke?
He coughs and grins. Opens up the worn leather wallet, flips through the little plastic flaps with his driver’s licence, his credit cards. He pulls out a little paper card.
Davis Howe Oceanography, Mullen reads, Davis Howe, CEO. What’s a CEO, Deke?
That’s me, kid. Sole owner and proprietor.
I don’t get it, says Mullen. Why do you have a different name on your Oceanography business card?
Because they really stack the deck against you when you’ve got a name like Deke Howitz. Everybody just thinks you’re some hillbilly. Some real asshole.
So the bank will loan you the money now? The money to buy your submarine?
All I’m saying is that Davis Howe is a lot more likely to get $400,000 from the bank than Deke Howitz is. He puts the card back into his wallet. Now I just have to get my suit cleaned.
Is that the suit you wear to pay your parking tickets?
Yeah, that one.
I thought you had a washing machine in there, says Mullen. I thought you even had a dryer.
Sure, says Deke, but you can’t wash a suit in a washing machine, it gets all rumpled. I’m rumpled enough already. Hey, Mullen, is your dad home? I need to borrow his jerry can. He’s already gone to work, says Mullen. Deke leans on his fence. I need to borrow his jerry can before McClaghan comes around for the rent, says Deke. Just the four-litre would do. He’s already gone to work, says Mullen. Deke goes back into his house. After a while the windows start to steam up.
Hey, buy some lemonade, best on the block. People mostly ignore us. They pull by slowly in cars, their dogs’ faces pressed up against the glass, panting. They walk by reading newspapers or just looking at the sidewalk.
Across the street Mrs. Lampman tugs on the rusty hinge of her mailbox. Hey, Mrs. Lampman, you want some lemonade? She shuffles through her mail, skirt creased, hair frizzy. It’s too cold for lemonade, she says, you should get a coffee pot. Well, Mrs. Lampman, we’re not allowed to drink coffee, and besides, we’ve got the best lemonade, and people love it even if it’s cold. Mrs. Lampman roots in the pocket of her jacket, finds some credit card receipts, a sticky mint, a kleenex, a dollar. Here, give me some lemonade. Hey, Mullen, get Mrs. Lampman some lemonade. Mullen blows a bubble.
Selling lemonade is a lot easier in the summer. In the summer we hardly have to ask people; they cross the street for lemonade, their quarters right out of their pockets. We had a big grasshopper problem this summer, I guess worse than a lot of other years. Grasshoppers all over the lawns and in the gravel, grasshoppers in garden hoses, in dog dishes and mailboxes, trapped underneath newspapers. Anywhere you went you could hear them, scritching and hopping, rattling around like pennies in a jar. All the cars on the street had grasshoppers ground up in their tires. We had to put tinfoil over the lemonade jug and wrap the lemons in cellophane. Grasshoppers jumped on and off the tinfoil, like popcorn.
Mullen’s dad pokes in the black mailbox. Lifts the metal flap. He pulls out a few letters, looks at the addresses. Puts one of them in his mouth and the rest in his back pocket. He takes the letter out of his mouth and tears it in half. Tears it in half again. Stuffs the torn paper in the front of his blue jeans.
Mullen’s dad is probably the tallest guy in town. He comes out of the house, stretching his skinny arms way up above the top of the door frame. He scratches his chin. He puts his hands on his narrow hips and leans backward, rolls his shoulders around.
How’s the old man’s credit?
It’s fifty cents a glass, Dad.
Come on. You know I’m good for it.
Dad, you’ve got a job.
Mullen’s dad sits down on the curb. He takes a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and sticks it in his mouth. Mullen pulls a plastic cup off the stack and digs his tongs into the ice bucket. Takes his dad a cup of lemonade. Then he gets a duotang out from under the bag of sugar and makes a tick on his dad’s tab. Mullen won’t ever let me look at his dad’s tab; I can only guess how big it is. Someday he’s going to pay it, though: a jam jar full of quarters, five-dollar bills tied into lumps with elastic bands. Enough nickels to fill a Thermos. We’ll both buy new bikes, with handbrakes, not the backpedalling kind, when Mullen’s dad pays his tab. Buy every new comic book the week it comes out, with plastic bags so they don’t get sticky and torn up. We’ll skip school and buy slurpees and boxes of Lego, and if they throw us out of school we’ll laugh, on account of our financial security. I think they ought to try and throw us out of school. We’ll just make the lemonade better.
At 8:20 we take down the signs: Lemonade! and No Dogs Please. We take the cooler and the lawn chairs into Mullen’s garage. Mullen’s dad lets us leave the cinder blocks and the plank on the lawn. We go to school.
At school all the Dead Kids from up the hill take off their outside shoes and put on their inside shoes. White with stripes and velcro instead of laces, or high-tops with thick laces that are always clean. Inside the school it’s dark and hard to see, especially after having been outside for so long. Kids move around in the dark like they’re underwater, bubbles rising from their yappy mouths.
Today I figure the whole school is underwater and all the Dead Kids are jellyfish, and you can’t touch a jellyfish ’cause you’ll get stung, see. Good thing I’ve got my snorkel and my flashlight. I figure some conquistadors must have sunk around here somewhere. Jellyfish come close and I duck and pivot like they taught us in basketball. Jellyfish stare at me with their buggy jellyfish eyes, floating on stalks in the murky water. A bell rings, it must be a fishing lure; all the jellyfish start floating off in the same direction. I bet it’s a trap, I bet there’s nets and harpoons waiting down the hall. They clog up the hall, all their oozy tentacles get caught up into one big jelly lump. I bob along behind them, breathing through my snorkel, in, out. Far enough behind that when the fishing starts, I won’t get trampled if they panic. I wonder if jellyfish panic when harpoons start sticking into their crowd, when brother and sister jellyfish get hauled up all of a sudden, out and away. Or maybe they just bob along stupid-like, waiting, bubbling, not knowing any better, until the harpoon gets them right square.
Pete Leakie sits on the sidewalk, legs spread out, drawing with chalk. Hey Pete, what are you doing? Drawing, he says. He rubs a stub of chalk into the grainy concrete. A house, with orange flames, and people sitting on the roof. Are they yelling, Pete? They’re laughing, he says. See? See all the smiles? Why’s the house on fire, Pete? Pete shrugs.
Pete reaches into his knapsack, blue and full of holes, reaches in and gets some green chalk. Starts drawing green circles above the house. Where’s Mullen? asks Pete. Mullen’s at home, I say, doing the dishes. Mullen’s dad makes him do the dishes? Sure, I say, every night after supper. Pete starts drawing green X’s inside the green circles. What are you drawing now, Pete? Well, the house is on fire, says Pete.
Pete wears sweaters and glasses and has two chins. There’s yellow chalk smudged in his black hair, and chalk handprints all up and down his overalls. Chalk on the arms of his black-rimmed glasses. Last year, when Mullen and I got sent up for putting wallpaper paste on all the shower floors at school, Pete brought us potato chips in the detention room. Pete Leakie isn’t a Dead Kid. He’s all right.
Pete shuffles backward on the concrete; he sticks a piece of blue chalk into his mouth and creases his forehead up all critical-like, examining his work.
Do
