Lost Boys: A Novel Page 3

  The doorbell rang.

  “Geez louise,” said Step.

  “You’ve got to go,” said DeAnne. “Stevie’ll be all right, you’ll see. Right, Stevie?”

  “Right,” said Stevie softly.

  Step kissed Stevie on the cheek and then Betsy was saying “Me too me too” and he kissed both the other kids and then grabbed his case and headed for the front door.

  DeAnne tried to reassure Stevie. “I’m sorry, but this is how your dad is earning the money we live on now, and he can’t very well . . .”

  “I know, Mom,” said Stevie.

  “We’ll head for school and you’ll meet the principal and . . .”

  Step strode back into the kitchen. “I explained to him that we had a crisis and tomorrow he’ll find me waiting on the curb for him, but today I’m going to be late. Got to take my son to second grade.”

  DeAnne was half delighted, half appalled. She knew perfectly well that in his own way, Step dreaded going back to an eight-to-five job as much as Stevie dreaded starting a new school. “This’ll really impress ’em, Junk Man,” she said, smiling grimly. “Missing your car pool and showing up late on your first day.”

  “Might as well get used to the idea that I’m a father first and a computer manual writer eighth.”

  “What comes between first and eighth?” asked Stevie, who was obviously delighted.

  “Everything else,” said Step.

  “You’d better call,” said DeAnne.

  Step got on the phone and she knew at once that it wasn’t working the way he had so glibly assumed it would.

  “Bad,” he said when he was done. “They have a staff meeting at eight-thirty and they were planning to introduce me there and everybody has sort of scheduled everything around my being there on time this morning.”

  “But now your ride is gone,” DeAnne pointed out, trying not to be mean about it.

  Step was kneeling by Stevie’s chair again. “I can’t help it, Door Man.”

  “I know,” said Stevie.

  “I tried,” said Step. “But the family really needs me to keep this job, especially since we moved all the way to North Carolina so I could get it.”

  Stevie nodded, trying to look game about the whole thing.

  “I do my job for the family,” said Step, “and you do yours.”

  “What’s mine?” asked Stevie. He looked hopeful.

  “Toughing it out and going to school,” said Step.

  Apparently he had been hoping for an alternate assignment. But he swallowed hard and nodded again. Then he thought of something. “How will you get there now that your ride is gone?”

  “He’ll fly,” offered Robbie.

  “No,” said DeAnne, “that’s your mother the witch who knows how to fly.”

  “I guess we’ll all pile into the car together and you’ll take me to work on the way to taking you to school.”

  “Couldn’t you take me to school on the way to taking you to work?” asked Stevie.

  “Sorry, Door Man,” said Step. “That would be backtracking. Geography is against it. The clock is against it. All of time and space are against it. Einstein is against it.”

  When they got to Eight Bits Inc., Step leaned into the back seat and kissed Stevie good-bye, and even though Stevie was well into the age where parents’ kisses aren’t welcome, this time he made no fuss. While Step was giving Robbie and Elizabeth the traditional noisy smack, DeAnne looked over the one-story red-brick building where Step was going to be spending his time.

  It was one of those ugly flat-roofed things that businesses build when they have only so much money and they need walls and a roof. That was actually a good sign, because it suggested that the owner of the company had no delusions of being in the “big time,” spending all the company’s cash from the first hit programs on gewgaws that would mean nothing at all when slack times came. If only we’d been so careful, thought DeAnne, when the money from Hacker Snack started flowing in. Not that we spent it on nothing. A Ph.D. in history, that was something. And helping out family here and there. And a beta-format VCR for which they could not find rental tapes in Steuben, North Carolina.

  “Bye, Fish Lady,” said Step.

  “Good luck, Junk Man,” said DeAnne.

  She watched him go into the building. He was striding boldly, almost jauntily. She liked the look of him, always had. He exuded confidence without ever looking as if he wanted to make sure everyone else knew how confident he was, like a salesman who had memorized a book on power walking. But this time she knew that, for once, his confidence was a lie. Just walking into this building spoke of failure in Step’s heart, despite the fact that the top people at Eight Bits had been so impressed that Step Fletcher himself had actually applied for a job with them. The very fact that they were so impressed was really a symbol to Step of how far he had fallen—he was now working for the kind of company that would never have imagined they could get someone as accomplished in the field as he was.

  “Am I going to be late, Mom?” asked Stevie.

  Step was inside the building now, and there was no reason to wait. DeAnne put the car in gear and pulled off the shoulder, onto Palladium Road. “You were going to be late getting into class no matter what,” she said. “We have to go by the principal’s office and sign you in.”

  “So I’ve got to walk in right in front of everybody,” he said.

  “Maybe the door will be in the back of the room,” said DeAnne. “Then you’ll be behind everybody.”

  “I’m not joking, Mom.”

  “It’s scary, I know,” she said. “But the principal is really nice, and I’m sure she’s picked out a wonderful teacher for you.”

  “Can’t I just meet the principal today and then come to school tomorrow at the regular time?”

  “Stevie, the other kids are going to notice that you’re new, no matter what. And if you just showed up tomorrow, how would you know where to sit? You’d end up standing there feeling like an idiot. By going in today, you’ll get a seat assigned to you right away and people will explain to you the things you need to know.”

  “Still.”

  “Stevie, there’s a law that says we have to have you in school.”

  “Wow,” said Robbie. “You could go to jail for letting Stevie stay home?”

  “Not really. But we abide by the law in our family.”

  “Daddy doesn’t,” said Robbie. “He drives too fast all the time.”

  “Your father thinks the speed limits all mean ‘give or take ten miles per hour.’”

  “Will they put Daddy in jail?” asked Robbie.

  “No. But they might take his license away.”

  “They almost did once before, didn’t they?” asked Stevie.

  “Your father had a year of probation once,” said DeAnne. “But it was before any of you kids were born. He really is an excellent driver, and he always drives safely.” Not for the first time, DeAnne wondered whether Step would change his driving habits if he could actually hear how the kids noticed his speeding. It was hard enough teaching children right from wrong without having to include ambiguities, like laws that Daddy felt he didn’t have to obey because he didn’t speed fast enough to get tickets. She could see herself explaining to her kids when they got to be teenagers and started dating, Now, you’re supposed to be chaste, which means that you can do whatever you want as long as you don’t do anything that will get somebody pregnant. But Step couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see the relationship between traffic laws and the commandments. “Laws of men and laws of God are two different things,” Step always said, “and our kids are all smart enough to know the difference.”

  Ah well. Marriage meant that you had to live with the fact that your spouse’s foibles would rub off on the kids. She knew how it annoyed Step that the kids had inherited her attitude toward shoes—they just couldn’t keep them on their feet. Step was always walking into a room and either stepping on somebody’s shoes, tripping over them, or—when he
noticed them soon enough—placekicking them into the hall or putting them under the offender’s pillow. “The difference between civilized people and barbarians,” he would say, “is that civilized people wear shoes.” Step had to live with barefoot barbarians, and DeAnne had to answer questions about why Daddy broke the law all the time. Not exactly a fair trade—she couldn’t see that there were any moral implications to bare feet—but she lived with it, grumbling now and then, and so did he.

  To get to Western Allemania Primary School you had to drive past the high school, also called Western Allemania. Yellow buses had been herded into a large parking lot, waiting for the end of the school day. What she liked least about sending Stevie to this school was that the little kids had to ride the same buses as the high-schoolers—and the drivers were high school students, as well. The idea of a seventeen-year-old having the responsibility for not only keeping all the children on the bus alive, but also maintaining discipline—well, what could she do? The principal had looked at her oddly and said, “Mrs. Fletcher, that’s the way we do things in North Carolina.”

  She drove down the hill into the turnaround in front of the school. Before and after school the turnaround was reserved for buses—parents who were picking up their kids had to drive on a completely different road to a small parking lot at the top of a hill about two hundred yards from the school and wait for their kids. She pointed out the hill to Stevie as she was getting Elizabeth out of her booster seat. “Whenever I pick you up, you go up that stairway leading to the top of that hill. I’ll be there for you.”

  “OK,” said Stevie.

  “And if something ever happened, like the car breaking down, and I’m not there, then you head right back down to the school and go straight to the principal’s office and wait there until I come in and get you.”

  “Why can’t I just wait up there?” asked Stevie.

  “Because this isn’t a safe world,” said DeAnne. “And what if somebody comes to you and says, ‘Your mother asked me to pick you up and take you home’?”

  “I don’t go with them.”

  “There’s more to it than that, Stevie.”

  “I get away from that person right away and head straight for the nearest person in authority.”

  “At school that means Dr. Mariner. And if you’re not at school?”

  “If the person is following me then I don’t hide, I run right out into the open, where there are the most people, and if he comes near me I scream at the top of my voice, ‘He’s not my father!’ Or ‘She’s not my mother! Help me!’”

  “Very good.”

  “I know all that, too,” said Robbie.

  “I know I know,” said Betsy.

  “I wish I didn’t have to teach you things like this,” said DeAnne. “But there are bad people in the world. Not many of them, but we have to be careful. Now, what if I really did send somebody to pick you up, because maybe there was an accident and I had one of the other kids at the hospital or something?”

  “The password,” said Stevie.

  “And what is it?”

  “Maggots,” said Stevie.

  “Little oozy baby fly worms!” yelled Robbie. Step had thought up the password, of course.

  “Quiet, Road Bug, this is serious,” said DeAnne. “And do you ask them about the password?”

  “No. I don’t even tell them that there is a password. But I never go with anybody unless he says, ‘Your parents told me to tell you Maggots.’”

  “Right,” said DeAnne.

  “If they don’t say that, then they’re a liar and I refuse to go and I scream and scream if they try to take me anyway.”

  “Right,” said DeAnne.

  “Mom,” said Stevie.

  “What?”

  “What if nobody hears me scream?”

  “You should never be in a place where nobody can hear you yell for help, Stevie,” she said. “But please don’t worry too much about this. If you do all that you’re supposed to, I’ll do all that I’m supposed to, and so nothing will go wrong. OK?”

  “Mom, I’m scared to go in.”

  Great, thought DeAnne. And I just went through a kidnapping-prevention catechism, to add a whole new layer of terror to the day. “Come on, Stevie. Dr. Mariner is a wonderful kind lady and you’ll like her.”

  Dr. Mariner did have a knack for putting kids at ease, and within a few moments Stevie was smiling at her and then laughing when she told a joke. But the fear returned when, after only a few minutes in the office, Dr. Mariner took Stevie by the hand and said, “Let’s go to class now.”

  Stevie withdrew his hand and immediately rushed to stand by DeAnne. “Can’t Mom walk me to class?”

  “Certainly she can, if she wants,” said Dr. Mariner. “Your teacher’s name is Mrs. Jones. That’s an easy name, right?”

  “Mrs. Jones,” said Stevie. He repeated the name several times, under his breath. Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones.

  DeAnne let Dr. Mariner lead the parade through the corridors, for all the world like a tour guide. She pointed out where the kindergarten and first-grade classes were, and then brought Stevie along to the vestibule that Mrs. Jones’s classroom shared with another. It was time for Stevie to go into the class. He clung tighter to DeAnne’s hand.

  “Do you really want your mother and brother and sister coming into class with you on the first day?” asked DeAnne.

  Stevie shook his head violently.

  DeAnne shifted Elizabeth’s weight on her hip and squatted down beside him. “Sometimes you just have to drink the cup,” she said.

  He nodded, remembering. It was when he was only three and had a bad stomach flu, and didn’t want to drink the prescription Tylenol syrup that she had to give him to help bring the fever down. Step had knelt beside his bed and told him the story of Christ praying in Gethsemane. Sometimes you just have to drink the cup, Step had said then, and Stevie had drunk it without another murmur.

  It worked the same way now. He tightened his face and nodded to show that he understood. Then he turned and walked through the door that Dr. Mariner was holding open for him. His stride was so like Step’s had been earlier today, trying to be brave. DeAnne felt a lump in her throat for both of them.

  Inside the classroom, there were immediate cries of “New boy! New boy!” She caught a glimpse of the teacher, Mrs. Jones, who was turning without enthusiasm to look in Stevie’s direction. Then Dr. Mariner swung the door shut.

  3

  GALLOWGLASS

  This is the company where Step worked: Ray Keene had been the computer systems guy at UNC-Steuben when the Commodore 64 started showing up in Kmarts. Ray saw right away that it was the 64 that was going to put computers in every home in America, if somebody had the brains to come up with cheap software so people could do something with the machine. Commodore sure wasn’t coming up with the right combinations—in Ray’s opinion all the software they offered was second-rate and way too expensive. So he came up with Scribe 64 and sold it for twenty-nine bucks, discounted to nineteen bucks including postage if you ordered it direct from Eight Bits Inc.

  There were a couple of bad times early on. Right at first, Ray’s lack of business experience nearly killed the company—he was paying so much for packaging that in fact he was actually losing 22c with each unit sold. So when he ran out of that first run of a thousand boxes, he began shipping in a much smaller box with no printing on the outside, just a sticker that said “The only word processor you’ll ever need—$29” and began making four dollars a unit. It sold even faster, and the profit per unit got even better, and one day his wife said, “Ray, I got no house left, it’s all Eight Bits Inc. Either me and the kids move out or the company does.”

  That’s when Ray Keene bought the ugly building on Palladium. It had originally been a climate-controlled clean shop for the assembly of calculators in the mid-70s, but it had been standing empty for a couple of years and the owner sold it to Ray at a price that said he was just glad to get it off his hands. Ray had
the whole thing rewired and half the big factory space cut up into offices. There weren’t any windows and the place was ugly but everybody in the company, which was up to ten employees by then, was so happy to have enough room to turn around that they loved it like a mama loves an ugly baby.

  When Step came down for interviews six weeks before, all he got from everybody was that sense of exuberance and excitement. But this first day at work there was something else. Ray Keene had remodeled his office since Step was there before, and it showed signs that Ray had apparently read that book about power that was on the lists the year before. Ray now sat behind a massive desk in a rock-back chair while all the chairs that visitors had to sit on were hard and too low and didn’t have enough space from front to back, so that you always felt like you were sitting on the edge of the seat because, in fact, you were.

  “You won’t report to me,” said Ray. “I’ve made Dicky Northanger the vice-president in charge of the creative end of things, and you’ll report to him, but send me memos from time to time. We’ll be hiring an assistant for you as soon as we can, but for now all the manuals for all our software will come through you, but pass it all by Dicky for final approval.”

  Dicky Northanger was the guy who used to do all the manuals. He was the first person Ray Keene had hired, and he and Ray were now great buddies, going every Sunday afternoon to pick up the New York Times at the Magazine Rack bookstore. He was genial, heavy-set, and middle-aged, probably the oldest man in the company, and Step didn’t see any problem with reporting to him. But he felt a vague sense of disappointment, since the job had been represented to him as one that would report directly to Ray. Of course Ray couldn’t have everybody report to him, but the company only had twenty-five employees right now, and it seemed weird in a company that size that Step was already being told that he was not to contact Ray except by memo.

  After Step met with Ray alone for that half hour of physical discomfort, they went straight on in to a staff meeting, where the new health plan was explained to everybody and, as an incidental at the end, Step and a new guy in the art department were introduced around. Dicky introduced him, and Step was a little embarrassed when Dicky made a great point of talking about what a genius Step was for having programmed Hacker Snack—and then, even more embarrassing, he pointed out to everyone in excruciating detail that Step would report only to him, and that while Step must have access to every programmer at every stage of development of all software, he had no authority over anyone and no one was to ask him for advice about anything to do with programming. Step was here solely to write manuals.