Lost Boys: A Novel Read online

  Step was in the grocery store when an insistent voice started calling out, “Brother Fletcher! Brother Fletcher!” It startled him, to hear himself called Brother outside of church. Most Mormons were a bit more discreet than that. Then he saw it was Sister LeSueur, and he understood.

  “How is that lovely family of yours doing, Brother Fletcher?” she asked.

  “Just fine,” he said.

  “I’ve been praying for your family every day,” she said. “And I dedicated my Thursday fast to your little baby last week. I fast every Thursday, you know.”

  “Thanks for thinking of us,” said Step, eager to get away from her. She was speaking so loudly. She must want something from him, but he couldn’t guess what it might be.

  “I received a witness that you are indeed special unto the Lord,” she said.

  “How kind of him to tell you that,” said Step. He glanced past her down the aisle, to see if anyone had been attracted by the noise. No one was even there. Or behind him, either. They had the canned soup section all to themselves.

  “But there must needs be a time of testing first,” said Sister LeSueur. “That’s what your dear little baby is all about.”

  Step felt anger well up inside. How dare she attempt to co-opt Zap’s tenuous little life. “I think Zap’s life is going to be about himself,” said Step. “Just like any other child.”

  She reached out and touched his arm, beaming. “You are so right, Brother Fletcher. It must be wonderful, to be blessed with so much insight from the Spirit.”

  “I really have to get the shopping done and get home, so . . .”

  At the end of the aisle, a woman was standing, watching them. Step knew her, but he couldn’t place her. Was she somebody from Eight Bits?

  “Don’t you think it’s time for you to bless your child?” asked Sister LeSueur.

  “Don’t you think that’s a matter for me and DeAnne to decide?” No, the woman wasn’t from Eight Bits. It was Mrs. Jones. He hadn’t recognized her immediately last time, either, when they met in the drugstore back when Zap was still in the hospital. She was so nondescript.

  “The Lord expects us to act boldly and with faith, Brother Fletcher,” Sister LeSueur said. “That’s what I was told in my dream. The blessing is yours by right, if only you have faith enough to demand it. Like the time I was urgently needed to perform compassionate service. There had been an ice storm the night before, and yet I didn’t have time to clear the ice off my car. So I told the Lord that if he wanted me to perform this service in his name, he would need to clear my windshield so I could drive. And when I came outside, mine was the only car that didn’t have two inches of ice encasing it.”

  Mrs. Jones’s gaze never wavered. She thinks I’m stalking her, thought Step. With a cart full of groceries and a list in my hand, she thinks I’m here just to pester her.

  “The Spirit spake to me in a dream and told me that it’s time for Brother Fletcher to claim a healing blessing from the Lord.”

  “We ask for blessings,” said Step. “We don’t demand them.”

  ““I the Lord am bound when ye do what I say,’” she quoted. “Bind the Lord, Brother Fletcher, bind him and heal your child. You are holding his sweet little soul hostage to your pride, saith the Lord.”

  Saith Dolores LeSueur, Step answered silently.

  “You must bend yourself to the will of the Lord, and cease rejecting his word to you. Do you pay your tithing faithfully?”

  Still Mrs. Jones stood there. If only I had the tape with me, I could throw it at her and make her stop watching every move I make. He smiled at Sister LeSueur, thinking: I’m faking a smile. Mrs. Jones is watching me like that song by The Police.

  “Go unto your child, lay your hands on his head, and command him to rise up and walk!”

  “That would be a miracle,” he said. “He’s barely two months old.”

  It was as if he had dashed cold water on her. “I know that,” she said. “I was sure you would understand that I spoke figuratively.”

  I’m sure you’ll understand that I speak figuratively when I tell you to go sit on a broom handle and spin. “Sister LeSueur, I appreciate your advice. Now I need to finish my shopping.” He swung his cart around to head down the aisle away from Mrs. Jones. But Sister LeSueur caught at his sleeve.

  “Brother Fletcher, you cannot resist the Lord forever.”

  He turned to face her. “I have never resisted the Lord in my life, Sister LeSueur, and I never will. But I’m not so hungry for dialogue with him that I have to make up his part as well as my own.”

  Her voice got a hard edge. “Beware of how the Lord will chasten you for your pride.”

  This would be the perfect moment for Mrs. Jones to pull a gun out of her purse and shoot me dead. Sister LeSueur could live off that one event for the rest of her life. But Mrs. Jones wasn’t there anymore. She had slipped away while his back was turned.

  ‘“I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children,” said Sister LeSueur.

  He pushed his cart away from her. In one moment he had played out in his mind the whole scene of his death at Mrs. Jones’s hand. It had been so vivid that he could now remember moments of it as if he had actually seen them. The gun coming out of her purse, pointing at his chest—he could have reached out and touched the cold metal. Was that how Stevie’s imaginary friends were to him? How Sister LeSueur’s visions were to her? Never there in reality, and yet when they came back in memory, so real-seeming.

  “‘Unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,’” said Sister LeSueur.

  He turned the corner at the end of the aisle, leaving Sister LeSueur’s vengeful doctrine behind him. He quickly propelled the cart through the store, weaving among the other shoppers as if on the freeway. It took a while before he realized that he was no longer running away from Sister LeSueur, he was looking for Mrs. Jones. Because she had been watching him. Because she had made him think of the song. He had to know.

  She wasn’t down any of the aisles. She wasn’t in the checkout lines. Abandoning his cart, Step rushed out of the store and scanned the parking lot. There she was, walking briskly among the cars. He hurried after her.

  Perhaps he should have called to her, but he was afraid that she would run away, since she already thought he was stalking her. As it was, when he caught up with her, just as she was putting her key in the door of the Pinto, she gave a little scream.

  Step made sure to stay well away from her, his hands in plain sight.

  “Mrs. Jones, I wasn’t stalking you. I was grocery shopping.”

  She said nothing.

  “But are you stalking me?” he asked.

  Her lip curled in contempt.

  “You sent me that record, didn’t you?”

  Her face went blank. “What record?”

  “By The Police. That song about watching. Someone mailed it to our house.”

  “I don’t even know where you live.”

  “We’re in the book,” said Step, “so don’t be absurd. Just tell me if you sent it.”

  She smiled. “So,” she said. “You don’t like knowing that somebody’s watching, is that it?”

  “I never dealt with you anonymously, Mrs. Jones.”

  “I didn’t mail you anything, Mr. Fletcher,” she said, “so it must have been one of the other people you’re blackmailing.”

  “Nobody else has persecuted any of my children,” said Step.

  “So you think it’s me. You blame one more problem in your family on a woman who isn’t even your son’s teacher anymore.”

  She’s enjoying this, he thought. She loves knowing that I’m really bothered by that anonymous record. Just as with Stevie, she loves to make somebody else squirm.

  “Your lawyer never called me about a restraining order,” said Step.

  She shrugged.

  “But Captain Douglas of the Steuben police thinks that the fingerprints on the envelope the record came in should be enough to make a pos
itive identification that will stand up in court.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said.

  “Wore gloves, huh?” he asked. “But you didn’t wear gloves when you licked the stamp and pressed it onto the envelope.”

  The stricken look on her face would have been answer enough. Her sudden relaxation a moment later confirmed it.

  “That was a relief, I see,” said Step.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “Remembering that you had the guy at the post office meter it.”

  Her face revealed her inner struggle. Had she really let him know that she sent it, or was he bluffing?

  “You never thought I was stalking you,” said Step. “You’ve known all along that you were the one watching me. So I’m telling you now, stop it. I’ve already given your name to the police as a possible sender of that record. They’re watching you. So it’s time for you to leave me and my family alone.”

  “Leave you alone!” She sounded defiant, but his mention of the police had clearly bothered her.

  “We’ve done you no harm. I could have reported what you did to the school board and sued the school district and you personally for what you did to Stevie. Your name could have been in all the papers. Instead I tried to be decent and handle it privately. Be grateful for that and stop looking to get even.”

  “Grateful,” she scoffed. “To you? You’re so smart, Mr. Fletcher. You and your clever little boy. You can take away other people’s careers. You can make them work as temps and live with humiliation and fear every day of their lives.”

  “Just as Stevie did,” said Step.

  She glared at him, opened the door of her car, turned her back on him as she slipped inside.

  “I keep almost feeling sorry for you,” said Step. “And then you prove to me all over again that you thrive on hurting other people. That’s what evil is, Mrs. Jones. That’s what you are.”

  She hesitated before closing the door of the car, as if searching for some final, clinching retort. Then she slammed the door and started the engine. Step watched her pull out of the parking place and, with a squeal of tires, race for the street.

  At least now I know who sent the record, thought Step. It wasn’t from the killer, just as Douglas said. It was from a bully. It was no worse than that.

  When he got inside, someone had taken his shopping cart. No doubt a store employee was carefully putting everything back on the shelves. He sighed, pulled his list out of his pocket, and started over.

  One night late in September, Step was going to be alone with the children while DeAnne was making a presentation on journal-keeping at homemaking meeting. He knew he should be helping to keep the children out of her hair as she got ready to go, but he was in the middle of a complicated algorithm that wouldn’t seem to go right, and he kept thinking, In a minute I’ll go help.

  Robbie was walking up and down the hall, bouncing a ball as hard as he could, a relentless thump, thump, thump that was about to drive Step crazy. Finally he couldn’t stand it anymore. He got up and went into the hall to put a stop to the bouncing. At the same moment, DeAnne emerged from the bedroom in her slip, with the same mission in mind. Poor Robbie stood in the hall between them, looking in dread from one to the other. “Sorry,” he said in a small voice.

  They both burst out laughing. “Just stop bouncing the ball inside the house, Road Bug,” said Step.

  “OK,” said Robbie. “It don’t bounce good on the carpet anyway.”

  “It doesn’t bounce well,” said Step.

  “I know,” said Robbie, puzzled. “I told you.”

  Half an hour after DeAnne left for the church, the phone rang. It was DeAnne. “This is going to sound stupid, Junk Man, but would you mind asking Robbie where he got that ball?”

  “He’s had it for years,” said Step.

  “But it rolled down one of the yucky holes in front of the house the first week we lived here,” she said. “I want to know how it got out again. You didn’t rescue it, did you?”

  “I didn’t even know it was lost. Maybe I could put it back.”

  “Step, please find out or it’ll drive me crazy for the rest of my life.”

  He agreed, hung up, and went in search of Robbie.

  “The invisible guy got it for me,” said Robbie. “He said it wasn’t very far down in the drain, and it came when he called it.”

  Step might have rebuked him for making up such a weird story, but the mention of an invisible guy gave him pause. “Where did you meet this invisible guy, Road Bug?”

  “In the yard today,” said Robbie. “He was naked because if he wore clothes people would see him.”

  “But you could see him,” said Step.

  “I’m your son,” said Robbie, as if that explained everything.

  Lee Weeks, thought Step. “How long ago was this?” asked Step. “Before or after Stevie got home from school?”

  “Before,” said Robbie. “He’s gone now. He had to fly to Raleigh.”

  Step went around the house, double-checking the locks. Then he made Robbie and Stevie go into Betsy’s and Zap’s bedroom while he went outside.

  It was nearly dark, with scant moonlight, but Step saw him almost at once, a pale ghostlike figure standing up against the neighbor’s high hedge in the front yard. Step locked the front door behind him and strode toward him.

  “How did you get over here with no clothes on, Lee?” he asked.

  Lee laughed in delight. “I knew you’d be able to see me. Just like your son.”

  “You’re lucky it wasn’t a cop who saw you, Lee. This is called ‘indecent exposure’ and you go to jail for it.” In fact, though, Lee’s naked body was more sad than anything, so pale, the hair making feeble shadows. “I don’t appreciate you talking to my son in this condition.”

  “I can’t help it if he has your power to see the invisible,” said Lee.

  “You’ve been palming your medicine again, I guess.”

  “Mother checks my hands,” said Lee. “She checks my mouth. And she watches me so I don’t throw it up.”

  “Do you hate it that much?”

  “It makes me feel like I’m moving through the world in a fog,” said Lee. “When I don’t take it, everything gets so sharp and clear. I can see forever. And my thoughts—I can think the thoughts of God. I don’t have to sleep. I haven’t slept in five days.”

  “I can believe it,” said Step, noticing that if Lee was God, then God chewed gum. “Why are you here?”

  “If you’re really going to be my spokesman, then you have to be tested.”

  “I’m not going to be your spokesman, Lee. Where are your clothes?”

  “Those are the robes of my captivity,” he said. “I never had clothing.”

  “Yeah, well, they don’t fit your mother.”

  “My mother likes you,” said Lee. “She thinks you’re really smart.”

  “How nice.”

  “But she says you don’t like woman psychiatrists.”

  “She’s mistaken,” said Step.

  “Oh, you don’t have to pretend. I don’t like them either. They’re so bossy. And they don’t understand what it’s like. They’ve got their drugs to turn you into a robot, when you’re just this close to seeing it all. To getting the whole picture.”

  The picture I need right now, thought Step, is how to get you safely back into your mother’s care without endangering my family and preferably without bringing in the police. “We never get the whole picture in this life, Lee.”

  “I do,” said Lee. “I see that you’re planning to call my mother.”

  “Of course I am,” said Step. “You need your medicine.”

  “Never again. I’m going to go seven days without sleeping and on the seventh day I’ll come into my full power. It’s sleep that dulls our minds, you know. I almost made it once before. I was driving along in that jet-black Z and I knew that all I had to do was just lean back to the right angle in my seat and I could fly anywhere. It was God
in me. I wish I’d done it, Step. But the police wouldn’t listen to me. The guy from the car lot must have called them. He didn’t understand that it was my car now. I drove exactly fifty-five, so the policemen wouldn’t stop me. But they have no respect for the law. They knew they had to stop me before I began to fly. They cut me off, about five or six police cars, and I got out of the car when they told me but they made me lie down on the road and the gravel got into my face and it really hurt.” His voice went high at the end. A kind of whimper, a childlike cry. It made Step think of Howie Mandel’s little-kid voice, small and high. It was funny when Mandel did it.

  “That was the time I was in the hospital. I told them, I can’t stand to be confined. But they strapped me down anyway, it’s this kind of straitjacket for when you’re lying on the table. You can, like, lift one arm, but if you do, it tightens down the straps on all the others, including the one around your throat. So if you move your arms both at once you can choke yourself. And I kept thinking, what if I fall off the table? I’ll strangle here and they won’t do anything because they’re jealous of me and they want me to die without ever coming into my power.”

  “I think they were trying to help you, Lee.”

  “It was killing me. So I started screaming, I don’t like this, I don’t like this, over and over but when the guy finally came in he just tightened it more so I couldn’t even move one arm anymore and he said, We won’t loosen this until you show us that you’re in control of yourself, and I said How can I be in control of myself when you’ve tied me up? You’ve got to let me stand up, I won’t go anywhere, I promise, and he says Yeah right. And then Mom got there and she had the medicine again but when she tried to give it to me I threw up right on her.” He laughed uproariously. Then stopped. “She won’t let me drive anymore. I had to walk all the way over here. Look. My feet are bleeding.”

  It was true. When he sat down in the grass and held up his feet for inspection, Step could see even by the light from the porch that they were badly lacerated, with bits of gravel and road dirt ground into the wounds.