Текст книги "The Dark Tower"

Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 52 страниц)

Chapter V:

In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle

One

The threat that the low men and the vampires might kill Oy was the only thing that kept Jake from dying with the Pere. There was no agonizing over the decision; Jake yelled

(OY, TO ME!)

with all the mental force he could muster, and Oy ran swiftly at his heel. Jake passed low men who stood mesmerized by the turtle and straight-armed a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. From the dim orange-red glow of the restaurant he and Oy entered a zone of brilliant white light and charred, pungent cookery. Steam billowed against his face, hot and wet,

(the jungle)

perhaps setting the stage for what followed,

(the mighty jungle)

perhaps not. His vision cleared as his pupils shrank and he saw he was in the Dixie Pig’s kitchen. Not for the first time, either. Once, not too long before the coming of the Wolves to Calla Bryn Sturgis, Jake had followed Susannah (only then she’d have been Mia) into a dream where she’d been searching some vast and deserted kitchen for food. This kitchen, only now the place was bustling with life. A huge pig sizzled on an iron spit over an open fire, the flames leaping up through a food-caked iron grate at every drop of grease. To either side were gigantic copper-hooded stoves upon which pots nearly as tall as Jake himself fumed. Stirring one of these was a gray-skinned creature so hideous that Jake’s eyes hardly knew how to look at it. Tusks rose from either side of its gray, heavy-lipped mouth. Dewlapped cheeks hung in great warty swags of flesh. The fact that the creature was wearing foodstained cook’s whites and a puffy popcorn chef’s toque somehow finished the nightmare, sealed it beneath a coat of varnish. Beyond this apparition, nearly lost in the steam, two other creatures dressed in whites were washing dishes side by side at a double sink. Both wore neckerchiefs. One was human, a boy of perhaps seventeen. The other appeared to be some sort of monster housecat on legs.

“Vai, vai, los mostros pubes, tre cannits en founs!” the tusked chef screeched at the washerboys. It hadn’t noticed Jake. One of them—the cat—did. It laid back its ears and hissed. Without thinking, Jake threw the Oriza he’d been holding in his right hand. It sang across the steamy air and sliced through the cat-thing’s neck as smoothly as a knife through a cake of lard. The head toppled into the sink with a sudsy splash, the green eyes still blazing.

“San fai, can dit los!” cried the chef. He seemed either unaware of what had happened or was unable to grasp it. He turned to Jake. The eyes beneath his sloping, crenellated forehead were a bleary blue-gray, the eyes of a sentient being. Seen head-on, Jake realized what it was: some kind of freakish, intelligent warthog. Which meant it was cooking its own kind. That seemed perfectly fitting in the Dixie Pig.

“Can foh pube ain-tet can fah! She-so pan! Vai!” This was addressed to Jake. And then, just to make the lunacy complete: “And eef you won’d scrub, don’d even stard!”

The other washboy, the human one, was screaming some sort of warning, but the chef paid no attention. The chef seemed to believe that Jake, having killed one of his helpers, was now duty– and honor-bound to take the dead cat’s place.

Jake flung the other plate and it sheared through the warthog’s neck, putting an end to its blabber. Perhaps a gallon of blood flew onto the stovetop to the thing’s right, sizzling and sending up a horrible charred smell. The warthog’s head slewed to the left on its neck and then tilted backward, but didn’t come off. The being—it was easily seven feet tall—took two stagger-steps to its left and embraced the sizzling pig turning on its spit. The head tore loose a little further, now lying on Chef Warthog’s right shoulder, one eye glaring up at the steam-wreathed fluorescent lights. The heat sealed the cook’s hands to the roast and they began to melt. Then the thing fell forward into the open flames and its tunic caught fire.

Jake whirled from this in time to see the other potboy advancing on him with a butcher knife in one hand and a cleaver in the other. Jake grabbed another ‘Riza from the bag but held his throw in spite of the voice in his head that was yammering for him to go on, go on and do it, give the bastard what he’d once heard Margaret Eisenhart refer to as a “deep haircut.” This term had made the other Sisters of the Plate laugh hard. Yet as much as he wanted to throw, he held his hand.

What he saw was a young man whose skin was a pallid yellowish-gray under the brilliant kitchen lights. He looked both terrified and malnourished. Jake raised the plate in warning and the young man stopped. It wasn’t the ‘Riza he was looking at, however, but Oy, who stood between Jake’s feet. The bumbler’s fur was bushed out around his body, seeming to double his size, and his teeth were bared.

“Do you—” Jake began, and then the door to the restaurant burst open. One of the low men rushed in. Jake threw the plate without hesitation. It moaned through the steamy, brilliant air and took off the intruder’s head with gory precision just above the Adam’s apple. The headless body bucked first to the left and then to the right, like a stage comic accepting a round of applause with a whimsical move, and then collapsed.

Jake had another plate in each hand almost immediately, his arms once more crossed over his chest in the position sai Eisenhart called “the load.” He looked at the washerboy, who was still holding the knife and the cleaver. Without much threat, however, Jake thought. He tried again and this time got the whole question out. “Do you speak English?”

“Yar,” the boy said. He dropped the cleaver so he could hold one water-reddened thumb and its matching forefinger about a quarter of an inch apart. “Bout just a liddle. I learn since I come over here.” He opened his other hand and the knife joined the cleaver on the kitchen floor.

“Do you come from Mid-World?” Jake asked. “You do, don’t you?”

He didn’t think the washerboy was terribly bright (“No quiz-kid,” Elmer Chambers would no doubt have sneered), but he was at least smart enough to be homesick; in spite of his terror, Jake saw an unmistakable flash of that look in the boy’s eyes. “Yar,” he said. “Come from Ludweg, me.”

“Near the city of Lud?”

“North of there, if you do like it or if you don’t,” said the washerboy. “Will’ee kill me, lad? I don’t want to die, sad as I am.”

“I won’t be the one to kill you if you tell me the truth. Did a woman come through here?”

The washerboy hesitated, then said: “Aye. Sayre and his closies had ‘er. She ‘us out on her feet, that ‘un, head all lollin…” He demonstrated, rolling his head on his neck and looking more like the village idiot than ever. Jake thought of Sheemie in Roland’s tale of his Mejis days.

“But not dead.”

“Nar. I hurt her breevin, me.”

Jake looked toward the door, but no one came through. Yet. He should go, but—

“What’s your name, cully?”

“Jochabim, that be I, son of Hossa.”

“Well, listen, Jochabim, there’s a world outside this kitchen called New York City, and pubes like you are free. I suggest you get out while you have an opportunity.”

“They’d just bring me back and stripe me.”

“No, you don’t understand how big it is. Like Lud when Lud was—”

He looked at Jochabim’s dull-eyed face and thought, No, I’m the one who doesn’t understand. And if I hang around here trying to convince him to desert, I’ll no doubt get just what I—

The door leading to the restaurant popped open again. This time two low men tried to come through at once and momentarily jammed together, shoulder to shoulder. Jake threw both of his plates and watched them crisscross in the steamy air, beheading both newcomers just as they burst through. They fell backward and once more the door swung shut. At Piper School Jake had learned about the Battle of Thermopylae, where the Greeks had held off a Persian army that had outnumbered them ten to one. The Greeks had drawn the Persians into a narrow mountain pass; he had this kitchen door. As long as they kept coming through by ones and twos—as they must unless they could flank him somehow—he could pick them off.

At least until he ran out of Orizas.

“Guns?” he asked Jochabim. “Are there guns here?”

Jochabim shook his head, but given the young man’s irritating look of density, it was hard to tell if this meant No guns in the kitchen or I don’t ken you.

“All right, I’m going,” he said. “And if you don’t go yourself while you’ve got a chance, Jochabim, you’re an even bigger fool than you look. Which would be saying a lot. There are video games out there, kid—think about it.”

Jochabim continued giving Jake the duh look, however, and Jake gave up. He was about to speak to Oy when someone spoke to him through the door.

“Hey, kid.” Rough. Confidential. Knowing. The voice of a man who could hit you for five or sleep with your girlfriend any time he liked, Jake thought. “Your friend the faddah’s dead. In fact, the faddah’s dinnah. You come out now, with no more nonsense, maybe you can avoid being dessert.”

“Turn it sideways and stick it up your ass,” Jake called. This got through even Jochabim’s wall of stupidity; he looked shocked.

“Last chance,” said the rough and knowing voice. “Come on out.”

“Come on in!” Jake countered. “I’ve got plenty of plates!” Indeed, he felt a lunatic urge to rush forward, bang through the door, and take the battle to the low men and women in the restaurant dining room on the other side. Nor was the idea all that crazy, as Roland himself would have known; it was the last thing they’d expect, and there was at least an even chance that he could panic them with half a dozen quickly thrown plates and start a rout.

The problem was the monsters that had been feeding behind the tapestry. The vampires. They’d not panic, and Jake knew it. He had an idea that if the Grandfathers had been able to come into the kitchen (or perhaps it was just lack of interest that kept them in the dining room—that and the last scraps of the Pere’s corpse), he would be dead already. Jochabim as well, quite likely.

He dropped to one knee, murmured “Oy, find Susannah!” and reinforced the command with a quick mental picture.

The bumbler gave Jochabim a final distrustful look, then began to nose about on the floor. The tiles were damp from a recent mopping, and Jake was afraid the bumbler wouldn’t be able to find the scent. Then Oy gave a single sharp cry—more dog’s bark than human’s word—and began to hurry down the center of the kitchen between the stoves and the steam tables, nose low to the ground, only going out of his way long enough to skirt Chef Warthog’s smoldering body.

“Listen, to me, you little bastard!” cried the low man outside the door. “I’m losing patience with you!”

“Good!” Jake cried. “Come on in! Let’s see if you go back out again!”

He put his finger to his lips in a shushing gesture while looking at Jochabim. He was about to turn and run—he had no idea how long it would be before the washerboy yelled through the door that the kid and his billy-bumbler were no longer holding Thermopylae Pass—when Jochabim spoke to him in a low voice that was little more than a whisper.

“What?” Jake asked, looking at him uncertainly. It sounded as if the kid had said mind the mind-trap, but that made no sense. Did it?

“Mind the mind-trap,” Jochabim said, this time much more clearly, and turned away to his pots and sudsy water.

“What mind-trap?” Jake asked, but Jochabim affected not to hear and Jake couldn’t stay long enough to cross-examine him. He ran to catch up with Oy, throwing glances back over his shoulder. If a couple more of the low men burst into the kitchen, Jake wanted to be the first to know.

But none did, at least not before he had followed Oy through another door and into the restaurant’s pantry, a dim room stacked high with boxes and smelling of coffee and spices. It was like the storeroom behind the East Stoneham General Store, only cleaner.

Two

There was a closed door in the corner of the Dixie Pig’s pantry. Beyond it was a tiled stairway leading down God only knew how far. It was lit by low-wattage bulbs behind bleary, fly-spotted glass shades. Oy started down without hesitation, descending with a kind of bobbing, front-end/back-end regularity that was pretty comical. He kept his nose pressed to the stairs, and Jake knew he was onto Susannah; he could pick it up from his little friend’s mind.

Jake tried counting the stairs, made it as far as a hundred and twenty, then lost his grip on the numbers. He wondered if they were still in New York (or under it). Once he thought he heard a faint, familiar rumbling and decided that if that was a subway train, they were.

Finally they reached the bottom of the stairs. Here was a wide, vaulted area that looked like a gigantic hotel lobby, only without the hotel. Oy made his way across it, snout still low to the ground, his squiggle of a tail wagging back and forth. Jake had to jog in order to keep up. Now that they no longer filled the bag, the ‘Rizas jangled back and forth. There was a kiosk on the far side of the lobby-vault, with a sign in one dusty window reading LAST CHANCE FOR NEW YORK SOUVENIRS and another reading VISIT SEPTEMBER 11, 2001! TIX STILL AVAILABLE FOR THIS WONDERFUL EVENT! ASTHMATICS PROHIBITED W/O DR’S CERTIFICATE! Jake wondered what was so fabulous about September 11th of 2001 and then decided that maybe he didn’t want to know.

Suddenly, as loud in his head as a voice spoken directly into his ear: Hey! Hey Positronics lady! You still there?

Jake had no idea who the Positronics lady might be, but he recognized the voice asking the question.

Susannah! he shouted, coming to a stop near the tourist kiosk. A surprised, joyful grin creased his strained face and made it a kid’s again. Suze, are you there?

And heard her cry out in happy surprise.

Oy, realizing that Jake was no longer following close behind, turned and gave an impatient Ake-Ake! cry. For the moment at least, Jake disregarded him.

“I hear you!” he shouted. “Finally! God, who’ve you been talking to? Keep yelling so I can home in on y—”

From behind him—perhaps at the top of the long staircase, perhaps already on it—someone yelled, “That’s him!” There were gunshots, but Jake barely heard them. To his intense horror, something had crawled inside his head. Something like a mental hand. He thought it was probably the low man who had spoken to him through the door. The low man’s hand had found dials in some kind of Jake Chambers Dogan, and was fiddling with them. Trying

(to freeze me freeze me in place freeze my feet right to the floor)

to stop him. And that voice had gotten in because while he was sending and receiving, he was open—

Jake! Jake, where are you?

There was no time to answer her. Once, while trying to open the unfound door in the Cave of Voices, Jake had summoned a vision of a million doors opening wide. Now he summoned one of them slamming shut, creating a sound like God’s own sonic boom.

Just in time, too. For a moment longer his feet remained stuck to the dusty floor, and then something screamed in agony and pulled back from him. Let him go.

Jake got moving, jerkily at first, then picking up steam. God, that had been close! Very faintly, he heard Susannah call his name again but didn’t dare throw himself open enough to reply. He’d just have to hope that Oy would hold onto her scent, and that she would keep sending.

Three

He decided later that he must have started singing the song from Mrs. Shaw’s radio shortly after Susannah’s final faint cry, but there was no way of telling for sure. One might as well try to pinpoint the genesis of a headache or the exact moment one consciously realizes he is coming down with a cold. What Jake was sure of was that there were more gunshots, and once the buzzing whine of a ricochet, but all that was a good distance behind, and finally he didn’t bother ducking anymore (or even looking back). Besides, Oy was moving fast now, really shucking those furry little buns of his. Buried machinery thumped and wheezed. Steel rails surfaced in the passageway floor, leading Jake to assume that once a tram or some other kind of shuttle had run here. At regular intervals, official communiqués (PATRICIA AHEAD; FEDIC; DO YOU HAVE YOUR BLUE PASS?) were printed on the walls. In some places the tiles had fallen off, in others the tram-rails were gone, and in several spots puddles of ancient, verminous water filled what looked for all the world like potholes. Jake and Oy passed two or three stalled vehicles that resembled a cross between golf-carts and flatcars. They also passed a turnip-headed robot that flashed the dim red bulbs of its eyes and made a single croaking sound that might have been halt. Jake raised one of the Orizas, having no idea if it could do any good against such a thing if it came after him, but the robot never moved. That single dim flash seemed to have drained the last few ergs in its batteries, or energy cells, or atomic slug, or whatever it ran on. Here and there he saw graffiti. Two were familiar. The first was ALL HAIL THE CRIMSON KING, with the red eye above each of the I’s in the message. The other read BANGO SKANK, ‘84. Man, Jake thought distractedly, that guy Bango gets around. And then heard himself clearly for the first time, singing under his breath. Not words, exactly, but just an old, barely remembered refrain from one of the songs on Mrs. Shaw’s kitchen radio: “A-wimeweh, a-wimeweh, a-weee-ummm-immm-oweh…”

He quit it, creeped out by the muttery, talismanic quality of the chant, and called for Oy to stop. “Need to take a leak, boy.”

“Oy!” Cocked ears and bright eyes providing the rest of the message: Don’t take too long.

Jake sprayed urine onto one of the tile walls. Greenish dreck was seeping between the squares. He also listened for the sound of pursuit and was not disappointed. How many back there? What sort of posse? Roland probably would have known, but Jake had no idea. The echoes made it sound like a regiment.

As he was shaking off, it came to Jake Chambers that the Pere would never do this again, or grin at him and point his finger, or cross himself before eating. They had killed him. Taken his life. Stopped his breath and pulse. Save perhaps for dreams, the Pere was now gone from the story. Jake began to cry. Like his smile, the tears made him once again look like a child. Oy had turned around, eager to be off on the scent, but now looked back over one shoulder with an expression of unmistakable concern.

“ ‘S’all right,” Jake said, buttoning his fly and then wiping his cheeks with the heel of his hand. Only it wasn’t all right. He was more than sad, more than angry, more than scared about the low men running relentlessly up his backtrail. Now that the adrenaline in his system had receded, he realized he was hungry as well as sad. Tired, too. Tired? Verging on exhaustion. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept. Being sucked through the door into New York, he could remember that, and Oy almost being hit by a taxi, and the God-bomb minister with the name that reminded him of Jimmy Cagney playing George M. Cohan in that old black-and-white movie he’d watched on the TV in his room when he was small. Because, he realized now, there had been a song in that movie about a guy named Harrigan: H–A–double R–I; Harrigan, that’s me. He could remember those things, but not when he’d last eaten a square—

“Ake!” Oy barked, relentless as fate. If bumblers had a breaking point, Jake thought wearily, Oy was still a long way from his. “Ake-Ake!”

“Yeah-yeah,” he agreed, pushing away from the wall. “Ake-Ake will now run-run. Go on. Find Susannah.”

He wanted to plod, but plodding would quite likely not be good enough. Mere walking, either. He flogged his legs into a jog and once more began to sing under his breath, this time the words to the song: “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight… In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps tonight… ohhh…” And then he was off again, wimeweh, wimeweh, wimeweh, nonsense words from the kitchen radio that was always tuned to the oldies on WCBS… only weren’t memories of some movie wound around and into his memory of this particular song? Not a song from Yankee Doodle Dandy but from some other movie? One with scary monsters? Something he’d seen when he was just a little kid, maybe not even out of his

(clouts)

diapers?

“Near the village, the quiet village, the lion sleeps tonight… Near the village, the peaceful village, the lion sleeps tonight… HUH-oh, a-wimeweh, a-wimeweh…”

He stopped, breathing hard, rubbing his side. He had a stitch there but it wasn’t bad, at least not yet, hadn’t sunk deep enough to stop him. But that goo… that greenish goo dribbling between the tiles… it was oozing through the ancient grout and busted ceramic because this was

(the jungle)

deep below the city, deep like catacombs

(wimeweh)

or like—

“Oy,” he said, speaking through chapped lips. Christ, he was so thirsty! “Oy, this isn’t goo, this is grass. Or weeds… or…”

Oy barked his friend’s name, but Jake hardly noticed. The echoing sound of the pursuers continued (had drawn a bit closer, in fact), but for the time being he ignored them, as well.

Grass, growing out of the tiled wall.

Overwhelming the wall.

He looked down and saw more grass, a brilliant green that was almost purple beneath the fluorescent lights, growing up out of the floor. And bits of broken tile crumbling into shards and fragments like remains of the old people, the ancestors who had lived and built before the Beams began to break and the world began to move on.

He bent down. Reached into the grass. Brought up sharp shards of tile, yes, but also earth, the earth of

(the jungle)

some deep catacomb or tomb or perhaps—

There was a beetle crawling through the dirt he’d scooped up, a beetle with a red mark on its back like a bloody smile, and Jake cast it away with a cry of disgust. Mark of the King! Say true! He came back to himself and realized that he was down on one knee, practicing at archaeology like the hero in some old movie while the hounds drew closer on his trail. And Oy was looking at him, eyes shining with anxiety.

“Ake! Ake-Ake!”

“Yeah,” he said, heaving himself to his feet. “I’m coming. But Oy… what is this place?”

Oy had no idea why he heard anxiety in his ka-dinh’s voice; what he saw was the same as before and what he smelled was the same as before: her smell, the scent the boy had asked him to find and follow. And it was fresher now. He ran on along its bright brand.

Four

Jake stopped again five minutes later, shouting, “Oy! Wait up a minute!”

The stitch in his side was back, and it was deeper, but it still wasn’t the stitch that had stopped him. Everything had changed. Or was changing. And God help him, he thought he knew what it was changing into.

Above him the fluorescent lights still shone down, but the tile walls were shaggy with greenery. The air had become damp and humid, soaking his shirt and sticking it against his body. A beautiful orange butterfly of startling size flew past his wide eyes. Jake snatched at it but the butterfly eluded him easily. Almost merrily, he thought.

The tiled corridor had become a jungle path. Ahead of them, it sloped up to a ragged hole in the overgrowth, probably some sort of forest clearing. Beyond it Jake could see great old trees growing in a mist, their trunks thick with moss, their branches looped with vines. He could see giant spreading ferns, and through the green lace of the leaves, a burning jungle sky. He knew he was under New York, must be under New York, but—

What sounded like a monkey chittered, so close by that Jake flinched and looked up, sure he would see it directly overhead, grinning down from behind a bank of lights. And then, freezing his blood, came the heavy roar of a lion. One that was most definitely not asleep.

He was on the verge of retreating, and at full speed, when he realized he could not; the low men (probably led by the one who’d told him the faddah was dinnah) were back that way. And Oy was looking at him with bright-eyed impatience, clearly wanting to go on. Oy was no dummy, but he showed no signs of alarm, at least not concerning what was ahead.

For his own part, Oy still couldn’t understand the boy’s problem. He knew the boy was tired—he could smell that—but he also knew Ake was afraid. Why? There were unpleasant smells in this place, the smell of many men chief among them, but they did not strike Oy as immediately dangerous. And besides, her smell was here. Very fresh now. Almost new.

“Ake!” he yapped again.

Jake had his breath now. “All right,” he said, looking around. “Okay. But slow.”

“Lo,” Oy said, but even Jake could detect the stunning lack of approval in the bumbler’s response.

Jake moved only because he had no other options. He walked up the slope of the overgrown trail (in Oy’s perception the way was perfectly straight, and had been ever since leaving the stairs) toward the vine– and fern-fringed opening, toward the lunatic chitter of the monkey and the testicle-freezing roar of the hunting lion. The song circled through his mind again and again

(in the village… in the jungle… hush my darling, don’t stir my darling…)

and now he knew the name of it, even the name of the group

(that’s the Tokens with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” gone from the charts but not from our hearts)

that had sung it, but what was the movie? What was the name of the goddam mo—

Jake reached the top of the slope and the edge of the clearing. He looked through an interlacing of broad green leaves and brilliant purple flowers (a tiny green worm was journeying into the heart of one), and as he looked, the name of the movie came to him and his skin broke out in gooseflesh from the nape of his neck all the way down to his feet. A moment later the first dinosaur came out of the jungle (the mighty jungle), and walked into the clearing.

Five

Once upon a time long ago

(far and wee)

when he was just a little lad;

(there’s some for you and some for me)

once upon a time when mother went to Montreal with her art club and father went to Vegas for the annual unveiling of the fall shows;

(blackberry jam and blackberry tea)

once upon a time when ‘Bama was four—

Six

‘Bama’s what the only good one

(Mrs. Shaw Mrs. Greta Shaw)

calls him. She cuts the crusts off his sandwiches, she puts his nursie-school drawings on the fridge with magnets that look like little plastic fruits, she calls him ‘Bama and that’s a special name to him

(to them)

because his father taught him one drunk Saturday afternoon to chant “Go wide, go wide, roll you Tide, we don’t run and we don’t hide, we’re the ‘Bama Crimson Tide!” and so she calls him ‘Bama, it’s a secret name and how they know what it means and no one else does is like having a house you can go into, a safe house in the scary woods where outside the shadows all look like monsters and ogres and tigers.

(“Tyger, tyger, burning bright,” his mother sings to him, for this is her idea of a lullabye, along with “I heard a fly buzz… when I died,” which gives ‘Bama Chambers a terrible case of the creeps, although he never tells her; he lies in bed sometimes at night and sometimes during afternoon naptime thinking I will hear a fly and it will be my deathfly, my heart will stop and my tongue will fall down my throat like a stone down a well and these are the memories he denies)

It is good to have a secret name and when he finds out mother is going to Montreal for the sake of art and father is going to Vegas to help present the Network’s new shows at the Up-fronts he begs his mother to ask Mrs. Greta Shaw to stay with him and finally his mother gives in. Little Jakie knows Mrs. Shaw is not mother and on more than one occasion Mrs. Greta Shaw herself has told him she is not mother

(“I hope you know I’m not your mother, ‘Bama,” she says, giving him a plate and on the plate is a peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwich with the crusts cut off as only Greta Shaw knows how to cut them off, “because that is not in my job description”

(And Jakie—only he’s ‘Bama here, he’s ‘Bama between them—doesn’t know exactly how to tell her he knows that, knows that, knows that, but he’ll make do with her until the real thing comes along or until he grows old enough to get over his fear of the Deathfly)

And Jakie says Don’t worry, I’m okay, but he is still glad Mrs. Shaw agrees to stay instead of the latest au pair who wears short skirts and is always playing with her hair and her lipstick and doesn’t care jackshit about him and doesn’t know that in his secret heart he is ‘Bama, and boy that little Daisy Mae

(which is what his father calls all the au pairs)

is stupid stupid stupid. Mrs. Shaw isn’t stupid. Mrs. Shaw gives him a snack she sometimes calls Afternoon Tea or even High Tea, and no matter what it is—cottage cheese and fruit, a sandwich with the crusts cut off, custard and cake, leftover canapés from a cocktail party the night before—she sings the same little song when she lays it out: “A little snack that’s far and wee, there’s some for you and some for me, blackberry jam and blackberry tea.”

There is a TV is his room, and every day while his folks are gone he takes his after-school snack in there and watches watches watches and he hears her radio in the kitchen, always the oldies, always WCBS, and sometimes he hears her, hears Mrs. Greta Shaw singing along with the Four Seasons Wanda Jackson Lee “Yah-Yah” Dorsey, and sometimes he pretends his folks die in a plane crash and she somehow does become his mother and she calls him poor little lad and poor little lost tyke and then by virtue of some magical transformation she loves him instead of just taking care of him, loves him loves him loves him the way he loves her, she’s his mother (or maybe his wife, he is unclear about the difference between the two), but she calls him ‘Bama instead of sugarlove

(his real mother)

or hotshot

(his father)

and although he knows the idea is stupid, thinking about it in bed is fun, thinking about it beats the penis-piss out of thinking about the Deathfly that would come and buzz over his corpse when he died with his tongue down his throat like a stone down a well. In the afternoon when he gets home from nursie-school (by the time he’s old enough to know it’s actually nursery school he will be out of it) he watches Million Dollar Movie in his room. On Million Dollar Movie they show exactly the same movie at exactly the same time—four o’clock—every day for a week. The week before his parents went away and Mrs. Greta Shaw stayed the night instead of going home