Do Not Pass Go Read online

Mom stopped in her tracks and looked at Jam with consternation. “Today? Isn’t that sort of short notice?”

  “Well, she told us about it last week,” Jam confessed, looking a little ashamed. Jam was inclined to be as disorganized as Mom and Dad.

  “Oh, lord. Deet, will you please get out the box of pictures and find one for her?”

  Deet made his world-weary face. “Come on.”

  He found the beat-up old shoe box full of snapshots on the bookshelf under a pile of Dad’s car magazines and Mom’s hairstyling magazines. He dumped the pictures out on the carpet and got on his knees to sort them out. Someone had spilled something red and sticky, like Kool-Aid, on the box lid, and some of the pictures were stuck together.

  “Someday I have to put those in an album,” his mom said as she passed through the living room. Deet smiled up at her, but he knew perfectly well that putting things in albums was not something his mom would ever do.

  Jam and P. J. picked up this photo and that, squealing over pictures of themselves in diapers or with spaghetti smeared all over their faces.

  Deet flipped through the pictures quickly, looking for the family picture they’d taken at Christmas, like they did every year. He and P. J. and Jam and Mom would all sit on the couch, and Dad would set the timer on the camera and then make a dash for the couch before the flash went off. In every picture Dad was a little blurred. Deet found the one he was looking for and gave it to Jam.

  “Here. And take good care of it. I don’t think we have another one. And next time, don’t save your homework till the last minute.”

  Jam made a yah-yah face at him, and she and P. J. ran off to get dressed. Deet picked up the snapshots from the rug and stuffed them into the box. He had a while before the school bus came, so he got a wet paper towel and wiped the sticky stuff off the stuck-together photos. No serious damage.

  He took the box into his room to sort.

  Deet’s room was in perfect order, his bedspread taut, his books organized logically, fiction on one shelf, nonfiction on the other. His thesaurus and dictionary lay on his desk, corners squared together, and neat lists were pinned precisely on the bulletin board, completed items crossed off with a ruled red line.

  A map of the known universe was over his bed. Deet had had it laminated and had pinned a little sign on the solar system: You are here. Over the dresser was a history time line poster.

  He could hear the rumpus from the girls’ room as his mom got them ready for school.

  “Patty Jane, you have to wear these pants today because the red ones are in the wash and it’s too cold to wear a dress today.”

  “I hate these pants.”

  “Well, wear them anyway.”

  “Jam, go brush your teeth before you get that sweater on. You always get toothpaste splatters all over your clothes.” P. J.’s belly laugh at this. “And P. J., put your inhaler in your pocket! Don’t forget it today.”

  He turned on his cassette player to drown out their chatter. He’d been playing the same cassette for a week, because he was trying to learn by heart the words to “Alice’s Restaurant,” which he thought was very funny. He’d had to quit playing it in the living room, because P. J. started to learn it by heart as well, and he didn’t think anyone would think “Alice’s Restaurant” was suitable for a six-year-old. (“Mother stabbers! Father stabbers! Kill, kill, kill!”)

  Deet kept the volume low because Dad was still asleep. Dad had worked two jobs for a while now, trying to make a little extra, trying to catch up on the bills.

  After he got off at the garage, he’d rush home to eat his dinner, then go to work driving a wrecker truck for an all-night wrecker service. He’d get home after midnight and be off to work again at eight the next morning. Deet was sure that he’d get tired with a killer schedule like that, but Dad seemed to have energy to burn. The bad thing was that the girls hardly got to see him except at dinner and on Sundays, when he didn’t work, and except for dinner Deet saw him during the week only if he went to the garage after school.

  Deet took some rubber bands from his desk drawer and started to make orderly piles of pictures on his bed. There was one picture of Mom with Deet when he was a baby. She was smiling joyfully at the camera, holding him on her hip. He was wearing only a diaper. He wondered who’d taken it. Deet turned it over to see if the date was on it. “Patty and Deet,” she’d written. That was all. Patty was kind of a bubble-headed name, and she looked like a bubble-headed sort of girl in the picture. Nothing like a mother, that’s for sure.

  She’d come up north from the Midwest to get a job on the pipeline. She didn’t have any folks. They’d been old when she was born and had died before she finished high school. Deet wished there was a picture of them, but his mom hadn’t brought anything with her when she came north. Not even her memories, it seemed like, because she never talked about her life growing up. She got pregnant with Deet when she was just nineteen. She’d never told Deet who his father was, and he’d never asked. Not asking seemed like the courteous thing to do, and he wasn’t very curious anyway.

  It must have been pretty hard on her, all alone with a baby coming. But she told Deet she was happy to have him, because having a baby meant she had someone to love. He knew she wasn’t just saying it to make him feel good, because he knew she was like that. All heart.

  There was a blurry picture of the pipeline camp, taken from pretty far away. On the back she’d written “Dietrich,” the name of the camp. That’s where Deet got his name, though no one ever called him Dietrich.

  There were two copies of Mom and Dad’s wedding picture. They looked young, like kids, really. Mom looked like a model or something, with her stacked-up hairdo, and Dad was smiling so hard you could see the gap where his tooth was missing on the side.

  Mom met Dad when Deet was still a baby, and he was a really nice guy. Deet had never seen him mad. He was tall and rangy with a sad kind of face. You look just like your dad, people told Deet, which was strange when they weren’t even related, and because Deet had dark hair and dark eyes. Deet figured it was probably just that they used the same gestures, the kind of thing you pick up from living with someone. He picked up his last year’s school picture and studied it. Maybe it was because he had kind of a sad face too.

  There were a lot of good things about Charley Aafedt, but the thing Deet liked best about his dad was the way he could say something nice in a joking way. When someone pays you a compliment, it can be an awkward moment. You’re not sure they really mean it, maybe it sounds a little phony or stiff. Dad wouldn’t say seriously, “You did a good job cleaning the truck.” He’d make some joke like, “I’m going to get fat because Deet does all the work around here,” and then they’d all laugh at the idea of Dad getting fat, but they’d know Deet was being praised.

  Deet put all the pictures of Mom and Dad and himself in one pile and then he started on the pictures of the girls.

  There were lots of Jam, because they’d had a new camera then. Mom had written “Jamima Mae Aafedt” on the back of every one, with the date, and how much she weighed at the time, “6 pounds ½ oz.,” and exactly how old she was, like “3 months and 21 days.” Like it was important, that half an ounce, three weeks instead of four. Proud mother.

  Deet had been delighted when Jam was born, had hovered over her crib by the hour, letting her hold his finger in her tiny fist. There was a picture of him looking proud as punch, holding her in his lap. Jam’s diaper was loose at the legs, and after the shutter had clicked she’d peed all over him.

  Deet found the yellowish Polaroid picture the hospital had taken of P. J. when she was born. She looked wrinkled and crabby. Her tiny hospital bracelet was stapled to the corner. Patty Jane Aafedt. He riffled through the box, wondering if there was a bracelet for him or Jam as well, but there wasn’t.

  There were a lot fewer pictures of P. J. than there were of Jam. He hoped that wouldn’t make P. J. feel bad.

  Deet thought raising children was a very serious thing, an
d he wished his mom and dad were more systematic about it, and a little more careful about stuff like not taking enough pictures of the last baby. Or shots. When he read in the paper about the importance of inoculations and the shots needed for school, he asked his mom about P. J.’s and Jam’s. She’d looked startled, that little line between her eyebrows.

  “I know I have their shot records somewhere. I’ll look for them and see if they’re up-to-date.” But of course she didn’t do it until the last minute, after the school had sent out a couple of notices.

  Dentist appointments and checkups, meetings with the teachers. Deet was always driving himself crazy trying to make sure his folks took care of those things. Some jobs he’d just taken over for himself, like reading to the girls. He read to them every night, because he had heard that it was very important for their intellectual development.

  Deet frowned at his stacks of photos and decided that he’d group them by years, not people. That would make more sense, and then you couldn’t tell that P. J.’s stack was the smallest.

  In a big manila envelope were more wedding pictures, snapshots. Deet in a little suit, squatting on the grass, eating a piece of cake from a plate at his feet. Grandma and Grandpa sitting stiffly at a table with balloons over it. It was hard to believe they’d even gone to the wedding, since Grandpa and Dad were not on good terms. Not that Dad ever said anything bad about Grandpa, but Grandpa had plenty to say about Dad. Deet thought Grandpa was the reason his Dad had that sad face.

  Grandma and Grandpa had been a lot younger-looking in the wedding pictures. For sure that was the last time Grandpa’d ever been dressed up.

  There were pictures of Bingo and Dan and Willy all dressed up too. They looked completely wrong out of their overalls. Something about the wrists, the way they were holding their arms. How come some people could dress up and you didn’t pay any attention, but with others, it was like they were wearing a Halloween costume or something?

  Deet put all the pictures of old cars and trucks together and wrapped a rubber band around them. It was a big stack. Dad had taken pictures of all the cars and trucks he’d ever had, like they were people, both sides, front and back angles.

  Deet put the sorted stacks of photos back in the box. Maybe he’d get an album this weekend and put them in it before someone spilled Kool-Aid on them again.

  THREE

  Deet was the first one to be picked up on the west side run, so the bus was empty when he got on, except for Mindy, the bus driver.

  Mindy had been driving that route since Deet was in kindergarten. She was a heavy, unpleasant woman in her forties or so who had one of those jutting bulldog jaws and a down-turned mouth, but she always grunted a greeting of sorts when he got on, more than she did for the other kids. He always sat in the front seat, behind her. It wasn’t that he wanted her conversation, he wanted to avoid the rest of the kids, who’d sprawl over the seats and yell all the way to the school. Deet jammed his fists in his pockets and burrowed his chin into the collar of his parka. The bus hadn’t warmed up yet.

  Nelly’s stop was next. He lived in a trailer in the middle of his dad’s junkyard. There was a big homemade sign propped up in front of the trailer: NELSON’S BOUTIQUE. Nelly’s mom had done that. She thought it was pretty funny.

  Wrecked cars were strewn everywhere, behind a sagging fence, which was supposed to screen the cars from the road but didn’t. Deet had been looking at that junkyard all his life, but he never saw it without a sort of mental shudder. If he’d had to live there he was sure he would have slit his own throat by now.

  His own yard was bad enough. Dad had an old car in the back, a junker he was going to fix up and sell when he got around to it, and other stuff was scattered by the front porch: nylon-strap lawn chairs, wooden boxes, P. J.’s tricycle without a front wheel—almost buried in snow now, piles of lumber, and a stack of pallets, which Dad collected anywhere he could, on the theory that they’d be very useful someday.

  When Deet went off to kindergarten, his mom used to ask him to bring kids home to play. Deet never wanted to bring anyone home from school, partly because there wasn’t anybody in kindergarten he wanted to spend any more time with and partly because his house embarrassed him, even when he was in kindergarten. It didn’t look anything like the houses in his Jan and Jerry reading books.

  The house started out being an ordinary log cabin, which Dad had built the first summer he and Mom were married. That summer they’d all lived in the backyard in a tiny camper, one of those shells that fit on the back of a pickup, until the cabin was finished. The camper was still there, behind the house, in the willows.

  After the girls were born, Dad had thrown up a frame addition on the side of the cabin that kind of spoiled the look of the cabin, and besides, he’d never gotten around to painting the addition. Deet was glad you couldn’t see their house from the road where the bus stopped.

  The bus stopped for Nelly, who was waiting by his driveway, on time for a change, shifting from foot to foot to stay warm. His arms were stiff at his sides, fists sucked up in his sleeves, just like a little kid. He threw himself down in the seat next to Deet, spikes of his hair standing on end in spite of the junk he’d smeared on it to make it lie down, his nylon GI surplus parka crackling from the cold. He threw a look of despair at Deet.

  “Did you get your math done?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?” Nelly squeaked. He was right in the middle of a voice change. “You always get your math finished.”

  “We’re not having math today, remember? We’re having that assembly. So I saved it until tonight.”

  Nelly rolled his eyes with relief. “Man, I forgot about that. Saved again.”

  Deet and Nelly had been in the same class since kindergarten, and Nelly always seemed to be hustling to keep up, treading water. It was because he wasn’t organized, Deet thought. His notebooks were a scramble of papers, never clipped into the binder, falling out, and even his shirts weren’t buttoned the right way, but started off on the wrong button.

  Deet and Nelly were the only ones who lived off the main road. The rest of the kids who rode the bus lived in the fancy houses along the ridge, where everyone had a view of the valley and the mountains in the distance. Each house was better than the last one, and each yard was like a picture in a magazine. None of the kids who lived in those houses had their shirts buttoned wrong.

  Deet’s locker at school was right next to his homeroom. He usually put his stuff in his locker, took his homework to Mr. Hodges’s room, and then took his library book to read until first period. He hoped no one would talk to him. He didn’t like to talk. Small talk, people said. Making small talk. How are you? How’s it going? What’s up? There was nothing sensible to be said to those questions. Nonquestions.

  His mom kept on urging him to make friends, but Dad said Deet was a loner, that’s all there was to it. Deet didn’t know if he was a loner or not. It was just that there were no other kids who were interested in the things he was interested in.

  And he wasn’t interested in what they were interested in. He just didn’t get what sports were all about. Chasing a ball seemed silly enough, but even sillier was the way people took games so seriously.

  Most of the new movies seemed to have car crashes or some idiotic guy, some action hero, and the new music bewildered him. He liked tunes you could hum, actually. He liked old stuff. Old movies, old music, like the big bands he heard on the radio once in a while. And books.

  When he went to the library, there was no telling what he’d come home with. Last week he’d gotten a book on weaving, of all things, one on ancient armor, and two books by John Steinbeck, whom he’d just discovered in Mr. Hodges’s class. (The book on weaving he got because he’d read in National Geographic that the Vikings had made their sails of wool, and the threads that went one way were made with the undercoat of a special sheep and the threads that went the other way were made with the top coat. So he wondered what other interesting
things there might be to learn about weaving.)

  The thing about books was that someone, somewhere, had written them, and so people somewhere must be reading them. Even the ones he took from the library had due dates stamped in the back, which showed that someone in town was reading them. So why did he never meet anyone who read things like that, or talked about them, or wrote them? And why didn’t anyone ever talk the way they did in books?

  Deet was just different, that’s all. He’d always been different from everyone he knew, and he guessed he always would be. The thing was not to let people know how different he was if he could help it. The best way to do that was to keep his mouth shut.

  Deet was frowning over his book when Nelly took the seat next to him in the back row of homeroom. Nelly tipped his chair back on its back legs so it leaned against the wall, clasped his hands behind his head, and watched while the front rows filled up with their classmates. Nelly didn’t hang out with anyone any more than Deet did, but he was always very interested in what everyone else did and pointed out this and that to Deet, who never paid any attention.

  Nelly suddenly tipped his chair forward to rest on four legs and looked urgently at Deet.

  “Would you take the second bus and help me with those equations? I just can’t get it, no matter what.”

  Deet started to nod an okay, but then he remembered.

  “Jeez, I’m sorry, Nelly, but I got to go over to my Grandpa’s right after school.”

  Nelly mimed desperation, banging his head on his desk. Deet had to laugh.

  “Why don’t you call me tonight, Nell, and I’ll talk you through it, okay?” Nelly looked dubious about the efficiency of this method, but he agreed.

  Deet had been helping Nelly for years, and not just Nelly. Teachers often asked Deet to help someone out, someone who’d been absent, or someone who was floundering. He supposed it was because his notes were always neat and complete, because he didn’t think he was any good at explaining stuff. He didn’t think he had the patience to teach anybody anything.