Chapter 34 Samson
Snow on the ground.
I’ve been visiting the hospital whenever I can.
They know me there now. I watch other people coming and going, being let through locked doors, but Dad says we are still not allowed to visit; it’s against her doctor’s rules.
All I can do is leave candy bars and paper bags of white mice for her.
The lady told me they have to open everything up and check there’s nothing dangerous hidden inside.
I was shocked at that. Something dangerous hidden inside a Snickers?
I drop them off together with handwritten notes torn from my exercise books.
Even though I have so much to say I can never find the right words.
So I keep the notes brief. It’s the closest thing I have to talking with her.
School days. Yesterday was the best I’ve had in months.
I wasn’t interfered with, apart from breaks and lunch.
I was left with a few scratches, sure, lost my essay, but nothing worse than that.
I managed to spend twenty minutes in the library researching college scholarships.
Premature, but I’ve got to get prepared.
Now I’m in Smith’s Bookstore and Stationers looking at atlases and encyclopedias of modern history.
Mr. Turner would have enjoyed these reference books.
He’d have devoured them and left dog-ears.
I leave the store and say night to Sandra. There are three of them between me and my bus so I take the long way around, by the scaffolding. I keep my head down. The ground is slippery with ice sludge and salt. As I round the corner Gunner appears in front of me. I turn back. Four boys behind me.
I am trapped.
“Where’s your girlfriend to help you this time, eh?”
I don’t say anything.
I walk faster.
“It’s rude to ignore a question, Noodles, buddy. Nobody ever teach you manners?”
“I need to get my bus.”
“You shouldn’t be with her, you know that, right? She’s not like you.”
“Need to catch the bus.”
“Needs to catch his bus, fellas.”
I look around for somewhere to go, for somebody to help.
“Gay bus, isn’t it, that one?”
I dash to the left to sidestep Gunner and he catches me with his arm.
“You’ll slip, Jenkins, running like that, little man. We don’t want that, now, do we? We don’t want any broken bones, Noodles.”
The others pull my bag off my shoulder.
“My bus is leaving.”
“Check he’s got his Walkman. Worth a couple of bucks, that is, even though it’s shit.”
They rummage around and then empty the contents of my bag onto the dirty gray snow. Textbooks and my pencil case and foil from lunch and my black wool gloves from Paul Pricklett.
Gunner puts his arm tight around my neck and leads me away.
“Please, bro. I have to get my bus. My dad’ll be angry.”
“I’m not your fucking bro, Noodles.” He lowers his voice.
“I’d throw myself under a truck if I was.
Why did they call you Samson with those noodle arms, eh?
What a fucking mismatch. Anyway, listen.
I heard you’ve picked up a paper route. Little enterprise.
I’ll be fair, right. Two bucks a week. You can pay me Mondays, keep it simple for you so you don’t forget. You got it?”
I nod.
He turns. “Give him his bag back, fellas. Come on. Noodles has a bus to catch, don’t you, buddy?”
I take my bag and look at Gunner and then run to my stop. I bang on the door and the driver begrudgingly lets me on.
“Next time you’re late I’m leaving without you.”
The bus pulls away.
The motion of the chassis, the wheels, the rolling hills, the country road, makes me sleepy.
I climb off the bus at my stop, carefully, my bag in front of me, and walk down to the towpath.
Phoenix saved my life a few days ago.
Sunday, it was.
I had cleaned up my knife and hacked away some of the old filth with a wooden toothpick so not to scratch it.
If I scratched it Dad would string me up.
It was a bright day and there was some traffic on the canal, people out in the cold, flat sunshine giving their motorboats a ride around, first trip of the new year, first decent day for it.
I finished off a bag of potato chips and had set up on the bank watching the world.
It was glorious. Insects buzzing low over the water and sun on my face.
Dad was out on a jog. I started sharpening my blade on his stone, grinding it one way then the next, working the edge, settling into a steady rhythm.
A Mississippi kite hovered over the field on the far bank, its angled head motionless in the pale sky, waiting patiently for its quarry.
I watched the bird closely. The growing rumble of a freight train approaching in the distance.
The kite flapped its wings once and dove down to the ground.
I stood up tall to see what it had caught and slipped and cut my index finger on the blade.
No pain whatsoever. My knife was too sharp for that.
But I dropped Dad’s sharpening stone and it hit the frozen ground and fell into two pieces.
I’m ashamed to say I screamed.
Phoenix came out of his boat and when he saw my bleeding finger he ran to me.
I did not expect that. I told him I was fine, but he helped clean and bandage my finger.
He said if it was any worse I’d need stitches.
We checked the stone. He said he’s never used one.
I told him it’s my dad’s. Then I sensed something behind us.
It was him. Back. Sweating, his head glistening, his shirt drenched.
His veins were bulging in his forearms. I started to speak.
I was stuttering, tripping over my words, panicking, and then Phoenix took over and said he was taking a look at the stone as he had never seen one like it, and he accidentally dropped it.
He apologized to Dad, who just stood there glaring at him.
He said he would buy him a new one or write him a check.
Dad said, “Samson, inside,” and ushered me back into the boat.
And that is how Phoenix saved my life.
We have no power now. Dad says there’s no money for diesel, so we have no hot water. He says he would move the boat to get away from the queer who smashed his whetstone, but he can’t with no fuel. I’m glad. I owe Phoenix something, I’m not sure what.
Dad looks over at me and says, “What are we having for supper?”
“Mushroom soup?” I say.
“Mushroom soup?”
I nod.
“I miss your mother’s cooking.”
My heart lifts at this. It swells. I can’t help but smile. These past months he has never once said he misses her.
“Me too. When do you think she’ll be back, Dad?”
“Why are you asking that again?”
I shrug.
“She’ll be back when she’s ready, boy. When it’s safe. Trust me, you don’t want her back before they’ve fixed her head up at the hospital. Let them do their work.”
“I’ve been hand-feeding a squirrel, Dad.”
“Vermin.”
“Two of them come to me now, take nuts right out of my hand.”
“Nuts?”
“It took six days, but I worked at it and they trust me now.”
“How do you pay for the nuts?”
“My paper route. What’s left over.”
“How much?”
“Not much.”
“How much?”
“Fifty cents or something.”
“Right. Put that in the house pot from now on. Feeding tree rats, I ask you, you’ll be locked up on that ward with your mother the way you’re going.” He points at me. “Don’t get any dumb ideas, now. They wouldn’t put you in there with her. You’d be in a wing for deranged children. You want that?”
I shake my head.
“Get that soup on then.”
I stoke up the fire and then change out of my uniform.
We have two cans of Campbell’s mushroom soup and the end of a stale loaf.
No butter. I open my schoolbag to retrieve my textbooks.
There is something sticking out of the edge of my pencil case.
I hold it in my hand and open it. Bring it up to the light.
There is a handwritten note in blue ballpoint.
It’s folded up and it has my name on it.
Inside are two brand-new razor blades.
They shine.
The note says: Your mom screwed it up. Make sure you do it properly.