December Park(102)
A shadow passed across the window.
I flipped the sheet off and practically spilled to the floor in my rush to the window. Pressing my nose against the glass, I looked down into the yard. Moonlight crisscrossed the black lawn, dripping between the interlocked limbs of the tall maples.
There was a man standing in the yard. He was halfway hidden in absolute darkness, and I could make out only the tapered yet undeniable slide of an arm, the protrusion of one shoulder, and, planted in the summer grass, the shape of a foot. I held my breath, unable to pull my nose from the glass, unable to shout for my father. I knew that the moment I saw the figure move I would find my voice and shriek like a girl.
But the figure never moved. I stared at it for such a long time the dark shapes began to lose their solidity, their realness. Things blurred into other things. The patches of moonlight turned everything into ghosts. There was no one down there. The remnants of my nightmare had caused me to see things. It fooled with my head. And despite my relief, sleep had a hard time reclaiming me.
Chapter Nineteen
The Search Party
Callibaugh, the proprietor and sole employee of Secondhand Thrift, was a foulmouthed old cur with three fingers missing from his right hand. Grizzled, barrel-chested Callibaugh was approximately my grandfather’s age and was a veteran of the Second World War. I wasn’t sure if Callibaugh was his first or last name, so I simply addressed him as “sir,” which seemed to please him the way not kicking a cat might please the cat.
“Ah,” he said after I’d introduced myself. He was perched on a swiveling stool behind the front counter, one fat index finger bookmarking his place in a creased and dog-eared paperback novel with battling warships on the cover. “You’re Salvatore’s grandson, eh?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re looking for a summer job?”
“Yes.”
Callibaugh waved one hand across the space between us. “Look around, son. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?”
In fact, two things came to my mind. One, that the store was in absolute shambles, with junk piled ceiling high in spots while random items hung off shelves and lay scattered about in incongruous heaps on the linoleum floor. And two, that he and I were the only two living creatures in the place, with the possible exception of the rodents that had left behind a Morse code trail of black turds along one baseboard.
But I said neither of these things. Instead, I surveyed the cluttered, schizophrenic amassment of junk with feigned contemplation before turning back to the proprietor. “It must be hard to remember where any specific thing is.”
“Yes,” Callibaugh said. He possessed the voice of a 1930s radio announcer, though one who had spent a lifetime sucking on unfiltered Camels. “I have no charts. I have no inventory. Do you know how this place started?”
I shook my head.
“I wanted to have a garage sale but don’t actually own a garage. It started with one old man’s lifetime of accumulation that, I suppose, at one point served a purpose and had a meaning but no longer does. The accumulation, I mean. Not the old man’s life.”
He set his book down on the countertop. “Walk around the store. Smell the place. Get a feel for it. See what junk pops out at you. If you work here, all this stuff will be yours until someone comes along and buys it out from under you. It’s important that you think of it in that way.”
“Is there an application or something I should fill out, too?”
Callibaugh’s laugh was as sharp and as brief as the report from a pistol. “Application,” he croaked, phlegm rattling deep down in his throat. “That’s rich.”
Somewhat bewildered, I turned away from the counter and proceeded to walk up and down the aisles. As I’d first gleaned, there was no rhyme or reason for how the items were placed on shelves—old textbooks slid into videogame cartridges which leaned against bags of potting soil which sat upon scruffy pairs of cleated sneakers. The only orderliness seemed to be in the way all the larger items had been shoved toward the back of the store. Sofas and love seats were packed against scuffed pieces of furniture. An old upright piano, its keys gray and furry with dust, slouched in one corner. I pressed one of the keys, only to be rewarded with a metallic and unmelodious clunking sound.
After I’d wasted what seemed like an obligatory amount of time wandering around, I returned to the counter where Callibaugh still sat on his swiveling stool, the open paperback mere inches from his face. When he didn’t set the book down, I made a show of clearing my throat, then offered him a guiltless smile when he peered at me over his book.
“Well?” he rasped loudly. “What say you?”
“It’s, uh . . . neat,” was the best I could come up with. Some wordsmith was I.
“It’s a war zone. It’s a sunken ship at the bottom of the sea. It’s a goddamned space station on the dark side of the moon.” The book rose to cover his eyes again. “You can start on Monday.”
That afternoon, with Michael’s parents having gone into Ellicott City for a day of antique shopping, the four of us gathered on the Sugarlands’ screened-in back porch to discuss what we should do about Adrian’s mysterious disappearance.
Though not nearly as creepy as Adrian’s house, the Sugarlands’ home was a cold and eerie museum, spotless and regal like a European church. Michael’s father was a lawyer, his mother a college professor, and to look upon their house one might surmise that the Sugarlands had never had any intention of having children. The few times I’d witnessed the Sugarland family together, their formality with one another bordered on palpable discomfort, like strangers trapped in a stalled elevator forced to make conversation. Even Michael, who was normally a live rocket ready to blast off into space when hanging out with his friends or among our peers at school, appeared uncharacteristically reserved in the company of his parents. I often theorized that his acting out at school was the equivalent of a valve letting off steam to prevent a systemic meltdown.