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Chapter 27
The ten-day deadline for IPM to get back to them seemed to last forever, particularly as it coincided roughly with the sluggish remaining days of the school year.
Even Mrs. Brenner seemed to be running out of steam. Earlier in the year, she’d changed the bulletin boards regularly, to correspond with seasons and holidays. But it looked like the same fading Bicentennial posters would be hanging up for the duration.
She was showing films in the afternoons with increased regularity, too. She didn’t even mind the students ripping lined paper from their three-ring binders to fold into fans, the days growing warmer and the school not equipped with air conditioning.
In the cafeteria, the talk was all about summer plans.
“You hear IPM’s gonna have their own fireworks this year out at the Rec?” Brandon asked. “They’re gonna be the best!”
The other IPM boys all quickly agreed that, if IPM were doing fireworks out at the Rec, they would definitely be the best.
IPM Rec was a country club a few miles out of town for the families of employees. Brandon had taken Timothy out there once or twice, so he knew it was nice.
Talk turned, naturally, to the many days the IPM boys would be spending together, poolside, at the Rec.
“I’m gonna eat french fries everyday,” Steve said.
“I am too,” Drew said, “and hotdogs.”
“The fries at the Rec are the best,” Brandon agreed.
“Eating french fries everyday gives you cancer,” Allen said from across the table.
“Who says?” Steve said.
“My dad,” said Allen.
Allen’s dad didn’t work at IPM, but he was a doctor, which was basically Allen’s ace in the hole, when it came down to it.
“I’m gonna eat fries everyday anyway,” Steve said.
“Me too,” Drew agreed, then added, “and I’m gonna do a cannonball off the high board.”
Doing a cannonball off the high board was not likely something Allen’s dad was going to say would give him cancer.
“I’m gonna do a flip,” Steve one-upped him.
“I’m gonna do a double flip,” Brandon said, “and land right in Karen Vandenberg’s lap!”
Everyone died laughing at this. At the beginning of the school year, this would have sounded purely icky. But 4th grade had begun to work its magic on a couple of girls in class, and landing in Karen Vandenberg’s lap suddenly seemed an almost attractive possibility.
Spending the summer months poolside at IPM Rec was not in the cards for Timothy. Cathryn would probably drive him to Kingston Point occasionally so he could swim in the Hudson, which was fun in its own way, but he still wished he could join the club, or at least the conversation.
Then he found himself asking:
“Do any of you guys know Jack Wallace?”
“Jack Wallace?” Brandon said. “He’s, like, the head of IPM.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
The IPM boys all laughed at this.
“Of course not, dork,” Drew said, “how would any of us meet Jack Wallace?”
Timothy couldn’t say anything further, of course, without risking word getting out about the investigation and the shit storm it had just kicked up at their fathers’ place of employment.
The laughter about Timothy’s ridiculous question continued. Timothy started laughing too.
Only he was laughing at something different than they were.
# # #
Even without the benefit of a touchtone telephone, Timothy’s fingers could dial Charles’ number quickly and automatically at this point.
“Hey Timothy, how’s it going?” Charles said.
“Pretty good... you hear anything from IPM yet?”
“It’s only been four days.”
“I know, I just thought I’d check.”
Timothy had called the day before, this is more or less what Charles had said then.
“I promise when I hear something, you’ll be the first to know, okay?” Charles asked.
“Okay...you want to meet at the diner or something?”
“I’d like to, but I’m studying.”
“You’re still studying?”
Since Mrs. Brenner seemed to be running out of things for them to do in 4th grade, he couldn’t imagine what Charles could possibly be studying.
“When you get older, you have all these finals,” Charles tried to explain. “You’ll see when you get to junior high school.”
“When’re you going to be finished with those?”
“In a week or so.”
“Jeez.”
Charles let the conversation go silent a few moments before he asked, “Anything else?”
“Guess not,” Timothy said.
“Okay, see you soon.”
“See you soon.”
When Timothy hung up the phone, he left his hand on the receiver momentarily, still trying to decode the conversation. Charles had seemed glad enough to hear from him. Granted, maybe finals were more difficult than Timothy could imagine, but did anyone need to study for two whole afternoons in a row?
Timothy wandered somewhat aimlessly down the street to the field behind the Green Apartment Building. No investigation to conduct. No Charles to hang out with.
Mark and Carl were out there tossing a frisbee back and forth.
“Hey, where you been?”
“Studying,” Timothy said.
“Studying?” Carl said. “For what?”
“I don’t know,” Timothy said. “How come you’re not playing whiffle ball?”
“Not enough people,” Mark said.
Mark threw the frisbee to Timothy, who clap caught it between two hands. Shifting it into his right hand, he threw it to Carl, who threw it to Mark, who threw it to Timothy again.
After a few throws, the three of them forming roughly an equilateral triangle, Timothy rediscovered the muscle memory to catch and throw with the same hand.
“What’re you guys doing this summer?” Timothy asked.
“I dunno,” Carl said, throwing a slightly low one to Mark, who compensated fairly effortlessly and made the catch.
“We might go camping,” Mark said.
“Where?” Carl asked.
“I dunno,” Mark said. “Somewhere.”
Carl and Mark both turned to Timothy.
“So what are you doing this summer?” they asked.
“I dunno,” he said.
They didn’t talk much beyond that. But somehow they managed to keep throwing the frisbee for a good half hour without dropping it.
# # #
The next afternoon, Timothy figured he’d give Charles a break and not call. He was probably just going to say he was still studying anyway.
Timothy hadn’t consulted the Real Men’s Guidebook in a while. Today he pondered the instructions for breaking down a locked door. Unlike the movies, you were not actually supposed to use your shoulder.
He went out into the hallway, closed his own bedroom door, and imagined it was the door to an interior office, say, somewhere deep within the IPM complex.
First step, root your left foot firmly on the floor. Next step, take careful aim at a spot just to one side of the doorknob. Final step, leaning into the kick, drive heel into target.
This final step Timothy executed with approximately half his available strength, which did not open the door but which generated a slamming sound sufficient to reverberate throughout the entire house.
“Is everything okay?” Cathryn called from downstairs.
“Yeah, the wind just blew the door shut,” Timothy called back, even though there wasn’t much of a breeze today to speak of.
Examining the door, the wood near the doorknob displayed a hairline fracture. Timothy had no doubt that if he were to employ full strength, the door would fly apart and open.
Since this was his own bedroom door, it seemed best to leave remaining experimentation in this area in the realm of conjecture.
Another experiment, using a double A battery to start a fire, likewise seemed like something he probably shouldn’t be attempting in the house right now either.
# # #
The following day, the Freeman reported that a Planning Board Meeting had taken place the previous evening at City Hall.
The Common Council had voted unanimously to give IPM permission to expand their facility.
A formal press conference was scheduled for the following Saturday, which happened to be the first day of summer vacation, and also coincided a little too neatly with the date by which Jack Wallace had promised to deliver his plan for environmental clean-up.
The Freeman article included some basic details about the expansion. The groundbreaking was slated for early July of this year. The first of the new buildings would add 50,000 additional square feet of production space, creating almost 200 new jobs immediately, leading to an estimated 500 new jobs over time.
Mayor Kroeger was quoted as saying, “This is a good day for IPM, and a great day for Kingston,” as if he hadn’t just been informed six days before that IPM was responsible for a toxic spill into the waterways of the City under his watch.
Timothy had to call Charles.
“Did you see the paper?” he asked.
“I’m looking at it right now,” Charles replied.
“Were they, like, just bluffing us to buy time?”
Timothy could hear Charles flipping the paper over to finish reading the article on the back page.
“I don’t know...I mean, we promised not to go public for two weeks, and by that time they’re gonna have this big press conference...”
“And then it’ll be too late?”
“Not totally, but... it’s kinda hard to argue with 500 new jobs...”
It was a hard decision, but Charles and Timothy agreed they needed to stand by their word and wait for Jack Wallace to get back to them, even though they were beginning to have their doubts.
When the subject came up at dinner, his mom, having been at the police station meeting and knowing the backstory, came to roughly the same conclusion that Timothy and Charles had come up with independently.
“Hopefully they’ll do the right thing,” she said. “Just try not to be too disappointed if they don’t.”
# # #
Timothy hadn’t ridden his banana saddle since the night Grafton chased him, even though the police had retrieved it from Terri’s alleyway and delivered it to his house that same night.
Now it was a beautiful Saturday with not much to do, the bike was calling out to him. The front fender was slightly dented from crashing into the dumpster at Terri’s, but beyond this was no worse for wear.
He considered revisiting one of the hotspots related to their investigation, but he found he didn’t have much appetite for being out of his comfort zone. He pedaled lazily around uptown instead, familiar turf.
Summer freedom was beginning to wash over him, but it was perhaps more wistful than previous years, with Timothy not really knowing what he wanted to do, and a growing sense that life was a sequence of things given then taken away.
Timothy drifted toward Forsyth Park, as good a destination as any, its few blocks worth of trees not quite forest-like, but dense enough for a little extra oxygen and the sense that you’d gone somewhere.
The path that meandered through the park led up the hill to J. Watson Bailey, so it was only natural that he found himself slow pedaling in front of the junior high.
It was closed now, of course, being Saturday. But Timothy pictured Charles in there, day in, day out, changing classes, doing finals, whatever you did at the end of the year in junior high school.
Timothy tried to imagine going to school there himself, two-plus years from now.
Doing the math, by the time he got to junior high, Charles would be in high school. And by the time he got to high school, Charles would be off in college somewhere.
They would never be in the same school together. Charles would always be several steps ahead. It was only natural that sooner or later, he would leave Timothy behind altogether.
Maybe that was just the way it was going to be.
# # #
In school Monday, the kids could barely control themselves knowing this was the very last week. Library was no exception, but there was something about that particular room, the students somehow had the restraint to keep their voices low enough that Mrs. Stein could read them one last story.
“Does anyone remember what a myth is?” Mrs. Stein asked.
Several hands went up and she called on Drew, the boy who’d worn a three-pointed hat during his presentation.
“A myth means it’s fake,” Drew said.
“Well, that’s one meaning of the word myth,” Mrs. Stein said, “but a myth is also a certain type of story, which might not be literally true, but it might contain a deeper truth that helps people understand something about their lives.”
The kids wiggled on their mats, half of them lost already, but she continued just the same.
“Today we’re going to hear a myth from the Algonquin people who lived here in New York State, not around here exactly, but not so very far away.”
She held the book up for the class to see and announced its title, “The Story of Thunderbird.”
Timothy’s ears perked up immediately, like she had just said his name, because in a way, she had.
She began to read:
When the people first came to live by the river, they did not know what to eat.
They found the fish in the river to be plentiful. But the river was also home to the Great Horned Serpent, who ruled the underworld.
Great Horned Serpent, they said, we will give you our respect, please allow us to eat the fish from your river. And they offered him various tributes.
The Serpent was well pleased with this, and allowed the people to take fish from the river, and this is how they lived.
Many years passed, the people grew more knowledgeable about life on the shores. They learned to grow corn and beans and squash, and as years passed, they came to offer the Earth Mother more and more tributes, while to the Serpent they offered less and less.
The Serpent grew jealous. When the people weren’t paying attention, he rose up angrily from the river. With fire coming from his mouth, he scorched the fields so that the corn, beans and squash could not grow. He muddied the river, so the people could not fish.
The people tried to offer tributes to the Serpent again, but it was too late, he had grown too bitter to hear their words.
Knowing they would surely starve, the people then looked to the sky and called out to Thunderbird, who controlled the upper world.
Now, this was not without risk, because Thunderbird had great destructive power. The flapping of his great wings created thunder, lightning came from his eyes, and his windstorms could be devastating. But he also had the power to feed the earth with life-giving rain.
Thunderbird looked and saw that the Serpent had left his river and was bringing harm to the fields. He swooped down to aid the helpless people.
A great battle between Thunderbird and Serpent began. Thunderbird had Serpent caught in his beak, but Serpent managed to wrap his tail around Thunderbird’s neck.
In the upper world, Thunderbird’s powers were greater, but below the surface, Serpent had the advantage. When Serpent began to pull Thunderbird into the water, it seemed that Serpent might win. Thunderbird thought only to free himself and return to the upper world.
The people called out to Thunderbird, begging him to keep fighting, but above the noise of battle he could barely hear them.
Then, Earth Mother called out to Thunderbird. She reminded him that it was only because the people had offered her tribute that Serpent had grown so vengeful. If he were left undefeated, he would continue to scorch the earth and muddy the waters, and the people would surely starve.
Hearing this, Thunderbird continued fighting with Serpent. Right before being pulled under, he managed to get Serpent within his talons. Flapping his mighty wings, Thunderbird carried Serpent off to a distant lake.
As he pierced the clouds, rain began to fall, which brought the soil back to life.
The corn and beans and squash grew and grew. That year was the greatest of harvests, and there was much celebration in the village...
Mrs. Stein closed the book and nodded her head with satisfaction at the power of a good story.
Some kids rolled their eyes, eager to get to lunch and the playground, but Timothy had been mesmerized.
He’d thought that Thunderbird was just another flashy car. But it turned out that Thunderbird ruled the sky. He could shoot lightning from his eyes, and was a protector of the people.
Timothy liked that idea.
# # #
After school, Timothy was in his room digging through his bottom drawer when he came upon the envelope of the first roll of film he’d had developed. It was still a sore spot that his mom had only taken the ones of her and Cathryn, but looking at the ones that remained from their Lake George trip, he had a vague idea he should try to make some duplicates to give her so he could keep his own copies.
He popped the envelope into his knapsack and took off on his bike.
Funny, this neighborhood now seemed not so bad at all. Charles’ mom was right, it really was close to everything. While kids like Brandon were stuck riding in circles in their suburban cul-de-sacs, Timothy could go pretty much anywhere he wanted.
When he got to the booth, he was glad to see the FotoMat girl, not the chubby guy with the mustache.
“I thought you’d forgotten about me,” she said, when Timothy pulled up on his bike.
“How’re you feeling?” he asked.
“Fine. Why do you ask?”
“Last time I was here your manager said you called in sick.”
“It happens.”
“He wasn’t so nice.”
“One of the benefits of working alone in a booth,” she said, “I don’t have to deal with him much.”
Interesting, Timothy hadn’t thought about this. If the paralegal thing didn’t work out, maybe his mom should think about working at a FotoMat.
“So, did you have something you wanted to develop,” she asked, “or did you just come here to chat?”
“You said can make more regular pictures from negatives, right?”
“You betcha. Whatcha got?”
Timothy took the negatives out of the little side compartment in the envelope and held them up to the sunlight. It was kind of hard to make them out, they were so small.
A car pulled up behind him.
“Sorry it’s taking so long.”
“Take your time, they can wait.”
Squinting at the tiny negatives, he still wasn’t sure.
“I’m having trouble choosing,” he said.
“You want me to have a look?”
He handed her the negatives. Holding them up to the light in her booth with a more practiced eye, she scanned them quickly.
“These are cute,” she said, “how ‘bout this one?”
She held her finger by one in particular and handed it back to Timothy. It wasn’t one of the ones he was thinking of for a variety of reasons. But then remembered the Real Men’s motto:
When that little voice says No, you say Yes, and double it.
This seemed to be one of those moments.
“Okay...”
“Great, what size do you want?”
“You can pick sizes?”
“Sure, we can bump it up to 5x7... or, if you really want to go for it, we can do 8x10.”
Double it, the voice reminded him.
“Let’s go for it,” he said.
# # #
That evening, the phone rang right in the middle of dinner.
Timothy’s mom didn’t think much of people who called right in the middle of dinner.
“This better be important,” she said.
She rose from the table and went into the kitchen to answer it.
Timothy and Cathryn could clearly hear the tone of her voice going from miffed to quite enthusiastic.
“Why yes... yes... yes, I think he can do that,” she said, seeming to agree to whatever was being proposed on the other end of the line.
Both Timothy and Cathryn had stopped chewing their Hamburger Helper by this point to listen in.
Stretching the phone cord to the max, Timothy’s mom came back into the dining room, bringing the phone conversation with her.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?” she said into the phone then, cupping her hand over the receiver: “Timothy, it’s Jack Wallace.”
Timothy wiped his mouth off lickety-split.
“Hello?”
“Yes, hi Timothy this is Jack Wallace, from IPM, sorry to disturb you during dinner.”
“That’s okay,” Timothy replied perhaps too eagerly, having anticipated this moment, while at the same starting to doubt that it would happen.
“So, I was just telling your mother, we’re going to be having a little ceremony at IPM this Saturday to formally announce the upcoming expansion of our facility...”
“Yes, I read about it in the paper.”
“Of course you did...well, we’ve decided to expand our presentation slightly to showcase the new Environmental Stewardship Program that we’re launching, in part thanks to the wonderful research that you were able to provide...we’d like to present you and Charles with an award to recognize your achievement, is that something you might be interested in?”
“Yes, definitely,” Timothy replied, not attempting to hide his excitement in the slightest by this point.
“It’s the first day of your summer vacation, I’m afraid,” Jack Wallace said, “maybe you have other plans that day, but the timing of the ceremony has been in the works for some time...”
“That’s no problem, Mr. Wallace, I’ll be there.”
“Glad to hear it, and please bring your family too.”
“I will, thank you Mr. Wallace.”
“No, thank you Timothy, good night.”
“Good night...”
Timothy stood there dumbfounded, then:
“I have to call Charles,” he said, “can I call Charles now, or do I have to wait until after dinner?”
“Call Charles,” his mom said.
His fingers fumbled on the rotary dial, he was so excited.
“Charles, I just got a call from Jack Wallace!”
“So did I,” Charles said, a bit more composed than Timothy, but obviously equally excited.
“We did it!”
“So it seems, Thunderbird, so it seems...”
They agreed to talk more later to firm up plans for attending, then Timothy fell back into his seat at the dinner table, still kind of stunned.
“This is great news,” his mom said.
“Yeah... he said I can bring my family.”
“Okay,” his mom said without hesitation, “I’ll take off work.”
Then they both looked at Cathryn.
“I’m very proud of you, Timothy,” Cathryn said. “I’ll be very happy to stay home and hold down the fort.”
Cathryn was smiling as if this was an arrangement that suited her perfectly fine. But Timothy knew her well enough by now. He knew that the smile was masking her hurt feelings at the prospect of being left out.
“No,” he said. “I think you should come.”
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Great chapter, though!
We’ll, this seems like a red herring, so … I remain angry (although I did tear up when Timothy invited Cathryn).