Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, Cory Doctorow [big ebook reader .txt] 📗

whenever
he'd been somewhere quiet long enough that his own inner voices fell
still, he'd remember the hair in his fist, the knife's thirsty draught
as it drew forth the hot splash of blood from Davey's throat. He'd
remembered the ragged fissure that opened down Clarence's length and the
way that Davey fell down it, so light and desiccated he was almost
weightless.

"If you remember it, then you know I did the right thing. I did the only
thing."

"*We* did the only thing," Brian said, and covered Alan's hand with his.

Alan nodded and stared at his cheeseburger. "You'd better go catch up
with your friends," he said.

"I love you, Adam," he said.

"I love you, too."

Billy crossed the room, nodding to the people who greeted him from every
table, geeks and jocks and band and all the meaningless tribes of the
high school universe. The cute redhead sprinkled a wiggle-finger wave at
him, and he nodded at her, the tips of his ears going pink.

#

The snow stopped by three p.m., and the sun came out and melted it away,
so that by the time the game started at five-thirty, its only remnant
was the soggy ground around the bleachers with the new grass growing out
of the ragged brown memory of last summer's lawn.

Alan took the little ones for dinner at the diner after school, letting
them order double chocolate-chip pancakes. At 13, they'd settled into a
fatness that made him think of a foam-rubber toy, the rolls and dimples
at their wrists and elbows and knees like the seams on a doll.

"You're starting high school next year?" Alan said, as they were pouring
syrup on their second helping. He was startled by this -- how had they
gotten so old so quickly?

"Uh-huh," Eli said. "I guess."

"So you're graduating from elementary school this spring?"

"Yeah." Eli grinned a chocolate smile at him. "It's no big deal. There's
a party, though."

"Where?"

"At some kid's house."

"It's okay," Alan said. "We can celebrate at home. Don't let them get to
you."

"We can't go?" Ed suddenly looked a little panicked.

"You're invited?" He blurted it out and then wished he hadn't.

"Of course we're invited," Fred said from inside Ed's throat. "There's
going to be dancing."

"You can dance?" Alan asked.

"We can!" Ed said.

"We learned in gym," Greg said, with the softest, proudest voice, deep
within them.

"Well," Alan said. He didn't know what to say. High
school. Dancing. Invited to parties. No one had invited him to parties
when he'd graduated from elementary school, and he'd been too busy with
the little ones to go in any event. He felt a little jealous, but mostly
proud. "Want a milkshake?" he asked, mentally totting up the cash in his
pocket and thinking that he should probably send Brad to dicker with the
assayer again soon.

"No, thank you," Ed said. "We're watching our weight."

Alan laughed, then saw they weren't joking and tried to turn it into a
cough, but it was too late. Their shy, chocolate smile turned into a
rubber-lipped pout.

#

The game started bang on time at six p.m., just as the sun was
setting. The diamond lights flicked on with an audible click and made a
spot of glare that cast out the twilight.

Benny was already on the mound, he'd been warming up with the catcher,
tossing them in fast and exuberant and confident and controlled. He
looked good on the mound. The ump called the start, and the batter
stepped up to the plate, and Benny struck him out in three pitches, and
the little ones went nuts, cheering their brother on along with the
other fans in the bleachers, a crowd as big as any you'd ever see
outside of school, thirty or forty people.

The second batter stepped up and Benny pitched a strike, another strike,
and then a wild pitch that nearly beaned the batter in the head. The
catcher cocked his mask quizzically, and Benny kicked the dirt and
windmilled his arm a little and shook his head.

He tossed another wild one, this one coming in so low that it
practically rolled across the plate. His teammates were standing up in
their box now, watching him carefully.

"Stop kidding around," Alan heard one of them say. "Just strike him
out."

Benny smiled, spat, caught the ball, and shrugged his shoulders. He
wound up, made ready to pitch, and then dropped the ball and fell to his
knees, crying out as though he'd been struck.

Alan grabbed the little ones' hand and pushed onto the diamond before
Benny's knees hit the ground. He caught up with Benny as he keeled over
sideways, bringing his knees up to his chest, eyes open and staring and
empty.

Alan caught his head and cradled it on his lap and was dimly aware that
a crowd had formed round them. He felt Barry's heart thundering in his
chest, and his arms were stuck straight out to his sides, one hand in
his pitcher's glove, the other clenched tightly around the ball.

"It's a seizure," someone said from the crowd. "Is he an epileptic? It's
a seizure."

Someone tried to prize Alan's fingers from around Barry's head and he
grunted and hissed at them, and they withdrew.

"Barry?" Alan said, looking into Barry's face. That faraway look in his
eyes, a million miles away. Alan knew he'd seen it before, but not in
years.

The eyes came back into focus, closed, opened. "Davey's back," Barry
said.

Alan's skin went cold and he realized that he was squeezing Barry's head
like a melon. He relaxed his grip and helped him to his feet, got
Barry's arm around his shoulders, and helped him off the diamond.

"You okay?" one of the players asked as they walked past him, but Barry
didn't answer. The little ones were walking beside them now, clutching
Barry's hand, and they turned their back on the town as a family and
walked toward the mountain.

#

George had come to visit him once before, not long after Alan'd moved to
Toronto. He couldn't come without bringing down Elliot and Ferdinand, of
course, but it was George's idea to visit, that was clear from the
moment they rang the bell of the slightly grotty apartment he'd moved
into in the Annex, near the students who were barely older than him but
seemed to belong to a different species.

They were about 16 by then, and fat as housecats, with the same sense of
grace and inertia in their swinging bellies and wobbling chins.

Alan welcomed them in. Edward was wearing a pair of wool trousers pulled
nearly up to his nipples and short suspenders that were taut over his
sweat-stained white shirt. He was grinning fleshily, his hair damp with
sweat and curled with the humidity.

He opened his mouth, and George's voice emerged. "This place is..." He
stood with his mouth open, while inside him, George
thought. "*Incredible.* I'd never..." He closed his mouth, then opened
it again. "*Dreamed*. What a..."

Now Ed spoke. "Jesus, figure out what you're going to say before you say
it, willya? This is just plain --"

"Rude," came Fede's voice from his mouth.

"I'm sorry," came George's voice.

Ed was working on his suspenders, then unbuttoning his shirt and
dropping his pants, so that he stood in grimy jockeys with his slick,
tight, hairy belly before Alan. He tipped himself over, and then Alan
was face-to-face with Freddy, who was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of
boxer shorts with blue and white stripes. Freddy was scowling comically,
and Alan hid a grin behind his hand.

Freddy tipped to one side and there was George, short and delicately
formed and pale as a frozen french fry. He grabbed Freddy's hips like
handles and scrambled out of him, springing into the air and coming down
on the balls of his feet, holding his soccer-ball-sized gut over his
Hulk Underoos.

"It's incredible," he hooted, dancing from one foot to the other. "It's
brilliant! God! I'm never, ever going home!"

"Oh, yes?" Alan said, not bothering to hide his smile as Frederick and
George separated and righted themselves. "And where will you sleep,
then?"

"Here!" he said, running around the tiny apartment, opening the fridge
and the stove and the toaster oven, flushing the toilet, turning on the
shower faucets.

"Sorry," Alan called as he ran by. "No vacancies at the Hotel Anders!"

"Then I won't sleep!" he cried on his next pass. "I'll play all night
and all day in the streets. I'll knock on every door on every street and
introduce myself to every person and learn their stories and read their
books and meet their kids and pet their dogs!"

"You're bonkers," Alan said, using the word that the lunch lady back at
school had used when chastising them for tearing around the cafeteria.

"Easy for you to say," Greg said, skidding to a stop in front of
him. "Easy for you -- you're *here*, you got *away*, you don't have to
deal with *Davey* --" He closed his mouth and his hand went to his lips.

Alan was still young and had a penchant for the dramatic, so he went
around to the kitchen and pulled a bottle of vodka out of the freezer
and banged it down on the counter, pouring out four shots. He tossed
back his shot and returned the bottle to the freezer.

George followed suit and choked and turned purple, but managed to keep
his expression neutral. Fred and Ed each took a sip, then set the drinks
down with a sour face.

"How's home?" Alan said quietly, sliding back to sit on the minuscule
counter surface in his kitchenette.

"It's okay," Ed mumbled, perching on the arm of the Goodwill sofa that
came with the apartment. Without his brothers within him, he moved
sprightly and lightly.

"It's fine," Fred said, looking out the window at the street below,
craning his neck to see Bloor Street and the kids smoking out front of
the Brunswick House.

"It's awful," Greg said, and pulled himself back up on the counter with
them. "And I'm not going back."

The two older brothers looked balefully at him, then mutely appealed to
Alan. This was new -- since infancy, Earl-Frank-Geoff had acted with
complete unity of will. When they were in the first grade, Alan had
wondered if they were really just one person in three parts -- that was
how close their agreements were.

"Brian left last week," Greg said, and drummed his heels on the
grease-streaked cabinet doors. "Didn't say a word to any of us, just
left. He comes and goes like that all the time. Sometimes for weeks."

Craig was halfway around the world, he was in Toronto, and Brian was
God-knew-where. That left just Ed-Fred-George and Davey, alone in the
cave. No wonder they were here on his doorstep.

"What's he doing?"

"He just sits there and watches us, but that's enough. We're almost
finished with school." He dropped his chin to his chest. "I thought we
could finish here. Find a job. A place to live." He blushed
furiously. "A girl."

Ed and Fred were staring at their laps. Alan tried to picture the
logistics, but he couldn't, not really. There was no scenario in which
he could see his brothers carrying on with --

"Don't be an idiot," Ed said. He sounded surprisingly bitter. He was