This short story is a guest post by Daniel Patterson, junior English major.
My friend Easton, he’s always getting into trouble. He’s a gypsy, that’s why—and that’s not being racist, especially if it’s true (my dad told me that). Anyways, he’s a gypsy and all, but what kind of gypsy is named Easton? He doesn’t look like a gypsy either; though, I guess I’m not really sure what one is supposed to look like. My dad says you can always tell—whatever that is supposed to mean—but you can’t tell with Easton. He’s as white as whipped cream.
Anyhow, when I heard a knock on the door, I knew it was him. I knew because he has this double knock, pause, and then repeat sort-of-thing that was beyond annoying. My parents knew it too, that’s why they didn’t go to the door. They don’t like him—probably because of all the trouble he gets into.
“Give me a second!” I yelled, and then brought another spoonful of cereal into my mouth. I walked over to the door and opened it. Easton came right in. He does that every time; some people never wait to be invited in, it’s like they think they’re always invited.
“Hey, Kev, how’s it goin’?”
“Good, I guess. You?”
“Cereal?” he said. “You eat cereal in the afternoon? It’s like three o’clock, man. Hey, what else you got?”
I didn’t answer. He was already searching the cabinets.
He grabbed a bag of potato chips and took a seat next to me at the table. I grabbed my spoon and began to finish my food.
“You know what I was thinking Kev? I was thinking we do somethin’ crazy, like really crazy and all.”
There he goes with his ideas and crap, always causing trouble. Easton took a handful of chips and stuffed them in his mouth. I tried to subtly move my chair away from his, not because I didn’t like him—I do—but because . . . well his chewing drives me crazy. I mean, Easton is one of those guys where even though his mouth is closed, he’s still smacking. I hate that. If there is one thing I hate more than anything else, it’s smacking.
“Did you hear me Kev?”
Kev. He was always shortening my name, always using my name. I know he’s talking to me, we’re the only one’s in the room.
“Yeah, I did East.”
“‘East’, hey I like that Kev. Man, people don’t really call me that much. You can call me that though, I don’t mind.”
I cringed as he loaded another handful of chips in his mouth.
“But, hey,” he said, “I was thinkin’, why don’t we do somethin’ crazy, like go to old man Benson’s house.”
“Why the heck would we go there?” I glanced to my left and saw my mom pop her head out of the office. She looked at me and gave one of those smiles that said too much; I think I only understood half of what she meant. She gave some kind of nod (I’m not sure why) and went back into the office, closing the door behind her. I looked back at Easton. He hadn’t noticed a thing.
“You see, because, I was thinkin’ earlier today,” he said. Easton could never answer a question right away. There always had to be an explanation. You could ask him what he had for lunch, and he would have a story about why he chose to eat a hamburger or whatever.
“And as I was thinkin’, I was riding my bike on that old road—you know, the one that Mr. Benson lives on—and I wondered why he always has so many nickels. Have you ever wondered that?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said. And why would I wonder? No one cares why he has so many nickels. They just don’t want to be yelled at and pelted with them if they go into Mr. Benson’s yard.
“But don’t you find it strange that he has so many nickels?”
“I guess, but I’ve never thought about it.”
“Exactly,” Easton said. He stuffed more chips in his mouth and let out a loud crunch as he chomped down on them.
I tensed.
“I bet you there is some crazy story behind it. Let’s go find it out,” Easton said, mouth half-full.
I stood up, made some distance away from Easton and his mouth, took a seat on the living room couch, and pulled the couch pillow up and into my arms. “How would we find out about the nickels?”
“We go inside his house,” Easton said.
“How?”
“We’ll figure it out when we get there.” He threw the empty bag of potato chips in the trash and made his way to where I sat. “What do you say?”
“Clean your crumbs from the table. I don’t want ants.”
“Sure thing, Kev.” Easton walked over and wiped them in his hand and lost about half of them on his way to the trash can. Yeah, there would be ants.
“What do you say?”
“Fine,” I told him, not really sure why I agreed. Gypsies always get you in trouble if you let them.
“Great,” he said. “I’ll call Katy.”
“Wait, why?”
“Cause I know she’ll wanna come along.”
“Fine, whatever,” I said. I should have never agreed.
On the way outside of my house, Easton dialed Katy’s number and I pulled my bike out of the garage. Stepping out, I heard him tell her what we were doing. There was a moment of silence, and then “Great! We’ll meet you there!”
I bent down and used my hand to squeeze the front and back tires to see if the air was good. It was.
“So I take it Katy is coming?”
“Sure is. That’s great, isn’t Kev?”
“For sure, East.” He smiled at that.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get going.”
We pedaled out in the summer heat, which looked like white waves swaying over the road’s pavement, sweat forming on our foreheads. I hate sweat. I hate the smell. I hate the feel. I know it’s unavoidable, but I feel like everyone should hate something they know they can’t avoid. It brings some strange sense of pleasure for no explainable reason, knowing you will have a run in with it, knowing you won’t ever win.
By the time we reached the street that old man Benson’s house was on, we could see Katy sitting on the side of the road, a good ways away from where his house was. Easton stopped pedaling and simply cruised to her. She stood up as he set the bike down and hugged him. They kissed. I looked away.
“Hey, Kev, why don’t you come join us? Instead of just standing there all awkward and everything.”
I looked back. Both of them were holding hands and were looking at me. “I’m not standing ‘all awkward,’” I said. That was a lie. I was standing “all awkward.” Joining them, I said, “Hey Katy.”
She smiled, barely. It was one of those half smiles, the kind you could never tell if the person meant it or not.
She said, “So, how we getting in? And when we find the buried treasure, I call first dibs. ”
“That’s fine,” Easton said.
“Buried treasure? There isn’t any kind of treasure in his house?” I said.
“And how do you know?” Katy said. “Have you been in Mr. Benson’s home?”
“Well, no—“
“Exactly, so you don’t know. There might be millions stashed away in there.”
“And there also might be a billion rats. Who knows, right?” I said.
“Well, anyways,” Easton said, “why don’t we cool down for a bit. I got a plan to get us in.”
“And?”
“And what?” Easton said.
“And what’s the plan, East?” I said. Katy was no longer holding his hand. She had her back turned to the both of us, was looking at Mr. Benson’s house. Even her stance looked tense. I could see that her thighs were flexed—her jeans weren’t hiding anything—and that her back was rigid.
“Y’all are going to hide in his bushes, while I stand in his yard. When he comes out to chase me, I want y’all to jump in his house and lock the door.”
“Then what will you do?” I asked. Katy still hadn’t turned back yet. What was she thinking? I bet she regretted coming. I really bet she did. That’s just like her.
“I’ll jump his fence and you can let me in through the back door. Pretty simple, right?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Katy said. “You think you can get away quick enough?”
“Oh, for sure. He’s old. I’m a natural born runner, remember?”
That’s another thing that annoyed me. I hate it when people say stuff like that. Oh, look at me, look what I can do. See how good I am at this. People really believe that crap, you know? People are gullible; you can tell someone that you’re good at whatever and they’ll buy it. They really will. People want to believe in everyone, because they don’t want to have to live in a world where everybody is always saying some kind of crap that is exaggerated or not true. The only person who never really buys into that kind of crap is yourself. You can lie to everyone, you can exaggerate every story, but you’ll never really believe what you say. Not in a million years.
“Sounds like a great plan, East. It really does.”
“Thanks, Kev.” He smiled. I’m sure he was feeling like a rock star right now, coming up with a plan and everything, going to be the first one to discover what was in Mr. Benson’s house.
“Well,” Katy said, finally turning around, “let’s not just stand around.”
“Alright,” Easton said. “It’s time to roll.”
And we did, I guess. Not in a super cool way, but in our own, special way. Easton did his normal thing—making a ton of noise. He stood in Mr. Benson’s front yard and shouted, “This grass feels great on my feet!” I don’t even know why he was saying that, because he was wearing shoes. It worked though. Old man Benson came running out, hands full of nickels. Katy and I, we were in the bushes by the front door. Benson didn’t even notice us. Benson started hurling nickels at Easton while screaming “Trespasser!”
“Come on,” I told Katy, “now’s our chance.” We slipped out from behind the bushes and walked up the two small steps leading to the front door. I glanced quickly back and saw that Mr. Benson was still throwing nickels at Easton, who was trying his best to dodge them. He turned around then, Mr. Benson, and saw me. I swear he was looking me right in the eyes. He froze, like he wasn’t really sure what to do or what was happening. That only lasted for a second.
Mr. Benson took off towards me, a madman’s look in his eyes.
“What are you doing!” Katy said, clutching my arm.
I looked at her, just now realizing I wasn’t moving. She yanked my arm, and that was enough to get me going. We both got inside and locked the door.
“What were you doing? Did you want to get caught?”
“Trespassers! Trespassers! Trespassers!” I heard, along with vicious banging on the door. It made my skin crawl.
“No, I just froze I guess.”
“Over what?”
“I don’t know . . . his eyes. Like there was—“
“Never mind,” she said. “We need to let Easton in.”
She led the way into the kitchen, where we spotted a back door and Easton standing next to it. He smiled as we let him in.
“I did it!” He shouted. He closed the door, locked it. “Dang, he said. Mr. Benson sure can pound. That’s the loudest banging I’ve ever heard.”
“The screaming doesn’t help, either,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t, Kev.”
Katy said. “Somebody is going to hear him.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s split up and look around. We probably don’t have much time. Kev, why don’t you go search the bedrooms? I’ll go look in the basement. And Katy, why don’t you look in the living room and wherever else?”
“Sounds good,” I said.
We all split up, walked to the different parts of the house. I realized my heart was pounding—like Mr. Benson was doing—as I entered his hallway and saw a closed door to my right. I grabbed the knob, tried to turn it, but it was locked. Maybe somebody was in there, sitting behind the door, waiting for Mr. Benson to come back. Maybe he has a daughter; she’s in there crying, probably calling the cops. I should have never come here.
There’s another loud bang. Mr. Benson was still screaming “Trespassers!” as I turned back to the living room and saw Katy peering at an overflowing bookshelf. She bent over so that she could see the lower shelves. She had never been the prettiest girl. Her hair always had loose strands all over the place, and she never cared to fix them; she wore nasty tennis shoes, mud soaked and spotted with holes; her jeans were faded and seemed to have picked up a smell that could never go away, but everyone from my school liked her.
She was different. We all wondered where the mud came from and what secret forest she had explored. I don’t think she’ll ever tell, because once she does, the mystery is gone and there will be nothing left, except for a girl with wild hair and dirty shoes.
I moved back in the hallway, although I’m not really sure why, and went to the next room down. The door was cracked shut. I opened it slowly, hardly making a noise. The walls were light blue, almost silver-looking in the sun’s light through the window. There was a small wooden desk that looked like it was from the ’60s and a bed that would break if you slept in it. The room was neat, nothing out of place. Great, another dead-end. There’s nothing in this house that is weird or out of place, nothing to justify the reason for coming.
But then I smelt it: mold and paper and something else I couldn’t recognize.
Looking around, I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I moved toward the bed, bent down and looked under it. Clean. Standing up, my eyes moved toward the closet. Whatever the smell was, it had to be coming from in there.
I stepped to the closet and brought my hand to the doorknob, but hesitated. I bent down once again and saw a moth crawling out from inside. I rose, thought of walking away, but instead yanked the door open. A swarm of moths flew out at me. I screamed and fell, hitting my head on the floor. Everything went dark for a second, but when I opened my eyes, I could see them flying around the room, landing on whatever was near.
Inside the closet, there were newspapers upon newspapers upon newspapers; they went from the floor of the closet to the top. Water stood at the bottom, the papers soaking in it. I turned the closet light switch on and was surprised to see that the bulb worked. I picked up a random piece of paper and saw that it was soaked; most of them were. Peering at the ceiling, I could see a small hole in the top, and guessed that when it rains a steady stream of droplets would fall inside. I tossed the paper on the floor and grabbed another one; this one from the far left side (which was the furthest from the whole). It was dry. The headline read: SMALL EARTHQUAKE CAUSES OLD CONSERVATORY TO CRUMBLE. The date read 1989. Scanning some more, I saw that it was from this town. I didn’t know Maplewine ever had a conservatory. I continued reading, “The old building crumbled, leaving three severely injured and one killed in the earthquake. Among those injured were Jeff Moore, Alex Carter, and Robert Benson. Killed in the accident—“
“Find anything interesting?”
“Just some old newspapers,” I said, turning to see Katy leaning against the wall.
“So no nickels?”
“No nickels.”
“Huh,” she said.
I tore out the page I had been reading and slipped it into my pocket. Katy moved toward the desk and picked up one of the pictures from it.
“Who do you think this is?”
I came over, and she handed me the frame. The picture was of a middle-aged woman who stood on top of a mountain or something. She had brown hair and was smiling. She looked happy.
“Do you think he had a wife or a daughter?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “Maybe she isn’t either of those. Maybe this picture is just of a girl he wished he could have had.”
“You really think so?”
I looked at her eyes and then put the picture frame back down, my hand shaking slightly.
“Maybe,” I said. “I bet he was one of the lucky guys, though. I bet he was able to get who he wanted.”
“Y’all, get over here!” We heard Easton yell.
“Come on, let’s go find him,” Katy said. She kept looking at me, though. God, what a look it was. Right before I thought she was about to speak again, Katy turned and walked away from me.
Easton was in the living room.
“I found it,” he said. “Come on, look in the basement.”
I started toward the basement but stopped. “Hey, do you hear that?”
“No, what?” Katy asked.
“Nothing. There isn’t any sound. Mr. Benson stopped banging on the door.”
“Yeah,” Easton said, “he probably got tired and gave up. Anyways, you gotta see this.”
We all walked down the creaking, wooden steps and into the dim basement. There were three trash cans along the back wall of the basement, lids on each of them.
“The room is empty,” Katy said, “besides a few things here and there. What’s so—“
“Look,” Easton said, pointing to the three trash cans.
Katy and I walked to them, stopped before them like it was an altar that needed a sacrifice set before its base. I reached for one of the lids, but thought of the moths from the closet.
“You do it,” I told her.
“Okay,” she said gently, and grabbed one of the lids. The trashcan was full of nickels. I grabbed the other lids and yanked them off; both cans were full to the brim. “Oh my God,” Katy said.
“I know, right? That’s a ton of nickels.”
“How do you even get that many?” I asked.
“Who knows,” Katy said. “Maybe he robbed a bank?”
“And took all of their nickels? Really?”
“You never know,” Katy said while moving away from me.
Easton gave me a look. I ignored it.
A moth flew by my face. My eyes followed it as it moved past me and landed on one of the trash cans.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” I said. “I don’t like this place.”
We all moved up the steps, one by one, silent, ready to be gone. When we reached the foyer, we saw that the front door was open, and the window next to it was broken. I looked to my right and saw Mr. Benson at the end of the hallway, looking at us.
“TRESPASSERS!” he screamed, and began to run.
“Move!” I cried, and we all tried to shuffle out the door. Easton went first, followed by Katy. Right before I reached the threshold of the door, I felt pressure on my shoulder, and then I felt my body go backwards as Mr. Benson yanked me down to the floor.
“Help!” I shrieked.
“TRESPASSERS!” He cried again.
“Easton!” I screamed, feeling tears roll down my cheeks. Mr. Benson was staring directly at me, lifeless-blue orbs reaching into my very soul, stripping me of whatever strength I had left.
“Trespasser,” he whispered, and then shoved a handful of nickels into my mouth.
Easton ran up the steps and yelled. He pushed Mr. Benson off of me, knocking him to the floor. Pulling me to my feet, he helped me outside and off his lawn.
I spat the nickels out of my mouth and was sure that half my teeth left with them. We reached the road and kept running until Mr. Benson’s house was out of sight and we could no longer continue. All of us collapsed on the grass by the road. We spent the next minute trying to get air into our lungs.
“You know,” Easton said, after a while, “we’ll have to go back and get our bikes.”
“No, we don’t,” I told him. “They’ll be there tomorrow.” I spat on the ground again and saw blood mixed with saliva. I wiped my mouth, rubbed the blood from the back of my hand onto my jeans. My teeth hurt. My mouth tasted like metal. I wanted to puke. Yet all I could think about were Mr. Benson’s eyes and how scary they were.
“What if he takes them?” Katy said.
“He won’t.” I stood to my feet. “Come on, let’s go.”
They got to their feet and followed me.
“I wonder why he has so many nickels,” Easton said. “I mean, there could be a billion different reasons.”
Katy said, “He found an abandoned mint factory. Inside, there were millions and millions of coins and cash hidden in a secret room.” She put her hands on Easton’s chest and said, “Or he abducted a child once, and ransomed the parents. But, he told them he only wanted a payment in nickels.”
I looked away from Katy, put my hands in my pockets, felt the paper in one of them. How come no one ever talks about the old observatory?
“Maybe he didn’t steal anything,” I said. “Maybe stars cry. And maybe when those tears fall to the earth, they land as nickels. He goes around in the cover of the night and collects them all.”
“I like it, Kev. Very poetic.”
Katy took her hands off of Easton. “Why would stars cry?”
“We are always looking up, but have you ever thought that maybe the stars look down? If they did, I’m sure they would always be crying. I know I would.”
Halfway though the walk back home, I felt something else in my pocket, crawling on my hand. A moth.
“Y’all go ahead. I need to stop for a sec.”
“You sure, Kev?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Besides, I’m a natural born runner too. I’ll catch up.”
I knelt down by the side of the road and slipped my hand out of my pocket. I thought that if I put my hand on the grass, the moth would walk to the ground or fly away. It did neither. I looked ahead. Katy and Easton were holding hands and laughing about something. They really did like each other. Maybe it’s because Easton was a Gypsy; girls always have more fun with Gypsies . . . I wanted to be a Gypsy.
I looked back at the moth. “Go on. Fly off,” I said. It tried to but couldn’t. One of its wings was crushed. I shook it off my hand and watched it crawl in the grass. It would die. I felt a twinge of sadness, but I didn’t know why.
Easton and Katy weren’t too far ahead of me, but I didn’t really feel like catching up. I just wanted to be alone. I eased to the ground, stared out at the long street, glad that Mr. Benson’s house was out of sight. I took the paper out of my pocket and thought of old man Benson and the observatory and the papers in his closet. Maybe he did rob a bank or find an abandoned mint factory; maybe he did ransom some kid’s parents. Or maybe he wasn’t really crazy after all. Maybe he was just trying really hard to be.
