Voyagers!
Derailed
by
Jake Crepeau
Off agin, on agin. Gone agin. ---Strickland Gillilan, Finnigin to Flannigan
New York, 1981
Jeffrey Jones woke slowly. He ached all over, like the first time he'd tried skitching.(1) When he'd let go of the bus, he'd been unable to keep his balance and had gone tumbling head over heels, scraping and bruising himself and tearing his clothes. He'd tried to slip in the door and directly into the bathroom to clean himself up, but his mother had spotted him and let out a shriek at his appearance.
His mother. He sat bolt upright with a cry as the emptiness in his middle became a raw pain, as if some creature had clawed his insides out. He remembered the crash, the fire, trying to get help, the explosion.
He didn't want to be awake, but he was, and he began to look around. His bed was surrounded by curtains that hung from the ceiling---a hospital, he realized. He was in a hospital. Of course he was bruised; he'd been thrown out of his seat in the camper when the car had run off the road. Additional pain told him that he had sustained some mild burns, as well, from the attempt to get his parents out of the car. The sight of his injured parents flashed before his mind's eye, and he began to cry. They were gone; no one could have survived that explosion. He was alone, an...orphan. Funny how the stories he'd read about orphans never talked about the pain involved.
The curtain moved, and a nurse came in. "Well, hello," she smiled at the ten-year-old boy. Well, ten and a half, but who was counting?
He found the smile irritating. "Go away," he mumbled, lying back down and burying his face in his pillow. How in the world anyone could be so cheerful when his world was falling apart was beyond him.
Surprisingly, she did go away, but she was back a few minutes later, with another woman in tow. Dr. Rubin, the name was embroidered on her white coat. At least she didn't have that annoying Good-Morning-Merry-Sunshine smile. "How are you feeling?" she asked.
"It hurts," he said. "All over."
"You do have some beautiful bruises," the doctor told him. "The burns aren't bad, though; you won't even scar. Can you tell me your name?"
"Jeffrey Jones."
"And where do you live, Jeffrey?"
He told her.
"What about relatives?"
"Do I have to?" he said with a grimace of distaste. Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Tom made no bones about the fact that they didn't like him; every time his parents took him to visit them, all he got in the way of greetings was "don't touch this," and "don't touch that," and "for heaven's sake, can't you sit still?" He wasn't even allowed to bring toys with him, because they left marks in the carpet.
"We have to contact them."
Reluctantly, he gave their names, address, and phone number. ...And when they came to his house to visit, he had to shut Ralph in his room, because they didn't want dog hair on their clothes. They got it, anyway, because it was all over the house, and no amount of cleaning could get rid of all of it.
Ralph! "My dog!" he said suddenly. "Did anybody find my dog? He was in the camper with me!"
Dr. Rubin flipped through the blue binder she held. "A tan Rottweiler?"
"Yeah."
"He was found and brought to the vet's office. I've got a note here that says he was just bruised up, like you." At first she was concerned about the fact that the patient wasn't asking about his parents, but then the tears started rolling down his face, and she realized he knew. Flipping further through the chart, she found the EMTs' note that state troopers had found him at the side of the road, trying to flag down passing motorists. He'd seen the explosion. She shook her head and put a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder. What was this poor child going to end up going home to, when he hadn't even wanted to tell her who his relatives were?
Two days later, his aunt and uncle brought him to their high-rise apartment uptown. Instead of their car, they'd come in a small truck, which he later found was carrying his things. The four boxes of his belongings would have fit in the car, but the furniture was another matter. Uncle Tom grumbled the whole time he and a friend carried the furniture into what was to be his room and set it up, and Jeffrey didn't blame him. This room had been Tom's study, and Jeffrey knew he'd grumble, too, if he had to give up his room for someone else. The minute the furniture was in place, Tom had retreated, leaving Elizabeth to help him unpack the boxes. Two of them held his books, and a few of his father's history books; the latter were mostly beyond his current reading level---even though it was well above grade level---but someone, in cleaning out the house, had realized he would want to keep them. They must have had outside help; his aunt and uncle would have gotten rid of anything that wasn't in his room. Even the Christmas decorations were gone; he wondered what they had done with that worn rag-doll angel his great-grandmother had made. And that battered rocking chair...
The tears came again as he set the books on the shelves, and there was no word from Aunt Elizabeth as she unpacked his clothes and hung them in the closet. When the job was done, she simply informed him that dinner would be in two hours and left.
At least they'd left the small TV in the room; Jeffrey turned it on, not really interested, but not wanting to sit in the silence, either; there was nothing on except for the stupid soap operas, and he turned it off again. With nothing else he cared to do for the moment, he set his alarm clock for two hours and went to sleep.
Dinner was not the homemade meal he was expecting; instead, they went to a restaurant down the block, where Uncle Tom kept trying to limit what he chose from the menu, until Aunt Elizabeth had to give him a dirty look and tell him to let the boy eat what he wanted. The prices were high, Jeffrey knew, and decided it would be common courtesy to find the least expensive thing he could stomach. He wasn't really hungry, anyway.
"What about Ralph?" he asked while they waited for the meal.
Uncle Tom sighed, an annoyed sigh that said clearly that he'd just as soon leave the damn dog where it was. Aunt Elizabeth gave him her look and said simply, "We'll go down to the vet's and pick him up tomorrow."
"And then you'll clean the dog hair out of the car," Uncle Tom added.
"Tom, don't be ridiculous," Elizabeth said. "How's he supposed to do that? We'll take it down to the detail shop."
"And he can pay for it."
Jeffrey looked at him with his mouth hanging open. "With what?" he demanded. He knew what it cost for them to use the detail shop; they never let his parents forget it. He also knew his parents had left him a trust fund, but he couldn't touch that money until he started college. He only had a dollar from his last allowance.
"Tom!" Elizabeth snapped. "Look, I know how you feel. I'm not exactly thrilled, either."
Jeffrey put down his soda and got up.
"And where do you think you're going?" Elizabeth said.
"I'm going back home. I'm not hungry." If they had anything to say about it, he didn't hear it, because he kept right on walking, knowing they wouldn't raise their voices at him in public. He'd hear about it when they got home, though.
Once he was outside, he found it tempting to just keep walking. They didn't want him, anyway; it couldn't get much worse.
But where would he go? He supposed he could find his way to the old pedestrian tunnels, but they wouldn't really be any better than the streets when winter came. He supposed he could spend seventy-five cents to take the subway back to his old neighborhood and maybe go hang out with some of his friends there, but that would leave him with only a quarter, not enough to get back. Shazbot.1
He was asleep when the sound of the slamming front door woke him; he wrapped his pillow tightly around his head to muffle the sounds of the argument. When it fizzled out, he went back to sleep.
He never would be able to explain how he survived the next two days. He'd thought he didn't have any tears left, but the sight of the pictures of Bill and Kathy Jones over the coffins at the funeral home brought them afresh. Tom and Elizabeth stood at the entrance to the chapel greeting people and just left him to cry. Some of his friends came with their parents, and the grownups cast dirty looks at Jeffrey's aunt and uncle behind their backs for leaving him alone at a time like this; Jimmy Dobson's mother actually stopped to hold him for a minute. It made him cry harder.
Most of his friends, however, seemed awkward, like they didn't know what to say or do, and, after saying hello, they stayed away from him. The whole world, it seemed, was shutting him out.
The boy was shocked when Sunday came. He reluctantly dragged himself out of bed early in the morning and put his best clothes on, only to discover his aunt and uncle were still sound asleep and harboring no intentions of getting up any time soon. Church? Was he kidding? Go back to bed.
It was an order that his depressed mood left him too willing to obey. In fact, for the rest of the summer, he rarely left his room, except to take Ralph out for walks. It was the only time he felt even remotely like his old self, when he took the big Rottweiler down the street to Central Park to play with him. Okay, so Central Park wasn't the safest place in the world for a small boy alone, but Ralph was very protective; the slightest snarl, and people tended to change direction very suddenly.
Then September brought the beginning of the school year and the first indication of possible future trouble. The neglect that was now a fact of his life only drove him deeper into mourning, so much so that he had trouble concentrating. His homework went neglected much of the time, and his grades started to fall, until his teacher, concerned, spoke to his aunt and uncle about it. His uncle dealt him the worst spanking he'd ever had; it left him unable even to think about sitting for the rest of the evening—though he was surprised when Aunt Elizabeth loudly berated Uncle Tom for his treatment of her nephew. Okay, so she didn't come in to talk to Jeffrey at all afterward; in his current state, her defense of him was enough to make him feel at least a little better about things. But what finally got him back on track was the stranger he met in the park one afternoon a few days later.
The middle-aged man had taken a bad fall; it seemed as if he had fallen from one of the many stone bridges that constituted overpasses on the park's trails. He sat up and retrieved the book that had fallen from his hand, open and face-down on the ground, before he got to his feet.
"You okay, Mister?" Jeffrey asked.
"I'll live," the man grinned at him.
Book...bridge...laughing teens up above...and a look about him that any inhabitant of Midtown Manhattan knew too well. Tourist. "Sir, it's not a good idea to read while you're walking here. That's how you got shoved, isn't it?"
The man blinked as if he didn't know what Jeffrey was talking about, then nodded. "Yes, I suppose you're right," he replied. "I must thank you for your advice. I'm Arthur Poole."
The boy cast a look at Ralph before answering. The dog was sitting quietly at his side, exhibiting no signs of warning, and he decided it was safe to respond. "Jeffrey Jones," he said.
"Good to meet you." They shook hands, then the man quickly flipped through the pages of his book, as if inspecting them for damage from the fall. "You're not related to Bill Jones by any chance, are you?"
"Yeah; he was my dad."
"Was?"
The tears welled in Jeffrey's eyes again. "He's dead. So's my mom. There was an accident in the summer."
A look of pain crossed Mr. Poole's face. "I'm sorry to hear that. He was...a friend of mine."
"You knew him?"
"Yes; I met him at Oxford. How are you getting along?"
He shrugged. "Okay, I guess."
"Uh-huh," the man said in a knowing tone. "Grades are slipping a little bit, aren't they?"
His jaw hung. "How'd you know?"
"Just a guess. You're 'way off your game right now; it's normal."
"Tell my uncle that," Jeffrey groused. "On second thought, don't. He'll just get mad again."
The man sat down on a bench. "Do you blame him? I'm pretty sure your father wouldn't have been too happy with you right now, either."
His head drooped as the tears began to fall.
"I'm sorry; that was a low blow."
"But it's true," admitted the trembling voice. "I didn't even think of that. All I could think about was how much it hurts." Then he looked at his dog when he felt a tug on the leash he was holding; Ralph was on his feet now, gently pulling in the direction of...home, Jeffrey gave the word a mental sneer. "It was nice to meet you, Mr. Poole, but I have to go. If I'm late for dinner, my aunt and uncle will have a fit."
"It was nice to meet you, too, Jeffrey."
"Will you come by again while you're in town?"
"No; I'll probably be leaving tonight. My job involves a lot of traveling, you see."
He nodded, yanking back on the leash as the tugging became more insistent. "Who needs an alarm clock with Ralph around?" he actually grinned. "'Bye!" With that, he trotted off after the large dog.
The man watched the boy go with a smile. That one was going to go far, and he envied the man who would become his mentor one day, he thought as his Omni's green light chimed at him.
Finis
(1) "Skitching" was the name given to an activity popular among kids, teens, and even some college students in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was kind of like water-skiing, only on pavement instead of water, and no skis, skateboards, or skates were involved. Wearing sneakers, you grabbed the rear bumper of the bus and stood with your knees bent and your feet flat on the pavement; when the bus started to move, you slid along the street behind it. You stopped much the same way as on water, letting go of the bus and keeping your balance until your momentum was spent and you came to a stop. The "sport" ended when they stopped putting bumpers on buses.
(2) An untranslated swear-word from the late 1970s TV show Mork and Mindy.