Unclouded Day Page 4

  Chapter Three

  He cooked sausage and scrambled eggs for breakfast that morning, and made cereal for Brandon, and after eating they walked the not-quite two miles to church, as they often did when the weather was nice or if nobody could give them a ride.

  Brian sent Brandon to his preschool group and then sat next to Rachel McCray on the third pew, for lack of a better seat. They were the same age, but not particularly close. She lived on the road to Glenwood, maybe ten miles away, and they didn’t see each other much except at church or at school. Brian had always thought she looked kind of like a rat; she was too thin, and her nose and chin were a little too sharp, and the Coke bottle glasses she always wore didn’t help matters any. He vaguely remembered that there was supposed to be something wrong with her, but he’d never been curious enough to ask anybody exactly what it was.

  He didn’t particularly like her, but the only other seat he could find was next to Adam Crenshaw and Patti Sue Jackson, whom he liked even less. Adam was a football player and Patti Sue was a farmer’s daughter; both of them were popular, good-looking, and fairly rich, and worst of all they both knew it. Brian always got the feeling they were looking down their noses at his raggedy clothes and cheap shoes, on the rare occasions when they talked to each other at all. He was in no mood to deal with all that today.

  “Hey, Mad Dog,” Rachel murmured when he sat down beside her.

  “Hey, Raych,” he answered, smiling tiredly at the nickname. His middle name was Madaug, after his great grandfather, and he’d made the mistake of letting that fact slip out a few years ago. It was supposed to be pronounced Madug, not Mad Dog, but people always seemed to think it was hilarious to mangle it like that. Yet another thing he felt like choking his mother for. Or maybe biting her, come to think of it. That might be a lot more appropriate.

  “Are you okay? Looks like you’ve got a pretty good bump on your head,” she said.

  “Really? Is it that noticeable?” he asked.

  “Well, no, not unless you’re close up, I don’t guess. What happened?” she asked.

  “Oh, it was nothing much. I fell down the stairs last night, that’s all. Busted my nose, bonked my head; it was just a stupid accident, really,” he lied.

  “Oh, okay,” she said. Then she paused, as if choosing her words carefully.

  “Everything’s all right, isn’t it, Brian?” she asked, awkwardly. It was almost like she knew what really happened, and for some reason that infuriated him.

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?” he asked, with just the slightest tinge of a hard edge to his voice.

  “No reason at all. I’m sorry,” she apologized hastily. He hesitated, and then decided it was better to just let it go at that.

  “No problem,” he said, with a fake smile. In fact he was worried. If blind-as-a-bat Rachel McCray could see that something wasn’t quite right, then probably other people could, too. Brian could imagine the gossip all too well, and he suddenly hated Mama even worse than before. The shame was worse than the punch.

  He glanced at Patti Sue without thinking, half expecting to see a knowing smirk on her lips. But she was only reading the bulletin and didn’t seem to have noticed Brian at all, actually.

  He quickly looked away again and told himself to get a grip; just because Rachel noticed he had a bump on his head didn’t necessarily mean the whole town was talking about him behind his back. It was crazy to let Mama make him so paranoid.

  With some effort, he put on a mild and pleasant face that showed nothing of how he really felt inside, and after a while he managed to put the incident out of his mind.

  After church they walked home again, and then Brian fed Brandon and sent him to watch Tom & Jerry cartoons in the living room. He had another project in mind to try out with the amulet that day, and it was one he definitely didn’t want any witnesses for.

  It had crossed his mind that it would be nice to have some money, and he’d been thinking about ways he could make that happen. He had several ideas he wanted to try, and hopefully at least one of them would earn him some serious cash. That was what he had in mind for his afternoon’s project.

  The first thing he tried was to pick up a sheet of notebook paper and imagine it turning into a stack of twenty dollar bills. But that turned out to be harder than he thought it would be, partly because he discovered that he wasn’t totally sure what a twenty dollar bill ought to look like. Oh, he’d seen them before, of course, but he’d never paid close enough attention to remember all the minor details, and he was uneasy about getting something wrong. That could land him in a lot of trouble, if he made a mistake. He wasn’t sure he had it in him to be a counterfeiter.

  Well, okay then. If he couldn’t print money, then what could he do to earn some? He thought vaguely about diamonds and gold and things of that sort, and he decided that would be his next experiment.

  Brandon had a big bag of marbles in his toy box, and Brian quietly went upstairs to fetch them. They were only glass, but they sparkled prettily in the sunlight and reminded him of lost jewels. Maybe, with just a pinch of luck, he could turn them into real jewels. He picked one up between his thumb and forefinger, and tried to imagine what a diamond would look like. He found that rather difficult too, when it came right down to it, since he’d never seen a diamond the size of a marble before.

  Still, he tried, and the marble did change into something that looked mighty similar to what Brian imagined a diamond ought to look like. He remembered that diamonds were supposed to be able to scratch glass, and so he tested his new-made bauble on the kitchen window above the sink. It scratched it, all right, but Brian still wasn’t satisfied. There might be other things that could scratch glass, too. Besides that, a diamond that big was probably worth a lot of money, and for that very reason it would probably turn out to be hard to sell. There had to be a better option.

  He picked up another marble and imagined it turning into gold instead. He knew what gold looked like, and this time the magic worked perfectly. He opened his eyes and saw that the marble was a bit smaller than before, but other than that it did indeed look exactly like gold. Brian nodded, much better pleased.

  He didn’t want to use up all of Brandon’s marbles, though, so he put the rest of them aside and fetched a handful of pea gravel from the flower pot in the bathroom. Mama used it to put out cigarette butts whenever she was in there, and Brian washed the ashes off in the sink before he did anything else.

  As soon as he got back to the table, he converted the gravel into a handful of gold nuggets that sparkled and glittered in the light. All the pieces were smaller than before, which he didn’t quite understand, but he shrugged it off as unimportant.

  After a bit of thought, he went up to the attic and removed a piece of loose floorboard near the back wall, his well-trusted hiding place. Inside was an old Crown Royal bag, and he pulled this out, listening to the coins jingle inside. Brian liked Crown Royal bags. The purple cloth and gold trim made him feel rich, like a king.

  Feeling rich and being rich were two different things, of course. Brian’s hoard contained not quite forty dollars, painstakingly collected over the past six months. Quarters left over from trips to the store, nickels and dimes salvaged from sidewalks and baseboards, all of it had gone into his hiding place. He’d learned to be tight as tree bark with his money, but now it seemed less important than before. He took out the change and hid it in an old shoebox where nobody was likely to look, and then he filled up the bag with his nuggets.

  He didn’t fill it up completely, but even so the bag was awfully heavy. He remembered reading somewhere that gold was supposed to be heavy, though, so he wasn’t worried about it. He stuffed the bag in his pocket and decided to call it a day.

  He thought he could probably sell the gold at the pawn shop that Mama sometimes used. They had a sign in the window specifically saying that they bought gold, and Brian knew the owner well enough to know that
he was a greedy man who could probably be talked into making some kind of deal. With a little luck, he could slip away from school at lunchtime on Monday, get his business done, and be back before anybody realized he was gone. If things worked out right, he’d soon be a very rich young man. Let Adam and Patti Sue and everybody else chew on that for a while.

  There was still the question of how to explain where he got so much gold, of course. He knew people tended to get mighty curious about things like that, but Brian had a ready answer for them. He’d just tell them he found it amongst his Papaw’s stuff in the attic. Everybody in town knew what a pack-rat his grandfather had been, so it wasn’t a totally unbelievable story. And even if people doubted it, they wouldn’t be able to prove anything. It would never cross their minds to think he was manufacturing it out of pea gravel at his kitchen table, and that was all that really mattered. If they wanted to invent some other story about where it came from, then so be it.

  So it was that Monday morning he went to school with a pocket full of gold nuggets and so much enthusiasm that he could barely endure his morning classes. He’d never felt so impatient for anything in his life as he did for the lunch hour to come that day, and when it finally arrived he wolfed down his food in record time and quickly slipped out to the parking lot.

  This was technically against the rules if you didn’t own a car, but enforcement was fairly spotty. Brian was counting on the fact that nobody would remember he was on foot.

  Apparently no one did, because he wasn’t challenged when he headed in that direction. Several kids were already out there, sitting on tailgates, talking on cell phones, and occasionally smoking when they thought nobody could see. None of them paid Brian any mind.

  He crossed the entire lot and casually slipped into the trees on the far side when he was fairly sure no one was looking. Then he set out for downtown as fast as he could walk. The pawn shop wasn’t far from the school, but then again he didn’t have much time, either.

  There didn’t seem to be any customers at the shop when he got there, which was so much the better. He patted the Crown Royal bag in his pocket and fought down the nervousness that threatened to ruin the whole deal. He reminded himself several times that he was a customer, and he had just as much right to be there as anybody else did.

  “Hey, Mr. Johnson,” he said cheerfully when he walked in the door. Mr. Johnson glanced up from reading the newspaper, and he didn’t smile back.

  “What can I do for you, son?” he asked, in a bored voice.

  “Well, I saw the sign in the window. It says you buy gold,” Brian said, a little nervously.

  “Yeah, we do. But I’ll give you a piece of advice, kid. Whatever you’ve got, take it back to whoever it belongs to before you get caught with it,” he said, in that same bored tone. Brian bit his tongue to hide the surge of anger he felt at the man’s casual assumption; he couldn’t afford to take offense, no matter how insulted he felt. He took a deep breath and told himself he was there to do business, not to make friends.

  “I didn’t steal anything, Mr. Johnson, honest,” he said.

  “Uh-huh. Well, let’s see what you got, then,” he sighed, putting his feet down on the floor and sitting up straight. Brian quickly pulled out the old Crown Royal bag and shook out a handful of nuggets onto the countertop. Mr. Johnson didn’t look impressed.

  “Painted pea gravel ain’t worth much, kid,” he commented.

  “Just test it, please,” Brian said. He knew Mr. Johnson had chemicals to test for whether gold was real or not; he’d seen him use it on one of Mama’s rings a few times. The man grumbled and muttered under his breath, but nevertheless he pulled out a vial of testing acid and dripped a little of it onto one of the nuggets. There was no reaction, proving the piece was real. Mr. Johnson looked up at Brian with wary eyes.

  “Where’d you get this, son?” he asked, and Brian lost his patience.

  “Where I got it doesn’t matter, Mr. Johnson. You can see it’s real, and I promise you I didn’t steal it, and you can have it for half the usual price if you’ll just keep your mouth shut and not ask me any questions,” he said boldly. He’d never said anything like that to a grown-up before in his whole life, but he figured if Mr. Johnson could be rude then so could he.

  For a second Brian was afraid he’d gone too far, but Mr. Johnson didn’t seem to care. He just knitted his brows while he stared at the gold, and Brian could almost watch the wheels turning in his mind as he considered the various aspects.

  “I think we can do business along those lines, Mr. Stone,” he finally said, and stuck out his hand with a saccharine smile. Brian shook it with a smile of his own, knowing perfectly well that the man thought he was cheating an ignorant kid. That was all right, though. Brian could make all the gold he wanted, and if he had to give Mr. Johnson a cut rate deal then he was ready to do it.

  They weighed out the nuggets, and when it was all said and done, Mr. Johnson laid nine hundred and forty-seven dollars into Brian’s hand. It was more money than he’d ever seen in his entire life.

  “You got any more nuggets like that?” Mr. Johnson asked lightly, after he counted out the money. Brian could almost see the greed in his eyes.

  “I think I might could scrounge up some more; I’m not sure,” he replied, just as lightly.

  “If you do, then you’ll bring them to me first, right?” he asked.

  “Sure thing. We got a deal,” Brian agreed, and that was that.

  It turned out to be a sweetheart deal, indeed. Every day at lunch after that, Brian slipped into the pawn shop to deliver another bag of nuggets and carry home another wad of cash. He kept it hidden under the same loose floorboard in the attic where he’d always kept his stash, where Mama couldn’t find it. God only knew what she’d think or do if she came across a hoard of money like that. Some of it he spent on things for the house and stuff for him and Brandon, but by the end of the week he still had close to ten thousand dollars stuffed away up there, if he counted right. It was a good feeling, knowing that.

  As he grew bolder, he started doing more things around the house, too, gradually ceasing to care very much whether Mama noticed or not. He still feared her at times, but not nearly the way he had just a week ago.

  Therefore by Thursday Brian had already fixed most of the subtle things around the house. . . the scratches and cracks, the ground-in grime, the creaky wood and the flaky paint. The place still didn’t look all that different at first glance, but the details were already very clear to anybody who looked close enough. Mama couldn’t help but notice, but so far she hadn’t said anything. Not yet. She surely knew Brian was behind it all, but apparently she hadn’t thought it was anything beyond an inexplicable attack of cleaning. After all, he hadn’t yet changed anything which couldn’t be explained with a lot of elbow grease, and he never changed anything at all unless she was gone first.

  But that wasn’t all. He used his newfound wealth to do all kinds of things he’d never had a chance to do before. He bought anything he wanted, without even looking at the price. He went places and hung out with people who would barely have spoken to him a week ago. Even Adam Crenshaw started acting like they’d been best buds since kindergarten.

  Brian wasn’t stupid; he knew the only reason Adam and the others suddenly liked him so much was because he was generous with his money, but for the time being he honestly didn’t care. He was enjoying himself too much.

  And then there was his main project, the one he lavished more care and love upon than any other, and that one he shared with no one but Brandon.

  If anyone had visited Black Rock about that time, they might have noticed something different about the place. Brian remembered what he’d done to the little meadow that first day, and in his enthusiasm he decided to beautify the whole area. He worked unceasingly on the land all round the Rock, until it gradually became a radically different place than it had ever been before. The first thing he d
id was to kill all the bugs and snakes and creepy-crawlies. He destroyed every thorn and every thistle, every weed and every wasp. Nothing dangerous or ugly was allowed to invade his little kingdom. It was reserved exclusively for all things bright and beautiful, and he set an invisible barrier to keep any new pests from getting in.

  About forty acres was the limit of his power to maintain all this, but within that circle the land was becoming like a page from a fairy tale in which every day is high spring and there is no stain to be found on a single leaf or stone. By Thursday evening it was almost perfect, with only a few little touch-ups remaining.

  If Brian had thought about it, he might have connected all this with that old, heartbroken longing he’d felt when he gazed at the misty mountains of the Crystal Range after the rain, when he imagined some place where no bad thing could ever come, or when he sang Unclouded Day to Brandon and dreamed of the same thing. But Brian was young, and it never crossed his mind to connect the dots in that way. All he knew was that the place touched his heart and made him happy, and that was good enough.

  He spent as much time up there as he could, when he wasn’t busy with Adam or other things. Sometimes he didn’t even come home till after dark. That wasn’t so very unusual, of course, but at first he’d worried that Mama would get suspicious and maybe even come up there looking for him. But she still seemed oblivious for the time being, and if she noticed anything different about the house or about Brian’s behavior, she didn’t see fit to mention it.

  So it was that on Thursday evening he was planting white oaks, setting acorns with one hand and then making them grow into tall trees in less than a minute. He kept one eye on his work and the other on Brandon, who was playing in the dirt not far away. Brian had never left him alone again since the day he got the black eye, and that meant he had no choice but to take him along up to Black Rock, even if it meant partially letting him in on the secret.

  He still worried sometimes that the kid might slip up and say something about what he saw to somebody who didn’t need to hear it, but so far he seemed to accept it all without question, like it was the most natural and ordinary thing in the world. He hadn’t even asked how any of it was possible. Brian told himself that even if he did mention it to somebody, they’d probably just think he was imagining things. Nobody paid much attention to what a little kid said, especially not a wild story like that.

  At least he hoped not.

  Still, Brian always wore the amulet under his shirt and never said a word about it, just in case. The less Brandon knew, the less he could talk about.

  Brian stood up from planting acorns and wiped a trickle of sweat off his forehead. It was hot work, growing trees. But he loved white oaks, and he didn’t grudge the effort. It was well worth it.

  He looked down the trail at Brandon playing in the dirt, and with a half-smile lifted him up off the ground and dusted him off. Brandon had loved that at first, but he was starting to get tired of it.

  “Put me down!” he cried, struggling uselessly against the breeze. The sun was beginning to slant low across the ravine, and it was almost time to call it a day.

  “I think I might just carry you home that way, Beebo,” Brian replied, teasing him. He wasn’t serious, but from Brandon’s howl you would have thought he was pulling hair. Brian floated him closer and set him down on his feet.

  “I didn’t mean it, silly boy,” he said.

  “Yes you did,” Brandon said, crossing his arms and scowling furiously.

  “All right, I’m sorry then, okay?” he asked. Brandon thought about that for a few seconds, and gradually stopped scowling.

  “Okay,” he agreed.

  Brian took his hand, and they walked home together with no more ado.

  There were limits to his power, of course, and through trial and error he’d gradually figured out what these were. He couldn’t affect anything more than about a thousand feet away, and he couldn’t create something out of nothing. He couldn’t make things with complicated parts that he didn’t understand. He couldn’t bring things back to life if they were dead, and he couldn’t affect anybody’s thoughts or feelings. But he could move things, and he could change one thing into another (if he had the same amount of mass to work with), and he could usually heal wounds on living things and make them grow.

  He wasn’t inclined to complain about the things that were beyond his reach, though. What he could do was plenty awesome enough.

  He was sure there was still a lot he didn’t know, but that didn’t worry him very much anymore either. He looked forward to finding out everything there was to know, little by little. He had all the time in the world, and it was a pleasure he had every intention of enjoying to the fullest. Still, there were times when he wished the amulet had come with an instruction manual.

  Mama was working the evening shift that night, so she wasn’t home when they got there. Brian cooked a pot of macaroni and cheese and cut up some hot dogs in it to give it a little extra pizzazz, and after supper he gave Brandon his bath and put him to bed. He enjoyed all these normal things very much, perhaps because he associated them with the nights when Mama wasn’t home and therefore he had peace and freedom for a little while.

  That night, in the simple happiness of his heart, Brian gave up on secrecy. Mama could think whatever she wanted to think; he was determined to fear her no longer.

  Therefore he walked through the house with a critical eye, changing anything he felt like changing. He denied himself nothing his heart could wish for, from marble floors in the bathroom to crystal goblets in the kitchen. The place became beautiful as the castle of a king long ago, and Brian was delighted at what he’d done.

  There were certain things he could only do with money, so he snatched up some cash from his hiding spot and called Adam to give him a ride to town.

  Adam was cruising the streets with Patti Sue when Brian called, but both of them were more than happy to do him a favor. Patti Sue even offered to stay behind and watch Brandon until they could get back from the store. It was truly amazing how things had changed, Brian couldn’t help thinking. But that was all right; he appreciated it anyway.

  Once they got to the store, he bought a big-screen TV and a high-definition stereo, a brand new computer and a dirt bike, among other things. Adam was suitably impressed, and Brian favored him with a hundred dollar bill just for the pleasure of giving it away.

  All these things he set up in the house, and when he was done, he was awed all over again by the power he held in his hands.

  He enjoyed it all for a little while, and then quietly went upstairs to bed. Mama could think whatever she liked when she saw it; he could deal with her, if he had to.

  He quickly changed into a more comfortable t-shirt and some shorts without switching on the lights, then laid down on the bed beside the already sleeping Brandon, listening to the old house creak and settle for the night.

  Brandon made a vague sleepy sound and moved closer to him, not really awake. He settled comfortably against Brian’s side and then grew quiet again. Brian reached down and smoothed his soft red hair, just starting to get long again now after being shaved off for the summer back in June. It looked like he was dreaming about something from the way his eyes moved, and Brian felt a gentle wash of love for him.

  “Good night, Beebo,” Brian whispered, and snuggled close beside him. He wasn’t especially sleepy yet, but he knew that would come soon enough, if he lay still for a little while. In the meantime, he said his prayers and dreamed about the future, and his thoughts were good ones.

  Brian was happier than he could ever remember being in his whole life, and he foresaw no end to the good times and the good work he could do with the amulet in his hand. He’d barely scratched the surface. He had power and wealth beyond his wildest dreams, and what could he not do now? The amulet had been the greatest thing that ever happened to him.

  He smiled again, and then slowly dr
ifted off to sleep.