Frankenstein

the bed to make a quieter conversation possible, the doorway clear in his peripheral vision, Bryce said, “Sounds like it’s not just them taking the BlackBerry that’s gotten under your skin.”
    “Not just the BlackBerry,” Travis agreed.
    “Want to tell me about it?”
    The boy’s voice fell to a whisper. “Something wakes me in the night. Don’t know what it is. Some sound. It scares me. Don’t know why. I lay here listening for it again—ten minutes, twenty. The room is dark. Only the moonlight in the window. Then the hall door opens and two of them come to my bed.”
    “Who?”
    “Nurses. I can’t see much of their faces. I pretend I’m asleep, but my eyes are open a little. I watch them watching me.”
    “Watching you?”
    “They don’t have medicine to give me. Don’t feel my forehead for a fever. They just watch me in the dark, and then they leave.”
    “They say anything to you, to each other?”
    “No.”
    “How long?” Bryce asked.
    “Two minutes, three. A long time to be watching someone in thedark, don’t you think?” The boy looked at the window, where a graying sky would mask the moon in the night to come. “And the whole time they were watching me … I could feel it.”
    “Feel what?” Bryce asked.
    Travis met his eyes again. “How much they hated me.”

    
chapter
31

    Nummy kept his cash money in a OneZip plastic bag, in a box of saltines, in a kitchen cabinet. At the moment the bag contained three five-dollar bills and ten one-dollar bills, plus ten more ones, plus three more ones.
    Mr. Leland Reese, Grandmama’s attorney, only gave him fives and ones because Nummy wasn’t good with numbers. He could count to ten as well as anyone, but after that he got confused. Nummy couldn’t read, but he could see the difference between a five and a one.
    The most stuff he needed to shop for was food and things to clean house with, like soap and paper towels. He always bought those things at Heggenhagel’s Market because Mr. Heggenhagel helped him and didn’t want money. Each month Mr. Heggenhagel sent a list of what Nummy bought to Mr. Leland Reese, and Mr. Reese paid Mr. Heggenhagel.
    As he carefully lined up the ones and the fives on a kitchen counter, Nummy explained all this to Mr. Conway Lyss. He also told him how Mr. Heggenhagel always brought Nummy home with the stuff thathe bought and helped him to put away what needed the freezer and what needed only the refrigerator. He talked about some favorite foods, like corn dogs with bottled cheese sauce, and cold cheese sandwiches with hot mustard, and thin-sliced roast beef from Mr. Heggenhagel’s deli.
    As Mr. Lyss picked up the money, he said, “Fascinating. If they ever made a TV show about your life, it would be a colossal hit, so riveting, so glamorous.”
    “I won’t be on no TV,” Nummy said. “I like to watch, but being on would be too noisy. Most stuff on TV is noisy, I turn it quieter.”
    “Well, if you won’t be on, that’s the viewing public’s loss. A tragedy for the medium. So I owe you thirty-eight dollars.”
    “No, sir, that’s not right. You owe me three fives, ten ones, ten more ones, and then three ones.”
    Mr. Lyss shook a long ugly finger at Nummy. “You’re sharper than you pretend to be, you rascal. You’re exactly right. No one can pull the wool over your eyes.”
    “I don’t like wool,” Nummy said. “It itches.”
    Mr. Lyss looked Nummy up and down and up again. “There’s not going to be anything in your closet that fits me. Pants will be too short by six inches, the waist half again bigger than I need. I’ll look even more like a clown than I do in orange.”
    “You don’t look like no clown,” Nummy assured him. “Clowns make people smile.”
    “Did your grandma ever wear pants?”
    “Sometimes she did.”
    “Was she a fat old tub or did she waste away? Maybe I’d fit in her pants.”
    “No, sir. You always felt like she was big, but then sometimes you’dlook at her and you’d see how she was really tiny. And shorter than me.”
    Mr. Lyss hadn’t been excitable for a while, but someone like him couldn’t stay calm for long. He moved back and forth in the kitchen, the way an animal sometimes got restless in a pen. He pointed at the clock on the wall. “You know what time it is, Peaches? Do you know the time? Can you even tell time?”
    “I know the hour and the half. And ten minutes to each and from each. But I don’t like the middle ten minutes