They sat like that for a spell. Then he rose, kissed the top of her head, threw his backpack over his shoulder, took up his skateboard, and again walked out the door. He was already late.
18
Will met Jonah in the parking lot of the hockey arena, amid the throngs of fathers shouldering corpse-heavy bags of gear and calling their sons “Buddy” while leading them inside.
“You’re going to roll around with that in your waistband?” Jonah said when Will covertly displayed the serrated knife he’d brought for protection.
“Good point,” Will said. He wrapped the knife in his sweatshirt and stuck the bundle in his backpack along with his amethyst and the Neverclear map.
As they started out, Jonah turned inexplicably angry. “What’re you going to do with that knife anyway? You think Marcus got kidnapped by a loaf of French bread? All kinds of things took Marcus,” he yelled over the cacophony of their wheels as they began bombing a hill. “None of them you can stab.”
Downtown, the fall cold had herded everyone inside the taverns, leaving the sidewalks barren. After kickflipping perfectly up the curb of a closed gas station and then improvising a magnificent ollie over an overturned trashcan, Jonah’s rage seemed to dissipate, or at least resubmerge. “I could see if my brothers could get us a hunting rifle,” Jonah said. Will liked the idea but figured it would be difficult to carry inconspicuously. Will asked Jonah if you could saw a rifle off like a shotgun and Jonah said he didn’t think so. “Maybe we’ll hold off for a while,” Will said.
The waterfront itself was the only section of the city they hadn’t searched by skateboard because it was all condemned industrial land, just broken concrete strewn with junk and rubble, impassable for their wheels. With boards in hand they crossed the tracks and discovered a deer path through a tough thicket of fireweed and brambles. They passed a rusting washer-and-dryer set that stank of putrid water, then followed a tangle of lesser rail tracks that ducked through a fence into a junkyard.
Hidden amid the landscape of discarded trucks and train cars and garbage were a few shacks and lean-tos, less sturdily built than Marcus’s had been, constructed mostly of derelict metal, plastic sheeting, and wood scrap. Two men were sitting near a steaming paint can hung over a smoky fire, one of them armless, the other weeping like a child while holding a tiny radio to his ear. The boys sighted some wolves or dogs—again they weren’t sure which—stalking the doorway of a distant burned-out shed across the yard, and Will’s heart ricocheted around in his chest while he cursed himself for forgetting to apply his deodorant that morning. But the wolves seemed otherwise occupied or at least didn’t catch his scent.
“So you think the Butler hides out down here?” Will asked, hiding his trembling hands in his pockets.
“My brothers said he’s rich, lives in a log mansion near the border. But he comes down to load Neverclear on trains and the occasional boat. So what exactly are we looking for, then? A big cage with Marcus’s name on it?”
“Anything,” said Will, scanning the bleak moonscape. “Everything.”
Soon they arrived at the foot of the largest of the elevators, twelve enormous concrete cylinders stood on end, all fused together like a pipe organ or a clutch of giant shotgun shells. Attached to the cylinders rose a towering structure connected by a bridge, looming two hundred feet overhead, high as the castles of Will’s encyclopedias. Painted on the side of the desolate structure in enormous flaking white lettering: SASKATCHEWAN WHEAT POOL 6.
“Hey!” Will exclaimed, “I think the Wheezing Man said something about ‘swimming in pool six’ when he grabbed me that night.”
“Okay,” Jonah said, craning his neck upwards. “We’ll start here.”
After tracing the perimeter of the elevator, they found an unblocked entrance near a covered area where the tracks spanned over a massive steel grate amid some brutish, disused machinery. “This’s where they unloaded the grain, I think,” Will said.
Jonah walked out over a rusted metal grate. “No bottom,” he said, peering into the black beneath his feet, setting Will’s stomach aflutter.
Inside, the floor was heaped with something strangely soft underfoot like moss, sweet-smelling in an unsettling way. It wasn’t until Will heard the burbling of thousands of pigeons overhead that he realized it was a carpet of droppings. Giant concrete pillars suspended a vaulted ceiling that sprouted with various mechanisms, sheltering their nests, while, below, a battlefield of metal scrap was scattered on the floor, all of it rusting, as if a great demolition derby had taken place long before either of them was born.
Everywhere was the smell of bricks, oil, metal, and wood, coupled with the stench of spilled beer dried to stickiness. They investigated a few doorways—control room, bathroom, locker room—and the instant they stepped inside, a hundred pigeons whooshed upward like dirty phoenixes to the closest smashed-out window. In these secluded nooks Will spotted half-busted bottles of fortified wine and malt liquor, a few limp mattresses that stunk of Neverclear, scattered with rank morsels of food.
Pressing deeper, climbing over broken-down doors, through ribbons of metal and wire, around open grain chutes in the floor that disappeared into nothing, the boys came upon a set of foursquare wrought iron stairs leading upward, high enough to vanish. Sunlight slashed through the shattered windows of the stairwell, illuminating rusted vents and hundreds of galvanized pipes that snaked about like a jungle canopy made of dead iron.
“Why did they have to build this thing so big?” said Jonah. “It’s like a demented cathedral.” As Will agreed, there came the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs.
Will froze, as though the embodiment of the Black Lagoon itself was at this very moment cascading down toward him like a herd of demonic horses. Then a hard tug on his shirtsleeve as Jonah dragged him into a crouch behind a large overturned table.
“Think he was telling the truth?” They heard a gruff voice echo through the staircase. “That he did what you told him?”
“Who can say,” came another, softer voice, enunciating like someone interviewed on television. “But I truly regretted that. Unfortunately, words really aren’t much use with old Corpsey.”
“Maybe another of those kids has it? Like the one who left his helmet?” the other voice said. “I checked the phone book for that name like you asked and came up empty. But I bet Corpsey knows where he is. So why’s he protecting them?”
“He’s got a soft spot for the younger set, it seems,” the soft voice said with a sigh. “Corpsey used to be such a good resource. But I’m afraid he’s overshot his expiry date.”
When they passed, the pungent smell of Neverclear wafted behind them. Will riskily peered at their backs and could make out a short bald man, accompanied by a slender one, white hair, at least a foot taller.
“Were you able to see their boots?” said Jonah after they were gone.
“There was too much bird shit on the floor,” said Will. “But that was definitely the Bald Man from the schoolyard. And my guess would be the other was the Butler.”
The boys made their way to the stairs. After the shot of adrenaline and the stair climbing, Will’s heart seemed to gear down into an unstable and dangerous cadence. Exhaustion soon tugged his face into a grimace, The one who left his helmet replaying in his mind mercilessly. They must’ve looked up Cardiel in the phone book, but of course his mother kept their number unlisted. Will’s stomach contorted, and he drove back tears as they crested the stairs and emerged into an enormous chamber that contained more droppings and disused machines. Huge windows lined the walls, providing a view of what seemed the entire world. Over the braying wind Will heard a groan and then a choked wail, halfway between a laugh and a shout.