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Chapter One

missing person

My father, a guy named Big Sam Webber, disappeared the summer I was eleven years old. No one knows what happened to him for sure, if he was murdered, kidnapped, forgot who he was or just decided to run and never look back. When he was first gone, I hoped for murder or amnesia. I didn't want to believe that he would choose to leave. But the evidence always pointed to flight, that he gave up on my mom and me.

    The police found his rusted old car at Dulles International Airport down in Washington, DC. It was in hourly parking, and it had rung up a giant bill over a two week period, an amount that would've left me and my mother broke if we'd had to pay it. Luckily, we didn't. The police got it out, towed it somewhere and blew dust all over it for fingerprints. Big Sam's were the only ones found on the worn steering wheel and scratched door handle. Kidnapping wasn't ruled out of the picture, mostly, I think, for my sake. He was what the police call a "Missing Person," and he still is.

    About a month after he disappeared, a pretty black police officer came by our house. She had a soothing smile and a gentle voice that whooshed out of her mouth like a scoop of sand. She asked me questions about my father. She wondered if Big Sam had ever mentioned leaving, if I'd ever gone to the track with him, saw him place a bet on something. Had I ever heard anyone threaten him, or did he sometimes seem lost?

    I'd seen a little of all of those things, but nothing big enough to catch her attention. The thing is, remembering backto normal times made me feel horrible. So when we were done, she took me in her funny smelling arms, held me against her so that my forehead scraped red and raw on her shiny silver badge.

    "It's going to be okay," she promised me, as if she could see into the future.

    Just a few months later, I found out she couldn't.

    When the savings were all used up, my mother sold the car. Then a couple of weeks after that, we started looking around for a cheaper place to live, somewhere closer to her job. We eyeballed a neighborhood called Charles Village, a few blocks off Baltimore's main north-south drags, Charles and St. Paul Streets, beside the most convenient bus routes in the city, and not too far from the Rotunda, a fancy shopping center with a Giant Supermarket crammed on the side.

    Other not-so-okay things happened, too, like the way my name changed. Before my dad left, everyone, including my mother, called me Little Sam. Together, my father and I were Big and Little Sam Webber, like I was a small part of him, and he was a larger part of me. But, when he'd been gone for awhile, my mom suddenly started calling me Samuel. I think the name Little Sam reminded her that there had been a big one out there somewhere, and remembering that turned her into a wreck. So I tried not to get too upset over the change, but it bothered me. The part of me I had always liked the best was suddenly the very worst portion of all. Still, for my mom's sake, I got used to it as fast as I could. Everyone calls me Samuel or Sam now. I wouldn't know what to say if someone called me Little Sam again.

    When my father was still around, he was a Baltimore Gas & Electric employee, one of those guys who looks for weird smelling fumes. He'd driven a car back and forth across the city all day, a little, dusty-blue sedan, shoe-box shaped, with a bright BG&E logo painted on both front doors. It was a mess inside. It always had coffee and soda cups rolling around and crushed under the seats, plus greasy yellow McDonald's cheeseburger wrappers floating about. He loved that kind of food. My mom used to say that if he could have his way, he'd eat every meal at a fast food restaurant, which didn't seem like such a bad idea to me.

    Starting when I went into the first grade, my dad always tried to pick me up from school. No matter what his day was like, he'd swing by to get me in the afternoons and chauffeur me home. He worried that I was too shy, too small and that bigger kids would pick on me if I was stuck taking the bus. He was right in most ways, too. I was shy, practically a runt, and often times bigger guys tried to push me around. Even still, I knew I could do okay. But my dad never was convinced. See, he had been a huge kid. I've seen pictures of him, and his arms bulged like rubbery car bumpers. Being that tough, he'd picked on runts like me when he was in school. He knew how cruel bullies could be, and he worried.

    The truth is, at times my dad worried way more than normal. He suffered horrible headaches that his doctor said were caused by grinding his long flat teeth, edges worn into tiny bumps, together. He chewed his cuticles raw and cracked his knuckles about a thousand times a day. His worrying wasn't just for me, either, he worried about my mother, too. During the cold months, he didn't like her waiting in the dark for rickety cross-town buses. They didn't come by nearly as frequently as the ones rolling up and down Charles or St. Paul Street, and he thought that she was vulnerable to something bad, standing along the side of the road as she did. So even though he was usually exhausted and sad feeling in the winter, he picked her up at Junie's Florist, drove her home, then went downtown to drop his work car off. On the days when he was feeling good enough, I begged to go with him, because it was nearly a perfect trip. Shimmering McDonald's cheeseburger wrappers swirled about us—bright, wrinkly birds—while colorful paper cups, stamped with flashy lettering, slipped and rolled beneath our shifting feet. And together, amidst all that movement, we scampered into the magical city, buildings lit, Baltimore's skyline sparkling like a forest of Christmas trees, helicopters and jetliners streaking above.

    He also worried about money. He and my mother tried to talk softly so that I wouldn't hear, but I knew what was going on. Their paychecks only went from week to week. We couldn't even afford to get a scruffy dog. When I asked about one, my dad usually asked me back who was going to pay the veterinary bills. Because I'd been listening in, I figured they couldn't, so I dropped the subject until I felt like I'd explode without a sad, little mutt around the house to hug and walk, to be friends with.

    My mom says that my dad lived with the knowledge that we should have moved to a less fancy neighborhood than Rodger's Forge. The thing is, he didn't want me to get stuck in one of the rougher inner city schools. More than once, I heard him tell my mother that I wouldn't last two minutes in the places he'd gone. A kid like he'd been would have pummeled me for sport.

* * *

    The Gordons, Ditch and Junie, owned the flower shop my mother started working at when she first dropped out of college. They'd never had any kids, so they treated my parents, who were kind of alone in the world, like they were theirs. As a matter of fact, when the Gordons came over, they didn't even knock on the door, they just opened it right up.

    After my dad disappeared, not one thing seemed normal except for Ditch and Junie. They even helped my mom and me find a new, cheaper place to live. Junie spotted a few ads in the City Paper and went ahead and set up some appointments. The thing is, when we went to see the apartments, I thought she'd over estimated how bad off we were. I mean, to me, they were for poor people.

    The place my mom chose took up the entire second floor of a two-story rowhouse, and even though that might sound like a lot, it wasn't. Without any furniture, it was still cramped. A long skinny kitchen was in the back, crammed tight with a giant rounded refrigerator and cabinets that, for a time, smelled like wilted lettuce. Hanging off of it was a shabby Baltimore bay window that somebody had added a few years before. It leaked like mad during storms. The narrow room right beside the kitchen was mine. The floors in it were scuffed a chalky brown, and the walls were so drippy with paint that they looked like they were drooling. Just looking in it made me feel low. Then there was the gloomy hallway, dark as a narrow cave, punctured by doors to a bathroom, a closet, the stairs and the big front room, which was my mom's. It overlooked the street, Abel Avenue, and the tar-drizzled front porch roof. It was the only place in the whole apartment that didn't seem like it was getting smaller every time I took a breath. Unlike the kitchen, the front room had a pretty bay window that had been built with the house, that wasn't popping and creaking and dangerous seeming. The day we were there, the brightest yellow beam of sunlight cut through it, and Junie, face like she'd spotted an angel, told us that was a good sign. The place was meant for us. Bright light would make my mom feel better. I guess it was supposed to sizzle her sadness away. Thinking back, it sometimes did and it sometimes didn't.

    "Well, what do you think, hon?" Junie asked me as we stood out on the spongy front porch. My mom was inside, upstairs, discussing the lease with the lanky landlord, a guy who pulled his pants nearly up to his chest so that it looked like the middle portion of his body had been chopped away.

    "It's okay," I said. Even though I didn't really think so, I appreciated that Junie was helping us.

    "Yea, it's alright," she agreed. "It's as good a place to start as any. Your mom can't afford that house you guys was renting in Rodger's Forge. Hope you know that, Little Sam. She'd have stayed there if she could have."

    I squinted over at her for a second, sat down on the top step and watched a skinny white guy, a straightened coat hanger, stagger by. He gave me the chills. He had these smoldering eyes, two holes that were tucked under the hard, pale bumps of his bony head. "My mom doesn't call me Little Sam anymore," I mumbled.

    Big fat Junie, wearing white cotton shorts, the kind with an elastic waistband, sat down beside me. Pale flesh, bread dough, dangled beneath her arms. "What's she call you now, hon?"

    "Samuel," I informed her as I watched the man step behind a tree and start peeing. Somehow, we weren't all that far from our old neighborhood, but it was a whole new world.

    Junie followed my gaze. "Hey you, git outta here!" she hollered when she spotted what the guy was doing. And, to my surprise, the man hustled off to somewhere else.

* * *

    Before moving, we had a huge yard sale to get rid of extra furniture. While it was going on, I had a great time. To me, it seemed like a carnival, with people barking out prices and my mom accepting them or calling back another price. But that night, when the frenzy was over, a funny thing happened. When I realized that a lot of my father's things were gone for good, I got queasy. My stomach churned for about an hour before I eventually spewed into a toilet. My mom sat on the dusty, cool bathroom floor watching me as I hovered over the slick white bowl, cold as an ice block. I could tell that she was sad, but I couldn't do anything about it. I was crippled by nausea. And that was just the beginning. For a time, my stomach got shifty and sore whenever I felt overwhelmed.

    The next weekend, Junie and Ditch, who was tall and stretched-out and constantly puffing on a cigarette, helped us move. And even though we used their delivery van to haul our stuff, it took us nearly six hours. We made three trips back and forth on Greenmount Avenue and York Road, and the whole time, my stomach gurgled. I hated the new place. It was so gloomy compared to our old home, dark as a crusty mayonnaise jar. It it's not our garbage."

    "But it's our street," my mother pointed out. "Don't we want it to look nice?"

    "Maybe," I muttered. But already I was scheduled to clean the backyard with Ditch, and I didn't want to be stuck doing that sort of thing all the time. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but it wasn't that.

    For dinner, we got a pizza around the block at Harry Little's. That's when I first noticed that there was a Little Tavern on the corner of 32nd Street and Greenmount. I would have preferred grabbing a hamburger there, but I didn't say anything about it. I wanted my mother to be stronger before I started nagging her. Anyway, it was alright smelling pizza, and it tasted pretty good. Maybe it would have been better if my stomach hadn't been one giant knot, bubbling and burning, a bag of lava. It rained that night, it poured, and as we ate, water streamed down the inside of the sorry bay window in the kitchen, where our table was located. It looked like a fountain. Occasionally, I put a pale, clammy finger up and redirected the little rivers, but mostly I just left them alone. Funny thing, the water didn't pool on the linoleum floor, either, it drained right through. Actually, I kind of thought it was nice the way it worked so cleanly. But I could tell that it bothered my mom. She didn't eat but one greasy slice of Harry Little's pizza. She spent her time staring at the water as it trickled by.

    "I'm going to get them to fix this," she declared, stood and went to the big, ancient refrigerator to locate one of the National Premium beers Junie and Ditch had left. She sat back down, turned away. She gulped from the can and leaned onto one of her knobby hands, balled up, the mashed body of a bird against her forehead. "I hate this place," she muttered.

    I didn't say anything, stared out the dusty window, chewed Harry Little's pizza and worried, worried about what was going to happen to us.