SILVER ZEN COYOTE - an unfinished short story

SILVER ZEN COYOTE

1st draft

Part 1:

The old Hempstead house stood empty on a tree covered hillside for decades. It leaned and groaned against the howling wind. Shutters drooped and shingles shed themselves at will. Behind a curtain of towering sycamore trees, the house was free to heave and shift completely unseen. In the little village below there remained not one single soul with the name Hempstead nor the slightest recollection of those who once resided in the ragged rickety shack on the hill. Truants had long ago smashed the last window. Kids both brave and stupid crossed its crooked threshold every Halloween, only to find the interior picked clean by critters and the ravages of time. Holes in the roof and floors let the sun and rain take their toll. It was an open secret. Old news. The garage door was rusted stuck shut stiff as steel, propped open no more than a few inches give or take. No one had ever succeeded in getting the door to budge. It wouldn't even rattle. The beam of a flashlight would reveal nothing more within than shadowy shapes and jagged angles. Intrepid teenagers lay down and wiggled on the broken pavement to extend their hands into the darkness only to find they could grasp not a thing. Broom handles and long sticks were similarly waved about in the void, striking nothing. As often as the house itself had been explored and its interior investigated over the years, the garage remained completely and utterly locked down beyond human incursion of any kind. Generation after generation of local residents knew nothing more of the garage contents than the musty smell that emanated from within.

Sitting as it did a few miles from the outskirts of town there were no eyes upon the house in the wee hours of the morning when a mercury sliver sprung from under the garage door and darted into the tall grass and thorny thickets overrun with vines.

*

Part 2:

The boy had always been an early riser. He'd have his usual bowl of corn flakes, read the back of the same cereal box over again, and slip into the yard behind the house to a spot where he liked to sit just under his mother's bedroom window. It wasn't because he liked to be near her. Only that over time he'd found it was better to keep close tabs on where she was from the first waking moments of the day. A small plastic radio fit perfectly in the front pocket of his baggy overalls. The local AM stations repeated weather reports at regular intervals but anyone with eyes could tell you if it was going to be a good day for a bike ride. The little transistor's volume was always set low lest he incur his mother's wrath. It didn't take much. It would be years before he learned what a hangover was. And later still when he realized that his mother must have experienced them with some regularity. Twice already he'd had to save up his allowance to buy a replacement when the radio had been destroyed by his mother for seemingly no reason at all. On one such occasion she hadn't even troubled to take it from his pocket before smashing it to pieces with a flurry of swift blows from a hairbrush or curling iron. He wasn't sure which. These explosive episodes often occurred out of the blue. He'd learned to give his mother a wide berth and not ask too many questions. With one hand he massaged the faded bruise on his ribcage. With the other he tugged at the leafy greens in the dry caked mud where he sat and pulled up the last few sickly carrots that he himself had planted in a makeshift garden earlier that spring. This dirt patch behind the house didn't get a lot of sun so the boy's attempts at a vegetable garden were never terribly successful. Flavorless and so pale they were almost white, these floppy root vegetables were good enough to provide sustenance on a bike ride that would keep him out of the house for most of the day. The way Mom liked it. The sound of dishes in the sink and muttered curses signaled it was perhaps best that he go. He quietly filled a plastic water bottle with the garden hose, slipped the little radio's strap over the handlebars, and set off down the driveway. He was several blocks away from home humming along with "Seasons in the Sun" before he realized that he'd forgotten to put on shoes.

Like any kid, there were cartoons and other programs he enjoyed on a television in the living room. But inclement weather usually found him holed up in his bedroom, reading a book or doodling in a sketch pad. A constant companion capable of what the child already considered a sort of benevolent sorcery, the low radio was ever at his side. The uneasy truce between him and his mother seemed to be predicated almost entirely on conversations kept short and to the point, invariably revolving around the subject of how he could successfully stay out of her hair for another day. Not yet eleven years old, he was already keenly aware of how unusual this arrangement was. But he could not recall a time when things were not this way.

Summer was winding down. Another school year just around the corner. A late August weekend loomed as the boy found himself instinctively hatching a plan. It was not unusual for his mother to drop him off at a local shopping center on Saturday morning, returning in the evening to retrieve him. Their steely passage back home rarely included conversation of any kind, and never once an inquiry as to how he had spent his day at the mall. As always, it was better not to poke the bear. Just let her drive on in silence.

Part 3:

As soon as he learned to read, the boy took to it like a fish to water. From cereal boxes to comic books, he soon graduated to magazines, newspapers, and short novels. Nine out of every ten neighborhood bike rides included a stop at the local library. An avid reader from an early age, he skated through grade school with easy As. A perceptive kid and a keen observer of human nature, his solo excursions through the shopping mall were like an ongoing anthropological survey. There seemed to be far too many women's clothing stores and shoe stores too, for that matter. But the sporting goods store, men's wear, custom airbrush t-shirt shop, and of course the record store made up for whatever imbalance there seemed to be in favor of female shoppers.

Always bustling with activity, color and sound, around the holidays it bordered on riotous. The boy felt certain he could find his way around in the mall blindfolded if he had to, thanks to the various smells emanating from the cookie shop, soap store, and the food court of course. Even the one-hour photo kiosk smelled of chemicals used to develop film, to say nothing of the cigar shop that occupied a large corner storefront in order to accommodate a humidor inside. And of the four department stores that were the economic engine of the whole sprawling complex, three of them featured perfume counters just inside their main entrance. The whole place was an olfactory smorgasbord. Even the bus stop had a distinct odor. It was only a matter of time before the adventurous boy boarded a city bus with a pocketful of change for bus fare and no idea where it would take him. All he knew for sure was these buses ran at 15- or 20-minute intervals, taking commuters into the city and various stops along the way, returning later in the day when the same people would return to the mall and presumably back to their homes after a day of work or shopping or who knows what. For a pre-teen from the suburbs to board a random bus and ride around town for a few hours was a fairly exotic notion. The whole endeavor went from idea to execution in the time it took the boy to get change for a dollar. After the bus driver assured him that thirty-five cents would get him to any other bus stop in the city and the same amount would see him deposited back at the mall whenever he wished to return, he slipped a quarter and a dime into the slot and took a seat.