The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [52]
Uneasy and itching in one of his father’s ancient tweed suits, Buster sat on the sofa in the registrar’s office, the secretaries ignoring him, as he clutched a copy of his second novel. Not for a million dollars would he have claimed authorship of the book in his hands if the secretaries, popping gum and filled with petty grievances, had demanded a reason for his presence in the school.
His sister, off to watch a movie at the dollar cinema in the near-empty ghost mall on the outskirts of town, had driven him to the front of the building in their parents’ second car, a rattling heap of a station wagon that took ten minutes to start. “Have a nice day at school,” Annie told him, and then left tire marks as she peeled out of the parking lot, leaving him alone on the sidewalk. He instantly wished he had some kind of note, documentation to support his arrival, a mystical object to ward off bullies and truancy officers.
As he waited for Lucas Kizza to claim him, Buster’s hands worried the pockets of the suit, searching for a diversion. In the inside pocket of his father’s jacket, he found a digital recorder the size of a stick of chewing gum, some kind of spy-games invention that was either very, very expensive or very, very cheap. He pressed the play button and listened to his father’s voice, serious and slow, say, “We live on the edge . . . a shantytown filled with gold-seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.” Buster, stunned by the strangeness of it, pressed repeat, turned up the volume, and held this matchstick of a device to his ear as if listening to radio static for the voice of a long-dead lover. “ . . . the law is skinny with hunger for us,” the recorder said, and Buster took out a pen, opened to the title page of his novel, and scribbled the phrases down so that he could see the arrangement of the words on paper.
He had an image of a plantation, ruined with flame from a slave uprising, long since abandoned. He saw a group of people, barely adults, ragged and lean, prying open the boards that covered one of the windows and spilling into the mansion like an infestation. He saw them making weapons out of bone and wood, everything sharp points, and patrolling the grounds, the fields newly planted with marijuana, wild dogs running up and down the deep furrows in the ground. He hit the button on the recorder one more time. “We live on the edge,” it began, and then Lucas Kizza was standing over him. “The unexpected visits of the muse,” Lucas said, smiling, gesturing toward Buster’s open book. “One must always be prepared,” he continued. Buster, never prepared for a goddamned thing, immediately agreed.
Lucas Kizza was tall and lanky, his face baby-smooth and pale, easily mistaken for a student. Wearing a crisp white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, flat-front khakis, an argyle sweater vest, and black leather sneakers, he looked like an idealistic young teacher who had thus far, by luck or by talent, managed to avoid having his guts ripped out by the handful. Reeking of mothballs, his uncovered eye still adjusting to the light, holding the source of his creative shame like a peace offering, Buster wished only to make it through the day without crying.
The frowning members of the creative writing club were seated in a circle in one of the unused rooms within the library. The nervous, desperate energy contained within the room was palpable, and Buster felt as though he