The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [111]
August 12, 2006. He stepped outside onto the back deck. Another coolish, airy day, sunny but not hot, scuddy white clouds blowing across the sky. A great day to complete his project. Wanting to give Rusty one more chance to be there when he made history, he stopped outside his shed and called her cell phone again. This time she answered. She didn’t sound happy to hear from him. She sounded sullen and snippy, like the old Rusty used to before he got to know her. Remembering that she usually slept late, he apologized for calling at eight thirty in the morning, but she said she was already up, had been up, and what did he want already?
Otis ignored her bratty tone and asked where she’d been, why she hadn’t called him back; and she acted annoyed, as if he were merely pestering her. “Why do you think?” she said. “Duh. Anyway, I don’t live in your neighborhood anymore. I don’t live in Tallytown anymore.” She told him that she and her mother and Angel were staying down in Lloyd, twenty miles away, with her mother’s parents. Then she added that her mother was divorcing her father, whom she would henceforth refer to as the demon seed.
Otis told her he was sorry, but he didn’t know if that was the right response to her parents’ getting a divorce.
“Seriously, don’t be,” she said. “It’s a big relief, right? Now I don’t have to lock my door.”
Otis felt a chill, even though it was plenty hot in his backyard.
“I meant I’m sorry about all of it,” he said. “I’m sorry it happened.”
There was a sniffling sound. Was she crying? He hadn’t meant to make her cry, so he started talking, quickly relating the trial-and-error process he’d been through in the past few days, the gunsight scam, shoplifting the batteries, and how today was the day he was assembling the entire thing and how he knew, just knew, it was going to work.
He heard the sniffling again, which puzzled him, but then he realized she was laughing. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, nothing. You. You’re so … I don’t know. Earnest.”
“Okay.” Otis didn’t know why that was funny, but he realized he was smiling, too. “I wish you were here,” he said.
“Me, too. Good luck with your whatsit. I’ll be there in spirit, cheering you on.”
“When are you coming back?”
She sighed. “Nothing’s been decided. I won’t be living in Canterbury Hills again, that’s for sure.”
“You’ll visit, though. You’ll come see me. I could drive down to Lloyd.”
“Uhmm. Don’t think my mom would be too glad to see anyone from your family right now.”
Otis protested that he hadn’t had anything to do with the “scandal” and that it wasn’t fair to blame him, and Rusty agreed and said it wasn’t fair but that nothing was and that she had to go now and please don’t call for a while. “I took one of your radium paint chips,” she told him. “For my medicine bag.”
“Don’t!” Otis said. “Don’t put it in your bag. Throw it away.” Why was he getting so upset?
“Sheesh,” said Rusty. “Okay, spaceman.” She hung up.
So, on the big day, Otis went into his shed alone and, feeling something of a letdown, after he’d put on his lead apron and mask and plastic gloves, he wrapped the uranium powder and beryllium in little foil cubes and arranged them around a block of carbon inside the lead gun, then wrapped the thorium ash in foil packets and distributed them around the outside layer of the gun, next to the packets of uranium and beryllium. Then he wrapped the whole thing up with duct tape and weighed it. It weighed two pounds. He set it down and left the shed, locking the door behind him. The deed was done.
* * *
Although everything had changed