AFTERNOON
Like Justine Barlow, that human magnet for dead baby birds, I, Keri Cleary, have decided to start jogging. Supposedly, it’s good for your head as well as your heart, and both of mine need a bit of help. School was uneventful, and the news is yet another crapfest (we’re fighting with Panama now?). So I put on a sweat suit, hat, and gloves. I grabbed what I thought was my Walkman and hit the slushy streets.
It wasn’t my Walkman, of course. It was the stupid walkie-talkie. I put it on anyway. I don’t understand a lot about frequencies and I thought maybe I could get a radio station if I fiddled with the knob. All I got was static.
Instead of bringing it back and swapping it for the Walkman, I just wore it. I didn’t want to go inside and have Dad see my outfit and ask what I was doing. It was better to jog and find out if I liked it and shower the sweat off and then only answer questions if absolutely necessary. Besides, static isn’t so bad to listen to. Beats listening to your thoughts when your thoughts are a scramble of stories and you’re having trouble telling what’s real and what’s a dream and what’s a coincidence and what’s basically what.
If you never jog and you suddenly jog, it’s not easy to jog. Didn’t help that it was below freezing out and the slush was now ice and my lungs were burning because they were working so hard trying to stay warm. I also had to keep watching the ground because I didn’t want to slip and I definitely didn’t want to see any more dead baby birds.
It all added up to surrender. I was ready to quit almost as soon as I reached the Loomis house, which isn’t very far at all. There was a pickup truck in the driveway, the first vehicle I’d seen there in a few days. The back was weighed down with bags and boxes that were held tight with bungee cords. I changed my pace from a slow jog to a fast walk, which is basically the same thing for me. And that’s when it came through the headphones. A voice.
“Knock knock … knock knock … knock knock…”
There was no reply, so the voice replied to itself, in a slightly nasally tone.
“Who’s there?”
“Dorian Loomis.”
“Dorian Loomis who?”
“Open the door, Ian, Lou misses you!”
It wasn’t funny. I’m not sure I even understood it. I mean, who the hell are Ian and Lou? Is that even a punch line?
“Yep,” the voice said. “It’s Dorian Loomis. I go by Luminary or Bush Baby. The Red Baron sometimes. But right now this is me speaking as me, as Dorian. Speaking to anyone who cares to listen.”
I cared to listen. I hurried a little farther down the road, past the Loomis house and the Carmine house, because Mrs. Carmine is a total busybody who’s always sticking her nose into things. To catch my breath, I sat on a big rock next to the sign for Seven Pines Road at the corner of Harriman. I listened.