The Friendship Song Read Free

Actually she was big all over. She had monster feet. Well, maybe it was just that the work boots she wore made them look big, but anyway she was not much to look at, especially not in her baseball cap. My dad had dated lots of women who were a whole lot better looking than she was.
    â€œI think you’ve got dirt on your face,” I told her.
    She just held up her hands, which were dirtier, and smiled, and came in. “C’mon. Do you like your room?”
    â€œIt’s okay,” I admitted. “What are those things in the windows?”
    â€œOld heat grates I polished up. You know, from old houses?”
    I didn’t know.
    â€œThey used to put a hole in the floor so the heat could get up from downstairs, and they’d cover the hole with a fancy cast-iron grate.”
    â€œSo what?” I sounded pretty rude, but I didn’t care. Okay, so I wasn’t going to fight with my dad about her, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t fight with her .
    Gus didn’t even blink, though. She pretended I was just asking a question, and said, “So what are they doing in the windows? Don’t you think they look witchy? I like circles. Yang and yin and all that. But you can just say they’re to keep what’s outside out and what’s inside in. There’s magic in metal.”
    Ordinarily I might not have paid much attention, but after what Rawnie had been telling me, you better believe I did. I think my eyes bugged, and I said, “You serious?”
    I would have felt better if she’d laughed at me. Mad, but better. But she didn’t laugh. She just let her smile curl up around that honker of hers and shrugged her big shoulders and went out to get some more of my stuff for me to unpack.
    I stayed in my room for a long time, arranging my stuff, partly because I knew I would feel better once I got my room set up and partly because I didn’t want to deal with Gus or her house more than I had to. But finally I had to go to the bathroom, which was at the back of the house, and while I was there I looked out the bathroom window, and my mouth came wide open because I was looking down at Gus’s backyard.
    It was huge. Here was this neighborhood all full of skinny brick row houses with no front yards and only skinny little backyards running between fences to skinny little alleys. And here in the middle of everything was this big square wooden house Gus had, and its yard stopped the alleys and stretched clear to the next street.
    And every inch of the yard was full of some kind of junk.
    What I’d seen out front was bad enough, but at least it seemed like it was arranged for people to look at. Besides the cactusy-looking thing and the hubcap tower there was a tall metal spindle out front with octopus arms on top, and there was a weird-looking metal deer with pipes for legs and antlers made out of old pitchforks. Kind of lawn-ornament stuff if you were really nutsoid. But the backyard was like a huge crazy playground made of sheer junk. In between big trees I saw the usual backyard trash, like old cars up on blocks and old washtubs, but also cockeyed street-lamps, and old steam radiators, and a cookstove, the kind with legs, and a ton of other things I couldn’t figure out through the branches in my way. There were sheds down there too, and a creek with some little ponds strung along it like shiny beads on a shiny ribbon.
    My room could wait a few minutes. I ran downstairs and out the back door. Forget wearing a jacket, because it was warm as summer out, even though it was only April. I found my way across the first part of the yard to the water. I say “found” because it took some doing. I mean there were about sixteen piles of stuff in my way. But I managed, and it was worth it. The ponds were way cool. They were made out of a car-top carrier, and a fuel oil tank cut in half, and a concrete septic ring, and an upside-down Volkswagen body, and just about