Snapdragon Alley

  Argus had no experience with anything seriously like obsession or compulsion, and he felt its tight grip uncomfortable but irresistible. That distant vacant lot with its weeds and its cracked cement and its broken curbs and surrounding structures became the occupying thought of his mind, the center of his attention. Miss Meyers, Argus' teacher, noticed his distraction and tried to pry the secret out of him. Argus shook it off long enough to reassure her that he was merely reminiscing about a vacation and the wonderful time he had. She asked him to draw a picture of it, and the pile of crayons on his desk and the blank white paper before him became a great relief.

  Argus drew cautiously. He was not the best at drawing. Molly was forever telling him that his efforts looked like nothing and she should just do exactly what she did. That little girl was never shy about offering her advice. Sometimes Argus would give in and copy her sketches of butterflies and horses and she would nod approvingly, and with her five-year old intensity assure him that he was making "great strides".

  Argus liked to have friends, and he liked to tell his friends all his ideas. Max especially was continually astounded by the things Argus would say. Max believed that Argus was the smartest person who had ever lived, smarter even than Miss Meyers. When the teacher told him something new, he would double-check with Argus to verify the fact. Argus wanted so badly to tell Max about Snapdragon Alley. He didn't like this feeling all bottled up inside that he was not allowed to share or tell.

  He drew a square in red, and then with brown and green he did some scribbling inside the square. With a yellow crayon he drew a tiny circle, and next to the circle, a stick figure of a man bent over, hand stretching toward the circle.

  "What is that supposed to be?" Molly bugged him imperiously from his right.

  "I like it", declared Max from the left.

  "It's a place I know", said Argus, darkly hinting.

  "Your room?" guessed Max.

  "A sandbox?" Molly tried.

  "It's a place my Uncle used to go and walk around", Argus told them. Suddenly he knew it wouldn't matter. Secrecy was an issue for the older kids, and certainly the parents had to be left out, but Max and Molly and Ayesha? It wouldn't do any harm to talk to them. Nobody ever believes us little kids anyway, he reasoned.

  "What did you uncle do there?" Ayesha asked from across the table. She was always the one to catch on quickest when Argus had something of interest to tell.

  "He was looking for something", Argus said, "something that no one else could see, and could only be found in a special way."

  "Like hopping up and down on one foot twenty zillion times?" asked Max.

  "Something like that", Argus smiled.

  "Did he ever find it?" Ayesha asked.

  "He did", Argus replied, "He found it but I think he lost it again, at least one time. He had to find it again and again. The thing kept getting away from him."

  "Like my bunny rabbit", said Molly. "Every time I try to catch her, I almost get her and then she hops away. I have to grab her real tight but not too tight because I'm not supposed to squeeze."

  "It hurts when someone squeezes you", Max supplied.

  "Did you ever see it?" Ayesha wanted to know.

  "Never", Argus said, and with that word he remembered Mason Henry, and what Sapphire said about the postcards, and thought that maybe he had said enough already.

  "I don't really know what it was", said Argus, "that's why I can't really draw it. I can only draw somebody looking for it."

  "It's a drawing AND a story", Molly declared approvingly. Argus could hardly believe she wasn't criticizing his work.

  "Thanks", he said. He looked at the picture and decided it was finished. When Miss Meyers came over to ask him about the picture and what it represented from his vacation, Argus made up something about a playground and finding a toy in the grass, and he noticed that his friends were listening in and smiling quietly. They knew the difference between a story for your friends and a story for the grownups.

  Chapter Twelve - Sloppy Joes

  Sapphire didn't feel the same way about it as Argus. She thought it was all very interesting, but also sad. Mason Henry was an old man who missed his wife and thought that maybe she was still alive and if only he could make the magic happen he would find her again and they'd be happily reunited. In short, she didn't really believe, and after all, she reasoned, why should she?

  Obviously there WAS some kind of mystery involved. She had seen the name Snapdragon Alley with her own eyes on that one and only bus map, and Mason Henry's attitude towards selling the place fit in nicely with her father's story about the lot. She still liked her original idea that somebody had a proposal for a development and gave it that name. That person had some connection with whoever decides what goes on the map, and even if her father hadn't heard of it, that only meant the idea got lost in the bureaucratic shuffle somehow. She needed to get online and dive into the records. Even better, she needed to get into the office of urban planning and development and go through the files. Chances were the project had never been entered into any computer.

  That was all going to be impossible, she decided, and so she filed the whole thing away in the back of her mind and concentrated on more immediate tasks - the volleyball team, swim practice, homework, and plotting more stray random notes to leave in stupid stores for unsuspecting customers to stumble upon. Those she composed during the classes she despised - Language Arts, for one. Math, for another. She tried to keep her snickering to herself, but on genuinely inspired occasions she couldn't help but kick the back of Alex's foot beneath the chair in front of her, and sneak him a copy of the note.

  "Citizen Beware. These comestibles could be combustible!" - that one was for the shop that specialized in egg rolls and donuts.

  "Any place has got to be better than this!" - that one was for World of Flavors, a restaurant that only offered tomato soup, turkey legs, pancakes and ice cream.

  She was going to wake somebody up. It didn't matter who. She was scheming to find a spy location where she could loiter and observe whoever was the first to discover the note, just to see the expression on their face. She could imagine it, and in fact her imagination was bound to be superior to reality (it always was), but just in case, in the off chance that for once reality might break through, she was calculating and planning.

  Alex knew just what she was up to, and as they rushed to the cafeteria he almost blurted out "no way" even before she proposed the trip. Any spare time he had he wanted to devote to Snapdragon Alley.

  "Oh, come on", she persisted. "It'll be fun. Besides, there's no way some invisible mystery land is suddenly going to pop up out of the blue and you know it."

  "It's doesn't pop up", he replied, "it doesn't become visible to the whole world, only to the people who can see it."

  "You mean to people who mutter some kind of mumbo-jumbo while pointing a coke can in the general direction of a dumpster?" she chuckled at her little joke.

  "I know", Alex admitted. "It does seem stupid."

  "Stupid, yes", Sapphire agreed and added with a terrible British accent, "but stupid in a rather sweet and delightful way"

  This time she cackled so loud she almost choked.

  "How come you never told me that your Uncle Charlie was such a weirdo", she asked after calming down.

  "He wasn't", said Alex, annoyed. "He was a great guy. Everybody has their secrets, I guess".

  "Not me", Sapphire said. "What you see is what you get", and with that she pushed her way to the front of the cafeteria line and was lost from Alex's sight. Just as well, he sighed. He had a feeling that they were not going to be seeing eye-to-eye on this one.

  He didn't quite know what to make of it all himself. He knew it wasn't logical that a place like the one described by Mason Henry could exist in the way he said it did, and yet he knew from his own experience that there were lots of things that people couldn't see even though it was right in front of their faces. In Science class he learned that the hu
man eye could only see a specific range in the spectrum of actual light, and that the human ear could only hear a specific range of sound. Dogs could hear sounds that people couldn't. Birds see things in ways that people don't. What if Snapdragon Alley was something like that - beyond the normal range?

  In that case, why would it seem to be a housing development? Why would it appear differently to different people? What if it were an alien base that could project any kind of appearance it wanted to? That made some kind of sense, at least. It might have seemed to be a bunch of houses to Henrietta, when really it might have been a tangle of Martian seaweed or something. Maybe it was even a creature. Maybe it was a hungry beast that lured its prey right into its mouth. That could be what happened to Charlie, and Henrietta. Maybe it only got hungry once a year, and it was saving up for a tender meal of nice raw Mason Henry.

  These ideas made the school lunch look even more disgusting than usual. The fact that it was sloppy joes and salad again didn't help. Alex couldn't even touch the stuff. He gnawed on a roll and chugged his milk while he sat off in a corner by himself. Sapphire had found the girls from her volleyball team and though she did smile and wave at him once, to let him know she was sorry about what she said about Charlie, and he sort of waved back to let her know it was okay, still he was glad to be all by himself for a change. He felt like he needed to sort through these ideas, to write them down and put them away. He pulled out his notebooks and made a numbered list of ideas. Later, in art class, he'd make up equations and formulas: if A then not B. If C and D then not A. Once he filled up pages with those, he'd be able to let the ideas alone to themselves, let them simmer and stew until one of them came bubbling up to inform him that it was the best of the lot.

  Chapter Thirteen - Daniel Fulsom

  All day, every day, whenever she ran into Alex, Sapphire had to listen to his host of theories about Snapdragon Alley and Uncle Charlie and the 63 Venezia bus line, so much she was getting sick and tired of the whole thing and really just wanted to prove to Alex, once and for all, that the whole thing was a big mistake, a complete misunderstanding. She was convinced that she could figure it all out, and to set the record straight, she took herself downtown to her father's office one afternoon after school. When she got there she forgot she should have told her father she was coming, because at first he wasn't there, and then when he was there he was busy with meetings and didn't have more than a second to talk to her.

  This was really annoying because by that time she had already been waiting there for twenty minutes, sitting quietly in the visitor's chair near his secretary's desk, and Sapphire had worked herself into a state about that secretary, Crystal Wisburne, known to Sapphire secretly as Miss Whistlebottom. She was convinced that all too many of her father's late nights at the office were somehow the fault of this overly stuffed and overly perfumed sweetness. Sapphire had sat there scowling and trying not to breathe too deeply lest she get infected by the odor. And there were never any decent magazines at her father's office, mostly architectural and engineering rags. Who could get excited about steel frame buildings? Besides her dad, that is.

  So after her father rushed through with nothing but a peck on the cheek and a homely 'sorry hon gotta run' little joke, followed by a closing of the door behind four identically balding men in suits, Sapphire was left half-standing half-stooping by the desk. Miss Whistlebottom gave her a friendly head toss which Sapphire scorned.

  "Maybe I can help you with something, sweetie", mewed the cat-like secretary.

  "Doubt it", Sapphire snapped, but Ms. Wisburne persisted and finally got it out of the girl that she was looking for the identity of the bus map artist, and really anything to do with a piece of land called Snapdragon Alley by some. As it turned out, to Sapphire's enormous surprise, Ms. Wisburne knew all about it.

  The bus map artist was usually a boring firm called Hemp&Ether, but two years previous it had been farmed out for a special occasion to a fabulous specialist named Cyrilla Pak. It had been the fiftieth anniversary of Spring Hill Lake Transit Authority (SHLTA, pronounce Shlate-Ah) and the Authority wanted to celebrate with a dolled up bus map, among other niceties. Cyrilla Pak was famous, in her own right, having once done the transit map for the London Underground, not to mention the bus maps for Oslo, Stockholm and Brisbane, California. One could get in touch with Ms. Pak if one wanted, according to Miss Whistlebottom (and Sapphire was already beginning to feel guilty about that nickname), because Miss Whistlebottom (Wisburne, she told herself) had the artist's email address.

  It may not be necessary, however, because, as Crystal Wisburne continued, she also knew about Snapdragon Alley.

  By now, Sapphire was all ears.

  "You've heard of it?" she was incredulous. "My father said there was no such thing! He says that plot was just a rundown apartment building that got torn down and now it's good for nothing".

  "A decrepit tenement, yes", agreed Ms. Wisburne, "but most decrepit tenements don't just get torn down for nothing. There's got to be something in it for someone. Truth is, there was."

  She leaned over her desk and lowered her voice to a whisper. Sapphire leaned over closer to hear.

  "Your father won't remember, or at least he won't admit it. Wouldn't do him any good. Better not to know certain things. Better to forget. Especially when they involve a certain someone."

  "A certain who?" inquired Sapphire.

  "I really shouldn't say", Crystal Wisburne replied, "and I certainly wouldn't mention Mr. Daniel Fulsom's name to your father, if I were you." She winked, and Sapphire jumped up at the name. Of course she had heard of Daniel Fulsom. Everyone in Spring Hill Lake knew of the man who'd gone down in flames a few months before, along with the mayor and every single city councilman, who all turned out to have been on Fulsom's black market payroll. Unfortunately for him he had failed to buy off the chief of police or the chief's cousin, who happened to be the district attorney.

  "I knew it!" Sapphire declared. "There WAS a project!"

  "Oh most definitely", replied Ms. Wisburne, "no doubt about it. But then there was a tiny glitch in the plan."

  "Mason Henry", Sapphire almost shouted, and even the all-knowing Crystal Wisburne was shocked.

  "How do you know about him?"

  "I met him", Sapphire said. "He said never. He'd never sell. At any price"

  "Precisely", Crystal replied, nodding. "Curious that you met him, though."

  "My friend has a thing about that place", Sapphire explained.

  "Well, it might never come to anything", Crystal said, "with Fulsom in jail and Mason Henry hanging on to it. Sometimes a whole lot of nothing is all you get. Then again, it might be only a matter of time."

  Now that she had her proof, Sapphire didn't need to hang around anymore, and she didn't want to have to explain herself any further to Miss Whistlebottom. She headed for the door and almost rushed off without even saying thank you, but Crystal had one more thing to tell her.

  "You might want to get in touch with Cyrilla Pak anyway", she said, handing Sapphire a piece of paper with the artist's email address on it.

  "She and your friend might have something in common", she hinted. "She had a feeling about that place as well."

  Chapter Fourteen - Charlie Kirkham

  Sapphire hurried home and stopped by Alex's house on the way to tell him what she'd found out, but he wasn't around. No one seemed to know where he was, but she guessed. He'd gone back to Snapdragon Alley.

  Alex arrived there around three-thirty, after having to change buses twice due to breakdowns. He was feeling very subdued and calm, as if the unknown was just so enormous it was easier to let go and stop questioning. His mind had been racing for days around the idea of this place, and he'd resolved, this time, to keep his brain quiet and his eyes open and try to really see what was simply there in front of him.

  And this time he saw the empty lot as merely an empty lot again. This time he noticed more clearly than before that the houses on Trent Boulevard w
ere not just run down, they were almost all abandoned. Alex walked slowly past each one, walking up the steps and peering in the front windows, and taking note of the emptiness inside them all. Only the last house on the block seemed to still contain an occupant - Mason Henry's house. Alex knocked at the door and was not surprised that Mason Henry was not surprised to see him.

  "Come in, Alex", the old man said. "There's someone here I think you'll want to see."

  Alex followed him into the kitchen and then his predetermined calmness vanished in a heartbeat. Sitting on one of the folding chairs was his long lost uncle, Charlie Kirkham.

  "Howdy, boy", Uncle Charlie said, slowly rising from his seat. He had barely made it to an upright position by the time Alex rushed over and flew into his arms. Alex could not hold back the tears and wept loudly into the grown man's chest. Charlie gave him a bug bear hug, but Alex didn't sense the old warmth he'd known so well, and soon let go, took a step back, and tried to get a clear look at the man.

  Charlie was smiling, and Alex always remembered him with a smile, but was it the same smile? It had been two years, and two years are much longer for a child than for a grownup. Alex felt he couldn't trust his memories. Of course it was the same smile, the same man. If pressed, he would have had to admit that Uncle Charlie looked exactly the same as he had the last time Alex had seen him, down to the denim jacket, the two-day growth, and the yellowing teeth. He had a million questions and Charlie seemed to know it.

  "Hold on there", he said, before Alex got a chance to ask them all at once.