Read Online A Master Plan for Rescue by Janis Cooke Newman - Free Book Online
Authors: Janis Cooke Newman
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guess you’ve already got one.” He sat back down. “From what you say, I don’t see how anything was your fault.”
“Then I didn’t explain it right.”
“You want to tell it over again?”
But telling it once had put too many pictures inside my head.
I slipped my code-o-graph back into my pocket, let my fingers spin the propeller around.
“You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
• • •
The first message arrived the following morning. It had been tucked inside our mailbox, which was never locked, because the lock had been broken a long time ago, a folded piece of paper with
FGVH
written on the outside.
And
YO PGLRY ITEN JGESO
written on the inside.
It was mixed in with the electricity bill and the sympathy cards, which had been coming every day now. Cards that just from the way our names were written on the envelopes made me sorry to be us.
I took the message upstairs and deciphered it using the code-o-graph. I didn’t doubt—not for one instant—that the message could be translated with the code-o-graph. Perhaps it was because I’d already spent so many of my waking minutes spinning that propeller, running my fingers over the device’s circle of raised letters and numbers, as if I could change history if only I did it the correct number of times.
FGVH
turned out to be
JACK.
And
YO PGLRY ITEN JGESO
was
IT WASNT YOUR FAULT
.
And here is the other thing I didn’t doubt—that the message had come from my father. Such an idea made no sense, was illogical. Then again, there was the message in my hands. And what was written there was precisely what I most needed to hear. My father, with his ability to read people, would have known that. Would have sensed it from wherever he was.
Which was where? And how had he ended up there?
I put my hands on the piece of paper that had come from my father, pressing it into my cowboy and Indian bedspread, and tried to imagine what might have happened in the 42nd Street subway, after I’d taken off the glasses.
Perhaps, in the final moment of the arcs, my father had tumbled off the platform with enough time to roll out of the way. To squeeze himself into the narrow space between the track—where in less than an instant the metal wheels of the train would come screeching—and the third rail. Perhaps that’s where he’d been the entire time the red-faced transit cop had been leaning in too close to me. The entire time I’d been concentrating on the crumpled-up Chuckles wrapper. The entire time the uptown A train sat silent above him.
It was an improbable story—impossible, really—but I was a twelve-year-old boy who had lost his father. A twelve-year-old boy with a head full of radio serial dramas, dramas that depended on last-minute escapes. And perhaps more important, I wanted very much to believe it.
There was a mentalist at Coney Island who claimed to be able to tell your future. You would write a question on a piece of paper, and then he’d ask you to hold it in your hand for a few seconds to put your magnetism on it. I pressed my hand harder against the paper on my bedspread, sure I could feel my father’s magnetism, a buzzing beneath my hand.
Then I smoothed my father’s message flat and slipped it under my T-shirt, tucking in the hem to keep it from falling out. The paper felt stiff and scratchy against my chest. I got up and ripped a page from one of my old composition books, wrote
I NEED TO SEE YOU
which I turned into
Y RUUB OT LUU ITE.
Because I had to know why, once the uptown A train had pulled out of the 42nd Street subway station, once my father had stood up and brushed himself off, why he hadn’t come straight home to Dyckman Street, where I was waiting, certain he was dead.
I folded the paper in half and wrote
BGB
on the outside, which was
DAD
.
Then I ran downstairs and slipped it into the mailbox.
• • •
I waited all day for my father’s answer. Leaving the Silvertone every
“Then I didn’t explain it right.”
“You want to tell it over again?”
But telling it once had put too many pictures inside my head.
I slipped my code-o-graph back into my pocket, let my fingers spin the propeller around.
“You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
• • •
The first message arrived the following morning. It had been tucked inside our mailbox, which was never locked, because the lock had been broken a long time ago, a folded piece of paper with
FGVH
written on the outside.
And
YO PGLRY ITEN JGESO
written on the inside.
It was mixed in with the electricity bill and the sympathy cards, which had been coming every day now. Cards that just from the way our names were written on the envelopes made me sorry to be us.
I took the message upstairs and deciphered it using the code-o-graph. I didn’t doubt—not for one instant—that the message could be translated with the code-o-graph. Perhaps it was because I’d already spent so many of my waking minutes spinning that propeller, running my fingers over the device’s circle of raised letters and numbers, as if I could change history if only I did it the correct number of times.
FGVH
turned out to be
JACK.
And
YO PGLRY ITEN JGESO
was
IT WASNT YOUR FAULT
.
And here is the other thing I didn’t doubt—that the message had come from my father. Such an idea made no sense, was illogical. Then again, there was the message in my hands. And what was written there was precisely what I most needed to hear. My father, with his ability to read people, would have known that. Would have sensed it from wherever he was.
Which was where? And how had he ended up there?
I put my hands on the piece of paper that had come from my father, pressing it into my cowboy and Indian bedspread, and tried to imagine what might have happened in the 42nd Street subway, after I’d taken off the glasses.
Perhaps, in the final moment of the arcs, my father had tumbled off the platform with enough time to roll out of the way. To squeeze himself into the narrow space between the track—where in less than an instant the metal wheels of the train would come screeching—and the third rail. Perhaps that’s where he’d been the entire time the red-faced transit cop had been leaning in too close to me. The entire time I’d been concentrating on the crumpled-up Chuckles wrapper. The entire time the uptown A train sat silent above him.
It was an improbable story—impossible, really—but I was a twelve-year-old boy who had lost his father. A twelve-year-old boy with a head full of radio serial dramas, dramas that depended on last-minute escapes. And perhaps more important, I wanted very much to believe it.
There was a mentalist at Coney Island who claimed to be able to tell your future. You would write a question on a piece of paper, and then he’d ask you to hold it in your hand for a few seconds to put your magnetism on it. I pressed my hand harder against the paper on my bedspread, sure I could feel my father’s magnetism, a buzzing beneath my hand.
Then I smoothed my father’s message flat and slipped it under my T-shirt, tucking in the hem to keep it from falling out. The paper felt stiff and scratchy against my chest. I got up and ripped a page from one of my old composition books, wrote
I NEED TO SEE YOU
which I turned into
Y RUUB OT LUU ITE.
Because I had to know why, once the uptown A train had pulled out of the 42nd Street subway station, once my father had stood up and brushed himself off, why he hadn’t come straight home to Dyckman Street, where I was waiting, certain he was dead.
I folded the paper in half and wrote
BGB
on the outside, which was
DAD
.
Then I ran downstairs and slipped it into the mailbox.
• • •
I waited all day for my father’s answer. Leaving the Silvertone every
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