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  Dutton Books

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © 2019 by A.S. King

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  Ebook ISBN 9781101994924

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket images © imageBROKER/ALAMY

  Quagga Media/ALAMY

  Jacket design by Samira Iravani

  Version_2

  For Pam, who said, “Those are your people.”

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART ONE: INTRODUCTIONSMarla & Gottfried’s Easter Dinner

  Jake & Bill can bring the snake out now

  PART 1.1: INTRODUCING THE SHOVELER AND THE FREAKThe Shoveler: the Snowstorm & Mr. _______son

  The Shoveler: Old Business

  The Shoveler: Tunnels on the Surface of the Moon

  MAKE THE FREAK VANISH!

  THE FREAK HATES HALF-WIT HIGH SCHOOL BITCHES!

  Jake & Bill are shoveling

  The Shoveler: Brain Man

  THE FREAK IS PART OF A TEAM NOW!

  The Shoveler: Transparent Backpack

  NAKED FREAK CAN’T CRY!

  Marla & Gottfried’s Drive-In Movie

  Jake & Bill go out for beer

  FREAKISH INTERLUDE!

  The Shoveler: Ma’am

  The Shoveler: Au Gratin

  Marla & Gottfried Get Ready for a Guest

  The Shoveler: Eyebrow

  The Shoveler: Placement Test

  THE FREAK PICKS UP THE PHONE AND TALKS TO DIRT!

  PART 1.2: INTRODUCING MALCOLMMalcolm Is Annoyed by the Basket

  Malcolm Ate Bad Shrimp

  Jake & Bill communicate via brain waves

  Malcolm Isn’t Supposed To

  Malcolm Doesn’t Eat Lamb

  Malcolm: White People

  Marla & Gottfried’s Grandson Is Not Acceptable

  PART 1.3: INTRODUCING CANIHELPYOU? AND LORETTACanIHelpYou?

  CanIHelpYou?: What’s the Point?

  Jake & Bill eat old pie

  CanIHelpYou?: Healthy Bacteria

  CanIHelpYou?: They Always Call Back

  Loretta’s Ticket Is a Flea Circus

  CanIHelpYou?: Us & Them

  THE FREAK HATES YOUR IDEA OF A PARTY!

  The Shoveler: Existence

  Gottfried’s Big Decision

  CanIHelpYou?: the Shoveler

  Loretta Likes Scabs

  CanIHelpYou?: Acid Hangovers Are the Worst

  Jake & Bill score convenient weed

  CanIHelpYou?: You

  PART TWO: OUR CAST IN A BLENDERLoretta Knows Her Lines

  CanIHelpYou?: Never Get a Manicure in Wichita

  THE FREAK HEARS THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF EARTH TALKING AT THE SAME TIME!

  The Shoveler: Some Shrink

  Gottfried Thinks Marla Is the Grim Reaper

  Malcolm in the Consciousness

  Loretta, Act Two: Classic with Cheddar

  CanIHelpYou?’s CallYouLater

  THE FREAK LOVES WHOOPIE PIES!

  The Shoveler: Meet the Beach-Bum Grandson

  Jake & Bill are coming for your daughters

  Loretta Bleeds

  Marla Still Believes Blood Is Sacred

  Loretta Has Found a New Holloway

  CanIHelpYou?: Kiss Me I’m Irish

  Loretta, Act Three: Cold Open

  The Shoveler: Marla Really Has a Thing for Easter

  Marla & Gottfried’s Saturday Field Trip Overtime

  Malcolm Worries Sometimes

  THE FREAK LOVES ACCIDENTAL FRUIT!

  CanIHelpYou?’s Boxing Glove

  Jake & Bill pick up Bill’s check

  Marla & Gottfried Can’t Believe Their Luck

  Loretta’s Flea Check

  Malcolm Discovers Sixty-Five Miles per Hour

  The Shoveler: Mike Needs a Hand

  Gottfried’s New Secret

  Malcolm Experiences the Benefits of American Consumerism

  CanIHelpYou? Is Not Going to the Mall

  Jake & Bill are thunder and lightning

  WATCH THE FREAK EAT ROAST BEEF JOY!

  PART THREE: OUR CAST IN A STRAINERMalcolm’s Phone Finally Rings

  Marla & Gottfried Run Off at the Mouth

  The Shoveler: Wrong Words

  Jake & Bill no longer share an address

  Loretta’s Lamb Symphony in V-Flat

  CanIHelpYou?: a Girl More like Him

  The Shoveler: Last Room

  Malcolm’s Strainer

  CanIHelpYou?’s Strainer

  Malcolm Isn’t Going to Be a Plumber

  THE FREAK LOVES SWIMMING NAKED AND AUTHENIC JERK CHICKEN!

  Loretta, Act Three: with Pop-Pop

  The Shoveler: Last Day

  CanIHelpYou?’s Doorbell Rings

  Marla & Gottfried’s Easter Dinner, Take Two

  Jake & Bill can bring the snake out now

  The Shoveler: Easter in a Sinkhole

  THE FREAK HAS MADE IT TO THE OTHER SIDE!

  Malcolm Holds Hands

  Loretta, Act Three: Balloons for Easter

  CanIHelpYou?’s Name Is Katie

  The Shoveler: Shoveler’s Surprise

  Marla’s Pineapple Stuffing

  THE FREAK IS LURKING IN THE TREES!

  The Shoveler’s Mother Is Hyperventilating

  Gottfried’s Robins Give Good Advice

  Jake & Bill are forensically evident

  Easter Conversation on the Deck

  Easter Conversation in the Living Room

  THE FREAK LOVES PINEAPPLE STUFFING AND AWKWARD CONVERSATION!

  CanIHelpYou?’s Easter Dinner

  Loretta, Act Three: Close the Show with a Bang

  Marla Doesn’t Really Like Dessert

  THE FREAK FEELS THE WIND IN HER HAIR!

  The Shoveler: New Jersey

  Marla & Gottfried’s Goodbye

  Loretta’s Strainer

  Jake & Bill will never speak of it again

&nbs
p; Marla & Gottfried’s Beach House

  The Shoveler’s Strainer

  THE FREAK LOVES SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF PEOPLE IN THE FOREST!

  CanIHelpYou?’s Freakish Cousin

  The Shoveler: See You Later

  Malcolm Knows Where He Belongs

  THE FREAK HAS BEEN STRAINED!

  Easter Conversation in a Nissan Sentra

  Jake & Bill in a strainer

  Marla & Gottfried’s Curtain Call

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  A man who prides himself on his ancestry is like the potato plant, the best part of which is underground.

  —Spanish proverb

  Without the potato, the balance of European power might never have tilted north.

  —Michael Pollan

  I’m pleading with my loved ones to wake up and love more.

  —Kate Tempest

  PART ONE: INTRODUCTIONS

  CAST IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:

  Marla & Gottfried

  Two Dead Robins

  Jake & Bill: The Marks Brothers

  The Snake

  Marla & Gottfried’s Easter Dinner

  April 1, 2018

  Marla Hemmings is hiding neon-colored plastic Easter eggs in the front flower bed. Four feet behind her, Gottfried is hacking at a patch of onion grass with a trowel. He stops to watch two spring robins chirp from a limb.

  “Do you think these are too hidden?” Marla asks.

  Gottfried goes back to his onion grass. “They’ll find ’em.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “They always find ’em.”

  Gottfried looks back at the robins. He thinks of a day back when he’d just learned to drive. Seventeen at the most. Did he say that out loud? Marla looks at him as if he did. He thinks it again. Seventeen years old. Driving that finned 1960 Dodge Matador wagon his whole family used to fit into for trips to the beach or his faraway track meets. Warm day, just like this one. Easter coming. The two robins dancing in the middle of the road. He thought they were dancing. Then he thought they were fighting. Then he knew what they were doing. Seventeen is old enough to know what robins do in springtime.

  “I’m going to the side now,” Marla says. She adjusts her gardening apron, picks up her basket of gleaming plastic eggs, and watches Gottfried looking at the robins. “You’ll have to get the ham on soon.”

  “Ham,” Gottfried says. “Gotcha.”

  Marla shakes her head. She wonders sometimes if her husband is losing his mind. He only ever needed to go to work and mow the lawn. She raised five children and did all the work that came with it and she isn’t losing her mind.

  The car was going too fast to stop. The robins were jumping up and then landing for another session, then rising again. By the time Gottfried got near enough to them to know he was going to hit them, he couldn’t slow down more than he had already. Thirty miles per hour to a robin is fast enough. Before he took the car home, he drove all the way across town to the automatic car wash. During the spray cycle he’d cried.

  Gottfried never believed in the resurrection. Marla’s insistence on perfect Easter egg hunts since the kids were little annoyed him. Her obsession with them now that there were grandchildren was infuriating, especially considering their grandchildren were mostly grown—teenagers. When she asks questions like that—did he think the eggs were too hidden?—he wonders if Marla is losing her mind.

  She says, “And don’t forget to peel the potatoes!”

  He throws the lumps of onion grass into the woods that surround the house.

  He goes inside and washes his hands.

  He puts the ham in the roaster.

  He empties a five-pound bag of potatoes in the sink and retrieves the peeler from the drawer. As he slices the skin off inch by inch, he thinks of the robins again and cries.

  Jake & Bill can bring the snake out now

  April 1, 2018

  Jake Marks and his older brother, Bill, walk through the high school parking lot. Bill has his snake with him—wrapped around his neck and tucked into his coat. Jake has the look of skipping school on his face even though it’s a Sunday and a holiday. Could be a school day for all he knows. He gives no fucks. Jake never gives any fucks. It was once suggested that the school should rename the in-school suspension room the Jake-Marks-Gives-Zero-Fucks Room.

  Jake’s just flowing in Bill’s wake. Six years between them, and the two act like twins, which is sad if you think about it. Either Bill is seriously immature or Jake is growing up too fast. Smoked since he was ten. Crashed his first car at twelve.

  PART 1.1: INTRODUCING THE SHOVELER AND THE FREAK

  CAST IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:

  The Shoveler

  Mr. _________son

  The Shoveler’s Mom

  Mike the Neighbor

  Mrs. Second Grade

  Penny & Doug or Dirk or Don

  The Freak, Flickering

  Half-Wit High School Bitches Kelly & Mika

  The Freak’s Mom and Dad

  The Shoveler’s Shovel

  Bill with the Neck Tattoo

  The Talking Dirt

  The Shoveler: the Snowstorm & Mr. _______son

  84 Days before Marla & Gottfried’s Easter Dinner

  5:33 A.M.

  My phone rings and it makes no sense that my phone is ringing because I’m in the ocean. It’s dark—storm coming in, threatening sky, and I’m trying to make it to shore ahead of the storm. It’s not a scary place, even though the waves are twenty feet high and getting higher. But I am at one with the ocean. Every time a wave rises behind me, I turn to look and then dip my head calmly under water until the wave passes. Then I walk toward shore until the next wave comes and I do the same.

  There are people on shore, but I don’t know who they are. They seem worried about me, but I’m fine.

  * * *

  I picked up the phone. There was a man on the other end and it wasn’t my father.

  It’s never my father.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is ______________ there?” I don’t remember the name—I didn’t even hear it when he said it. It was Sunday morning at 5:33 a.m.—I was still chest deep, walking to shore. He’d heard my answer—scratchy, tired and dreaming. He knew he had the wrong number.

  “I think you have the wrong number.”

  “This is Mr. ________son.”

  “Wrong number,” I said again.

  “Sorry to bother you,” he said. He sounded like he was heading to church. His voice was the choir. Soft, understanding, sorry. He hung up.

  Before I fell back to sleep, I knew what his name was. I repeated it to myself a hundred times so I’d remember. But I didn’t remember it when I woke up. I ran through all the names. Stephenson, Richardson, Davidson, Hutchinson, Robinson, Johnson, Morrison, Nicholson, Jefferson. None of them were his name.

  But he was somebody’s son.

  * * *

  I check to make sure the call wasn’t in my head. But it’s there on my recent calls list. 5:33. A call from 407-555-1790. Maybe it was the coast guard calling to make sure I got out of the ocean okay. Maybe it was just a guy trying to wake up his church buddy. Maybe they were going fishing after the sermon. Maybe they were going to rob a convenience store. Maybe they were going to visit a friend in the hospital. Maybe they were going to drive to New York City to see a show.

  I don’t know how to stop the variables.

  * * *

  I know Mr. ________son wasn’t calling for my mother. No one calls for my mother. It’s not that she’s unlikeable; she’s just hard to locate. Today, Sunday, she’s trying to organize the kitchen. We moved in three days ago and she can’t
find her big potato pot. This is a problem.

  “Are you sure you didn’t use it for something?” she asks me.

  “I’m sure.”

  “I don’t understand where it could’ve gone,” she says.

  “Still three boxes in the shed out back that we never opened.”

  She sighs and frowns. “Those are all clothes. Not pots. I put all the kitchen stuff in kitchen boxes. I know how to pack.”

  We’ve moved seventeen times as far as I can remember and I’m sixteen. She knows how to pack.

  “It’s not like I have a lot of stuff,” she says.

  “I’ll go check the boxes anyway. Maybe things got mixed up. Can’t hurt.”

  She smiles and the teakettle on the stove whistles and she turns off the blue gas flame and pours the steaming water into a bowl of instant oatmeal and makes a cup of tea with the rest. The way she stirs the oatmeal. The way she wrings out the teabag with the string—it’s confident. My mother is confident about oatmeal and tea and she knows how to pack.

  She has trouble with money. Paying rent. Communicating effectively with bosses, landlords, and the electric company. She has trouble telling the truth.

  She won’t tell me who my father is, but I know she knows.

  * * *

  I go to the shed—there’s light snow falling—and I find the boxes already opened. It’s a shared shed, for all the tenants of the building. I don’t know if she opened the boxes or if someone else did. They weren’t open yesterday when I came out here to sneak a cigarette.

  Now the boxes’ flaps lie open, and the items inside seem vulnerable and frightened. My summer clothes that probably won’t fit me by summer. My swimming trunks. My flip-flops. All shivering.

  I reach my hand down the sides, inspecting every layer. I find the potato pot in the second box and pull it out and put it on the floor of the shed. Then I find a shopping bag full of kitchen utensils. I put it inside the pot. Then I fold the boxes back the way they should be—flap over, flap under—and stack them in the back corner as far away from the lawn mower as I can so our stuff won’t smell like cut grass and gasoline.