Mr. Was by Pete Hautman Read Free Book Online Page A

I whacked my shin on a log or something and tumbled exhausted into a patch of ferns; I had no idea where I was. I could only hear the air rasping in and out of my lungs. I expected the dog to pounce on me at any second.
    Slowly, I got my wind back. The sound of my breathing was replaced by the buzzing of insects. I felt a mosquito on my neck, slapped it, slapped another one that was trying to get into my left ear. I got back to my feet and began to trudge back through the woods, my knee throbbing. I don’t know howlong I walked, but eventually a road appeared before me. I was about to step out of the trees when I heard an engine. Thinking it might be old man Henderson and his dog, I lay low. Yellow headlights appeared, and a noisy, beat-up antique pickup truck chugged past. I waited until it had disappeared, then went running down the dirt road, hoping to find Scud so I could punch his face in. If I found Andie first, I might even punch her.
    The moon had dropped low in the sky, and it was harder to see.
    I found Boggs’s End before I found Scud or Andie. I had come out of the woods onto the driveway and mistaken it for the road.
    I have to explain something here. During the hour or so I’d spent with Scud and Andie, I hadn’t thought at all about Boggs’s End, or the door, or the fact that in the real world—if that’s what it was—snow lay three feet deep over the land. I’d forgotten all of that.
    Actually, it wasn’t so much that I’d
forgotten,
it was that I had somehow misplaced it in my mind. Seeing Boggs’s End standing dark and dim in the fading moonlight brought it all back in a rush.
    I wanted to go back.
    But would the door work in both directions? Would passing back through that doorway return me to the Memory I remembered?

Some of the Worst Days of My Life
    T he door worked both ways. The next morning I woke up to a silent house. I lay staring up at the yellow ceiling, at a strand of cobweb hanging above me.
    I asked myself, Is it real?
    I remembered climbing the dusty staircase, and the way the fertile scent of summer air gave way to the dry sterility of Boggs’s End in winter. I remembered climbing into bed, my mind buzzing with recent memories. I did not remember falling asleep.
    My shin hurt.
    I pushed aside the covers and found myself still dressed in my jeans and my Chicago Bears T-shirt. An apple, red streaked with gold, perched on the nightstand. I picked it up, felt its roundness, took a bite. Sweet, tart juices flooded my mouth.
    It had been real, all right.
    Mom was sitting in the kitchen staring down at her empty coffee cup. I poured myself some grapefruit juice and sat down across from her.
    â€œAre we having breakfast?” I asked.
    She moved her shoulders up and down about atenth of an inch. “Make yourself some toast, Jack.” A big bruise on her left cheek, another one on her chin.
    â€œWhere’s Dad?”
    â€œHe went back home last night.”
    â€œYou guys had a big fight, huh?”
    â€œI could make you some eggs, I suppose.”
    â€œThat’s okay. He must’ve really beat the crap out of you.”
    â€œDon’t talk like that.” Her eyes were wet. “He didn’t mean to do it. I made him angry. He feels bad.”
    â€œAre we going back home?”
    She picked up her coffee cup, swirled the dregs, set it back down.
    â€œWhat would we do here in Memory, Jack? How would we live?”
    I didn’t have an answer for that. She peered closely at my scratched-up face.
    â€œWhat happened to you?”
    â€œNothing,” I said.
    Before we left, while Mom was loading up the car, I slogged through the snow to the south side of Boggs’s End to look for the door. The vines I remembered were gone, though I could see brown and leafless fragments clinging to the clapboard in places. Instead of vines, there was a snow-covered thicket of some sort. I couldn’t see the door. I pushed