Monstrous Affections by Gavin J. Grant

Author:Gavin J. Grant [Link; Kelly; Grant, Gavin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7085-6
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2014-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

One night, after everyone in North Bangor, Michigan, had gone to sleep, and only one woman was left to sing the night-song shift, Blank Itzikoff snuck out of his bedroom window and walked through the black field toward the ruins of South Bangor.

On his way through the tall corn, he spotted Nit Stevens mounted on a pedal-driven noisemaker. That Nit had the energy to pedal the thing was surprising. He was an incalculably old man, older than Dumb Maxwell and all the other learned men. Blank could hear him breathing heavy above the wooden clop of the noisemaker. Blank tried to sneak behind him and had barely crept a dozen feet before he heard Nit’s voice call his name.

“Itzikoff! What are you doing sneaking around?” Nit hollered.

Nit Stevens had picked up the Mad Hatter’s tremor; Blank could hear it in his voice, and though it was a warm late-summer night, Nit shook like it was winter. He smiled, and his gums glittered like pink rocks in his mouth.

Blank shouldered his way out of the corn and made himself visible. “Your head on top of that corn looked like a Ping-Pong ball floating in a tub,” Nit yelled, breathlessly. Nit never stopped pedaling the noisemaker. He had to shout to be heard.

“I’m going to scavenge some rubber gloves,” Blank said.

“What do you need those for?”

Blank couldn’t think of a lie. “I want to take up learning, like you and Dumb Maxwell.”

Nit Stevens kept on him with a wet, wild look. Then he burst out laughing. “You find any rubber gloves out in the ruins, you bring some back to me, you hear? You give me a little taste of them rubber gloves,” he said.

Blank gave Nit a distrusting look. He thought he would get whipped for sneaking right out there in the field. “I’m free to go?”

“You ain’t going to find nothing in the ruins, boy, but you’re young and full of mosquito piss. You’d find some way anyway. You got your whistle?”

Blank showed him his whistle.

“Get back before sunup. Don’t tell no one I sent you. And watch the ground.”

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