The Last Martin Read online

  THE LAST MARTIN

  Jonathan Friesen

  To Wendy

  Yes, you were right.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Prologue

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  POSTSCRIPT

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  Prologue

  “A great new story needs a great first line.”

  Martin Boyle licked the tip of his pen. “Oh, dumb!” He reached for the antibacterial spray resting on his desk, lifted it mouthward, and squeezed the trigger. His face contorted. The stuff tasted terrible. The taste alone could kill — That was it!

  Martin grabbed his notepad.

  “Why not kill him now? He’s in your grasp!” The jackal circled the motionless body. “Or let me do it for you.”

  The Black Knight kicked the beast and spat. “Everything in me wants to run him through with his own sword.” He turned toward the giant stone and stroked its smooth face. From the center of the rock, a light dimmed.

  “What’s the matter, my lady? Do you not look forward to our union?”

  The Black Knight brought the hilt of his sword down onto the rock. The blade flew from the knight’s hands and he swung around. “I need him. I need this sickening, unconscious knight to free my bride! I need him to wake up!” He kicked the body, and a faint groan rose from the floor.

  The jackal slumped nearer. “So you do believe in prophesies.”

  The Black Knight paused. “No.” He knelt down and grabbed the White Knight’s chin. “I’ve known this boy from birth, and I assure you, he is not pure in heart.” He released the prisoner’s mud-caked face, stood, and jumped on top of the stone.

  “But an heir to the king? Yes, he is that. The only one who bears the name. And if the old words are true, if he alone can free Alia, then his death can wait a little longer —”

  “Martin! Come down from that bedroom! Your spaghetti is cold.”

  “Okay, Mom,” Martin whispered. He stared at the page. “White Knight, you’re in a heap of trouble.”

  CHAPTER 1

  I WAS BORN DEAD.

  Lani adds stupid and scrawny, but my little sister wasn’t there. Mom was the only witness and she owns the tale. She loves to tell the story — usually on spaghetti night — of an evil umbilical cord that coiled like a python around my neck. I came out purply-gray. Silent. Still.

  Dead.

  Dr. Underland’s quick hands untangled me. She whacked and squeezed and inflated my limp lungs. But my wrinkled skin turned cold, and soon the doctor conceded to Death. “I’m so sorry.” She shook her head, held me up for the light to glimmer off wet, raisined skin. “It’s been too many minutes.”

  Mom pursed her lips and nodded. “Of course it has.” For months, Elaina Boyle prepared herself for this moment — the one when disaster would strike. She knew I would die.

  “I fear this was meant to be.”

  Mom always pauses here for dramatic effect. She reaches over the table and tousles my curly hair, hard. My glasses break free from their perch on my nose and fall lens-down into the spaghetti sauce.

  Mom doesn’t notice. She’s in her glory throughout this tragic epic. “Dead. Limp. Lifeless.” She perks up. “Another meatball, Martin?”

  I grab a napkin and smear lumpy red off my lenses.

  “I was certain your birth would be a tragedy,” she says.

  Dad clears his throat. I sit quietly. Lani can’t.

  “It was!” She grins and sneezes.

  “Would you be quiet?” I say.

  Mom lunges over the table and snatches up our centerpiece, a soap-filled gravy dish surrounded by fake fruit. A minute later, Lani is lathered and cleansed. Mom breathes deeply and continues. “Maybe if your father had been around — “ She shoots Dad a sharp glance. His garlic toast pauses halfway between plate and mouth, then finishes the trip.

  “Had he been home, I wouldn’t have needed to find my own way to the hospital. Oh, the stress. You could have lived.”

  “But I did live!”

  “Yes, I know.” She looks at me and sighs. “Such a strange day that was. Cheese, anyone?”

  Mom’s in no hurry to retell the rest. But it’s Dad’s favorite part, so it’s my favorite too.

  The doctor placed my tiny carcass on Mom, and she cried — big, fat Mom tears. Three minutes later, she launched into her what-a-dangerous-world-this-would-have-been speech. It must have been a stirring version because I hiccupped. Again. And again. Then I coughed.

  Mom sniffled and sat up. “What’s happening?”

  Dr. Underland dropped her clipboard and rushed toward the bed. “Touch him! Rub him. Your son is trying to live.”

  Mom lifted up my arm and let it flop back down. “Can’t be happening.”

  It took a while for me to convince her, but by evening I had earned “miracle child” status, and Mom was overjoyed. As was Dad.

  He burst into the newborn nursery the next day, fresh from the airport and still wearing his army fatigues. He grabbed the first child he saw, raised him to heaven, and christened him Martin, Martin Boyle. The child already had a name — Ahmad — and this caused quite a commotion. A husky nurse yanked the double-named brown kid from Dad and pointed to the bluish boy in the corner. Dad said he’d never been so proud.

  He scooped me into strong arms, as every firstborn male born into the Boyle clan has been scooped. He spoke the words every firstborn Boyle has heard:

  “I name you Martin.”

  And for the first time in my brief life, I cried.

  “Train!”

  I drop my fork with a clink. Mom’s holler interrupts her own spaghetti story, and she scurries over to the cowbell that hangs above the kitchen sink. Lani and I cover our ears.

  Dong.

  Mom sounds the alarm. Children beware. Get off the tracks, a train rumbles near.

  She feels them coming deep in her bowels. I’m not sure where exactly that is, but her saying the b-word makes me squirm.

  Of course, there are no children on the tracks, but Mom says she sleeps better knowing she did her part.

  “What if?” She points to the three of us in turn. “What if there had been children at play on the rails? And they were deaf or dead? And the railmen fell asleep and rounded the bend?” She folds her arms and raises eyebrows in victory. “What would you say then?”

  Lani shrugs. “Deaf kids couldn’t hear your bell and dead ones don’t need to?”

  Mom puffs out air, plops down in her chair. “But my conscience is clear.”

  Clearly disturbed. Clearly paranoid. So yeah, clear.

  But Mom’s right about one thing. There are trains. Lots of them. House rattlers that rumble so near our home, the glasses tinkle in the cupboard.

  It’s what comes from living In Between, in the no-man’s-land between downtown and the suburbs. It’s an odd middle place filled with steel factories and smokestacks and train yards. It’s where the Burlington line tires of heading north, hangs a U-ey, and
heads west. And in the middle of the concrete and steel stand six old houses, built before there was concrete or steel. Huge houses that don’t belong.

  “Still,” Mom continues, “train infestations are safer than animal infestations. In that regard, you’re safe as safe can be,” Mom says. “Surrounded by activity, out of the city, near a hospital, and far from the wilderness.”

  She fires Dad another harsh look. This time he sets down his fork and folds his hands. His cool eyes catch Mom off-guard, his words slow and carefully chosen.

  “I can’t help it my brother and Jenny chose to live in the country.” He glances around the table. “Don’t worry. It’s not for another week, and we won’t stay long.” He lowers his voice, so that I think only I hear. “Hate to see you mauled by a squirrel.”

  “Can’t Martin and I stay with Uncle Landis while you two go to the cemetery?” Lani squirms. “All those dead bodies — “

  “Yeah.” I bite my lip. “We could wait for you both at the farmhouse. I never met those buried people anyway.”

  Mom pushes back from the table. “Do you hear them, Gavin? The children are terrified and for good reason. They understand that cemeteries are breeding grounds for germs and —”

  “No.” Dad stands, and his eyes flash. “We will all go — Lani, without your attitude; Martin, without your fantasy books; and please, Elaina — without your paranoia.”

  Dad whips his napkin onto the table and storms down the stairs to Underwear World.

  It’s silent until Mom clears her throat. “Don’t worry. I’ll talk to your father.”

  I can’t look at her. If Dad walked up, I couldn’t look at him either.

  So much for making him proud.

  CHAPTER 2

  I GROAN, STRETCH, AND WHACK THE SNOOZE BUTTON.

  Curtains hide the morning, but I feel it — it’s April. Today even Industrial Boulevard, the service road that leads to our chunk of In Between, will feel springy. There’ll be warm sun and warm smiles and nobody at school will understand. But the April flowers lining the sidewalk? They know. They smile all innocent, but from their roots rise a mocking mutter, “Woe to you, Martin. Your time is near.”

  I’m six days from D-Day. Dead Day.

  I collapse onto my back and bury myself beneath covers.

  My mind fills with life’s little horrors: The smile of wicked Dr. Devlin, a dentist who doesn’t believe in happy gas; the pierce of Lani’s fish hook, cast into my left nipple. Then there was our one camping trip — poison oak leaves certainly look like suitable toilet paper.

  Painful, yes. Terrifying, no.

  Our family’s yearly pilgrimage to honor the Boyle dead wins the creepiness award hands down.

  I squeeze my knees to my chin — turn into a tiny Martin ball — and feel a pit, not a tiny grape pit, but a big old avocado pit, roll around my gut. I’m thirteen, they’re not breathing, and I shouldn’t have to hang around them.

  And I’m not laying my hand on Great-Grandpa Martin’s stone. Not this year.

  “Wake up, sleepyhead!”

  Cripes. The Barn Owl. Mom’s song rises through the vent, wriggles under my blanket, and slaps me on the cheek. I exhale hard.

  Maybe it wasn’t kind of Lani to nickname Mom after a carnivore that feeds on mice, but so be it. Mom sees all, moves silently, and never sleeps.

  I roll off the bed and thump against the hardwood. Pages from my fantasy story flutter down like flowers at a funeral. I gather up the story and stuff it in the desk drawer. No time to shower. I throw on balled-up clothes and fight a comb through cowlicked brown hair. My reflection scowls back at me from the computer screen.

  “Einstein. On a bad hair day.” I stumble out my door and down the stairs.

  “Good morning, Martin. Martin, good morning. Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo —”

  My feet grind to a halt, and my chest tightens.

  Morning people should never sing-hoot at people before 8:00 a.m.

  “Come off those steps, my dear.” Plates clatter in the sink. “You’re late. You’ll need to eat breakfast on the way.”

  “Um, hmm.” I creak onto the main floor, peek into the kitchen. “Where’s Lani?”

  “Sick.” Mom glances over her shoulder, sighs, and approaches. She licks her palm and works her spit through my Einstein hair. Not only germy, but really second grade and really gross. “Your sister sneezed twice last night.”

  I swat at Mom’s hand and grab my backpack from the floor. “Wait, I need to say bye to Dad.”

  Mom pauses. “He left hours ago. His regiment has another battle reenactment at Fort Snelling. I don’t expect him home until mid-week.” She digs in the closet for my jacket. “When Gavin retired from the service, I thought we’d placed this schedule behind us. But I declare, the demands of a Living History Museum are equally intolerable. Guns blazing, crude talking, chew spitting, and sleeping with bugs. It is utterly amazing that man is still alive.”

  Inside, I feel it. A little flutter. It frightens and excites me at the same time.

  “Do you think someday he’d take me with him? It’d be like school. It’s history, right? I mean, those battles really happened.”

  Mom’s hands shoot to her hips, my jacket clenched in her fist. “I will not have you missing the important lessons of life — the writing of haiku or perhaps new techniques of proper hygiene …” Her arms drop and her voice softens. “Your father is a good man, but he lives in the past, and — “ She places her hand on her abdomen, strains her ear toward the door. “Your bus is here. Run!”

  I scoot outside, skip down porch steps, and dash for the yellow speck in the distance.

  Only eight kids live near the Midway district of St. Paul, not enough to deserve a real school bus. We get the shrunken version — special-ed. transportation. It’s hard to feel self-confident when your bus is the size of a minivan.

  I reach the accordion door, double over, and suck air. My thighs burn and I blink and wince and stare up the steps of the bus at our driver’s smiling face. Father Gooly is the size of a minivan too. The priest is a mountain, dressed black as night, with a little snow cover on his collar beneath both chins. All around, belly-fat foothills overflow his seat.

  “Top of the mornin’ to you, Martin! Comin’ aboard, or would you be taking the wheelchair ramp in?”

  “No, thanks.” I step up and squeeze by those blubbery hills. “I’m good.”

  The bus smells like flu. That dreadful combination of sick room plus 7-Up plus soda crackers. I hold my breath and shuffle down the aisle.

  So much for April fresh.

  I run out of air, take several shallow breaths, and scan for Charley. My gaze falls on Brooke, my nearest neighbor. She rolls her eyes, sets her backpack beside her to fill the seat, and points her thumb back over her shoulder. I smile and push by her and stare down at my pasty-faced best friend.

  “What’s wrong?” I plop into place, door hinges squeal, and we jerk forward. “You look sick.” My rear inches away from Charley.

  “I’ll wait ‘til you’re finished,” he says.

  I nod and go to work. I remove the portable air bag from my pack, stick both arms through the straps, and tighten the belt at my chest. Mom bought the contraption from the Sky Mall, a bargain at $149.99. According to the ad, I’m now perfectly safe from ninety percent of possible traffic accidents.

  “I need your help in English.” Charley glances over at me, his face all droopy. “I promised her I’d write the story if she’d be my partner and do the illustrations.”

  “Her?”

  My friend—my best friend—bites his lip and frowns. “Well come on, Marty. You’re never going to talk to Julia.”

  My voice gets quiet. “I was going to talk to her today.”

  “About what? She plays lacrosse. She rides four-wheelers. She’s into crazy stuff and outdoor stuff. Camping, fishing —”

  “I fished once.” My nipple twitches, and I reach up to massage my chest. “You know I tried that.” I hold my
breath, turn away, and sigh. “What’s your story for English about?”

  Charley straightens, flops a pad and pen onto my lap. “Okay, it’s supposed to be a fairy tale based on a reallife event. So anything, you know? Some dumb prince, princess deal.”

  “Have a start?”

  He chews some more on that lip and gives a quick nod. “There.” Charley points at the paper.

  “'A Prince and a Princess,’ by Charley Baxter.” I look over at him. “How long did that take?”

  “Most of Saturday.”

  “Right.” I close my eyes, think of Julia, twiddle the pen around in my hand, and settle into my seat. “I started a new story. I’ll write one page for you to use, but that’s it.”

  “I tire of waiting. I’ll do this myself.” The Black Knight lifted the sword, its tip glinting in the torchlight. His minions —

  Charley grabs my arm. “What’s a minion? That like an onion?”

  I yank free. “His bad guys.”

  His minions lurched forward. Sweat traced down beneath their armor, fell in black pools on the stony ground of the prison where the White Knight and the princess were held captive.

  “Cursed White Knight, behold the end of your dream. This dungeon is your destiny. And now Alia is mine. Yah!” The sword fell upon the clear stone with a clank. Sparks flew through the air. Fire rained upon the Black Knight’s helmet.

  “My sight!” He reeled, clawed at his eyes, and stuck his finger in the White Knight’s chest. “It is true! The prophecy. Only one pure of heart can free the beauty trapped within the crystal.” He gestured around the room. “Guards, loose the man!”

  Hideous creatures, black of heart and mind, crushed the shackles that bound the White Knight’s hands and feet, and he slowly rose. Silently, he approached the stone and gazed down into it. His love gazed up from within the rock. Such pure crystal. Had Alia made it so? Her smooth features radiated light from within. She looked so at peace — save for her eyes. They beckoned to him, and he could not free himself from the call. Would she ever know how he felt? Would she ever know his secret? He would live forever trapped in a dark and lonely world, forever far from her, but she would be free. He would do this much.