The captain with an eye fixed for minute info

I recently had the enviable task of reading nearly every story Richard Matheson ever wrote and selecting 33 tales to be included in Penguin Classics’ The Best of Richard Matheson. This turned out to be like stepping into a time machine, transported back to the age when I started reading him. I was fourteen. The year was 1986. My introduction to his fiction, his short novel I Am Legend, was one of the first books that made me run up to my friends and tackle them so they’d all check it out, too.

Suppose you haven’t read it (what the hell is wrong with you?). In that case, it is a work of science fiction, a vampire story, a progenitor of the “biological plague” apocalyptic novel, and an excellent thriller. All that is about 160 pages: I had to find out more. I dove into The Shrinking Man (the film added “Incredible”), Hell House, and wow. I wish I had a more sophisticated way to describe my reaction to the seismic effect of Richard Matheson on my young mind, but “wow” gets at the raw, awestruck nature of things. And then I came to find out the man had written short stories. I tracked them down with gusto, with glee. And with time, I began to relate to the man’s writing in a way that seemed damn near mystical.

I want to explain exactly what I mean by that.

There’s a lot I need to say about Matheson and the importance of his fiction, and why this collection is so vital and worthwhile, but I can’t get to that directly. I will go there eventually. But first, I have to tell you about my Matheson moment. I don’t mean that I met the man. I mean, I stepped into a story he could’ve written. I have to tell you about Cedric and his mother.

My mother made good when I turned fourteen.

At least that’s how she saw it when she moved us out of an apartment in one part of Queens and took us to a house she’d bought in another. The woman emigrated from Uganda in her twenties, and now, in her forties, she’d worked like a machine to stop renting and start owning. From a two-bedroom to a two-story home, damn right, my mother felt proud. , my sister, grandmother, and I were grateful for the tagalongs.

We moved in over the summer, and when September rolled around, I started going to school. The local public school was Springfield Gardens High, and just before I arrived, the place had been outfitted with the latest technology: metal detectors. And with good reason. This was 1986, the Crack Era, and as old news reports will tell you, some people had the propensity to shoot guns wildly in places where teens gathered. My mother took one look at the school where she was meant to send her child, and she made changes posthaste. This woman was not about to have her kid ushered through those contraptions every morning before heading to homeroom. More to the point, she didn’t want to get some phone call about how I’d been caught by Stray Bullet Syndrome while standing outside. She found a private school out on Long Island, and before I could say, “Where the hell is Nassau County,” she’d gotten me enrolled on a scholarship. My mom was no joke.

My mom also wasn’t a car owner.

She got to work and back by taking a bus to the Long Island Rail Road and the train into Manhattan. Suffice it to say, there weren’t any such choices at Woodmere Academy. People either got dropped off by their parents (Mercedes, BMW, Audi) or took a school bus. Mom enrolled me in the pickup service, and every morning, around 7:45, I’d go out and stand on the corner of 229th Street and 145th Avenue, and there I’d wait for one of those long yellow buses to pick me up.

I waited in front of a single-family home with yellow aluminum siding. One morning, maybe around November or December, when the chill weather set in heavy, the front window of that house slipped up, and a kid my age stuck his head out the window and called to me.

I turned, baffled. He had an enormous round head and a close haircut. This gave him a kind of Charlie Brown look. A brown Charlie Brown. He wore a white tank top. He was, by no definition, a skinny kid.

“Cheese Bus,” he said again, and I realized he’d given me a nickname. Before I could speak, he reached one meaty hand out of the window and waved me away.
“Go stand down the block,” he said. “Your bus is fucking up my vibe.””You don’t own the sidewalk,” I said. Citing fundamental property law was the best I could do.
“You sound like a herb,” he said. “Cheese, are you a herb?”Well, how come you’re not getting ready for school?” I said. What kind of kid treats cutting school like an insult? This one. And with that, I cemented my herb status.
“I would try to help you,” he said. “But I can’t even guess where I’d start.”I walked up to the chain-link fencing at the edge of his parent’s property and leaned my elbows on it so that I was posed just like him.

Seriously though,” I said. “You’re skipping?
He thought about this a little bit. He sighed and said, “I’ve got company coming over.” Like, you’re having a party?” Party for two,” he said, then he pointed to his left discreetly with one finger.
When I looked up, I saw two things: my bus — the cheese bus — chugging toward me and a girl, fourteen, moving down the block with much more grace. This would be Lianne, Cedric’s sweetheart since seventh grade. They kissed sweetly when she reached him. He led her inside without even saying goodbye.
After that, Cedric and I talked each morning. He’d lean out the window and gab with me before the bus arrived. I made pleasant, but not because I found him so charming. I’ll admit I had ulterior motives. New in the neighborhood and being bused to a school miles away. How was I going to meet anyone? I wanted to have a girlfriend, too. Couldn’t Lianne call in a friend for me?

It turned out to be surprisingly easy to cut school.

Just don’t be on the corner when the bus shows up. After two minutes, the driver drove on. Meanwhile, I’d been tucked inside Cedric’s house, peeking through the blinds like some secret agent at risk of blowing his cover. The bus left, then Cedric tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Stop hiding.”

It was easy to do when two young women knocked at the front door. Cedric went to let them in, and I stood in the living room feeling sure I’d ascended to some higher plane of existence. Or was about to. He opened the door, kissed Lianne, and stepped aside so she and her friend Tasha could slip in. The front door fed right into the living room where I stood. The living room fed right into the kitchen. There were two bedrooms elsewhere — Cedric’s and his mom’s. When I’d asked him if I could use hers — if things went well with Tasha — he patted me on the arm and said, “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

Anyway, I was standing there, and Tasha and Lianne were coming through the doorway, and then I heard a sound in the kitchen. Knocking. It was not all that loud, but I was getting closer to the kitchen. By that, I mean that Tasha and Lianne were taking off their coats, and I ran away. Later, I told Cedric I went to “get them water,” but there’s no other way to say it: I fled.

As soon as I entered the kitchen, the knocking stopped.

I figured it might be their boiler kicking in. It was winter, after all. I knew I’d run away, so I came up with the water idea and scrounged for cups. This led me to chase through the cupboards as Cedric called for me in the other room. And then I reached their pantry door. This style of one-family home had a separate little pantry, about the size of a small walk-in closet. I found the door there and, still hunting for glasses, I tried the handle and found it locked. Then Cedric walked into the kitchen.

“Cheese,” he said. “You making me look bad.”When he said it, he didn’t sound playful. He’d convinced his girlfriend to bring someone, and his boy had entered the kitchen. But I also wondered if that was the reason he seemed unhappy with me. He peeked at the pantry door and then back to me.

“Cups is over here,” he said, taking four down from a cupboard by the sink. Then he rushed me out of the kitchen.

He put on a movie. I don’t remember what it was. He closed the blinds, so the living room went dim. Lianne leaned into him. Tasha and I hardly spoke. She was as nervous as me.
At some point, Cedric went to the bathroom and left us alone in the living room. Lianne patted the cushion beside her, and Tasha hopped over the pair, whispering, and I sat there alone. Hadn’t even sipped my water once. And then I heard that knocking coming from the kitchen again. I didn’t hesitate. Maybe I felt stupid sitting alone. I walked in there and went quiet.

ThLownd insistent, knocking me from the other side of that pantry door. I checked for Cedric, but he wasn’t around. I tried the door but found it locked. Meanwhile, the knocking kept on, regular if weak. It damn sure wasn’t the boiler.