Waking Lazarus by T. L. Hines Page A

Nathan dissolved, displaced by the face of Kristina. Overnight she had become the five-hundred-pound gorilla battering through his waking thoughts. And, although he rarely remembered his dreams, he was pretty sure she’d rampaged through his subconscious mind the night before, as well.
    He wheeled the mop and bucket down the hallway. One of the sticky wheels moved grudgingly, sounding something like a rusty hinge. Frank, his supervisor, had asked him to fix it numerous times, had even taken a can of oil to the wheel himself once. But still the squeak persisted. Every time Frank heard the wheel, he told Jude it was a sound that ‘‘made the monkeys moan.’’ Jude wasn’t quite sure what that meant—wasn’t quite sure what a lot of Frank’s colorful little quips meant—but the general gist was clear enough: it aggravated Frank. The sound didn’t bother Jude at all, but he really wished it would stop squeaking just to keep Frank happy. If Frank was happy, Jude was happy.
    Jude stopped the bucket, then went back up the hallway to retrieve the Wet Floor sign. Just as he grabbed it, the bell rang. Recess time. Kids seemed to materialize out of nowhere, making a quick sprint for the doors and the playground beyond.
    Jude stood mute, holding his Wet Floor sign as the kids milled about. He thought of Kristina, sitting in the chair, looking at him the whole time. Yes, she really had stared at him the whole time, hadn’t she? Whenever he had chanced a peek in her direction, she was looking right at him, and her eyes weren’t afraid.
    The hall emptied as quickly as it had filled. Jude stood, alone again, with his sign.
    He placed the sign back in the same place, then returned to the mop and bucket. He wheeled the squeaky-wheeled contraption to the section of floor he’d just finished and began mopping to cover the fresh footprints.
    Ron Gress was a head-scratcher for Frank, one of those things (and there were a few) he couldn’t quite figure out. Like those blasted word puzzles in the newspaper, for instance. He could fill in the right answers here and there, but never all of them. Never. Each time in frustration he told himself he’d never do another. Yet he always did, because a different part of him inside demanded it.
    So maybe that’s what Ron was, too: one of those word puzzles with a five-dollar word for the answer. The guy wasn’t your average village idiot, Frank could tell that. Ron was pretty smart, a lot smarter than himself, though that wasn’t saying a whole lot. The bottom line was, Ron shouldn’t be here, because . . . well, he just shouldn’t. Ron should be doing something else, something that qualified as True Work.
    Frank, himself, had some True Work. Something he was born to do. He’d always hidden the results of his True Work in the basement. But maybe he could, maybe he should , show Ron. Inspire him a bit. It would be a good deed, and the truth was, he wanted to show someone else his True Work. Lately he’d been having trouble keeping it locked up inside his home, locked up inside his brain. The time was coming when he’d have to let the world see what he’d been doing down there. After all, it needed to be seen to be appreciated. Ron, he’d probably be a good place to start. And it would show him there was more to life than just janitorin’.
    Of course, if Ron wanted to be a janitor, well, that wasn’t Frank’s biscuit to butter. It wasn’t as if he himself had set out to be in this position; so many people end up in places they never dreamed they would. And Frank had to say that being a janitor wasn’t all bad. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, as his dad always used to say. Janitorin’ gave him time to clear his mind, because these days, with everything on the TV, with the newfangled cell phones and gadgets and computers, even with those godforsaken newspaper puzzles, well, there was too much to fit in your mind, wasn’t there? Jani-torin’ gave him a chance to