The Lifters Read online

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Dave Eggers

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by Eric Fan and Terry Fan

  Interior illustrations copyright © 2018 by Aaron Renier

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! rhcbooks.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-5247-6416-6 (trade) — ISBN 978-1-5247-6417-3 (lib. bdg.) — ISBN 978-1-5247-6418-0 (ebook)

  Ebook ISBN 9781524764180

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Chapter Seventy-nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-one

  Chapter Eighty-two

  Chapter Eighty-three

  Chapter Eighty-four

  Chapter Eighty-five

  Chapter Eighty-six

  Chapter Eighty-seven

  Chapter Eighty-eight

  Chapter Eighty-nine

  Chapter Ninety

  Chapter Ninety-one

  Chapter Ninety-two

  Chapter Ninety-three

  Chapter Ninety-four

  Chapter Ninety-five

  Chapter Ninety-six

  Chapter Ninety-seven

  Chapter Ninety-eight

  Chapter Ninety-nine

  Chapter One Hundred

  Chapter One Hundred and One

  Chapter One Hundred and Two

  Chapter One Hundred and Three

  Chapter One Hundred and Four

  Chapter One Hundred and Five

  Chapter One Hundred and Six

  Chapter One Hundred and Seven

  Chapter One Hundred and Eight

  Chapter One Hundred and Nine

  Chapter One Hundred and Ten

  Chapter One Hundred and Eleven

  Chapter One Hundred and Twelve

  Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  For B + A

  Gran did not want to move to Carousel.

  But his parents had little choice.

  His father, a mechanic, had not had steady work in many years, for reasons unknown to Gran.

  His mother had had an accident when Gran was young, and was now in a wheelchair. His parents never explained quite what happened, and Gran didn’t feel right asking. After a while, when people asked Gran about his mother’s condition, he just said, “She was born that way.” It was the easiest way out of the conversation.

  But he remembered when she walked. He remembered that she had once worked as an artist in museums, making the animals in dioramas look realistic. He had a foggy memory of standing, as a toddler, in an African savannah with her as she touched up the whiskers of a cheetah. That was before the wheelchair.

  Then Gran’s sister Maisie was born, and his mother hadn’t returned to work. Gran’s father had built a studio for her, enclosing their deck and filling it with easels and paint and worktables, everything the right height. But Gran couldn’t remember her ever using it.

  “My art is them now,” Gran heard her say to his father one day. At the time, Gran didn’t know what that meant.

  Something of her talents had rubbed off on Gran. When he was four, his mother began giving him a certain kind of clay, available in hundreds of colors, that hardened when baked in the oven. With this clay, and with his mother’s gentle guidance, he formed penguins and dolphins and narwhals—sea creatures who shared the Atlantic with him.

  There was a distinct satisfaction in taking a block of blue clay and warming it, rolling it into a ball, then pinching it here to make a fin, squeezing there to make a tail—and suddenly, from a blue ball there was something like a whale. Gran made animals from clay when he was happy, when he was sad, and especially when his parents fought. He was never sure what would happen when his parents argued, how loud it would get or how long it would go on, but he always knew that in twenty minutes, as their voices faded from his mind, he could make a ball of colored clay look like an orca, a manatee, a hammerhead shark.

  As he worked, Maisie usually watched.

  “Doesn’t look like anything,” she would say as he first rolled the clay.

  He would pinch and pull, and she would say, “Looks like a snake. Snakes are boring.”

  Then he would twist and poke, and something different, and specific, wou
ld emerge, and always Maisie acted like it was a miracle.

  “How’d you do that?” she would ask, her voice awed. Gran liked nothing better in the world than to hear his sister’s voice awed. It gave him immeasurable strength for reasons he could not know.

  But over the years, money had grown tighter, and there was nothing left over for clay.

  Now work had been offered to Gran’s father in Carousel, a town where Gran’s great-great-grandparents had once lived.

  “Much less expensive there,” Gran’s father had said.

  “Less stressful. Less traffic,” Gran’s mother had said.

  “What about the ocean?” Maisie had said. She was five years old now, and had been amassing a tremendous sand dollar collection.

  “There’s no ocean there,” Gran’s mother had said to Maisie and Gran. “But there are hills, and a river winds through the town, and there are trees, and raccoons, and foxes, and more deer than you’ve ever seen or could count.”

  So one day Gran, his parents, and his sister Maisie left their coastal Atlantic town to drive to Carousel, a hilly hamlet a thousand miles from any sea.

  On moving day, Gran’s parents did what they did for any long drive: they woke Gran and Maisie up in the middle of the night, carried them to the car, buckled them in, stuffed pillows under the seat belts, and covered them with blankets.

  “I am a burrito!” Maisie said.

  “You are not a burrito,” her father said. “Go back to sleep.”

  When Gran and Maisie next woke up, they were at a gas station. “Halfway there,” their mother said. It was warm in the car, so they fell asleep again. The next time they woke, they were parked in front of a narrow two-story house located midway up a slope crowded with other wooden homes.

  “This is Carousel,” their mother said.

  “This is our new house,” their father said. “Not that it’s new. My great-grandfather built it.”

  “When?” Gran asked.

  His father opened the car’s passenger side door and sat, putting on his boots. (He liked to drive barefoot.) He paused for a long moment, his right boot in his left hand. “Shoot. Now I can’t remember. I know it’s on a plaque inside. Or used to be. I want to say it was 1924. Or 1942. I’m almost sure it was an even number.”

  “Why’s the house crooked?” Maisie said.

  “Maisie, shush,” her mother said.

  They got out of the car and stood for a moment on the sidewalk, which zigzagged up and down the hill, in front of the other homes that dotted the street. Gran agreed with Maisie: the house looked crooked. The first floor seemed to be leaning to the right, and the second floor leaned to the left, and all of it seemed to be leaning ever so slightly downhill. But Gran knew saying any of this might hurt his father’s feelings, so he stayed quiet.

  Gran’s father was standing with his hands on his hips, his head tilted and eyes squinting at the house, as if trying to figure it out.

  “Something’s off,” his father said.

  “It’s fine, Ben,” his mother said. “It’s just fine.”

  This new house and this new town were in every way different from where Gran’s family had come. Their previous home was an apartment near the sea, and there, the landscape of their town had been flat, and most of it paved. The only time Gran had seen any kind of distance was when he went to the beach, where he could see the wide sweep of the coast.

  But Carousel was hilly and wild. The roads were curvy and full of potholes. There were barns next to gravel mountains next to auto parts stores next to wide-open pastures.

  In their apartment by the sea, the doors had never made a sound, but the front door of this house in Carousel creaked like an old man waking from a thousand-year slumber.

  “I’ll fix that,” Gran’s father said.

  When Gran’s father showed Gran the bedroom he’d be sharing with Maisie, he couldn’t believe what he saw out of his window. He’d never seen views like this. He could see most of the town below, and the river that separated the town from a steep expanse of wooded hills beyond. He could see the railroad that ran along the silver zigzag river, and could see the steeples of the two churches, and could see people coming and going into the grocery twenty blocks away. Next to the grocery store was some kind of flea market, and just up from that was a red brick building that Gran assumed was City Hall.

  “Come up here!” his father yelled.

  Gran looked into the hallway, where he saw a ladder leading up.

  “We have an attic, Gran!” his father said from above. Now Maisie appeared on the second-floor landing.

  Gran and Maisie had never seen an attic before. Apartments don’t usually have attics.

  Gran climbed the ladder and Maisie followed, but when she got to the top of the ladder, she didn’t want to go farther. She scurried quickly back down.

  “Too dark,” she said.

  It was indeed dark, and smelled like warm wood. Gran made his way to his father, who knelt over an old cardboard box.

  “My great-grandfather’s stuff, I’m guessing,” he said.

  Gran peered in. It was a mess of old tools and scraps of metal. There were dark metal fragments of a dozen shapes and tools that neither Gran nor his father had ever seen before. There was a giant C, about the size of Gran’s hand, that he picked up. It was etched with beautiful lines that entwined like the paths of birds.

  “That’s a nice one. Brass. I think he was a blacksmith,” Gran’s father said. “But I had no idea he’d kept all this stuff.”

  “What are you going to do with it all?” Gran asked.

  “No idea,” Gran’s father said.

  Gran arrived well after the school year had begun, which is not an easy time to arrive in any new place. But he was optimistic. For one thing, he looked forward to trying out his new name.

  Gran had never been Gran before. He had been born with the name Granite. His father had insisted on giving him a sturdy first name to compensate for his last name, which was Flowerpetal.

  “We needed to balance it out a bit,” his father had explained. “We couldn’t name you Blossom, right?”

  But the name Granite came with its own problems. Gran had to explain it to everyone he met. He usually had to spell it. If his name had been Michael or Derrick, there would be no need to pause, explain, to spell or discuss the nature of names, of unusual names, or how you got them. He would not have to talk about earth science, the properties of granite as opposed to marble or sandstone. He just wanted a name that was a name—easily understood, easily spelled.

  So when his family moved to Carousel, Granite decided to shorten his name to Gran. Gran almost sounded like Grand, which was a good thing, and no one would ask how to spell Gran. If someone didn’t know how to spell Gran, they wouldn’t admit it. Gran was convinced that this easy change would solve all his name-related problems.

  But he was only partially correct.

  Carousel Middle School was only half a mile away, and Gran could get there by walking up the hill, and then over, and then up a ways, and then over, then up a ways one last time.

  “And Maisie’s school is on the way,” Gran’s mother said the first day, which wasn’t the first day at all. The rest of Maisie’s classmates had been in school for three weeks. Gran’s school had been in session for four.

  Gran and Maisie set out on a warm morning in mid-September and were happy to be able to walk to school. All their lives they’d been driven to school, picked up from school and driven to stores and playdates, but this, simply leaving the house and walking on their own—it made this new situation easier to accept.

  “Should we run?” Maisie asked when they left the house.

  They ran up the hill, but it was so steep they were quickly tired. They stopped in front of an extremely narrow house on the corner. It was painted burgundy, and had a turret rising from its roof like a torch.

  “Who’s that man?” Maisie asked.

  There was a sign on the narrow home’s scrubby lawn, a
nd on the sign, a word bubble extended from the mouth of a bald man with a bushy mustache. “NO ON PROPOSITIONS P&S! YES ON PROPOSITIONS M&H!” he appeared to be yelling. The sign indicated that the man’s name was Dr. Walter Woolford.

  “He looks like a gopher,” Maisie said.

  Gran told her it wasn’t polite to compare adults to rodents, but secretly he knew that Maisie was right. This man named Dr. Walter Woolford did look a lot like a gopher, with the same oversized cheeks and protruding front teeth.

  Gran read the words on the sign to Maisie, but he didn’t know how to explain who Dr. Walter Woolford was, or anything about Propositions P&S or M&H.

  “Look,” Maisie said.

  On the other side of the same lawn, there was a different sign. This one featured a kindly-looking woman who reminded Gran of pictures of his own grandmother, his mother’s mother. Both his grandmother and this woman had long white hair tied in a ponytail and dark, smiling eyes. This woman’s name was Phyllis Feeley, and her advice was YES ON PROPOSITIONS P&S! NO ON PROPOSITIONS M&H!

  Gran wondered what Propositions P&S were, what Propositions M&H were, and how it could be that the people on the signs could be disagreeing with each other so vehemently on the same lawn. While he was wondering all this, a screeching voice came from the burgundy home. “Loiterer!” the voice yelled. “Off the grass!”

  It was the voice of a middle-aged woman, and Gran located its source: a silhouette standing in the window of the narrow house.

  “Is she yelling at us?” Maisie asked.

  Gran was sure she couldn’t be. He was twelve years old and had never been yelled at by a stranger.

  “Leave them alone, Theresa,” said another voice, this one soothing, like warm water bubbling from a kettle. Gran saw a different woman’s silhouette in the window of the other side of the same house. “They’re only kids!”

  “Quiet, Therése!” the first woman screeched.

  Now Gran had the feeling they were talking about him and Maisie. He took Maisie’s hand and they slowly backed away from the lawn until they were safely on the sidewalk.