Stay Away

by Ike Hamill

  “Huh,” she said, regarding him. It seemed like he was telling the truth, but she was terrible at knowing when Brett was telling the truth. “Well, I need your help.”

  Neither of them said anything for several seconds.

  “Good luck with that,” Eddie said. “Help department is closed for the holidays, lady. Try again next week.”

  “Brett?”

  He looked at her, sad and helpless again. This was exactly how it had happened the last time they got together. Brett managed to look so timid and bashful, and yet so handsome. She was sliding backwards into her old feelings.

  “Brett? Please? Can you guys help me out?”

  For a fraction of a second, she saw a devious glint in his eyes. “How?”

  # # #

  When Lily came into the classroom, there were already a bunch of people in there. If she hadn’t spotted Eric’s slumped shoulders near the front, she might have thought that she was in the wrong place. Then, she realized that she recognized everyone. They were out of place in the context of Wendell’s old school. Nicky had somehow arranged for the use of the room after declaring that the school was probably far enough away.

  On the left side, near the windows, Jessie was standing with his friends. Nicky was in front with Eric. Against the blackboards on the right, Eddie and Brett leaned. In the middle of the classroom, the only one sitting down behind a desk was Officer Frank Libby.

  Lily went and sat at the desk next to him.

  “Okay,” Eric said, standing in front of the teacher’s desk. “We’re all here.”

  Nicky went to the back of the room and closed the door.

  “I know this is going to sound strange to some of you, but if you could just try to keep an open mind and allow yourself to remember, it will probably make more sense,” Eric said.

  “I’ll start with Wendell. My cousin, Jessie’s brother, followed Jessie and his friends out to the culvert under Lewiston Road about two years ago. After that, he went and made a trade with a man by the oak tree beyond the cemetery. There’s a man there who makes trades. His name is Lueck.”

  One of Jessie’s friends leaned over and said something to the others. Jessie shot Lily an evil glance. It was amazing to her that Eric had even been able to get him out there.

  Eric kept going. “That man knows what happened to Wendell. After my aunt and uncle tracked him down, they tried to get him to talk. He said that he had information about Wendell, but before they could do anything about it…”

  Officer Libby turned to Lily and shook his head. “I’m sorry for your loss, but this is nonsense.”

  He started to get up.

  “No,” Brett said. “It’s not. I remember. Lily’s mom came and asked me for help too. It was last year on the day she died. She asked me to get that Trader man to come out. I think I did.”

  Eddie laughed.

  “You were there,” Brett said to him. “Don’t you remember when Ms. Carroll came and talked to us?”

  The smile disappeared from Eddie’s face.

  “I traded with him,” one of Jessie’s friends said. “I know who you’re talking about.”

  Jessie put up his hand. “I’ve seen him, but I’ve never talked to him.”

  Officer Libby stood up and took command of the room as he straightened his shirt. “It’s a ghost story you kids all tell each other. I’ve heard it all. You tell each other that Mikey died from drinking Coke and eating Pop Rocks. You talk about the girl who had spider eggs in her hair.”

  “What about Jim?” Lily asked. “He remembers. Ask him.”

  Officer Libby leaned closer to her. “I’m sorry, honey, but Jim is just this side of mentally handicapped at this point. They said his brain died of oxygen starvation when he was under the water.”

  “Why was he under the water, Frank?” Lily asked.

  “It was an accident. His transmission malfunctioned while he was backing up on the boat ramp,” Frank Libby said.

  “And why did my mom have wounds on her head? And how come my father managed to pull her through the window but they somehow both died?”

  “That was way upriver from your house and this oak tree, Lily. What does this have to do with anything?” Frank Libby asked.

  “Mr. Libby,” Eric said from the front of the classroom. “When you were a kid, where did you get your new bike?”

  Officer Libby’s face went blank. The question transformed him back into a kid. The empty expression was that of a ten-year-old boy, looking at the world with pure confusion.

  “Bike?”

  “You traded with Lueck,” Eric said. “Bruce Hanson followed you and saw you making good on the trade. What did you trade?”

  “Trade,” Frank Libby whispered. “I traded… teeth.”

  “What?” Lily asked.

  Frank looked at her. Blinking, he seemed to come back from the past. He cleared his throat and answered her.

  “Teeth. He wanted baby teeth from me, and then my sister’s. The last one needed help coming out, everyone said so.”

  “You gave the man teeth and he gave you a bicycle?” Nicky asked from the back of the room.

  Officer Libby settled into his seat again. “I suppose I did.”

  “Didn’t it ever occur to you to wonder why?” Lily asked.

  “At the time, maybe. It wasn’t just me. Other people traded money for things. It wasn’t only teeth.”

  “So you remember,” Lily said. “It’s not a ghost story.”

  Regaining his composure and straightening in his seat, Frank Libby said, “I suppose I had trouble remembering.”

  Eric pointed at him from the front of the room. “And that’s the problem. For whatever reason, people have trouble remembering. That’s how he slips under the radar.”

  “Jim remembers,” Frank Libby said.

  “I remember,” Brett said. He looked at Eddie. After a second, Eddie nodded.

  “So what?” one of Jessie’s friends asked. “Big deal. What do we do about it?”

  “The first thing we’re going to do is get some answers,” Eric said.

  # # #

  The room broke into several small discussions. Eddie and Brett were having a whispered conversation. Jessie and his friends were arguing loudly over whether or not they were to blame for Wendell’s disappearance.

  Lily wanted to scream at all of them. It didn’t matter what any of them thought—they had to remember that this was all about Wendell. If there was even the smallest chance that he was alive somewhere, they had to do everything they could to get the information that would lead to his return.

  “Hey,” Jessie said. When the side discussions kept bubbling, he raised his voice. “Hey! Shut up.”

  Everyone turned to him.

  “Sure, we could get him. We could get him and make him talk. Don’t forget, that’s what my parents thought, too. Look what happened to them. What’s it worth? Wendell is probably already dead.”

  Coming from Jessie, the statement hit Lily right in the chest. If anyone else had said it, she would have fought and argued. It was a possibility that she wasn’t willing to entertain. But from Jessie, the words were acid that eroded the bedrock of her conviction.

  “You’re thinking of it the wrong way,” Frank Libby said.

  Hope swelled back into Lily, only to be banished again.

  “Wendell is probably dead, but what about the next kid?” Frank Libby asked.

  “Or mother,” Eric added.

  While Frank regarded Eric, Brett unfolded his arms and stuck his chest out.

  “So let’s get this done. What are we waiting for?” Brett asked. He backhanded Eddie on the arm and the two of them began to head for the door.

  “Wait,” Frank Libby said. “We start with a plan, and a plan starts with all the cards on the table.”

  “It doesn’t matter what we say here,” Nicky said. “It matters what we remember. The closer we get, the less we remember.”

  “Then we fold that into the plan. What do we
know about this guy?”

  “I know what Mrs. Bisson told me about him. She had stories from the old days,” Nicky said.

  “Then you start.”

  NICKY

  NICKY TOLD THE DETAILS of what Mrs. Bisson had said, years before. She told them about the rituals that the natives had employed and the trades they would make. When she looked at Officer Libby, or even Brett, she wanted to embellish and dispel their skepticism with extra detail. Instead, she forced herself to only tell them precisely what she remembered. It was difficult. Even the stories from Mrs. Bisson were on the other side of a thick fog.

  When she finally finished her statement, Nicky sat down. Their attention turned away from her.

  “Hold on,” Eric said. “What about the psycho pizza?”

  “The what?”

  She could picture what Eric was talking about. There used to be a guy who lived behind the library. He had always looked clean but smelled terrible. His order had always been the same—cheese pizza with olives. Nicky and Eric had started referring to it as ‘Psycho Pizza’ because only the strangest people who called into Dottie’s ever ordered cheese pizza with olives. From their voices on the phone she knew they would be weirdos and then when they showed up in person, it always turned out to be true. Nicky knew what psycho pizza was, but not why Eric was bringing it up in…

  “Oh!” Nicky said. “I traded with him.”

  She shrank when everyone turned back to her.

  “I guess I forgot to mention. After all of the stories from Mrs. Bisson, my curiosity got the best of me and I traded a pizza for a Dr Pepper. My brother drank it. I remember thinking that he shouldn’t have drunk it because we didn’t do the ritual, but I don’t think anything bad ever happened to him.”

  “Good to know,” Frank Libby said. “Who else has information from a third party?”

  He swept his eyes around the room. People shook their heads in response.

  “Anything that you’ve heard or read about the Trader,” Frank Libby said. “Warnings from parents? Stories from your grandfather?”

  Charlie Holdt’s hand went up slowly.

  Ben Trout, standing right next to Charlie, took a small step away from his friend, like the information might be contagious.

  “I heard something,” Charlie said.

  “What’s your name?” Frank Libby asked.

  “Charlie Holdt. People call me Holdty.”

  “What did you hear?”

  After a hard swallow, Charlie coughed into his hand.

  “It was my mom talking to my sister. That was the first time I heard about the Trader. My brother and sister are both way older than me and when I was a little kid, my sister got in some kind of trouble.”

  Charlie blushed and blinked.

  “It was a thunder and lightning storm, so I was at the top of the stairs and I heard them arguing. My mom wanted her to go stay with her friend for a while. My sister didn’t want to—she only wanted my mom to knit a pair of socks.”

  “Socks?” Lily asked.

  Charlie Holdt nodded.

  “My mom used to sell her socks down in Freeport to the summer people. Everyone knew about them, so I guess the Trader had heard about them too. He was going to make the trouble go away if she gave him a pair of Mom’s socks. But my mom didn’t want to give them to her. She kept saying that, ‘If you give the Devil a token, he’ll own an equal share.’ My sister begged and begged and then eventually said that if she didn’t get the socks she was going to tell Dad who it belonged to.”

  Ben Trout didn’t actually say anything, but he moved his hand up towards his mouth to cover the beginning of a smile.

  “Shut up, Fish,” Jessie said.

  “Anyway, Mom made the socks and it was lightning again the next night. I followed my sister when she walked down there. I used to get into trouble all the time back then, and I guess I thought that if I knew how she was going to get out of trouble that it might be useful to me. I almost turned around when I saw her cut across the cemetery. But my brother always said that girls could only do what boys showed them, so I followed her. If she could do it, then I could too. I saw her trade with the man. That’s how I learned about him.”

  When Charlie was done, he looked to Frank Libby.

  “And her trouble went away?”

  Charlie blushed and looked down at the floor as he nodded.

  “Interesting,” Frank Libby said. “Where’s your sister now?”

  “She moved up to the County a bunch of years ago. She doesn’t come around here anymore.”

  “Interesting,” he said again, scratching the back of his neck. “Any other information? Who here has made a trade?”

  Nicky put up her hand. Charlie and Ben Trout raised theirs and Eric put his hand up to his shoulder. On the other side of the room, Eddie said, “Yeah, I did.”

  Frank turned to him.

  “You’re next, then. What happened?”

  # # #

  “It wasn’t a big deal,” Eddie said with a shrug and a smirk. “I lifted a bag from a guy and he wanted it back. The only problem was that it was all gone by then. I offered him some dough, but he wouldn’t take it. He said that I had to replace kind for kind. I couldn’t find a connection, so I ended up down at the tree.”

  Frank Libby frowned.

  “You can’t bust me. This is all hearsay,” Eddie said. “Anyway, he was down there, just like I heard he would be. He wouldn’t take money for it. He said that all he wanted was a car key. He probably figured that I was dumb enough to give him a spare key to my own car, but I knew a kid who worked over at Aubuchon. He cut me a GM blank and I took it back to the man. That asshole traded me a full bag for a key that wouldn’t fit anything.”

  “Did you sample anything from that bag?” Frank Libby asked.

  “Nope,” Eddie said. “I passed it along.”

  “Great.”

  Eric had settled into the teacher’s chair, behind the desk. When Eddie finished, he stood and grabbed a piece of chalk. On the board, he wrote, “Teeth,” “Pizza,” and “Key.” He paused for a moment and added, “Socks.”

  “What do these have in common?” Eric asked.

  “Why does it matter?” Nicky asked. “If we want to stop him, we don’t have to trade.”

  “I think we do,” Eric said.

  “He’s right,” Lily said. “Nicky, in your story, you had the upper hand because he wanted the pizza so much. If we can find out what else he really wants, then we can lure him out and get him to tell us what he knows about Wendell. Whether or not that information is useful, we ought to find out what it is before we do anything else.”

  “What do you mean by anything else?” Frank Libby asked, narrowing his eyes.

  Jessie spoke up. “You said we were going to stop him before he could trick some other kid.”

  “Just so we’re all on the same page here, what do you all think is an appropriate way to stop him?” Frank Libby asked.

  “We break his legs,” Ben Trout said.

  Frank Libby started shaking his head.

  “What, you just want to try to put him in jail?” Brett asked. “How long do you think he’s going to get locked up for? What can we prove that he did?”

  “No, that’s not what I was thinking at all,” Frank Libby said. “Maybe we’re not all seeing this thing in the same way at all.”

  Frank Libby looked like he was going to get up and walk out. Nicky had a horrible premonition. Cops always thought that they were the only people who could actually get something done. In her experience, they didn’t trust regular people to do anything, even if it was in their best interest. Frank Libby would get up, try to handle everything on his own, and forget what he intended to do before he even got across the bridge. He was so sure of himself that he would go off half-cocked and then be under the Trader’s amnesia in no time. One thing was clear to her since the meeting had started—they needed Frank Libby. It was amazing that he had even come, and even more amazing that he had
stuck around this long. During that time, he had become the leader of their little group. If he left, nothing at all was going to get done.

  “There’s only one solution to this problem,” Frank Libby said. “We’re going to have to kill the Trader.”

  # # #

  The room was silent until Eric dropped the chalk. It hit the floor and pieces skittered off in different directions.

  “All right,” Eddie said as he raised his eyebrows.

  “This conversation alone is a felony,” Frank Libby said. “Just so everyone here understands the gravity of what I’m saying.”

  Frank Libby ran his eyes around the room, measuring them one by one.

  Nicky looked over at Ben Trout. In her opinion, the kid had always been somewhat of a coward.

  She decided to put it at his feet and see what he would do.

  “So anyone who wants out, this is the time to decide,” she said, staring at Ben Trout until he looked away.

  “Nope,” Frank Libby said, shaking his head. “I’m afraid that’s not true. Regardless of why you all came here, you’re in this now. The time to decide that you were out was before you walked through that door. We’re all in this together and anyone who tries to back down is going to find out how fast I can lock you up for no particular reason at all.”

  His eyes went to Eddie, who took it all in stride. The smile on Eddie’s face suggested that he had known all along that Frank Libby was going to threaten to set him up.

  “So you want us all to murder the Trader,” Lily said.

  “You’re all going to have a part in it,” Frank Libby said. “But I’ll be the one to pull the proverbial trigger. Eric, get another piece of chalk and write down the other half of that list.”

  “Sorry?” Eric said.

  Frank Libby ticked off the items on his fingers as he said them, “Bike, Dr Pepper, Drugs, and Abortion. And put down the fifth thing—whatever you traded and what you got back. You raised your hand, but you haven’t told us why.”

  Eric looked confused for a moment and then turned to the board to start writing. When Nicky thought back, she could picture herself sitting on the deck, talking with Eric. He had come back from Ohio and planned to turn right around and leave again. It was amazing how confident she had been back then. Sitting there, smoking her last cigarette of the day, everything had been clear. Eric was suffering from some kind of guilt surrounding his mother. The two of them had been equals instead of mother and son. Eric had been expected to be the adult most of the time. Then, when his mother had died, Eric had found a way to consider her death his own fault.