by Ike Hamill
“I remember something about this,” Deidra said. “Where was I?”
“You must have been at grad school,” June said.
Deidra looked up and thought about it while Jules continued.
“We were out at Hobbit Village. Did you ever go there?” Jules asked.
Deidra shook her head. “No. I was straightedge, remember?”
“Right. Right. Me too, for a little while. Anyway, we went out with a sixer and the bong and we intended to stay all night. Chris said that if you stayed all night, right in the center of Hobbit Village, you would get to ask the universe one question and it would answer.”
“You guys were so idiotic. Why did you call it Hobbit Village?”
“It was this ring of mushrooms that Chris said looked like little hobbit houses, you know? Anyway, we had almost made it the weekend before, but it started raining at like three in the morning and we had given up. We weren’t going to give up this time though. We had all our supplies and we were ready to go. Chris checked the weather and other Chris brought along a bunch of cookies that his mom had made. She made these amazing cookies that would keep you going for hours, you know? It was just like that special bread that the hobbits would eat on a journey?”
“You hadn’t even read the books back then,” June said.
“Hush,” Jules said. “We had to park all the way down at the creek and walk up the long trail. There was a place to park near the top, but Mr. McCready would hear your car if you parked there and he would call the sheriff every time. And Chris was the son of Mr. McCready’s cousin’s brother-in-law, so Chris’s dad would be coming for us as well.”
“I understand that nobody was watching you,” Deidra said, “but how come nobody cared that these other three kids were out all night?”
“Chris and Chris worked their names,” Jules said.
Deidra cocked her head with an unasked question.
“They had this bit where they would play on the popularity of their name. We must have had a dozen kids named Chris in our grade—both boys and girls. To differentiate, the kids made slightly different inflections on the name. So, Chris Skehan we called Chris, but Chris Corbin was called Chris, and Chris Michaud was Chris, and Chris Kirby was Chris.”
“I’m not hearing it,” Deidra said.
Isla shook her head against Kate’s side. She wasn’t hearing any difference either.
“You had to be there,” Jules said. “June was always terrible at it too, but ask Auggie. He always knew who we were talking about.”
“How did that help them stay out all night? Their parents were so confused by the names that they didn’t realize that their child wasn’t at home?”
“In a way, yes,” Jules said. “Chris would say that he was inviting Chris over. Then Chris would say the same. Each Chris claimed to be allergic to a different food. When the mom would commit to a particular menu, they would know which Chris she thought was coming. That’s when Chris would pull a shuffle. Suddenly, the plans would change and this Chris would be going out and that Chris would be staying home. It was always a different Chris than the parents expected. When they had everyone in confusion, Chris would ask if he could stay at Chris’s house and the parents would agree. By that point, they just wanted Chris to be someone else’s problem for one night. Next thing you knew, nobody had any idea whose house Chris was supposed to be at.”
“Stop!” Deidra said, laughing as she put her hands over her ears. “Please, stop. That’s too much Chris.”
“Exactly,” Jules said. “Now you know how they felt and why Chris and Chris were able to wander away without parental supervision. I was at Chris’s house one time when the phone rang. His mother answered. I could hear the voice of the other parent ask if Chris was there. She said yes. After they said goodbye and hung up, she said, ‘Your mom is looking for you.’ She didn’t even know that my name wasn’t Chris, and she had no idea that it wasn’t my mother calling. That’s how they got away with it.”
“Okay, I get it. What happened at Hobbit Village?”
Jules leaned towards her and dropped his voice as he started his story again. “Chris and Chris were in the lead. They paused at the edge of McCready’s lawn. We could have gone around, but there was that one marshy section and we didn’t want to get our feet wet. There’s nothing worse than hanging around all night in the dark with wet feet. Chris wanted to wait for McCready’s light to go out, but other Chris said that we should make a dash and hope for the best. Even if he heard us, he would probably think it was deer, eating the apples from the tree at the edge of the woods.”
Jules looked at Isla and then glanced at Penny.
“This is where certain substances might have been kicking in,” Jules said.
Deidra rolled her eyes.
“Chris was convinced that someone was watching us from the window of McCready’s garage. Other Chris said that he was crazy because he could see McCready through the window, watching TV in his kitchen. It was Stuart who figured it out.”
“Stuart Libby?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought he was mute,” Deidra said.
“He was. He figured it out and he pointed. Stuart had a kind of special sign language that he did with us kids. It wasn’t ASL, or whatever, but a set of things he knew we understood. To say dog, he would put up his hands like he was begging, like this, and then put out his tongue like he was panting.”
“That’s not how you say dog?” June asked.
Jules shook his head. “Nope. Anyway, he pointed and said there was a dog. He was right. The person that Chris saw watching TV in the kitchen was a dog. The dog was sitting up in a chair, like a human, watching the late news.”
“What?” Deidra asked, her tone completely flat.
“Yeah. Remember, substances, but we all saw it. That dog was sitting in a chair, a cigarette burning in the ashtray, watching TV as the smoke curled up through the flickering light. And the face in the window of the garage was a painting. Stuart pantomimed that too. The real McCready was upstairs. He was in the dark up there, but we could see him silhouetted by the light from the hall. The man was brushing his teeth in the dark.”
Deidra exhaled. Jules waited to see if she would ask a question. She only waved for him to continue.
“We kept a weather eye on the old man as we crept through his yard. Chris was right about the deer. There were three or four of them eating the apples that had fallen to the ground and they didn’t even hear us. That’s how quiet we were as we crept. As soon as we reached the woods on the other side, we were in the clear. There were no more houses to pass, we had dry feet, and there was nothing stopping us from receiving the answer to the mysteries of the universe. It was time to celebrate. Chris pulled out a flask that must have been deep in his pocket because the whiskey inside was as warm as spit.”
“Gross,” Penny whispered.
Jules nodded at her and put out his hand so they could high-five.
“Exactly. Chris said, ‘No mezcla bien,’ which he always said when stuff was gross. We each took a deep pull from that flask. I remember distinctly that the flask went from Chris, to Stuart, to Chris, to me. They would never pass from Chris to Chris. It was bad luck for two Chrises to drink in a row. So, later, when Chris said that he thought that Stuart didn’t make it past McCready’s house, I was the one who pointed out the flask passing. Of course, one Chris said that I took twice as many drinks as the rest because they passed it through me every time.”
Jules shook his head at the memory.
“Anyway, we celebrated by killing the flask and then we took the path through the dark woods. Even in broad daylight, that section of woods was dark as hell. The leaf canopy was low and thick and the soil was as black as coal. Passing through there was like walking under an eclipse. At night, forget about it. I have been in caves that had more natural light. To stay together, we each put a hand on the person in front’s shoulder. Chris, Chris, me, and Stuart. I know that Stuart had his hand on my s
houlder the entire time.”
Jules put up a finger.
“For me, this is when I was sure that the substances were taking over. I saw tigers slinking around in that darkness. They were too clever to be obvious, but they would dart around in my peripheral vision and then disappear at the last possible second when I turned to look. Chris must have felt my hand tense up on his shoulder because he kept asking me what my problem was. I told him it was the tigers and he only laughed at me. Their orange stripes were practically glowing and the white flashes were nearly blinding, but only to the sides of my eyes. Straight ahead, I still couldn’t see anything other than black.”
Jules took a moment as a dark thought crossed his brow.
“I saw the thing. I actually saw it. The tiger darted to my left and Stuart’s hand squeezed down on my shoulder before it slipped off. I didn’t say a word. I was too frightened that the tiger would come for me next. Then I realized that Stuart’s hand was still there. I had imagined the entire thing.”
“So he…” Deidra began
Jules put up a hand to ask for one more moment.
“Hold on. I’m not quite done. Again, I know that Stuart made it through to the dam with us because he passed around beers to me, Chris, and Chris. We only had six, and that was fine. Normally, Chris didn’t drink beer. He preferred his warm-spit whiskey, and we had a ton of h-e-r-b and a b-o-n-g.”
“We can spell, Uncle Jules,” Isla said.
He smiled at her and then turned back to Deidra.
“But the beer is important because, again, it’s more evidence that Stuart was still with us just before Hobbit Village, regardless of what Chris says. We drank for a moment and then continued on. The path only went another twenty yards or so. We heard a splash and Chris turned back. I kept walking with Stuart and Chris, but Chris kept asking what the sound was. Stuart handed me the two beers still on their plastic ring and the open one in his hand. I had to grip them against my chest because I was still holding my beer. Chris found a spot in the Hobbit Village and told us to come sit down with him. He was scared.”
Jules sighed.
“That’s when everything went tits up, pardon my French,” Jules said. “I told Stuart to take his beer back—the open one—and Chris asked me what I was talking about. Other Chris came back from investigating the splash and we started arguing. I said that Stuart Libby had just handed me the full beers and his half-drank one, and one Chris said that Stuart had left us at McCready’s and the other Chris said that Stuart had turned back before the dark woods. I told them that they were both high, crazy, and stupid. Nobody disagreed on that point, but we couldn’t come to any resolution about how long Stuart Libby had walked with us.”
“What?” Deidra asked. “How could they not know?”
“He was so quiet,” Jules said. “Stuart was a total enigma. It happened to teachers all the time. He would be sitting behind a big guy in class and they would mark him as absent. Or, they would mark him as present but then he would bring in a note the next day to excuse him for having the flu, you know? Stuart Libby just blended in, wherever he went. It wasn’t surprising that we couldn’t decide where he had left us, it was only surprising that we had such distinctly different memories of having seen him. I knew he had taken a swig of whiskey and handed us beers. Chris agreed to the whiskey but said that I had handed around the beer. Other Chris had a different memory. That argument is probably what did Stuart in.”
“How?” Deidra asked.
“Because it took so long. We spent so much time arguing that it took hours before we ran back to McCready’s and started banging on his door. The dog was all done smoking and watching TV and McCready was up in bed. He came to the door in one of those old nightgowns that went all the way to his ankles. He looked like he was from a Dickens novel. Chris started giggling and I felt like the only sane person there. I begged him to call the cops and tell them to get a search party out to look for Stuart. The first time I asked, he told me to go sober up and he slammed the door.”
“That must have been terrible,” Deidra said.
“It was and it wasn’t,” Jules said. “By then, Chris had us pretty convinced that Stuart had never come along at all. It seemed plausible, to tell the truth.”
Jules sat back in his chair.
“In fact, by the end of the night, I wanted to believe that too. Stuart’s parents, notified by the cops, said that he was safe at home, asleep. He lived at the end of a long driveway and nobody had come to visit, and Stuart had never gone out. The cops were ready to call off the search when dispatch rang them up again to say that the Libbys had called back. When they went to check on him, Stuart was indeed gone. They were convinced that he had only wandered off to go look at the stars, but they wanted help searching their property. Chris and Chris went home with their parents. The sheriff called Uncle Tommy but he told them to keep me. Auggie came and sprung me, eventually.”
“So they never looked?”
Jules shrugged. “There was some searching that night, before the Libbys called them away. There was never a proper search until the next day. I went and watched the divers searching the deep water just above the dam. Chris had woken up and sworn that the splash he heard was Stuart coming after us and slipping in. He dreamed about Stuart drowning, unable to yell for help and signing up towards the stars.”
Jules shivered at the memory.
“Eventually, I convinced Chris that Stuart had made it all the way past the dam. Other Chris denied that Stuart had bolted at McCready’s and he took up the story of the parents—we had never gone to pick Stuart up and he must have wandered out to look at stars. Stuart loved to look at the stars. The cops didn’t really bother us much because everyone had a different story.”
“Whoa,” Deidra said. “And nobody ever saw him again?”
“Just one person,” Jules said. “Just one. Here’s the weird thing—Mr. McCready swore all along that four of us came to his house. He told the cops that Chris, Chris, me, and Stuart all came, raving about some missing kid. When we said that Stuart was gone, he thought that we must be talking about another kid named Stuart. It wasn’t that odd to him—after all, there were two Chrises, why wouldn’t there be two Stuarts?”
Deidra blinked and regarded Jules with her mouth open.
“Confusing, right? Anyway, that wasn’t even the last time that he claims to have seen Stuart. He says that Stuart came back to his house the following night, as well. A couple of us were out in the woods, looking, and we used flashlights after sunset. He wrote down the times when we all came and left. Then, after the late news, his diary has another entry that mentioned Stuart was standing in his yard, over by the apple tree. According to him, Stuart came back every few days for two weeks. The sheriff didn’t believe him. He sent guys with dogs out to sniff around the yard and they said that there were only deer footprints out there.”
“That’s bizarre,” Deidra said.
Jules nodded. “Yeah. I remember Mr. Libby going over to stay with Mr. McCready, on the off chance that he might see his son out in the yard. Those two stayed up every night for a week. I think Chris went over and stayed with them once, just to keep them company. For a little while, lots of people held out hope that Stuart would come walking back out of the woods, safe and sound. Eventually, most everyone decided that he must have run away from home. Lot of rumors popped up.”
“And he never made contact again?” Deidra asked.
Isla’s mother hugged her tight and looked down at her.
“Honey, this is why it’s important to never even joke about running away, right?”
Isla nodded. She honestly didn’t see the connection, but she nodded up to her mother, who seemed to need the reassurance. Isla had only ever said she was going to run away once, and she hadn’t been joking. Fortunately, the problem had been solved and she hadn’t needed to go through with it.
The door pushed open and her father poked his head through.
“Is anyone going to come
help me in the kitchen?”
“Sorry,” Kate said. She lifted Isla to her feet and then took her hand. “We’ll be right there.”
Chapter 8 : June
FOR THE MOMENT, JUNE had the place to herself. At Auggie’s call, everyone had filtered through to the kitchen to go help with the preparation. June sat on the edge of the chair for a second and then bounced back to her feet. She got out the bucket and cleaner from her cabinet and took them to the bathroom.
It had been cleaned spotless just a day before. Settling to her knees, she turned on the hot water and waited for it to warm up.
Tilted in the right way, the lip of the bucket fit below the faucet. June splashed the water around to suds up the soap. There was a tiny knock on the door. June shut off the water as Kate’s head poked into the bathroom.
“Sorry. Do you need to use…”
“No,” Kate said with a smile. “I thought maybe you could use some help. Auggie is overrun in the kitchen.”
June glanced around the tiny bathroom and up to the tilted ceiling. Of course she didn’t need help—there was nothing to do anyway.
“No. Thanks,” she said, dumping the water back into the sink. “I was only busying my hands.”
June sighed as she pushed to her feet and slipped back through the door. Kate looked like June felt—uncomfortable and out of place. For June, this happened every year. It was Kate’s first time in a long time.
“I’m sorry you won’t get to see your sister this New Year’s,” June said. After putting her bucket away, she led Kate over to the window seat. In the summer, June would sit there with a book in her lap and read while the golden light burned itself out. There was too much of a draft between the rattling panes in the winter. With everyone bustling around the house, generating so much heat, it was a nice place to take a break. The breeze actually felt refreshing against her dry skin.
“I see her every year,” Kate said. She settled down against the other wall, resting her legs against June’s. “I’ve always imagined that this must be difficult for you. You’re holding up much better than I would, I must say.”
