Under the Overtree

by James A. Moore

  During our two-hour daily detentions, Alex and I started to form a friendship. It was almost inevitable. You really can’t spend twenty hours with someone in complete silence, not when you’re fourteen, not in the world I grew up in. It just wasn’t possible. We talked about what it had been like for him when he had to move here, and we talked about why he had been given such a hard time by Charlie. We talked about everything, even Susan, and I had never told anyone how I felt about Susan, she was two years younger than me and it just didn’t seem like the right thing to do. Not in Summitville. I guess things had been different in San Diego, because to Alex, it seemed perfectly natural. Alex was like that, he seemed to understand where I was coming from, even when I didn’t. We became friends very quickly.

  As time passed, we spent more and more time together and we learned to be friends in a way that few people ever are. Alex Harris was my first best friend. By the end of September, he meant more to me than my family did. That’s just the way those things go, I guess, there’s no real way to explain well enough to make them clear.

  In the first week of October, when the sun was setting so much earlier than it had only a month before, I met his family. His father was a lean and likable man who I came to know and appreciate in a very short time. Mr. Harris liked to read, and fostered in me a love of something more powerful than a comic book or detective magazine. He brought to me a love of novels. Whenever I went over, which then was very frequently, he had another book in his hands, and he would nod politely as he puffed away on his briar pipe and he would hand me another book to read. Most of them were thrillers, stories that seemed like longer versions of the stories I was already reading in True Detective and in other trashy magazines in the same vein. The man almost never said more than “Hello Philly, got another one, let me know what you think.” But in those words he showed an interest in what I thought. Me. As if my opinions were worth listening to. He always gave me the books to read before he read them, and it was like he wanted to know if he should even bother with the stories, except that he would read them whether I liked them or not. I will always remember him fondly for that; it made me feel important. It was more than my own father had time to do. My father never was very good at being friendly; he was just good at being stern. Some dads never seem to understand the difference I guess, my dad didn’t.

  On one occasion, I was told by my father that I should clean out the attic at our big old house. He even offered me two dollars to do it, but I would have done it even without the money, I was very curious as to what was up there. There was a lot of junk, stuff that had sat around in that house since it had been built, and that was a good deal of time before my Grandfather moved into this town. (It’s funny thinking back on that, because once upon a time my father was the new kid in town, and it took him almost fifteen years to be accepted in Summitville. I guess that’s why he liked Alex from the first time he met him. I was lucky, and I was born in town, but until Alex moved here, I was still called “That young un’ of Howard Sanderson, the new kid from a few years back,” by the long timers in Summitville. Even after twenty-five or more years, my dad was the new kid in town to some of those old farmers and mill workers.)

  Alex was good enough to help me, and he brought along his little brother, possibly the clumsiest three-year-old I had ever seen. His little brother’s name was Todd, but I always called him Toddler, because it just seemed to fit with him. He didn’t walk, he toddled along and as often as not he fell on the ground skinning one part of his body or another. Todd normally had a dozen of those little baby Band-Aids on his hands, elbows and knees at any given time, and I often wondered how he managed to survive the day with the way he fell down. He was a cute little kid, though, and he loved his brother with the pure unsullied love that only a three-year-old can have. Alex had to take Todd with him that day, because Alex’s dad worked in Denver for some big law firm, and he was almost never home before seven o’clock at night. Todd only stayed at Mrs. Phillips’s house until Alex got out of school, because Alex was big enough to watch him, and Mr. Harris felt it best to have his son influenced by a family member like Alex then by a stranger like Mrs. Phillips. I never understood that kind of thinking until I was a good deal older and learned about life away from a small town like Summitville. Summitville had almost no crime back then and in comparison to some towns, it still doesn’t except for the occasional fight at Dino’s Bar & Grill. I guess I lived a very sheltered life growing up, especially next to someone like Alex or his father.

  It was while we were getting to the last of the junk in that old attic, that Todd found an old book, bound in red leather, and closed with a tarnished brass clasp. The book had no name, but it held a fascination for Alex and me, it held the promise of secrets to learn. Alex set it aside immediately, and when we finally finished in the attic, asked if he could take it home. He was my best friend, and I trusted him even with so great a find. I said yes. Whenever I think back on that day, I wish I had told him no. I wonder if things would have been different if I had. I like to think not, but I suspect it was still so.

  I forgot about the book for the next couple of weeks, but Alex didn’t. He spent hours going over the thing nightly, while I spent those same hours reading the latest book on loan from his father. Mr. Harris had a large library, and I guess he must have had the books that Alex needed, because he managed to figure out all the things that were written in that book, and most of what was there was written in three different languages. One of them I later realized was Celtic, one old English, the other I still have no clues about. Whatever books his father had in the library must have been very diverse, because I have looked long and hard, and even sent copies to some of the universities I have visited in my time, and I have yet to get an answer that told me what that last language was.

  It was at the end of October, on Halloween day, that he told me the book was the journal of a man named Stoney Miles. Once upon a time, that name would have terrified me, but by then I was fourteen and I knew better than to be afraid of old ghosts. Maybe I’ll tell you about Stoney later, but he’s really not important now. Suffice to say that he had a very dark reputation in my hometown. Alex wanted to have a kind of séance, out in the woods were Stoney had written in his journal about a special place, one that was closer to the nature of other places than this world. I didn’t like the idea, but Alex was so excited about the idea, that I simply couldn’t say no to him. I especially couldn’t say no when he told me that Susan and Anita would be going as well. He said it would be great fun, and maybe we could give them a scare while we were at it. Hey, I was only fourteen, and if you try to tell me that the idea of scaring a couple of pretty girls didn’t appeal to you at fourteen, then you either don’t remember your childhood well, or you are a liar. It was a Saturday, and the girls were agreeable; we left less than an hour later. Antoinette and Todd were along for the show, and we had a good time. Todd delighted Anita and Susan, along with Antoinette, and that left Alex and me all the time we needed to study the little notebook in which he had written the “Magic Spell” that we would be trying. We had everything that we needed, except for the blood of a lamb. In substitution we took the blood from one of the chickens in my refrigerator, waiting for mom to chop into pieces and fry. It would have to do; besides, it was just for show.

  Everything went beautifully, Alex made dramatic gestures and intonations as he cast the various tidbits like toads’ eggs and such about the place he claimed was Stoney’s special place. And we all got terribly frightened by the dramatics. Even Todd. Todd got very frightened, and screamed and stumbled and fell and cut his hand. And that was the end of the show. We all laughed about it later, but Todd had managed to give himself a good scraping when he fell against one of the big rocks that decorated the woods where we had our little show. The winds promised snow in the near future, however, and in Colorado you take that kind of promise as a threat. It was a two-hour walk back home, and then we all went our separate ways so we could get ready for
the Halloween Party at the school.

  Alex never made the party that night. We had planned on hanging around together, and generally having a blast, but Alex never made it. I waited for about three and a half hours, having as good a time as I could without my best friend, and even dancing with Susan once (it was a faster song, and much as I wanted to, I couldn’t hold her in my arms) before I finally called it a night.

  The next day, I went over to Alex’s place, and I saw his haggard tear stained face. I almost missed the moving van. All I could see was the agony that enveloped my friend. Beside him was a woman I had never seen, carrying Todd as if he were the most fragile of crystal vases. She too looked incredibly sad. I found out that day that a man I had come to love in the way any boy can love a substitute father had died on his way home from Denver the night before. He’d hit a patch of black ice on the road, never even saw it would be my guess, and his car had spun into one of the Tarkenton Lumber trucks from over near Boulder. My friend, the father of my best friend, was dead. Buried under several tons of red oak on Interstate 70. The strange woman I saw with Alex and Todd was their mother. She had divorced Mr. Harris just four months ago, and I guess maybe she realized that she still loved him. Maybe she always had. I can never say for certain, she was the one thing that Alex never talked about.

  That was the last time I saw Alex Harris, I wrote a few times, but I never had anywhere to send the letters. He never gave me a forwarding address. I never asked for one. I guess I never thought it possible for my best friend to leave me, especially so soon after I had found him; I always felt I’d see him again, even when he climbed into the station wagon with his mother, the station wagon with the California license plates.

  I only knew Alex and his family for a short time, but I remember them very fondly. Years have blown past like leaves in a strong wind, and I guess you could say that I am now in the autumn of my life. I would be willing to bet money that Alex is long dead, I feel he would have come back here if he were alive, if only to say goodbye properly. All I have left to remember him is a book he once found in my attic and the unreadable script that he translated. I never knew what words he said that day so long ago, but they chilled me when he spoke them.

  Now and then, when I’m feeling particularly morbid, I wonder if that “Magic Spell” he cast caused his father’s death, and his being torn from my life. I hope not. I don’t like to think that such things are really possible, and I like the idea that it was in part my fault even less. I guess I had to write this down. I guess this is my way of finally saying goodbye to Alex and his Father, and even little Todd.

  Hold your friends dearly, you never know how long you’ll have with them, like the seasons that change so abruptly when their time is due, life changes, and all too often it changes without warning.

  Good Bye Alex.

  P.J. Sanderson

  October 31 1991

  CHAPTER ONE

  1

  Mark Howell stared absently out the window of the moving car, only vaguely aware of the mountains that now blocked his view of the horizon. “Not just any mountains, the Rockies,” he thought to himself. “A long way from where I was last week.” It was only June, but the air here was already considerably cooler than it was back home.

  The thought of the temperature change and the thought of considering Georgia “home” brought a sad smile to his face. “Is there such a thing as a home, or just different places to live?” The words were silent so as to hide from his mom and her husband, Joe, just how much the thought hurt. He needn’t have bothered. Neither of them ever paid him the least bit of attention anyway. Atlanta, Georgia had never been home to Mark. Neither had any of the dozen or so other cities and states in which he had lived, but at least in Georgia he had started to make friends. That in itself constituted a minor miracle in his eyes. The thought of moving to another new town in another new state was enough to bring tremors of fear to Mark’s insides. New towns meant no friends, no one at all with whom he could talk. New towns also promised a great deal of suffering. Suffering normally caused by the local bully-boys with nothing better to do than make the new kid’s life a living hell.

  Mark stared at his reflection in the window, faint and insubstantial, but still showing the soft features that went with being a good fifty pounds overweight. His hair was short and very dark, framing a face cursed with delicate features and the general shape of a basketball. His eyes were a pale blue and the closest thing he had to a good feature on his heavy jowled face, at least in his own opinion. Mark believed that he was possibly the least interesting person on the planet. Unless there was someone out there who enjoyed chatting merrily with the Blob.

  The road up ahead forked suddenly, as it wrapped around the mountain’s edge. Joe took the left fork and smiled brightly. “We’re almost there, Marko! You’re gonna love this place, kid. It’s a lot smaller than Atlanta, but at least you don’t have to worry about the crime rate or any of that stuff. and wait’ll you see the houses, they’re unbelievable! No more apartments for us, guy, just nice comfy houses.” Mark smiled towards Joe’s reflected eyes in the rearview mirror, as the curving road descended sharply between the mountains. The smile never went past his mouth. Joe had been talking about how much Mark was going to love Colorado from the first day he had accepted his new job with the publishing firm in Denver. He’d never bothered to ask Mark how he felt about another move. The thought probably never entered his head. Joe didn’t think that way; it was Joe’s way or no way. Mark had never been overly fond of his mother’s choice for a new husband and he knew that the feeling was mutual. Mark thought Joe seriously needed to consider a few hundred good books on how not to treat a step-child. Joe probably felt Mark was a sissy, owing to the fact that Mark almost always came home from whichever new school he was attending with at least one black eye in the first week alone.

  Sometimes Mark really wished he were still living with his grandparents. He’d been happier back then, before Joe had shown his stupid face in the picture. Other times he wished he’d never been born at all. At least then he wouldn’t be such a burden on his mom.

  He looked over at his mother and came to the same conclusion as always; she was beautiful. Not just because she was his mom, but because she had a dynamite figure, corn-silk hair and a face that looked almost ten years younger than it should. Considering that she was only thirty-one this year, that said a lot. His mind still reeled when he realized that she had been his age when she’d gotten pregnant with him. She’d given birth to her first and only child at the age of sixteen. Fifteen years later she still looked incredible and still managed to smile most of the time. He chalked that up as another minor miracle; no matter what his feelings for Joe, his love for his mother was complete. He forgave Joe’s numerous trespasses because Joe made his mother happy. It would have to be enough.

  As the car erupted into Summitville, Mark stared around in something like awe. He guessed the town might have a population of six thousand, but that was being overly generous. The road they were on became, of course, Main Street and was surrounded on both sides by cute little shops and cute little restaurants and even a cute little hardware store. He doubted that he would be able to keep up with his comic book collection in town. He seriously doubted that they had ever seen a comic book in the tiny little Norman Rockwell town of Summitville. At least Joe had told him that they had cable. In the far distance, off into the woods behind what town there was, he could see the faint glimmer of a lake. Maybe he would be able to go swimming there, later on, when the air warmed a bit more. The thought brought a smile to his face that was tentative but real. The smile positively glowed when they cruised past a solitary store on Third Avenue, a good mile and a half past the town proper, that bore the legend “WE SELL COMIC BOOKS!” in big bold letters. The tiny town of Summitville was looking up already. Then Mark saw the house they were about to move into. In that moment he knew everything would be okay here. The place was even bigger than Joe said and had a lawn that was
more than just a postage stamp in size.

  As they were getting out of the car and stretching muscles that protested having been in the same position for too long, Mark spotted a girl who was approximately his own age jogging past. He smiled, thinking about how pretty she was and, amazingly, she smiled back and waved. Mark blushed furiously, knowing in his jaded heart that the smile she flashed had to be a way of teasing him, lulling him into a false sense of security, praying mightily that it might be real just the same.

  Maybe, just maybe, Summitville Colorado wouldn’t be such a horrible place after all. With a small secret smile and a spring in his step, he grabbed his suitcases and started toward the house.

  2

  Tony Scarrabelli watched from outside the main building of the Charles S. Westphalen High School as the new kid stepped out from the back entrance, facing the woods. A thick, slow grin spread across his face. The fat boy looked in every direction and finally started walking. He’d missed Tony and the whole crew by some twist of fate. The new kid, Mark Howell, knew that his life was over if Tony caught up with him.