A Plague Year

by Edward Bloor

  I was shocked, though, by a few of the nontoy items.

  These items had obviously been made from a stolen shopping cart—probably from the Food Giant. There was a low, square movers’ dolly made out of four metal wheels and the slats from a wooden pallet. There was a half-full firewood basket, which had once been the main section of a shopping cart. It was missing its hinged, movable side. That’s because that piece of metal was now the grill for a hibachi, sitting there on top of a ring of concrete blocks.

  Bobby Smalls would have been horrified. But I had to admit it was all pretty clever.

  I couldn’t see Warren’s trailer very well. It sat another thirty yards behind Aunt Robin’s and on a higher elevation. It looked narrower by perhaps ten feet across. As far as I could tell, it had no debris around it.

  We parked near the right corner of the first trailer and got out. Just as Arthur reached the front door, someone pulled it open from the inside. Arthur backed up to let Warren step out, followed by Jimmy.

  They both smiled at me and said, “Hey, Tom,” almost in unison.

  Warren was holding an item I recognized from the Food Giant—a fifty-count box of Ziploc freezer bags. He pointed to the driveway and smiled hugely. “Whoa! Check out the new ride!”

  Arthur grinned. “Yeah.”

  Warren asked Jimmy, “Is that the one you told me about, bubba? From Primrose?”

  Jimmy nodded.

  “Sweet.” Warren winked at me, but he spoke to Arthur. “Now I don’t have to drive you to football games? And sit there and watch you lose?”

  “Nope. I guess not.”

  Warren then looked from Arthur to me. “So what are you two gentlemen up to tonight? You goin’ joyriding?”

  Arthur replied, “We’re heading up to the college.”

  “The college? What for?”

  Arthur smiled. “Tom’s got a girlfriend there.”

  Warren poked my ribs with the box. “Is that right, Tom? You’re dating a college girl?”

  I protested, “She’s not my girlfriend. And she doesn’t go to the college. She just lives there with her family.”

  Arthur corrected himself. “I should say we are going to a party at the college, a Halloween party, invited by a friend of Tom’s, who just happens to be a girl.”

  I nodded my approval. “There you go.”

  Warren asked Jimmy, “Remember the time we went up there, bubba? With Ralph? And the Cowley brothers?”

  “I do indeed.”

  “That was some night.”

  “Amen to that.”

  I asked them, “Did you go there for a party?”

  Warren replied, “Not hardly, young Tom. We went there for a fight.”

  Arthur, who rarely looked surprised at anything, looked shocked. “A fight? Why don’t I know about this?”

  Warren pointed at Jimmy. “Because bubba here never told you? So I’ll tell you now. Here’s what happened: Jim’s buddy Ralph got beat up by two college boys. Beat up for no reason except that he was a townie.

  “He was working at the Strike Zone, and these two frat boys showed up drunk. They were acting stupid, acting like they were better than everybody. Laughing at everybody. You know the drill.”

  Arthur nodded. “I do.”

  “So Ralph told them to leave. A few minutes later, he went out to make sure they were gone, and they jumped him. Beat him up real bad. So the next night, him, Jimmy, me, and some other guys went up there to take care of business.”

  “To the college?”

  “Yeah.”

  Arthur asked, “How did you find them? There’s gotta be a thousand people up there.”

  “It wasn’t that hard,” Warren explained. “They got those college bars on the main road, heading up to that big gold dome. We figured two drunken frat boys would be there drinking, and so they were! Ralph spotted their car after about five minutes. Then we all waited until they came out.”

  Warren smiled, remembering. “I believe it was a Ford Mustang. A bright red one. Jimmy took a tire iron to the front and back windows. We gave them college boys as good as Ralph got and then some. Then the bar owner came out, yelling that he had just called the cops.

  “So we left them on the sidewalk, bleeding and crying for their mommies. We jumped into the back of Jimmy’s truck and peeled out of there.”

  Jimmy added somberly, “Somebody coulda got my tag number. I kept waitin’ for the cops all the next day. Waitin’ to get arrested.”

  Warren told him, “Don’t matter if you got arrested or not. We did what we had to do.”

  Jimmy agreed, “Yeah.”

  “They hit us, so we hit them back.”

  “Amen.”

  Arthur nodded angrily. “Yeah, I hear that.”

  Warren raised up his Ziploc box in a friendly wave. “Well, enough townie history. You guys have a good time up there. Don’t drink and drive. Don’t play with matches. All that stuff.” He started up the incline to his trailer, calling, “Anybody needs me, I’ll be at the Drunken Monkey.”

  I followed Arthur and Jimmy through the door. Arthur veered left toward his bedroom. He pointed to the right and said, “Go sit in there. I need to find me some zombie rags.”

  I said, “Okay,” and walked into the living room. It was surprisingly large—with a long cloth-covered couch along the right wall, a big TV straight ahead, and a pair of recliner chairs to the left.

  Aunt Robin was sitting on the floor in front of the chairs. She is a small, feisty lady with long black hair and multiple ear piercings. She was playing with Cody—a cute, squirmy boy about two years old.

  She looked up at me, “Why, Tom Coleman! As I live and breathe!”

  I waved awkwardly. “Hi, Aunt Robin. Hi, Cody.”

  “Did I just hear you’re going to a party?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “No drinking or drugs!”

  “No, ma’am.”

  I had seen Aunt Robin often over the years—at the Food Giant and at other public places—but I had never been in her living room before. Nobody ever said it out loud, but we all knew that Mom and Aunt Robin did not get along. Going way back. We had never spent a holiday together, or any other day, for that matter.

  Jimmy walked in from the kitchen holding a jar of Gerber’s baby food and a spoon. He grinned at me, but he spoke to Aunt Robin. “Here I am, out bustin’ my butt at work all day, and I got to come home and work here, too?”

  Aunt Robin got instantly riled, like this was an ongoing argument. “Don’t you start that, Jimmy Giles! Especially in front of company!”

  She shot an offended look at me. “Don’t think I haven’t been working, Tom. I just finished a job driving a school bus.” She pointed a red nail at me. “The trouble is, you need a second job if you drive a school bus, because the pay is so low. But you can’t get a second job because you always have to be on call for the school bus job.”

  Jimmy interjected, “But having one job was better than having none, wasn’t it?”

  She answered angrily, “No. Not that job. It was terrible. You never knew what they were gonna throw at you. Especially if you were new, like me. You might have to drive the gangbangers, or the teenage girls with the babies, or the just plain old troublemakers up to the county school. With no security on board. Just you.

  “Or you might have to drive the retarded bus.” She assured me, “I got nothing against those kids, Tom. They’re just fine. But some of them need helpers with them, and they don’t have helpers.”

  She stopped talking.

  I felt like I should say something, so I commented, “Bobby Smalls has Down’s syndrome. He’s the bag boy at the Food Giant.”

  “Yeah. I know who you mean. But he’s a smart one, right?”

  “Yeah. He’s real smart.”

  “Well, I’m not talking about him, Tom. I’m talking about these poor kids who still wear diapers. And they’re big kids! I just couldn’t handle driving them every day. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but it
was just too sad for me.”

  Arthur came out of his bedroom. He was dressed pretty much the same as before, in his camo pants and boots, but he had ripped up an old white shirt and pulled it on over his hoodie. And he had smeared black stuff under his eyes, like football players do for glare.

  He said, “Let’s roll, cuz,” and exited quickly, without a word to Aunt Robin, Jimmy, or Cody.

  I muttered, “I’ll see everybody later,” and followed him out.

  But we could not roll.

  A car had pulled in and parked behind Arthur’s Geo Metro. A white Saab convertible.

  Arthur was really annoyed, but he didn’t say anything. We just stared at the car uncomfortably until we heard voices from above. Two tall college-age guys emerged from Warren’s trailer. Despite the dim light, I could see that one of them had a Baggie in his hand. Of marijuana? Probably. They were all laughing about something. Then they exchanged some goodbye stuff, like “Later, bro,” “Be cool,” and so on.

  Warren stepped back inside and closed the door. I don’t think he even saw us.

  But the college boys did.

  They kept walking toward us, but the one with the Baggie stuffed it into the pocket of his Blackwater U jacket. They got into the Saab, backed out, and roared away down the road.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Arthur cut me off. “You didn’t see that. You didn’t hear that. You know nothing.”

  I agreed, “Okay.”

  Arthur opened the driver’s-side door. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  We both got inside. I assured him, “I don’t even know what you’re saying, because I didn’t see or hear anything.”

  He mumbled, “Good. What Warren does is his business. Always has been.”

  “Okay.” Arthur dropped the Geo Metro in gear, and we began a tense drive up to the party.

  I guess you could say that Blackwater University is the most famous thing around here, but I had never heard a good word spoken about it in my life. The university people look down on us, and we hate them for it. That’s the way it is, and always has been.

  We drove for about twenty minutes, mostly through farms and woodlands, until the highway narrowed. Then we turned onto a two-lane road leading to the main gate. College-kid businesses lined both sides of the road—used-book stores, coffeehouses, trade-or-sell music stores, and several bars. (I wondered where, exactly, Warren and Jimmy had found those guys and beaten them up.)

  We entered the campus and veered right, following a perimeter road around academic buildings, dormitories, and a wide quadrangle dotted with statues. I recognized that Venus-without-any-arms statue. She had been the victim of a frat boy prank, though, and was now wearing a pink bra. (I wondered if frat boys did that in Florida, too.)

  The perimeter road took us behind the student center, where we veered right again and, technically, left the campus. We were now in a tree-lined area that held the fraternity and sorority houses and the homes of the university professors.

  Arthur had not spoken all the way up, and he did not sound happy when he finally did. “What’s the address of this place?”

  I told him, and we slowed down to look at numbers. But that turned out to be unnecessary. It was obvious where the big Halloween party was taking place.

  The Lyles’ house was a large redbrick structure with a white porch running around the front and sides. College kids in costumes were hanging out on the porch and on the lawn, and they were moving in and out of the open front door.

  We found a parking spot a block and a half away and started walking back through a crowd of partyers. Some were in real costumes—I saw a Spanish matador and a couple of Disney princesses—but most people had improvised like we had, and the prevailing costume was indeed zombie.

  The first person I recognized was Catherine Lyle. She was standing, costumeless, on the front porch (which was, of course, her front porch). She was speaking to a young man about the plastic beer cup in his hand. The young man reluctantly poured the beer over the porch railing and onto the dirt below.

  When Arthur and I mounted the stairs, Catherine Lyle looked up and met my eyes. But then her counselor ethics kicked in, I guess, and she looked away. Her frown deepened, though, as she realized that two more underage kids, very underage kids, were entering her house.

  Some kind of rock music was playing as we walked into the wide foyer. To the left was a living room filled with people on couches and chairs. They were all smoking and drinking.

  To the right was a dining room. There were snacks and sodas on one table, and a CD player, some CDs, and two kegs of beer on another.

  I heard a familiar voice call out from the back of the foyer. “Hey! You made it!” Wendy Lyle was standing there (leaning, really) against a wall. She was wrapped in purple cloth. Like a genie, I guess.

  A short guy with curly hair had his arms pressed against the wall over her head, like he had her trapped. He was wearing an eye patch and a purple sash with a plastic dagger stuck in it.

  Wendy slipped out from under his arms and walked toward us just as Catherine Lyle walked back inside. Catherine stopped her long enough to say, “There is to be no underage drinking, Wendy. That goes for you and any of your friends.” She then continued down a hallway to what I figured was the kitchen.

  Wendy was not like herself. Not like herself in class anyway, or in the counseling group. She was smiling at everything. She told me, over the rock music, “One thing I will say about the town of Blackwater [she pronounced it BACKwahr], one good thing, is that they are really into Halloween. We were driving around, and we saw all of these … haunted houses. You know? Like people had gone all out to turn their houses into these … haunted houses.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. There are always a lot of those around.”

  “I guess because it already is a dark, old, scary place, people just go with it, you know? They make it even darker and scarier. You know?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  She stopped talking. I tried to come up with something to say. The best I could do was to point to the walls. “This is a nice house. It’s all brick?”

  Wendy wrinkled her nose. “I guess. Aren’t most houses brick?”

  “No.”

  “No? What’s your house made of?”

  “Wood.”

  I had forgotten momentarily about Arthur. He was right behind me, and he suddenly spoke up. “I live in a trailer.”

  Wendy started to laugh hysterically. “My God! Do you hear that? Do you get it? We’re the three little pigs! I’m brick, you’re wood, and you’re … I don’t know. What are trailers made of?”

  Arthur didn’t answer. He walked into the dining room and stared at the snacks table.

  Wendy laughed for a little while longer. She muttered, “Straw. That’s it. They’re made of straw.”

  I asked her, “What’s with the purple? Are you a genie?”

  “It’s not purple! It’s indigo. It’s because I am an indigo.”

  I must have looked confused. Wendy added, “That’s the color of my aura.”

  That didn’t help me. She asked, “Have you ever had your aura read?”

  “No. I don’t know what that is.”

  “Every living thing gives off energy in an aura,” she explained. “Like the aurora borealis. And every aura has a color.” She tugged at my sleeve. “You could be an indigo and not know it. Tell me: Do you seem to have more empathy than those around you?”

  I remembered my PSAT vocabulary. “Like can I put myself in someone else’s shoes?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And are you more creative than those around you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. That’s not too hard around here.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  The conversation deflated after that. Wendy started looking around, maybe to find someone better to talk to. “So, where did you get your aura read?” I asked.

  “Cassadaga. In Florida. My dad took me.
”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s all spiritualists. It’s a very spiritual place. You should check it out when you’re down there.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I will.”

  “I know you will.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Arthur rejoined us. He had a handful of Chex mix.

  “Because I’m an indigo,” Wendy said.

  Arthur asked, “What’s that?”

  “It’s the color of my aura.”

  Arthur tried to pronounce it, like it was a foreign word. “In-DEE-grow?”

  “Indigo—like indigo on the light spectrum,” I explained. “ROY G BIV.”

  Arthur asked, somewhat dumbly, “Roy Biv? Who’s that?”

  “Nobody. It’s a mnemonic device.”

  Arthur rubbed at his eye, smearing one black line of makeup. “Huh?”

  “A memory trick. ROY G BIV. Each letter stands for a color on the spectrum.”

  “Relax, cuz. I know what it is. I’m just bustin’ them on you. I know all that stuff.”

  “Oh.”

  “I was good in science.” He asked Wendy, “Indigo? So that means you’re … what? Like a grape?”

  Wendy didn’t respond to that. She checked around furtively. Then she whispered to both of us, “Who wants a drink? We have beer. We have rum punch!”

  Arthur made a dismissive gesture with his hand. He answered curtly, “Not me,” and walked outside.

  I shook my head. “No. I’d better not, either.”

  Wendy shrugged. She stepped into the dining room and grabbed two pieces of candy corn. “I love these. Love them, love them, love them.”

  She took me by the arm and led me back to that spot against the wall, the spot where the pirate had been. He wasn’t there now.

  She told me, “Open your mouth.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just do it.”

  I complied.

  She placed a piece of candy corn on the tip of her tongue. Then, out of nowhere, she leaned into me, like for a kiss. She slid her tongue and the candy inside my mouth. I took it off with my lips, letting them run down the length of her tongue.

  It was incredibly exciting.

  Wendy reloaded her tongue with another piece, and we did it again.