Tales from The Lake 3

by Tales from The Lake

  The class chewed on this for a moment, and then Trembley resumed the video. The narrator’s flat voice filled the room. Students drifted off again, one by one, like lights going out in a prison block.

  Except Freda, who watched the dispiriting images glide across the screen. Current snaps of her dying town. The soaped-up windows, the jalopy cars. The dirty river, broiling with trash and swaths of yellow foam. And Barrett Tool, all crumbling brick and crashed-in windows. Workers out on the lawn by the water—a patchwork of lunch buckets and tired, apple-doll faces.

  She could use a good summer, something to look forward to.

  Hell, they all could.

  ***

  Billy sat in bed, knee propped up, puzzling over his calculus textbook. He turned some numbers in his head, couldn’t make them fit. After a moment he closed the book and dashed it across the room.

  He fell back on his pillows, feeling frustrated and lonely. His surgical follow-up had not gone well. Another month of bed rest. And right smack in the meaty part of spring. There’d be no pickup baseball games for him. No smoking cigs and guzzling Pabst with Jim and Freda, down by the railroad tracks. All because he wanted to save three bucks, sneak into the Friday night football game by scaling the visitors’ bleachers.

  The bedroom door opened a crack. His mother’s big blue eye winked at him.

  “Everything alright?”

  “Fine, Ma. Dropped my book is all.”

  She came in, and a sharp odor followed her. Something that looked like vomit was splashed across the front of her Garth Brooks T-shirt. She was holding her bandaged hand. A few red drops had soaked through the gauze. The tip of her index finger looked purple and swollen, like a tick about to pop.

  She picked up the textbook with her good hand and brought it over to Billy. He took it and set it aside.

  “Maybe I could hire a tutor.”

  “We can’t afford that.” Billy forced a smile. “I’ll be fine. Just have to concentrate.”

  The big front door slammed shut downstairs. There was a scurry of footsteps, some commotion in the hall, and then Freda and Jim were in the room. Freda unshouldered her bulging backpack, wiped sweat from her forehead with the sleeve of her hoodie. She took a breath, wrinkled her nose, and glanced in the direction of the kitchen.

  Jim, as always, looked cool and unperturbed, caught somewhere between awareness and oblivion.

  “Dude,” Freda said, turning to Billy. “Have you heard of this thing called Scream Night?”

  Billy’s mom slid between Freda and Jim. “Don’t mind me.”

  “Oh, hi,” Freda said. “Sorry.”

  “Whoa,” Jim said, pointing at her injured hand. “What happened?”

  “She got hurt at work,” Billy said.

  “Again?” Freda said.

  Billy’s mom raised her hand, adjusted the gauze. “It’s not that bad. My fault, really. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Right,” Billy said, sitting up, triggering an avalanche of magazines and wrapped fruit strips. “You always stick up for them.”

  “They’ve been good to us.”

  “Yeah, just great. We’re living in the lap of luxury, all thanks to Barrett Tool.”

  An alarm sounded in the kitchen. A ribbon of black smoke drifted into the room. Billy’s mom cursed and ran off, slamming the door behind her.

  “So?” Freda said, sitting on the end of the bed.

  “So what?” Billy said, unwrapping a fruit strip and tearing into it like a wild dog.

  “Do you know about Scream Night?”

  “Think so,” he said through a mouthful of strawberry-banana gruel. “Melinda Barrett?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Freda said, bouncing up and down. “Wow, Trembley’s really gotten to you.”

  “Best buds,” Jim added, and chuckled.

  Billy grunted. Mr. Trembley had turned him onto Garland town history. The old hippie had called to check on him after his knee surgery, and they’d ended up shooting the breeze for two hours. The next day Freda and Jim came over with a stack of dusty books to accompany his usual folder of homework assignments. Billy ate up the monster tomes—all of them from Trembley’s personal collection—until he could almost smell the horseshit on the stone-paved streets, the industrial stink from the leather tanneries and furniture factories that used to line Upper Main Street.

  “What do you know about it?” Freda said, drawing her legs up Indian-style.

  “Not a whole lot,” Billy said. “Started after she died, obviously. Supposed to bring good luck or something. Lame, if you ask me.”

  “Yeah, yeah. We know all that. What else?”

  “I don’t know,” Billy said, and nibbled his fruit strip. “They would do it down by the river. She drowned, Melinda Barrett. Fell into the Millers at a carnival, or something. Why are you so interested? Was Trembley talking about it?”

  “Yes. Well, it was in that documentary. Not Scream Night, but there was this picture, a bunch of old-fashioned kids hanging around the water. I asked Trembley about it, and he told us the story.”

  “The documentary, sure,” Billy said. He hadn’t seen it. The only television in the apartment was in the living room, and his mother would sooner sell a kidney than miss her nightly shows. Trembley had promised to lend him the tape.

  “So, what else?” Freda said.

  “Guess the factory workers took it hard. She treated them real good, like family.” He looked over at the closed door, listened to the scrape of pots and pans, the strained sounds of his overworked mother trying to salvage another cheap supper. “Not like now.”

  “And?” Freda pressed.

  “God, I feel like I’m on the witness stand. I read somewhere she was partially deaf. That’s what did her in, I think. Got knocked into the Millers by a runaway horse, couldn’t hear the people yelling at her to move.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense,” Freda added, chewing on the end of her thumb. “That’s why they’d scream, to warn her.”

  “How could a dead lady hear anything?” Jim said, taking a pair of Mickey Mouse ears off a bookshelf and pulling them onto his big head. “Once you’re in the ground, that’s it.”

  “It’s symbolic,” Freda said.

  “Right,” Jim said absently, examining himself in the dresser mirror. “Symbolic.”

  “Well, guess what?” Freda said, patting Billy’s foot. “I’m bringing it back. Already been spreading the word.”

  Billy tossed his empty wrapper onto the floor. “What for?”

  “Because this town could use some good luck. Don’t you think?”

  “But it’s not real,” Billy said. “Never was. Might as well rub a rabbit’s foot, or get yourself a four-leaf clover.”

  “Ah,” Freda said, wagging a finger at him. “Been thinking about that. In that picture we saw there were twenty, thirty kids. I bet they weren’t loud enough. Not with so few of them. But imagine if a hundred of us got together, going all out, top of our lungs. We might actually see something. How cool would that be?”

  “Shit, man,” Jim said, his shoulders sagging. “I never thought it could really happen.” He took off the mouse ears and let them fall to the floor. “I’ll have nightmares.”

  “You’re both insane,” Billy said. “Sincerely, how did I get stuck with you two?”

  “Well, it’s happening,” Freda said. “Next Friday.”

  Billy laid back, stared at the ceiling. “Great. You can tell me all about it.”

  “Oh yeah,” Jim said. He squeezed onto the bed beside Freda. “How’d it go today?”

  “Another month.”

  “Sorry, bud,” Freda said. “Here, these might cheer you up.” She hefted her backpack onto the bed, and Jim helped her unload several musty volumes. “From Trembley. That documentary has him full of piss and vinegar. He wants you to read these.”

  Billy grabbed one and flipped through the pages. Motes of dust tickled his nose.

  “Great,” he said. “Who needs a social lif
e when you’ve got books?”

  ***

  By the time Freda turned onto Exchange Street, the sun was already setting behind Barrett Tool. She was late, had gotten roped into helping her mother fold a couple tons of laundry, but stopped for a moment anyway to admire the bright orange halo encircling the building, the rich colors splashed across the Millers. She was struck by how pretty the town could look sometimes, with all its grittiness stripped away.

  She reached the bridge, slid down the rocky riverbank, and damn, the turnout was even greater than she’d hoped for. She got her hundred kids, plus about fifty more. They were mingling in loose groups, passing joints, bottles of booze. Some had slipped off their shoes and were splashing around in the water. Everyone had paper roses pinned to their shirts.

  She looked around for Jim, tried to pick out his corkscrew hair, but couldn’t find him.

  Marcia Spokes, another student from Trembley’s soc class, emerged from a thicket of bodies. She spotted Freda, took a rose from a canvas sling she was wearing, and pinned it on her.

  “What’s this?” Freda said.

  “I made them,” Marcia said. Her breath was all rum and cigarettes. “So we could be like Melinda. Had to guess at the color, since all the pictures were in black and white. But roses are usually red, aren’t they?”

  “Sure are,” Freda said, fiddling with the delicate tissue paper.

  Someone started clapping. Soon the whole assembly was applauding and chanting Freda’s name. She took a little bow, then walked toward the river, stopping to hit a huge spliff rolled in a couple cigar wrappers. She hopped onto a big rock and raised her hands. Things got quiet. She scanned the crowd. Glowing cigarettes dotted the gloom like red fireflies. An army of flashlights lighted the underside of the bridge, its generations of lurid graffiti. No Jim.

  “Sorry, Jimbo,” Freda said, and turned to face the factory. The river rushed by, misting her skin. She threw her head back, and like some mad orchestra whose conductor had just dropped her wand, they all began to scream.

  ***

  Jim stood outside the Friend’s Café, looking across Main Street at the puke-green bridge. He saw a few shadowy figures disappear underneath its hulking skeleton, and he felt as depressed as he ever would, picturing the good time he was missing. He’d bet anything their fathers weren’t drunks, didn’t need to be retrieved from some scummy downtown barroom like a child who’d pissed himself at a birthday party. He shook his head, spat onto the sidewalk, then pushed through the saloon-style doors.

  The old man was in back, spread out on a pool table. Jim saw that he actually had pissed his pants; there was a big wet spot on the front of his jeans in the shape of a fried egg. He slapped his dad’s grizzled cheek, got him conscious enough to lead him out into the front room, holding him up under the arms like a big rag doll.

  The pair was almost at the exit when they were shoved aside by a couple men in twill pants and grease-stained T-shirts. Jim spun on his heels and fell on his ass; his father shot forward, as if from a cannon. Daddy-O landed underneath the Old West doors—which were still swinging from the men’s hasty exit—half in and half out, snoring like a grizzly bear full of sleeping pills.

  More patrons were leaving the bar, walking across the old man’s back like it was the world’s lumpiest welcome mat. One fellow came down on his father’s hand with a chunky work boot, and the sound Jim heard was like someone biting into crunchy cereal. He got to his hands and knees, and just managed to scoot out of the path of a big mama in baggy jeans and a Barrett Tool trucker hat. She was staring straight ahead, a dumb little smile on her round, sweaty face.

  Jim crawled underneath the doors, grabbed his dad and dragged him onto the sidewalk. He sat him up against their rust-covered van and peeked over the hood. Men and women were shuffling down the street, all of them with queer grins spread across their lips. They staggered out of bars and apartment houses, the VFW hall on the corner, turning right when they reached the end of the block, towards Upper Main Street.

  Jim sat on the van’s creaky bumper, out of breath and eminently confused. He turned his head at a noise across the way, by the bridge—the shriek of what sounded like a hundred and half screaming voices.

  ***

  Billy glanced out the open window. He could see pieces of the Exchange Street Bridge through gaps between the faded downtown buildings. He’d promised Freda he would listen, but there was no way he’d be able to hear them, no matter how loud they got.

  He turned back to his book, scribbled a date on a composition pad. He was putting together some notes for a letter he planned to write Mr. Trembley. They’d been doing that lately, trading thoughts on what they read. And with Scream Night on his mind, Billy had dug up some curious items—things that made him question the events surrounding Melinda Barrett’s freak drowning.

  She hadn’t died at a carnival but rather a summer picnic for Barrett Tool employees and their families. There’d been big barbeque pits, rides—including a Ferris wheel that’d run at the 1931 Colonial Exposition in Paris—and a travelling animal circus. Billy had come across all this in a book of historic newspaper articles, as well as an accompanying photo of Melinda Barrett and Aldo Brighenti posing with a gorgeous American Quarter horse. Gorgeous except for one detail: a missing ear. A gnarled hunk of cartilage stuck out from the side of the horse’s lopsided head like a big brown thumb. The caption underneath the pic was darkly concise: The last image of tool baroness Melinda Barrett, moments before her death. The article didn’t say if the one-eared horse had been the one to kick Mrs. Barrett into the Millers, but Billy thought it was a safe bet.

  He went on to find a set of court documents in another book Trembley had lent him, A Record of Local Manufactories, 1850-1950. It was a motion that Aldo Brighenti had filed with the Massachusetts Superior Court, claiming the illegal transfer of Sydney Barrett’s half of the business to Melinda upon his death. This was in September of 1932, less than a year before she was carried downriver. Billy searched, but there’d been nothing among the hundreds of other documents to indicate an outcome.

  He got to thinking about the party again, the bizarre nature of Melinda Barrett’s demise. More than two hundred people had been on the lawn behind Barrett Tool that day, but only Melinda was struck down when that rogue equine went on its rampage. Plus he thought it was strange how Brighenti had simply absorbed Barrett’s share of the factory after her death. On a whim, Billy consulted his set of supermarket encyclopedias. He discovered that American Quarters were docile creatures, unlikely to commit random acts of violence. That is, he theorized, unless they were trained to. He took another look at the picture of Melinda and Aldo Brighenti, tried to find something in the guy’s appearance that suggested foreknowledge of his partner’s impending doom. Billy stared at that photo for a long time, until it all melted into a gray smear, then gave up.

  He knew it was weak detective work. The closest he’d ever come to solving a mystery were the games of Clue he played with Freda and Jim. Still, he wanted Trembley’s opinion.

  The sound of the kitchen door startled him, and he dropped the book in his lap, squishing his balls. He groaned and pushed the book aside. Noises in the hall, the creak of rickety stairs. He peered out the window and saw his mother walking down the driveway. She was in her robe and fuzzy slippers. The bandage on her hand had come loose; it trailed behind her, blowing in the breeze.

  “Ma,” he called, but she kept going, slid behind the wheel of her dented Dodge. Billy could see her grinning through the windshield. The expression was cold and mean—it made him think of a villain in some spy flick, a split second before hitting the death switch.

  He yelled again, but his mother was already backing out. She ran over a mailbox, lurched forward, and scraped the side of a parked minivan before turning the corner.

  Billy blinked away the ghosts of the Dodge’s tail lights, watched the empty street. He wondered if she’d mixed up her prescriptions and taken some loopy cocktail of painkillers
and antibiotics.

  He sat back and pondered his mother’s strange exit, wondered if he should call the cops. He began flipping absently through his book, browsing the grainy pictures. After a few pages he stopped, went back. He pulled his bedside lamp closer.

  It was a picture of Aldo Brighenti’s retirement party. 1942, according to the simple caption, at his vacation home in Edenville, New York. It looked like a gala affair. There were steaming buffet tables, clutches of balloons, enough bunting and crepe paper to choke an elephant. Brighenti was handing a set of keys to a younger man, a fellow who looked too much like the old taskmaster not to be his son. And behind them, hitched to a tree and looking about two days from the grave, was a horse, missing one ear and appearing to grin as he worked on a big pile of apples.

  ***

  Freda rubbed her throat, surveyed her defeated troops. They’d gone at it for ten minutes, looking more and more embarrassed for each other as their screams got weaker, finally calling it quits after Marcia Spokes got a bloody nose, panicked and pulled her boyfriend into the river, nearly killing them both.

  Now everyone was just hanging around, draining what was left of their beers and wine coolers. A group of guys were lighting their paper roses and tossing them into the river, seeing how far they’d go before the foamy water doused the flames.

  Freda watched, liking the way the paper burned colorful in the gathering darkness. It made her feel less foolish somehow. Most of the little torches didn’t last long, though, going out within a couple seconds of hitting the water. Except one. It held its place, the small blue and orange flame licking the cool air. Freda figured it’d gotten marooned on a jutting rock, would eventually burn off like all the rest.

  Only it didn’t. The fire grew, and now she could see that the flame wasn’t on the water but crawling up the side of the Barrett Tool factory, across the river. Shapes started to materialize in its windows, floor by floor; clumsy, flailing things that looked like drunken shadows. Glass exploded from the side of the building, sparkled in the last scraps of light, rained onto the unkempt lawn below.