by Brian Hodge
“I almost forgot how bad that smell really is,” he said.
He wasn’t talking about the zucchini.*
A little later that evening I dug through the trash and pulled out the previous night’s newspaper. I hadn’t read the account of my run-in with Dennis Lawton, and I still wasn’t any too crazy about the idea. You give yourself enough time and you can convince yourself that most anything didn’t really happen. But see it in print and it becomes official.
Drowned, Levitt had said. Lived a few miles out of town, Levitt said.
The paper described him as having lived eight miles north of town on Route 37. Roughly a mile from Tri-Lakes.
It took me longer than usual to fall asleep that night.
Chapter 7
A good night’s sleep did wonders for both Aaron and me. He apologized Wednesday morning and I was ready to forgive and forget about the scene in the kitchen. Both of us had been under more strain than usual lately, though for vastly different reasons. Mom didn’t intervene, either. No doubt she was glad to see us working it out on our own. Whatever roles mothers like to keep playing for their kids, I’m sure referee isn’t one of them.
Aaron worked again on Wednesday and Thursday, days that went considerably smoother. He had Friday off, and wasn’t scheduled to go in until five Saturday evening, and each of us planned on hitting the town with friends Friday night. Mom and Dad went out to eat, leaving us to scrounge supper on our own. I reheated some Hamburger Helper that did the trick.
Phil and Rick came by for me not long after we’d eaten. Since they knew Mom and Dad were gone, they let themselves in and stood on the landing, yelling something about the vice squad and a raid. I appeared on the second floor with arms folded over my chest.
“You guys are worse than the real thing,” I said.
Phil flipped me off, but Rick merely ignored me and asked, “Got your dancing shoes?”
“Not so fast. Mom, uh, says I have to clean up my room before I go anywhere tonight. You’re drafted to help.”
Rick grinned and tried his best to hide it by tilting his head. Phil burst into a loud, cackling fit of White Trash Joe laughter. “Mama’s boy! Apron strings! You puss!” He loved to imitate White Trash Joe.
I weathered the storm of abuse, and finally they trooped upstairs. When Rick saw my room he suggested we call in for an air strike and rebuild. We waded forth into the devastation. Rick and I plucked up the salvageable items and Phil vacuumed up everything we left or that tried to run away. I deemed the room presentable in ten minutes, for we had better things to do.
When the thump of a car door caught our ears, Phil peeked out the window. “Uh oh. Look what just showed up.”
A blue Pinto sat parked at the curb behind Phil’s Duster. A tall, obese figure jounced his way up the walk, lank hair slapping his ears and neck as his belly quivered behind a too-tight shirt.
“I haven’t seen Hurdles since school was out,” Rick said, then poked a finger down his throat and made gagging noises.
“Don’t panic,” I said. “He’s probably here for my brother.”
Phil made a sour face. “That’s sick.”
I punched him in the chest.
Rick crept to my window, peering around the curtains. “I don’t want to take any chances. Hey, wait … he’s not stopping at the front door. He’s going around to the side.”
“Ah, the servants’ entrance,” I said. “Come on, that’s our cue. Let’s break for it.”
They followed my lead down the hallway, down the stairs, and out the door. We sprinted across the lawn toward Phil’s car. Rick started to giggle loudly, and when Phil turned to shush him he tripped on nothing and fell flat, long arms and legs flying, air rushing out in a loud “OOF!” Highly skilled commandos, that was us.
Only after we were pulling away did I glance back at our side door, off the carport. Aaron still hadn’t let Hurdles in yet, and he stood watching us. He cocked his head to one side, as if trying to figure out why things had to be that way. His face looked loose and sad, much as a Bassett hound’s does. I couldn’t meet that stare.
We grabbed a case of beer and Phil drove us west, out of town. Rick in the back with his Martin twelve-string, leaned over the front seat between us. We opened beers and the night was ours.
“I propose a toast, to me,” Phil said, and barely restrained pride coated his voice. “I got another date with Connie next weekend.”
Rick and I patted him on the back, congratulated him, granted him the first toast of the night. It was well-deserved. Connie Browne had been a constant fixation in Phil’s mind for two years, ever since her family had moved into town. He called her a blonde, fair-skinned goddess, and I guess that’s as good a description as any. But it had only been within the past month that he’d worked up nerve enough to do something about it.
Phil laughed. “I called to ask her out for tonight, but she said she was busy. I hate that word. Busy. It’s so damn vague.”
“And girls really know how to use it, too,” I said.
“Right. So I told her, ‘Fine, sorry to bother you, now if you’ll excuse me I’ll go stick my head in the oven.’ She said she didn’t want that on her conscience, so why didn’t we plan on next Friday?” Phil sighed and belted down some beer. “Good thing, too. Our oven’s electric.”
Singing “Back in the Saddle Again” as only he couldn’t, with Rick scurrying around on guitar in a vain attempt to follow, Phil drove us by Connie’s house He slowed and honked and gazed at the house as if it were a religious shrine, but didn’t dare stop. Connie’s dad made little secret of his opinion that the Markleys were beneath the Brownes. Economically, I guess they were. Both her dad and Phil’s worked at the tire plant outside of town, but Mr. Browne was in purchasing and Phil’s dad was a shift supervisor.
And there are those who say a caste system doesn’t exist in America.
We drove on, and eventually I had to take a leak. Phil refused to stop, contending that it would make a man out of me. I grabbed a glass he’d gotten from McDonald’s — Connie worked there, and Phil drove through every chance he got — and unzipped my fly. Ultimatum.
“You keep your pecker out of my Mayor McCheese glass!” Phil cried, snatching the glass from my hands. “Is nothing sacred to you?” He shuddered and wedged the glass between his thigh and the car door, then decided it was time to go to Tri-Lakes. I’d have been just as happy somewhere else, but kept quiet.
We parked and pissed in the weeds and stretched and belched at the moon. Rick retuned his guitar and excused himself. He sauntered on down to the pond, and as he sat at the bank and began to play, Phil turned off the stereo. Rick’s tune was formless, jazzy. A single-line melody sprinkled with a few chords here and there. He seemed to be improvising it. I found it slow, sad, wistful.
“You know what I got in the mail today?” Phil asked.
“Scat porn?”
“I’m serious, man.”
“Okay. So tell.”
“I got my housing assignment from Andrews College.”
“Oh.” I shifted against the fender. All the unpleasant implications of that statement seemed to hit home at once.
“I got the dorm I wanted. But my roommate’s name is Ashley Hopkins.” He laughed softly. “Ashley. What kind of name is that? He’ll probably wear eye shadow.”
We laughed, drank. Rick’s melody worked its way through the still air, the perfect soundtrack for the bittersweet feelings I held within. I wiped away a sheen of sweat from my forehead. Humidity hung damp and heavy in the air, like invisible fog. The only thing that could’ve made it worse was a swarm of mosquitoes. I wondered where they were. It didn’t seem right.
“You know,” I said, “come this fall, things won’t be changing much for Rick and me, driving back and forth to junior college. You, though. Four hours away up in Bloomington. I’m gonna miss you, you know that?”
“Maybe you’ll join me there next year.”
“Maybe I will.” Someday, yea
h, but I wasn’t ready now, no way.
“That’d be great.” He nodded and grinned broadly. Then Phil lightly touched my shoulder. “And anytime you feel like heading up for a visit, or to check the place out, you’ve got a place to stay.”
We noticed that Rick’s tune was finished. He rejoined us, the guitar slung over one shoulder, and he seemed a bit wobbly. Being smaller than Phil and me, he showed his beer quicker. His long hair made him look younger too, like an innocent child. “What’s going on?”
“We’re talking about school,” I said. “Phil’s in the gay dorm.”
Rick grinned. “Coming out of the closet at last, huh, Phil?”
“My roommate’s name is Ashley,” Phil said, taking a thoughtful sip. “Yeah, he’ll probably be a scrawny little fellow, with long hair, and he’ll play guitar.”
Rick strutted over to stand before Phil, who had better than six inches on him. “All right, asshole, you’re just jealous ‘cause I’m gonna be the hottest guitar since Eddie Van Halen.”
“You?” Phil laughed. “Okay, so you were a big deal in high school and got voted ‘Most Talented’ and tied for second on ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ and everybody loved you and thought you shit ice cream. But that’s over now. C’mon, Twang, time to face reality.”
Rick grinned and leaned in, backing Phil against the car. The gauntlet of challenge had been cast and accepted. Then he bounded away, letting loose with some furious flamenco guitar. He got about ten yards away, cried “Ole!” and thrashed his final chord and whirled to face us again.
“I’ve got a surprise for you two,” he said. “You’re both on the guest list to hear me play two weeks from tonight.”
I whistled and clapped. “All right! Where? Who with?”
“Eclipse.” They were an area band, real rockers, with quite a legion of followers. “They got a gig down in Carbondale, at the Watering Hole. That’s close to the SIU campus. Their lead player is having his knee operated on, something stupid like that, and I’m filling in. Places tend to get irate when you don’t show up with the number of musicians you’ve contracted for. But get this … their drummer told me they were having problems with the guy. Big ego, eats too many pills. If they like me live as well as in rehearsals, they might boot him out and keep me.”
“Good luck, Twang,” I said, and saluted. “Kick ass.”
“When you’re up there in the rock and roll stratosphere,” Phil said, “don’t forget about us poor ordinary mortals down here.”
Twang countered with something, but I tuned them out. When it got like this, it was like watching Spock and McCoy on Star Trek.
I emptied my beer and crushed the can and tossed it toward our empties sack. A perfect two-pointer.
The night was so unusually quiet. The silence caught my ear far more readily than did their talking. Silence wasn’t right, not in summer. There should’ve been bugs buzzing away in the weeds, frogs droning by the pond. This just was not right.
And then I realized what I was doing.
I was rubbing my arms, my shoulders, just as you do when late autumn creeps in without warning and you realize your coat isn’t heavy enough. Five minutes ago the heat and humidity had been thick enough to slice. Now the temperature seemed to have dropped thirty or forty degrees.
And that definitely wasn’t right.
I think Phil and Rick were about to remark on it when the wind hit. A frigid blast of air swept over us, coming from the direction of the grove. November air, cold, crisp, almost numbing. Northern air.
“Son of a bitch!” Phil cried over the howling wind. “What is this?”
Rick’s hair was a swirling mass. He pushed it back from his eyes. We all scrambled for the car at once. Phil clambered behind the wheel and fired it up. I fell into the shotgun seat. Rick stopped long enough to scoop up our empties sack. Ever Nature’s guardian.
“Forget that!” Phil yelled.
Rick stood up, sack in hand. First he looked at us, then at the grove. His head cocked to one side, and his free arm started to rise, as if he were going to point at something.
“Screw that, come on up.”
Rick heaved the sack toward the trees, a gesture that looked comically defiant. Empty beer cans flew out, catching the moonlight before clanging to the ground. Rick jumped into the back seat and Phil was laying down rubber before Rick even shut the door. We circled the cul-de-sac and rocketed back up the drive. We all glanced back, and I don’t know but what each of us expected something huge and terrible to come charging out of the grove after us, with angry red eyes and a roar to match.
Phil had us heading south again on Route 37 before any of us said a word. He turned to Rick and asked, “What were you staring at back there? Right after you picked up the sack.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You were about to point at something.”
“Forget it,” Rick said, trying his best to smooth down his hair. He was by far the most disheveled of us. “It was nothing.”
I grabbed another beer and held it just beyond his reach. “Come on, tell.”
Rick sighed. “Okay, but promise not to laugh.” He frowned, then looked at me. “Now, this was for just a second, no more. But I thought I saw something big and furry in there … kind of like a bear.”
Phil sputtered, making an exaggerated attempt at stifling laughter. Then he cranked up the volume on the tape player — the ultimate insult.
Rick sulked in the back seat, and I felt an odd empathy with him. Because I knew precisely what it felt like to see something you didn’t think anyone else would believe.
It’s the loneliest feeling in the world.
Chapter 8
Two days later. Sunday.
That evening I’d been invited to a barbecue that Phil’s older sister and her husband were hosting. They were pretty famous for their barbecues. They’d serve up about eight tons of ribs with homemade sauce, and coleslaw, and beans, and corn on the cob, and the decadents of ancient Rome couldn’t have had it much better. Except whereas they had orgies, we played volleyball.
They lived on the northern edge of town, and as I neared the turnoff for their house, I shot on past. I knew where I had to go first.
I suppose that curiosity, more than anything, made me head out to Tri-Lakes again. By Sunday I was feeling sheepish about letting my imagination run away with me Friday night. Douse us with an unseasonal wind and we come down with a fast case of the jitters.
Plenty of daylight was left when I arrived, although I wasn’t sure what I expected to find once I got there. I parked, wandered around. Everything seemed normal enough, bugs and birds aplenty, the splash of a fish in the pond. Idyllic. I went so far as to step inside the grove. Trees and underbrush grew thick, sometimes tangled, blotting out much of the daylight and turning the grove dusky within.
I pressed deeper in, kicking aside frail, broken limbs and vines. Shafts of sunlight slanted through like spotlights on a stage.
When I emerged on the other side, I thought I saw something in the grass ahead. Not far, fifteen or twenty yards. Something colored a dull gray. I walked closer.
It was a stone block of some kind, half buried in the ground, overgrown with weeds. It looked to have been a foundation block for a house. Phil had once said that Tri-Lakes was going to be a subdivision, and I thought that plans had been scrapped before construction began. But a closer look at the crumbling stone made me think it was a lot older than a few years. I kicked at it. Buried solid.
As I retraced my steps on the way back, I stopped by the largest tree. Stared up at it as I had the night we’d first found Tri-Lakes. Its rough bark looked like the thick, dark scales of a sleeping dragon.
Welcome, I’d felt it say. I’ve been waiting a long, long time.
“What is it with you?” I muttered.
Coming for you.
Were those two voices one and the same? This place … the first night of discovery, the business with Dennis Lawton’s body, now Friday night’s wind and Rick’s bear
. They all seemed like pieces from the outer edge of a jigsaw puzzle whose middle remained unassembled.
“What is it with you?”
The tree stared down, silent and mocking. And right then I knew that I had to keep coming back until I found out. I had no choice.
But such is destiny.
Chapter 9
I worked a full day the next Tuesday, returning home worn and ragged, almost asleep on my feet in the shower. I ate an early supper; Mom had fixed a cache of cold things since she and Dad were leaving the next morning for a few days’ vacation down at a lake resort in Kentucky. Finally, like a dying man crawling for water in the desert, I crawled onto my bedroom floor for a nap. I might have slumbered away until morning if I hadn’t had company.
My visitor arrived shortly after seven-thirty. I looked at my clock immediately after being awakened by heavy footsteps clomping in the hail. I closed my eyes again to play possum, barely peeking out under the lids. You can never be too careful.
Run-down sneakers appeared in the doorway, the left bursting at its seams. My eyes traveled past jeans and an overstuffed tank top and white shoulders until I saw Hurdles Horton staring down at me, his face bored. I wanted nothing more than to curl up and turn my back to him. He shifted his considerable bulk from one foot to the other and boards groaned, then he coughed loudly. Without covering his mouth.
No use. He’d stand vigil in my doorway all night if he had to.
I yawned and stretched and sat up, back against my bed. “Hi, Hurdles.”
He nodded. “Were you asleep?”
I twisted to pop my spine with a satisfying crack. “No, I heard so much about comas I thought I’d give one a try.”
He walked in and sat at my desk chair. Make yourself at home, Hurdles.
“I stopped by to see if Aaron wanted to do something, but your mom said he was at work. She said I could come up and see if you wanted to. So. Wanna do something?”
