The following day began with a sprinkle that provided little rejuvenation for the ailing lawns and vegetation of Meadowton. A torrid sun, seemingly incensed by its temporary displacement from the heavens, burned through the shallow clouds and dried the moisture from the fields. The remaining precipitation hung like a damp sponge over the neighborhood, smothering the atmosphere with humidity seldom experienced in the northeast. What started out as an unexpected reprieve from the hottest summer in thirty years, transformed into the muggiest morning thus far.
No amount of heat could have kept two boys from seizing their summer vacation. Even before the sun emerged from the clouds, Kyle and Robby had set out on their bikes in search of mischief. Unlike yesterday, they had no specific destination in mind. By the time they grew weary of pedaling, they found themselves in front of the township’s park. Aside from the sprawling slopes of lawn and plastic-molded jungle gyms, Homer Park contained the lone baseball field in Meadowton.
On most afternoons, the field was overrun with kids and adults alike, each bickering for their fair share of playing time. It had reached a maddening point where the arguments outnumbered the actual games played. Because of this, Kyle and Robby learned to find other things to do, but eventually even they couldn’t resist the urge of feeling the clay infield crumble under their shoes.
Apparently, the sweltering temperatures had proven to be a deterrent to the crowd on this day. Mostly everyone stayed home—everyone except for one exceptional young talent. His name was Casey Collins, and he was revered as the best adolescent ballplayer in the entire county, maybe even in the whole state of New Jersey. Still six months shy of his thirteenth birthday, Casey had mastered the fluid movements and discipline of competitive athletes nearly twice his age.
Kyle and Robby rated him as a prodigy to the sport, a potential major league all-star in the making. They understood that Casey was consumed with his quest to become the best at the game. When others studied math or science, Casey took batting practice or worked on his curve ball. When not engrossed in the physical aspect of the game, he’d absorb baseball encyclopedias and recited obscure statistics of favorite players. He made no apologies for his obsession, not even to his parents, who finally accepted the notion that their son was born to play ball.
It was not unusual for a boy Casey’s age to harbor dreams of greatness. Whether it was in the guise of an astronaut, a fireman, or a cowboy, this was the fuel needed to keep the fires smoldering in a child’s imagination. Kyle had set his hopes on becoming a famous screenwriter for big-budget Hollywood productions, and Robby once bragged that he’d be a favorite to capture pole position at the Indianapolis 500—as soon as he learned to drive. Few boys, however, possessed the commitment and sheer tenacity that Casey developed for baseball. He had convinced nearly everyone, including his teachers, that he’d be a starting pitcher for the New York Yankees before his twenty-first birthday.
To achieve this goal, Casey labored at least three hours a day by hurling baseballs into the steel backstop at Homer Park’s ball field. Sometimes he rustled up a few neighborhood kids to take a swing at his fastball, but no one close to his age stepped into the batter’s box with an expectation of getting a foul tip off of Casey’s repertoire of pitches. To ease the handicap, Casey let his friends hit the ball occasionally, but an untold number of them had retreated from the field in search of more beatable opponents.
Kyle and Robby remained the two exceptions to this boycott. Even though Casey played no favorites in regard to whom he struck out, Kyle liked Casey’s company enough to know that he was a good buddy when he wasn’t humiliating the competition on the diamond. Besides, Kyle had arrived at the conclusion that nurturing such friendships bettered his own chances at becoming more popular. In a couple of years, Kyle guessed that Casey’s athletic prowess would make him the envy of his high school peers.
Since neither Kyle nor Robby brought their baseball gloves today, Casey assumed that they had come to watch. And watch they did. From Casey’s position on the pitching mound, no one appeared more in command of his domain. The sun shadowed his face, but there was no mistaking the sway of his arm as it cocked to fire another accurate pitch across home plate. Pitch after pitch collided into the backstop with a resounding clang. Instead of weakening with each consecutive toss, Casey’s stamina increased, causing his fastballs to gain velocity.
Casey stood at least four inches taller than all the other kids in school. Though visibly lean, he was unusually muscular for a boy still on the verge of puberty. He had dark skin, with cropped brown curls flecked with golden highlights. His cinnamon-colored eyes were deep-set against his brow, and he offered a wide, toothy grin to his friends and foes alike. Some didn’t know what to make of this smile. Was he purposely mocking those who he deemed inferior? Those who knew Casey best realized that this wasn’t his intention at all. Casey simply enjoyed perfecting his craft, and for those fortunate enough to derive joy from their endeavors, such expressions formed quite naturally on the lips without ulterior motives.
Robby, the instigator of this gathering to be sure, wasted no time challenging Casey to a contest. Though Robby was fully aware of his ineptitude for the game, he liked getting Casey riled up. He immediately grabbed one of Casey’s baseball bats and casually strode up to home plate. Casey smirked with confidence as Robby adjusted his cap and dungarees.
“You think you can hit my fastball, farm boy?” Casey laughed, flashing his signature smile.
“I’ve seen better arms on a cooked chicken,” Robby countered, as he slapped the tip of the bat against home plate. “Let’s see some real heat, okay?”
Casey bit his bottom lip and gripped a baseball tightly between his fingers. “You asked for it,” he said, just slightly above a whisper.
Kyle squinted into the sun’s glare as dust stirred up from the infield. He knew what was coming, and he almost felt sorry for Robby’s display of arrogance. Casey released the ball with such speed that the swipe of air could be heard as it moved toward home plate. As expected, Robby dropped his bat and dove to the ground, far outside the batter’s box. The ball sailed untouched into the backstop, sticking momentarily between the fence’s metal webbing.
Casey shook his head and stepped off the mound. He trotted in toward home plate and helped Robby off the dirt. Kyle let out a jubilant chuckle and gasped, “Hey, Casey, why don’t you let the farm boy hit one?”
“That was my slowest pitch,” Casey answered, extending his hand toward Robby with a wink of his eye.
After Robby picked his backside up and brushed the dust from his shirt, he patted Casey on his shoulder. “Who ever taught you to throw a ball like that?”
“I guess I taught myself,” Casey replied.
“What’s your secret?” Kyle piped in, secretly hoping that Casey might reveal some magic antidote to account for his skills.
Casey calmly removed his sleeveless T-shirt and wrapped it around the top of his head. “There ain’t no secrets, Kyle,” he explained. “Just lots of practice.”
Kyle smiled with rapt admiration as he and Robby followed Casey over to a wooden bench near the dugout. Casey unscrewed the cap from a plastic water bottle and poured the contents down his throat. After quenching his thirst, he passed the bottle to Kyle and Robby in turn. They both took a swig.
“If you keep it up, Casey, you just might make the Yankees’ starting rotation a lot sooner than you planned,” Robby beamed, setting the empty bottle on the bench.
Casey welcomed such compliments from time to time, but he didn’t play the game solely for praise. Coming from a relatively poor family, Casey wanted to make a better life for his parents and younger sister. The Collins lived on the south end of Meadowton—in the rundown section of town—where the few remaining sod farmers and fruit vendors struggled to pay their bills and put a decent supper on the table. Casey had promised his parents a long time ago, when he was just five, that they wouldn’t have to fret about money or working odd jobs when he grew up. He’d take care of t
heir needs, no matter how modest or extravagant.
After resting briefly on the bench, the three boys spent the next hour taking turns at hitting the baseball. As usual, Casey did most of the pitching, but he let his friends swat their share of balls on the fly to the outfield’s grass. The intense heat proved to be the biggest threat of this day, however, and even Casey grew fatigued under the blistering sunlight.
“We sure do need a good spell of rain,” Casey announced breathlessly, peering up at the nearly cloudless sky. “Seems like we’re in for a hot summer, boys.”
“Yeah,” Kyle and Robby agreed simultaneously. Soon afterwards, the boys found refuge from the heat under the shade of some oak trees bordering the park. Kyle and Robby had removed their shirts by now, too, and lied side-by-side on the yellowed grass. Each of the three took turns watching the sky, wondering when a sudden storm cloud would float into the path of undying sunlight. When this became a futile mission, they turned their attentions to the field again. It was completely empty by noon.
“Some start to our summer vacation, huh, guys?” Kyle grumbled with dissatisfaction.
“Why should summer be any different than the rest of the year around here?” Casey questioned, yawning to openly display his boredom. “Face it, Kyle, we’re the only kids our age left around here.”
“He’s right, Kyle,” Robby agreed with Casey. “It’s not like it was a few years ago. Most of the kids go off to summer camp nowadays.”
“Maybe we should’ve went this year, too,” Kyle thought.
“Nah,” Casey said, waving his hand at a buzzing deerfly near his armpit. “They got loads of soccer tournaments in those places, and maybe even a basketball court to shoot some hoops, but no baseball. I can’t be in a place for three weeks without playing my game.”
“What about fishing?” Kyle asked.
“Who cares about fishing?” Casey yawned more emphatically.
Of late, Robby had developed the annoying and sometimes obvious habit of agreeing with almost everything Casey uttered, including his opinion on fishing. “Casey’s got a point,” Robby blurted out. “Fishing gets a little tiresome after awhile.”
Kyle knew that Robby would have tossed his tackle box into a river if he thought it might conjure a stare of approval from Casey. Rather than challenge his best friend on his most recent stance, he decided to think of something to do that they could all agree upon. Suddenly, Kyle had a notion that was bound to meet with some protest.
“Instead of sitting around here all day and watching the grass shrivel up, I was thinking that we could do something different,” Kyle started.
Robby groaned and covered his face with his hands. He knew what Kyle was going to suggest before the words came sputtering through his lips.
“Now is as good as time as ever to go and check out Ben Murden’s house,” Kyle announced, ignoring Robby’s tortured expression.
Casey swung his head sharply toward Kyle. His eyes widened with perplexity before he asked, “Did I hear you correctly?”
Kyle nodded his chin once and answered ingenuously, “Yeah, I guess you heard of him, too?”
Robby tried unsuccessfully to withhold his hilarity, but Casey didn’t know whether or not to laugh of slap Kyle on the top of his head with his baseball glove. Robby finally came to Kyle’s defense by explaining the situation to Casey. “It’s half my fault. I got him thinking about that old coot yesterday. I guess he just doesn’t know when to quit.”
“I’m just looking for something different for us to do,” Kyle replied.
Though Casey didn’t make it a habit of berating his friends, he decided to make an exception in this instance. “Kyle,” he snapped, “no offense, but are you completely out of your wits?”
“I thought you guys might want to do something exciting,” Kyle said, kneeling up from the grass.
“Exciting, maybe,” Casey replied, coaxing Robby for his assistance, “but going anywhere near Ben Murden is just plain crazy.”
“Come on, Kyle,” Robby added, “I thought we were finished with this conversation yesterday.”
Kyle never complied with any such agreement; he merely delayed his curiosity until he could work up the nerve to investigate the details for himself. Of course he would rather confront Murden with a friend or two, but he was prepared to venture forth alone if necessary.
“I’m ready to see that old man today,” Kyle confirmed. “I know the way now. His house won’t be hard for me to find.”
Sensing as though Kyle must have been joking, Casey reached his hand over and felt Kyle’s forehead with his fingers, pretending to register his temperature. “Funny,” he smirked at Robby, “he doesn’t feel too warm to me.”
“But he’s definitely a sick puppy,” Robby simpered.
Now agitated by his friends’ antics, Kyle brushed Casey’s hand away with more force than was needed. “Quit it, guys,” he warned. “I’m being dead serious.” Kyle then stood up and pulled his T-shirt on over his head, all the while trying to disregard the quirky sounds of his friends’ amusement.
“Dead is exactly what you’ll be if you go near that old man,” Casey stated between his giggles. “Look, man, I don’t need to remind you of what that nutcase is capable of doing, do I?”
“Maybe he’s done nothing,” Kyle suggested, standing up and walking out from under the tree. After staring into the sunlight for only a moment, he sensed his body temperature soaring again. “From what I’ve been told, there’s no real evidence to prove that Ben Murden ever killed anyone.”
Casey adopted a more serious attitude as he sprang up in front of Kyle’s face. His nose was less than two inches from Kyle’s forehead when he barked, “Aren’t you forgetting about what happened to that young couple about six or seven years ago?”
Kyle appeared confused for a moment before admitting, “I was too young to remember…”
“Well,” Casey explained, the confidence perking in his voice. “Let me remind you…”
“Go ahead, Casey,” Robby yelped, goading Casey into discourse. “Set this boy’s head straight on his shoulders before he does something that we’re all gonna regret.”
In his most foreboding voice, Casey recounted the events as they were relayed to him. “I think it was back in 95’, that’s when those two hikers disappeared in Ben Murden’s peach grove.”
“I remember,” Robby gasped, hoping that his embellished gesture might stimulate Kyle’s memory as well. Kyle forwarded no immediate reaction to his friends’ grim recollections. He had in fact recalled being told of such a
happening. As best as he could remember, the hikers, two teenagers, did vanish, but their bodies—like so many others rumored to have been slaughtered in those woods—were never recovered.
“I’ve heard this all before,” Kyle huffed, spinning away toward his bicycle on the edge of the park’s embankment. “The fact is that no one ever found those hikers—they couldn’t trace them to the old man or anyone else.”
“Did you ever think that Ben Murden planned it that way?” Casey asked. “The newspapers don’t want to tell you everything, Kyle. But some of the old farmers talk a lot plainer—they have a theory as to how he got rid of the bodies so thoroughly.”
“Oh, really,” Kyle replied, partially dispassionate to Casey’s admonition. “I guess you’re gonna give me all the gory details now, right?”
“You need to hear them,” Robby chided.
“I’m just telling you what I know,” Casey proclaimed innocently. “After those kids turned up missing, a couple of my dad’s buddies went up to Murden’s farm to check things out for themselves. They got an eerie suspicion that the sheriff wasn’t searching hard enough for the corpses, so they did some snooping around.”
Before straddling his bike, Kyle paused and cast an irritated gaze at Casey. He was at least intrigued enough to ask, “So did they find anything that looked like a body or what?”
“Nah,” Casey whispered. “Murden made sure that would neve
r happen. According to them, the old man had diced those hikers up in at least a hundred pieces. There wasn’t much left to either of them but a few shreds of clothing and an empty flask.”
“He’s not lying to you,” Robby taunted his friend. “Murden killed them, and he’ll do the same thing to you if you ever get near his house.”
By now Kyle had heard the cautionary tales from all angles. His friends had no reason to be deliberately dishonest with him, so it was futile to become enraged by their tactics. They were simply reciting the rhetoric that had been uttered by a generation of Meadowton residents. Despite their honesty, Kyle had to be candid as well. He wasn’t vying for attention from his peers. A part of him truly wanted to dispel the injustice that had been leveled upon one lonely soul.
“A man’s reputation is at stake,” Kyle told his friends, hoping that they would be struck by some sense of moral responsibility toward the elderly.
“When did Murden’s reputation become so important to you?” Robby quipped.
Casey strengthened their argument against Kyle by adding, “What’s the difference what people think of him, man? He must be at least a hundred years old by now anyway.”
Kyle had no reasonable response to offer his friends at this juncture. And he was wasting valuable time by bickering over his intentions. The fact remained that he had heard nothing to dissuade him from his decision to visit the old man in question. Without issuing further details of his plan, Kyle angled his bike around his friends and pedaled up toward the dirt trail adjacent to the park.
Robby and Casey were both startled by Kyle’s abrupt choice to depart. They stood their ground in the park for several minutes, waiting until a plum of dust obscured Kyle’s progress along the road. Then, sensing as though they demonstrated an unspeakable level of cowardice, Casey began to reconsider this predicament.
“Do you think he’s really dumb enough to go over to Murden’s farm?” Casey asked Robby, the dread in his voice blatantly clear.
Robby wasn’t quite certain what sort of foolery Kyle had in mind for the remainder of this afternoon, but he suspected that it was destined to lead to some serious problems, more so than they encountered in all their summer vacations combined. Now feeling guilty himself for permitting his friend to leave unattended, Robby hopped aboard his bike and said, “We got to look after him, Casey. Did you bring your wheels?”
Casey motioned to the opposite embankment, where his five-speed was chained to a leaning sapling near the ball field. Casey may have not been as motivated as Robby to join in the pursuit, but he at least agreed to follow Kyle until the trail ended. After that, he was on his own.
Sweat trickled down the front of Kyle’s face as he coasted along the serpentine lane toward The Bogs. Fortunately, a stretch of the road leading away from Homer’s Park was centered on the sloping end of a hill. Without question, the heat was unforgiving to those who defied its potency. Though breathless and perhaps slightly woozy from his efforts, Kyle pedaled onward, reaching the hill’s summit without stopping to rest.
In front of him, Kyle saw the woods thickening. Daylight became prematurely shrouded beneath the treetops. Did he really wish to navigate farther into this woodland? Never before this moment had he felt so courageous and fearful in the same instance. But it seemed as though something was luring him into the range of Meadowton’s most maligned character—something that he didn’t yet possess the words to articulate.
Chapter 7
Songs of a Peach Tree Page 7
