City Fishing

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  He remembers his old pledge buddy, a fat kid no one else liked. They had driven him ten miles up into the mountains the day before initiation. He hadn’t seen him since.

  The brothers are taking a new road to the stadium, one he’s sure he’s never seen before. It meanders out into the country, through patches of wood and around fields and small farms. He has a moment of uneasiness, worried that perhaps they plan to leave him out here, that he’ll never make it to the game on time.

  As the car rounds a wide bend in a wooded section, it slows. The brothers stop the car and the driver races the engine. They stare into the clearing a hundred feet ahead and slightly below them.

  On a stump beside the road there is a body, lying face up, the back and rump resting on the flat cross-section. Its red shift is tattered and water-spotted.

  The driver yells at the top of his lungs, the other two brothers chorusing. They sound like coyotes. The car lurches forward, bearing down on the stump. The brother at the front passenger window pulls a small pistol out of the glove compartment.

  As the car suddenly swerves around the stump the brother puts two bullets into the body’s torso.

  He can see that there are dozens of other bullet holes and torn places in the body’s skin. He also notices that it might have been a man, or a woman with short hair. Certainly sexless by now, however.

  As the car speeds out of the woods, his brothers laughing and hollering, he looks back at the clearing. He can see another car approaching in the distance. He thinks the body is stirring, about to rise, and his legs tighten up at this thought. He knows that if he were standing by the stump, and if the body did rise, he would not be able to move his legs. He would be unable to run away. But then he realizes this is all just his imagination, that it’s the wind rustling the few remaining rags on the corpse, that no, it isn’t going to rise.

  He sees a gun appear at the window of the distant car, preparing to put more bullets into the body. A road sign, he thinks.

  He figures it’s no more than fifteen minutes to kickoff.

  Outside the stadium he stumbles and falls in the gravel. He’s going to miss the kickoff, and he was so close. He’d been lucky to catch the bus; he’d flagged it down, in fact. He is worried about the woman back in his apartment, probably even now looking at all his scattered clothing, his unkempt rooms. He is worried about his torn brown pants, his scuffed alligator shoes. He worries about the fact of the corpse back on the stump, the fact that he will no doubt miss the kickoff.

  He runs into his parents as he nears the stadium entrance. They look so old. His old father, his shriveled lips unable to catch the moisture dripping from his mouth as he speaks, pleads with him, wondering why he hasn’t answered their phone calls. His aged mother nods, distracted, singing to herself.

  His father grabs him by the arm, pulling him closer conspiratorially, whispering hoarsely, “Your mother … she hasn’t been the same, and Don’t go in there. First time I had it … down by one of the old sorority houses. She pulled me back into the bushes … unzipped me, stuck it up there herself … was awful, like a big old frying pan in there …”

  He pulls away from the old man and pushes past his mother, seeking the stadium entrance. He sees nothing but a smooth limestone wall. Where is it? He’s going to be late.

  His beautiful young date is in there waiting for him, her bony fingers encircling a paper cup full of beer.

  As he enters the stadium it’s a few minutes to half time. It has been a long walk. The crowd seems strangely silent, as if they were watching an engrossing chess match.

  But he’s forgotten his tickets, now he knows this, and knows too that he will therefore be unable to watch the game. He searches the crowd for his fraternity president, their beautiful dates, his beautiful date, but it’s impossible in this crowd. Everyone looks the same, dressed in grays, blacks, dark blues, their faces pale, hair cropped short. When they try to cheer the players out on the field, no sound comes out.

  An usher touches his arm from behind and he begins formulating an excuse for not having a ticket but the usher says nothing, instead leads him to a seat a dozen rows down, on the aisle.

  He is sitting next to a family of spectators. They all have light brown hair, the father, the mother, the daughter and son, and perfect smiles, displayed to each other, not to him, in their mutual pride. They clap in unison to approve some play on the field, though strangely, he seems unable to see, to get the field into proper focus. Their clapping makes no sense.

  He looks around a bit. Rows of spectators, stacked at an angle, back and upwards, as far as he can see. But except for the family sitting next to him, he can discern no movement, not even a nervous tic. He again looks at the family beside him, and is drawn to their smooth, tucked-in lips. And their light blue pallor.

  Discomfited, he stands up and starts down the aisle toward the field, still unable to get the players into focus. No one attempts to stop him. He reaches the retaining wall above the sidelines, climbs on top, and jumps down, the thud of his feet in the grass the only sound he can hear.

  When he reaches the center of the field he turns around. There’s no one on the field. The stands seem empty. A slight breeze begins to rustle the grass.

  He attempts to reenter the stadium through the tunnel leading to the players’ dressing rooms. The light here is dim.

  Mummified corpses line the walls, sprawl over dressing tables and tile shower floors. The bodies have lost most of their flesh and only thin strands of hair remain. They still wear their scarlet jerseys, though most of the color has leached away. Bones in white or sporty gold togs peer out of open lockers.

  Entering the stadium he discovers to his relief that the game hasn’t yet started. All seems well. No corpses, parents, or strange women to trouble him. He pulls his ticket out of his unwrinkled pants pocket and makes his way to a seat on the fifty-yard line. His friends are all there and are overjoyed to see him.

  The fraternity president slaps him on the back and says, “Great to have you here. Wouldn’t be the same without you. And say … after the game, I’d like to talk to you about your maybe becoming our new pledge master.”

  His fraternity brothers pass on their congratulations from their seats further down the aisle.

  The crowd suddenly leaps to its feet to cheer the upcoming kickoff. He is thrilled by the motion, color, and sound. His fraternity brothers are slapping each other on the back, stamping feet, shouting, and bussing their pretty dates on the cheeks. Popcorn and empty cups fly through the air. Frisbees are tossed from section to section.

  He turns to greet his beautiful young date with an embrace. She opens her mouth widely. He notes the blueness of her throat. She grins and shows her perfect white teeth.

  Later he climbs the steps for popcorn and soft drinks for the girls. He wonders if he might not just marry his date someday; she seems so much like him. The day is going so well now, and he wonders if maybe it’s time for him to finally settle down, maybe have a family.

  He is slowly aware of two arms, clothed in tatters of red, coming around his sides from behind as if to embrace him. The hands are thin, almost bone.

  Everything is suddenly quiet again.

  HIDEY HOLE

  Every house Jennifer had ever lived in had a hidey hole. A secret place at the back of a closet, or behind a door, or under a porch. A place where thoughts were private and where you could be anything you wanted to be. She thought that maybe each house came that way. Or better still, maybe you dreamed the hidey holes up in your head because you just had to have them, and that made them appear. Like magic.

  Jennifer had never gone inside any of her hidey holes, not at any of the many houses she’d lived in. She’d always been too afraid.

  Instead she went inside herself and dreamed about what it would be like to be inside those hidey holes. The dreams weren’t always nice.

  Here the hidey hole was under the brick porch, on the cold north side beside a bush where nobody went, not
even her parents. Her mom said the dirt was too poor to plant a flower bed there. Six or seven bricks were missing to make the hole. It was the only opening under the porch—everything else was all brick. Jennifer could see black dirt there, and if she stood several feet away—which was the closest she would ever get to the hidey hole—she could see an old moldy shoe and a brown bottle a couple of feet inside.

  This was her twelfth house, hers and her mom’s—that was more houses than she was years old. She had a dad this time, not just mom’s boyfriend, and mom promised her he was going to last. He wasn’t too bad, kind of grumpy sometimes but then he read stories to her sometimes and took her places and told her, really told her that he loved her. None of them had ever done that before.

  But she was big for her age. Maybe a little fat, “baby fat” her new dad called it and laughed a little. And taller than anyone else in her class. “Big-boned,” her new grandmother called it, and gave her a brownie and some milk. Her new dad didn’t like her grandmother doing that. He said it just encouraged her to eat too much.

  He said it was okay to be bigger than the other kids, but he made her run all the time just the same. And made her take classes. And made her wear clothes that made her look not so big.

  He said he cared, and that was pretty okay. But he didn’t like her being fat. She could tell. Her mom was always saying she was fat because she was lazy and because she didn’t care about herself. Her new dad didn’t like her mom saying those things to her, but she’d always been saying those things, so Jennifer didn’t think she’d stop it now.

  Besides, Jennifer didn’t think it bothered her so much anymore. Not so much. She’d just lie on her bed and pretend she was in the hidey hole. She’d make a picture about what it was like inside the hidey hole. She’d make a picture of a little dog in the hidey hole she could pet. She’d make a picture of a bunch of comic books and sodas all covered with ice like on the TV. She’d make a picture of a bag of cookies, and flowers growing there even though it was so dark, and the ground was so poor.

  But most of the pictures she made were mean ones. Snakes and lizards with long tongues, black beetles and white wigglers eating rotting dead things and old underwear, horrible things she couldn’t name that squirmed and dug and scraped the ground at the bottom of the hidey hole.

  She thought it was probably pretty bad to be thinking those things, but she couldn’t help it. They just came that way. And it made things feel a little better that they came—she thought that was pretty weird, and a pretty bad thing, too. Maybe she was just bad all the way through.

  But she would never go inside a hidey hole. Not one single one of them. She was much too afraid. Something might happen to her for making all those mean things. Maybe—and this was hard to think about—maybe she’d just turn into a mean thing herself. So she’d never go inside one. She’d just make pictures inside her head instead.

  There was just one more problem she had, besides being big for her age. That was Robert. Robert was five years old. Robert was her new little brother.

  A long time ago Jennifer’s new dad had had another wife, and Robert was their baby. Then she did something real bad and so she didn’t live there anymore. Robert wasn’t a baby anymore. Jennifer liked babies; babies were cute. Robert was her new dad’s little son, and her little brother.

  Jennifer’s new dad loved little Robert a whole lot.

  But that was okay. He was supposed to. Because he was a good daddy.

  The problem was that Robert was just too little to be much fun. And every time her new dad wanted to take her someplace little Robert wanted to go to. And her new dad usually let him.

  And her new dad was all the time stopping her from yelling at Robert, or from shoving Robert away when he got into her business. Her new dad kept saying she didn’t always know how big she was, and she could hurt him. He called that “bullying.” Jennifer didn’t understand. Robert just kept making her mad at him, and she didn’t want him making her mad. It scared her to be mad.

  Her mom always said she had a mean temper.

  Now today Robert was wanting to play with her some more. He wanted her to take him outside.

  “Let’s play soldier!” he kept saying, real loud.

  Jennifer just looked at him. He was kind of cute when he was all excited like that about something. And sometimes she actually liked playing with him, and it was good that somebody wanted to play with her all the time, even him. Her new dad said Robert “looked up to her.” That was kind of nice.

  But he was too little for her. And she didn’t feel like playing outside.

  “Let’s play soldier!” he screamed.

  “Hush! You’ll get us both in trouble!”

  “I’ll tell dad you … hit me.” Robert looked happy that he said that.

  “I don’t think he’d believe you.”

  “Mom would.”

  Jennifer figured he was right. And just then her mom did come in.

  “What’s going on here?” Her mom looked like she just got out of bed. Her hair looked dirty. Jennifer thought that her mom wasn’t very pretty anymore. It made her wonder why she was always telling Jennifer that she didn’t look good.

  Robert looked real sad. He was pretty good at looking sad. “Jennifer won’t play wif me.”

  “Go out and play with him, Jennifer.”

  “But, Mom …”

  “Just do what I said. It’s better than having you two yelling at each other down here, waking me up.”

  So Robert ran outside, Jennifer walking right behind him, trying not to say anything. But then Robert ran toward the north side of the house.

  Jennifer felt a hurt in her chest. “Don’t!” She’d yelled it so loud Robert stopped and turned around. He looked surprised, and a little scared. “Let’s play someplace else,” she said.

  He looked at her a little while and then said, “Don’t want to!” He turned and kept running toward that side of the house.

  “Robert!” Suddenly Jennifer was running toward that side of the house, too.

  When she rounded the corner Robert was crouched down in front of the hole.

  “No, Robert!”

  He turned and stared at her. “It ain’t your hole,” he said. “Dad and me had this house before you ever came.”

  Jennifer’s chest hurt again. For a little bit it was hard to breathe. She was watching wide-eyed as he started to crawl through the hole. “Don’t go in there!”

  He stopped and turned his head. “It ain’t your hole!”

  Jennifer wanted to tell him it was her place, her secret special place that she’d made herself because she pictured it and thought about it and knew the kind of things that might be there. But she wouldn’t crawl into the hidey hole herself; she was much too afraid. So how could it be hers?

  “It’s not safe.” It was all she could think of to say.

  Robert looked a little worried. “Why not?”

  “There’s things in it, crawly things. And… things with long thin legs to wrap around you.” She shivered just saying it. Pictures were coming into her head she tried to keep out.

  Robert looked at her with his little lip sticking out. She might have thought he was cute then if she wasn’t so mad at him. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes you are and God hates liars. He burns ’em up!”

  There were more pictures fighting to get inside Jennifer’s head. She kept looking at Robert real hard, thinking about him being her little brother, trying to think about the times she liked him. It got harder and harder. “Go on in then! I don’t care!”

  She screamed it out so quick, she didn’t even know she was going to say it. Robert was already halfway into the hole before she thought to take it back. “No! Robert, come back!”

  And in her panic she let the pictures come into her head.

  A thin line dropped onto Robert’s back, followed by another, then another. She could see his little yellow T
-shirt bulge in the places where the lines, the legs, pressed in.

  He had just begun screaming when the last long leg wrapped around his backside and pulled him in. Then he stopped screaming.

  Jennifer turned and ran.

  They never found Robert. Finally the police decided her new dad’s old wife had come and got him, and so they had to find her. But nobody knew where she was. Jennifer told them all she was in the back yard when Robert ran around to the front. That was the last she ever saw of him.

  Her new dad was very sad. Sometimes he just held Jennifer in his lap for a long time, real tight, and didn’t say a word.

  Her mom just looked at her. But at least she didn’t say bad things about her anymore. Just once she said real quiet, “You’re going to drive this one away, too, aren’t you?” Jennifer wasn’t sure what she meant.

  Jennifer knew she was bad inside. She saw the pictures of her badness in her head. It was real mean and real ugly.

  That’s why she never went inside any of the hidey holes. Because that’s where she’d always kept her badness so no one could see it.

  But she missed Robert. She’d liked her little brother a lot more than she ever knew. After all, he was the only one she’d ever had. Maybe she’d even loved Robert, but she decided she really didn’t know what that meant.

  She was going to have to go visit the hidey hole real soon now. Just like Robert. Just like Robert she was going to have to go inside.

  THE OVERCOAT

  When I first saw the overcoat I thought it was a man slumped there, in the alley between Ellison’s Deli and the Apex Pool Hall. A warmly-dressed, elderly man, the collar and shoulders of the gray and black tweed coat pushed up over his neck and half-concealing his small, white head. The angle and the lighting had deceived me—the coat was neckless and headless. Yet it seemed to be propped up there, sitting in an unnatural way.