by Lee Durkee
“Just a couple pinches. I’ll show you my scars if you do.”
Noel pulled his jeans the rest of the way up then stuffed a matchbox with the red-stitched buds. He slipped the matchbox shut and handed it up to her.
Amber smiled and asked, “This that same spooky-dooky trip weed?”
Noel said it was.
“He speaks,” she chimed. “Back from the dead.”
“You gonna show me those scars?”
She knelt and took his hand and guided it to the crown of her head and rubbed it there. “Feel that?”
He nodded that he did.
“That’s from where I went through the windshield boom! See, like my own private railroad track woo-woo! chuga-luga-chuga-luga all the way down . . . to . . . feel that?”
She pirouetted to show Noel the back of one thigh, which looked to be coated with lacquer. “That’s where they peeled off my skin and patched it back on . . .” Again she rotated and this time lifted her hair away from her neck. “Right here. Feel. Shaped just like a heart.”
Next she used both hands to diamond-frame a jagged four-inch scar running just under her belly button and ending in a pink blemish. “Don’t touch it, though, it’s bad luck. I can’t even have babies because of it.” She took the flashlight and pointed it at this scar so that a pale mouth of light engulfed it. “Shaped like lightning hitting a tree, see?” she noted. Then she asked, “I guess that’s how it always works with you and girls, huh?”
Noel stared at the scar a long time before saying, “What do you mean always?”
“It . . . you know, melting off on us like that. You were doing real fine for a while. We could try some more, if you want. I don’t mind.”
“Why did you say always?”
“Nothing. Just something I heard. You know, girl talk.”
“What kinda girl talk?”
“Regular ol’ girl-talk girl talk. Hey, don’t get mad at me, I didn’t do nothing.”
“I’m not getting mad. Just tell me what it was you heard. Please.”
But Amber remained hesitant until Noel offered up a fat joint. When she reached for it, he snatched it away.
“First tell me what you heard.”
She scrunched up her face to answer. “Nothing much. Just that maybe you don’t like girls as much as you think you do.”
“What?”
“That maybe you only think you like girls.”
Noel’s fake laugh sounded more like a cough. He relinquished the joint and took a long evil pull of tequila, then he shuddered. Amber had balanced the flashlight on the slat between them, its beam pointing up at the ceiling, where a hole had been cut and a knotted rope led outside onto the roof.
“Don’t worry, Moon Man, I’ll tell everybody you were the best ever,” she said, and as if to prove this she leaned in and closed her mouth on his neck and started to suck there, not one long continuous suck but a series of short ones between which she pinched his skin with her teeth. “There. Now everyone’ll think we definitely fucked.” She admired the hickey. “You wanna give me one?”
At first her neck tasted salty, but then it just tasted like neck.
“Ow!” she cried. “Stop!”
Noel apologized. Then they examined each with the flashlight.
“Yours is like a crow flying,” Amber reported. “What’s mine like?”
He brought the flashlight closer.
“Like two ghosts. Holding hands.”
“Crows and ghosts.” She picked up her jeans and shook them out. Then, more like an accusation than a question, she asked, “You used to go with Layle Smokewood, didn’t you?”
He nodded and mouthed yeah.
“She was real pretty.” To this she quickly amended, “I heard she ran off to Hollywood with some drummer.”
Noel said yeah, he’d heard that too.
“You know what’ll probably happen to her out there? She’ll probably end up making those movies. You know, with horses and all. That’s what happens to all those small-town chicks in Hollywood. They get them addicted to heroin, then they trot out Mr. Ed. She was a preacher’s daughter too.”
“Horses?”
“Horses, heroin, and black dudes. You know what else I heard? That she had an abortion. That you took her to New Orleans and made her have it.”
Noel heard footsteps outside, or thought he did. He tensed and listened, but whatever it was had fallen silent.
“That’s the exact same as murder. Maybe that’s why you can’t . . . you know. Like maybe that little dead baby placed some kind of curse on you?”
Noel drank more tequila and kept listening for the footsteps.
“Did you even ask her to marry you first? I mean down-on-your-knees ask?”
He gave her a strange look then shook his head no.
“See. I bet that’s why you can’t . . . you know, anymore. ’Cause y’all murdered that little baby.”
She finished buttoning her jeans then crawled over to the ladder and started down the hole in the floor. With only her head and arms visible above the floor, she asked if he was going home. Noel said he’d stick around here for a while, if that was okay.
“You’re not gonna hang yourself up there, are you, Moon Man?”
“Hang myself?”
“Yeah. Every time I climb up here I kinda expect to find somebody hanging from that rope, don’t ask me why.”
Amber stared at the rope, knotted at the bottom, which dangled through the hole in the roof and was tied outside to a branch above the tree house.
“The left half of your face looks Chinese,” he told her.
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.” She stretched both eyes into slants and bucked her teeth. “Confucius say . . .” But then evidently she could think of nothing for Confucius to have said. She let go her eyes and the right one reshaped itself.
Noel asked how many girls knew about . . . you know?
“Not many, probably. Most girls I know think you’re real hot. I guess that must be kinda sad, having all us chicks chasing after you and then you not being able to . . .”
Noel used his cough laugh again. Then he asked, “You ever have them dreams, the kind where you fall in love with someone, someone you don’t even know in real life, but in that dream, it’s like you’d known that person forever? Then you wake up and just kinda lay there all brokehearted. That ever happen to you?”
Amber nodded and whispered yeah, she’d had those dreams. “They’re so sad,” she agreed.
“Well, that’s what my whole life is like. Like one of those dreams.”
“What? You fall in love with me?”
“Sure. Kinda. Showing me your scars and all.”
“Don’t hang yourself, Moon Man.”
Saying that, Amber went down the ladder.
“Hey!” he called after her. “Can you do a split? A real one?”
Her face reappeared above the floor. Looking at him quizzically, she replied, “I used to could. But not anymore. I got steel pins in both my knees.” She stepped up one rung then leaned her body away from the ladder so that her elbows locked straight. “It’s okay with me—if you want—you can tell guys we did it. If you want. I don’t care.”
Noel watched her a moment longer, then asked if he could take her picture.
“Take my picture? Now?”
“Yeah, I got my camera back in the car. I’ll run get it.”
Amber wanted to know what kind of pictures. Her voice sounded suspicious.
“Any kind you let me. Brushing your hair out in front like you just did.”
She climbed the rest of the way up the ladder then sat with both legs dangling through the hole.
“Or maybe showing off them scars.”
“Moon Man, you
ever wonder why I asked you out in the first place?”
“I asked you out.”
“Shoot. I practically twisted your arm.” Amber knocked twice on the plywood floor. “Guess whose fort this is.”
“I’ll give you some more weed. Hell, I’ll give you all I got here, plus I’ll throw in some ’ludes.”
“Does the name Ross Altman,” she asked, “ring any bells?”
Noel glanced around the tree house then up at the hole in the ceiling.
“Ross was my half-brother.”
“Your half . . .”
“But there wasn’t nothing half about us. I can’t even remember not knowing him.”
“But your name’s Smith.”
“Yeah. I’m a Smith and he’s an Altman.”
“That’s why you wanted to go out with me, because of what happened with your brother?”
“That and because everyone knows you got the best weed.” She grinned and added, “Nah, I mean, yeah, I was curious, but ever since I first saw you I thought you were real fine. I still do.”
Noel slumped forward, his elbows hanging over his knees.
“Don’t you think it’s weird us two being here together?” she asked.
“Weird?”
“Weird spooky weird. You’re the one who ran him down and I’m his damn sister.”
“That wasn’t my fault. He shoulda been taking them baseball pills.”
“Baseball pills?”
“The ones that let him play baseball, the ones for his brain.”
“Oh. Who told you about that?”
“I dunno, my mom. She said your family couldn’t take pills because you’re some kind of scientists.”
“We’re not scientists. We’re Christian Scientists. Or we used to be. Now only my dad is. My mom won’t step foot inside church. And me, I’m not anything. I don’t even believe in God, I don’t think.”
“You don’t?”
She shook her head. They sat quiet. Noel was imagining Ross Altman playing in the tree house—not Ross Altman exactly, but Ross Altman’s ghost.
“I heard the police talked to you about my brother.”
Noel made a series of half shrugs.
“What’d they ask you?”
Suddenly he felt very tired, almost too tired to lie.
“Nothing. Look, I didn’t do it. I know everybody thinks I did, but I didn’t. I mean, if I did it, then how come nobody’s arrested me yet?”
“Maybe they don’t want to arrest you. Maybe the police don’t think it’s really murder so they didn’t arrest you, because they knew you’d go to jail and it’d ruin your life, and you’re just a kid who didn’t really do nothing wrong.”
The way she was scrutinizing him, it made Noel wonder if he looked different to her out of the one slanted eye.
“Did you know I was sleeping in his hospital room the night he was murdered?”
“You were?”
“All night long. On the cot. I used to sleep there all the time.”
“You didn’t wake up at all, not even when the alarm went off?”
“How do you know about any alarm?”
“I don’t. I just figured there musta been one went off when his heart stopped beating. Like on TV.”
Just then the flashlight fell over and rolled about a foot toward Noel.
“You see that?” Amber said, nodding as if proud of something.
Without taking his eyes off the flashlight, Noel said, “Hey, this ain’t some kind of setup, is it? I mean, your old man ain’t fixing to bust in here and shoot me down or nothing?”
It took her a moment to comprehend Noel’s paranoia, then she laughed and assured him, “No. I ain’t setting you up.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“That day I was in his room, how come he had a Ouija board on top of him?”
“Did you tell the police that?”
He shook his head.
“Because I used to talk to him on it.” Amber had said this without the least bit of embarrassment, like answering a dare. “You think that’s crazy, huh?”
“I dunno, I never used one. My cousins always said they were for devil worshipers.”
“I heard that too.”
“What’d you ask him on it?”
“All sorts of things.”
“You ever ask him if he was already dead or not?”
“I tried, but he never understood what I meant. He just kept wanting to know the way home. He still thought he was a little kid and that he was lost on his way home from a baseball game.”
“You’re supposed to tell them to go to the light.”
“I know you are. But whenever I told him that, he’d always spell out, WHAT LIGHT? Except he spelled it wrong.”
“Those boards, they really work?”
She snorted and said, “Shoot.”
“What else did he say to you on it?”
“Different things, different times. But lots of times I’d get all these white-trash spirits pretending to be Ross. But I knew it wasn’t him because they could spell better than he could and because they didn’t know our secrets. And sometimes I got other patients in the hospital. They’d tell me their names and what room they were in and what was wrong with them. And they’d give me messages for their family, but I could never figure out how to give the messages without sounding crazy. I’d sneak into their rooms, though, and check to see if their names matched up.”
“Did they?”
“Sometimes they did, most times they didn’t. I think some of them had died in the hospital a long time ago and didn’t know they were dead. Isn’t that sad, not knowing you’re dead?”
“What kind of messages did they give you?”
“I love you messages usually, either that or please let me die messages. You believe in ghosts?”
He took another quick look around the fort and whispered, “Fuckin’ A.”
“I’ve seen his ghost in here before. Ross’s.”
“What was he doing? Playing?”
“How’d you know that?”
“I just guessed it, since he was a little kid.”
“He was still wearing his baseball uniform. Number five.”
Noel slapped a mosquito on his wrist and rubbed it off.
“Do you think I did it?” he asked her.
“Nah. I know you didn’t.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, you’re crazy enough but too sweet. Besides, you’d have messed it all up. Unplugged the wrong kid or something.”
Noel whistled then ballooned out his cheeks. He didn’t know what else to say, so he whistled again, then asked if she wanted to split a ’lude.
“No way. Too many bad things happen to girls on ’ludes. They 714’s?”
“Bootlegs.”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head decidedly no before smiling one last time and descending two rungs so that once again only her head showed above the brace of two-by-fours. Noel offered her his flashlight, but she said that she could find her way home in the dark. “’Bye, Moon Man.” She slipped out of sight and from below came the crunch of leaves. When the leaves quieted down, Noel set the flashlight sideways on the floor and started arranging his contraband within its beam. The joints, the matches, the baggie of weed, the five quaaludes, the tequila bottle, the can of Skoal . . . he arranged them in the order in which he would do them, quaaludes first, dip last. After he had swallowed the first of the thick lime-green tablets, he picked up the flashlight and pointed it up at the rope’s stop knot. He got to his knees and leaned forward and tested the rope, like ringing a bell. He undid the stop knot and as best he could he fashioned a hangman’s noose, though it did not much
resemble the ones on TV westerns. He wasn’t sure why he had done this, just something to look at maybe, that or maybe as a keepsake for Amber, who would find it there the next time she visited the tree house with some other stud.
He was still watching the noose when he once again heard the crunch of leaves. This time they were distinct and definitely moving toward the tree house. The ladder creaked and shifted. As fast as he could, Noel extended his legs straight out and shut his eyes. He let his head lag to one side and his mouth droop open. He held his breath, sprawled both arms.
“Hey, you okay, Moon Man?”
He sat up again.
“I thought it was your dad,” he explained. “I thought I was about to get shot.”
Amber crawled inside and settled herself beside him so that their knees were touching.
“I changed my mind about that ’lude.” She took out the joint Noel had given her and blew along the wet seam. “Let’s get all Chinese-eyed.”
Noel made a vague welcoming gesture toward the flashlight beam of paraphernalia.
“You play dead real good,” she told him. Then she added, “And I oughta know.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
ROGER DRUMMED NOEL awake at dawn demanding to know, “What happened to your car?” He jerked Noel out of bed and then with a series of shoves propelled him across the room to the window above the toy box. The sunlight distracted Noel for only a moment before he saw, showcased in the front yard, his battered Mustang, the driver’s door winged open, both fenders bashed and contorted, headlights shattered, one taillight dangling out of socket.
Pushing Noel’s face into the window, Roger kept shouting, “Well? . . . Well? . . .” Noel’s breath was fogging the glass in front of his eyes. He tried to speak, but his mouth was smeared against the window. Finally Roger released him, and Noel sagged onto the toy box then looked up at his stepfather and asked, “What happened?”
To which Roger screamed, “You’re asking me?”
That our lives are little more than our memories of our lives, that we have secret playgrounds we visit from time to time that we keep hidden from the parts of us that claim to remember, that we have dark aliases, names we answer to that our memories balk at—these were notions testified to by the wrecked Mustang below him in the yard, notions he would ponder more and more over the next few weeks as he waited to be arrested for what crime he was not yet sure.
