Garden Lakes

by Jaime Clarke

  “Ready . . . set . . . go!” Warren signaled the start of the race with a wave. Figs and Hands darted through the maze, in and out of the piles of limestone and slate and shale, some worn into cones by wind, others leveled off by unknown tracks, some human, most animal. None of us acknowledged the orbital train of paw prints that could only have been made by coyotes. The absence of yipping told us coyotes were unseen spectators watching from a distance.

  Hands vanished momentarily behind the second rock pile from the finish line, and Figs called out, “Two points!” in a voice loud enough to be heard but quiet enough not to perk the ears of Mr. Malagon or Mr. Hancock. Hands swore through his teeth, knowing he was beaten. Figs galloped to the finish line, a full rock pile in front of Hands, and circled back, weaving toward us so as to avoid Hands’s bitter disappointment.

  “Two out of three,” Hands said, his hands on his knees. He rubbed at the smear of dirt on his khakis incurred from his fall.

  “No way,” Roger said. “It’s my shot at the champ.”

  We each raced once, though there was no clear champion—Figs beat Hands, but then Roger beat Figs; Assburn beat Roger and then beat me, finally falling to Warren, who was promptly beaten by Roger. Hands was still talking about a rematch with Figs when Warren remarked how late it was. We sneaked back onto Garden Lakes Parkway. The still houses along Regis Street seemed to foretell our doom.

  Our alarm clocks read nine thirty, a half an hour beyond curfew, and we each feared being the one to be called on to explain the night’s activities. Fantastic improbabilities floated through our minds: Maybe Hancock and Malagon didn’t make a bed check. Maybe they poked their heads inside the door and assumed we were in our beds, exhausted. Maybe we could say we were out stargazing with Lindy. Some of us set our clocks back a half an hour, creating a digital alibi. We lay awake, though, until we put back those thirty minutes, knowing it wouldn’t work.

  It was no surprise, then, when Mr. Hancock rang our doorbells angrily, calling out “No showers!” Our blood pumped in our ears, our eyes dry and tired, but we double-timed it to the dining hall, averting our eyes as we entered and took our seats. The kitchen was busy, but no food had been laid out for breakfast.

  Mr. Hancock stormed into the room, Mr. Malagon in tow, a sour look on his face, a jury of two called back from deliberations to render their verdict.

  Mr. Hancock, on the verge of leaving Garden Lakes with the school’s permission, shot Figs a look that stole all our breath. He knew. Someone had ratted us out—Figs in particular—and the pool of suspects began and ended with Sprocket. Possibly Lindy, though Lindy had been leading a pod of sophomores on a celestial exploration through his telescope.

  Realizing he had been caught, Figs internally ran through the arguments. He could deny it, though he usually eschewed denial because of its stringency: Once you started denying, you had to keep on denying, regardless of the evidence brought against you. Figs knew unilateral denials were trouble; he preferred the maneuverability of vagueness. He would calmly wait for the case to be presented against him.

  Mr. Hancock’s glowering unnerved Figs, though. Another thought, one that visited Figs now and again, was that someone—somehow—was onto him about what happened in Mazatlán, that he’d invented the policeraid to make himself out as a hero. The next day and every day since, Figs had known he’d made a mistake. He’d come close to divulging it to Hands, but he knew the information would make Hands coguardian of the secret, and realized his desire to let Hands in on it was a selfish move to lessen the stressful burden. Each time Rosa’s or Mazatlán was mentioned, Figs had to call up the mental note cards etched with the details of that night. He had to remember what he’d said about how he’d heard a car pull up, about the quick footsteps on the dirt driveway, about the excited voices speaking Spanish. He’d memorized the details with the same concentration he had his social security number and date of birth, and guarded the information with the same care.

  As lucid as the manufactured minutiae was the very real cause of said manufacture. As he paced the backyard that night, the ramifications of not going inside to meet one of Rosa’s girls weighed on him. He knew he couldn’t let Hands and the others walk out sharing the distinction of having visited Rosa’s. The playful taunts weren’t what worried Figs. The idea of not wanting to visit a prostitute required some sophistication on the part of the mind trying to understand it, and as Figs knew, it was easier to substitute slander and innuendo in the place of understanding.

  Panic morphed into desperation. A carload of teenagers arriving at Rosa’s prompted the idea of the raid. The sudden absence of the bouncer at the door was the impetus. Figs made up his mind, the strangers in the backyard glancing casually as he charged the door, hollering.

  The memory turned Figs’s stomach.

  But while the occasion of the showerless, foodless breakfast was a curfew violation (and it was clear to all of us that Mr. Hancock had been hipped to our derby in the Grove), we wouldn’t have guessed in a million years if we had been given a million guesses what had steamed Mr. Hancock and chagrined Mr. Malagon so.

  “You boys will notice that Mr. Murfin is no longer with us,” Mr. Hancock said.

  We scanned the tables, acknowledging one another for the first time that morning, and confirmed what Mr. Hancock had said: Smurf was not in attendance.

  “Mr. Murfin has been sent home,” Mr. Hancock continued, “for violating curfew.”

  A silence fell across the room. Our empty stomachs rumbled, our hunger muzzled by our rattled nerves. “Boys, Smurf was kicked out for smuggling in his girlfriend,” Mr. Malagon said with dispiriting frankness. Clearly, he’d fought for Smurf and lost. Mr. Malagon wouldn’t have considered the offense expellable; Mr. Hancock, on the other hand, would have argued for capital punishment (in which case Smurf was getting off easy). “There are some questions about how exactly Mr. Murfin was able to summon his girlfriend to meet him,” he said. “So if any of you boys have anything to add, please feel free to speak up.”

  Assburn’s face glowed with sweat, though he refrained from wiping it for fear of drawing attention. But Mr. Hancock appeared oblivious about Assburn’s mobile phone. Warren and a few others glanced at Assburn, but Assburn trained his eyes on the clock on the wall behind Mr. Hancock.

  The particulars of Smurf’s rendezvousing became known over the course of the next two days: Smurf had instructed his girlfriend to wait with her car hood up outside the gates of Garden Lakes. (This detail was particularly hilarious, as Smurf was often the victim of his own imagination: Once while his parents were on vacation, he fired his father’s .357 through his bedroom door, thinking someone was trying to break in in the dead of night. His parents never fixed the spiderwebbing on Smurf’s door where the bullet had exited, lodging in the hallway between portraits of Smurf and of Smurf’s grandparents.) Smurf waited until ten o’clock and then tiptoed out of his residence on Regis Street, careful not to wake his housemates, padding along Garden Lakes Parkway to the entrance, where his girlfriend was waiting. A perfect plan. Perfect except for Mr. Malagon, who, unable to sleep, was out for a walk. He spotted Smurf, and thinking that Smurf had followed Q’s lead and deserted, he reported the departure to Mr. Hancock early the next morning. But Mr. Hancock’s search turned Smurf up, asleep in his bed. Mr. Hancock questioned Assburn and Roger, who knew nothing about Smurf’s nocturnal voyage. Once satisfied in this, Mr. Hancock hauled Smurf to his residence on Loyola, where he made Smurf phone his parents to come pick him up, which they did before Mr. Hancock woke the rest of us.

  We feared Mr. Hancock knew about the stilt race too, but he was prevented from prosecuting by Reedy, who rushed into the dining hall, his bloodless face shaped by terror.

  “What is it?” Mr. Hancock growled.

  “Laird got bit,” was all Reedy said.

  “Scorpion?” Mr. Malagon asked, but Reedy’s pale look told us it was not a scorpion but a rattlesnake.

  The dining hall emptied and we cr
owded around Laird, a sophomore whose first name some of us didn’t even know, who was curled up on the smooth kitchen floor, grabbing his right ankle in anguish. The kitchen smelled of pureed tomatoes.

  “You boys stand back,” Mr. Hancock said. He and Mr. Malagon kneeled beside Laird. Mr. Malagon ripped Laird’s pant leg and we saw spots of blood coagulated around the puncture marks.

  “How did it happen?” Mr. Malagon asked.

  “I was taking the garbage out,” Laird explained, “and it was outside the back door.” Laird twitched. “God, it stings.”

  Mr. Malagon, who would break all our hearts, cautiously opened the back door. “It’s gone,” he said. “I’ll take Laird to the emergency room. Maybe I can talk them into a good rate on visits.”

  Mr. Malagon’s attempt at humor brought a titter from the crowd. “I’ll take him,” Mr. Hancock said automatically. Mr. Malagon appeared as if he might protest, but didn’t. Instead, he rounded us all back into the dining hall, calling on the sophomores to serve breakfast. Mr. Hancock and Laird rolled past the windows while we devoured cereal and fruit as if we hadn’t eaten in days. Mr. Malagon disappeared into the hall, reappearing a moment later after having cleared the community center as being free from any sign of the snake.

  “I’m going to need some volunteers,” Mr. Malagon said. “Fellows and sophomores both. Need teams of three to search the houses and scour the area, beating the brush for this thing. We don’t want it sunning on a rock in our vicinity.” We looked at one another fearfully. “To be clear,” he continued, “I’m not asking you to corner it, trap it, or kill it.”

  “I’ll go,” Roger said, hailing Mr. Malagon from a back table. “Count me in.”

  “Good shoe, Roger,” Mr. Malagon said. “Who else? Hands?”

  Hands brought his face out of his cereal bowl. “Yeah,” he said reluctantly. “Sure.”

  “Attaboy.”

  One by one, we volunteered. Not because we wanted to be snake hunters, but because with each raised hand the moment changed from an opportunity to volunteer into an event that would forever divide us into two camps: Those Who Did and Those Who Didn’t.

  A few of the sophomores, not yet schooled in the ways of coerced volunteerism, elected to stay behind in the kitchen to decipher Mr. Hancock’s instructions for caldo verde, a difficult Portuguese green soup whose ingredients included Portuguese sausage and kale. Conscription not being in Mr. Malagon’s nature, he did not press the sophomores.

  We spread out across Garden Lakes, angst about the day’s schedule abetting our search, which we undertook with caution. Under Mr. Malagon’s directive, we were to throw open the front door and yell, listening for the clack of the snake’s rattle. Cupboards were not to be opened, but were to be banged on; toilets flushed before lifting the lid; each bedroom receiving the door-thrown-open treatment, accompanied with yelling. Beds were to be bounced on before anyone scouted beneath with the sawed-off ends of two-by-fours scavenged from the construction site. “Don’t stick your kisser under the bed,” Mr. Malagon said.

  Sophomores trailed fellows through the front doors of their own houses. The snake hunt momentarily suspended our disbelief that Smurf had been kicked out. His bellowing was plainly absent from our screams and yelling as we tried to flush out the rattlesnake, half hoping for a chance at it, half hoping that it was on its way to Mexico.

  The houses on Loyola Street seemed unlived in. The pristine kitchens and unused couches in the front rooms gave the feeling of a model home. A veneer of dust blown in from open windows and open doors had accumulated on the kitchen countertops. Those who had been sophomores at Garden Lakes knew that the downstairs was just a hallway linking the private life spent in the sanctuary of the bedroom to the life of servitude all sophs lived for six of the hottest weeks of the year.

  Roger led Reedy (who had become his new best friend, apparently) and Adam Kerr through their residence, violating Mr. Malagon’s instructions by boldly opening the kitchen and bathroom cabinets without knocking. Reedy and Kerr stayed back as Roger opened door after door. Being bitten was better than being afraid, he reasoned.

  A sweep of Loyola Street turned up nothing. We marched down Regis like a street gang looking for a fight, the air interspersed with tough talk about what would be done if the predator was found. Hands recommended the sophomores be permitted to return to the kitchen, and Mr. Malagon agreed. The relieved sophs hastened inside the community center, leaving us to continue the hunt.

  We split up into teams, each inspecting its own house. Mr. Malagon tapped Figs and Warren, who were standing nearest him, to help check his residence. “We’ll meet at 1959 to check the jobsite,” he said. “But wait for me in the street. No one goes in until I say so.” Mr. Malagon’s commands fired us up, as if we were war heroes taking back a beachhead or liberating a village overrun by tyrants.

  Our labors to turn up the snake in any of our houses were unsuccessful. Assburn charged ahead to his room, yelling as he pushed open the door, listening nervously for any rattling. He wasn’t concerned about the mobile phone—though he still wanted to control the number of people who knew about it (we all knew, at this point)—but worried the package with Q’s father’s pen would be discovered. He leaped from the doorway to his bed, his head coming within inches of the acoustic ceiling finish. He hopped off the bed and swabbed underneath with the board he’d snagged from the pile out front of 1959. Nothing. “All clear!” he yelled, double-checking that the bulge between the mattress and box spring could not be seen or felt.

  Mr. Malagon called us all out of our houses for a report.

  “Negative,” Roger said.

  “All clear,” Hands said.

  “Nada,” Assburn said.

  “What about Smurf’s room?” Mr. Malagon asked.

  Assburn and Roger exchanged glances. The door to Smurf’s room had been closed, slammed by Smurf in protest as Mr. Hancock and Mr. Malagon stood watch earlier that morning. Assburn had opened his door to investigate the commotion but had been shooed back inside by Mr. Hancock. They’d regarded Smurf’s room as quarantined as they swept the house for the snake.

  Roger spoke up. “We didn’t check.”

  The sun blasted the rooftops and street with heat. Since none of us wore watches—the schedule our only guide—we would’ve sworn it was after noon. In reality, it was a little past six a.m. We followed Mr. Malagon, who took the steps two at a time, the way men in their thirties do to test their fading athleticism. Hands and Figs and Roger followed through the house and up the stairs too, others jogging behind.

  Mr. Malagon battered the door as he turned the knob. Hands began yodeling, until Mr. Malagon told him to shut up. The snake was not in Smurf’s room, the sheets still mussed from what little sleep Smurf must’ve gotten the night before. An empty pack of Camel Lights lay crumpled defiantly on the dresser, but Mr. Malagon made no effort to throw the pack away, his eyes roving the room. “Okay, boys,” he said. “There’s nothing here.”

  A deferential silence fell among us. Smurf was a general pain in the ass, but he could cut the tension in any room. He would’ve goofed on us for thinking a lowly snake was interested in menacing us, we knew, and this much-needed solace made Smurf’s expulsion reverberate. Mr. Malagon lingered, opening Smurf’s top dresser drawer as he put one hand on the bedroom door. Figs turned in time to notice Mr. Malagon retrieve Smurf’s job journal and fold it into his back pocket. “Let’s go,” he said to Figs, clapping him on the back.

  “We’re going to get back on schedule,” Mr. Malagon said after we’d all reunited in Hands and Figs and Lindy’s living room. “We’ll make a search of the jobsite and then we’ll work until the midmorning break. Any questions?” There were none. As we let ourselves out, Mr. Malagon pulled Figs aside.

  “That was a stupid stunt last night,” Mr. Malagon told him. “It would’ve been you who was thrown out and not Smurf if Smurf hadn’t done you one better. Is that what you want?”

  “No, sir,” Figs sai
d, eyes downcast. He’d assumed this pose before, but this time he felt grateful that he hadn’t been tossed out of Garden Lakes.

  “Mr. Hancock is going to be keeping an eye on you from now on,” Mr. Malagon said. “I can’t do on that score other than to alert you to the fact. So watch yourself, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Malagon appraised Figs’s face and smiled. “Knock that ‘sir’ shit off,” he said. “Everyone else might buy it, but I don’t.”

  Figs smiled back. “Okay.”

  “Here’s a piece of advice, for what it’s worth: The only people who like a politician are those who are getting something from him; everyone else hates him. You’ll learn that sooner or later, but I thought I’d give you a head start on that bit of wisdom.”

  Figs didn’t understand what Mr. Malagon meant, but nodded as if he did. He knew most adults were appeased by nodding in agreement.

  To alleviate our anxiety over the snake—Laird had been given an antidote and returned with nothing more than a sore ankle and a slight limp—Mr. Hancock announced the screening of a movie at seven p.m. in the dining hall (refreshments would be served), and so the reading hour and sophomore tutoring passed slowly, our excitement about the movie overmatching our concentration. We hadn’t accounted for the truth that neither Mr. Hancock nor Mr. Malagon would have run to the closest video store and would instead be selecting one of the boxless videotapes stored in the locking compartment under the TV/VCR combo mounted on a cart that was used to show instructional videos at retreats. So we were dismayed when Mr. Hancock revealed the evening’s fare: The Lost Weekend, a movie none of us had heard of, starring actors we didn’t recognize. But none of us complained, glad to be out of our sweltering houses while the air-conditioning worked to cool our rooms to temperatures that were livable. We were gladder still to be bunkered in the dining hall, forgetting about the day’s events for a couple of hours.

  Mr. Hancock watched the first half hour of the movie with us, then slipped out the door. Roger crept to the front door, waiting until Mr. Hancock was safely inside his house. He tapped Reedy on the shoulder, and he rose like a soldier and followed Roger into the kitchen. Quickly, they filled a plastic five-gallon bucket that had previously held sliced dill pickles with all the silverware from the silverware bins. Spoons, knives, forks—everything. Those who had seen Roger and Reedy duck into the kitchen pretended not to; the rest of us were too weary to take notice.