Billy Goat Hill

by Mark Stanleigh Morris

  Hero worship had some therapeutic benefit, but bad dreams cannot be offset by fantasies forever, not even by fantasies come true. Even after that glorious day in the sun, the little silver sphere came back around with the certitude of an orbiting planet ruled by the unyielding laws of physics. I just can’t help thinking about the dead man. Because of me, he will never get to see Dodger Stadium.

  It is all too much for the bruised mind of a boy not yet twelve. Something has to give; and when it does, I fear I will be looking at the beginning of the end of the world.

  The missiles in Cuba can’t begin to compare.

  e and the bat are hanging out in the garage. Man, I love this bat. It’s been three months; still, every time I look at it, I relive the entire day at Dodger Stadium—the best day of my life. I keep it next to my bed at night. The smell of the pine tar comforts me and helps me get to sleep. The bad dreams have been fewer and farther between with the bat sleeping by my side. I think some kind of magic is working for me. Good magic. Duke Snider magic.

  I hear Lucinda yelling for me. What now?

  I walk outside and close the garage door behind me. Lately, Mac has found a cool place in the garage, and he keeps trying to get in there to relax away from the afternoon heat. He really likes it, and I’ve been meaning to make a spot for him with an old blanket so he doesn’t have to lie on the oil stained floor. I haven’t gotten around to it, though.

  “Coming!”

  She beckons me up to the front porch. She is dressed for work and ready to leave, and I can see she is agitated about something. “I want you to go get your brother. Something very important has come up, and I need to talk to both of you right away. Hurry up, go find him right now.”

  Three sentences, that ties the record for the amount of conversation my mother has directed toward me in weeks. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “I don’t care—I said go find him right now!”

  “Yes, ma’am. You don’t have to yell.” This can’t be good.

  I guess correctly and find Luke two blocks away. He’s been around the back side of Jake’s Barbershop, where he discovered a half-empty bottle of Clubman aftershave lotion in Jake’s trash bin. He has managed to soak himself with the stuff. I actually smell him before I see him. The scent is so strong my eyes are watering. I send him on ahead of me and fret about what might be on Lucinda’s mind. She is overdue for a good rampage. Way overdue. Maybe she’s heard something about the dead man?

  Lucinda is pacing like a wild animal in the living room when Luke and I finally settle side by side on the sofa. She’s been crying, and my first thought is that Earl must have come around again and upset her. The sinking feeling starts to come over me, the feeling that I seem to live with most of the time, the awaiting execution feeling.

  I brought the bat in the house with me intending to put it away in the bedroom closet, but she didn’t let me get past the living room. I’m holding the bat between my legs, my sweaty hands gripping the handle for courage. Luke sits next to me, reeking like a florist shop full of dead flowers.

  Being sat down together on the couch and addressed like this feels uncomfortable, threatening. For so long, Lucinda has been here physically, but her spirit has gone elsewhere, searching harder than ever for Matthew. All this time she hasn’t communicated with us much more than to say hello and good-bye; now all of the sudden she has something important to tell us. This sure can’t be good.

  She doesn’t sit with us on the sofa but stops her nervous pacing and stands off to one end of the room, about as far away from us as one could be and still be in the same room. She looks drained and tired, like a person overworked, short on sleep, and long past the need for a vacation. For the first time, I wonder if her nights might be possessed by bad dreams, like mine. She really looks terrible.

  Convulsively, she blurts, “We have to move away from here right away.”

  Stunned, disbelieving my own ears, I stare at her.

  “No way!” Luke cries. “I like my school!”

  “I’m sorry—but that’s just the way it is, Luke. We are moving, and I need you guys to start packing for me.”

  I stand up, my hands clenched tight around the bat handle. “What do you mean? Today? Right now?”

  “Yes. We have to go immediately.”

  Huffing and puffing, Luke pulls his hat down over his eyes, slumps deep into the sofa cushions, and refuses to hear anything more.

  I move a couple of paces toward her, the bat swinging from my right hand. “Well, why, Mom? What’s going on?”

  “There’s nothing to discuss, Wade. It’s just a fact—we are moving tomorrow. I’ll be back with some boxes, but then I have to go to work. So I need you guys to really pitch in and get all of your stuff ready to load. It would be great if you could pack up some of the kitchen things as well. When I get home tonight, I’ll work on the rest of it. A truck will be here in the morning, and some men will load the heavy furniture for us, but we need to have everything else ready before they arrive.”

  “What men?”

  “Just some men!”

  “This is crazy. Won’t you at least say where we’re moving?”

  “Glendora—but that’s all I can say right now.”

  “Glendora? Where the heck is Glendora?”

  She exhales a partial surrender and gives in to tears. “Wade, I can’t go into anything else right now. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. I’ll be back soon with the boxes.”

  And just like that she heads out the door.

  From under his hat Luke mutters, “This sucks.”

  Lucinda comes back a little while later with lots of cardboard boxes: new ones tied ten to a bundle. She tries to drop them off without subjecting herself to further questioning, but I scoot out the back door and around the side of the house and manage to pin her out by the car. “Do the Sergeant and Miss Cherry know about this?”

  “As a matter of fact they do.”

  I am taken aback. “Well, what did they have to say about it?”

  “I told you I don’t want to go into this right now. I just can’t deal with any more questions.”

  “But this isn’t fair. It’s not right. What did the Sergeant say? Did he…tell you anything…something bad about me? This is my fault, isn’t it?”

  She looks at me with tired, angry eyes. “For that matter, you can’t see the Sergeant anymore either.”

  “What!”

  “I know you think the world of him and Miss Cherry, but we have to cut off those ties now. I have made an agreement with them, and they know they are not to have any further contact with my sons.”

  I hold on to her arm. “Agreement? What agreement? What in the heck is going on? This can’t be right!”

  She removes my hand and gets in the car. “I’ll be back tonight. Please pack.”

  I stand with the bat in my hand and watch her drive away. I look around and wish I had someone to complain to, to argue my case to. I want to smash something with the bat, but there is nothing to smash. I sit on the curb and try to stifle the rage that has nowhere to go. They made an agreement?

  Uninspired and with great reluctance, we dutifully pack all of our things. We also make a good dent in the kitchen items as directed. Luke and I don’t have much to say throughout the afternoon and evening, both of us wrapped in the depressed colorlessness of mourning. Drained from the packing and the stress of the dastardly news, we decide to hit the hay a little early—but not without a plan.

  At about 10:30 p.m., we hear Lucinda pull in the driveway. She looks in on us, and by the sound of her movements about the house, spends about an hour packing. Shortly after midnight the lights go off.

  Luke whispers, “Are you ready?”

  “Yes. Let’s do it.”

  Out of pure defiance, we head out for one last hurrah at Billy Goat Hill. Not knowing how far away Glendora is, we figure it could be a long time before we see Billy Goat Hill again.

  There is no moonlight sliding, no l
aughter, no playful arguing over the finer points of baseball. We sit next to each other at the top of the Crippler, depressed, confused, and more than angry. Even the crickets show reverence for our funeral-like mood and keep their whirring low and dirgelike.

  Luke throws a pebble down the incline. “I think she’s found us out.”

  I stare straight ahead, believing I know exactly to what he is referring, but we have never had this conversation, and I don’t want to have it now. I want my murderer status left unspoken. I want the burden of all that it entails kept within me, and me alone. I want to continue to protect him from “it” as I have all this time, and for as long as possible—forever.

  But, I also know Luke. That he would speak of it now means that he has completed his unfathomable process of logic and has arrived at a point of understanding, and having arrived at that understanding must now speak about it. He will explode if he doesn’t. I can’t just stare ahead and say nothing and allow an explosion.

  “She had to find out sooner or later, I guess.”

  “What are we going to do? I don’t want to move.”

  “We don’t have a choice, Luke.”

  “This really sucks!”

  I look around for Mac. I need him here by my side. “Mac! Where are you!”

  “He went back to the house.”

  “I thought he was following us.”

  “He went back.”

  “For sure?”

  “Yes, I saw him go back.”

  “Darn!”

  “I’ve been thinking, Wade—what if we promise her we’ll give up Cavendish Caverns?”

  My heart stops and I look at him with relief and amazement. He thinks she found out about our storm drain escapades, not the dead man! “I’m pretty sure she isn’t open to negotiation. I’m afraid we’re just going to have to do what she says.”

  I see the reflection of the moon in his teary eyes. “I’m scared, Wade.”

  “We’ll be okay.”

  I wish I had said it with more conviction, but I have always hated lying to him. He scoots over closer to me and halfheartedly throws another pebble into the darkness.

  We come home at four-thirty in the morning to a very scary scene out in front of the house—four police cars with lights ablaze and neighbors milling around in their robes and slippers. Carl’s wife is out on her front stoop in her nightgown and appears to be praying toward our place. Luke goes into a stupor over the flashing lights.

  I run to the house and a policeman tries to stop me, but I dodge him and rush inside to find Lucinda lying on the sofa. She is crying hysterically. Another policeman is trying to calm her.

  She sees me and cries out, “Wade! I’m so sorry!”

  My heart pounding hard in my chest, I turn around in a panic. Where is he? And then…I see him.

  The tiny little light left shining in my soul is savagely snuffed out by a massive sigh of pitiful desperation. Mac, my great protector, my true loyal friend, is lying dead in the corner behind the front door, his tongue lolling from his mouth in a circle of blood on the floor. I see a big hole in his chest.

  “Noooo!” I fall down beside him. Sobbing, I sit there petting his head and rubbing his ears. “I love you, Mac. I love you, Mac. I love you, Mac.” My hand touches the blood on the floor. It is still warm.

  Evil has broken into our house in the middle of the night. Mac is dead. Lucinda has gone insane because she couldn’t find us. And I want to run away from everything, but I can’t.

  The cops leave me on the floor with Mac. After a while I get up and go into the bedroom. I pull my bedspread off of my bed and drag it into the living room. No one gives me a hard time, and I ask two of the cops to help me pick Mac up. We carry him out to the garage. I want to make a nice spot for him with my bedspread. I want it folded just so and spread out smooth for him so he doesn’t have to lie on the oil spots. The two cops seem to understand why this is important to me, and they help me fold and position the bedspread. We lay Mac down, and I ask them to leave me alone with him.

  They nod to each other, and one of them says, “I’ll wait for you outside the garage door. We’ll need to take him away in a little while, son.”

  “Why, sir?”

  “I’m sorry, but we need the bullet.”

  “Oh.”

  “You can be with your dog for a few minutes.”

  “Is Sergeant Cavendish coming here?”

  “No he’s not, son. Your mom made it very clear she doesn’t want him here, and he’s tied up with some other problems anyway.”

  Other problems? “Is he okay?”

  The two cops seem to exchange a worried look while my question floats away in the dark. They step outside the garage, leaving me staring at the empty doorway.

  I sit next to Mac and pick up his front paw. I feel the soft tufts of fur between his toes. I remember how when he was just a pup he would chase big mean neighborhood dogs away from our yard, and how he always wanted to play Get the Stick with the biggest stick he could find, and how when I was sick he would stay by me on the bed until the fever broke—what a tough guy he was, even as a pup.

  “I love you, Mac. You’re a good boy—the best friend I ever had. You did your job. Thanks for protecting Lucinda.” I lie down next to him and wrap my arms around him. Has he gone to where dogs don’t bark?

  After a while, I leave Mac’s body in the garage and walk outside to the front yard. The sun is rising, and all of the neighbors have gone back to bed, all except Carl’s wife. She sees me and comes over to the fence.

  I walk over to her, and she reaches over the fence and hugs me. “Somebody killed my dog.”

  “I’m so sorry, honey.”

  Her kind words and her gentle smile do give me some comfort. “We are moving away from here.”

  She takes my bloody hand in hers. “Yes, I heard. I’ll miss seeing you boys.”

  “I have to go check on my brother.”

  “Okay, you take care of yourself.”

  I start to turn away, but then I stop and look at her. Tears welling up again, my eyes meet hers, and something inside keeps me there at the fence. “Everything is all messed up, ma’am.”

  “I know, honey.” She touches my cheek. “I believe somehow all things work for God’s purposes, and I just want you to know I will always keep you and your family in my prayers.”

  “I never knew your name.”

  “Esther. My name is Esther. Do you still have your friend’s Bible, honey?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Try to keep it with you.”

  “Okay. Good-bye…Esther.”

  “Good-bye, Wade. God bless you.”

  I leave Esther standing by the fence with tears running from her kind eyes.

  A few minutes later, Luke and I watch as two police officers carry a black bag from the garage to a van parked out front. I sit there on the porch with my arm around Luke, wondering what sort of darkness awaits us in this place called Glendora.

  An impenetrable distance into which coolness has settled defines the relationship between Lucinda and me. I’d never even heard of Glendora, and with hardly a day’s notice I find myself living here. I have questions, lots of questions, all prefixed with the word why.

  Why did we have to move?

  Why the hurry?

  Why Glendora?

  Why did Mac have to die?

  Why can’t I see the Sergeant anymore?

  Why can’t I see Miss Cherry anymore?

  Why won’t you answer me?

  There are many ugly battles, and Lucinda always ends up in tears. But she never once gives me a plausible answer to any of the core questions. Luke tries his best to stay out of it. Worst of all, I have not heard from the Sergeant or Miss Cherry. I obey Lucinda and do not try to contact them.

  For a while, I harbor hope they will find me and do something about this terrible injustice. I believe they will come and help me, but months pass, during which every ring of the telephone and every knock
at the door sends my heart skipping with the hope that it is them. They never call. They never come. Not even a note in the mail. Eventually, my pride kicks in, and I begin to lie to myself and pretend that I don’t need them.

  The initial shock of the violence at Ruby Place slowly wears off, but I am left mired in a thick sludge of resentment that lays heavy over the prior layers of my troubled existence. I no longer trust Lucinda, or anybody else, for that matter. For a while, I try to accept things as they are. I truly try to make it work. But after everything else that has happened, my litany of misfortune, I can’t help seeing Lucinda as the bad guy, the person who ripped me up by my precious few roots and jammed me into another universe without so much as one word of explanation. Like layers of fallen leaves beneath an old dying tree, season by season my bitterness deepens.

  A price is paid by all. Lucinda seems to age ten years overnight, though I feel no compassion for her. Frustrated and hamstrung by her derisive silence, I knowingly, ever so gradually, separate myself from her, until it becomes clear we are living in opposing camps. To me, Lucinda is the enemy.

  My only power in the whole mess comes when I absolutely refuse to go along with her ridiculous proclamation that, coinciding with the move, we have to start going by a different last name.

  “What do you mean we have to change our name?”

  No answer.

  “What do you mean from now on our last name is Gelson?”

  No answer.

  “No way, Lucinda! Earl was a complete jerk, but I’m not changing my name from Parker to Gelson! No way! What in the heck is going on?”

  No answer.

  For a while after the move from Ruby Place, Lucinda tries to spend more time with us. She claims things at work have changed and she can afford not to work so many hours. How can that be? She has the same job, as far as I know. I don’t bother to ask…she won’t tell me anyway. She seems always on edge, and we all feel the tremors building toward a cataclysm. Our new home in Glendora is a darkening sky. A showdown is coming.

  The fuse of rebellion sizzles and sputters for four long years, until I can’t take it any longer. The time comes to make a decision, and I believe I am doing myself, and probably Lucinda too, a big favor. I have to target my anger somewhere, and Lucinda is the bull’s eye.