“I remember.”
* * *
And Scott remembered because he was seeing it, experiencing it — an episode, anyway. He and Janis were walking along a towering oak that had recently fallen, giving them access to a part of the woods that sank into a low bog. They had always avoided the bog in the past. It smelled like toilet water, for one, and was next to impassable, for another. Plus, they imagined all kinds of creatures and dangers lurking inside, quicksand not the least of them.
How old were they? Eight? Scott wasn’t sure. It was mid summer and they were pretending to be explorers — that much he did remember. As Janis stepped over a limb, she reached back for his hand to balance herself. She was maybe an inch taller than he, her cheeks splashed with bright freckles. And even though he was still aware of himself on the couch, he could hear the whine of mosquitoes and smell the stinging repellant his mother would spray over him in coats. And not only could he see Janis, the girl, he could feel her small hand around his own.
“Whatever you do, don’t fall in.” She stopped on the other side of the limb to help him over, then pointed with a stick she was holding in her hand. “That’s where the water moccasins live.”
Scott squinted into the reedy water but couldn’t see anything.
“C’mon,” she said.
He followed her down the trunk and along a treacherous path of limbs and bifurcations. Squinting, they pushed through showers of branches whose narrow leaves were already browning and flittering into the water. She clambered ahead while he took more care, kneeling down whenever he began to totter. The tree seemed enormous, as if they could keep walking along it forever. He really did feel like an explorer, and the water world they traversed, though only a few hundred yards from their street, looked foreign to him and strange.
Soon, the limbs narrowed and shifted under their feet. Janis took him down a limb that dipped into the bog before emerging again. They got on both sides of the dip and squatted. The tips of Janis’s battered green Keds touched the brown water, but she didn’t seem to notice.
They were peering into an alien world, where little black beetles sped on the water’s surface in circles, like mercury squeezed out in drops. Long-legged insects skated past. And then they did see a snake, maybe even a water moccasin. It lay in a black coil at the bottom of the bog. Janis prodded it with her stick, and they watched it wriggle from sight, mud kicking up around it.
An alien world, yes. But best of all, it was their world, his and Janis’s. She had been right about that, and he felt himself nodding even as he remained immersed in the memory.
Janis swatted a mosquito on her arm, then stood up and looked around. Scott straightened his plastic glasses and followed her example. From their vantage, they could see the cement wall of the levee through the trees. It ran from Sixteenth Avenue around the Meadows on the far side of the creek. Janis had told him her father said it was for when the creek flooded, which happened most summers. It wasn’t to protect their neighborhood but the lower-lying ones around it.
“Hey, look,” Janis said. “If we jump down there, we’ll be past the swamp. We can follow the creek to the end of the Meadows.”
That seemed like a grand idea to Scott. The Meadows consisted of a single street with three shorter streets coming off of it, Janis’s street being the first one. The end of the Meadows, though modest in street distance, seemed really far away in woods distance. And they had never been that far in the woods before.
“All right,” he said.
They made their way toward the end of the oak tree’s branch and scampered down. The ground squished under the soles of their sneakers but soon became solid as they cleared the tall grass bordering the bog. They now looked out into more familiar woods of scrub oak and pine. The creek chuckled off to their left. Janis marched ahead, whacking saw palmettos with her stick as they passed. Scott did the same, imagining the palmettos were brigands come to steal their rations. Both of them had scratches on their legs, the ones suffered in earlier excursions already scabbed over. That always surprised Scott — they could bleed and heal without realizing their skin had been torn in the first place. It was part of the magic of the woods.
“Hey, is that Mrs. Thornton’s house?” Scott whispered.
He aimed his stick off to the right where color showed through the trees. The Thorntons lived four houses from the end of the Meadows. Mrs. Thornton had one of those old-fashioned bikes with a metal basket in front, and she rode it through the neighborhood like Miss Gulch from the Wizard of Oz. Her eyes stayed hidden behind brown sunglasses, lips pulled in as though she had just tasted something sour. She yelled at Scott once for “loitering” in front of her house on his clamp-on skates (he had fallen). Scott and Janis were sufficiently afraid of her that they skipped the end of the Meadows on Halloween, which was saying something.
“Yeah,” Janis whispered. “We better stay back until we’re past it.”
They watched the house through the trees as they crept along, following the bank of the creek. The houses always looked different to Scott from behind than from the street — sinister, almost — as though maybe that was the side you weren’t supposed to see. And Scott had never seen these houses from behind before. They made it past the Thorntons’ and then the one beyond that. Through the slats of a fence, Scott could make out the aqua tiling of a swimming pool. Though they hadn’t meant to, they were drawing nearer to the backyards, where tangled growth met fencing and barbered lawns. The course of the creek seemed to be pushing them there.
The next house stood large and dark, and Scott couldn’t even remember it now from the street.
“Maybe we should go back,” he whispered.
“Just one more, and we’ll be at the end of the Meadows.” Hoarse excitement scored Janis’s voice. She was always the more adventurous. “We don’t even have to go all the way, just to the edge of the last property line. But we’ll still be able to say we went to the end.”
He wanted to ask her about Samson. One of the houses down there was supposed to have an attack dog, though Scott wasn’t sure which house. His mother was always telling him never to play at the end of the street, in case Samson got out. Samson. The name held a grave fascination for him, as if it belonged to a mythical beast. But standing there, Scott felt the fascination turning to dread, like a belt cinching his aorta. He was certain that the tall house with the iron fence was the one — Samson’s house. He looked back the way they had come and then into Janis’s determined eyes.
“Please,” she whispered, squeezing his hand.
He agreed even as his fear centers begged him not to. The thing was, he liked Janis, liked her a lot. And being the only girl he liked — the only girl he really knew — Scott just assumed they’d be married someday. Janis smiled and led him forward again. The woods fell under a shadow as palmettos gave way to woody vines and a dim carpet of poison ivy. Janis seemed to know where to step to avoid the ivy without even looking down. Scott followed her until she pulled up.
“Did you hear that?” Her ponytail swished like a flame as she peered from side to side.
Scott listened. “You’re just trying to scare—”
“Shh!”
And then Scott heard it too: a low growl that ended in what sounded like a dry cough. Gooseflesh broke over him until it felt as if someone was trying to lift him by his hairs. Scott saw him before Janis did. And what terrified him the most was not his nearness, but that he had waited until that moment to announce himself. How long had he been watching them?
“Get behind me,” Scott whispered.
“What? What do you see?”
“We need to back away. Slowly.”
He crouched and held the stick out in front of them. Thin and not very long, the stick looked like a wand with which he was trying to cast a warding spell. And in his mind, that’s exactly what he was doing: muttering incantations, hoping beyond hope that Samson could hear him somehow — and would heed him.
Stay right there…
We’re leaving… Please… Please don’t come any closer.
He placed one foot behind himself and then, very gently, his other. Janis clung to his shoulders. He could tell by the movement of her breath, first over his left ear then his right, that she still hadn’t spotted him.
“Where?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t afford to become distracted. He would learn later that you were never supposed to lock eyes with an aggressive dog, that the primitive part of its brain would interpret the signal as a challenge. But Scott was certain that the moment he dropped his gaze, Samson would charge. He could see the thought process inside the dog’s obsidian eyes: why bite their arms when he could have one of their throats in his jaws before they knew what was happening?
Scott took another step back. The Rottweiler sprinted from the shadows, barking savagely. In the time it took for Janis to scream, the beast halved the distance and pulled up, his scarred muzzle wrinkling from a pair of dagger-like canines. The muscles beneath his chest vibrated, as though the least stimulus would set them off. Pound for pound, he was bigger than either of them.
“Shhh…” Scott whispered, not to Janis, but toward the dog. Fear had numbed his body into an insensate shell, like the papier-mâché globes they had made at school the year before with strips of newspaper and flour-based paste. And it felt to Scott as if he was peering out from the inside of his own globe, from that cool hollow where he had popped the balloon and pulled out its flaccid skin.
Strangely, his fear was the only thing keeping him calm. He hoped to project that calm onto Samson somehow.
“Shhh…” Scott whispered again, the stick still held up in front of them. With his other hand, he felt behind for Janis.
Samson growled from the pit of his stomach.
Can I have your attention, please?
* * *
Scott started and found himself on a couch, Janis beside him. But she was a more mature version of the Janis he had just been with in the woods, a stunning version.
And then, with the same rapidity with which the party sounds and a Madonna song climbed around them, Scott remembered where he was, who he was. He straightened himself. Janis was looking down between them, and when Scott followed her gaze, he found his hand holding hers.
“Oh!” He fumbled to release her. “I’m so sorry — I didn’t—”
Someone whistled sharply. “Hey! Can I have your attention?”
They looked up to where Britt, Gamma’s sergeant at arms, stood. He was also Scott’s older Gamma brother, who, as older brothers went, had turned out to be indifferent more than anything.
Behind Britt, someone turned down the music. Voices fell.
Britt smiled. “That’s more like it.” He was wearing a white tuxedo, which might have explained why he was speaking with more than his usual refinement. He waved the pledges into the dining room. “The presidents of Alpha and Gamma would like to make a toast.”
“I’m all right,” Janis whispered to Scott, holding her own hand now.
When their eyes met, perplexity wrinkled the space between her brows. She stood and, with a backward glance, joined the other pledges filing up the three steps. Beyond their heads, Scott could see slices of Grant Sidwell and Margaret Graystone standing in the center of the dining room, drinks in hand. Scott followed the pledges but at the last moment veered down the hallway.
Squinting against the bright lights of the bathroom, Scott locked the door and leaned his arms against the marble countertop.
What in the world just happened?
That day in the woods — he hadn’t been just remembering the experience, he had been inside of it, reliving it. Had he just completely zoned out? Had he slumped there like a zombie while Janis sat watching him? He must have. And why was his hand holding hers? How had that happened?
He filled the sink with cold water and scooped it against his face, trying to drown the memory of that final bewildered look Janis had given him. Way to go, Sport. Way to freak her out.
Through the door, he heard shouts of “Hear! Hear!”
“All right,” he told himself as he toweled his face off. “This thing goes until eleven. There’s still time. There’s still time to fix this.” He cleared his throat and spoke into the huge mirror. “Oh, hey, Janis. Sorry about blanking out on you a minute ago. I’ve got this weird epilepsy thing I contracted while, um, watching an episode of The Space Giants. No, no, I’m fine. And don’t worry, it’s not contagious or anything.” He forced a weak laugh.
When Scott emerged, he found Janis across the living room. For a second he thought she was raising her hand toward him, but she was only pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, her gaze fixed on whomever she was talking to. It was not until he skirted a group in the center of the room that he saw the person in Janis’s company: Blake Farrier. It was a bye week, Scott remembered — no football game.
Scott took another step nearer, but something about their closeness told Scott that their conversation would not be welcoming of a third party. He’d get no points for barging in and spilling a drink this time. And Blake looked so solid standing there, so self-possessed. When Janis’s lips turned up at something he said, Scott’s heart crumpled into a wad.
He retreated to the refreshment table, where Sweet Pea was encamped again, a plate piled high to either side. Scott watched their faces from across the room.
Blake and Janis were still together when, an hour later, Scott went to the kitchen to call his father. As he returned through the pillars of the front hallway, he raised his hand to the living room, to no one, then went slouching out into the night, toward the house where his father had dropped him off.
18
“Blake asked me out,” Janis said.
Margaret turned toward her. “Out out? Like on a date?” She smirked and returned her gaze to the road. “I was wondering why you were being so quiet.”
They had just dropped Feather Heather off, and the Prelude’s headlights were sweeping an arc past the Oakwood sign. The Alpha-Gamma gala had gone until almost eleven o’clock, and Margaret and Janis had stayed late to help Kelly and her parents clean up.
“How did he ask you?”
“He said he was getting his driver’s license this week and invited me to a movie next Saturday.”
“And you said…?” Margaret was watching her from the edge of her vision, ready to critique any missteps in her answer.
“I said that it sounded nice but that, yes, I would have to check with Dad.”
Margaret nodded her approval. “You always want them to know you have a father looking out for you. That’s very important. It separates the ones who are serious about you from the sleazeballs.” She patted Janis’s knee. “But I happen to know that Blake is one of the good ones. I’ll be happy to put in a word to Dad for you.”
“Thanks.”
“He’ll still want to meet him, of course.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Well, how does it feel,” Margaret asked, steering them into the Meadows, “your first time being asked out in high school? You seem sort of, I don’t know, blasé about the whole thing.”
Janis watched the road. How did she feel? In the moment it happened, it had seemed surreal. Blake had found her after the toast and congratulated her for making the varsity team that day. (She was the first freshman in eight years to be selected — and he knew that as well, somehow). From there, they had fallen into the kind of conversation people have when they both know they’re interested in each other and, for the first time, they’re beginning to suspect that the feeling might be mutual: conversation that’s intimate and excited but a little guarded at the same time, a little frightened. Then Blake was telling her about his driver’s license. He was asking her about a movie together. And as Janis wrote down her number on his invitation, she realized that if they had still been in middle school, if it had been only a year or two earlier, she would have written it down on the palm of his hand.
Yes,
surreal was definitely the word for it.
But with a little distance, Janis wondered whether the sphere of their conversation, his asking her out, had felt that way for the very reason that it was so far removed from the fear and strangeness that was becoming her life, her reality.
That week, Janis had become more attuned to the news during dinner. The bulk of coverage dealt with the presidential election. (Mondale wasn’t seen as having a spitting chance in November, and even though her mother didn’t say it, Janis could tell that the news depressed her.) Janis paid closer attention to the international stories, the coverage seeming to fit with what her father had told her. U.S.-Soviet relations were as tense as they’d been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Reagan was talking about building a missile defense system in space — “Star Wars” they were dubbing it. Even Reagan’s call for an arms reduction treaty seemed to fit. After all, why try to change the rules of the game unless the other team was winning under the old rules?
And during P.E. that Monday, Janis had overheard a fellow student — a nerd, she supposed — telling another student that “the Doomsday Clock” had been moved to three minutes until midnight that year.
“What does that mean?” she’d asked, her shoe still propped on the gym bleachers where she’d gone to tie it.
At first, the student, seated on the bleachers, had only responded by stroking his frayed mustache, grinning up in a way that made his smallish eyes press together. When he spoke, his voice was thin and arrogant. “Well, well, a neophyte doth seeketh a sip from the fountain of knowledge.” He turned to an Asian student beside him. “What say you, Chun? Is this one worthy?”
“Oh, forget it,” Janis muttered.
He spoke rapidly to her back. “The Doomsday Clock is a feature of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists put out by the University of Chicago. The minute hand represents the statistical probability of global nuclear war.” He gasped for breath. “The scientists adjust it depending on how far or close we are. I was just telling Chun that they adjusted it up another minute this year.”
XGeneration, Books 1-3: You Don't Know Me, The Watchers, and Silent Generation Page 15
