Dreamland Lake

by Richard Peck

  By then, Arlene is waving her hand in the air, and so Miss Klimer says, “Yes, Arlene, now you.”

  So poor old Arlene jumps up and starts in without even looking down at her page. In this high, fast monotone she recites:

  Sunset and evening star,

  And one clear call for me!

  which brings on sort of a groan running through the half of the class that had Mrs. Vogel back in fifth grade. This happened to be Mrs. Vogel’s favorite poem, and she made us all memorize it. But Arlene plugs along with it like it’s hot off the presses and way up on the charts.

  And may there be no moaning of the bar,

  When I put out to sea, . . .

  The nearer the end, the faster she went. Arlene was developing a very good bosom. But from the neck up, she was lost. When she finished, she dropped back into her chair, kind of flushed.

  Then Miss Klimer says, “Yes . . . well, that was, of course, a poem highly praised in the last century. And certainly very well known . . .” Then she gives up because we all get the point except Arlene, who’s looking bewildered because she’d been aiming to please. “Well, let’s move right along. I wonder if you have a poem, Philip Townsend?”

  He does; and he gets up, and comes to the front of the room, and announces the title: “Frankenstein.”

  Then he begins, sort of acting it out with appropriate gestures of one hand:

  In his occult-science lab

  Frankenstein creates a Flab

  Which, endowed with human will,

  Very shortly starts to kill.

  First, it pleads a lonely life

  And demands a monster-wife;

  “Monstrous!” Frankenstein objects,

  Thinking of the side-effects.

  Chilled with fear, he quits the scene,

  But the frightful man-machine

  Follows him in hot pusuit

  Bumping people off en route,

  Till at last it stands, malign,

  By the corpse of Frankenstein!

  Somewhere in the northern mists

  —Horrid thing—it still exists . . .

  Still at large, a-thirst for gore!

  Got a strong lock on your door?

  This performance is met with a long ovation from the class, who never counted on any entertainment in Language Arts. They love it. And as Flip returns to his seat, people reach out to shake his hand and ask him for a copy of it and like that.

  When it’s finally quiet, Miss Klimer draws herself up extra tall and says, “When we speak of modern poetry, we do not include morbid doggerel. That so-called verse is, among other things, tasteless. I do think, Philip Townsend, that you have a twisted sense of humor and a preoccupation with the grotesque. Isabel, I think we need you, read some . . .” But the bell rings then. And Miss Klimer sits down, completely disgusted, as we all try to see who can get out the door first.

  That’s pretty much the way the week went. But on Thursday we quick-marched through the route, hurling papers at porches with wild abandon and bad aim. So we were downtown at the Camera Shop just before it closed.

  “Game of hide-and-seek?” said the guy behind the counter, who’d been looking at the pictures. He pulled the enlargements out of a big manila envelope. We’d had them blown up to eight by tens. I was trying to elbow Flip out of the way so I could see them, but he was jamming them back into the envelope and paying the clerk.

  “Come on, Flip, let’s have a look at them,” I said as he was taking giant strikes down Market Street. “Not here,” he said. “Someplace where we can concentrate.”

  We could either go to The Napoli for a soda, or we could take the bus home. Finances didn’t cover both. “To the Napoli,” Flip said, so I knew he couldn’t wait, either.

  The Napoli was empty at that time of evening. It smells like chocolate syrup and has the reputation of doing a little quiet business in the narcotic trade. But it has big, high-backed booths, and it’s about the only place where you can sit down in privacy.

  “Come on, cut the build-up,” I said.

  “Order first.” So we ordered—the usual: all-chocolate sodas with sprinkles. And two waters on the side.

  “Now,” I said.

  “Now.” And he began to pull the pictures out of the envelope slow and easy, trying to drive me crazy. He acted like he was going to keep both of them, but, at the last second, scooted one across the table at me.

  So we both look. My stomach’s turning over. We exchange them and look again.

  Then we look at each other. “Might have known,” Flip said finally.

  It was clear as anything. In both pictures. The face looking out from behind the tree belonged to Elvan Helligrew. A big, round moon-face.

  I should have been relieved. At least, it wasn’t some mad monster or a stranger. It was, at least, somebody we knew. Somebody harmless. And I should have been mad too. Since, instead of taking our route for us that day, Elvan had been stalking us through the park, poking his nose into our private business. But I don’t know. I still had this weird feeling. In a way, I felt embarrassed for Elvan for doing it. And too, I still felt insecure. Like we thought we were alone, but we weren’t. Like you’re always at the mercy of somebody or something that’s watching when you’re not. But instead, I said to Flip, “Well, that clears up the mystery.”

  “Part of it,” he said. Then the sodas came.

  We had to walk home, but the days were getting longer so it was still light. In the distant past, we’d done some jump-riding: leaping up on the back bumper of the Number Five bus and hanging on for dear life. But we’d outgrown that. I was tall enough so they’d see me through the back window from inside the bus.

  I could take longer strides than Flip, but he walked faster to make up for it. We headed off past the Public Library and out West Jefferson Avenue which finally ends up at the entrance to Marquette Park. But we turned off and cut across the campus of the Bible College before we got there.

  Along in through there, Flip said, “I wouldn’t have thought he could manage it.”

  “Who?”

  “Elvan, who else? How’d he go creeping along within a few yards of us without us hearing him? Size he is, you’d think he’d sound like a rhinoceros battering down a jungle.”

  “Light on his feet, I guess. He’s spongy.”

  “Yeah, like a dirigible.”

  We were just coming out of the other gates of the Bible College onto West Monroe Street, which is the quickest way home, when Flip said, “Well, I hate to have to do it, but we’ve got to be nice to Elvan.”

  “I’d hate to have to do it too. So why?”

  “Why? Use your head. We’ve got to find out why he was in the woods. We’ve got the evidence.” He waved the manila envelope. “Now we got to get to the motive.”

  “We’ve already got to the motive,” I said, trying to get the upper hand. “I can give it to you in a nutshell. You remember the next day, when you took after him in the cafeteria about not delivering?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you remember how he acted. Like he wanted you to call him every name you could think of. Like, maybe, if you started slapping him around, he wouldn’t have minded that, either.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the way he is,” Flip said, kind of ashamed-sounding.

  “And that’s the way he’s always been—long as I can remember—always wanting attention, always wanting to hang around with some gang or other. Nobody’d ever have him. Listen, in the middle of that whole thing in the cafeteria, he called you old buddy—OLD BUDDY—get it? He doesn’t care what he has to do to get in with us—you, especially.”

  “Good luck to him on that.”

  “Good luck nothing! According to you, we’re going to be nice to him now. We’ll be stuck with him till high school graduation. Maybe longer. Just so you can find out what we already know. You better realize, when we start being nice to him, it’s not going to be easy to get rid of him.”

  “When did you take up practicing
psychiatry?” Flip wanted to know. “You’ll be charging thirty-five, forty dollars an hour to shrink people’s brains before we know it.”

  “Yeah, and you’ll want to go into partnership with me, so we’ll be broke all the time same as now.”

  “Well, I’m not saying you’re wrong. But you’re overlooking a few points.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as what we found in the tennis clubhouse. And what we found carved into the concrete roller coaster thing. And what we found by the bridge, which is hanging up on my closet door and is authentic.”

  He had me there. I’d have gladly forgotten those Nazi souvenirs. “What’s that got to do with Elvan?”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe something. We’ve got to find out, don’t we? We’ve got to get into his confidence. Then if we find out he didn’t have anything to do with that part of things, well, then we’ll have to turn our investigation in a new direction.”

  “Instead of turning our investigations in new directions and spending the rest of our lives with Elvan Helligrew and all those fun things, I got another idea,” I said. “We could forget the whole thing.”

  “Could we?” Flip said.

  Nine

  If it’d been left up to me, all I’d have done was just go up to Elvan and say, hey, we might as well be friends. To start the ball rolling, what could be easier? He’d have jumped at it. Of course if it had been left up to me, I’d never have gone near him. But since it was Flip who was managing things—as usual—it had to be elaborate. And, as Miss Klimer would say, “preoccupied with the grotesque.”

  He was still carrying around A Centennial History of the City of Dunthorpe, Black Hawk County, and Environs. He kept renewing it at the library, even though we didn’t have much time to continue on our local history kick. The librarian must have been overjoyed to have old Estella Winkler Bates off her shelves all spring.

  So one day, while we were making the deliveries, he started carrying on about the Municipal Art Museum—not one of our regular hangouts. He must have been reading up on it in study hall. “Built as a palatial residence by Marius Benderman, drainpipe and ceramic tile tycoon, in 1878,” he quoted, more or less from memory.

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “An eclectic structure, basically Italianate, with the popular Gothic embellishments of the period. Wagonloads of tourists came to watch the construction which took three and a half years.”

  “Do tell,” I said.

  “The central staircase—entirely black walnut—was handcarved by Bavarians and rises from the reception hall, connecting with a conventional box staircase to the central tower.”

  “Think of that,” I said.

  “There’s a statue of Diana Undraped—Goddess of the Hunt—in imported marble in a niche in the sitting room.”

  “Diana Undraped—right here in Dunthorpe,” I said.

  “Built as a country villa, it now stands near the middle of the city on eight landscaped acres, only a fraction of its original grounds. Dedicated to the people as an art museum in 1914 by the Benderman family.”

  “A pleasant parkland,” I said, “where once gracious living of a bygone day still hangs around. Thank you, Estella.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Flip said.

  So after we got the papers out, we walked over to the art museum, which is in a neighborhood that’s known better days. Basically Italian with Gothic doodads it may be, but it looks like the chamber of horrors today. Old Marius built big, but it lacks the homey touch. The only thing that kept it from coming off like a Halloween card was that, now that it’s an art museum, they have fluorescent lights hanging down from all the ceilings. This doesn’t add to the charm, but it does give it a modern, everyday glow. We went in.

  “Herringbone parquet,” Flip said, pointing to the floor of the entrance hall. It was put together with little pieces of polished wood in a zigzag pattern.

  Just to keep up, I pointed out the staircase and said, “Handcarved black walnut.”

  The art exhibit was of local talent. And since there isn’t much, nobody was looking around, and most of the walls were bare. “Let’s find Diana Undraped,” I said, but Flip was heading for the handcarved staircase.

  “I wonder where the curator is,” Flip whispered.

  “Beats me,” I said. “In fact, I don’t know what one is.”

  “That’s the person in charge,” he said, “like the caretaker. And from now on, keep quiet.”

  So I could see we were up to something even before Flip started creeping up the stairs, which were carpeted, luckily. The only art on the second floor landing was an oil painting of Marius Benderman with a beard down to his belt. The staircase went on up, but there was this little velvet rope across it with a sign: PUBLIC NOT ADMITTED BEYOND THIS POINT. Flip went under it. I went over it.

  The third floor landing was smaller, with five closed doors. Dark too. Flip looked at each one of them and, finally, pointed to the only one that had a little step under it. He tried it, and it opened.

  “Conventional box staircase leading to central tower,” I quoted to him.

  “I said be quiet,” Flip whispered back. He hustled up into the complete darkness. The steps were uncarpeted and steep. We were both going up on hands and knees. I thought I better pull the door shut behind us, just in case. So it was like the middle of a moonless night. The staircase made several turns, but, finally, we came out in a little room. Dusty as hell, with cobwebs. We were standing in the top of the tower right over the front entrance of the museum. There were narrow, round-topped windows on three sides. You could see all over town. We were up, maybe, five floors, and you could look over the trees downtown to the Merchants’ and Farmers’ Bank Building, which is the local skyscraper.

  “Great view,” Flip said.

  “We’re trespassing,” I said.

  “This’ll do just fine,” Flip said, and started off back down the stairs. We got all the way back to the second floor before we heard voices. A bunch of women were just coming in the front door. So we whirled around and contemplated the painting of Marius Benderman. Then we strolled back down the stairs like a couple of well-known art lovers. And out the front door.

  I didn’t bother to ask Flip why we’d done it—or why it would “do just fine.” I was always supposed to be able to figure out ahead of time what we were planning. And I wasn’t about to ask.

  The next day at school we were about the last ones through the cafeteria line. Flip had told me to wait for him, and he arranged to be late. So the only table left was the one at the back. It was sort of Reject’s Row, if you know what I mean. Elvan was there.

  Flip made a line straight for it. When Elvan saw us flop down within easy reach, he looked up from his mountain of lunch, and his face really lit up. But right away, Flip started talking to me in an extra loud voice. Like we were in a play or something. But also like we were completely alone at the table.

  “Well, Bry, tonight’s the night. Yessir, this is the night we’ve been waiting for. Going to go down to the art museum just as quick as we get the papers out. I hear you can climb right up into the tower if you go up the main staircase without getting caught. Then you go through this door and up some more stairs, and there you are. Supposed to be the best view in town, they tell me. ’Course, it’s strictly off-limits. I don’t know if we better risk it. Still, it’s worth a try. Never been up in that tower, have you?”

  “Sure,” I said, And Flip gave me this look like I’d gone berserk and betrayed him. He started kicking away at me under the table. “I was up there two, maybe three, years ago,” I said, very cool. “Great view. Wouldn’t mind having a look at it again.” At least, this stopped the kicking. I wasn’t about to give Flip complete control over the conversation—once I figured out what we were up to.

  “Yeah, well, we ought to be up there by about five o’clock, wouldn’t you say?” While he said this, he kept an eye on me.

  “I’d say so.” Then we started talking about something
else, I forget what. Elvan could hardly eat for straining his ears.

  We were a little ahead of schedule arriving at the art museum. It was just four-thirty. And there were some bona fide art lovers wandering around the first floor. So we made a quick run through the rooms legally open to the public. It must have been a great old place in its day. As big as Mrs. Garrison’s house. Without all her furniture, and lampshades, and things, it looked even bigger.

  The exhibit of local talent was mostly wishy-washy watercolors—a lot of pink barns, and tree limbs, and like that. Except for them, it was an interesting place. Diana Undraped was standing up on her toes, naked as a skinny-dipper and snowy white. Somebody had painted the little alcove behind her like a blue sky with big, white, puffy clouds that were beginning to flake. And you could see where they’d had gaslight fixtures coming out of the walls in the old days. It was a nice piece of local history, and you could tell that the old ladies going around on canes and looking at the watercolor barns were glad to see young fellows taking an interest in art.

  But Flip was working our way back to the entrance hall. We stood around in there on the herringbone parquet till nobody was around. Then he was up the stairs—two at a time—around the landing, and under the velvet rope. One minute, we were there; the next minute, we’d vanished. Like a couple of bats heading for the belfry.

  Up in the tower room, it was still afternoon. The sun was streaming in at a low angle. All the west windows in town were bright orange. “Keep an eye on the front gate,” Flip said, “but don’t let yourself be seen.” We stood up there maybe twenty minutes.

  Then, way down in the distance, we saw Elvan Helligrew coming through the big wrought-iron gates out by the street. He was looking first one way and then the other, like we might be hiding behind the trees in the yard. But he came lumbering on up to the house and disappeared right under our feet onto the front porch.