Dreamland Lake

by Richard Peck

  “I know it,” he said. But that’s all he said.

  I started to get up then, but Flip grabbed hold of my arm. “Sit down. Not now.”

  “Well, not at 5:30, either,” I said to him. But I might as well have saved my breath.

  Because at quarter after five we were heading out Jefferson Avenue with the main gates of Marquette Park at the end of it. Flip had been too quiet while we carried the route. Afterward, when he just turned down Jefferson Avenue like it was understood between us that we were going to meet Elvan, I finally got mad.

  “Where do you think we’re going?”

  “To meet Elvan.”

  “I’ve got a better idea.”

  “What?” Flip said, like he didn’t want to hear it.

  “Let him stand out there waiting for us a few hours. That’ll cure him of planting anonymous notes.”

  “I doubt it,” Flip said, and I guess I did too, but I didn’t like to admit it.

  “But, dammit, if we meet him out there according to his instructions, he’ll feel more like Hitler than ever. I’m for not giving him the satisfaction.”

  “It’s not for giving him any satisfaction,” Flip said. “We’re the ones going to get the satisfaction if anybody does.”

  “It’d satisfy me just fine to go home.”

  “So go.”

  I got as far as starting to turn off on the last cross street before the park gates. I was getting tired of playing by Flip’s rules. But that wasn’t so bad. I hated playing by Elvan’s.

  “But if we don’t go,” Flip said to my back, “we’ll be making a mistake for two reasons.” I stood there. He knew he had me. I knew he had me. “First, he’ll just keep after us if we don’t scare him off for good. And second, we won’t be satisfied if we don’t find out what he’s got to say that he’s so anxious to tell us.”

  That turned me around. “Look, Flip, you don’t really think he has any evidence, do you? It’s just something he’s thought up to say. Right?”

  “How do we know till we hear?”

  “What we’re going to hear from him is a bunch of bull. What I want to know from you right now is do you think Elvan killed the dead man?”

  Flip just stood there, looking at me.

  “Do you think he killed the dead man, and now he’s decided to confess to us?” I said, loud.

  “No,” he said, finally. “No motive. And no guts.”

  “All right then, why play along with him.”

  “I told you why,” Flip said. “To scare him off. For good. We don’t need him.”

  “Then let’s get it over with,” I said. And Flip strolled off into the park like he didn’t particularly care whether I came along or not.

  “We’ll play by your rules—one last time,” I said. But maybe I didn’t say it out loud.

  Looking back, I think I knew right then that making the break with Elvan was going to break off the friendship between Flip and me too. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell about friendships. I haven’t had a close one since. Maybe I only knew it later. But now, it seems right that I knew it when we walked through the park. That something was happening. Or something was over. Something that didn’t have much to do with Elvan at all. Like from then on, Flip and I wouldn’t have each other to lean on as usual. Like game time was over. For good.

  The swans were two white blotches out on Dreamland Lake. They floated out there like plastic toys, hardly moving. And the other ducks were all clustered together next to the shore. It was as still as a picture. Or like one of those little scenes in a glass paperweight before you shake it up and the snow falls.

  The sun was just setting behind the woods and shining through the trees and the fancy ironwork on the bridge over the lake. It all looked so normal that it seemed artificial.

  We went into the tunnel of branches, moving like a couple of Indians. My heart was pounding, and that made me feel like a fool. I wanted to ask Flip if he thought Elvan was already there, but I didn’t want to make a sound. We stopped when we got to the creek and looked across at the clearing. It looked empty. But then, it had looked empty the day we took the pictures too. I didn’t give the dead man a thought. All I could think of was which tree Elvan might be back of.

  Flip cleared the creek first. There weren’t so many leaves on the ground. The trees hadn’t even started to turn much yet. Instead of marching up to where the dead man had been, Flip settled down on the roller coaster block. The one with the swastika carved on it. He seemed cool, but he was looking around.

  “Well, which tree is he behind this time?” I said, low.

  “Who knows? Let him have his fun.”

  “Maybe we’re early.”

  “We’re about on time.”

  “Maybe he’s not . . .”

  “Shut up,” Flip whispered. “Listen.”

  But there wasn’t anything to hear but the breeze in the trees and a honk or two from the ducks.

  We could see a little section of the shore path curving around from the far side of the lake. Just a narrow open place in the trees. We both watched it, even though he could have been coming up on us from any direction. It was a warm evening, and the lake smelled like the sewage treatment plant only milder.

  Pretty soon, we saw him coming around the edge of the lake. He just took a couple of steps where we could watch him, but it was Elvan all right. Ambling along, taking his time. Maybe even stopping to have a look at the swans. Because it seemed like a long time before he battered through the trees on the other side of the clearing. He wasn’t creeping this time.

  “Hey, buddies,” he said. And waved. He was wearing a pair of outsize corduroys. You could hear the little rasping sound they made on the insides of his legs when he walked straight across where the dead man had been. Toward us. “You bring the medals?” he said, walking up close.

  “Yeah, we got them in our pockets, Elvan,” Flip said, easing off the concrete block. “Want them?”

  “No, that’s okay,” Elvan said. “You don’t really need any identification.”

  Then he dried up—like he hadn’t thought things out past that point. The three of us were just facing one another, toes almost touching. After awhile, Flip said, “What about this so-called evidence you’ve got up your sleeve, Elvan? Want to tell us about it?”

  Elvan started kicking backward, digging his heel in the dirt. He looked nervous, playing it by ear. All I could think of was that it was boring. Standing around waiting for him to think up something to invent. He was a slow thinker.

  “Yeah, well, you guys pretty much have the picture,” he said, looking at the ground. “I mean you guys found the knife, so I guess you pretty much have the picture.”

  “What picture?” Flip said, standing up straight so he’d be as tall as Elvan.

  “Well, I mean I could fill in some details. I mean if you want the details.”

  “Anything you want to tell us, Elvan.”

  “Well, here’s the way it was. Like this. I was out here in the woods, doing some exploring, oh, sometime last winter. There was a lot of snow on the ground. I forget the day. And I had my knife with me in case I might need it. You buddies know the one I mean. And I was right here in the woods, back there in the open place. You know the place. Well, I heard something behind me. Something suspicious. I heard this footstep in the leaves right behind me, so I turned around quick. It was this tramp. A real mean-looking guy. Dangerous-looking with red eyes. And he started coming for me . . .”

  Elvan was talking faster, and his face was lighting up like it did sometimes when he was really wound up. Once he got his story going, he was enjoying it, beginning to believe it himself.

  “. . . So I pulled out my knife and let him have a look at cold steel and . . .”

  “Wait a minute, Elvan, hold on now,” Flip said. “You mentioned snow on the ground, but then you said you heard the tramp’s step in the leaves. That doesn’t figure. I don’t think we believe that, Elvan.”

  His face sagged. He swallo
wed and looked confused, just like he’d looked back in grade school if the teacher ever called on him. He thought a long time before he answered. You could see the wheels turning, very slow. “Yeah, well, there’s leaves under the snow. There wasn’t too much snow.” Then instead of going on with the story, he just looked at Flip and me, like he wanted us to okay this part before he went on.

  “Then what happened when the tramp saw cold steel, Elvan?”

  “Well, he told me to hand over the knife and any money I had on me. He said he needed money for something to eat. He could tell it was a valuable weapon. The knife, I mean. It is.”

  “Sure, it is.”

  “Well, then he made a grab for my throat since he saw I wasn’t going to give up my knife. I mean I was armed and I’ve studied combat warfare. Hand to hand fighting.” He slowed down again then. Like he didn’t exactly know how to handle the big moment in the story.

  “What happened when he grabbed you by the neck, Elvan? What’d you do then?”

  “Well, then I had my knife in my right hand, see? Down low. And I brought it up fast and jammed it into him. I mean it really happened fast. Self-defense.”

  “Where’d you jam it into him, Elvan?”

  “Right over there,” Elvan said, waving his arm backward. “Right where you guys found him.”

  “No, Elvan, I mean where in his body did you jam it?” Flip said, very patient-sounding.

  “Oh, I see what you mean. Well . . . right into his . . . gut. Right into his big, soft gut.”

  He shut up then. And looked at Flip, then at me. His little eyes were as big as they could get. It was evening then, and his eyes looked black in his round face.

  “That about it, Elvan?” Flip said. “That about all you have to tell us?”

  “Yeah, well that’s about all I can think—remember. I mean he was dead. No question about that. There was a lot of blood on the snow.”

  “And the leaves,” Flip added.

  “Yeah, on them too.”

  Flip zipped up his windbreaker and said to me, “Okay, Bry, it’s getting late. Let’s shove off.” Like Elvan wasn’t even there with us. I was ready to go. I started to reach in my pocket to give Elvan his medal back.

  But when he saw we were about to pull out, he yelled out at us, “Hey, wait a minute!” For a second, his voice had that sound it had when we were at his house—commanding, sort of. “You guys wouldn’t tell on a buddy, would you?”

  And Flip turned around to him and said, “What’s to tell, Elvan?”

  Elvan opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Then his face collapsed. It looked too small for his body. But we waited, and so, finally, he said to me, “It’s true. Every bit of it. You believe me, don’t you, Brian?”

  “No,” I said.

  But he was looking at Flip again. “I wouldn’t lie to you guys. I wouldn’t put you on.” He grabbed Flip’s arm. “You’re my best buddies.”

  “Turn loose of my arm,” Flip said.

  “But . . .”

  “Butt out, Elvan,” Flip said. He wasn’t talking loud, but there was hate in his voice—real hate. “Just how damn stupid you take us for? How long you think you can play us for a couple of suckers?”

  It wasn’t just what he said. He’d told Elvan off before. But it was the sound in his voice. It scared me as bad as it did Elvan. “Now I’m going to give you a count of three. And when I hit three, you’d better be out of sight. Because we’ve had about all your crazy-assed talk we can put up with. So let’s just see how fast you can do a vanishing act because if you hang around here, you’re going to be one sorry slob. One.”

  Elvan pulled back and stared at Flip. He must have forgotten how much he’d enjoyed talk like that before. He could tell this was different.

  “Two.”

  Fifteen

  Elvan lit out running. He didn’t jump the creek. He waddled right down in it and up the other side, wet to his knees. His big legs were pumping away. He slipped once and came down hard on one knee, but he was up again, moving faster than he’d ever moved. He bobbed around a little, looking for the path out of the woods, the way we’d come in.

  “Three,” Flip yelled, loud enough for him to hear. “Come on, let’s go after him.”

  “Let’s go the other way.”

  “No, we’ll just tail him till he hears us behind him. It’ll keep him moving. Come on.”

  We jumped the creek together and kicked along the path, half running, making extra noise. But I think Elvan was too far ahead to hear. We loped along, bent over under the low branches, and came out into the open by the end of the lake.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the big swans cutting across over the water, working their wings, heading up toward the woodsy end. I couldn’t see Elvan ahead of us, though. Not at first.

  But I was looking straight up along the path, past the barricades at the approach to the bridge. Flip stopped dead. He threw out one arm and opened his mouth. Then I saw Elvan. He’d gone over the Park Department sawhorses that warn you off the bridge. And he was pounding over it. Almost at the top of the arch over the middle of the lake.

  Flip cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled, “Elvan, stop!”

  And Elvan did. He was just a shape on the bridge. Like he was miles away instead of yards. Like that day out at Warnicke’s Creek.

  “Elvan, watch what you’re doing. The floor’s rotted out!”

  Flip was screaming it. So loud I couldn’t even understand him. But I didn’t need to. I knew how rotted out that floor was. Without even going past the barricades, you could see daylight through the cracks in it.

  “Grab hold of the handrail,” Flip yelled. “Hang on to that!”

  Elvan had turned back toward us. Like he was listening—or trying to hear. But he didn’t grab hold of the handrail. It was cast-iron, and he could work his way back to either end of the bridge if he’d just hang on and go hand over hand. But he just stayed there in the middle with his arms hanging down.

  Flip started to run. So did I. If we got closer, Elvan could hear. But when he saw us move, he turned away and started running himself, to the other end of the bridge. Flip froze in his tracks and reached out an arm to stop me. Hoping, I guess, Elvan would stop again and see we weren’t chasing him.

  But there was a sound like a shotgun blast, and I saw rotten floorboards drop into the lake under where Elvan was. For a second, he looked like he was running in place. Then there was another bang, and Elvan dropped through the floor.

  We were still on the path. So we could see him fall. He dropped like a sack of grain, but he suddenly stopped. The whole bridge creaked.

  At first, I thought he was hanging on there, holding on with his hands. I thought he’d do better to let go and drop down into the water. Even if he couldn’t swim, we could. We could save him.

  But then, I saw his arms were dangling down by his sides. He was hanging from the floor of the bridge by his neck.

  We made a run for the bridge. Without planning it, Flip went to one handrail, and I went to the other one. There were iron strips that ran along under the metal sides. We kept to them and never stepped on the old floorboards. I had to look down to plant my foot at places where the fancy ironwork on the sides didn’t get in the way. But I tried not to look back down at the water through the cracks in the floor.

  We worked our way along, keeping pretty even with each other. I kept trying to balance my weight, so that if I started to fall, I’d pitch over the railing, straight down into the lake and not back through the floorboards.

  By the time we got to the middle point and could see the rest of the bridge sloping off down to the other shore, we saw Elvan’s head. It was at a crazy angle, right down level with what was left of the floor.

  Still, I didn’t understand. Why hadn’t he fallen straight through and down? The big part of him had crashed right through.

  There were splinters of wood all caved in around him. We were up to him, hanging onto the railings and looking ri
ght down into Elvan’s face when we saw. Under the flooring right there were two iron beams, crisscrossed to support the floor. He must have lunged to one side as he was falling because his neck wedged into the angle of the iron beams.

  Later, that’s how they said it must have happened.

  Elvan’s eyes were open. Like he was looking up in our direction. Only beyond us. He was dead.

  “Goddamn us,” I said, looking across at Flip. “Oh, goddamn us.”

  DUNTHORPE MORNING CALL

  September 27

  LOCAL YOUTH EXPIRES IN FREAK PARK ACCIDENT

  Early last evening, Elvan Helligrew, 13, was killed on the condemned footbridge spanning the Marquette Park duck pond. The youth and two of his playmates, all students at the Coolidge Middle School, were in the vicinity of the bridge, which is barricaded by sawhorses owing to the deteriorated condition of the plank floorboards. The Helligrew youth entered upon the bridge and fell through it 28 feet from the southern approach, having run across the longer portion of the span before the fatal fall.

  According to Black Hawk County Coroner, V. H. Horvath, death was caused by a broken neck. In his fall, young Helligrew’s head wedged in the juncture of two metal supports, directly below the collapsed floor surface. Death was apparently instantaneous. Coroner Horvath has termed the fatality “death by misadventure” and has called further investigation unnecessary.

  Dunthorpe Park District officials have not made themselves available for immediate comment.

  A lifelong Dunthorpe area resident and a member of the Mount Gilead Methodist Church, Elvan Helligrew was the only son of Mr. and Mrs. Austin L. Helligrew, 62 Old Plymouth Drive, Beechurst Heights. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

  DUNTHORPE MORNING CALL

  September 29

  LETTERS FROM OUR READERS

  Sirs:

  I feel certain that I speak as the voice of the entire Dunthorpe community when I point the finger of outrage at the Park District’s criminal negligence in allowing the deathtrap that spans the Marquette Park duck pond to lure a child at play with his fellows to an untimely grave.