“Yes.” I point to the hollow log, now collapsed, where I slept. “Right over there.” I stare for a moment, remembering the feel of moss and warm fur against my bare skin.
“Are you okay?” Katie says, startling me.
Only then do I notice the tear streaming from my right eye. I turn from her.
“We can go back to my house if you want,” she says softly.
I wipe my eyes. “I’m fine.”
Once I’ve pulled myself together, we go deeper in. I show her every nook where I used to hide. We kick off our sandals and go wading in the creek; I snatch crayfish and little shad off the bottom to show off, then—against my better judgment—let them slip back into the brownish water. Finally we reach the massive beech tree where I used to hide and watch the campers and hikers, its leaves a thick cone that could conceal anything.
She stares at the top. “You climbed all the way up there?”
I nod. “It’s easy. Just don’t think about it.” I run for the tree, beckon to her. “Come on—I’ll show you how.”
“It looks really high,” she says, stepping into my cupped hands to grab the lowest limb.
I climb right beside her, pointing out each safe handhold. In a few minutes she catches on and her fear is gone. Before too long we’re near the top, perched on the last two safe branches, our arms hugging the trunk. “My dad would kill me if he knew I was doing this,” she says.
“So would mine.”
We stay up there for a while, staring down at the canopy, the cars and RVs pulling into the park.
She smiles. “This is nice. I could stay up here forever.”
Her hand touches mine; I feel its warmth. She smells like sweat and strawberries. I lean toward her, and she toward me. Her lips meet mine, quick and soft. Then she looks away, blushing. “We should probably go back,” she says with a guilty smile.
We slink down the tree; I go first, so I can catch her if she slips. We gather our bicycles, and on our way home we do not speak.
When I get home Mum and Dad are waiting for me at the dining room table. Their faces are grim.
“You were supposed to be home half an hour ago,” Mum says.
“Sorry.” I pass them and grab half a watermelon from the kitchen, plunge my canines in. “Got distracted,” I mumble, mouth full.
Dad stands up, pulls out a chair. “I think we’d better have a talk.”
Mum gets up and quietly leaves. This does not look promising.
I sit. We stare awkwardly for a minute. “Jeremy,” he finally says, “When a boy and a girl really like each other....”
I suddenly feel about to gag. “Dad,” I interrupt, “I know what sex is.” I saw a lot from that beech tree: birds, animals, men and women, men and men. And then there’s late-night cable after Mum and Dad are asleep.
“Well,” he says, “it’s a little more complicated than on TV.”
“What are you saying?” I demand.
He rolls his eyes. “Jesus, you’re going to make me say it. Your mother and I need to know you’re not gonna force yourself on her.”
I feel my eyes go wide. “You mean rape her? How could you even think that?”
“I’m sorry.” His palms smack the table. “I just want to know you can handle this.”
“And not rape her. I get it.” I get up, shove the chair back under the table despite Dad’s warning, run upstairs to my room and slam the door. I hear arguing downstairs, muffled. I don’t even try to listen. I can barely breathe.
I climb out the window and quietly slink down the gutter. Halfway down I stop; the sparrows’ nest is at eye level, the baby birds fully feathered, mouths reaching up to me. So easy. Mum wouldn’t notice just one missing. But I have given my word.
I run to Katie’s, see her silhouetted in her bedroom window. No one is around to see, so I climb up.
She jumps when I knock on her window, but lets me in.
“You know how to use a doorbell, right?”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“What’s the matter? You’re shaking.”
I look down at my hands; I can’t keep them from quivering. I tell her what Dad said. I don’t know why, but I feel like I should.
“That’s silly,” she says. “You’d never do that.”
And all at once a pressure releases in my chest, and I take in a long, deep breath.
“Your dad really hurt your feelings,” she says, cooing as if over an infant.
I nod.
“I’m sorry.” She wraps her arms around my neck and squeezes hard. “If it helps, my mom and dad don’t have a clue either.”
We stay like that for a minute, until she finally releases me. “You should probably go before you get caught.”
I drape a leg out the window.
“And call next time?”
I nod again. We laugh for a minute, before I plunge back into the evening sun. I sneak back unnoticed, and for some reason I can’t stop smiling.
“Everything all right now?” Mum asks when she summons me to dinner.
“Yeah,” I say, with an impregnable grin. “Everything’s fine.”
***
Katie and I are heading home from the Dairy Dream on our bicycles, steering one-handed, the remains of our chocolate malts in the other. My sugar rush is in full swing; head abuzz, I watch Katie’s ankles as she pedals ahead of me.
I hear a car with a bad muffler behind us.
It pulls even, hugging the curb, and slows to keep pace. I turn to see Max in the driver’s seat of an old hatchback, his face contorted into a stupid mocking smirk. Another boy, scruffy and greasy-haired in a “Megadeth” T-shirt is in the passenger seat; in the back seat is a girl in a tube top, a crude butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder. She is the only one grinning.
“Leave us alone!” Katie cries out.
“Look at me, squirrel-fucker!” Max shouts out the passenger-side window, nearly smothering the other boy, a cigarette clenched in his teeth. I don’t. Then I feel a quick, hot sensation on the back of my neck, hear the cigarette butt fall to the pavement.
“Hey, man, don’t do that,” the other boy protests, but Max isn’t listening.
I could be civilized, ride home, let Dad call the police. I could also leap through the car window and maul him. Neither response seems appropriate.
I rear back, estimate the trajectory, and hurl my malt cup. It misses his passenger entirely and hits Max square in the face, spattering him with chocolate-espresso ice cream. The brakes screech. The other two laugh at him. He flops out of the car and starts to chase us, but we’re long gone.
It does not seem safe to go home, so we make for the park while Katie calls her parents to come retrieve us. “My dad’s calling the cops,” she says, breathless, flipping her phone shut. “He’ll be here in a few minutes.” We find the nearest picnic table and sit, our backs straight and tense. The park is mostly empty, not even a ranger in sight.
I hear Max’s car before I see it.
“Run,” I tell her. “Into the woods.”
The hatchback skids into the gravel lot. Max gets out first, teeth bared, face taut and scowling, the remnants of my malt still splattered on his shirt. I once saw this look on a badger who invaded our hollow log. No amount of growling could dissuade it, so fuzzy-mum had to fight until it left. I spent that night licking her wounds clean.
The other boy and the girl get out as well, slowly. Both look frightened.
“Come on, Max!” the boy shouts. “Leave him alone.”
But Max isn’t listening.
I stop, plant my feet and put up my fists the way Dad taught me—we will have at it like civilized men.
Then he pulls a knife out of his pocket.
I turn and run. It seems the sensible thing to do.
Katie is twenty yards ahead of me; I catch up to her in seconds, Max’s footfalls crunching the dead leaves behind me. “I’ll go easier if you don’t run,” he calls to me.
We run until we reach the beech tree. “K
eep running,” I tell her, and start to climb. Halfway up the tree, I don’t see her anymore. But Max is upon me, standing at the base of the trunk. Ten seconds later I’m all the way up, beyond his reach.
“Come on down,” he says.
“No,” I call back.
He hacks at the bark with his knife. “I can wait here all day.”
So can I. He stares up into the branches, calculating whether he’ll make it. He won’t. He slips the knife into his pocket and climbs. He is slow, clumsy. Branches crack under his weight.
Deeper into the woods I hear Katie’s voice, high and desperate as she talks to the 911 operator.
I inch higher, Max a few feet beneath me. A branch breaks in his hand, and he tries to grab another. I am close enough to reach down and guide him to the nearest sturdy limb. It would be the civilized thing to do.
He reaches for another handhold, but the green wood snaps in his hand and he falls.
His body bounces off the lower limbs like he’s made of soft rubber, flipping end-over-end until he lands face-first on an exposed root. He doesn’t move after that, and his head is turned too far to the left. His eyes are open but there’s nothing behind them.
It takes about ten minutes for the police to find us, five more for the paramedics. Others are gathered around too—campers, bicyclists, all staring up at me. From the treetop I watch as the EMTs load Max onto a gurney and slide him into the waiting ambulance. Katie looks away. I do not come down, even though the policemen say they know what happened, that it isn’t my fault, that I’m not in any trouble. Then Mum and Dad arrive, saying the same thing.
“It’s okay,” Katie calls to me. “It’s over now. Please come down.”
I try to explain why I can’t, but my brain can’t find any words. She starts to climb up the tree—I would be fine with that, just her and me up here, away from the world. But her father pulls her away. “Come down,” she says again.
I don’t. I won’t.
Slowly, the crowd peels off—first the ambulance, then the campers. After a while Katie’s father drags her away. She looks up at me once and gives me a sad little wave. And then it’s only Mum and Dad and a few policemen.
Mum and Dad take turns telling me to come down, because it’s safe now and they love me. I barely listen. Somewhere, right about now, Janice and her parents are finding out about Max and are grieving for him; one of them, no doubt, will swear revenge, maybe with fists, or a baseball bat, or a gun. Maybe they’ll get it; maybe I really will rip someone’s throat out. There’s no point in coming down.
I can wait them all out up here if I have to, until morning and the next day and the next, until even Mum and Dad give up and go home. It will break their hearts, but it’s for the best—sooner or later it was bound to come to this. And then, when I’m finally alone, I’ll creep down, climb up to Katie’s window in the dark. I’ll take her hand and lead her out into the night, and we’ll set out together into the woods, deeper than we’ve ever been, where everything is simple and wild and clear.
Death-Rays: A Tragedy
Professor Mervis Tate was in the middle of conferencing with a girl named Maggie, pajama-clad, hair dyed dark purple, and somewhat daft, who had come to ask for an explanation of the ‘D’ she received on her midterm essay. He spent twenty minutes attempting to explain that ‘Brideshead Revisited is a very interesting novel’ was not an adequate thesis.
“If you’d just look it over again,” she said, “I’m sure you’ll see how good it really is.”
He sighed, took the paper from her. It was practically smeared with red ink. Then his cell phone beeped.
“Just a second,” he said to her, and opened it. Evelyn had sent him a picture of the new place-setting she’d just bought, a sort of red fleur-de-lis pattern against a beige backdrop, with a little note that said, “Like it?” He did not. But in the interest of peace and tranquility, he did not respond.
“So what about my grade?” Maggie said. “My mom’s a junior high English teacher and she said this was great.” She stared at him for a minute, jaw slightly open, head tilted to one side.
Tate felt a hot itch behind his eyeballs, and then saw a red-orange flash before his eyes. For an instant Maggie’s face was etched with horror and surprise, and then she vanished, flaky ash fluttering to the chair where she had sat. The air smelled faintly of sulfur.
For several minutes he stared at the pile of ash on the wooden chair, a partially-melted My Little Pony barrette the only sign that anyone had been there. He hadn’t partaken of any mind-expanding substances in a long time, and as far as he could tell he was awake. He slammed his kneecap into his desk drawer to make sure. It hurt. He did not wake up.
Tate considered what he would tell Grayson, his department chair: the truth would sound so ridiculous it hardly deserved to be said aloud. Finally he made the call.
At first Grayson thought it a joke, that Tate had been smoking cigars in his office again and spilled the ashtray and wanted someone to come clean it up.
“It’s no joke, Charlie,” Tate said.
Grayson hurried into his office, with Suzanne close behind. They shut his office door and ran their fingers through the ashes; Suzanne picked a half-melted purple barrette from the smoldering mound.
“I don’t know what to say, Merv,” Grayson said. “Have you been drinking again? Because if you have, I can get you some help.”
Tate assured him he had not been drinking, at least not heavily, for a good six months.
“And you’re feeling okay?” Grayson said. “No fever or anything? We could go down to the health center...”
“I swear to God I’m fine,” Tate said, cutting him off. “What do we do?”
Grayson scratched his head, sighed loudly. “Just stay here,” he said. “I need to think about this.”
Tate waited. This all felt eerily familiar, somehow—a thing floating at the edge of his memory that he’d written off as a dream. It was a few years ago, right after Evelyn told him about Tyler or Taylor or Todd, the bartender she’d been fucking. He never bothered memorizing the name. At first, he sat unmoving in the chaise, staring at Evelyn. She begged him to scream, hit her, something. Anything. He wasn’t listening. He remembered his eyes were itchy and hot then, too. At some point she stopped talking, and he walked out the door, and kept walking all the way into town. He finally stopped at McCaskill’s, the high-end tavern near campus where the faculty went to avoid their lives, and drank until he forgot his own name. His eyes felt like lava was about to pour out of them. Then, as he was pissing away the nine Scotch-and-sodas, the men’s room wall spontaneously combusted. There was running, and shouting, and he’d stumbled outside.
He awoke on his office floor the next morning smelling of smoke and walked past the blackened bones of the building on his way home. Beyond that, he didn’t remember a thing.
After Suzanne came to sweep up the pile of ash, Tate fidgeted with a pencil, thumbed through a dog-eared copy of his book on Virginia Woolf, stared out the window at the students huffing across campus. He tried to duplicate the incident, squinting hard at the sticky-notes on the desk—if he could do it in front of an audience it might keep him out of prison. But nothing happened, and he chided himself; this was the stuff of comic books and bad sci-fi movies, well beneath his dignity.
He considered calling Evelyn to tell her what had happened, but immediately thought better of it. Things at home were finally peaceful again—best not ruin it.
Finally Grayson summoned him to his office and ordered him to sit. Tate was uncharacteristically meek, hands folded in his lap. Grayson pulled a chair up close. “Are you sure nothing’s going on?” he asked. “Headaches? Blackouts?”
“No,” Tate said. “Nothing like that.”
Grayson nodded gravely. “Merv, this is damned odd. I don’t think the dean would believe me. Or the police. We should probably handle this quietly.”
“Agreed,” Tate said.
This was the plan: if asked, Gr
ayson would say he saw Maggie leave Tate’s office; they would deny any knowledge of her disappearance, and in a few months the whole thing would blow over. For his part, Tate needed to go about his week as though nothing were amiss. “Just keep it low-key,” Grayson said. “And don’t stare at anyone too long.”
“Fair enough,” Tate said.
When it was time, he headed for his noon class, a British literature seminar full of business majors who resented having to take it. Immediately upon entering the classroom, he was surrounded by three burly male students in nearly-identical baseball caps, shorts and sandals (in October, no less), all wanting to speak with him about the paper due that day—there were mitigating circumstances, and could they have until Monday to turn it in? They were closing in, and the oak lectern was no barrier. He felt a hot tingle behind his eyes. “Go away,” he said quietly. “Just take your seats.” Two of them retreated, but one remained—Brent, a six-foot-five basketball player who sat in the furthest row and plucked folded-paper footballs at his friends while Tate lectured.
“I have a good excuse,” Brent said. “If I could just explain...”
“Sit down!” Tate bellowed, and shielded his eyes. Everyone in the room was staring at him—forty people about to witness Brent’s cremation. He grinned; at the very least it might keep the others from texting on their cell phones in class. Then he came to his senses.
“Everyone go home,” he said. “Class is canceled. Turn in your papers next time.” A few students cheered quietly; most just shrugged, gathered their books, and filed out. Once they were gone the burning faded and he finally began to feel like himself again.
Tate’s townhouse was a fifteen-minute walk from campus, a bit further than the big old colonial he and Evelyn used to own, but secluded, and free of the baggage of that old place. When he first started at the university, he and Evelyn used to stroll together down the cobblestone streets just to gaze at the rich autumn colors. But that was a long time ago. He walked faster than he should, the tendons and muscles in his legs stretching painfully, his pigskin cap tipped low to prohibit eye contact.
Being a man of reason, he decided there were only three possibilities to explain what had transpired in his office: Maggie had fallen victim to a rare episode of spontaneous combustion; he had developed some previously-undiagnosed condition of which the death-rays were the primary symptom; or this was all a cruel, elaborate prank. He hoped for the third option; he could avenge himself by having Maggie suspended.
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