December Park

by Ronald Malfi

  We sat on the porch and played game after game of Uno. At one point, my grandmother brought us bologna sandwiches and Cokes, and we took a break while we ate and listened to the sounds of summer winding down. When Peter started in with his elephant jokes, we all groaned and Michael threw a pinecone at him, but inside I couldn’t have been more elated.

  “Did you hear about Eric Falconette?” Scott said as he dealt a new hand.

  I shook my head.

  “Killed in a car crash in Baltimore. It was on the news. Denny Sallis was with him but he survived.”

  “Was Keener with them?” I thought of his truck parked on Haven.

  “News didn’t say anything about Keener,” Scott said.

  We played another round of Uno, and I thought I wouldn’t ask them the question that was most on my mind. Ultimately, though, I was bested by curiosity. “What took you guys so long to come by?”

  They glanced at one another, and Scott slowed down in his dealing of the cards.

  When they offered no response, I provided one for them. “Did your parents not want you to come over?” I thought of Rachel and how she said her mother hadn’t wanted her to bother my family and me.

  “Well, no,” Peter said evenly. “Not exactly.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “We thought you might be mad at us,” Michael said.

  “Me? Why would I be mad at you guys?”

  “Because we went along with it,” Scott said.

  “Because what happened in that old building would’ve never happened if we didn’t let you go in there,” Peter said.

  “We thought you might blame us,” Michael finished.

  “I don’t blame you guys at all,” I said, finding myself relieved. “In fact, I thought you guys were mad at me.”

  Scott made a face. “Why would we be mad at you?”

  I tried to answer but my throat had tightened up.

  “Always making up stories,” Michael commented. “Always creating drama.”

  “Yeah, Mazzone,” Peter said, “you’ve got some imagination.”

  We played cards until dusk when Scott had to head home. Before leaving, he nodded toward the samurai sword I’d leaned against one of the wicker chairs. “That is a sweet fucking sword.”

  The three of us remained on the porch, watching the sun sink below the line of trees.

  Michael announced that he might try to run for class president again this year. “I’ve done my time in summer school and have been on the other side of the tracks. I think that would really appeal to the working class.”

  Peter and I called him names, which only egged him on.

  When my grandmother poked her head out onto the porch and told Michael that his mother had called and wanted him home, he saluted her, then gave me a big sloppy kiss on the cheek.

  “Madonna mi,” exclaimed my grandmother, who quickly withdrew into the house.

  “Great to have you back, you big toolbox,” Michael said to me as he hopped off the porch.

  “Get bent, butt cheese,” I tossed back at him.

  Michael threw both middle fingers in the air. Running around the side of the house toward the street, he shouted at the top of his lungs, “Gorbachev’s wife!”

  Once Peter and I stopped giggling like a couple of schoolgirls, Peter said, “Did you hear Adrian’s coming home from the hospital tomorrow?”

  “That’s great.”

  “We’re gonna have to get that turd a new backpack. No more superheroes and shit. It’s embarrassing.”

  I smiled and looked down at my hands.

  “What’s wrong?” Peter said.

  “I’m moving.”

  “Moving where?”

  “Away. Me and my family. We can’t stay here.”

  Peter was silent for a moment. Then he said, “No. That’s stupid. Who said you have to move? You didn’t do anything.”

  “We still can’t stay here. It’s too much.”

  “But . . . when?”

  “I don’t know. Soon, I guess.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Maybe New York.”

  “That’s like a million miles away!”

  I stared down at my hands. A single teardrop fell on my left thumb.

  “So this was our last summer hanging out? No way. I don’t believe it. You’re joshing me, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “Come on, Angie. Say you’re only joking, okay? Just say it.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “But we promised each other that when we left, we’d do it together.”

  “I guess that was a silly promise to make, huh?”

  Peter hung his head as he sat there on the porch steps beside me.

  I knew then that everything that had happened over the past year would not have been possible without him and without the others, too. And not just what happened at the end but all the stuff that led up to it. The good stuff. The stuff that made us stronger, better friends. The stuff that mattered most.

  “Do me a favor and look after the guys,” I said after a time. “Make sure Scott doesn’t cut his thumbs off with that stupid butterfly knife. And make sure Michael actually graduates.”

  Peter laughed. There were tears in his eyes.

  “And look out for Adrian,” I said. “Don’t forget about him when school starts.”

  “No way, man. He’s one of us now. He always will be. Just like you are. We’re brothers, man. The five of us.”

  “Brothers,” I said, liking the way that sounded.

  Grinning, he threw an arm around my shoulder, and we sat like that until it was time for him to go home.

  That evening, I stood outside my father’s bedroom while he reclined on his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. When he sensed my presence, he turned and looked at me.

  “That cop who drove us to the cemetery today,” I said. “He’s been following me around town the past few months.”

  Something akin to a sad smile overtook my father’s features. He sat up on the bed, swinging his legs over the side. “He mentioned to me that you had finally noticed.”

  “You knew?”

  “I asked him to keep an eye on you.”

  “Because you didn’t trust me? Because you wanted to know what I was up to?”

  “No,” he said. “To make sure you were safe.”

  When I didn’t respond, he asked me if I was okay.

  “I guess so,” I said, though I was unsure exactly how I felt. “I’m gonna go for a walk.”

  “Don’t be too late,” he said, reclining back on the bed.

  What difference does it make now? I wondered.

  While having a smoke, I walked down to the end of Worth Street where the pavement turned to crushed gravel before dead-ending into a fan of overgrown shrubs, wildflowers, and the fences that surrounded the quarry. I thought about Nathan Keener’s truck, which was still parked at the curb on Haven Street. It hadn’t been moved in weeks.

  As I approached the fence, I found what I had expected—the padlock chaining the gates had been popped. The chain lay in a rusted coil in the gravel, the sprung lock beside it like some medieval torture device. I eased one of the gates open just wide enough to permit access and crept inside.

  The quarry was no larger than a crater left behind after the demolition of a large house. When we played down here as children, Charles and I used to pretend it was the sarlacc pit from Return of the Jedi. I crossed over to the edge and peered down at the sludgy brown soup at the bottom of the pit. There were crevices in the stone walls, and some of them were big enough to hide in.

  Or to hide someone else.

  Carefully, I crawled down into the pit where a shelf of limestone extended over the drop. I peeked into the larger gaps in the rock, but the darkness made it impossible to see anything inside. I thought of the holes in the cliff face at the ass end of Harting Farms. How far did they go? Were there tunnels just below the surface of the earth crisscrossing every inch of the c
ity?

  There was nothing down here. Nothing I could see, anyway.

  I climbed out of the pit, my sneakers kicking up dry white clouds of dust and rolling loose pebbles down into the pool of mud at the bottom. Crickets trilled and the sky was afire with countless stars. As I tramped through the bushes and overgrown grass, something misshapen and unnatural poking up from a patch of kudzu caught my eye.

  I went to it, bent down, prodded it. It rocked.

  It was a boot. Someone’s Doc Marten. Scuffed clasps and worn leather. I had stared at these boots on Mischief Night as Nathan Keener approached me while his friends held my arms.

  It was Keener’s boot.

  (If anyone ever hurt you or tried to hurt you, I would snap their neck. I would bury their corpse in the quarry at the end of our block. I would leave them there for the rats.)

  I stood and surveyed the quarry and the dense woods that surrounded it. It had become fully dark in just a matter of seconds, making it difficult to see anything beyond the mere suggestion of things. All around me, a chorus of insects lit up the night.

  Sucking one last time on my cigarette, I chucked the fading ember down into the quarry. It sizzled when it hit the water.

  Back at the house, I pulled my bike out from the patch of ivy and wheeled it up the Gardiners’ driveway. I was propping it on the kickstand on the front porch when the door opened. Startled, I looked up to see Doreen Gardiner luminescing out of the darkness.

  “Hello,” I said quietly.

  She stood framed in the doorway, her face a colorless mask. She glanced at the bike. “What’s this?” Her voice was just barely audible.

  “My bike. I’m leaving it for Adrian.”

  “Won’t you need it?”

  “I’m sixteen. I’ll be getting my license soon. Besides, he’s gonna need it if he keeps hanging around with the guys.”

  “He had a bike back home, you know,” she said.

  I offered her a wan smile but said nothing.

  “He’s never had lots of friends. Maybe that’s my fault. I mother him too much.” She stepped out onto the porch. She wore nothing but a man’s thin white T-shirt and longish shorts. “Thank you for being there for him.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You know why he doesn’t have a bike here?” she asked.

  “Yes.” My voice shook.

  “He told you about what his dad did,” she said, and this time it wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” I answered nonetheless.

  She fingered the horrid scar on her neck. “He did this, too. With a knife from the kitchen. But it didn’t kill me. If it had, we would have all been dead.”

  She took another step closer to me. I was powerless to move.

  “I found them in the car together, the engine running and the garage door shut. He’d carried Adrian straight out of bed and strapped him in the backseat. Then he got behind the wheel and turned the car on, reclined the seat, and closed his eyes,” she said with the detachment of someone reciting a poem from memory. “I was able to get Adrian out in time. It was very lucky I found them.”

  One of her hands came up, and before I could flinch away, she caressed the side of my face. Her hand was cold but not ungentle. That was when I noticed tears in her eyes.

  “He’s very lucky to have a friend like you,” she said. “Please don’t forget him.”

  Mounting the rear porch steps at the house, I shook a cigarette from the cellophane, then froze as movement off to my right caught my attention. I jerked around to find my father’s silhouette slouched in one of the wicker chairs.

  “Oh.” I dropped my arms in an effort to hide the cigarettes.

  My father leaned forward, and the moonlight played across the left side of his face. I was shocked by how ancient he looked. “Got an extra one for me?”

  “Uh, sure.” I handed him the cigarette, then took out another one for myself. I’d never smoked in front of my father before. When I brought the lighter to the tip of my cigarette, it was all I could do to keep the flame steady. Then I handed the lighter to him.

  He lit his cigarette and eased back in the chair with a satisfied grunt. He gestured toward the empty chair beside him. “Have a seat.”

  I sat.

  “You doing okay?”

  “I guess.”

  We sat there smoking together in silence for a long time. After a while, I felt my hands shake and my face grow hot.

  “I spoke with a fella from the Army this evening,” he said. “They still don’t have a lot of information, and there are questions I know we’ll never have answered, but he told me what they know so far. At least it’s something.”

  I looked at him. The tiny red ember of his cigarette bobbed as he spoke.

  “We were told Charles was killed when his unit attacked Iraq in February of ’91. Turns out many soldiers were killed, and very few bodies were ever recovered. Others were injured and taken to hospitals. A soldier named Frank Belknap was one of the injured. He spent a lot of time in the hospital before being discharged and sent back to the States. Police found Belknap’s dog tags and discharge papers in the Patapsco Institute, along with some of Charles’s stuff. Best they can figure, Belknap was killed and Charles stole his identity.

  “Army doctors said the soldier they thought was Belknap—the soldier who was really Charles—suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder.” My father sighed heavily. “Charles could have been living in that building in the woods ever since he came back.”

  “Why didn’t he come home? Why did he lie about who he was in the first place?”

  Even in the poor light, I could see my father grimace. “There’re things about your brother you don’t know. Things I hope you never learn, though maybe all that’s pointless now. He didn’t want to join the military. I didn’t give him a choice. He had a temper. He was getting into trouble and needed to be reined in. He . . . he did a bad thing to a girl in Baltimore—an accident, I guess, but due to his own carelessness, though now I’m not so sure what it was exactly. He had to straighten up. He had . . .” His voice broke.

  “I was his father. I did what I thought was best at the time. And he was your brother and he loved you,” he said, quickly regaining his composure. “You didn’t need to worry about the things I worried about. And you don’t need to change your opinion of him. Do you understand?”

  And then I heard Adrian speak up in my head: What do you call it when you dream about something that’s gonna happen? Could there be an inverse to a prophetic dream? A dream that clued you in on the secrets of the past instead of the future, secrets that didn’t belong to you and you had no right knowing?

  I thought about my own recurring nightmare, being chased through the woods by an unseen beast while I ran alongside my grandfather who was not my grandfather, my father who was not my father. I realized why the soldier looked like a younger version of my grandfather and father: he had been Charles. And Charles had ushered me through the rain forest and into the village where he told me to enter the hut. Inside, I had joined the Piper, who had also been Charles, only the dark and hidden side of him. I become you and you become me and us become us and we become we.

  He was my brother, but he had been something else, too. A man hidden within a man.

  Again, Adrian’s ghostly voice sang out to me: Turns out it’s a whole world under there—a world beneath a world and within a world but also somehow occupying the same space as the real world.

  “Do you hate me for it?” I said at last.

  My father stared at me.

  “I wouldn’t have done it if I knew it was him.” It was like a confession pouring out of me.

  “Angelo,” he said, leaning toward me, “I could never hate you. I’m proud of you. And what happened . . . what you did . . . it wasn’t your brother in there with you that night. That was someone who needed to be stopped. You were man enough to do it.”

  Tears spilled down my face. My leg bounced uncontrollably.

&nbs
p; “That story you had on your desk?” he said, changing the subject and shaking me back to reality. “It’s very good.”

  “You read it?”

  “After your teacher left that afternoon, I wanted to know what I’d been missing.” He patted my knee and I saw that his hand shook. “You’ve got a good talent. I think that Mattingly fella was right about moving you to advanced English.”

  It won’t be here, I thought morosely. It won’t be at Stanton School. Not anymore. Because we’re leaving.

  “AP English is full of nerds and dweebs,” I said.

  “So maybe you’ll teach them nerds and dweebs a thing or two about writing stories,” he said.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said . . . then my entire body began to tremble. I couldn’t breathe. Tears spilled from my eyes, and the world lost its clarity.

  “Oh, Angie. Oh, sweetheart.” He came toward me just as I fell toward him, and he held me in arms that felt like great bands of steel. He rubbed my back, kissed the top of my head, and let me get it all out. Soon he was crying right along with me. And once we’d finished, we held on to each other a little bit longer.

  Epilogue

  The Last of the Vanishing Children

  (September 1994)

  We left Harting Farms on a Sunday in September, just as the bells of St. Nonnatus tolled noon. My grandparents had left for New York days earlier, so it was just my father and me. Astride their bikes, my friends watched from the street as I climbed into the car and slammed the door. When my dad pulled out of the driveway and headed up Worth Street, they followed us.

  Michael raced along on his Mongoose, sunlight gleaming off his newly polished army helmet. He had on his Blues Brothers sunglasses and was pedaling just about as fast as I had ever seen him.

  Peter lifted himself off the seat of his bike, his red hair whipping back from his forehead in the wind, his green eyes blazing. He had his headphones down around his neck, and I knew he was blasting one of his mix tapes. On his face was a dazzling smile.

  Scott came right up the center, his long legs pumping effortlessly, his Orioles cap turned backward. He wore a pair of black cargo shorts and his Oh Shit Shark Shirt despite the chill in the air.