by André Babyn
“You aren’t allowed here,” said Paul.
“That’s not true,” said Jeff.
He wanted so badly to belong, even when he had no business belonging. I thought I saw tears forming in his eyes.
“Guys,” said the girl. “Come on. Be nice.”
“This is nice,” said Paul.
“Fuck you,” said the boy, to us.
“See?” said Paul.
“Go home,” said the boy.
“We don’t want to,” said Jeff, picking up a stick and, for a second, holding it in a vaguely threatening way. Then thinking better of it and whacking it idly against the creek bed instead.
“What’s your name?” Paul asked me.
I just looked at him.
“His name is Kent,” said Jeff.
“Can he talk?”
“Yeah,” said Jeff.
“What?”
“I said ‘Yeah.’”
“You can talk?” asked Paul, looking at me.
I nodded.
“He probably shouldn’t be here,” said the boy.
“Yeah,” said Paul. “We’re bad.”
“Maybe you can stay, though,” said the boy, looking at Jeff.
“Jesus,” said the girl, rolling her eyes.
“Don’t mind her,” said Paul.
“Yeah,” said the boy. “She’s on her period.”
“You asshole,” said the girl.
“What’s your name?” asked the boy.
“Jeff.”
“You seem cool,” he said.
Jeff shrugged. He knew he didn’t seem cool.
I could tell we were losing.
“Smoking is bad for you,” I said.
“Is that right?” said Paul, taking an exaggerated drag.
“We know it’s bad for us,” said the girl.
“Are you going to tell?” asked the boy.
There was a moment of silence, as if Jeff was actually considering the boy’s words. Was he going to tell on them or not? And, if so, to whom?
“Hey,” said Paul. “Come over here.”
Somehow, without our noticing, Paul had put his hand up the girl’s shirt. It looked like a surprise to her, too, and she was trying to squirm out of his reach, but he was holding her close with his other hand.
“Do you want to feel?” asked Paul, looking at Jeff.
“Stop it,” said the girl. “Come on.” She tried to hit him away, but he adjusted his grip so that he was holding back one arm with his far hand and the other one back with his shoulder. That arm was pinned between them and she tried to manoeuvre it out.
“C’mon,” said Paul. “They feel pretty good.”
“Can I feel?” asked the boy.
“No,” said the girl, finally ripping Paul’s hand out from under her shirt and pulling the material back down to her waist. She got up and walked to the other end of the clearing. But first she grabbed the cigarette out of Paul’s mouth and threw it into the water.
“Fucking asshole!” she said.
Paul shrugged.
“Look at him, he’s so scared,” said the boy.
Jeff was really scared, I could see that. He was still staring at Paul.
“How old are you?” asked the boy.
Instead of answering, Jeff turned and ran. I looked at them for a minute longer, unsure what had just happened. I think they were surprised, too.
Finally, the boy laughed. “That was so fucked up, Paul.”
“I know,” he said.
Somehow they’d forgotten all about me.
“That kid is going to have a wet dream tonight,” said the boy.
The girl just looked at Paul.
“That wasn’t okay,” she said.
“Ugh,” said the boy.
“He wasn’t going to do it,” said Paul.
“You’re right he wasn’t,” she said.
The two boys laughed. Paul was lighting another cigarette.
“Like. What the fuck,” she said.
“It was a joke,” said Paul.
“It wasn’t very fucking funny.”
“I thought it was funny,” said the boy.
“See?” said Paul.
She gave him the finger.
“Like, what the fuck,” said the boy, in an idiot voice.
“Fuck off,” said the girl.
There was a moment of silence. My heart was pounding. I wanted Jeff to come back, to show them up, to prove that he was better than they thought he was. That he was better than they were. But I knew that he wasn’t coming back. And that it was an impossible dream.
“Don’t say ‘fuck,’” I said, instead.
The girl jumped a little when she noticed me.
“I thought he was gone,” said Paul.
“Don’t say ‘fuck,’” I said again.
For a minute it was quiet. Then the boy grinned. Paul started to laugh.
And then I ran back the way we came, just like Jeff had.
* * *
Then I’d been scared, too, going back down the creek on my own, so scared that I hadn’t been watching my feet while crossing over a log and slipped and soaked myself. And made things much worse digging out one of my shoes from the muck in the creek bottom. Jeff got in trouble for that, of course, when I came back, stoically limping in my dripping clothes, because he was supposed to be watching over me, and Mom and him got in a huge fight and he ran out of the car when we pulled into the driveway, and didn’t come back until later that night, well after dinner, which Mom said she wouldn’t have let him eat, anyway, when we were at the table without him. Although when he came in the door she told him about the Tupperware full of lasagna in the fridge and he put some on a plate and ate it cold in the dark kitchen (he didn’t bother turning on the lights), working slowly, I could tell, while Mom and I watched Law & Order in the living room, dropping his plate in the sink with a crash when he was done, which got Mom on her feet. He whispered sorry loudly from the kitchen, but everyone knew it wasn’t a mistake, and Mom told him to go to bed, and me to go bed, which I did immediately, not even hesitating, and which he did only after muttering something which my mom asked him to repeat and which turned out to be, when he finally said it, “I was going to bed.”
We’d been back to the creek lots of times afterward and though I always thought the teens would be back, not without some hesitation, we hadn’t seen them once. Not even from a distance. Though Jeff wouldn’t admit it, I think they were why he insisted on going there week after week. He wanted to see them again. I don’t know why. Or what he was trying to prove.
I made my way up the creek slowly, occasionally calling his name. My fear was different than it had been back then. I was alone and something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. I was afraid that he wouldn’t be there and I wouldn’t know what to do. I couldn’t search the whole forest by myself. I’d have to get Mom, and then even if we did find him it would be a huge deal and he’d probably run off again.
Eventually I started to hear a low sort of mewling coming from down the creek. Little breathy squeaks that sounded like they were coming from a hundred miles away. Which obviously couldn’t have been possible, it was just the way that the sound dispersed into the air. It reminded me of this time I had been mowing the lawn and noticed only when it was too late — just as the lawn mower passed over — that the movement between the blades of grass I had assumed was the wind wasn’t the wind at all, but a baby bird straining to be fed. I turned off the lawn mower and went inside, afraid to move it forward or backward, afraid to disturb the site of the massacre, until Mom came home from work and yelled at me for leaving the lawn unfinished, the mower out on the front lawn. When I reluctantly went back to the mower and moved it off its little square, I couldn’t find any traces of the little bird at all, which felt like a miracle, even though I was certain that the bird was dead. Even though I hadn’t been able to hear the bird at the time, because of the lawn mower noise, obviously, the mewling that I heard now sounded like
what I imagined the bird must have sounded like, the sound which I had heard over and over in my dreams. If there was a baby bird on the ground, maybe I could manoeuvre it back into its nest somehow, with sticks or leaves or something, without the mother bird noticing. Small atonement. I forgot about Jeff for a minute and began scanning the ground.
But when I rounded the bend in the creek it was Jeff I discovered, lying on his side, half his body in the creek, his head on the far bank. He was staring into a middle distance and he was the one mewling. His head was bleeding, and the blood was running down his neck and staining his shirt.
I didn’t want to touch him because I was afraid I might make things worse. Also because I was afraid to touch him. Because he was bleeding and I was scared and I didn’t know what to do. He didn’t look real to me. It was like he had crawled out of my imagination. I thought maybe if I closed my eyes and told myself he wasn’t real that he would go away, like a bad dream, and I’d find him farther down the creek bend, waiting where he always was, and he’d call me a loser for getting so afraid over nothing, just a walk in the woods.
He somehow managed to look at me but he was only able to make more of that mewling sound, infinitely more disturbing than from the bird in my dreams.
7
I ran back to get Mom, and she ran into the forest with me to see what she could do. Someone at the park volunteered to call an ambulance from home. I led Mom to Jeff and then ran back to the forest entrance to wait for the paramedics.
It looked like Jeff hit his head on a boulder lying near the creek bed. It was lucky that he hadn’t face-planted into the water. He could have drowned.
I mean, I led her most of the way, pointing her down the final bend of the creek. I was too afraid to see him again. I didn’t even look in his direction when they carried him out of the forest.
Mom camped out in the ICU overnight and I stayed over with Aunt Wanda. Mom was upset, but also angry, angry at Jeff for injuring himself, and angry at herself for fighting with him on the way to the park. I think she wondered, too, if she had driven him to it, like it wasn’t an accident at all, but a weird form of revenge. I mean, it seemed to me like she thought that but she never articulated it that clearly, probably because she knew to suggest that would be seriously crazy. He was just a kid. He slipped.
The next morning they said his condition had stabilized and they took him out of intensive care. I went to visit him with Aunt Wanda around ten o’clock. He was sleeping and the whole right side of his head was swollen, a gross purple blotch. There was a bandage wrapped around his head, and some of his hair was shaved. He had to get the whole thing shaved later to even it out, and it didn’t grow back in properly until the first week of school, at least not according to his complaints.
I was afraid that if he woke up he might start mewling again, and eyed him cautiously from across the room. Mom smiled wearily from the chair next to his bed when Wanda handed her a Thermos of coffee and a muffin that she’d picked up on the way over.
“I’d strangle him if I wasn’t so happy he was okay,” she said.
Wanda laughed.
Jeff opened his eyes slowly, as if he hadn’t been sleeping, only play-acting.
“Hey,” he said.
“Look who’s up,” said Mom.
“I was trying to sleep, but I couldn’t,” said Jeff.
He looked at me.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said.
“I saw those kids again,” he said. Obviously I knew exactly what he meant, even though we hadn’t talked about them in a while.
“What kids?” asked my mom, suddenly concerned.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. In his dreams, maybe.
“What kids are you talking about?” Mom asked.
“You’re right,” he said to me. “I didn’t.”
“You sounded like a bird,” I said. I was already warming up to him. When he spoke I was somehow able to look past the purple blotch and see through to his real face. But only when he was animated. Otherwise he was unreadable, an abomination that I didn’t want to confront.
“I know, Mom told me. Although she said I sounded like a mouse.”
“Kent, what kids?” asked my mom.
“That was a joke,” said Jeff.
“Yeah,” I said.
“What do you mean, a joke? Kent, were there any other kids out there?”
“No,” I said, feeling worried.
She lowered herself to my level. “Are you sure?”
“Trish,” said Wanda.
“Wanda, will you stay out of this?”
She turned back to me and grabbed my arm.
“Mom,” said Jeff, “I was joking.” He sat up a little bit and then winced in pain and lay back down.
“Why would you joke about a thing like that?”
“I don’t know!”
“I think he’s telling the truth,” said Wanda, looking very confused.
“What if someone hurt him?” asked my mom.
“No one hurt him,” I said.
“What? Who did?” said my mom, snapping her attention back to me.
“No one did,” I said, bursting into tears. “No one hurt him.”
Somehow I’d broken the spell. Mom suddenly softened, pulling me close and putting her arms around me. I hid my face in her shirt, embarrassed because Jeff and Aunt Wanda were there.
“No one hurt him,” I repeated.
“I’m so sorry, baby, I’m so sorry,” she said, running a hand through my hair.
“It was just me, Mom,” said Jeff.
“I know that, Jeff.”
“Maybe you should get some rest,” said Wanda, cautiously.
“You’re right,” said Mom, standing up again, very slowly. “I’m exhausted.” She looked down at me. “How are you doing, buddy?”
“I’m okay,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes.
Wanda patted Jeff’s arm.
“I think the real question is, how are you doing?” she asked.
“My head hurts,” he said.
“I’ll bet it does,” said Wanda.
Mom laughed and kissed Jeff on the forehead.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said.
Jeff tried not to smile.
* * *
Jeff didn’t change after the accident, but I sometimes thought of him that way, as if there was a before and after that could be separated into two distinct periods. But in reality maybe that process had already begun long before then.
He outstripped puberty, growing larger — in every direction — weight piling on his frame, lumbering from the kitchen to the couch like a bear stumbling home after gorging himself on turned berries, his eyes intent on whatever was playing on the screen. Not that I didn’t have the same rounds — we both ate constantly, when we were home, but somehow it stuck to him and not to me. Maybe I got out of the house more, or ate a little less, or watched less TV, or maybe I was just lucky.
He still fought with Mom. But the fights changed — it took less, a lot less, for him to get angry — though that anger didn’t always show itself immediately. His anger was always on the surface, but it often manifested itself in quieter ways. In silence. In brooding. In comments that hid their aggression, but were aggressive nonetheless. But it could lead to real violence, too — once he utterly annihilated a Super Nintendo and ten-inch television that he’d set up in his room. When I asked him what had happened he told me that it was the fault of whichever fucking asshole had designed Donkey Kong Country. I was angry that he had wrecked a thing that belonged to both of us but it seemed pointless to get upset about it in the face of his anger. All I could do was shrug.
Mom told him that he was lazy, that it was his fault that he was unhappy, that he needed to get a job, to do better at school, that he had an anger problem, that it would help him to have more friends, that he was going to grow up miserable. I’m ashamed to say now that I usually agreed with her. I wanted him to be happy so there co
uld be peace at home.
He never really came out of his shell, but when Wizard Palace comic book shop opened and he got into Magic: the Gathering, he at least started leaving the house more. He made friends that he spent time with outside of school. This was when he was in either grade nine or ten, I don’t remember. Before, he would do his best to ignore Mom whenever she asked him who his friends at school were or whether he wanted to invite any of them home. After Wizard Palace, he could at least name them. First, kids his age, Spink and Ted Linnean. Later, Watt and JC, Watt in my grade and JC two years above. There were other players, too, on the periphery, guys in their twenties and kids in middle school, whom they occasionally talked about but who were never officially part of their group.
Wizard Palace ran casual games at a table in the back, and he usually went there after school, coming home first and dropping his things off in the mud room, eating a snack and maybe watching an episode or two of The Simpsons, then heading back out again, eschewing homework most nights, and only picking at dinner at nine o’clock, after the Palace had closed and he’d already filled up on Doritos and Mountain Dew. He got his spending money from a job that he held in the summer, and sometimes on the weekends, sautering simple circuit boards in the garage of our neighbour, Mr. O’Shaunessy.
Jeff built me a deck out of his cast-off cards so we could play, and he was always trying to encourage me to purchase my own, so that the games between us could become more heated. When we played I had brief flashes of insight that caused me to get more involved, that made me rush to my pile of extras and trade cards in and out of my deck, brief thrills when I managed to pull off something that Jeff hadn’t anticipated (because he hadn’t thought I was capable of it), flashes where I could see what drew him and his friends to the game. It was the feeling of control, of dominance, of mastery, of creativity made into a corporeal force that could inflict itself on your opponent. But those moments were fleeting, and whatever gains I made were always paid back double in the next match, when Jeff — eager to compete — would totally adapt to my strategy and blow me out of the water. Eventually Jeff had to beg me to play, which took the fun out of it for both of us.
But there were other things that threatened to draw me to the game: the little fantasy portraits and scenes on each card almost always showed something in motion — between two actions, making it impossible not to speculate on the before and after, on the context that established the rules of our encounter. The cards were little pieces of another world thrust into ours, and their mannered presentations raised questions in my mind. But I made sure not to become too intrigued. I was happy for Jeff, but careful not to get too wrapped up in that world. Watt, JC, Linnean, even Spink, though everybody loved him, they were all just a rung or two higher than Huddy, and maybe only because of their ability to blend in, to remain out of sight, to seem innocuous and mundane by comparison.