In the lunchroom later, Doug found himself staring at a long motivational banner on the back wall. It sagged in the middle and was clearly several sheets of printer paper taped together. It could’ve hung there for months and he was just now noticing it. “Never Settle For Less Than Your Best!” it said, followed by a graphic of a light bulb. Doug chewed, reading the banner so intensely that it took a moment to hear his remaining two tablemates. They’d shared their summer plans and were asking about his. “Not die,” he answered and continued to repeat the poster’s advice, slower each time, until the words mucked into a mantra: Neversettleforlessthanyourbestexclamationpointlightbulb. He knew why. Even that knowledge didn’t help. He wanted a light to go on inside himself. The tablemates didn’t return after dumping their garbage. They sat with the leftover assortment of geeks and weirdoes that’d regrouped elsewhere. The cheese sat alone. If he left the group, this would be his life.
After school, he found the walking trail entrance on Oketo Street swarmed with white vans. Reflective vests flashed through the trees. Land developers roamed the woods in packs and hollered in booming, yet incomprehensible voices. Along the wooded side of the street, several graphic posters were staked. Large digital images of glassy condos built around a nine-hole golf course were superimposed on a fat diamond of woods nearest the rec center. The project would leave few original trees but for lone decorative specimens. “VOTE FOR THE FUTURE! PROP#1!” each said. These posters made Doug uneasy and made the woods’ erasure real in a way it hadn’t been before. Dozing the place was the easiest solution to ending the group, he told himself, but couldn’t believe it, deeply ashamed, as if he’d wished the images into existence by wishing John out during his visit with the principal, except that each house did not sit on a hill, though the buildings were as stately and streets as clean perhaps, and definitely as sad, as both were pictured empty, uninhabited. Of course, people would light all those windows (wouldn’t they?). This new Palos looked so much fancier that rich folks would have to move in from elsewhere, from outside, Palos Park maybe, or much further north. Doug considered for the first time that the entire town might similarly be redeveloped. His home wouldn’t be his, it too erased eventually, inconspicuously at first, from the edges, the woods, and then—Where would the people go? His family had been outsiders at some point, immigrants. What’d happened to the ones before them? And the ones before that? He vaguely recalled a lesson on Manifest Destiny, something about violence and identity—just a jumble of dates and battles in his head. He hadn’t hurt anybody, was the victim (right?). Still, his guilt persisted over not wanting to stop the development of what felt like ruin. Doug continued down the block, dazed by his glimpse of one possible future. He tried to think of a single, positive force at work in his life, in life period. He immediately quit, mind adrift in a lingering fog of sadness. His only distinguishable emotion, he felt numbly, firm beneath his feet, yet at a distance, on the other side of his gummy shoe soles: hope that he and everyone weren’t cursed to forget what’d come before as if it had never existed.
At the end of the block, four of the group called from the playground beside the rec center. Among the colored slides and bridges and tubes, they grimly squatted and scoped like vultures. The workers in the trails would make it difficult to go back and forth by day, Josué assessed. Tiffany confirmed that they would hang around all week, sizing up the job and laying plans, and that going unnoticed wouldn’t be easy. Greg suggested taking the train tracks further into the woods and cutting across that way. Alex agreed to all points.
John and E. rode up. John seemed distracted and approved the plan with a twist of his hand, as if screwing in a light bulb. E. was quiet and attentive to her friends as usual, but she didn’t look happy. She didn’t acknowledge Doug at all. His first thought was that she’d told John about the note and his being sent to the principal’s office. If questioned in front of the others about what he’d written, Doug would lie about nearly bringing down the axe. The woods were their dream place, after all, where they could be what they weren’t in real life. Even Doug had been granted his wish there: he wasn’t nobody. He let the group sweep him through the tall reeds of the overgrown ditch that ran along the elevated tracks. He was who they wanted him to be.
Greg helped John up. They climbed to the fist-sized stones that topped the wall and Greg slipped. He would’ve dropped the Dead Man but for E.’s save. The group laughed it off—Greg the graceful—then followed the rails through the woods to find another way down to Bachelor’s Grove. When they didn’t stay on the railroad ties, the stones clacked beneath their shoes like giant marbles. They stopped before the train bridge that spanned the Cal-Sag River. On the other side was the next town over. On the left, below in the tree line, they spotted a lightly used trail. They followed it in roughly an easterly direction toward the moraine. Several miles and many assurances later, the group came out huffing on a high ridge that overlooked the valley. Low clouds slid as smoothly and soundlessly as ice across glass above the split in the earth scabbed with trees. The leaves were in full bloom from the unusual winter rains to defend against another relentless summer heat wave.
Doug lingered a moment while the others followed the trail around the ridge. The view disoriented him, not the space but the expanse of time the moraine represented: long ago, but not forever. The woods had a remarkable history compared to his insignificant blip on Earth. It was just trees. They were pretty, emerald green and endless over the hills from this vantage. They were grand altogether, terrifyingly so, as if Doug beheld an entire labyrinth—one he was trapped in the middle of. Fear brought Doug into himself. They would be gutted together if he didn’t change the course set by John and the killer, who were fundamentally the same. Whether the guy murdered or got people murdered, their disregard for others was indistinguishable.
“That’s it,” John said behind him.
The Dead Man’s hood was up against a chill that only he seemed to feel on bright spring days. His arms hung at his sides, but his fingers were outspread and made Doug anxious while on the edge of the ravine.
“It’s … something else,” Doug said.
The Dead Man lowered the hood. Newly shaved, his head was egg slick. Blue veins branched up his skull like fractures. The guy came beside him and scanned the valley.
“It’s home, Doug.”
The Dead Man set a hand on his shoulder. John didn’t pat him in the fatherly manner he had when they’d first met. The hand perched there, nimble and light. His fingers drummed, full of the potential to thrust Doug forward. Doug sucked a single breath into his tight chest. He’d never been in a fight before. All he could think to do was clutch John’s hoodie and take the Dead Man with him.
“The Grove as it is can be yours forever.” John continued intently, as if testing him with each line. “It soon will be. If we listen to the voice in the trees. For all of us. Do you understand me?”
Doug wanted to scream to shut the guy up. His throat was tight. All he could peep was, “I … It can’t last.”
“Your perspective needs readjustment,” John said patiently. The hand squirmed like a tarantula and reseated closer to Doug’s neck. Doug didn’t look at it, couldn’t. “You’re right about Nothingness. But wrong about Forever,” John said. He leaned in, still watching the moraine without lowering his voice, which added to the intensity of what he said next. “I need you listening, of all people. What remains when they take everything else is—”
“Is this even the right way to go?” Tiffany called to John. She ignored Alex’s affirmations that the course was positively correct.
John hesitated. He released Doug’s shoulder. “We’ll finish this conversation later.” He rejoined the group. Doug followed at a distance, convinced that, if John wasn’t the original killer, he’d become capable of anything to see his plans realized.
John claimed to have spotted the Big Tree. No one else recognized it below, but they followed him around the rim of the valley. The trail was
worn to the mud, a bike-tire wide. Wild growth made it impossible to see around each bend, and the group walked single file, slowly and cautiously, listening for the killer and the developers. They swatted at mosquitos buzzing in their ears. The lean path broke underfoot. John waved them aside to look down a less sheer face into the valley. It was only vaguely familiar to everyone else until Alex said, “This is likely the route the killer takes,” and pointed out the gray stumps of the original crime scene visible just through the trees.
Josué stopped the group before they descended. He looked back over his shoulder, hand in his pocket as if prepared to draw one of his imaginary six shooters. Something red waved from behind a bush up the trail, like a flag, about waist high. He led them over to it. A strip of red plastic had been tied around one of the trees. It matched the markers used by the surveyors two weeks ago.
“They won’t make it down to the valley. Right?” Greg asked.
John rested against a tree, back hunched, taking shallow hiccups of breath between which he said: “This will happen … to the Big Tree … in time.”
“If we don’t do something,” E. said.
“Um, hell yes,” Tiffany said and clung to E.’s shoulder enthusiastically. The girls smiled and immediately separated, weirded out by their comfortableness. Doug understood the moment—E. channeling Erika’s rebellious spirit, Tiffany welcoming its return. “If it means screwing over my dad, I’m in,” Tiffany said.
“The Grove—it can’t fight for itself,” Josué added.
“You said it, man.” Greg pulled the red band until it snapped.
That afternoon, they devised additional plans to beat back the developers: removing and switching their land markers, booby-trapping all routes to the Grove, sabotaging equipment when the time came. Tiffany promised to snap pictures of the blueprints laid out in her father’s office if it would help.
The group looked to Doug, waited for him to remark on their priorities or the plan’s effectiveness. He didn’t.
E. then listed the items each would need to bring tomorrow to camouflage and equip a stakeout team to track the land developers’ movements.
Doug noticed her studying him across the circle. He looked up and her gaze dropped into the unlit pit. Did she feel some shame at last? Doug hoped so. Honoring her sister was one thing. But battling the killer and now the developers? John was leading them to war, an illegal one, to defend what? Trees? Doug didn’t want to see the woods chopped, either, though not at the risk of death or jail. They had long lives ahead to make something of. OK, not the Dead Man. Too bad. The group could find a better, safer solution to these problems if only they plugged their ears and listened to themselves, to their fear if necessary. They weren’t ready, Doug reminded himself. He put his fingers in his mouth and chewed to keep from saying anything. The meeting ended, and he grabbed his book bag and ran home ahead of the others.
Doug reached his driveway when E. shouted his name. She burned a line of black rubber across the concrete and let his bike bounce hard as she strode over. Her cheeks were flushed from pedaling fast, having first carted John home.
“What did you write?” she said. “The note. Today in class.”
“I really—I can’t—” He wanted to tell her everything.
“If it’s about the Grove or the group, it concerns us all.”
She stepped in close. The kids weren’t two feet apart. He could put his arms around her. To reach out and touch E. even tenderly would make her shriek. She wouldn’t feel the concern that brimmed his heart. She was too upset over make-believe missions that gave her life the sheen of worth. Which it had already. To Doug. Because he loved her. He had, all this time, and his love was real. What John didn’t have for her. Because the guy was using her for his cause. Doug only wanted her to be happy, finally and truly. His last and only friend.
“You can’t write about it. You can’t talk about it,” she said louder. “Were you going to tell them? Say you weren’t.”
“I—no. But—”
“John was waiting for me after school today. He asked if I thought you could be trusted. It’s like he can read my mind.” Pained, the corners of her mouth downturned.
“What’d you tell him?”
“The truth. That I didn’t know. He needs to trust you in this work. Now more than at the beginning. If he can’t trust you, then …”
“What’s he going to do? … to me? We’re friends. Aren’t we?”
“Dougy, yes, but you have to promise me you won’t say anything. I need to hear you say that you won’t.”
She took his hands. Her palms were damp, yet cool. Her finger bones felt lighter and finer than in his fantasies. In all these years, he’d never touched or been touched by the girl so deliberately. Not a hug, nor a helping hand. He looked down and couldn’t believe her hands were in his. A bit delirious, he half-circled the back of one hand with his thumb. She didn’t pull away.
“I want to do right,” he said.
He squeezed. She squeezed back too firmly. Her eyes didn’t look glad, but round with fear.
Doug let go. “I can’t promise.”
“Please,” E. said.
“If he’s such a good person, then … I shouldn’t have to be afraid of him.”
“What are you saying?” she said, shocked and a bit offended. “John would never hurt you. He would be hurt if others learned about what we do and if protecting the woods came to an end. We all would be. Doug, I need this. I’m happy for the first time since … ever. For once in my life, I belong somewhere. Don’t try to end it. Not for John or the group—for me.”
E. resembled her dark-haired mother, maybe for the first time. Her brow drooped, burdened by loss. Her lips flattened against her teeth and quavered to restrain tears. A dozen ways to say he cared crossed his mind. Not one of them sounded like he wasn’t jealous of John and wanted E. locked away again in her bedroom or at the library or some tower to have all to himself, for as long as it took her to love him.
“I would never—I couldn’t hurt you … or anybody,” Doug said. “Fighting a killer … those workers—it’s too much.”
“It’s not enough, yet,” E. said.
Her grimness confirmed his failure. He’d wounded her at school in being a few words away from disclosing everything. Now that he’d shared his concerns prematurely, he’d screwed up worse. Not prematurely—too late. He had feared that under John’s influence she would turn from him, from reason completely. She was already turned.
“E. … I’m going to say something. I hope … Can you hear me? All this stuff—the woods—it can’t last. It’s not going to. He’s not going to. The Dead Man—John—the longer he stays alive, he gets more twisted. The guy, he’s like a monster—literally undead.”
“He’s not,” she said fiercely. “John’s so—he’s a—”
“What? Mysterious? Deep? He’s on painkillers and who knows what else. The guy’s out of his mind. Just … Don’t you see that? What happens next, when he finally goes? What do you do after he dies?”
“Continue The Work.”
“You—no,” Doug said. This was his last chance. His thoughts scattered and distended, were useless. Something underneath, like a stone hill, rose inside him. “I plan to still be here. Think about that, the future—real life—growing up.”
E.’s fists clenched as if wanting to shake him to make herself understood. Likewise, this would be her last attempt to reach him. Above her plea, which wasn’t forceful, but melancholy, Doug heard that most.
“You mean well. You want to do good. I know you do. So you’ll wait, won’t you? You’ll wait until you’ve walked. Then you’ll see he was right about us and everything.”
“How can you believe that? Things are so much worse,” he said. “I want to go back to how it was before. We can. Together. We were … happier.”
“Doug, none of this—” with an arching wave she circled Palos Hills and the entire world “—matters, only what’s inside you … and me �
�� between us.” E. took a breath and showed her damp eyes. Her ginger lashes were clumped into triangles. She must’ve sensed she was losing him in making John-esque proclamations about the meaning of existence. “If you don’t—if you don’t want to … fine. But wait until I walk the ritual Friday. I at least want to live that fearlessly.”
“You can, without him. The ritual—it’s dangerous.”
Into that Good Night Page 20