Don't Clean the Aquarium!

by Osier, Jeffrey

  They took my cigarettes, lit up, and decided to nail a few more cars. I sat about ten feet away, listening as they got into the rhythm of the game. They stopped talking about me, about Larry and his old man, and just talked about the kinds of cars they were hitting. I was amazed at how much they could find to say about each one, at how clever their remarks seemed. I had grown up one of the good kids, the smart kids, and yet, in every sense that seemed to count anymore, these two proto-greasers outclassed me. Nothing I was or had ever wanted to be stood for anything anymore.

  I didn't dare walk over and join them, afraid I was going to start crying.

  Larry had cried, there at the edge of Frantantian's driveway, but that was different. There was no way I was going to let that happen to me, not over something as meager and unjustifiable as my own shame. After all, I was the guy who had yet to cry even once about my own dad, after a whole month.

  I wondered if anyone had brought that up back at my house. "Hey, Pickett! You're missing all the theater traffic, man!"

  I sulked over. Jimmy turned and smiled his toothy, threatening grin, as though nothing had happened. He tossed a snowball at me. I caught it, kneeled into the drift, watching the rows of headlights rolling towards us.

  The people were fairly unresponsive. Occasionally someone would honk at us. As the traffic thickened it slowed down and we had to be more and more careful about revealing ourselves. Bob and Jimmy got into an argument over what were the best songs on the radio during the school year so far. Bob held out for '96 Tears' by ? and the Mysterians, 'You Can't Hurry Love' by the Supremes, and 'Psychotic Reaction' by the Count Five.

  "Oh yeah? What about 'Ruby Tuesday'? What about 'Eleanor Rigby'? 'Devil with the Blue Dress On'? Come on, Pickett, help me out here."

  I wondered if I had a voice left. "All the good songs came out last summer," I grumbled. "There won't be as many good songs all school year as there were last summer. Think about it. 'Hanky Panky, ' 'Summer in the City, ' 'Along Comes Mary, ' 'Paint it Black,' 'Wouldn't It Be Nice'…"

  "'They're Coming to Take Me Away'!"

  "'Over, Under, Sideways, Down'!"

  "'Lady Jane'!"

  "'Good Lovin"!"

  "Naaa, that came out last spring. How about 'Hey Joe'?"

  "And 'Hey Little Girl'?"

  "'Wild Thing'!"

  "'DIRTY WATER’!”

  "Shit," Bob said in amazement. "You're right. I'd never even thought about it. Last summer was the best. It ain't ever gonna get that good again. Not now. Not with the Monkees it ain't."

  "Yeah, now we get crap like Winchester Cathedral.' 'Snoopy and the Red Baron.'

  "'Mellow Yellow'…"

  "'The Eggplant that Ate Chicago'…"

  "Aww, hey, man. I like that song!"

  "Hey, hey… Oh, shit! Look at this!"

  Jimmy pointed down the road. I looked, and a chill ran through me, an unaccountable revulsion as I first set eyes on those headlights, wider apart than any others on the road, moving as though in slow motion, silent and completely isolated from all the other cars.

  "Jesus Christ! It's a fuckin' Packard!"

  "Bullshit, man. That's a Caddy!"

  "Ahh, you don't know shit about cars, Ritchie, ya jagoff.”

  I let loose a snowball. "I don't care what it is," I cried. "Let's get it!"

  We must have hit it ten times before we heard the sound. It had just passed us. It wasn't as though it slammed on its brakes. On this afternoon's fresh slush, those tires would have sent that hulk of metal sailing, even at the slow speed it was moving. It just suddenly…stopped dead, a jolting stop that was coupled with a deep, monstrous hiss.

  And then it began to back up, sending traffic skidding and honking. It was backing up towards this street.

  "Holy shit," Jimmy cried. "This guy's pissed off!"

  By the time we were out from beneath the tree, the car was turning the corner.

  We cut a diagonal across the Frantantians' back yard and across the next two yards before we cut over to the street. There was no sign of the car. We ran half a block and only stopped then because of Jimmy's outstretched arms. "Okay," he whispered, "We're all right."

  Bob whistled. "Man, that guy was maaad!”

  "What the hell was that thing?" I asked. "It didn't look like a Cadillac."

  "No way. You know, I think it was a Checker Marathon."

  "Whaaa?"

  "You know, a cab, but not painted like a cab."

  Bob spit. "Naaa, it was too big for that."

  "I still say it was a Packard."

  "Did you hear that hissing when it stopped? Like it had air brakes."

  "Aw, great. Now it's a fucking truck."

  Suddenly there was an explosive, metallic roar behind us. We were drowned in a field of yellow light.

  We whirled around to see the car bearing down on us. Beams from its twin spotlights slashed at us.

  "Split up!" Jimmy cried as he jumped one way, while Bob and I jumped the other way. I slid and fell into the street.

  The tire that skidded to a halt only two feet away from my head was enormous. For an instant I caught my clear but distorted reflection in the hubcap. In the next instant the door was opening and I was on my feet and running up the front lawn of the nearest house. I caught a glimpse of Bob disappearing between two houses on my right.

  I slipped into the shadows along the side of the house. The car door was shut and the car was idling. I couldn't see a sign of anybody, in or outside the car. I backed into a metal garbage can, lost my balance, slipped on the ice and fell to the ground, catching my forehead on the twisted metal handle.

  I touched the fresh cut near my temple as I stumbled to my knees and crawled behind the row of three trash cans. I huddled there, listening, rubbing my blood between my ungloved fingertips.

  Time seemed to freeze. A lifetime passed through me in a single breath. I wondered if I would ever be able to move again.

  The spell was broken abruptly by the sound of one of the trash cans being kicked against the brick wall and then sent flying across the snowdrifts at the house next door.

  I jumped to my feet. At twelve-and-a-half I must have been all of one inch over five feet tall, so I may be wrong, but facing him for the first time, he seemed to be at least eight feet tall. I could see only his silhouette now but could already feel the monstrous presence in that shadowy face. He lifted the second trash can off the ground.

  It wasn't until he held the can high over his head, with paper bags tumbling onto the ice, that I realized what he intended to do.

  The sound of that can against the ice was a sickening thud. I wasn't far enough from the impact not to be shaken by its implications. I heard the other can crash and turned back to see him, with his quick but bent and clumsy gait, following me across the yard. I leaped over the fence and landed on hands and knees in the alley. My ungloved right hand slapped down hard, impacting all the way to the gravel.

  By the time I got back on my feet he was at the fence. As I ran I heard the fence shatter.

  I ran past three houses and then ducked through a backyard, over a fence and across the street. He was no more than twenty feet behind me the whole time.

  And I was moving in the wrong direction. I was now two blocks east of the street where we'd split up, and I was moving farther from my house, from Jimmy and Bob's houses, towards the fringes of town. From here on, the houses were farther and farther apart. Sooner or later they would give way to the quarry and industrial park.

  But he was moving too fast and covering too much ground with every step for me to double back. It was almost as though he was funneling me in the direction of his own choice.

  I tried to cut around corners every chance I got. Once I managed to get myself turned towards the west as I rounded a garage, but found him standing there, blocking my path. A glint of light hit the face, or that mass of tissue where the face should have been.

  A staccato pattern whistled through one of the orifices at the front o
f the head.

  I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out but a cold, hoarse gasp. I stepped back once, twice, and he didn't move. I took off, sprinting as fast as I could in my constrictive winter wear, out into the drift-white wasteland separating the houses here on the edge of town. Half of my steps deposited me in snow up to my hips.

  The first time I looked back I could see his silhouette trudging after me, at what under any other circumstances would have seemed a safe distance—thirty or forty yards. The fact that I saw him at all only convinced me to run faster.

  I didn't look back until I was among the trucks along the edge of the quarry, a good half a mile past the last house. I couldn't see any movement and so for a moment wondered if maybe I'd actually shaken him—lost him or tired him or just discouraged him.

  And then I thought of that… face. His size. The way he'd brought down that can in a blow that had to have been intended to kill me. I looked around. Was all this a dream?

  I felt a throbbing pain in my right palm. I took off my left glove and felt the wet abrasions with my fingertips. I gently flicked away the alley rubble and searched for that right glove. It was gone and I couldn't remember when I'd last had it on.

  Somehow I had to find another route home. There was no way I could retrace my steps and so I had the choice of cutting north and moving parallel to the expressway, or continuing south as I seemed to be doing now, along the heavier machinery on the quarry's perimeter. I stood a better chance of finding my way back home if I followed the expressway, but I couldn't bear the thought of getting back on O'Neill Road.

  So I continued to move past the heavy machinery, most of which was hidden beneath sweeping, untrampled peaks of snow. And as I walked, and especially as I left the quarry, crossed a road and into the parking lot of the Pohl Company, I felt a chill gnawing at the real world.

  It began to snow.

  The flakes were big, and dropped in clusters on this windless night. Within a few minutes the snowfall was so thick that I couldn't see where I was going. My only beacons were the lights that stood high over the landscape, softened by the haze of the snow. I became completely disoriented and began to wonder if it was worth it to keep walking at all.

  So I sat for a while and examined the abrasions on my palm and forehead. I grew hypnotized by the vast perspectives revealed in the illuminated falling snow, felt myself pulled away from the events that had marred my life all winter. I lay back in a snowdrift, staring up at the sky, blinking the snowflakes away and thinking about my Dad.

  I sat up with a start, wondering how long I'd been on the ground like this, unsure of whether I'd fallen asleep or not. I struggled to my feet. Every joint seemed to ache as I took those first few steps, but as I walked the pain slowly subsided. So I had to walk, had to keep moving. A layer of snow was dropping from my coat and pants as I staggered up to a snow-laced chain-link fence.

  I no longer knew where I was or what time it was or whether I would ever find my way out of this wasteland. Everything around me, especially the dark, hulking shapes on the other side of the fence, seemed somehow unreal, as though beneath the drifts and the freshly fallen snow lay a world not as I had ever known it, but as the disease within me was recreating it. In fact, everything that had happened to me since we'd first set eyes on that car seemed—not like a dream—but like the doom that pervaded my life and dreams, leaking out and warping the world to suit the madness and bitterness that tainted every aspect of my life.

  "Pickett! Hey Danny!" came a hoarse whisper on the other side of the fence. I saw a shape move out from behind one of the giant, snow-draped machines. "Is that you?"

  Bob Ritchie. He looked from side to side and then ran up to the fence. "Shit, man! What are you doin' here?"

  "That guy followed me! Shit, Bob, I think the guy was trying to kill me."

  "Followed you? But… have you seen him?"

  "Not for a while. What are you doing out here?"

  "Just climb the fence."

  'Why don't you climb the fence?"

  "Shut up and climb. Anyway, I got the fags."

  He backed away, disappearing through a wall of falling snow. I made a slow, unsteady ascent up the twelve-foot fence. As I reached the top the entire fence wavered beneath my shaking, weakening arms. I leaned in too hard against the sharp twists at the top, cut my face and ripped my coat. I was afraid to go over the edge. I swallowed hard and looked about me at the transfigured night. I could see the vast space surrounding me, the open fields, the gaping sky, but the air was so thick with snow that I felt enclosed in a small room whose boundaries were a pulsing haze—easy to break through but impossible to escape. I could see no sign of Bob Ritchie.

  I lost my balance and then my grip, and fell the twelve feet into the snow bank, my little room still firmly in place around me.

  I struggled to my feet, feeling the frustration well through me, that feeling that I could do nothing right. No, it was the feeling that misfortune not only seemed to follow me but actually radiated from me and infected the world around me. I'd killed my father, perpetuated my mother's grief, created all these nasty-tempered drones who called themselves my relatives, and now, finally, created a monster and a snow-smothered wasteland of twisted metal to bring about my death. The Big Snow of 1967 was nothing more than all of my frozen tears, unable to come out any other way.

  "What kind of place is this?" I heard a haunted voice and thought I recognized it as my own.

  "Ahh, this is just a bunch of old scrap from the Pohl Company. We trashed all this shit years ago." Bob Ritchie emerged from the shadows of a great machine, smoking a cigarette.

  "Is he here?" I asked.

  "I don't think so. Anyway, why did you say he chased you out here? I mean, the guy was right behind me `til about ten minutes ago."

  "Well, then there's two of 'em, 'cause someone came out of that car after me, and he chased me all the way out here."

  "Naaah… There was only one person in that car. A big guy."

  "Yeah, a real big guy. I saw his face. Jesus Christ! I mean… he hasn't got a face at all!"

  "Shit, he was just some guy. Some drunk, I'll bet. He was probably after both of us and we were so scared we couldn't see each other the whole time. But we shook him. See? Here, have a fag."

  I took a cigarette, lit up and gazed at the field of snow. "I don't think so," I coughed as I pointed. "Look."

  Over a hundred yards away, beneath the snow-filtered glow of a light, a figure staggered, tall and broad, with arms that hung nearly to his knees. "That's him," I whispered.

  "Yeah, okay. You're right. But look, Danny, see how he staggers? Just a drunk. Some old boozer, like Larry's old man."

  "He's coming this way."

  "He'll never get us. Wait a second." He began digging in the snow at the foot of the machine, finally pulling up a length of steel rod with a twisted, jagged tip. "See, I told you we trashed these things years ago. Here, you take this." He pushed it at me and then dug some more, until he came up with another piece. "Just in case the guy does catch us, we'll crack him with these. Hell, we'll knock him out and take his money. How's that? You with me?"

  I lowered my head. I wanted to believe Bob Ritchie, I wanted to trust his judgment. I needed to trust it. But Bob was wrong. I couldn't feel his fear, but I knew it was there. It had to be.

  "Check out the way he walks, Danny. The guy can barely stand. We can take him!"

  "The guy who chased me was fast."

  "All right! All right! Come on. I know a place we can go. We'll hide in the tunnels."

  "Tunnels? No fucking way!"

  "Ahhh, come on!" He started and I followed. "They're big pipes of that corrugated sheet metal stuff. They've been here for years. We used to play war in 'em all the time when we were kids."

  As we walked I tried to imitate his air of self-assurance, tried to walk as though I was cool and cocky and enjoying myself. All the while I was feeling sick inside, wondering what Bob Ritchie was really thinking.r />
  The tunnels were just as he'd described them. Corrugated sheet metal pipes, anywhere from ten to thirty feet long and almost five feet in diameter. As we approached, we passed concrete blocks from which bouquets of tall, twisted cable grew, spreading into the night skies like electric trees, arching over us like a forest canopy. I could hear a distinct buzzing noise but never had the chance to pinpoint the source.

  We ducked into one of the pipes, moved through it, stepped briefly back into the snow and then into another. We sat down and had a smoke. My throat was hurting pretty bad now and I had to suppress the nagging tickle.

  I kept my eyes on the barely visible face of Bob Ritchie, trying to read him. I kept my ears to the sounds outside.

  "Bob? What kind of car was that?"

  "I don't know." His whisper was softer than mine as he spoke, occasionally spitting out a pinched speck of tobacco. "A Hudson Hornet maybe. I bet your brother would know."

  I was coughing now, trying to catch and propel a worm of phlegm from my throat. It wouldn't come, and I couldn't stop coughing, or keep the cough from getting louder. Suddenly Bob clutched my forearm and let out a hiss.

  There was a sound nearby. At first I couldn't make it out, but as it passed us, I realized it was someone's hand brushing against the ripples of the metal. Accompanying it was a deep, troubled breathing, in synch with a thin, fluttering whistle. We backed in the other direction, watching the circular opening at the end of the tunnel, and finally, the silhouette of a man staggering against the snowlight. We gasped, pushed against each other for the lead, and ran.

  Bob dashed through a maddening labyrinth of those tunnels, almost losing me on several tight turns. When he stumbled and fell inside one of the pipes, I tumbled right over him.

  We sat up breathless and cursing.

  "This isn't right," I whined. "Nothing about this is right! That guy, this place. It's all wrong. Don't you see? Like I'm in a dream!"

  "Shhh! Don't wet yourself, Pickett. Let's just…listen a minute."

  The silence was so intense, so strained, and the cough trying to escape me so violent, I was afraid that by letting it out I'd shatter not only the silence but everything around me, leaving only me in black, borderless space. "Okay," he whispered at last. "Let's go."