The Black and The Blue

by Jay Brushett

  Jay Brushett

  The Black and The Blue

  Copyright © 2018 by Jay Brushett

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  First edition

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  Contents

  Author's Note

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  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  Second Epilogue

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  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Author's Note

  Canadian spellings are used throughout this book. For example, colour and not color. There may be cases where I am not quite so strict and use American spellings for certain words. For example, license instead of licence.

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  Dedication

  For Linda, for everything, for always.

  Prologue

  THE BLACK WAS ITS home.

  That void had been its home for millennia.

  At some point it would leave The Black. It would find The Blue or The Green or The Blue Green. There were many such places scattered among The Black.

  It had passed by many Greys and Reds and Whites. They were interesting places — some extremely cold, others very hot and others dry.

  But they were not The Blue or The Green or The Blue Green. They were lifeless.

  It continued its search.

  ······························

  FINALLY, IT HAD LOCATED The Blue Green. It was distant, but it was definitely The Blue Green. It altered its course through The Black.

  ······························

  THE BLACK WAS FILLED with The Yellow now. It had become so as it had moved closer and closer to The Blue Green.

  Several times since it had entered The Yellow it had had to alter its course slightly.

  It had skimmed the surface of The White, The Grey and The Red, using their gravity to push it along the correct path.

  ······························

  FINALLY, AFTER MILLENNIA AND millennia more, it had arrived. It was entering the atmosphere of The Blue Green.

  But something was wrong. It was entering too fast, at the wrong angle.

  The heat was increasing. It was falling, uncontrolled.

  Then, there was only darkness.

  Chapter 1

  JIMMY NOONAN, NINE-GOING-ON-TEN, was excited. It was the first day of summer vacation. And a Saturday.

  He awoke early to the sun streaming through his bedroom window. School was over for another year: two months of adventure spread before him. Today that meant bathing in the phosphor-tinged light of Saturday morning cartoons. Several thirty-minute sessions of animated glory awaited.

  Jimmy leaped from his bed and walked, yawning, to the kitchen. He wiped sleep from his bleary eyes with balled up fists. There were no other sounds from inside the house; his mother was probably still asleep. Outside there was the sound of a lawn mower, most likely his father doing the household chores.

  He retrieved cornflakes from a long cupboard and 2% milk from the fridge. He combined these in a deep bowl — the same bowl he always used. With his favourite spoon, one of the ones his mom had gotten in a package of Tetley tea, he topped the cereal with several heaping spoonfuls of white sugar. Finally, he filled a glass almost to the brim with Minute Maid orange juice. It was the first large glass he put his hand on; he wasn’t particular about glasses.

  Both hands full, and the large cornflakes box tucked under his short arm, Jimmy went to the living room. Walking up to the edge of the coffee table he laid his breakfast down before returning to the TV. He switched it on with one dial and made sure it was on channel eight, NBC, with another. He plopped onto the carpeted floor behind the coffee table. Spoon in hand, cornflakes sufficiently soggy and the Smurfs staring at him from TV land, he lost himself in pure childhood bliss.

  Several hours later, when real people replaced his ink and paint heroes on the screen, Jimmy stood. He again turned the dial, though this time in the opposite direction. The screen stopped glowing and receded to one whitish dot before going dark.

  Those previous hours weren’t measured in minutes, they were chunks of Transformers, He-Man, G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K, Centurions, Foofur and My Little Pony. Jimmy didn’t discriminate, he liked the shows for girls as much as those targeted at boys. There were no My Little Pony toys in his toy box, but he was willing to give any cartoon a chance.

  Outside the sun was almost overhead. The sound of the lawn mower was long gone, replaced by the laughter of other kids. Jimmy raced to join them, shedding his PJs for brown cords and a t-shirt with Spider-Man on it. When he was halfway out the door his mother, stood at the kitchen counter, called after him. “Where are you going, young man?”

  “Outside,” he said. He had no other plan.

  “That’s fine. Don’t forget to take a coat or a sweater.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  He realized that he was and allowed his mother to make him a Cheese Whiz sandwich, crusts on. Unlike some kids, he actually liked the crust on his bread. Jimmy ate the orange and white slab in a minimal amount of bites, gulping down a can of Pepsi between them. He didn’t want to waste more precious daylight. When he finished he said thank you and left the house straight away, before his mother could tell him once more to take a coat. He knew kids didn’t need coats, they were always moving, always too warm.

  Arriving in his driveway he saw the neighbour kids playing catch on their lawn. “Hey, Brad. Hey, Steve,” he called.

  “Hi, Jimmy!” Brad, Jimmy’s classmate, called back, waving. Steve, a couple years older, acknowledged his greeting with a slight flick of his chin.

  “What are you guys doing?” Jimmy asked.

  “Cartwheels,” Steve said, smirking. He tossed a baseball into the air, caught it and then repeated the motion.

  “I meant like all day,” Jimmy said, rolling his eyes.

  “Want to go to the playground?” Brad asked.

  “Yeah!”

  “You want to come, Steve?” Brad asked his brother.

  Steve snorted. “I’m a little old for playgrounds. You guys go.”

  “See ya!” both younger boys called, taking off as quick as if the ice cream cart was going down the road.

  “Kids,” Steve said to himself as he watched them go, wishing he could join them. He still loved the merry-go-round. But he wouldn’t tell that to anyone.

  Jimmy and Brad were almost to the top of Jimmy’s driveway when a voice called from behind, “Jimmy! Where are you going?”

  “To the playground!” he called back to his mother.

  She stood framed in the doorway, holding open the screen door with one hand. “Careful crossing the roads, and be back by suppertime.”

  “Okay, Mom!”

  At the top of the driveway they crossed the street, looking both ways first of course, and then turned right. They kicked the grav
el of the shoulder — there were no sidewalks in their small town — and stopped often to inspect something interesting in the shallow ditch that ran along the road.

  Eventually, with the purposeless meandering of children, they arrived at a grassy path that led through a wooded area and ended at the open expanse of the playground. It was only a short trail and they could already hear other children playing there. Laughter and exclamations mixed with the metal-on-metal squeal of swing chains as they swooshed one way and then the other.

  Wasting no more time they raced along the grass. With practised ease they lifted their feet in the right places to avoid large jutting stones and tree roots that had crept across the trail. The tree cover thinned on both sides as they came to a fairly wide, gurgling stream. To them, however, it was a river. On the opposite side, up a little hill and still out of sight, was the playground.

  Catching their breath for a moment at the river, Jimmy waved Brad ahead.

  Brad picked a hopping path across some rocks that rose above the water level of the stream. Only one of them could cross at a time and remain dry.

  Jimmy joined him and they were off, up the hill.

  The playground was a small circular area, covered in gravel, encircled by the stream and marshes on one long side to their left and by woods on the right. Beyond the equipment there was an open grassy area, as if the intention had been to add more pieces — perhaps a set of monkey bars. While small, the space was big enough that the kids sometimes played Frisbee and 500s there.

  The equipment itself was pretty standard. Up from the trail there was a metal, somewhat rusted and faded red and blue merry-go-round. It was creaky and shook until it got going fast enough. A slide that seemed high to the younger kids was beyond that. Unlike most slides, the bottom of this one didn’t end on a level surface with space to put your feet down to the ground. No, the surface of this slide ran into the ground so that kids had to jump and run at the end to shed their momentum. The polished surface often caught the sun in the late afternoon, blinding the kids using the swings opposite. There were four regular swings, each just a seat of thick black rubber suspended by chains. On the opposite end were two baby swings, saddle-like affairs with slots for tiny legs.

  Today most of it was in motion, swarmed by children of varying ages. Many were Jimmy’s and Brad’s age or pretty close.

  “Hey, Jimmy, hey, Brad!” called one young girl, the sole occupant of the merry-go-round. Her ponytail flowed behind her as it spun.

  Her back was facing them by the time the boys called back, “Hi, Rhonda.”

  “You want to get on?” Rhonda asked as she came back around.

  “Sure.”

  Rhonda moved to the edge and grasped one of the handrails. She put a foot down and let it drag in the dirt that ran all around the circumference of the merry-go-round. A plume of brown dust followed in her foot’s wake. The circle of metal lessened its pace until it was slow enough for the two boys to jump on. Once aboard, holding tight to the rails, the three of them put one foot each to the ground. This time they hopped along in the direction of spin, pushing it faster and faster. Smiles shone on all three faces.

  It might have been an hour later, or two, when the three friends sat out past the gravel, in the grass at the edge of the woods. They were sweating, tired from play.

  “Did you see it?” Brad asked.

  “What?”

  “The swings, they almost tipped over!”

  “They did not,” Rhonda said.

  “They did!” Brad exclaimed. “The poles, the back ones, I saw them as we were all swinging together. You know, syncro-,” he thought a moment, “syncronotized. They came up from the ground.”

  “I don’t know,” Rhonda said.

  “I think he’s right,” Jimmy said. “It felt weird for a minute, almost like they were gonna tip.”

  “Maybe we need four people,” Brad said. “Then it would tip!”

  “Boys!” Rhonda said, rolling her eyes. “Then we wouldn’t have any swings to swing on!”

  “Oh,” Jimmy said. “Right.”

  They lapsed into silence then, picking at the dandelions and buttercups which sprouted from the ground around them. Kids came and went, playing on the equipment or in the open area beyond it. A couple of girls kicked around a soccer ball while a bigger boy hit pieces of gravel with an aluminum baseball bat. They tinked and pinged off the bat and flew into the woods, over the heads of the three young friends.

  One of the small rocks landed in the grass near Jimmy, Rhonda and Brad. Another hit a larger rock behind them with a crack.

  “Uh oh,” Rhonda said, looking up at the sudden sounds. “We should probably move. Larry is hitting rocks again.”

  “Again?” Brad asked with a sigh, glancing in the direction she was looking.

  “He’s such a moron,” Jimmy said.

  They stood and started toward the path and the river. They had taken only a couple steps when one of the flying pebbles hit Brad hard on his upper arm.

  “Ahhh!” he cried and started rubbing the stinging spot where it had struck. “Stupid asshole!”

  It was harsh, very unlike Brad, and also loud.

  Too loud.

  Jimmy and Rhonda knew it immediately. The look of fear that replaced the anger on Brad’s face showed that he knew it too.

  There was a crunching of gravel beneath sneakers. It was loud in the sudden silence, punctuated only by the whine of the slowing merry-go-round and the decelerating swings. All eyes focused on the unfolding drama.

  The three friends, frozen to the spot, stopped looking at each other and turned to look toward Larry, the kid with the baseball bat. Though he wasn’t a kid, not like them. He was almost a teenager, a couple of years older than them, a head taller, twice as wide and, they figured, half as smart.

  And he was getting closer. He didn’t hurry but walked with purpose.

  The crunching of the gravel grew louder with each step he took. Yet they didn’t move, couldn’t.

  “What did you call me? Hey! Dickhead! What did you call me?!” Larry yelled to Brad.

  Larry was pissed. Really pissed.

  Brad knew then there was no talking himself out of it — he was in for a beating. He made a mad dash for the trees. Jimmy followed immediately. Rhonda sighed, but then ran to catch up.

  They were well into the cover of the trees by the time Larry reached the edge of the gravel. He didn’t stop there though, continuing after them.

  They followed a rough trail, created between the trees by generations of kids and teenagers. They passed the remnants of old fires, discarded chip bags, bar wrappers and polystyrene fry containers. Beneath some trees the brown glass of broken beer bottles glinted in the sunlight that was able to filter through the thickening canopy of branches.

  The kids saw none of this though. They were focused on one thing: survival.

  They continued their frantic scramble deeper into the forest. The trash and other signs of human frivolity thinned while the tree cover thickened. Soon the trail became a path and then they were pushing through the gaps between tree trunks.

  And yet they didn’t stop, or at least Brad, leading them, didn’t stop.

  Behind them, every so often, they heard a thump and sometimes a thump-twang. Larry was hitting the trees with his baseball bat as he followed them. The sound was not close but not far enough away.

  Then the trees thinned before them a little. Brad picked up speed, realizing only too late that the opening in the foliage was due to a stream that ran down a shallow hill. He stepped in the stream, submerging his foot up to the ankle in thick mud.

  “Shit,” he said as he tried to pull his foot free. “Shit!”

  Jimmy and Rhonda stopped where the trees thinned and caught their breath. They watched Brad wrestle with the mud, unsure of what to do.

  “Help me!” Brad said.

  They positioned themselves one on each side of the stream and grabbed hold, one to each of Brad’s arms, pulling. His
foot came free with a sloooouck sound, they lost their grip on his arms, and he tumbled forward.

  He went down over the slight hill, right along the path of the slippery stream. At the bottom the stream opened into a deep pool, where the water had eroded most of the soil around the roots of an ancient tree. Brad fell headfirst into it with a large splash.

  His friends ran after him, making their way down the hill, careful not to slip themselves.

  Only Brad’s back was visible, protruding from the muddy water.

  Jimmy was reaching for Brad when the boy shot up from the water and stood waist deep in the pool. Brad was covered in dead leaves, pine needles and mud. He spat dirty water from his mouth while more streamed from his hair, ears and nose.

  “My mother is going to kill me,” he said.

  He took a step toward the exposed roots of the large tree, grabbing them for leverage. Then he stopped and seemed to be deep in thought.

  “Where’s my shoe?” he asked.

  “You had it on when we pulled you free,” Rhonda said, “I saw it. I made sure to look because my sister lost a shoe like that once — it stayed in the muck.”

  “Double shit,” Brad said. He knew where it was and what he had to do. Swallowing a huge gulp of air, he plunged back into the water, both hands before him.

  Rhonda and Jimmy watched, wanting to help but neither wanting to go any closer to the dirty water than they had to. They were starting to get worried when Brad again erupted from the water, gasping for breath. He withdrew a soaking shoe from beneath the surface of the pool and tossed it to land next to Jimmy.

  “There’s… something… there,” he managed, “but it’s stuck.” And then he was gone again, beneath the surface. This time his whole body disappeared, leaving only ripples.

  Rhonda looked at Jimmy. He shrugged and watched the surface of the pool, studied the perturbations on its surface from Brad’s movements.