The Shadow Year

by Jeffrey Ford

  That night I was in the cellar looking for the basketball when I heard Mrs. Harkmar, like Krapp, addressing her last class.

  “You all did very good,” she said. “Mickey, you were the best. Sally, you did good. Sandy, you’ll have to go to summer school, but don’t cry.” She whapped the desktop with her ruler. “Mickey’s moving away, so let’s give him a round of applause.” There was the sound of clapping. “I’m retiring,” she said. “I won’t see you again.” These last words were spoken in Mary’s, not Mrs. Harkmar’s, voice. I went back to looking for the basketball and found it under the supply table. As I was heading for the stairs, I heard one more thing. There came a quick “Yay!” in Mickey’s voice, and I figured school had just let out.

  On the first weekend night he had free, my father cooked his meal of many meats out on the backyard grill. Hamburgers and hot dogs, chicken and sausage. There was potato salad from Rudy’s. We all sat, Nan and Pop included, at the picnic table, and feasted off grease-stained paper plates. Afterward, in the dark, we kids cooked marshmallows over gray coals that glowed orange from within when you tapped them. The adults sat at the table and drank and smoked and talked. A few houses down, a transistor radio was playing “There’s a Kind of Hush” by Herman’s Hermits.

  This Is Cool

  One night my mother didn’t drink. She didn’t drink the following night either, or the next. For the first few days of this new routine, she’d go to bed directly after dinner. Losing the wine made her look older and very tired. On the fourth night, she seemed to have awoken, smiling and talking at dinner. There was no mention of Bermuda. Maybe that’s where her anger had gone. She took out her guitar and showed Jim a few things she knew about frets and charts. From that point on, the summer got so light it was like a dream. Days were both long and brief, if that makes any sense. I forgot if it was Monday or Thursday. We played basketball over at East Lake, swam in the neighbors’ pools, read about Nick Fury and His Howling Commandos, stayed out late, and captured fireflies in mayonnaise jars. I kept away from the woods and in that way managed to forget about Charlie for the most part.

  That light time lasted a month or so, and today I’m not sure it ever happened. Then one evening my mother came home from work, toting a half gallon of Taylor Cream Sherry. “Oh, no,” Jim whispered when he saw it sitting on the kitchen counter. The late sun was shining through the window, and its rays illuminated the wine. It glowed a beautiful red-amber, and the sight of it made me instantly weak. Dinner was late, it had already grown dark, but none of us kids said a word. Before we’d gotten to the table, my mother had already had quite a few glasses. She sat smoking, her eyes nearly closed.

  “Why so quiet?” she finally said, and her voice had an edge to it.

  I stared into my soup.

  “Look at me,” she said. I looked up and saw Jim and Mary do the same. “What’s your problem?”

  I shook my head, and Jim said, “No problem.” I was going to return my gaze to the soup, but I saw something move outside the darkened window behind her. Mary actually jumped in her seat, but my mother was too drunk to catch it. I can’t believe I didn’t cry out, but there was Ray’s face at the glass. He was smiling and holding two fingers up behind my mother’s head to make it look like she had devil’s horns. Jim couldn’t help himself; he smiled. My mother looked at him and said, “Are you laughing at me?”

  “No,” he said. “I was thinking about this kid in school who could put his whole hand in his mouth up to his wrist. You know that kid?” he said to me.

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding, but I wasn’t sure which one he meant.

  Ray motioned to us and then pointed his finger down. He ducked out of sight, and a few seconds later I heard the slightest noise coming from the basement window well next to the back steps. When my mother closed her eyes, Jim looked over at me and smiled. Mary pointed to the floor with the pinkie of the hand holding her spoon.

  After dinner we helped clean up, and then my mother headed for the couch to pass out. We each went to our rooms and waited. We’d not seen or heard anything from Ray since the night-watch night when he’d given me the note. There hadn’t even been any reports of the prowler. For some reason I’d never really wondered what had happened to him. It was like he’d vanished once the weight of Mr. White had been lifted. Ten minutes after I’d closed the door of my room, Jim was whispering up the stairs for me. I tiptoed down and found him and Mary waiting by the cellar door. My mother was out on the couch, and the sight of her reminded me momentarily of the guitar lesson she’d given Jim. Down we went, laying each foot carefully on the creaky wooden steps. One of the back windows was open and latched up on its hook in the ceiling. The sun was on over Botch Town. Ray sat in Jim’s chair, staring out over the cardboard roofs. He turned when we came toward him, and he smiled.

  “This is cool,” he said, nodding toward the board.

  We introduced Mary to Ray and he shook her hand, which made her smile. Jim told Ray about building the town, and Ray kept looking at it, moving his gaze up and down the block.

  “He made it out of junk,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Jim, laughing.

  Ray lifted up the figure of Mrs. Harrington to get a better look. He turned her around and smiled at what he saw. Placing her carefully back in front of her house, he turned to us and said, “The white guy was outside your house all last night.”

  “But the cops told us he was gone,” I said.

  “You talked to the cops about him?” he asked.

  I told him what had happened in the alley next to the store, how Pop had saved me, and all I’d said to the police. “They’re after him,” I said.

  He moved the chair around to face the three of us. “I’m telling you, he was parked outside on the street right here last night. I watched him to make sure he wasn’t going to try something.”

  “Did you make a plan?” asked Jim.

  Ray nodded. “I’ve got something good. Tomorrow night, you two”—he pointed to me and Jim—“sneak out and lead him over to the school. I’m betting he’ll be around. It seems now he’s after someone in your house. I’ll be waiting at the school. You’ve got to get there a little before him and run around back. I’ll leave a ladder for you. Climb it, and I’ll be on the roof. When White shows up, we yell at him from the roof. He’ll find his way to the ladder, which once he climbs will put him right near the opening to the courtyard. The minute he steps toward that side of the roof, I’ll run into him and knock him into it.”

  “He’ll be stuck,” I said.

  “Right, and either they’ll find him there the next day and call the cops or he’ll try to break a window and the cops’ll come. Then we’ll be rid of him for good.” He stood up. “Can you do that?” he asked, moving toward the back window.

  I shook my head no, but Jim said, “I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” said Ray. “I’ll be waiting for you.” He reached for the edge of the window frame with both hands, got a good hold, and then pulled his body up in one graceful motion. Like a snake, he slithered through the opening and was gone. We stood quietly for a minute, and then Jim pulled his chair over to the window. He stood on it, unhooked the window from the ceiling, and held it while it swung closed.

  “Do you think Mr. White was really out there?” I asked.

  Jim brought his chair back to Botch Town and sat down. He picked up the white car, which had lain idle by Hammond for months. He blew dust off it and rubbed it clean with his thumb. “What about it?” he said, turning to Mary.

  “I can’t tell,” she said, and suddenly she looked older to me, like she’d grown up overnight. There was nothing Mickey about her.

  We’d never even looked later on to see if the white car was at the curb, and the next day Jim didn’t say a word to me about Ray. I made sure not to mention him either. As afternoon turned into evening, I started to wonder if he’d really go by himself, but the night crept by, and eventually he fell asleep on the couch watching television. Wh
en my mother told me to wake him to go to bed, he made like he was in a daze, but I knew he was faking it. I avoided looking out the front window into the dark and made sure the front door was locked when I went up.

  During the following days, we devoted ourselves to summer vacation with the same crazy energy my mother had given to Mount Kilimanjaro. A week went by, and my concern that no one had gone to see Ray began to fade. Still, I listened at night to hear if Jim was sneaking out, but there was only silence. I never mentioned it to him, because I myself was too scared to go, so I had no right to mention it. Always some small part of me expected a face at every window, but I shoved that to the back of my mind and ran harder, swam faster, and thought more deeply when I wrote, in order to fall straight to sleep at night.

  Last Chance

  A week after Ray’s visit, I was sitting up late watching Chiller Theatre on TV with the sound turned way down. That day Pop and Nan had taken us kids to the shore, and we got to swim in the ocean until Pop’s shoulder started bothering him too much. I was sunburned and had that shivering tiredness that came only from the beach. My mother had already gone in to bed, and my eyes were slowly closing. I could hear Jim upstairs, strumming his guitar. The front door was open, and a breeze wafted through the screen. On the tube there were brain eaters from outer space.

  The phone rang in the kitchen, startling me. It rang again, and I leaped out of the recliner and went to answer it. I picked it up, expecting to hear my father saying that he had to work another shift, but when I said “Hello,” all I heard was breathing.

  “Hello,” I said again.

  There was more breathing, and then a voice said, “Last chance.”

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “You know,” said the voice. I stood frozen, listening, but then the breathing was gone, and all I heard was a dial tone.

  Jim came into the kitchen as I was hanging up. “Who was that?” he said.

  “I’m not sure,” I told him. “It might have been Mr. White.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Last chance.”

  “Last chance for what?” said Jim.

  I shrugged. “It might have been Mr. White, but now that I think of it, it might have been Ray. I don’t know. It could have been anybody.”

  Jim went into the living room and closed and locked the front door. He walked over to the front window and pushed the curtains aside to look.

  “Is he there?” I asked.

  “I don’t see him.”

  We stayed up late, watching show after show until we heard my father’s car pull in and his steps on the path. We took off like a shot and were up the stairs and in our beds before he opened the door. With him home I felt safe enough to go to sleep, but instead I listened to that voice in my memory repeat its message. Half the time it was Ray, and the other half it was Mr. White—his face in front of mine, my back against the wall. I took the second image into sleep with me, and my muscles tensed, my legs jerked.

  I came awake to George growling. I’d kicked him.

  Treachery

  The phone call spooked me, and I didn’t want to leave the house, but a couple of days later Jim heard about a new development going up over by the Sullivans’. Part of the woods was being knocked down so construction could start.

  “There’s a hundred hills of dirt swarmed by flying grasshoppers.”

  “Who told you?” I asked.

  “Tony Calfano. I saw him outside the candy store.”

  “He’s back?”

  “I asked him what happened to him for shooting up the school, and he told me he had to go to court, and then all these people asked him a million times why he did it. He said he has to go every week to a head doctor.”

  “Is he crazy?”

  Jim shrugged. “What about the grasshoppers? I want to go see them.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “It’s daylight.”

  “When Mr. White grabbed me, it was daylight.”

  He finally convinced me by saying we would take our bikes and not stay long. We crossed the school yard on our way there. The sun was blazing hot. We waved to Chris Hackett and his brother playing catch in a heat mirage way across the field. The rows of houses we passed into were old and tall, with wooden front porches and columns. Jim led me on, pedaling at top speed, and we made so many turns I wondered if he even knew where he was going. Finally he stopped at a corner and waited for me to catch up. He was panting worse than I was.

  “We should’ve been there by now,” said Jim.

  “What did he tell you?”

  “I went the way he told me. Maybe he lied.”

  “He told you he was crazy,” I said.

  Jim was quiet for a second and then shook his head and said, “That kid never lies. I’m gonna keep looking for a while. Are you going home?”

  He knew I was too afraid to go by myself. “Just a little more,” I said.

  He started out, pedaling more slowly than before. I followed. We traveled three long streets that wound around and into each other. We made two left-hand turns and a right before we caught sight of the woods back behind a house.

  “There it is,” said Jim, and I looked up toward the end of the street past the last houses. It looked as if God had taken a bite out of the woods. There was a wide expanse of hard-packed dirt formed into hills from four feet to seven feet tall and covered by a boiling shadow. Chirping and flapping mixed together into a buzz that rose and fell in a single note.

  Jim made it to the edge of the hills before me. He was putting his kickstand down as I rolled up. “Look at this place,” he said. A gray grasshopper three inches long landed on the sleeve of his T-shirt. He laughed and flicked it away. “Come on.” He headed up the closest hill and disappeared over the top. I got off my bike and set the stand. Before I followed him, I looked back up the street. It was empty.

  Over the hill and into the bugs I charged. I could feel them hitting against me, landing on my skin, battering my head, but they didn’t hurt. It was like being in a living blizzard. When I got to the top of the next hill, I saw Jim through the cloud, standing in the distance on a tall hilltop. He was holding a long, flat board and was swinging to beat the band. I headed toward him. On the way there, in a valley between the hills, I found stacked-up sections of an old picket fence crawling with grasshoppers. I grabbed one of the slats, instantly getting a splinter at the base of my thumb. I ignored it in my rush to reach Jim. I had to go over three more hills and then trudge up the steep one he was on. When he saw me coming, he started laughing. “Treachery,” he said, and swung twice as hard. I scrabbled the rest of the way up and joined him.

  We fought back-to-back, like in the movie where Jason and his men duel with living skeletons. Every pass of the slat brought the sound of a dozen tiny pops. The dead and injured fell to the dirt with broken wings and severed sections that continued to flap and crawl. In the middle of my third swing, I finally felt how exhausted I was after running and riding so far in the heat. I tried to lift the plank again, but I couldn’t. I dropped it and bent over to catch my breath.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Jim. He dropped his bat, too, and jumped halfway down the hill. He waited for me at the bottom. “It’s so hot I can hardly breathe,” he said. I was too weary to do anything but nod. By the time we got back to our bikes, the insects had become a horror, and I worried I might pass out and they’d eat me where I fell.

  We got on our bikes and didn’t look back. So slowly, pedaling four times and then gliding till the glide was nearly gone, we made it to East Lake. Just inside the northern gate, we followed the fence out along the boundary. There was a huge maple tree in a backyard whose branches hung over the chain link, making a pool of shade on the field.

  We didn’t even bother with the kickstands but just let the bikes drop on the ground. Jim stepped into the shade, let himself fall, and then rolled onto his back. It was such a relief to step out of the sun. I knew what it was like now for the neig
hbors of Botch Town when we’d leave the sun burning all night. I lay down a few feet from Jim and looked up through the tree branches. The five-pointed leaves were red, and in the distance, through their maze, I saw a triangle of blue sky.

  “What about those grasshoppers?” he said. “That was the stupidest thing.”

  “What was happening there?” I asked.

  He laughed.

  “You were right about Calfano,” I said.

  “I told you,” he said. “Remember you said Calfano was crazy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was thinking that the dirt mounds and the grasshoppers is what it’s like inside a crazy person’s head.”

  “Mr. Rogers?” I said.

  “He had so many grasshoppers they ate his brain.”

  “Krapp?”

  “Krapp craps grasshoppers.”

  “We know a lot of crazy people,” I said.

  Jim rolled onto his side, and I turned my head to look at him. He had a piece of grass in his mouth. “Mom’s crazy when she gets loaded,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “They’re all a little crazy,” said Jim.

  “What about us?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. Instead he said, “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think Mr. White is after Mary. I think he’s after Mom.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s weak,” he said.

  I turned back to the triangle of blue and the shifting leaves.

  Jim didn’t say anything else about his theory. Some time passed, and then he announced, “I’m gonna teach George to dance.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “By holding food over his head and making him spin on his back legs. I saw it on TV. At first you use a lot of food, and then you make it less and less until you don’t even need any food, and all you have to do is whistle and they get up and start dancing.”