The boy nodded gratefully.
“Fuck you!” the chief’s daughter yelled.
“Now get Miss. Charm out of here before I haul her in on a drunk and disorderly charge.” He let the girl go, and her boyfriend immediately took her arm, pulling her away.
“You can’t stop it!” she called. “There’s nothing you can do!”
Mccomber walked slowly back to his car, ignoring her taunts, wondering if he should tell the chief about what had happened or if he should try to keep it quiet. The good mood which had been his upon initially approaching the Mazda had long since fled, and now he no longer felt like cruising the streets at all.
He felt like drinking.
He felt like getting drunk.
It’s almost here.
He did not acknowledge the boy’s wave as he passed the two teenagers on his way down the road.
The ground was wet, the sky overcast, the air redolent with the fresh, invigorating odor of recent rain. Above the rooftops, the trees appeared almost black against the gray background, their heavy leaves and branches disturbed only by the cool northerly breeze which blew against his face. Dion felt happy, for no real reason at all. Days like this inevitably put him in a good mood, no matter what had happened the night before. He breathed deeply, smelled fireplace smoke, exhaled, saw steam.
In a puddle on the sidewalk he saw a reflection of the sky, silhouettes of trees and rooftops, a charcoal sketch.
Fall had always been his favorite season. While most kids linked the seasons with the school year, waiting anxiously for summer and school’s end, dreading fall and the resumption of classes, his perceptions had always been more instinctual, less tied to the workings of the material world. He loved fall, always had. There was something about this time of year which made him feel healthy and alive. Autumn was usually assumed to be nature’s dotage, the season before its death, but as he had learned from Penelope, plants such as grapes belied that assumption, bucked the general trend, died when others bloomed, bloomed when others died, and he himself felt a little like that.
A van drove by, its tires hissing on the wet asphalt. He waited a moment, then crossed the street, stepping into and splashing through a shallow puddle. Looking down, he saw muddy black water.
Black water.
He felt cold suddenly, and he shivered, his mood dampened by the remembrance of last night’s dream.
It had been a bad one.
In the dream his mom had been staggering through a meadow, drunk and naked, holding in one hand an overflowing skin of wine, in the other a severed penis, blood still dripping from its torn, ragged end. There were other women nearby, also naked, also drunk, but his attention was focused only on his mom. He’d stepped forward, through a pile of rustling leaves. She turned and saw him and let out a great, excited whoop of joy. She dropped the wineskin, dropped the penis, and began dancing, a mad celebratory dance of wild abandon. A goat sprinted by, passing directly in front of her, and she leaped at it, grabbing the animal around the neck and twisting it to the ground. There was an audible snap of bone, and then she was on top of the goat, ripping with fingers, tearing with teeth, ecstatically smearing the blood on herself.
In the space between her legs, he could clearly see the goat’s hairy erection.
And then the other women joined his mom, all of them coalescing into one madly carnal, wildly anarchic group of grasping hands and hungry mouths.
His mom grabbed the goat’s erection, yankiag it out and proudly holding it aloft.
And then he was alone in the darkness, floating face up in the waters of a black river, everything, all of his thoughts, all of his feelings, all of his memories, fading, going, gone until he was a blank nothing drifting onward into a bigger nothingness, the black water streaming through his ears, through his nose, through his mouth to fill him up.
He’d awakened cold, shivering, his blanket kicked off the foot of the bed, feeling … not frightened exactly, but … disturbed. He’d felt depressed as well, filled with a strange sense of loss.
The feelings faded with breakfast, were washed away with his shower, and were forgotten when he saw the gorgeous fall day outside.
But now he was worried. He walked slowly down the sidewalk toward school. There was something about the dreams he’d had lately that didn’t sit right with him. They didn’t feel like ordinary nightmares, did not seem to come from the same subconscious pool as the dreams he usually had. He was not sure what about them made him feel this way, but whatever it was had him scared.
“Hey, dickmeat!”
Dion looked up to see Kevin hanging out the passenger window of Paul’s Mustang.
“Need a ride?”
He shook his head, waved them on. “I need the exercise.”
“I thought you got your exercise doing push-ups on Penelope!”
He pointed toward Kevin, then pointed toward his crotch. “Your breakfast, bud!”
Kevin laughed. “Later!”
The Mustang took off, tires squealing on the wet road, splashing water.
Black water, Dion thought, looking at the spray.
He shivered.
Kevin closed his locker. “She called it what? The commune?”
“The combine.”
Kevin thought for a moment. “You know,” he said, “there used to be a religious cult that ran a winery around Santa Rosa, back, I don’t know, a long time ago. Fountaingrove, I think it was called. And it was run by a cult called the Brotherhood of the New Life. If I remember right, they used to use their wine in ceremonies. This sounds a little like that.”
“Penelope’s family is not a cult.”
“It doesn’t sound just a little spacey to you?”
Dion twisted his combination lock, pulled on it to make sure it had caught. “A little,” he admitted.
“Just keep your eyes open.” Kevin grinned. “You’ve got a rare opportunity here. You’re seeing all possible permutations of the female Daneam. You’re seeing Penelope’s future. In twenty years she’s going to look like one of them. Acorns don’t fall far from the tree and all that good crap. So you’ve been given fair warning. If you don’t like what you see, back out now. Save yourself some grief and heartache.”
Dion tried to smile. “I like what I see,” he said. “I hope so.”
Dion tried not to think of Penelope’s family as he and Kevin walked to class.
Bacchus, Mr. Holbrook wrote on the board. Dionysus. He underlined the words, wiped the chalk dust on his pants, and turned to face the class.
“Bacchus, or Dionysus,” the teacher explained, “was probably the most important of the Olympian dieties. More important even than Zeus or Apollo. There are not as many stories about him, but the fact remains that he was, throughout this time, the most popular of the gods, and his followers were by far the most loyal. This can be attributed in large part to the fact that he was the only Olympian god who was both mortal and divine.”
A student near the back of the room raised his hand.
“Yes?” the teacher said.
“Which name are we going to be tested on?” the student asked. “Bacchus or Dionysus?”
“We will be referring to him by his proper Greek name in this class:
Dionysus. You may be tested on both.”
The class was filled with the sound of furious scribbling.
“As I said, Dionysus was both mortal and divine, the son of Zeus and Semele, the princess of Thebes. Zeus was in love with the princess, and after impregnating her while in one of his many guises he swore by the river Styx that he would grant any wish she desired. Zeus’ wife, Hera, jealous as always, put the idea into Semele’s mind that her wish was to see Zeus in all of his glory as the king of heaven, and this is what the princess asked for. Zeus knew that no mortal could behold him in his true form and live, but he had sworn by the Styx and could not break that oath. So he came to the princess as himself, and Semele died beholding his awesome splendor, but not before Zeus took the child th
at was about to be born.”
Mr. Holbrook turned back to the chalkboard and wrote two more words:
Apollonian. Dionysian.
“Over the years, over the centuries, Dionysus has usually been misunderstood and misinterpreted. In general, these two words have come to mean ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ If something is described as “Apollonian,’
that means it is connected with light and goodness, order and lightness.
The word ‘Dionysian,’ on the other hand, applies to the dark and chaotic, and is often connected with evil. Although Dionysus was by no means a bad or evil god, this mistake is easily understood. As a god who was half human, half divine, Dionysus had a dual nature. This duality was further emphasized by the fact that he was the god of the vine, the god of wine. Wine can make men mellow, and it can make men mean.
Likewise, Dionysus could be likable and generous, warm, good and giving.
He could also be cruel and brutally savage. Just as the same wine that brings men together in camaraderie can also make them drunk and drive them to commit degrading acts and horrible crimes, Dionysus could bring to his worshipers joy or pain, happiness or suffering. He could be both man’s benefactor and his destroyer. Unfortunately, over the years the dark side of Dionysus has tended to overshadow his good side, to the point where today most people’s picture of him is highly distorted.”
Mr. Holbrook turned back to the board. Dionysian Rites, he wrote.
Bacchanal.
“We will now look at the worship of Dionysus, which was done often through drunken orgies and festivals of debauchery.”
Dion felt a pencil in his back. “Now we’re getting to the good stuff,”
Kevin whispered.
Dion laughed.
Vella was absent, Kevin had a dentist’s appointment, and for the first time Dion ate lunch alone with Penelope. He was glad Kevin wasn’t there, but he felt guilty about it. He liked Kevin, enjoyed his friend’s company, but at the same time he found that he preferred being alone with Penelope.
The two of them walked through the cafeteria line— Dion picking up a hamburger and Coke, Penelope a salad and juice—and sat at a table near the low wall which separated the eating area from the softball field.
The conversation was easy, comfortable, free and wide ranging, shifting from music to school to plans for the future.
“What do you want to do with your life?” Penelope asked. “What do you want to be?”
He smiled. “When I grow up?”
She nodded, smiled back. “When you grow up.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I used to think I’d like being an archaeologist or paleontologist, dig for fossils and artifacts, travel to exotic locations. I thought it would be exciting.”
“Exciting?” She laughed. “You’ve seen too many Indiana Jones movies.”
“Probably,” he admitted. “Then I thought I’d like to be a dentist. You know, have a big waiting room with lots of magazines and a saltwater aquarium, work five hours a day in a pleasant environment and rake in big bucks.”
“Sounds good.”
“I suppose. But I’ve changed my mind since then.”
“What do you want to be now?”
“A teacher, I think.”
“Why?”
“I could lie and say it’s because I want to help open young minds and expose them to great truths, but actually it’s because I’d get summers off. I’m spoiled. I like vacations. I like getting my two-month summer, two-week Christmas vacation, and one-week Easter vacation. I don’t think I could survive getting two weeks a year, period.” He took a bite of his hamburger. “What about you?”
She shrugged. ‘The winery. What else?”
“What if you didn’t want to work at the winery? What then?”
“But I do.”
“What if you didn’t? What if you wanted to be a computer programmer?
What would your … your mothers dor “I don’t know.”
“They don’t have anyone else to leave the place to, do they? You don’t have any brothers or sisters.”
“I don’t have any other relatives.”
He looked at her. “None?”
She stared out across the field, then turned back toward him. She wrinkled her nose mischievously. “What if you could be anything you wanted? Not anything practical or realistic. Your secret fantasy.”
“Rock star,” he said.
She laughed.
“Thousands of girls screaming for me, groupies galore.”
“Hey!” He smiled, drank his Coke. “You really don’t have any other relatives? Just your mothers?”
She reddened. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? Some other time.”
“Okay. I understand.” Dion finished his hamburger, rolled up the foil wrapper, and tossed it at the nearest trash can. It missed by several feet, and he stood up, picked it off the ground, and dropped it in. He turned around. Through the thin material of Penelope’s blouse he could see the outline of her bra. He sat down next to her. “So what are we?”
he asked. He tried to make the question sound casual. “Are we friends or are we … more than friends?”
She licked her lips, said nothing.
His heart was beating rapidly in his chest, and he suddenly wished he hadn’t said anything. “What are we?” he asked again.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t either.” His voice sounded too high.
They were both silent for a moment.
“I want to be more than friends.” Penelope said softly.
Neither of them said anything. The surrounding lunch noises faded from background sound into something else, something less. They looked into each other’s eyes, neither knowing what to say but neither turning away.
The silence was awkward, but it was a pleasant awkwardness, the welcome discomfort of initial intimacy. Dion smiled, embarrassed. “Does this mean that we’re, uh, like boyfriend and girlfriend?”
She nodded but looked down at the ground. “If you want to be.”
“I want to be,” he said.
There was a second’s hesitation, an instant of uncertainty, then he took her hand in his. His palms were sweaty. He was embarrassed by their sweatiness, but not embarrassed enough to move them away. He squeezed her hand.
She squeezed back.
He let out the breath he’d been holding. “Well, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
“It wasn’t?” She laughed.
He laughed.
And then they were laughing together.
Dion met with Mr. Holbrook after school.
He hadn’t discussed the independent study idea with Holbrook since the teacher had originally brought it up, had, in fact, nearly forgotten about it, but he’d received a pink summons notice during his last period, requesting that he meet the mythology instructor after class, and after dumping his books in his locker, he made his way through the rapidly emptying hall to Holbrook’s room.
The classroom was empty when he arrived. He waited five minutes, but the teacher still hadn’t shown. He would have left then and there, but a message on the blackboard read:
Dion, Please wait. I will be back shortly.
There were other words on the blackboard as well, most of them half-erased. Many appeared to be foreign, the characters part of a non-English alphabet, and while Dion didn’t know how he knew, he realized that they were entirely unrelated to classwork or school.
That frightened him for some reason.
The door of the room opened, and Holbrook walked in. He was carrying what looked like a folded sheet atop an armload of supplies, and he placed them all on top of his desk. “So, Dion,” he said. “How’re things going?”
“Well, there haven’t been any big changes in my life during my afternoon classes.”
Holbrook chuckled, but there was no, humor in the sound. ‘That’s true.
We just saw each other this morning, didn’t we?
In class.”
There was something about the teacher’s tone of voice that seemed odd, off, unusual.
Threatening.
That was it exactly.
He stared at the instructor, his stomach knotting up. The hostility had been vague, veiled, but it had been there, in the voice, and it was there now in the look the teacher was giving him from across the room.
What did Holbrook have against him?
He suddenly realized that the classroom door was closed.
“I … got your summons.” He held up the pink notice, aware that his voice was quavering, wishing he could stop it.
“Yes,” Holbrook said.
“Is mis about the independent study thing? I already told you I don’t want to do it.”
“Why?” the teacher asked. “Afraid of being alone with me?” He grinned.
This was getting too damn weird. Dion started toward the door. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have to go.”
“Afraid I’ll attack you?”
Dion stopped, turned toward the teacher. The supplies on the desk, he saw now, were rolled-up scrolls of parchment. “Is there a reason you called me here?” he said coldly. He met the teacher’s eyes.
Holbrook looked away, moving back a step. “Why do you think I asked you here?”
He wished Kevin was with him. If he’d had his friend’s moral support, he would have replied, “Because you’re a pervert, that’s why.” But Kevin wasn’t here, and he wasn’t brave enough to talk back to the teacher.
“I don’t know,” he said.
The teacher had pulled open the top drawer of his desk. Dion craned_his neck, trying to see what Holbrook’s hands were fiddling with, caught sight of what looked like a long, shiny knife amidst the pencils and paper clips.
The door to the room opened, and Dion jumped, startled.
“Wait a minute!” Holbrook said.
Dion was not sure if the teacher was talking to him or to the group of men walking into the room, but he quickly pushed his way past the men, through the doorway, into the hall. He was sweating, his heart pounding, and the first thing he noticed was that the school seemed to be empty.
There were no faculty or students in sight.
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