Limetown

by Cote Smith

“The dead don’t talk,” Austin said. “Maybe you should try it.” The class laughed again. Emile heard the waves of agreement—give it a rest, freak—from his classmates. Take a deep breath, Jacob would say. They’re just words, nothing worth getting riled up over. Emile clenched his fist, but didn’t say anything. “There you go,” Austin said. “Now you’re getting it.”

  The bell rang. The students gathered their things, but Emile lagged behind. He would wait until Austin was long gone before he made his way to his locker.

  “Hey, Jonestown,” Ginny said, “can I talk to you for a second?” When it was just the two of them, she shut the door.

  “Everything’s fine,” Emile said. “I’m just weird. That’s all.”

  Ginny sat down in one of the student desks. She looked very much out of place. “You are weird, but that’s not what this is about.” She gestured for Emile to have a seat. “Or, I guess it is . . .”

  “Emile.”

  “Emile. You did an excellent job with today’s assignment. At first I wasn’t sure where you were going with it, but it’s pretty cool where your questions led you.” She folded her arms. “Hey, I wanted to ask you something. Why did you go quiet when that boy made fun of you? That Allen.”

  “Austin.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Emile shrugged. “They’re all thinking it.”

  Ginny sighed, as if she were disappointed.

  “Do you know what I did before I came here? After my stint at the Times? You know the Journal-World, the local paper? I worked for it. I did more than work for it, actually. I was a senior editor. Can you believe that? I was the only woman there, and the youngest editor by far. You understand what I’m trying to tell you?” Emile did not. Her thoughts were clear but their meaning was hard to read. “Every day some asshole like Austin told me I didn’t belong there. Do you think I stayed quiet?”

  “I can’t get in any more fights,” Emile said. “They’ll expel me.”

  “Yeah,” Ginny said, almost with a laugh. “They expelled me too.” She slumped back in the desk, and for a moment her thoughts drifted away from the classroom. She focused on an office. It was her former boss’s maybe, some guy with a bad tie and even worse haircut. He was yelling at her, while Ginny stood there, staring at her reflection in the framed degree that hung above her boss’s head. She was not crying or worried, as Emile thought he would have been. She was grinning, as if to say, so what?

  “You got fired?”

  “And I’ll tell you what,” Ginny said. “It was worth it.”

  She didn’t say anything more, and the two of them sat until another bell rang. It was Ginny’s free period, but Emile was late for Algebra.

  “You weren’t scared,” Emile said, “were you.”

  “Of losing my job?”

  “No,” Emile said. “At Jonestown. I can tell. When you talk about it, your mind is calm.”

  Ginny’s face changed. She looked at Emile the way they always looked, when they suspected he was more than a little strange.

  “I wasn’t afraid,” she said. “But I should have been.”

  * * *

  Emile ditched his last two classes. He walked home, which, at nearly ten miles away, really wasn’t a walkable distance. But it gave him time to think. The more Ginny talked, the more he felt that the two of them had a lot in common. “Do you ever feel like you belong somewhere else?” he asked her, just before he left. “Of course,” she said. “I’m a reporter. I’m always looking for the next big thing.”

  He was on the outskirts of the city, still a mile away, when he heard the engine. A black truck roared by. It swerved to a stop half a football field ahead, reversed until it was even with Emile. It was an enormous vehicle, and older than Emile, who backed away from the road, into a small ditch. He knew who the truck belonged to.

  “Hey,” Austin said. “Where you going? The asylum’s thataway.”

  Emile stayed where he was. He always imagined there’d be a crowd present when he finally fought Austin, cronies who’d descend on Emile if the fight began to go his way. But no crowd meant no witnesses, which meant maybe he wouldn’t be expelled.

  “Well,” Austin said, “what’s it gonna be? We’re wasting gas here.” He reached across the cab and threw open the passenger door. It took a moment for Emile to understand.

  “Are you serious?” He searched Austin’s mind, saw a small lake, an unfamiliar shore. A private place where two guys could go and beat the shit out of each other and not be bothered by a principal or the police.

  “C’mon,” Austin said. “I ain’t got all day.”

  Emile climbed into the truck. As he shut the door and put on his seat belt, he thought about what Ginny said about Jonestown. How she should’ve known better than to not be afraid.

  * * *

  Austin blasted rock on his radio the first few minutes, and Emile looked out the window as they flew past the road that led to his aunt and uncle’s house. A few miles later they climbed a back road and when they reached the top the lake appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Austin drove down to the shore, where an old rowboat waited, tied to a makeshift dock. He got out without saying a word and grabbed two fishing poles out of the back, along with a small tackle box. Emile understood that he should get out, and when he did, Austin handed him one of the poles. They climbed awkwardly into the boat. Neither spoke as Austin rowed them away from the shoreline. When the truck was a dot behind them, Austin stopped rowing and cast his line. He asked Emile if he’d ever fished before. Emile hadn’t. His guardians never took him anywhere.

  “That’s too bad,” Austin said. “You should probably cry about it.” He laughed to himself and Emile thought about punching him right then, ending whatever this was. But when he looked inside Austin’s mind, he felt no waves of anger.

  “So that new teacher is a real bitch, huh?” Austin said.

  Something tugged on his line. Once, now twice. He reeled in slowly, but when the hook came out of the water, there was nothing attached, not even the bait.

  “Why am I here?” Emile said.

  Austin dug a worm out of his tackle. “Isn’t it obvious?” he said. “I needed a fishing buddy. Not safe to be out here alone.”

  “But you’re an asshole.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you already have friends. I’ve fought every one of them.”

  “I know,” Austin said. “That was hilarious.” He swung his pole back and recast. Emile watched the line fly in what seemed an infinite loop before it settled gently on the water. “Besides, those guys aren’t my friends. Any friend of mine would know how to throw a punch.”

  He kept his eyes on the water, reeling in aimlessly.

  “I can’t stay out here forever,” Emile said.

  “Why not? You got a study date with the history teacher?”

  “I have to meet my brother.”

  “Your brother,” Austin said. He set his pole down. “He’s like your only friend, huh?” Emile didn’t say anything. “What are you going to do when he graduates? Hang out with the teacher?”

  Emile set his pole next to Austin’s. He’d done his best to not think about the end of summer, when Jacob left to run track out of state on a partial scholarship in Utah, which, even though it wasn’t on the coast or anything, felt impossibly far away.

  Austin laughed. “Nah, man. You can’t be friends with the teacher. The teacher?” He laughed some more. “You need someone your own age.”

  “Who? Like you?”

  “Why not? I can be weird.” Austin smiled now, and stared at Emile, almost daring him to smile back. “You wanna be weird together?”

  He stuck out his hand. He wasn’t thinking about fishing. He was sitting on a bale of hay, on top of a hill, somewhere on his family’s farm, Emile assumed. The sun was setting over the land he worked, coloring a field of corn purple and blue.

  “C’mon,” Austin said, “who else is gonna stop you from doing something stupid like runnin
g off to Jonestown?”

  * * *

  It was dark by the time Austin dropped Emile off at home. The guardians had already eaten. A plate of leftovers waited tin-foiled in the fridge. Jacob was in their room, still in his tracksuit, lying on his bed with his trigonometry book covering his face. He asked Emile where he’d been.

  “Austin Beckett? Isn’t that guy kind of a jerk?”

  “Yeah,” Emile said. “I don’t get it.”

  Jacob sat up. The book fell off his face. “Well, you know who are mad at you. They got a call during dinner, which made them mad enough. It was someone from the school. I didn’t hear the whole thing, but it sounded like you’ve been skipping. You know anything about that?”

  “Maybe,” Emile said. He sat down on his bed, opposite Jacob.

  “Hey,” Jacob said, “forget those kids. Things will get better. I promise.” He reached over and patted Emile’s knee, as if that settled everything. And Emile could tell his brother truly believed what he said. In his vision of the future, he excelled at college, on and off the track, in ways that would ensure a long and happy life after he graduated. He met a girl his last fall semester, they got married in the spring. He got a job and they lived in a bigger, nicer house than the guardians would ever be able to afford. This plan floated on the surface of his thoughts.

  “For you, you mean. Things will get better for you. I’ll be stuck here.”

  “You’ll come with me,” Jacob said.

  “Yeah. In two years.”

  Jacob said he would visit, but they both knew he wouldn’t have the time. He would have meets over spring break, summer vacation too, if he ran well. Maybe he could return for Christmas, but how would he pay for the flight home? Neither saw the guardians helping. And even if Emile survived the next two years, what would he do while Jacob finished college? He didn’t play any sports. He was good, but not great at school. He wouldn’t have any scholarships waiting.

  “Well, I don’t know what else I can do,” Jacob said. He was getting angry, upset in the way Emile imagined all older siblings got upset. Mad at the world for assigning them a little brother or sister to watch over, to hold them back when all they wanted to do was march forward. But was it any better to be the younger sibling? To be compared to, reliant upon, and ultimately abandoned by an older, better version of yourself?

  * * *

  When Emile arrived to American History the following afternoon, the desks were arranged in a circle. “We’re going to try something different today,” Ginny said. “Sit anywhere you’d like.” Austin saved Emile a seat. A few students stared at this new arrangement—Why is the freak sitting next to him?—then settled into their own seats. The bell rang.

  “I reviewed all of your questions last night,” Ginny said. “It took me an entire bottle of wine, but I did it. To no one’s surprise, they weren’t great. You asked simple questions. All yes or no.” A few snickers. “Obviously you don’t get it. You’re still thinking small.”

  Austin, pretending to take notes, wrote a message for Emile, and slid it to the edge of his desk. What crawled up your new friend?

  Ginny continued. “You’re sitting in a circle as a reminder that everything you do or say can be seen by another person, affects another person. You say you want to know about places like Roanoke and Jonestown, but you ask questions as if those places aren’t real, as if the people who died or disappeared didn’t really exist. ‘What kind of tree was “Croatoan” carved on? Who mixed the Kool-Aid?’ You need to realize that we’re all interconnected. Write this down. ‘Any man’s death diminishes me.’ ”

  The class looked around before reluctantly doing as they were told. Austin kicked Emile under his desk, passed Emile another note: Let’s get out of here Lost 80. Do you know it? When Emile ignored him, Austin raised his hand and asked if he could be excused to the bathroom.

  “Sure,” Ginny said. “But were you ever really here?” Austin left. “Now where was I? Ah yes. I was just about to tell you what happened to Mr. Church.”

  * * *

  Ginny began by confessing that she should not be telling them this. But she had taught them the importance of asking questions, of sharing the answers, no matter what. That is our responsibility to one another. After all, a question is a connection. A promise, really. It’s a way of saying that if something happens to you, I’ll ask why. I’ll ask how. If, like Mr. Church, you go missing, I’ll seek you out, find out what happened.

  To prove her point, she’d interviewed a few colleagues in the teachers’ lounge. They told her Dale Church was an amazing teacher, once upon a time. He loved his job. He had a way with his students, more than one interviewee said. He saw the future in them. The students tilted their heads, trying to reconcile the man Ginny described with the one they knew, the teacher who assigned in-class word searches and coloring sheets, who on more than one occasion nearly nodded off during his own lecture. That was their Mr. Church. So what happened?

  What happened, Ginny explained, was time. Time erodes hope. It washes away our very will, if we let it. Rarely is it a single event, a giant wave that crushes us. More common are the smaller waves that take us away, slowly, inch by inch, until, like this sentimental speech, we get carried away. But wasn’t he married? Didn’t he have kids? A few students flinched, their minds settling on memories of their own fathers leaving. Emile thought of his mother. He was married, Ginny said. But time had its way with family too, severing the connections he once forged with his wife and children, until there was nothing tying your poor Mr. Church to this town.

  Emile continued to think about what Ginny had revealed as he made his way to Lost 80 after school. Austin’s truck was parked away from the picnic benches, under a large oak tree. Emile found the trailhead and wandered into the woods, down toward the pond. He came upon Austin sleeping near the water, using his book bag as a pillow. Austin had his shirt off, his belt buckle undone. His chest and stomach were ghost-white from the winter. It was a strange thing for Emile to realize, but he was happy to see him.

  “What’d she say?” Austin asked. His eyes were still closed. Emile lay down next to him.

  “She didn’t care,” Emile said. “I probably could’ve ditched too.”

  “No. About Mr. Church. What happened to him?”

  Nothing. Something. No one knows. A teacher close to his wife said that he left for school last Friday and never came home. His kids are grown, live out of town, but not far away. They haven’t heard from him either.

  “So what was the point of the story?” Austin said. “Life sucks?”

  “She never said. She passed out a poem. We talked about it until the bell rang.”

  A gust of wind rippled the water. A large willow tree hung above them, waving. Austin sat up. “Hey, I got you something.” He reached behind him and pulled a stick from his book bag.

  “It’s a stick.”

  “You don’t like it? I thought you could use it to roast marshmallows with all the Jonestown survivors, when you find them.”

  “Great.”

  Austin smiled. “Hey. I have another idea.” He dug in his bag again and pulled out a small blade. “Borrowed this from my dad. It’s his whittling knife. I thought we could carve something into a tree.”

  “What, like at Roanoke?”

  “Yeah, weirdo. Like at Roanoke. Here.” He handed Emile the knife, which looked pristine, like it had never been used before. “Don’t worry. My dad’s out of town. A farm show in Hays. I’ll clean it up before he gets back.”

  Emile glanced inside Austin’s mind, but he didn’t see his father. Only a woman, Austin’s mother, he supposed. She was sweeping the front porch. No, she was sitting in the kitchen, reading something. A Bible. The guardians had the same edition in their living room.

  Austin stood up and started surveying nearby trees, running his hands over brittle bark. He found a good candidate in a nearby maple. “Over here. You go first.”

  “What should it say?”

  “
I don’t know. Something cool.”

  Emile stood in front of the tree, considering what to carve. A thousand ideas swirled inside his head before he decided. He stabbed the maple deep, the dark bark oozing with every letter.

  * * *

  It took much longer than expected. Track practice was over by now and Jacob would be wondering where the hell Emile was. Emile pushed those thoughts aside as he turned and revealed his work to Austin.

  “No man is an island,” Austin read. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It’s from the poem we read in class. She kept trying to make this point, about all of us being interconnected or something.”

  Austin tilted his head at the carving. “Huh. That’s not bad, I guess. But I get to do the next one.”

  “Actually, I need to go. My brother’s waiting.”

  “Already? Fine. Whatever. I’m gonna stay. Maybe camp out. Come tomorrow I’ll have a whole book carved in these trees.”

  “You’re going to stay out here?” Emile said. “All night?”

  Austin looked at the knife, though he didn’t think of his father. He thought of his mother. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s cool. I can do whatever I want.”

  * * *

  Emile agreed to meet Austin at Lost 80 the following day after school, so Austin could show him what he’d etched into the tree. He ditched after Ginny’s class, but when he arrived at the park, Austin was nowhere to be seen. He looked everywhere, even searching the trees for a hand-carved apology. He waited beneath the willow tree as the sun ran through its colors, and when the moon showed up instead of Austin, Emile started home.

  Jacob was washing the dishes. It was a Tuesday night, which meant the guardians were at church.

  “You’re lucky they’re gone,” Jacob said. “The school called again.”

  Emile took the towel off his brother’s shoulder to help dry. “What’d you say?”