Garden Lakes

by Jaime Clarke

  “You can’t say I told you, though,” Charlie said.

  “I’m going to say something right when we get back,” the intern said, seething.

  “They’re not going to take your word for it,” Charlie said. He coached her on what to say, convincing her that she’d have to claim that the reporter had touched her in an inappropriate way that made her uncomfortable. The intern questioned the need to lie, but Charlie pointed out how close the managing editor and the reporter were—they were neighbors, for Chrissakes—and she reluctantly agreed. “I’ll back you up and say I saw him touch you too,” Charlie said. “If it comes to that.”

  But it didn’t. The reporter was fired, and the intern quit shortly after that, maybe buckling under the embarrassment of being the subject of office gossip but probably because she found a better way to spend her free time. That’s what Charlie told himself in the quietest moments of the now-still afternoons at the Tab offices.

  And so the cover-up involving the employee that could’ve absolved the farmer in the Heather Lambert matter had been an easy elision. Charlie assumed the employee had found work on another farm, maybe in another state, or in another industry. If he was being honest, he had worried that the employee was lying or mistaken. But in Charlie’s mind the employee was so far into the distant past he’d become fictive, though he couldn’t shake the sickening feeling that Richter had dredged him up for a purpose Charlie’s nervous and guilt-ridden conscience was all too ready to supply.

  Chapter Eight

  Sprocket proved adept in his position as supply manager. With Warren’s help, he reorganized the supply shed by construction phase: hanging tools on one wall, taping tools on another, sanding tools on yet another, and on and on. The supply shed had an open front like the illegal fireworks stands on the Indian reservations, providing Sprocket with enough cover to preserve his albino skin, though he slathered himself in sunscreen as a precaution, the front and back of his job journal decorated with his oily fingerprints.

  Sweating under the tin roof of the supply shed during construction, Sprocket had occasion to do plenty of reading. Over the years, a library had collected on a low bookshelf in the classroom, and Sprocket would fill the Randolph book bag he’d affixed to the side of his wheelchair with titles like Encyclopedia of Ancient and Forbidden Knowledge, The Astrologer’s Handbook, and A Treasury of Supernatural Phenomena. The bag also contained a few volumes of Super Seek-and-Find from a subscription his parents renewed yearly for his birthday. The puzzles were a throwback to his pre-accident days, before he crashed his BMX on a homemade ramp in the backyard of the twin brothers who ultimately joined the military, and his parents had kept paying the renewal notices as just another household bill, even though the brightly hued covers grew into a skyscraper in the corner of Sprocket’s room after he returned from his stay in the hospital, the puzzles unworked. Sprocket had spent many an afternoon resenting the puzzle books, refusing even to flip through their pages; to do so would be to admit defeat about how his free time could be spent. But then one day he reached for the issue balanced atop the pile, and once he started circling words, he couldn’t stop.

  The rest of us went about the duties of a Garden Lakes fellow with zeal. A heap of drywall blossomed into a garden of scraps, board cut too small or broken solidly in two by the freight of miscalculation, or by pressure applied in the wrong place, or from navigating a corner too sharply. Regardless, under Mr. Malagon’s watchful (but, as it turned out, unhelpful, as his math skills were suspect) supervision, 1959 Regis Street started to look habitable, the dust covering us so thoroughly we appeared ghostly to the sophomores at lunch.

  Our sleep patterns adjusted; some of us anticipated the doorbell alarm, waking thirty to sixty seconds before the peal of chimes. A shower routine developed, fellows showing for breakfast in the same order day after day. Mr. Malagon revealed himself not to be an early riser, his eyes still half hooded as he ambled through the breakfast line, hardly distinguishable from the rest of us. Come class time, though, he was rejuvenated, slapping his palms together for effect.

  Assburn continued to ignore Smurf’s inquiry about the mobile phone in his possession. Assburn, who would plunge through the ice somewhere between Canada and Detroit, sinking to his death along with a load of counterfeit game systems, led a troop of us to his room (after we pledged solemnly not to breathe a word to anyone) and showed us the phone, which was smaller than the brick-size phones we’d seen. We passed the phone around as Assburn regaled us with the story of how he’d stolen it from his father’s telecom business. “They’re, like, four grand apiece,” Assburn said proudly.

  When the laws of relay brought news of our secret preview to Smurf, he was irate. He threatened Assburn with a shun and Assburn relented, allowing Smurf to use the phone to call his girlfriend. The shun against Reedy had escalated with the pouring of honey in Adam Kerr’s hair while he slept, the penalty for his standing up for Reedy in the dining hall. Kerr was absent during breakfast the next morning but appeared for chapel with a shaved head. Roger snickered at Kerr, and Kerr avoided Roger’s glare. Kerr told Mr. Hancock and Mr. Malagon that he’d shaved his head because of the heat, but by lunchtime we’d all heard the story and knew that Reedy had lost his only ally. By dinner, Reedy’s nerves were so fragile every sound brought a momentary state of paralysis, as if his next breath, or any movement at all, would bring swift punishment of a kind Reedy could only guess.

  Some of us talked about bailing Reedy out, but no one wanted to approach Roger about the reprieve. We’d never observed a shun in a closed environment (at Randolph, the shunee got to go home at the end of the day and had to withstand being ignored only between bells), and some were fascinated with the experiment, knowing the shun would ultimately be rescinded. Which was exactly what happened.

  Roger cornered Reedy after tutoring one night, waiting for him at his residence. Reedy had been walking in a group that included Adam Kerr and some others, but they shot through the front door when Roger materialized from the side of their house. Reedy thought about screaming but knew that even if Mr. Hancock answered his cry for help, Roger would retaliate the following morning (or in the dead of the night, as he had Kerr).

  Roger, who would in the future go AWOL in Iraq with a platoon of his men and be court-martialed for shooting one of them, laid out the conditions of Reedy’s release: Reedy was to secret a predetermined quantity of silverware from the kitchen, in increments prescribed by Roger. (Reedy had been the first to happen upon the silverware strewn outside the kitchen door and had hurried to wash it and replace the spoons, forks, and knives in their proper places for fear of being blamed by Mr. Hancock.) Reedy was to store the pilfered silverware until Roger called for it. Reedy was also made to understand that if he was caught, he was to take the heat himself, that Roger would deny knowing about it.

  “Imagine how stupid you’ll sound,” Roger said. Reedy got the picture.

  The next morning, Reedy moved around the dining hall with his old jauntiness, and we knew the shun had been called off. Hands ceremoniously called out to Reedy at lunch for another soda, and Reedy smiled, buzzing for our table, bringing us all more soda, whether we asked for it or not.

  Reedy brought his energy to the soccer field too, though no matter which team he played for—or the makeup of the two squads, for that matter—the scores of the soccer matches were inevitably ties. For the first few days, we thought nothing of the deadlock. Mr. Hancock and Mr. Malagon drew up new rosters daily, no two teams consisting of the same teammates on successive days. If we had thought about it—and we didn’t—this could’ve accounted for the scoring anomaly. Closer monitoring would’ve detected the silent communication between Mr. Hancock and Mr. Malagon before a foul was called, or before Sprocket’s goal-line calls were overturned, but we were still of the mind to accept things as they appeared.

  It was Hands who ferreted out the conspiracy, alerting the rest of us to it during free time as Lindy whirled his telescope around the
night sky, hunting for a constellation he was keen to show us.

  “Guys need to keep a watch,” Hands said. “If you’re on the bench, or if you’ve got a clean view from the field, check for Hancock and Malagon to line up across from each other. They do this right before they call a foul. And they only do it if one team is ahead by two.”

  We’d never known Hands to exhibit signs of paranoia, but the next day didn’t bear out his misgivings. Neither Mr. Hancock nor Mr. Malagon seemed to be looking to the other for calls. Nor did they appear to be acting in concert. Some wondered if Hands’s ultracompetitiveness had driven him to delusion, though the even scores piled up. Hands continued to cry conspiracy, but the rest of us lost interest in Hands’s theory until that Friday’s match. A ball that sailed wide of the palm tree—and was correctly called out by Sprocket—was ruled a score by Mr. Malagon, bringing Figs’s team within one score of Hands’s squad. Hands conferred with Figs—who had been standing on the sidelines—at dinner that night.

  “Who cares?” Figs said. “It’s meant to be exercise. Like in a prison yard, you know?” This brought laughs from the table.

  Hands snorted. “Let’s run laps around the parkway if we want exercise. A match is meant to have a winner and a loser. What’s the point of keeping it even?”

  “Maybe it’s some new teaching method,” Warren said. “So no one feels badly about losing.”

  “Don’t be dumb,” Hands said, eliciting a couple of laughs before we realized he wasn’t trying to be funny. “What would you guys say to a competition for Open House? A match in front of our parents. They couldn’t fix that.” Hands searched the table for the same fervor he felt for the idea, but met only disaffected stares.

  “Yeah, sure,” we said, and shrugged.

  “Good idea,” someone threw in.

  We watched Hands work the other tables, his idea getting the same reception; but Hands was undeterred. He knew he was popular enough that no one would protest his idea—he didn’t need outright frenzy, just compliance.

  “Mr. Handley, what’s with all the table jumping?” Mr. Malagon called out.

  Hands gave a short oration on “the fellows’ desire for a soccer match at Open House.” Mr. Malagon appeared immediately sorry he’d asked. “We’ll take your suggestion under advisement,” Mr. Hancock said without looking up from his asparagus soup, the day’s special. Disenchantment shaded Hands’s face; he knew the phrase “We’ll take your suggestion under advisement” meant something altogether different from what it would have meant had it been spoken by Mr. Malagon. The Open House soccer match would dominate Hands’s thoughts over the next week, but his primary attention was focused on an idea hatched that second Friday: a stilt race through the Grove after curfew.

  The race was Figs’s idea. Hands had inadvertently provided the inspiration, though, as we finished off a ceiling during construction. Figs and Hands each strapped on a pair of stilts that lifted them about three feet off the ground. The rest of us hung the ceiling by standing on drywall benches, adjustable metal sawhorse-like platforms that could hold two drywallers at a time. Sprocket’s cataloging and organizing of the supply shed had unearthed two pairs of stilts, and Figs and Hands volunteered to strap them on. The stilts had joints that flexed. “It’s like standing on a spring,” Figs said, traipsing around the dirt front yard of 1959 Regis Street like a circus performer.

  Hands’s learning curve was more concave. He took off after Figs but fell in front of Sprocket, who reached out to help him up. Smurf had witnessed this ignominy and cackled from an upstairs window. Figs waltzed through the house, bounding into rooms, yelling, “Just passing through!” as he swept in and out.

  Mr. Malagon reined Figs in, though he was enjoying the high jinks. Hands stumbled through the open front door, tripping over a cut two-by-four someone had laid carelessly in the hallway after using it to brace a piece of drywall.

  “You okay there?” Figs asked.

  “I’ll race you anytime in this getup,” Hands countered.

  And then it was forgotten. Hands acclimated to the extensions and was striding confidently through the house by the end of the working day, looking away when Figs stepped into a hole punched into the earth by a rock that had taken up residence elsewhere. Our enthusiasm for Figs and Hands’s stunt waned as the day progressed; we’d practically forgotten that it had happened as we congregated for free time, which Figs and Hands had ritualized by inviting the other fellows to drop in without knocking.

  “C’mon, it’s Friday night,” Smurf begged Assburn. “Let me at least call her and see what she’s doing. Hey!” His eyes widened. “Should I tell her to come out, and bring some friends?”

  Those playing stud poker at the kitchen table looked up from their cards.

  “Are you nuts?” Hands asked. You could never tell when Smurf was joking and when he wasn’t. Hands shook his head no to settle the question, excusing the rest of us from having to weigh in on what we knew was a terrible idea, but an idea that tantalized us nonetheless.

  “What, then?” Smurf asked. “It’s goddamn Friday night.”

  “So?” someone said.

  “So?” Smurf echoed. “So we should do something fun. We can’t just work, work, work. Christ.” Smurf, who would one day successfully slander a female colleague with whom he’d cheated on his wife, spit the curse out in disgust, realizing what he’d said wasn’t true: We would in fact work, work, work, and that would be all.

  “What about that stilt race?” Figs asked slyly.

  Hands glanced over Sprocket’s head as Sprocket dealt. “Anytime, tough guy,” he said.

  Figs stood. “Why not? If we were quiet about it, we could do it away from the houses,” he said. “Maybe down at the entrance. The pavement’s better there anyway.”

  “Why not back in the Grove?” Hands asked, anteing up. “A little obstacle course action.”

  “No way I can give you the keys to the supply shed,” Sprocket said without stopping the fourth round of cards. “No way.”

  “That’s true,” Hands said. “There really is no way you can give us those keys.” He paused. “We could take them”—he smiled—“but there’s no way you could give them to us.”

  “You want to get me kicked out?” Sprocket asked.

  “No one’s going to get kicked out,” Figs said. “Has anyone ever gotten kicked out? I don’t think so. And with Quinn taking off, and the others not showing, they can’t afford to kick anyone out.”

  Some of us nodded in agreement.

  “Sorry,” Sprocket said.

  “Yes!” Warren said, scooping up the pot of plastic poker chips.

  Sprocket passed the deck of cards to his left. Warren picked up the cards and shuffled them liberally. “Who’s in?”

  “This one is just me and Sprocket,” Hands said gamely. “For the keys.”

  Sprocket eyed Hands. “What?”

  “If I win, you set the keys on the table and I take them from you. If we’re busted, I tell Hancock and Malagon I stole the keys from your room. Everyone in this room will stick to the same story.”

  “I’ll get in trouble for not keeping the keys safe,” Sprocket said.

  Hands turned to Warren: “Deal.”

  Luck seemed not to be on the side of the scheme. Sprocket landed all four aces and quickly won the first hand—prompting a call to reshuffle the deck, which Warren did with exaggerated effect. Skill worked against the endeavor as well. Hands’s lack of skill as a poker player, that is. Some of us were taken aback by his poor play—we’d all assumed his talent for winning was inherent, so his losing at anything was inconceivable. Consequently, Sprocket beat Hands two games out of three. Hands lobbied for best of five. Sprocket acquiesced under protest, spurred to accept the challenge by the jeers masquerading as encouragement around the room. Hands evened the game at two apiece, but a pair of jacks delivered Sprocket the fifth and decisive game. Hands looked like he was going to propose a best of ten but instead said, “Well, you’re a
mighty fine poker player, Sprocket. But we need those keys.”

  Sprocket glanced up from his cards, puzzled.

  “Same deal,” Hands said. “We get caught, we say we stole the keys from you.”

  “The deal was if you beat me, you could have the keys,” Sprocket said, waiting for confirmation from the rest of us, glancing around the room when it failed to surface.

  “Aw, c’mon, Sprocket,” Figs said. “We’re not going to get caught. And if we do, you’re not going to be in trouble.”

  Hands saw that Sprocket was unmoved by Figs’s appeal. “No one will care about a stupid little race,” he added. “We should just ask Hancock and Malagon, and they’d let us. Maybe I should run over and ask Mr. Malagon,” Hands said, standing. “He’ll probably want to take on the winner.”

  Sprocket knew the social consequences if Mr. Malagon assented to the race—and he believed Hands would ask, even at the risk of being told no—and surrendered the keys from a hidden Velcro pocket on the inside of the right armrest of his wheelchair, dropping them with a contemptuous jangle on the Formica kitchen table.

  There were those who remained behind with Sprocket, either out of sympathy or out of cowardice; the rest of us walked quietly toward the supply shed, which shone under the phosphorescent moon. The Grove was similarly lit, the symmetrical grid of gravel knolls beckoning all comers to test their navigational skills. Figs and Hands suited up first, the vaunted matchup producing cries of “I got next!” from the gallery of faces washed gray by the moonlight.

  The ground rules were laid: Contestants were to weave through a specified row of rock. Points would be assessed—one if the contestant grazed any rock pile, two for each fall taken by a contestant. The winner would be the contestant with the fewest number of points against him.