SCOUT

by Sanjiv Lingard

  I took hold of his hand.

  “I’m proud of you, Mike. That you’ve chosen me as your coming out pal.”

  And then we collapsed with laughter. Mr Dinkel looked over the counter at us, rheumy eyes peering through thick lenses. His gaze sank down to our naked feet.

  “Why no shoes?” he asked.

  “We spent all our money on chocolate torte,” I replied.

  “That’s money well spent!” he shot back.

  My hand was still in Mike’s, and I felt self-conscious holding on to him whilst being scrutinised by the bakery owner. Being eighty years old, Mr Dinkel probably thought of us as young lovers. But that wasn’t it at all – we were scientists, engaged in a serious experiment at the boundaries of human perception.

  My hand slipped from Mike’s.

  “So, tell me,” asked Mike, “as a scientist—“

  “Don’t, please,” I said. “You’ll get me all hot.”

  “Scientifically speaking – what is it you see when you follow a trail?”

  “Oh, a proper question? We’re talkin’ seriously?”

  “Yes. I’m curious.”

  “I don’t see anything. Okay, that’s not strictly true, because tracking involves all of my senses, of which sight is probably the least important. Like on the lawn with Brianna – I could see her footprints, but then so could you. Maybe I’ve got a more developed sense of smell than most people, but I can follow trails that dogs don’t get.”

  “And hearing?”

  “Oh yeah. And touch and no doubt taste – they all contribute, though I don’t think I’m gonna start licking the sidewalk anytime soon.”

  “But there’s more to it?”

  “I can feel it, Mike. That’s been the biggest development in the last few weeks. It happened quite by accident; but I found that if my bare feet touch the ground, I can trace emotions. I don’t perceive them as colour, or sound – I actually experience the original feeling. It’s muted, of course, weathered by time. But if there’s a story to tell, I can follow it.”

  “Like a songline?”

  “Uh?”

  “Native Australians navigate by following paths laid down during the ancient Dreamtime. The songs are learnt at a young age, and as they are recited they bring into being the hills and creeks and trees of the landscape. Every journey tells a story.”

  “Mike Forrester, you are exceptionally well-read for a varsity jock.”

  “It’s a filthy habit of mine.”

  “Stick with porn like the rest of your buddies. But to answer your perverted scientific question – no, it’s not music that I follow, though at times there is harmony to it.”

  “And you don’t get visual flashes of what the person saw?”

  “I’m not telepathic.”

  “That’s a good thing because my mind is full of—“

  “Science?”

  “Yeah.”

  Right then I hoped that his mind was full of not very scientific thoughts about me. Well, ruminations on human biology maybe.

  *

  Right after Armand’s Circle, we picked up running mates. Tyler and some of the soccer team were training on the road as we jogged round the curve near the Village Bank.

  For me the trail was getting stronger, as by this portion of his journey Mike had been ravenous. The smell of the salt-beef bagels in the paper bag had sent his salivary glands into overdrive. It was sweet of him, I thought, to suffer like that. He had denied himself even the slightest morsel so that he could share his lunch with me. With a trail this strong, I couldn’t help but sprint.

  We almost collided with Tyler and his friends. They were at the end of a 10K road race, a friendly competition for those on the team not exhausted by the morning’s training session.

  “Yo, yo, yo!” shouted Tyler, coming abreast of us.

  The guys were all around us, the air thick with their heavy breath.

  “What’s with the bare feet?” asked Tyler.

  “The Kenyans do it,” replied Mike.

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah, shit. When’s the last time you saw an American win gold at the marathon? Even our champ is from that part of the world.”

  “Keflezighi’s from Eritrea not Kenya,” puffed Tyler.

  “That’s East Africa anyhow. And they all start running without shoes.”

  I didn’t realise how much they respected Mike until the running group stopped and all slipped off their shoes. Despite the November cold, they were going to try it Mike’s way.

  The screams of pain died down after the first few hundred yards. I set the pace, and though I was smaller than the guys none of them looked like they were capable of passing me.

  We wound our way back through the town. Mike had not taken the most obvious route from the bagel bakery to my house, but I had no problem following the scent of his hunger. Tyler and the gang loped alongside us, with enough faith in Mike to not question our route.

  Now that there were ten of us running without shoes, the people we passed looked at us with admiration, as if they knew all about the Kenyan running method.

  The slap-slap of our feet carried us all the way back to Brighton Avenue.

  I turned to face Mike, just as his Prius came into view.

  “How did I do?” I asked Mike.

  He had a great beaming smile on his face.

  “Inch for inch, turn for turn, you were perfect!”

  I whooped, and did something I had not done since I was thirteen. I ran into the front yard, turned a cartwheel on my hands and flipped back onto my feet.

  I stood, arms akimbo. At the very least I expected applause. Instead the boys stood frozen on the lawn, jaws agape.

  “Why? You ain’t ever seen gymnastics before?” I asked. Then I had a horrifying thought. “Please don’t tell me – my shorts are split?”

  “No, no, it ain’t that at all,” said Mike, stepping forward to take me by the shoulders. “I don’t want you to be upset, okay?”

  “Upset?”

  “You don’t even have to look at it. We’ll get rid of it.”

  “Get rid of what?” I asked, tearing myself from his grip and turning to find a single word roughly spray-painted on my front door:

  ‘WITCH’

  The paint was still wet, black tendrils dripping from the letters like it was bleeding.

  “I know who did this!” I shouted.

  “Yeah, yeah, we all do,” said Mike.

  It turned out that since I saved Brianna from The Pits, she had been spreading a rumour that I had lured her out there using hypnotism or voodoo or something. Apparently I followed her, pushed her into a hole and used a hex to make everyone forget that I had left the party. I then staged a ‘miraculous’ discovery to win Mike’s heart.

  As clear as if she had trod footprints of black paint, I could see Brianna’s jaunty steps as she ran away from her vandalism and hopped in a car.

  She was pleased with herself.

  “It was her, I can see it,” I said, pulling away and trotting to the road. I was going to run that trail down and shove the girl’s guilt into her face.

  Mike blocked my way.

  “I’ll speak to her,” he said.

  He looked off to his friend Tyler.

  “Hey, Drifter, your bro’ still working home improvements?”

  “I’m on it, man. I’m on it,” replied Tyler, flicking on his cell phone.

  “We’ll paint it over,” Mike explained to me. “Give the door a new coat while we’re at it.”

  “You can’t wish away what she’s done!” I said. Actually, I think I probably shrieked at him. “I’m gonna get the cops on it!”

  “You can’t do that, Scout.”

  “Why the hell not? She’s a vicious little bitch.”

  “Y
es, she is. And I’ve spent most of the last year picking up after her. But calling the cops will escalate this to war footing, and I don’t think you want to go down that route. You have no idea how poisonous she can be.”

  “So? I turn the other cheek?”

  “Nope. I’ll speak to her. Tell her that she’s not going to get anywhere with me by attacking you. Tell her that you’re my friend and nothing’s gonna change that.”

  I probably stopped shrieking at that point, because something about Mike’s calm voice made the humiliation go away.

  “She’s out of our lives, Scout. No more Brianna.”

  *

  Dean arrived shortly afterwards. He’d been finishing the siding on a nearby house, and his flatbed was stacked with cans of paint.

  “I can get most of that off with thinners,” said Tyler’s older brother, and set to work scrubbing at the door. It being Friday, Dean had a cooler full of beer in the back of his truck. Tyler threw a can over to me –

  “Catch!” he said.

  He was unaware of my legendary mis-coordination. The can of Bud sailed right past, but Mike shot out a hand and plucked it from mid-air. That’s why he was the jock and I was the geek.

  Mike cracked it open and handed it to me.

  “Sip?” he asked.

  I belted it down in one gulp. The booze hit me in the happiness centre of my brain (probably in the orbitofrontal cortex, though the jury’s still out on that one). Suddenly I couldn’t care less about Brianna and her vendetta.

  Someone found garden chairs and brought them out front to watch Dean at work.

  “You livin’ here alone?” asked Tyler, scrunching an empty can and throwing it in the back of his brother’s truck.

  “For the moment,” I replied.

  “No shit?” he said. That was Tyler’s response to unfamiliar concepts. He used it all the time.

  “Then,” he continued, cracking open a second can of beer, ”you’ve got yourself a house party!”

  One of the soccer boys had found Mom’s collection of ’80s music, and set a Prince CD to play at top volume through the open windows.

  It was about then that Dean stopped halfway up the path, a brush in one hand and a dumbfounded expression on his face. He turned slowly around and about, taking in the mob that had colonised my front yard – some were jousting with garden chairs, others were kicking a ball around (where did that come from?), and all were drinking his beer.

  Dean shook his puzzled head.

  “Can someone please tell me,” he asked, “what happened to your freakin’ shoes?”

  Chapter 21

  Later, when the party had wound down and the boys had gone, I soaked in a hot bath. I ran soap into the water and luxuriated in the silky feel of it. The grime and the cold washed away. I slipped beneath the surface, clearing a breathing hole in the bubbles, and lay under the water, just my nose poking out like a seal hovering under the Arctic ice.

  Brianna’s taunt was forgotten. Washed away. In its place was euphoria – a feeling of triumph so complete it had made me cartwheel across the front yard.

  Resting under the water, I thought of how Mike’s eyes had locked with mine when I traced our route home. I wanted to fall into his arms, to feel myself suspended and without weight. I wanted to feel his hands on my body, just as my hands now rested on my skin. In that moment, I felt electrified, as if he had touched me.

  And then the phone rang.

  I exploded out of the water, not so much like an elegant seal but more like a white whale, covered in suds. Water sloshed onto the floor as I reached for my jeans and grabbed the handset.

  “Hi,” I said, leaning over the edge of the bath so that I wouldn’t drip on the phone.

  Was it waterproof?

  “Hi,” said Mike. “Did I get you at a bad time?”

  “No, no,” I said, reaching for a towel to dry the phone whilst desperately trying not to splash and give away the fact that I was naked and wet. “I’ve just cleared out the last of the beer cans.”

  “Sorry about that. The guys can be real animals.”

  “I’ve seen worse.”

  “At the zoo?”

  “They’re your buddies not mine. I’ll tell ‘em you said that.”

  “Listen – um, Scout…” he hesitated. His voice became deeper, more serious. “I did what I said I would.”

  “You spoke to her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “She denied it.”

  “Oh, Jesus—“

  “No, no, listen. I told her that I knew it was her, that she’d crossed a line by doing this to you, who’d saved her when she was stuck down the hole. I told her she could screw herself, right in front of that stuck-up bitch she has for a mom.”

  “We should’ve called the cops. I knew she’d get away with it. She’s harassing me, Mike. For all I know she set the cops on Moy and Riley.”

  “Why d’you say that?”

  “Someone made an anonymous call to the cops, tipping them off that drugs were being sold from my house. The boys like to smoke weed when they’re making out on the sofa – ain’t a crime in that. It could have been her who made the call.”

  “I can see her doing it,” groaned Mike. “That’s just her style.”

  “No excuses?”

  “None at all. She was drunk, but then she’s drunk a lot of the time. And when she’s drunk she’s evil. Yeah, she could’a made the call. I’m sorry, Scout. I’m really sorry. I dragged you into all this, and none of it would have happened if I had left you alone.”

  “You don’t have to apologise, Mike. I wanted to go to the party. It meant a lot to me.”

  “It meant a lot to me too. I wanted you there. And you looked great.”

  “I did?”

  “Oh yeah. You looked better than any girl there.”

  I slid back into the bath, letting the warm water caress my body.

  “Tell me more, science-boy. I like what you’re saying.”

  “Are you in the bath?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, not daring to move a muscle. Mike must have picked up on the hollow acoustic of the bathtub. I lay rigid in the water, a mound of bubbles sitting on my nose. Just above my left toe, cold water dripped from the faucet.

  Splash.

  “You’re in the bath, aren’t you?”

  “What if I am?”

  “Without any clothes?”

  “That’s the usual way to take a bath.”

  “I shouldn’t interrupt,” he stuttered. “I mean, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “I answered the phone, Mike. And now we’re talking. Does it disturb you that I might be in the bath?”

  “No. No it doesn’t. I’m glad that you keep up a hygienic regime.”

  I could feel Mike squirm on the other end of the line. It’s not often a girl like me managed to have a sports jock in her control.

  I kept the tension going as long as I could.

  “Hey, Woody, I hate to disappoint you but I’ve just finished bagging up the beer cans, and I’m in the back porch, dressed in an orange velour tracksuit with the word ‘Goldigger’ across my ass.”

  “Oh,” he sighed with relief.

  Was there disappointment in that sigh? I wondered.

  “However,” I told him, “I will be taking a bath later, so you can call then.”

  “No! I wouldn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Of course.”

  “I just wanted to tell you that you did great. You are great.”

  “You can tell me that anytime, Mike.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  The fact is I could have lain in that bath, talking to Mike, until the water went cold and my skin was as wrinkled as a dried plum.

&nbs
p; *

  Curled up under the duvet, a mountain of pillows propping me up, I reached for my favourite bedtime reading:

  My collection of AAA Road Maps.

  I’ve always had a thing for cartography, and American road maps were the best. I had an extensive library of AAA maps, both countrywide and by state. Many of them I bought at yard sales, as people ditched their paper maps for GPS. Has no one ever thought what would happen if the satellites fell out of the sky?

  I was reading California.

  It was an old map, dated 2007, but I had picked it up for twenty-five cents. Near mint. I was working my way down past Big Sur, following the Cabrillo Highway. That ribbon clung to the coast, just about falling into it. I pondered what it would be like to drive down its seductive curves, letting the Californian sun shine on my face, stopping off for a swim at Sand Dollar Beach.

  Every journey tells a story.

  Marcus had been taken on foot from his home. Past the museum, and then to a municipal parking lot. It was a journey of about half a mile. Only then was he put in a vehicle.

  Why was that?

  It chilled me just to think about it.

  To cheer myself up, I reached for our local town map. It was large scale, five inches to a mile, and was a collectible in itself. It didn’t show the new development beyond Vermillion Creek, and on its pages the Doughy Doughy Mill took pride of place, both as a location and a sponsor.

  Mike had told me that he had driven straight to the bagel bakery, but that wasn’t quite true. He had taken a meandering course from my house, 10987 Brighton Avenue. As my finger traced the journey, I imagined that he thought he was being clever, laying down such a complex trail. He had set off in the wrong direction and then curved back on himself. Once he’d bought the bagels, despite his hunger, he had not headed straight to the house.

  Every journey tells a story.

  It struck me that maybe Mike was telling me something, because there was a peculiar symmetry to his path. I retraced the first half of the journey to its conclusion at Dinkel’s, just to make sure I wasn’t wrong.

  Mike had drawn a shape on the map.

  My heart was racing in my chest, faster than it had when I was running these very roads. I took a pink Crayola and began to shade in the path he had taken. The town is set out in a grid, every junction at right-angles, amongst the only exceptions being the Peterboy and Armand Circles. We had circumnavigated both. Their curves gave an organic roundness to a shape that was otherwise as clunky and disjointed as a computer graphic from the 1970s: