Wicked Cruel

by Rich Wallace

  “What’s wrong with the spaghetti?” Mom asked with surprise.

  “Nothing, Mom,” Claudine moaned. “I always look forward to it on the fourth night in a row.”

  “Danny,” Mom said, “you don’t really wipe snot on the side of the couch, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, he does,” Claudine said. “Every time he watches TV. Go take a look.”

  “I do not!”

  “Enough!” Dad said. He picked up his fork and set it down much harder than the last time. “Not another word about nose picking, please.… And the word is mucus.”

  Claudine looked at her plate and rolled her eyes. “He’s so immature,” she muttered.

  “You’re immature,” Danny said.

  They ate in silence for a few minutes. Mom cleared her throat. Dad carefully picked a scrap of green matter from the tomato sauce on his plate and set it on his napkin.

  “I hope that’s not what I think it is,” Claudine said.

  “I don’t care for olives in my spaghetti sauce,” Dad said, raising his graying eyebrows at Mom. “That’s a well-established fact.”

  “Maybe it’s not an olive,” Claudine said. “Maybe Danny wiped something into the pot.”

  “Real funny,” Danny said. “Ha-ha.”

  “You know, you can give yourself a brain infection by sticking your filthy fingers up your nose,” Claudine said.

  “Cannot.”

  “Yes, you can. They told us about it in health class. There’s only a very thin layer of skin between the back of your nostril and the brain cavity. When you make it bleed, you’re exposing your brain to all kinds of bacteria.” She sat back and gave Danny a smug look.

  “At least I have a brain,” he said.

  “Oh, and I don’t?”

  “Not as far as I can tell.”

  Claudine made her voice very high and whiny as she imitated her brother. “ ‘Not as far as I can tell.’ ”

  Dad pushed his chair back and set both hands on the table. He spoke evenly but with some heat. “I’ve had just about enough of this.”

  “Save it for your students, Byron,” said Mom, who was much younger than her husband and had once actually been his student. “We don’t need another speech.”

  “Is it really too much to ask to have one peaceful meal a day in this house?” Dad said. “I should run a tape recorder. We can play it back and you children could hear just how petty and ridiculous you sound. Really. Petty and ridiculous.”

  Danny looked across at Claudine. He could tell that she was holding back a smile. He bit on his lip to stop from laughing. But he laughed anyway, and so did Claudine.

  “Nice lecture, Byron,” Mom said. “Now sit still and eat your dinner.”

  Danny grabbed the pepper mill and ground it onto his pasta. Claudine took a sip of water. Dad wound some spaghetti onto his fork and chewed carefully with his mouth tightly closed.

  “And by the way,” Mom said, “I didn’t put any olives in the sauce.”

  * * *

  Danny washed his feet twice that evening, once at the beginning of his shower and once at the end. Then he sat at his desk near his bedroom window, leaving the light off.

  The moon was up and it was shining brightly on Brickyard Pond, about fifty yards away. The pond was on the campus of Cheshire Notch State College, and it began at the edge of Danny’s backyard. The site of the pond really had been a brickyard at one time, more than a hundred years ago. It had produced the bricks for many of the college’s buildings before being flooded.

  The legend was that one day a worker dug into the clay and sliced into an underground aquifer. Water burst into the brickyard so quickly that the man barely escaped. A team of horses got bogged in the mud and drowned. It’s said that on dark and rainy nights, you can sometimes hear the horses trying to gallop to safety.

  Danny thought quickly of Janelle, the girl who sat one row in front of him and one seat over in class. Her dark, shiny hair was pulled into a tight braided ponytail, like a horse’s mane. She was always nice to him. She was nice to everybody.

  He turned on his light, picked up a comic book, and flopped onto his bed.

  He heard the sound of knuckles rapping on his bedroom door. Only one person rapped like that.

  “It’s open, Dad.”

  The door swung smoothly. Dad cleared his throat. “I have a few thoughts I’d like to share with you,” he said. He was holding an old book. It had no jacket, and the hard-cloth cover had faded to a ragged pink.

  With his pointing finger, Danny pushed his glasses back up on his nose and swung his legs off the bed, sitting on the edge. “I’m all ears.”

  Dad took a breath and let it out slowly. His hair was short and mostly gray. He sat on the edge of the bed, too, but barely, as if he might jump up at any second. He scratched at his carefully trimmed beard and sighed. “I spoke to your sister, too, so don’t assume I’m only coming down on you.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You know …” Dad spread his hand and studied the palm. “I didn’t have the privilege of siblings. My parents were older, and I came along relatively late in their life, as you did in mine. Your mother and I, well … not to put too fine a point on it, but you were in some ways a gift we created for your sister. And she was a gift that was waiting for you to arrive.”

  “Happy birthday,” Danny mumbled.

  Dad raised his palm. “I hope—I sincerely hope—that you two will come to appreciate each other. And soon. This constant bickering has gone on far too long.”

  “It’s no big deal,” Danny said.

  “Nonetheless,” Dad said. He opened the book. “This poem is called ‘To My Sister,’ and I’d like you to listen to a portion of it.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Just a few lines.”

  “Is this Wordsworth again?”

  “Indeed.”

  Danny shut his eyes and dropped back on his pillow. “Lay it on me.”

  Dad cleared his throat again. “This was written more than two centuries ago, but it’s terribly relevant today,” he said. “Especially in this household.” He began reading from the middle of the poem.

  My sister! (’tis a wish of mine)

  Now that our morning meal is done,

  Make haste, your morning task resign;

  Come forth and feel the sun.

  Danny rolled onto his face. This is agony, he thought. Make him stop!

  Then come, my Sister! Come, I pray,

  With speed put on your woodland dress;

  And bring no book: for this one day

  We’ll give to idleness.

  Dad stopped reading. Danny opened his eyes. “Is it over?” he asked.

  “That’s the end of the poem, yes.”

  “Praise the Lord.”

  “Danny!”

  “Sorry, Dad. Couldn’t they just speak English back then?”

  “The finest,” Dad said. “Did you grasp what the poet was saying?”

  Danny shrugged. “Sure.”

  “He appreciated his sister, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, Dad. I get it.”

  “Good,” Dad said, carefully closing the book. “Good. All I ask is that you reflect on those lines a bit.”

  “Will do.”

  Dad stepped away.

  “What did you read to Claudine?”

  Dad stood still for a moment, deep in thought. “ ‘There Was a Boy,’ by the same poet,” he finally said. “It’s about a young lad, of course. Same age as you.”

  Dad held the book to his lips. When he spoke again, his voice was very soft. “I read her the entire poem.… I’ll share the last stanza with you.”

  Danny propped himself on his elbows to listen. He heard the toilet flush across the hall.

  And, through that church-yard when my way has led

  On summer-evenings, I believe, that there

  A long half-hour together I have stood

  Mute—looking at the grave in which he lies! />
  “The kid died?”

  Dad nodded.

  “Great. I’ll sleep real well tonight.”

  “It has a broader meaning than death.”

  “Okay. Tell Claudine to leave her gifts of gratitude outside my door. We’ll offer our mutual appreciation in the morning.”

  “Just think it over, Danny,” Dad said. “A sister is a wonderful thing.” He hesitated in the doorway for a moment. Danny didn’t look up.

  “This is a fragile volume,” Dad said, “from 1898. You’d find the same poem in some of the later editions in my office.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s called ‘There Was a Boy.’ ”

  “Right, Dad. I got it.”

  Danny woke early and walked over to the pond. He could fish for a half hour before school. The pond was only the size of three football fields, but he’d caught a few small bass last summer.

  This was the quietest and most remote part of the campus, with dirt paths and maple trees. The college’s performing arts center was on the other side of the pond, but then there was a border of woods and no other nearby buildings.

  The morning was cold—probably below freezing—and a chill mist was rising from the water. Red and yellow leaves were floating near the banks. Nothing was biting today, not even sunnies, but being alone in what passed for wilderness was one of Danny’s favorite things to do.

  He didn’t quite fit in with other kids, and he knew it. He’d joke around with them at school, and once in a while he’d get in a game of basketball or touch football on a weekend. But he didn’t have a best friend or a group that he hung out with. Lonely? Sometimes. Maybe even often. But never out here by the pond.

  He gave up on fishing after twenty minutes and walked to the arts center to check the posters. Sometimes there were events worth seeing.

  The upcoming film schedule included Night of the Living Dead on Halloween. There was also a poster for the town’s annual Pumpkin Fest, which was a huge deal in downtown Cheshire Notch. That was only two days away.

  And then Danny saw his father gazing at him from a black-and-white notice:

  POETRY READING AND BOOK SIGNING

  Wordsworth scholar Byron Morgan, PhD, adjunct professor in the Cheshire Notch State College Department of English, will read from his new collection of poetry—Monadnock Reflections—at 7 p.m., Saturday, October 28, in the Brickyard Arts Center Auditorium. Admission is free.

  Danny figured he’d have to be there, even though he’d heard every poem his father had written about Mount Monadnock a hundred times. Over the years, a few of the poems had been published locally, in the Daily Sentinel, the Monadnock Shopper, and the Cheshire Notch State College Literary Review. The rest would be appearing in print for the first time.

  Danny could see the mountain from here.

  The town of Cheshire Notch, New Hampshire, sits in a valley and is mostly flat, so Mount Monadnock appears particularly regal as it overlooks the town. It has the classic Alpine shape, with a sharp peak, and its treeless, granite summit majestically reflects the sun’s rays.

  Danny picked up a flat stone and skimmed it over the pond. It took one big skip and two shorter ones before sinking below the surface. The rings spread out and disappeared.

  He and Claudine were the fourth generation of Morgans to live in the white clapboard house near the pond. Their father’s grandfather had built the house not long after the brickyard flooded over. The family history was sketchy prior to that.

  Danny wanted to see those ghost horses some night. He’d heard that you could feel their fear as they struggled to escape the flood, see their flared nostrils and hear their desperate whinnying. And on certain nights they would break free, leaping from the water and racing circles around the path.

  But he’d never seen them. And he’d spent lots of nights by his window, just looking out. Twice he thought he’d heard distant hoofbeats, but he was never quite sure.

  Four members of the college cross-country team jogged past as Danny headed for home, shuffling through the fallen leaves.

  “It’s late,” Mom said as he entered the kitchen. “Pour yourself some cereal and wash your hands. Claudine already left.”

  “She always leaves too early.”

  “Well, she likes to see her friends. Now get moving.”

  Danny ran up the stairs and washed off the bait smell. What friends? he thought. Claudine wasn’t any more popular than he was.

  He brushed his teeth and gathered his stuff for school, then leaned on the windowsill and gazed out at the pond. He let out his breath in a long, steady burst that fogged the window, then stepped across the hall to his father’s office.

  “There Was a Boy” was easy to find. It was also easier to read than most of the poetry Danny’s father had imposed on him over the years. He scanned the lines:

  At evening, when the earliest stars began

  To move along the edges of the hills,

  Rising or setting, would he stand alone,

  Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake

  “Danny!” called his mother. “You need to go!”

  He closed the book and carefully put it on the shelf. Then he grabbed his backpack and ran down the stairs. Mom handed him a peanut butter sandwich and told him he’d better keep running.

  Danny heard a distinct pssshhhhttt sound as he closed his locker. Luke was giggling. He was in Danny’s seventh-grade class and was seven inches taller and a whole lot stronger. It’d been Luke’s elbow that had caused that first nosebleed at school the day before. Luke said he didn’t mean it, but it was hard to see how. Danny had leaned over to pick up a pen that had dropped off his desk. When he came back up, Luke’s elbow happened to be in the aisle. When Danny cleaned his nose out with his finger a couple of hours later, it started bleeding again.

  Luke caught Danny’s eye and held up the bottle of soda, then started chugging it down. His friend Carter was doing the same.

  “Ahhh,” Luke said, wiping his mouth. “Nothing like warm Coke.”

  “Gross,” Danny said. “Why didn’t you just get a cold one?”

  “You’ll see,” Luke said. “Warm is perfect.”

  Danny followed Luke and Carter into the classroom. They had a few minutes to kill. Danny sat down and looked at Janelle. She was studying a sheet of paper, but she turned to look after a minute. She smiled at Danny. “How was your lunch?”

  “Terrible,” he said. “Glop with tater tots. You?”

  “I brought my own. But I like glop. Was it brown or gray?”

  “A little of both. And some yellow.”

  “Mmmm. Yellowish glop.”

  “There’s probably some left over,” Danny said with a grin. “I could fish it out of the Dumpster for you after school if you want.”

  “That would be great.”

  Danny felt someone leaning toward him, and suddenly a very wet buuuuurp exploded inches from his ear. It smelled like sausages and warm Coke.

  “That’s disgusting!” Danny said.

  Janelle was laughing, so Danny tried to, too. Luke and Carter were high-fiving each other.

  They burped and farted several times over the next half hour. Mr. Barnes asked Luke if he needed to see the nurse or use the restroom, but he didn’t say it with much sympathy.

  Most of the kids in the class were very amused. Danny might have been, too, if he hadn’t received a wet earful of it before class.

  On Saturday morning there was a cold, light mist, but the sun was supposed to break through in time for the Pumpkin Fest. Danny liked going downtown early to watch them set up the scaffolding. There would be nearly thirty thousand carved pumpkins on those scaffolds, stacked as high as forty feet in the air. At night they’d all be lit, creating a spectacle that was hard to put into words. It was bright and orange and spirited.

  Every school kid in town, every Scout troop, every youth group had spent the week carving jack-o’-lantern faces. Danny’s contribution had a big wide grin and two lopsided teet
h. It had taken ten minutes to cut during homeroom. He’d been told it would be on Main Street near the Colonial Theater with the other middle-schoolers’ pumpkins.

  “I suppose your mother will drag me into town this afternoon,” Dad said as Danny was getting ready to leave. “Maybe we’ll see you there.”

  Dad didn’t care for the crowds. The Pumpkin Fest attracted seventy-five thousand visitors to town for the day, from all over New Hampshire and Vermont and Massachusetts, including a few busloads from Boston.

  Danny’s favorite part of the whole thing—besides the jack-o’-lanterns—was the food. The ambulance corps, church groups, Little League teams, Special Olympics—those and dozens of other organizations sold doughnuts, pizzas, pierogies, cider, and countless other food items, earning most of their budget for the year on this single day.

  “Dress in layers,” Mom said. “You can always shed some things if it warms up.”

  Layer one: T-shirt, Danny thought. Layer two: sweatshirt.

  “Mom! He’s trying to leave without a jacket,” Claudine said as Danny opened the back door.

  “Danny,” Mom said. “They say it might be stormy later.”

  He pulled a Red Sox jacket from a hook. “Thanks, jerk,” he said to Claudine.

  “You’re so welcome.”

  “Don’t you two forget about your father’s poetry reading tonight,” Mom said.

  “Mom,” Danny complained, “that’s when they start lighting the pumpkins.”

  “They’ll be lit until midnight. You can miss a little of it.”

  Claudine scowled. “That’s when, like, twenty of my friends are meeting to hang out,” she said. “Can we just stay a few minutes?”

  “No,” Mom said. “The entire poetry reading will be less than an hour. You need to be there.”

  Claudine walked out of the room, muttering, “Why do I have to be the daughter of a famous poet?”

  Danny put on the Red Sox jacket and left the house. Right, Claudine, he thought. Dad’s famous and you have twenty friends. And Santa Claus is married to the Easter Bunny.

  Main Street was closed to traffic for the day, starting at the roundabout, so Danny walked down the center of the road past huge brick houses and the post office and St. Joseph’s Church. Dozens of giant pumpkins were set up on the center median here, some of them as tall as he was. The food vendors started a block later, with tents and booths and grills lining both sides of the wide street.