by Newman,James
He looked back toward us, winked at me and mussed up my hair. “I guess this is it.”
Mom started crying. She pulled Dan into her arms, hugged him so tight I heard him gasp for breath.
“You take care of yourself, baby,” she sobbed. “I’ll never forgive you if you run off and get yourself hurt.”
“Oh, Mom,” Dan said. He peered over Mom’s shoulder at me, rolled his eyes. “You guys don’t have anything to worry about. I’ll be fine.”
“You better be.”
He started to move my way several times, but Mom kept pulling Dan back to her. Squeezing him. Sobbing softly.
“You’re not gonna make a scene, are you, Mom?”
Mom let him go. Shook her head. Found a Kleenex in her pocketbook, dabbed at her runny mascara.
“No,” she said. “N-no. But I could give a damn what anyone thinks. My son’s going away to college. Folks can turn their heads, they don’t like it.”
She blew into her tissue long and loud, crumpled it up and shoved it back in her purse. All the while she glared at a Japanese family who were seeing off their own loved ones several feet away, as if she suspected those folks, specifically, of begrudging her time with her son.
Dan turned to me.
“Sport,” he said.
“Dan,” I said.
“You take care of Mom, okay?”
“I will,” I said.
“You’re the man of the house now. You know that, right?”
I nodded, wiped my eyes with the back of one hand when a tear tickled its way down my cheek. My bottom lip quivered as if it might leave my face and take flight outside with the planes at any moment.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” Dan said. “You’ll see. Thanksgiving break’s only a couple months away. Then there’s Christmas and New Year’s!”
I nodded again, could feel my face scrunching up against my will. Any second I knew I would start bawling like a baby. Perhaps Dan should quit stalling, I thought, just get on the damn plane and skip the sorrowful good-byes. Otherwise it wouldn’t be Mom making a scene.
“I love you two,” Dan said. “Very much.”
A squeal of feedback over the P.A. system interrupted us then, and the stewardess said, “Last call, please. All passengers of Flight 237 to Tallahassee, Florida should board at this time. Repeat. Last call. All passengers of Flight 237, please board at this time.”
“I’d better go,” Dan said.
And suddenly I was all over him. I leapt upon my big brother like a wild animal, held him so tightly I thought for a second I heard his bones creaking and popping in my grip. He let out a moan, dropped his bags, and I buried my face in his neck when he lifted me off the ground. Dan smelled of Brut aftershave, and at that moment I considered it the greatest smell in the world.
“I love you, Dan,” I cried. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”
“I love you too, little bro,” he said. “But you know I have to.”
He tickled me in the ribs, and I giggled. It felt good. Damn good. I giggled again, and Dan laughed with me.
“Remember, Tiger…take care of Mom for me.”
“I will,” I said.
“Not an easy job.”
“I know.”
His voice dropped to a whisper. “And do the right thing, Kyle. Please.”
My breath caught in my throat. I said nothing.
“You know what I’m talking about?”
Still, I said nothing. I looked off toward that Japanese family, suddenly very interested in their tearful embraces and heartfelt sayonaras. I smirked, wondered how their loss could ever compare to mine.
Dan set me down, leaned into me. “Go see Deputy Linder. Today.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Don’t put it off. You know it’s the right thing to do.”
I could not meet his eyes.
“Tell Deputy Linder what you saw. Swear to God, if I hadn’t overslept I would have gone with you…but that stupid alarm…”
I’m sure my face turned sunburn-red. But if Dan noticed he didn’t bring it up.
“Make them pay for what they did, Kyle. Don’t let Henry Baker get away with this a second time.”
I frowned, wondering what he’d meant by that…
“I’ll see ya, little bro.” Dan stepped back, adjusted his Seminoles cap. He picked up his bags again. Winked at me one last time. “Make me proud, okay?”
And at last he was on his way. He waved at us.
“B-bye, Dan,” I said, biting at my lower lip nearly hard enough to draw blood.
While I did cry, when all was said and done, I was able to hold off until Mom and I got back in Dan’s truck. Then we both started bawling like bratty toddlers pitching tantrums when they don’t get their way.
We wept all the way home. Even when Mom took me to Mr. Smiley’s Ice Cream Hut for a triple-scoop chocolate sugar-cone—like she did when I was younger, after visits to the dentist or other arduous tasks through which I behaved like a perfect gentleman—it didn’t help at all. In fact, I only took several half-hearted licks off the thing before I threw it out into the rain.
Of course, Mom treated herself to a reward of her own. She stopped at the ABC store on Fifth Avenue, and I stayed in the truck while she went in to purchase a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. She smiled so contentedly when she came back out, that wrinkled brown bag protected in the crook of her arm like a beloved prize, and for some reason that made me feel ten times worse.
Meanwhile, the chill autumn rain kept falling. On and on and on.
****
First thing I did when we got home was sprawl out on Dan’s bed, listening to his Led Zeppelin 4 album over and over while I stared at a map of the United States in one of my big brother’s old textbooks, trying to figure out exactly how far Tallahassee, Florida was from Midnight, North Carolina.
Three hundred forty-eight miles, as the crow flies.
It didn’t seem that far, on paper. Only a little over three inches.
Outside, the rain continued. Usually I associated the sound of a nocturnal storm with such tranquility, the voice of the night itself whispering me to sleep. Its pitter-patter upon the roof might have been the silken footsteps of angels mere feet above my head. Yet it had become, in the space of the last day or so, a very ominous sound.
Before long, sleep overtook me like a villain that had pursued me relentlessly since the night of the Apple Gala. I fell beneath it. Hard.
I slept all day, though it felt like only a few minutes. I didn’t stir until nearly eight hours later, when Dan’s clock radio suddenly blared the Eagles’ “Hotel California” loud enough to wake Old Man Gash over at the junkyard on the other side of Midnight. My heart raced as I came to. My brain felt foggy. I tried to remember where I was, the time of day, but to no avail. After separating myself from the sticky puddle of drool that had leaked from my mouth onto the sleeve of Dan’s favorite record, I rolled over to squint at the time. 7:45. I would have been unsure whether the numbers displayed there reflected a.m. or p.m. had it not been for the gathering darkness outside Dan’s bedroom window…and I remembered how I was responsible for the alarm going off twelve hours later than Dan had set it to wake him.
Thunder boomed outside, vibrating the entire house.
I rolled over, slammed one hand down atop the radio. The Eagles shut up. The rock ’n’ roll stations had all been running that song in the ground for well over a year, and I failed to comprehend why everyone loved it so. All that crap about dark feasts and stabbing at beasts with steely knives and never checking out. I found the tune to be quite depressing, creepy.
It was one of Mom’s favorite songs ever. Go figure.
Everything felt oddly dream-like as I rubbed my eyes and gazed around Dan’s room. Even with my big brother’s belongings filling up the room—his books, his basketball trophies, his posters, and the various model cars he had once enjoyed working on for so many long hours—Dan’s domain appeared so empty. Hollow. Li
ke this wasn’t really his room at all, but a cheap Hollywood soundstage set up to resemble my absent brother’s sleeping quarters. Everything appeared mutated, too, not quite right, all stippled with the blotchy shadows of the foliage outside Dan’s window, painted with the wormy gray streaks of the autumn storm batting at the glass like a noisy burglar.
Dan’s Led Zeppelin album had long since stopped playing, and only the muffled shish-kthump-shish-kthump of the player’s needle scratching against the LP’s label kept me company. It was a lonely, ominous sound, rhythmic but strangely menacing above the constant white-noise hiss of the rain.
I rose from the bed, turned off Dan’s stereo. For the millionth time since I’d watched him board his plane that morning, I reminded myself that my big brother wasn’t dead. He was coming back, and soon. Thanksgiving would be here in just a few short months, and Dan would be home for four whole days that weekend!
That didn’t make me feel any better, though. At all.
I sighed.
From her place upon the wall, Farrah Fawcett seemed to mock me.
I showed her my middle finger before leaving the room, slamming the door behind me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Perhaps it was everything that had transpired over the last twenty-four hours, the constant worrying over what I planned to do about the crimes I had witnessed in my Old Shack on top of fretting endlessly that I might never see my brother again…so much going through my head, so many conflicting emotions and anxieties the likes of which most twelve-year-olds are never forced to suffer…
Strangely enough, I hadn’t thought about Burner once. Not since the last time I had seen him, out at my Secret Place.
Before I left Dan’s room that evening and retired to my own bed, I’d taken a minute to check on Mom. She was passed out on the living-room sofa in only a pair of baggy sweatpants and a lacy bra the color of cantaloupes gone bad. That bottle of Johnnie Walker Black she had purchased earlier lay empty on the floor beside her. I shook my head, covered her with a ratty old afghan we kept draped across the back of the couch. I kicked her bottle across the room before turning off the television, ignoring the three talking heads waxing melodramatic despondency over “this horrendous murder in Midnight” (“more on that later, Jim, for now here’s Ted Roker with your WHLP weather report…for goodness sake, Ted, how long can it possibly keep raining?”).
At last I collapsed upon my own bed, drained.
I had just closed my eyes when I suddenly sat up, one word on my lips: “Burner!”
My heart skipped a beat. The temperature in my bedroom seemed to drop thirty or forty degrees. Lightning flickered outside my window, and thunder crashed like the voice of God reprimanding the town for its sins.
“Oh, no…”
I stared into the darkness of my room, breathing heavily. For a second or two I almost slapped myself. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before…
“Burner…”
The night after the Gala, when I fled from Sheriff Baker and his son through the Snake River Woods, fearing what they might do if they caught up with me…I had left my bicycle behind. I had abandoned my best friend like an empty promise.
Burner was still out there, I realized. He sat on the other side of the Old Shack, propped up against that oak tree in the forest between my Secret Place and Midnight’s business district. Waiting for me to come back for him.
“Holy shit,” I said, and my voice seemed unnaturally loud in the silence of my bedroom.
Darth Vader stared down at me from my Star Wars poster upon the wall like the awful repercussions of my careless mistake personified and standing before me in the night.
I couldn’t believe it. How could I have been so stupid?
I fell out of my bed then, stood, and my legs felt like Silly Putty as I made my way to the closet where my shoes and jacket waited.
****
Once upon a time I loved the night, cherished that strange but wonderful blue-black period between sunset and dawn. The world seems so much larger when we are children, I believe, and in my mind Polk County, North Carolina might have encompassed the entire globe during those hours when the sun ducked behind the Blue Ridge Mountains as if it had better things to do than hang around. I used to love to sneak out of my bedroom window after dusk to ride Burner through Midnight’s dark streets and alleyways, weaving in and out of the beams of my hometown’s streetlights as if basking in their glow for even a second might shatter my bliss completely.
I was the King of Midnight, back then.
Of course, after the god-awful things I had seen in the Snake River Woods, my love affair with the night had become a thing of the past. In the space of just several days my hometown had become a ravenous beast waiting to swallow me whole as I ventured through its massive black belly.
For the umpteenth time since I realized I had left my bicycle behind, I asked myself: How could I have been so stupid?
With nothing but an old scuffed pair of tennis shoes and a cheap windbreaker covering my Spider-Man pajamas, I ventured out into the vast ebony maze that was Midnight approaching its namesake, preparing to bring Burner home. The rain had slacked off, at least temporarily, though a faint mist kept my clothes damp throughout my quest. I couldn’t stop shivering no matter how hard I tried.
Before long, as I walked through my backyard…through the knee-high grass Mom had begged Dan to mow for over a month but he never got around to it…past the rusty swing-set I hadn’t touched for years and around the corner of my family’s small storage shed which almost resembled a miniature Old Shack in the far corner of our property…as I cut across the widow Mertzer’s lawn next door and at last entered the Snake River Woods…
I began to pray.
It wasn’t something I did often, pray. I could count on both hands the times my family had attended church since Dad passed away, and I would probably have several fingers left over when I was done. But that certainly did not mean I no longer believed in God. Over the leaves crunching beneath my feet, over the somehow tangible silence that blanketed my hometown, I spoke aloud to the Big Man Upstairs without shame or inhibition. A sense of peace seemed to envelop me, like a shield protecting me from the horrors I had seen the night before, and several times I even closed my eyes as I walked so I could focus fully on the things I needed to say…
This was important. I felt I had to get it right the first time.
“God?” I said aloud, my voice as deeply sincere as any twelve-year-old boy’s can be. “This is Kyle. Kyle Mackey? You know…I live at 2217 Old Fort Road? My brother’s name is Dan, and my mother’s Darlene Mackey? Dan just left for college, which really suck—er, stinks. I’m sure gonna miss him. You might remember my Dad too. Sergeant Daniel Mackey, Sr.? He died when I was five. He’s up there with You now, I guess. Would You tell him I said hello, please?”
I bit my lip, fought back the stinging tears that last part brought to my eyes.
“Anyway…if You do remember me, God, I need Your help. I need it bad. I know we haven’t talked in a while. I guess the last time we spoke was around the time Mom wanted me to pray for her to get that raise at the juice factory. She didn’t get it, but You know that. I guess that was a crappy thing to pray for anyway. Aw, man…umm…where was I?”
I shook my head, felt like slapping myself for veering off on this unrelated tangent. Then, as I continued my prayer, I began to search for my Old Shack in the darkness up ahead, wanting to get this over with as soon as possible…
“I guess I just wanna ask You to watch out for me, God. That’s all. If you can find the time, I mean. Please take care of Dan, too, while he’s down there in Florida. And watch out for Mom. I guess she needs it most of all. You know all she ever does is drink, and one of these days I’m scared it’s gonna kill her. My mother can be really difficult sometimes, God, but I do love her.”
At last I could see them up ahead, in my tear-fogged vision. My Old Shack. And the Well. I stopped walking, just stood there and
stared at them for several long, unnerving minutes, chewing vigorously at my nails as I did so. Where my Secret Place had once felt like an old friend, the sight of it made my bowels lurch now. I shuddered. I didn’t want to go any closer.
Please, God, I finished my prayer, but this time I spoke to Him in my head. Please just look out for us all, okay? Help me figure out the right thing to do. I know Dan’s right. I can’t let them get away with what they did. But I’m scared, God. Really scared…
My prayer trailed off at last as I passed the Old Shack. I could feel the evil that had transpired there the night before, like something rotten that has been thrown out but continues to taint the air with its lingering stench. That whole grove in the middle of the Snake River Woods seemed…contaminated, somehow, a hateful, alien place where I could not believe I had once spent so many wonderful hours.
I made the mistake of looking back once, and when I did a frigid rash of goosebumps broke out all over my body. My teeth began to chatter. The darkness beyond the Old Shack’s doorway was a thicker, blacker, more terrible darkness than any I had ever seen. It seemed to plead with me, inviting me to reclaim my territory and cherish my Secret Place the way I had cherished it before the Gala.
I shook my head, walked on past it. No way, Jose.
The night beyond that open doorway seemed to shift, move. Pulse.
I picked up my pace, glanced over my shoulder every few seconds as I hurried toward the copse of trees about a hundred yards to the east of my Old Shack, where I knew I had left my bicycle. I squinted through the blackness for that familiar glisten of Burner’s bright blue body in the night, but I saw nothing yet. The moon, smothered as it was behind the gathered thunderclouds above, barely offered enough light for me to see more than seven or eight feet ahead of myself.
There. I spotted it, then. That massive oak tree I had propped Burner against that night. I breathed a sigh of relief, so ready to retrieve my bike and hurry home, never to return to that hideous site I had once loved more than any other place in the world…
I rounded the tree. Smiled.