“On December 16, you will be sent to Saigon. That’s so far from here you can’t possibly imagine. Now you’re really scared. Because by now you’ve heard the rumors. The stories you don’t hear on television or from your parents. The killings. The torture. You hear about how the gooks live in tunnels in the jungle and how GI’s walk into their cunning little traps. Those GI’s are all executed. Efficiently.”
I thought back to the way it was about to happen. I knew the exact dates, knew the exact scenario because I had read the military attaché’s report a hundred times.
“You only last a month.”
I looked at Marty and could see the tension in his face. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because it’s the truth.” My eyes met his, and I stared at him long and hard, so he’d have no question I meant it.
“It’s Friday, December 20. You don’t even last until Christmas. You go in country, up to the border with North Vietnam, but you never reach your destination. The Viet Cong find you first. Your commanding officer is a guy named Jason Trembleton. He’s 22 and is just as scared as everybody he’s commanding. Your troop has been separated from the main column when the gooks attacked the night before. None of your troop is able to sleep, and by daybreak you’re all a bunch of basket cases.
“The jungle heat is oppressing, scorpions and snakes are everywhere, strange echoing sounds bounce off the unfamiliar trees, hot rain streams down, blinding you, and above all, you feel the eyes of the enemy on you. Lots of them. You know they have you in their sights. You imagine the rifles centering you in their cross hairs. But that’s nothing compared to what actually happens.”
He was scared. He was a fucking eighteen-year-old kid, for crissakes. Why the hell was he being forced into committing suicide? He didn’t say anything, just listened.
My voice softened to little more than a whisper. As I spoke, I felt the terror in my own voice.
“You take a bullet to the gut. Three bullets actually hit you, but it’s the one in the gut that does the damage. The others rip holes in you, then pass right through. You don’t die right away, but you wish to hell you had. The pain is so terrible, like nothing you’ve ever dreamed of before. The hole in your gut is so large, your intestines start to fall out in front of you. You try to hold them in, knowing you’re going to die, wondering how this could happen.
“The gooks find you and laugh as you crawl around the jungle floor. They snap a word over and over again, but you don’t know what it means. They taunt you. Finally, they spit out in English, ‘Patriot!’
“You don’t feel like a patriot now. You feel like a child. You’ve long ago wet your pants and shit yourself, and now all you wish is that you could go to sleep and end the pain. You’re eighteen years old and all you want to do is die.”
I paused, shaking from describing Marty’s future to him in such detail. I took a deep breath and finished my story.
“The gooks eventually tire of watching you. They slit your throat. The last sound you hear is their laughter once again.”
Marty continued to be silent for a few minutes. He hung his head low.
I reached to him and pulled his head back up to me. The spirit had left him, and all he wanted was to make it not true.
“Go,” I said. “Go to Canada while you still can.”
“How could you know this?” he asked.
I just stared at him. “Go.”
Chapter 41
I left Marty so he could digest our conversation. There’s no way I could tell if I scared him enough or if he’d just laugh me off as a crazy old man. If he listened to Dad, it would be the latter choice.
I went back to my room and tried to settle down with a cold beer. Just one this time.
Claire.
I rummaged through my mind, pulling out random memories, hoping some strands would somehow tie together. Why did you create Julie? I asked in futility. Why did you leave?
And, maybe most important of all, Why do I care?
At some point, I’d want to say good-bye to Little Sam, since my time was running short. The last time I had seen him, he was playing baseball with the other members of the Beauty Shop Gang.
The Beauty Shop Gang. Something twigged. Something I had missed. I tried to connect the dots in my mind to find the clue I had over-looked.
Melanie, Mikey, Lance, Rich, and a couple of others whose names didn’t immediately come to mind. During daylight, you could pretty much count on all of us being together somewhere, unless I was hiding in the library. That was my sole time alone. Otherwise, we spent every day of every summer together during our teen years, playing baseball mostly. Other times, we’d try our hand at other sports: football, basketball, whatever.
In the winter, it would be hockey, played on rinks we watered ourselves at the back of the beauty shop. Or watching B horror movies on TV every Saturday afternoon. Vampirella. Old Bella Lugosi flicks. Lon Chaney. Vincent Price. We loved them all. We even secretly looked forward to watching Dark Shadows each weekday at 4:00, pretending it was a horror show instead of a soap opera.
Some summer days, we just wandered around the neighborhood in a pack. We never bothered anyone, just wanted to explore, wanted to relieve boredom.
The haunted house.
That was it. That’s what was nagging at me. The time we dared each other to go to the Stone Manor. Double dog dared each other to go up to the attic.
I bolted up and ran from the basement, leaving half a can of beer behind.
The Stone Manor was about a ten-minute walk, but I was half-jogging and got there in less than five.
The house stood hidden down a long winding gravel driveway. I couldn’t see the building from the street, as a dense cluster of trees covered both sides. I walked down the drive and found myself in front of -- well, a large house to be sure, three stories -- but certainly not the monstrosity I remembered.
It didn’t particularly look haunted for that matter, only slightly in dis-repair. Run-down. I’d seen many other houses in my life that looked more “haunted.”
By this time, it no longer surprised me that my memories differed from reality. Of course, my childhood self probably did think this was about as haunted as a house could get, and it was that feeling of dread I stored away.
The house was built of dark brown bricks, with solid yellowing mortar. There were many windows, most of which had been broken by kids throwing a decade or more of rocks. Including me.
It was more pathetic than scary.
I knew the door would be unlocked, since it would be unlocked a year down the road when the Beauty Shop Gang came calling.
The inside was as empty as I remembered, but still not frightening. It just looked vacant, a hollow shell of a home, waiting patiently for its owners to return. I wondered if they ever did.
I took a quick walk through the main floor, mostly just to assure myself I was alone. Not seeing or hearing anybody else, I skipped the next two floors and went directly to the attic.
The third floor had one of those trap doors that fold down from the ceiling. I pulled down the stairs, which creaked from lack of use. The steps were solid, and I climbed into the attic.
The light wasn’t very good, since there was only one small window at each end of the attic. The roof of the house was a pitched A-frame, and the attic reflected this. The highest point was in the center, where I could just barely stand without having to crouch. The ceiling sloped down quickly on either side to disappear into nothing at the edges of the house.
My eyes adjusted to the light level after about half a minute.
It was cold and a bit damp. A light kiss of a breeze made the air seem alive.
One side of the attic was crammed with old furniture. A wooden rocking chair. A bed frame. Two dressers. A bunch of other things. They all appeared to be in good condition. There were a couple of wooden crates stacked together, and behind those were a few frames protecting some amateur landscapes. None of this was what I was looking for.
I tur
ned and walked to the other side of the attic, near the far window, and as I got closer, I could see the scene I remembered from my previous visit here, next year.
This window hadn’t been broken, and it was covered with a stained glass diagram of a white dove flying past some navy blue thorns. A sun set in one corner of the window.
Beneath the window was a child’s play area. Maybe two children, a boy and a girl.
There was a small plastic table set up with three small pink chairs carefully arranged just so. The table was set for a tea party. There was a white linen cloth covering the table, a set of small plastic cups, a miniature teapot, and chrome-colored fake silverware.
A doll sat in the middle seat.
The doll was about eighteen inches tall and wore a frilly green dress.
The dress was covered with splotches of red, as was the doll’s face. It looked as if it was covered in blood.
That was the image that had frightened us all those years ago. A blood-soaked doll.
We had come up the stairs, relaxed, feeling we had conquered the haunted house. But then, we saw the corpselike doll, which really turned us around 180 degrees. Our relaxed minds jumped into over-drive, immediately imagining a dark horror, a murderous psychopath, using the doll as a surrogate child.
In my mind’s eye, the murderous psycho was hiding behind those crates at the other end of the room. Near the exit. Near our escape.
We had all stared at the doll, and it almost seemed as if it was bleeding fresh blood as we watched.
Mel was the first one to say anything when she admitted, “I’m getting scared.” Without even knowing I was doing it, I took her hand in mine.
Right then, a gust of wind shook through the attic, breaking us from staring at the doll. One of the crates seemed to make a crunching noise.
And by God, we all just about flew out of that house, jumping down the stairs three at a time, in a mad panic to get out before it got us. We ran and ran and didn’t stop until we were back in the central part of Nelson, surrounded by normal homes, normal cars, normal everything.
We never spoke of the visit to the Stone Manor again.
Now, I forced myself to look at the other toys in the attic. There was an Easy Bake Oven beside the table, a small crib and stroller, and a couple of other dolls that might have been Barbies. I don’t know dolls well enough to really tell.
The far side of the table had the boys’ toys. A pile of scattered tracks from an HO train set, a couple of boxcars lying on their side nearby. A cardboard box full of pieces of a Hot Wheels road race set. A deflated football, a handful of GI Joe soldiers, one missing an arm.
This rung a bell. Curious, I crouched down and picked up the box holding the Hot Wheels and read the scrawled note on the bottom: “Property of Sam Ellis. DO NOT TOUCH!”
I dropped the box in surprise at seeing my own name.
“This was mine?” I asked.
I looked more closely at the other items. Were they all mine? Yes, I had once owned a train set and an old football. I seemed to recall them all being given away by my parents, or maybe sold at a junk sale or something.
How did they end up here?
A loud creak sounded from somewhere below in the house, and my heart jumped a beat. I almost dropped the train set. I hadn’t realized how quiet it was in the house until just then. I forced myself to relax.
I looked back and picked up the tortured little doll sitting patiently at the tea party. She had a note in a pocket of her dress. I unfolded it and read, “Welcome to Julie’s tea party. This is the last party I can have. I have to go away now. If you ever want to know why, you’ll need to read May 21. It’s here with me.”
May 21.
May 21, 1965 was the date Mrs. Williamson had said Claire left.
I had checked and her Remembrance Diary was empty for that date. It was the only date without an entry.
But, now the doll told me the entry for May 21 was here.
I searched the doll to see if there were any other papers hidden in her dress, but there were none. She seemed to smile at me, almost laughing, as if she were saying, “Did you really think it would be that easy?” Nothing was on the table or anywhere else in plain sight, either. I looked behind and around the general area, but no luck.
I searched for an hour, everywhere, moving back to the other end of the attic, checking the drawers in the furniture, but then light was starting to fade. Twilight was coming.
I needed to find May 21, but it felt hopeless. I had looked everywhere. What if somebody else had beaten me to finding it? I went back and looked at the toys one more time before almost giving up.
The Easy Bake Oven.
I opened the oven and saw the note. It was written on the same paper as the diary and in Claire’s handwriting.
I shoved the note in my pocket and put the oven back in its place, ready for me to find it a year later, and I left the Stone Manor for the last time, just as darkness covered it.
Chapter 42
Sunday morning.
Six o’clock arrived much too early for my tastes. Fortunately, I had set the alarm clock Mrs. Williamson had left in my room, or there’s no way I could have awoken. The alarm seemed to go on a long time before slowly winding itself down. By the time I had actually woken up enough to crawl out of bed and walk over to the clock (sitting on the dresser, out of reach for this very reason), it had stopped ringing.
I guessed fish were morning people.
It took me a good thirty minutes to really wake up after that. Two quick cups of coffee and a cold shower helped.
I was more tired these days due to my newfound penchant for getting up in the middle of the night and wandering outside. Looking back, I’m not really sure why I started doing that, but it seemed like a habit I was going to have trouble breaking. The nighttime was refreshing, clean, unencumbered. It felt like I was more alive than during the daytime.
At seven on the dot, I walked over and banged on the back door of my parents’ house. Dad opened the door and sheepishly nodded at me, with a smile. “All set,” he said. “I got the rods. You got bait?”
“Umm, no.” I had forgotten about that. The only bait I had remembered was the two cases of Budweiser now sitting beside me. Dad glanced down to be sure I had them.
A chorus of a kids’ song ran through my
mind: twenty-four bottles of beer on the wall . . .
We put the beer in the trunk of his rusting green ’57 Plymouth, and he drove us out of town. I didn’t know where we were headed, since I had never fished as a kid, but he was taking us northeast. I remembered an arm of the Montana River flowed up in that direction.
The car stank from the bitter smell of rancid cigarettes. The ashtray was full of butts, and there were half a dozen others on the floor by my feet. I don’t think Dad could tell how bad it was.
“You know a good spot, right?”
He didn’t look over at me when he answered. “Been a helluva long time. Still don’t know why you wanted to do this.”
“I’m just trying to fit in.”
“Yeah. Sure you are.” The tone of his voice made me wonder what was going through his mind. He pulled sharply over to the side and into a gas station. He looked over at me expectantly, and then pointed at the sign in the window.
FRESH BAIT
CHEAP!
I went inside and asked for a box of worms. The clerk was an old man, jowls pulling his face down and random whiskers springing out from them. He shuffled down to the rear of the store and came back with a small box that looked like an order of chicken chow mein from my local Chinese delivery place in Seattle. “Fifty?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Dollar seventy-five.” He shook the box. “Should all still be alive. I got a boy collects ‘em over night.”
“I’m sure they’ll be fine.”
He rung up the sale, and I took the change and the worms back to the car. “We’re all set.” I had to remember not to fasten the seatbe
lt. Nobody did that.
“How about you grab me a beer before we head out,” he said.
I was going to talk about the dangers of drinking and driving and then thought how silly I would sound. I took a beer out of the case and popped the cap for him. He took a long drink before pulling out of the gas station.
“You not having one?”
“Later. I don’t want to be too buzzed to catch anything.”
“Wouldn’t bother me none.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence. Fortunately, we weren’t going very far, and I took mental notes as we went. I wasn’t planning on driving back home with him.
A few miles outside the city limits, we followed a snaking dirt road down a hill. It dead-ended in a small clearing surrounded by a thick thatch of trees. Their shadows swept over us, and I could hear their branches slowly swishing against us as we set up our site. The Montana flowed by at a brisk pace, about twenty feet across. There were a few wide pools in the river where the water didn’t flow as smoothly. Dad pointed them out. “Fish’ll be in those pockets. Trout. Some perch. Whitefish.”
I nodded.
“Bring out the beer.” I did as I was asked. It wasn’t even 8:00 in the fucking morning, and he was on his third beer.
Some memories are true.
I had to force myself to put a worm onto the hook. It felt like I was torturing the damned thing. I did my best not to think about the fish nibbling at the worm. I never thought about how inhumane fishing seemed until then. I tossed my line out and hoped nothing would bite.
“Jimmy, when’s the last time you were out fishing?”
“Don’t really know. Probably ten years. Maybe more.” He thought a moment. “Shit, probably twenty.”
His line went out to another still pool, and we sat down on some large rocks to play the waiting game.
Two hours passed, with only a few bites and even less conversation. Dad had six more beers and had long ago started to slur his words.
The Memory Tree Page 15