Four Octobers

by Hautala, Rick

  “You sure it’s coming from the northwest?” I asked after what seemed like a really long time but which probably had been no more than a couple of minutes.

  “That’s what the newspaper said,” replied Chucky. He was standing a few feet behind me, so I couldn’t see him. Elena was off to my right, a little downhill.

  I knew which way west was because many an evening I had watched the sun set from my bedroom window on the back of the house as I sat at my desk, supposedly doing homework but usually drawing or daydreaming. So I figured if I faced west, north would be directly to my right, across the field. That meant northwest was halfway between them, but I had been looking up at the sky already so long my neck was beginning to hurt. I would have lain down on the grass if it hadn’t been so cold and damp.

  “I’ll bet we already missed it,” I finally said.

  “The newspaper said it’d go by around quarter to five,” Chucky said.

  “You got a watch?”

  “No. You?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t see Chucky standing behind me, but his voice was close to my ear. It had been just 4:30 when we left the back porch of my house, and it couldn’t have taken us more than five minutes or so to get out here, so there was no way we could have missed it. Still, I felt as though we had. The ache in my neck was getting steadily worse, and I lowered my head and twisted it from side to side to relieve it.

  Suddenly Elena cried out, “There it is!”

  The pitch of excitement in her voice made me snap my head back. My eyes were watering from the cold, and I was staring so hard at the star-sprinkled sky that everything seemed to blurb.

  “Where?” I asked as a tingling rush of excitement ran up my back. The air pressure around me seemed suddenly to increase, and for a few seconds, I thought I could hear a low humming sound in the air.

  “Right there! See!” Elena said, using that impatient tone of voice she always used when she talked to me. She was pointing up, her silhouette a black cutout against the starry sky.

  I looked where she was pointing, straining to see the satellite and afraid it would streak past before I could, but after a heartbeat or two, I saw a tiny white dot moving against the backdrop of stars.

  It wasn’t much to see, and I experienced a slight twinge of disappointment. I thought the humming sound I’d heard a few seconds ago might have been Sputnik, but I now realized that the satellite was too high and too small to make any sound that I could hear on the ground. My vision throbbed in time with my pulse as I slowly rotated my head, tracking the tiny dot of light as it streaked across the sky from northwest to southeast.

  “It’s just like a little shooting star,” my sister said, sounding more disappointed than I was.

  “Yeah, but it’s manmade,” I whispered, trying to grasp the sense of wonder and excitement that filled me. All around me, the air seemed to crackle with energy. A wave of warmth blew across the back of my neck.

  “You see it, Chucky?”

  I turned and glanced behind me, surprised for a moment how, after staring up at the sky for so long, everything on the ground appeared so dark.

  Chucky was nowhere in sight.

  I thought he might have decided to lie down in the grass rather than tilt his head back so long, but I couldn’t see anything that might have been him.

  “Chucky?” I called out.

  An edge of panic slipped into my voice, and I forgot all about the artificial satellite zipping by overhead as I tried to locate my friend.

  “Chucky?” I shouted again, louder.

  Still no answer, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I looked all around where we stood, I realized that he was nowhere in sight. The field sloped gently down toward the street, but there wasn’t any place within a hundred yards where Chucky could be hiding… not unless, while Elena and I were concentrating on the sky, he had slipped away unheard and was hiding in the woods, crouched behind a tree or something.

  But coming out to see Sputnik had been Chucky’s idea, so it didn’t make sense that he would take off just as it came into sight.

  The cold feeling in the bottom of my stomach was getting bad, now, like I had gulped down a mouthful of snow. In spite of the predawn chill, trickles of sweat rolled down the back of my neck. When I glanced over toward the woods, my vision flickered like there was heat lightning in the air. The deep shadows underneath the oaks reached out like hands into the field. For a moment, they seemed to sway sickeningly to the right, like the light behind them was shifting rapidly to one side. I wondered if the satellite was bright enough to do that but mostly I was panicking because my friend had disappeared.

  “Will you guys shut up?” Elena said, her voice laced with irritation. “It’s almost gone already.”

  “So’s Chucky,” I said.

  Elena didn’t answer me for a moment, and I could see that her head was still thrown back as she tracked the satellite’s progress to the southeast horizon above the old chicken coop. I caught another glimpse of it just before it dropped out of sight behind the trees.

  “I’m cold,” Elena said. “Let’s go back and make some cocoa.”

  “We have to find Chucky first,” I said, fighting the tremor in my voice.

  “What the heck are you talking about?” Elena said, but in the darkness, I could see her head swiveling from side to side as she looked around for Chucky. The predawn stillness seemed so dense it was almost like being underwater, and I wondered how far any sound could travel; but we were both silent for a long time, neither one of us daring to call out. Finally, Elena sighed and said, “He probably got cold and went home.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “Not without telling us he was.”

  “Then he’s just goofing around, trying to scare us, I’ll bet.”

  “I don’t think so,” I replied, still shaking my head and gnawing my lower lip.

  I remembered how hushed the night had gotten and the funny feeling I’d had just before we saw the satellite. Maybe Chucky had said that he was leaving, and I was so intent on seeing Sputnik that I hadn’t even heard him. Off to the east, the first traces of dawn smudged the sky with a cold gray that looked like scorched metal.

  “Well I’m not hanging around out here and looking for him,” Elena said. “If he wants to act like a jerk, he can act like a jerk.”

  She started to leave, but I reached out and snagged the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She shook me off and shouted, “Cut it out.” With that, she started back across the field toward the woods and home. It wasn’t long before her silhouette blended into the ink-stain shadows under the trees, and she was gone.

  For the longest time, I just stood there, watching until the porch light winked on in our house. That single, lonely glimmer of yellow light made me feel all the more alone as I started slowly back to the house.

  “Chucky?” I called out softly a few times, but there was no answer.

  My shoulders were tensed and the back of my neck prickled because I was half-expecting him to burst out from his hiding place—wherever it was—and holler, “Boo!” but that never happened. The only sounds I could hear were the soft rattling of the wind in the oaks and a solitary cricket, chirruping somewhere in the darkness of the field. I wondered how that little insect could have survived the cold this long, and a wave of deep sadness swept over me because I think I knew, even then, that I would never see my friend again.

  The search for Chucky started shortly after daybreak. I went home and told my parents that Chucky had been with us but had disappeared just as Sputnik went by overhead. Even then, I wondered if there might be a connection between the two things, but I knew that was impossible.

  My dad called Chucky’s house, but Mrs. Neilson told him that Chucky wasn’t in his room, that he had left his bed unmade, and that his sneakers and jacket were missing from the front entryway where he always left them. She said something more to my dad. I couldn’t make out exactly what it was over the phone, but she sounded really upset, but not as u
pset as I was.

  After he got off the phone, my father and I went back out to the field and looked around. The sun was up by then, and I remember a weird feeling of unreality as we walked through the same woods we had passed through not more than an hour or two ago. Now, everything looked so different, so normal. I had a hard time convincing myself that we had just been out here. It seemed like I was remembering a dream or something that had happened a long time ago.

  My father and I traipsed all around the field, looking for any sign of Chucky. We found the beaten down grass and broken weed stalks where the three of us had been standing. We even found the spot where I was sure Chucky had been standing when the satellite went by overhead, but there were no other signs of my friend.

  I followed my father as he walked the perimeter of the field, his head lowered as he scanned the grass. He liked to hunt deer up in Maine in November, and he was a pretty good tracker, but other than a few rabbit trails in the dewy grass, we didn’t find anything.

  I had no idea what to think.

  The cold wind in my face made my eyes water, and I was afraid my father would think I was crying, so I kept wiping my eyes on the back of my hand when he wasn’t looking at me.

  “Don’t worry, bud,” my father said. He stopped a few steps ahead of me and waited for me to catch up, then placed his hand gently on my shoulder. “I’m sure he’ll turn up safe and sound.”

  “Yeah,” I said, but then my throat closed off and made a funny little squeaking sound, and I didn’t believe him. After another complete circuit of the field, we were about to head back to the house to call the police when I noticed something close to where I had been standing with Elena and Chucky.

  “What’s that?” I asked as I pointed toward what, at first, I thought must have been a trick of the light or something. Summer was long gone, and the grass in the field was dying and turning yellow. It glowed like gold in the slanting morning sun, and thin trails of steam were rising into the air as the frost evaporated.

  But there was one spot close to where Chucky had been standing that looked different.

  My father kept his hand on my shoulder as we walked toward it. The closer we got, the more defined the spot became. There was a faint circle where the grass was browner than the rich gold of the rest of the field. It looked as though maybe the sun or a close flame had seared it. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I tried to focus on it, but that made it harder to see. It was like staring at something at night when if you shift your gaze just a little to one side, you can see things better.

  “That brown spot there?” my father said, squinting and tilting his head to get a better look at it. He glanced at me, and I raised my hand, jabbing it at the circular brown spot. He slipped his hand from my shoulder and walked a little closer to it, frowning as he looked from side to side.

  “Yeah. Looks kind of like the grass was burned or something,” he said.

  Crouching low, he knelt down in the center of the spot and studied the ground.

  I took a few cautious steps closer, but I didn’t want to step inside the circle. Something told me to be careful. When I was standing just at the edge of it, it looked about eight or ten feet in diameter. My father straightened up and walked to the other side of it. Shaking his head again, he said, “I can kind of see it, but I’m not sure—It just looks like a patch of dead grass to me.”

  “No. See? It’s a perfect circle.” I wasn’t even sure if I had spoken out loud as I slid one foot forward into the circle. Nothing happened until I stepped forward and was completely inside the circle. The instant I did that, a funny dizzy feeling swept over me so intensely it frightened me. My legs were trembling, the muscles in my thighs thrumming like tuning forks as I took another step forward.

  From inside the circle, it appeared to be much more clearly defined. Beyond it, the rest of my grandfather’s field shimmered like I was looking at it through dense heat waves. Even as I watched, the edges of the grass at my feet started to crinkle up and turn darker brown. The edges of the dying grass turned into ash as a wave of warmth surrounded me. I expected the whole area to burst into flame at any moment. A strange smell filled my nose. It reminded me of burning hair, and it made me cough.

  “What do you say we head back up to the house?” my father said.

  I stared at him, struggling not to cry out as the pressure inside the circle squeezed my chest, making me gasp.

  “Yeah,” I finally said, but the air seemed to absorb my voice before my father could hear it.

  Everything around me appeared to be moving in slow motion. My father was looking straight at me, and it seemed to take forever just for him to blink his eyes once. The wind flattened the grass around him like a huge, invisible hand was pressing down on it from the sky, but I couldn’t feel even the faintest stirring of a breeze on my face. Wisps of smoke curled up like tiny blue threads from the dead blades of grass, which was turning into charcoal powder. The crackling sound got steadily louder until it filled my ears, reminding me of the sound a campfire makes when it’s blazing away.

  My father’s mouth moved as he said something to me, but it took so long for him to form each word that all I heard was a low, dragging sound like a long, pained groan that wavered weirdly up and down. The air inside the circle had created a dense, translucent barrier between us. A subtle current of electricity passed through me, making my hair stand on ends. I had the distinct impression that my feet had somehow lifted off the ground, and I was hovering in the air several inches above the browning grass. I waved my arms wildly for balance and cried out to my father, but there wasn’t enough air inside the circle for me to catch my breath. It was like wide, metal bands were squeezing my chest until my eyes bugged out of my head.

  My father started moving toward me in slow motion. It looked to me as though his body left long trailing smears of color behind him. My vision doubled, then tripled, and then multiplied so much I couldn’t focus on anything. The field and the sky and my father’s face all spun crazily around me. I felt like I was being sucked up into the sky.

  I have no idea what happened next. I guess I blacked out because the next thing I remember, I opened my eyes and was looking up at my father. He was leaning over me with a look of deep concern on his face. The ground was cold and hard beneath me, and my arms felt like they were made of rubber as I raised them slowly and touched my face. The skin was as cold as granite, and when I took a breath, my ribs made crackling sounds, like crumpled paper.

  “Take it easy there, bud,” my father said.

  His voice was so low I could hardly hear him, but I was relieved to hear everything sounding perfectly normal again. My vision gradually shifted until it was no longer distorted.

  “Don’t try standing up just yet. Take a few good, deep breaths until your head clears.”

  “Wha—what happened?”

  My voice sounded as weak as a mouse’s squeak.

  “You fainted,” my father said.

  He didn’t look all that concerned, but I wondered if he was holding back something because he didn’t want me to be scared about what had happened.

  The truth was, I was very much afraid. I have never fainted before in my life. I didn’t even know anyone who had ever fainted before, and my first thought was: How close was I to dying?

  After I took a few more tentative breaths, my father slipped one arm under me and helped me to my feet. I was really wobbly. The field kept pitching wildly from side to side, like the deck of a ship, and a raw, burning sourness twisted deep in my stomach. I felt like I was going to throw up even though I hadn’t eaten anything for breakfast and didn’t have anything to throw up. A high-pitched buzzing sound filled my ears. At first I thought it might be crickets, singing in the field, but after a moment, I realized the sound was inside my head. It had a faint, metallic ring to it that made me think of the sound of Chucky’s voice over the tin can telephone.

  “Think you can make it back to the house?” my father asked, his forehead wrinkled wi
th concern.

  I nodded but didn’t say anything, afraid that my voice would sound funny, and that he would laugh at me. Every breath I took felt like a little sip of fire in the back of my nose and throat. My legs felt rubbery, and I would have dropped to the ground again if my father hadn’t been supporting me.

  As we made our way across the field back to the house, my father chuckled softly as he scruffed my hair.

  “You ain’t just faking this so you can get out of going to school, are you?”

  I started to protest, but before I could say anything, he quickly said, “Just kidding.” After a short pause, he added, “You did have me worried there for a minute, though.”

  The muscles in my neck still felt brittle, like they were going to snap when I nodded. Something thick and hot clogged my throat and made my voice sound funny—at least to me—when I spoke.

  “I’ve never done anything like that before.”

  My father regarded me with a soft expression of concern in his eyes.

  “Don’t worry about it, bud,” he said. His hand was resting lightly on my shoulder, and I felt a little less scared. “It’s probably just a combination of getting up so early, not having any breakfast, and—you know, wondering about what Chucky’s up to.”

  Chucky’s gone, and I’ll never see him again, I wanted to say, but I didn’t.

  I’m not sure why I thought that then, but I was certain that, after this October morning in 1957, I would never see Chucky Nielson alive again.

  I felt a little better after eating breakfast, so I went to school that morning as usual. Things seemed really weird, though, not at all normal. I was so used to having Chucky around that, over and over again throughout the day, I would look up from my desk or turn around at lunch, expecting to see him standing or sitting there, gawking at me with that big, goofy grin of his.