by Russell Moon
Marthe is talking, but I cannot hear her. I sink like a corkscrew into the soft wet earth of the riverbank, and grab the ground with both fists for balance.
But balance is a long way away.
CHAPTER 6
We learn about the town by trying to get out of it.
The walks I’ve been taking—or been led on—have basically avoided the small town center of Blackwater. You can easily make it from my house to the school along the stream and through the residential and semirural bits of the area without ever knowing the center exists.
But if you want to get to the woods—and Chuck and I want to get to the woods—you have to cross the heart of Blackwater.
It’s about the same as a lot of other tired, rustic, half-step-out-of-time town centers. It’s shaped like a double cross, with the one main street and two lesser avenues crossing it. The shopfronts are as familiar as you can get; one bookstore, one hardware store, one barber shop complete with striped pole. There seem to be too many precious children’s clothes shops. You could get your hair and your nails done in this town, you could visit three different realtors to buy a new house, or you could go to the bed-and-bath shop to spruce up the old one.
And every place you went to would look about the same, because the center of Blackwater appears to be one of those places where the look of all the shopfronts is dictated by some local ordinance. Except for the dilapidated old movie house that stands rotting like a big screw—an embarrassment to the Blockbuster video store next door—the whole place looks like it could be an old American theme park or a movie set with nothing going on behind it.
We meander through it, Chuck and I, following our noses to the woods. We can do that, could do it with our eyes closed. When it comes to woods and earth, air and water, my nose is every bit the instrument his is.
And what the nose finds, before it finds wood, is water. The scent of water, of the particles in the air, is never far away. It is like being at the ocean, except it is not salty water. I feel surrounded. There is the stream, burbling along out there somewhere, and a famous swimming hole, Blackwater Pond, out by the college, and there are little duck ponds and fountains, antique horse troughs and cement birdbaths dotted everywhere. They love their water in Blackwater.
Finally Chuck and I have found woods, a crest of evergreen humping up over the back end of town about a quarter mile beyond the THANK YOU FOR KEEPING BLACKWATER TIDY—COME BACK SOON sign. We run the rest of the way.
We are, blissfully, breathing heavily once we reach them, taking forest essence deep into our lungs. I do not care if we ever emerge once we walk in. I really don’t. Because we are at home the instant we step under the canopy, comfortable, cool, and familiar as it is.
“Maybe we’ll build us a house in here, Chuck, whaddya say? Someplace where we can hide, where we can rule, where nobody can bother us…and we can’t bother anybody else. Sounds good, you think?”
He thinks. But he shuts up about it. Atta boy, Chuck.
We walk steadily, as straight into the heart of the old growth as we can. We approach a solid-looking old pine tree with a nice shoulder about twenty feet up. I crouch down, and Chuck knows right what to do. It has been a while since he has been up a tree, and the excitement has him so charged he hurdles clear over me on the first try, then scrambles around for a second. He’s on, and we are up.
I am back. Back in the air. Back to clarity, back to sense. Back, at least partly, to me.
“I don’t think I can go to this party, Chuck. I don’t think I believe a word these people say. An Obair? What the hell is that all about, The Business? They’re giving me the business, is what it is. I have been sucked in so bad, Chuck…Chuck…stay still….
“Chuck!”
I watch with horror as Chuck twists and bucks and plummets the twenty feet from the branch to the forest floor, crashing on his back.
He lets out a squeal and gets to his feet, hobbling in a circle, whimpering.
I scurry down the tree quick as a squirrel, but still not fast enough to catch him. He has taken off, limping all the way, back down the trail we just walked.
“Chuck,” I call. “Chuck!” But despite his injury, he is losing me. I fall farther and farther back until, winded, I have to stop chasing him.
I am walking steadily, wheezing a bit, squinting to try to see him ahead, then checking the bushes immediately around me to see that he hasn’t collapsed along the way.
“So, have you given it any more thought?” Eartha says from the bushes, scaring the absolute pants off me.
“Shit,” I say, stumbling backward, away from her. I instantly regain my footing, if not quite my composure. “No, I haven’t. I mean, yes…I mean, leave me alone, I have to get to my dog. Why are you people haunting me?”
I continue on the path toward home and listen, like a slasher-movie victim, to the determined padding of her feet behind me.
“Come on, Marcus,” she says. “Wait up. Stop running.”
“No. No, I want to be left alone. I need to be left alone. I need to know what happened in Port Cal, because I don’t know what the hell is—” I stop dead, whirl around.
“Leave my dog alone,” I shout. “We’ve been up a thousand trees together, and he never fell until you popped up. You witch.”
This brings a faint smile to her lips. “Finally,” she says, “you’re getting it.”
“I didn’t mean that kind of witch. I meant the other kind. Bitch witch.”
She is less amused. She actually looks hurt.
“Come on, Marcus, you don’t mean that.”
She takes a step closer. I take a step back. I am so lame, so vulnerable to her, I cannot be trusted. She looks wounded, speaks to me low in the Julesiest voice, and I start to melt like a snowman.
Stop, Marcus, think, stop, think, remember.
“Hey,” I shout, startling her. “Is that your damn snake that keeps trying to bite me?”
“Don’t take it personally,” she says.
“Don’t take it personally? It came all the way to Port Caledonia to bite me. That’s pretty personal, isn’t it?”
She takes a step closer. I take two steps back.
“Please, Marcus—”
“Please nothing. This is for starters. Tell me about the snake, or I’m gone. Tell me now.”
She sighs. She sighs again. She shifts from foot to foot, looks behind her—everybody around here seems to be looking behind them. Mostly it’s me.
“You had to come here, Marcus, and that is that. We needed you. And the snake—her name is Sonja, by the way—was there to make sure that you didn’t make any last-minute mistakes before coming.”
“For chrissake, what the hell could a snake…?”
Here, right here, right now, something happens to me, from the inside out, from the top on down. It feels as if there is an actual fire burning on my inside, everywhere. Like lava is pouring through me, rushing from the hot center of my heart through my veins, through to every outer branch of my system. My eyes are bulging, as if the pressure inside my head has risen and will burst out through my skull, shooting my eyeballs across the forest.
“Juuuules!” I scream, and the woods shake with my rage. “Juuuuules!” I shake the ground again. I am nearly blind with this, and can see nothing as it is. It is as if I were flying, or, rather, as if I were standing still with the rest of the universe hurtling past me in strobes of brilliant white peripheral light.
Except for her.
I see the back of Eartha as she tries to beat a retreat away from me. Her long chocolate-brown hair is splayed out like turkey feathers as she attempts speed.
She achieves speed.
She flies, her feet leaving the ground as if some unseen giant bird of prey has swooped down, snagged her by the shoulders…
And thrown her, directly into the base of a giant, gnarly oak.
Next thing I know, I am standing over her. She is silent, writhing, shielding her face.
“Did your snake
…,” I say, “have anything to do…,” I say, “with what happened to Jules?”
I could kill her. I could kill anyone, for the right reason, for the wrong answer, right now. I don’t know who I am, but I could.
“She was just there,” Eartha says in a trembling voice, “to get in the way.”
“Why?”
“Because you weren’t supposed to…do that.”
“Why?”
“She was not your kind.”
For the moment, for a change, for now, I am glad I have whatever powers I have.
“How…dare…you,” I say, feeling the fire again, feeling my hands pulling into forged iron fists, feeling the trees shake again….
Until Eartha flips herself over, lies on her back, arms and legs splayed out sacrificially, defenselessly, eyes closed….
Jules’s eyes closed. Jules’s hair spread under her like a carpet.
I stand over her. I stand and I stare, and I stand and I stare. And the tremor slows, stops. My blood ceases boiling.
I know who I am. I feel who I am. I couldn’t hurt anybody. I couldn’t ever hurt this face.
But I am aware, as Eartha’s eyes crack open, that my fists remain at my sides.
“Nobody means to hurt you, Marcus,” she whispers, still terrified. “You will see that. We are only doing what has to be done—for you as well as for us. It’s hard for you to see, but you will see. And besides, the snake didn’t do anything. She was interrupted.”
“I was interrupted.”
“But not by us. There is a lot of power coming to you at this point.”
I shake my head. I feel nothing like power in me now. I feel weakness and confusion, and I am as vulnerable now as I was threatening just minutes ago.
“No,” I say, “I won’t see. Nothing good has happened to me since that night, my last night in Port Caledonia, and you and your people are all over it. I don’t want anything to do with any of you from this moment on. I am going to find my Jules, and ‘my kind’ can just all screw themselves.”
She is slowly, tentatively, shaking her head at me.
“Please don’t do it,” I beg, feeling like somehow I am pleading for both our lives. “Please don’t make me mad, Eartha.”
“I don’t want to make you mad. I know, even more than you do, how bad that would be.”
“Good. Let’s just leave it at that, then.”
I turn and take the first few steps in the direction of home.
“Not without us, Marcus. Without us you’ll never f—”
I spin on her, one flat, extended hand held out in her direction. “I’m leaving now. I have to go take care of my dog. Leave us alone. Don’t say anything, and don’t follow me. I mean it, Eartha.” I say it as if everything depends on it.
“Okay,” she says, gently nodding. Nodding her lovely head. Jules’s lovely head.
When I get back to the house, Eleanor is on the porch, seated in a big, sideways-slanted, white wicker armchair. Chuck is lying at her feet, looking like he has just finished a game of rugby as she pats him down, smoothing and soothing him.
“He’s awfully spooked,” she says as I mount the steps.
Chuck raises his head and looks at me, his eyebrows raised emphatically.
“Is he?” I say, sliding right up beside him, waiting my turn.
The three of us stay there silently, solidly, for a very long time.
On Friday morning I make my decision.
“Mr. Sedaris?”
“Yes, Marcus, please come in.”
Mr. Sedaris, my guidance counselor, has a very kind, reassuring face and manner. He is about five feet seven inches tall, with frizzy black hair and one eyebrow. He wears a blue-and-green plaid sweater that reaches to his Adam’s apple, so you can’t quite tell if he is wearing a tie, but I am guessing he is not. This immediately sets him apart from the sedate Blackwater faculty.
“Thanks for stopping by, Marcus. I was hoping you would. I normally like to have a more extended meeting with new transfers, but heck, you saw what it was like on registration day—nutsy, wasn’t it? Have a butterscotch hard candy.”
“Thanks,” I say, though it is barely a hard candy. I must be the first one to accept the butterscotch offer in a while. As I take it, it dents under the hardly viselike pinch of my fingertips. And when I try to peel back its transparent yellow wrapper, it clings to the paper as if it is embarrassed to be naked.
“And I have a hunch you need a fair bit of guidance around here. No?”
“Yes,” I say.
“I know my kids. Now, how are you settling in?”
“Well, to be honest—”
“No,” he says, covering his ears and jumping out of his seat. “No, don’t do that.”
I stand to leave. I am fairly easily derailed at this point.
“I’m joking,” he says, waving me down. “You’re a very serious fellow, Marcus. What are you, like, a poet or something?”
“No. Actually, Mr. Sedaris, I only wanted to talk to you about my schedule.”
“Oh. Well, okay. I was kind of expecting something a little more challenging, but…okay, you want to change something. What do you want to change?”
“All of it.”
“All of it. Hmm, all of it. All of it? That’s a very unusual request, Marcus. Why would you want to change your entire schedule? I see, for instance, you’re in Spanish. Spanish is the second language of the United States, and getting bigger all the time. You’ll do well with Spanish. Can’t go wrong there. And study hall. Who the heck would want to dump study—”
“I’m just feeling a little crowded. In my current schedule. Like I can’t get any space.”
“You know, all the class sizes are the same, pretty much. Except Latin. You’d have a lot of elbow room in Latin. You want Latin?”
This is not going very well at all. In my state of distress, I think I have once again miscalculated the workings of things. I actually somehow thought I was going to skip into Mr. Sedaris’s office, tell him to change everything on my schedule only one week into the year, and he was going to fix me up and send me on my way with nary an inquiry into my motives. Not only is that not happening, but he is, deliberately or otherwise, making it hard for me to get through the conversation.
“It’s not about class size. Can I speak frankly, Mr. Sedaris?”
“No,” he says again, covering his ears again. “Don’t do that.”
With as much respect as possible, I say, “Could you stop that, please?”
“Sorry,” he says. “I just like to break the tension. A lot of tension comes into my office, as you might imagine. You brought a load of it in yourself, did you not?”
“I did.”
“Okay, so, you being bullied?” he asks sternly.
“No.”
“Harassed by faculty?”
“No.”
With each wrong answer, Mr. Sedaris leans harder over his desk, in my direction, as if he will read the right answer in the ever deepening lines of my troubled teen face.
And the further he leans toward me, the further back I tip my chair in the opposite direction.
“Overwhelmed by the coursework?”
“No. If I may just—”
“No, no, don’t tell me. I can do this.”
I sigh, leaning back far enough that my toes are just about keeping contact with the floor.
He gets a eureka face.
“Got it. It’s the strain and confusion of discovering you are a witch.”
I make a huge clatter as I fall, first backward, then as I catch the edge of his desk with my toes, forward. I land with my palms flat on Mr. Sedaris’s desk, and my face in his face.
“Did I get it?” he asks, all excited, as if he honestly isn’t sure.
I gulp. “Pretty close, yeah.”
“Told you I knew my students. Now, why exactly do you want to escape?”
This is the latest in a lengthening line of don’t-know-which-way-to-go forks in my road. Who is a
friend, and who is a foe? Is anyone really either one, or should I just take my chances and beat it the hell out of here? How much of what has happened to me—if any of this has actually happened to me—is my own fault?
“You can talk to me, Marcus.”
“How do I know that? If you already know…about me, then you’re obviously one of them, right?”
“Us. One of us, you mean. That’s the point. That’s why you do not have to be afraid, ultimately. Because we are us. You are inside now, not outside. And you have never been inside before, have you, Marcus?”
“I am not afraid,” I say. I am scared out of my mind now. “I am cautious, that’s all.”
“Cautious is good,” he says, leaning back to appear less threatening. “Under the circumstances, cautious is wise. You go on being cautious. But I want you to know that I am your guidance counselor for school, and for the other, as well.”
“Great,” I say, a wave of frustrated aggression coming over me. I lean over his desk. “Counsel me then. What’s going on?”
“Go to the party, Marcus.”
“What, am I supposed to bring the snacks or something? Why does everybody keep telling me to go to this freaking party?”
“Just go to the party, okay? You’ll know a lot more when you go to the party. You’ll know a lot more, and then I’ll be able to counsel you the way I should.”
I swear, this is the last person I am going to talk to. I swear. I make a note to myself not to talk to people. Don’t talk to people, Marcus. Ignore everybody. By playing, you are letting them do this to you.
Don’t play anymore.
“What about my schedule?” I say as I am about to go out the office door.
“They are merely looking out for you,” he says.
“What about my schedule?” I demand, as if I had the slightest bit of power or control over anything.
He shrugs. “Whither thou goest, they will follow. Better to be shadowed in Spanish and study hall than—”
I slam his door as he speaks.