by Chad Oliver
He didn’t care what they said about Larson. Larson was as much a part of his summer life as the sunshine and the scent of pine needles.
Dead? Burned? No. No!
If Larson could die, anything could die.
“I don’t believe it,” Douglas whispered, although he had seen the evidence with his own eyes. “I don’t believe it.”
“What did you say?” Mom asked, turning the radio down for a moment.
“Nothing, Mom. I’m going to bed.”
He slowly climbed the worn wooden stairs to the sleeping loft, and he was very careful blowing out the coal oil light.
He closed his eyes and waited for the frogsound to soothe him.
It was late when he slept, and his dreams were empty.
On a day when that summer was more than half over, but before Dad came up from Illinois for his annual ten-day vacation, Douglas took the rowboat out on Sky Lake.
He did not have the strength that would later come to him, but he rowed expertly under a cloudless blue sky. Rowing did not require power; it needed skill and fluid motion, and Douglas had that. His shirtless body was as tan as varnish over a dark knotholed board. His bare feet squished in the seeping water by the red coffee can.
When something is taken from you, you do what is possible with what you have left. Turtle hunting was still possible.
He rowed steadily more than halfway across the lake of summer, angling slightly toward his right. There was a cove there with lots of lilypads and the projecting rocks that the turtles liked. Sky Lake was a lake Douglas could swim across if he had to, but it was not tiny. Douglas was a good swimmer and he could barely make it. It took time to row across that lake. How much time? Does any boy carry a watch on an afternoon in summer?
When he got close to the cove, he turned the boat around, working the oars against each other, enjoying the slight slipping rattle of the oarlocks. He moved stern-first, pushing the water in the opposite direction from normal rowing, so that he was facing where he was going.
You had to see turtles to catch them.
He had a great day.
The little turtles had sectioned green shells with splashes of color along the edges. They dozed in the sun, nearly always off guard, protected by their ancient armor. When they saw Douglas coming, they took their sweet time scrabbling into the water. He could almost grab them off the rocks, but not quite. He could have used a long-handled net, but that was not the point of the game.
Douglas loved diving into the cool clear water, his brown body going in as straight and true as a knife. He liked holding his breath and swimming in the green hush of the underwater world. His arm strokes were more coordinated than the wild flapping of the turtles’ stubby clawed little legs. He almost never missed. He had a large bucket crawling with turtles in the boat. He needed a bucket with a lid to keep things under control.
It was such fun that it was hard for him to imagine that other boys did not do this. Grown-ups? The idea was impossible. Girls? They never had the opportunity. This was kid stuff, but it was more than that. It was something for a special boy, not just any boy. Douglas did not dwell on that, but he knew it.
Catching turtles has a way of releasing time. An afternoon can vanish in an instant. This one did. Clock time does not count. It has no meaning here.
The first real change Douglas noticed was that the turtles had stopped their sunning and were slipping into the water before he arrived. The next thing he was aware of was a feeling of cold. The sun was no longer drying the drops of water on his thin shoulders. He wished that he had brought a shirt.
There was no need to turn the boat around to get back to the cabin. He simply had to lever the oars in a more orthodox way.
But suddenly there was a wind. It was a strong wind, blowing toward the cove. Before he could be ready for them, the waves came swelling across the lake. The lilypads bounced and shook, went under and struggled back, only to be drawn under again. The waves began to smack the shore with a crashing he could hear even above the whining wind.
Douglas looked up. The blue sky was gone. There was a boiling blackness.
This was not the friendly darkness of night, a velvet canopy laced with stars. No, this was black and churning. It had hate in it.
Sure enough, the lightning came. It started with a single jagged bolt, smashing straight down, hissing into the water. The instantaneous crack of thunder was like a plank slammed against his ears.
“Now, Douglas, you be careful out there.” Mom’s voice. How long ago?
Then the storm really hit. It was a solid wall of wet flashing fury. Douglas had never been out in such a storm. His rowboat was tossed around like a cork in a draining bathtub.
Douglas knew that he could not row back across the lake. He certainly could not swim against those waves. He could not stay where he was, a lightning rod bobbing in a leaking rowboat.
And there was something else.
He did not want to beach the boat on the swampy shore of the cove. He had never liked the shoreline there. That was where the bad dreams started. Even in sunshine, with his Daisy BB carbine to protect him, he had always hurried his steps when he circled the cove. There was oozing muck there. Strange ferns arched over crawling things. The willow brush grew in twisted clumps. The tall poplars were dead in their upper branches. They cracked and snapped even in the still weather. They would be showering dead wood now.
Douglas was quite certain that something terrible lived in that place. Not all the time, maybe. But sometimes.
If it had a name, it was a name Douglas had never heard.
It was there now.
Waiting.
Douglas knew that in his bones.
Douglas wiped the driving spray out of his eyes. He recoiled from another stunning smack of sound and electricity that hit within thirty yards of his boat.
There was nowhere else to go, nothing else he could do.
He remembered to dump the turtles. He unfastened the bucket lid and separated it from the bucket. He didn’t want the turtles trapped in a sinking coffin with no way out.
Then he just went with the flow. Wind, rain, and smashing waves picked his boat up and hurled it against the cove shore. He felt it hit. It struck hard, but the shore had a spongy yielding texture to it.
Douglas jumped out. He sank in muck up to his knees. He beached the boat as well as he could. It was heavy with water.
Another crooked shaft of lightning sizzled the swamp. The hammer afterblow of the thunder dazed him.
Douglas ran. Or tried to. His bare feet were sucked into the ooze. He felt things crawling between his toes. Imagination? Maybe.
It was tough to walk, let alone run.
He was shaking and crying.
Running?
Perhaps not. But he moved as fast as he could, dragging himself away from the churning lake and toward whatever it was that was waiting for him deep in the dark shoreline of the cove.
It was not a blur. Douglas experienced each event with an intense clarity.
He heard the snapping of each dead poplar branch. He felt every drop of slashing rain separately. His bare skin reacted to each shift of the howling rain. His feet sensed every change in the structure of the earth: squishy ooze that was colder than it should have been, sharp rocks that cut and sliced, flat grass that gave him a welcome surface to move on.
Strained as he was, he knew that his two most urgent problems were time and distance. Time was suspended in the fury of the storm. No matter how hard he tried to cross it, the swamp seemed endless. He knew he was moving, moving toward the deep swaying woods, but somehow he could not close the distance. It was always the same time and the same place.
The wall of wind was solidly at his back now, shoving him. Even the lightning bolts seemed behind him, held by the lake. It was as though he were being driven. Like a cow. Herded. Toward what?
The awareness of the thing that prowled the shoreline between the swamp and the deep woods permeated every cell in hi
s body. It was not a conscious knowledge. It was way down deep.
Douglas was more afraid than he had ever been.
It wasn’t that something was after him. No. Something was waiting for him. That was worse.
But he had no choice. He kept running, trying to run, fighting, a stab of flame in his lungs, getting closer to the wet pine smell of the woods, eyes half-shut, and then—
A bony hand grabbed his right shoulder.
Douglas screamed.
Some primitive nerve network got through to him before the voice did. A dry musty smell. An old beaked cap that the rain did not touch. A warm clean odor, like freshly washed denim overalls hanging in the sun.
Then the voice.
“Take my hand, boy.” Only the trace of an accent. “Chust come along and nothing will hurt you.”
Not a ghost voice. Not a skeletal voice.
Larson’s voice. His real voice. His only voice.
Douglas grabbed the offered hand. It was hard, sure, tough as anchor rope on a big ship, always had been that way, but it was a hand of flesh and blood. The bones were covered.
Fear flowed out of Douglas like a violent upchuck. Joy suffused him.
Never mind the storm!
Forget the thing that wandered hungrily through the stinking swamp.
He had Larson back.
Larson!
“Larson.” He whispered the name.
Larson heard him. Douglas did not know how, in such a storm. There was so much wind, so much noise …
But he did. And he said exactly one word in return: “Yes.”
Douglas let himself go. He didn’t think. He felt no fear. There was a silly grin on his wet face.
Why, everything was just as it should be!
They moved without effort. Douglas knew where they were going and did not question it.
Of course.
Back to the farm.
One pale blue eye twinkled at him across the worn kitchen table. The room was hot, dry, and cozy. Fresh split wood crackled and hissed in the stove. There was a very large slice of black cherry pie on a thick, glazed plate.
Real-for-sure rain pelted the roof. It sounded like marbles dropped on a metal washtub. It sounded like the hail of acorns that ushered in the fall.
Douglas had dried off. He had even managed to comb his sun-bleached hair back with his fingers. Larson had given him an old long-sleeved shirt that had once been blue. It had patches on it. It felt wonderful.
Douglas neither probed nor doubted.
He accepted.
He was totally safe in this place.
He wanted to stay forever.
Gradually, the rain slowed down. Douglas was almost sorry to see it go. The thunder receded. It was far away now. The pie was eaten, the plate shiny. There was a sense of expectancy that was not entirely welcome.
“Yew cannot stay,” Larson said. There was a sadness in his voice. Douglas did not know whether it was for Larson or himself. “We must get you home before morning. Your mother, she will be worried.”
Worried! That was the understatement of the year.
“I am home,” Douglas wanted to say. He wanted to say it very much. He knew better than to voice the words.
“Can I see the cats?” he said.
Larson smiled. His teeth were crooked, but there were no stains on them. “Just for a little. There are kittens.”
Outside, then. Still dark. A dripping world where stars were just beginning to be born.
The hay-smell in the old wood barn. It was fresh-cut hay, juicy, no decay in it. The cat was there with four kittens. They hardly had their eyes open. Douglas did not know how he could see them so clearly in the dark. He touched the kittens, gently, one by one. He stroked Mama between her velvet ears. She purred.
Out through the farmyard. He didn’t have to worry about rusty nails here. Larson kept them picked up. Douglas smelled the mules, heard them shuffling.
The sand road under his bare feet. An instant, an eternal instant, no more, no less. A half-moon silvered the running clouds. He could see the cabin where his mother was. There were buttery lights in the windows.
“Larson, are you okay?” Douglas knew that he could not come any closer than that without risking something infinitely fragile.
Larson smiled. “I have pleasure,” he said.
“Will I ever see you again?”
Larson did not answer him at once. He held out his hard knotted hand for his shirt. They both understood that Douglas could not show up in the cabin with that shirt on. There were some questions that were best avoided.
“I do not know, Douglas,” he said finally. Douglas was surprised. Larson had not called him by name before. “I think it is up to yew, what yew become.”
The words were so thick in Douglas’ throat that he almost choked. He could not say any of them. All that could be said had been said.
Douglas started for the cabin, breaking into a trot. The night air was cool against his bare skin.
He turned once and looked back.
Larson was not there.
Douglas did not have to be told that if he retraced his steps there would be no farm up that bending sandy road. It was not there always.
Just sometimes. For some people.
The reality was a fire-gutted ruin and an old man who no longer lived. One reality.
Douglas felt strange. His heart was hammering as he practically fell through the back door of the cabin. There was heat from the woodstove, light from the lanterns with their glass chimneys. All the neighbors were there.
“Mom,” he said.
The tears came. He did not know why.
There was a confusion Douglas did not even try to sort out. Even though it had once been his, this was a world he did not fully understand.
Tense men were gathered in clumps and circles. They had been planning a search in the morning. Some of them carried rifles. Now, they did not know what to do.
Women bustled about, not giving any orders but obviously running things. They cooked and comforted and fussed.
The neighbor kids, all wadded up wide-eyed in the corners, stared at him with a mixture of relief and regret. They did not often get to stay up so late. He saw some envy in their eyes.
Douglas was scared. Not as frightened as he had been in the swamp. More scared than he had ever been with Larson.
Mom. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.” Rubbing her hands together, wanting to comfort him, not knowing how.
“The storm,” he said. The words ran together. “It came up so fast. I had to beach the boat. I got lost in the swamp.” Sort of true. Not completely a lie.
Mom. “You’re all dry. Even your pants. I don’t understand how…”
“I found shelter.” Try to sound like a real woodsman. “A big fallen tree I could get under. I just waited until it was all over, and then I came home as soon as I could.” Oh, sort of true!
“You’re going to have some hot oatmeal right now, young man.” In her view, oatmeal could cure anything, maybe even death itself. “Douglas! Don’t you ever scare me like that again.”
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
Now she could embrace him. He could feel her trembling. They tried to ignore the gawkers.
He ate the oatmeal. He didn’t want it. He was full of black cherry pie. It seemed to him that he ate buckets of oatmeal.
He could not tell them anything, of course. Not even Mom.
He shivered. It was not from cold, and certainly not from hunger. He felt loved but not entirely safe. Peculiar.
Mom. “You’re going to march right off to bed this minute. Catch your death, that’s what you’ll do if you don’t take care!”
Douglas eyed the people in the cabin. He had never seen the cabin so crowded. They all seemed to be strangers, although he knew their faces. He remembered his manners. “Thank you,” he said. “Sorry.”
He almost ran up the old stairs, his bare feet sensing the grain of the worn wood.
He shucked his shorts, yanked on his pajamas. They were clean and a little stiff, like from too much starch.
He piled into his bed, pushing the wooden shutter on the window open. He had to hear the lake.
He closed his eyes. The trick was to get to sleep before Mom came up and before the frogsound stopped. The frogs were at it late because of the heavy rain. Soon, it would be morning. It would be too quiet then.
He tried not to be frightened. He felt something slipping away from him.
Don’t let it go. Don’t ever let it go. Hold on to it. Make it a part of you. Never think about it but never forget it.
He pulled the frogsound inside of him, letting it soothe him.
He kept his eyes tight shut.
“Larson,” he whispered once.
And then Douglas slept, and he dreamed the dreams that were forever dreams.
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Also by Chad Oliver
Novels
Mists of Dawn (1952)
Shadows in the Sun (1954)
The Winds of Time (1956)
Unearthly Neighbors (1960)
The Wolf is My Brother (1967)
The Shores of Another Sea (1971)
Giants in the Dust (1976)
Broken Eagle (1989)
The Cannibal Owl (1994)
Collections
Another Kind (1955)
The Edge of Forever (1971)
A Star Above and Other Stories (2003)
Far From This Earth and Other Stories (2003)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Books don’t happen without a lot of volunteer effort: Attention must be paid!
Proof reading was provided by a stalwart band of NESFAns: Dave Anderson, Bonnie Atwood, Lis Carey, Pam Fremon, Deb Geisler, David Grubbs, Lisa Hertel, Tony Lewis, Mark Olson, Kelly Persons, Sharon Sbarsky.