Charnel House (18 page)

The rotting stumps jutting out of the water looked like old black teeth to Bobby. The station wagon in which he rode with his mother and younger sister Dana was crossing the causeway out of Decatur, and he glared out the window at the passing river. Sometime in September the engineers who ran Wheeler Dam had begun to slowly lower the level in anticipation of the coming winter rainfall and the old trees had risen from the murk, first as dim shapes and now as slimy crumbling piles that trailed out of sight in the muddy stew. Real horror movie stuff, despite the sunshine.
They empty the reservoir to prevent floods
, Mrs. Hughes had said in science class when someone asked her.
Otherwise we’d be in a world of hurt when the wet season came. Alabama would look more like Louisiana.
She would be pleased that he remembered, he thought.

He was ticked off
because
he was in the station wagon with his mom and little sister on the way to Belleville instead of parked on his behind in front of the TV, watching
Super Friends
. The commercial for this week
’
s episode during
Scooby Doo
had shown the Wonder Twins fighting some giant space monster.
Bobby liked seeing Superman and his buddies battle Lex Luthor and the Legion of Doom, but he
loved
when Wonder Twin Jayna was on, with her exotic slanted eyes and skintight purple costume. She really activated a wonder power in him, that was for sure. So what if she wasn
’
t real? She was
fine
.

The morning had started out so well, too. Saturdays were his favorite when school was in session, because they belonged completely to him. No racing around the house getting ready for church like on Sunday, and no racing around the house getting ready for school like during the rest of the week. Just him, a couple of bowls of cereal
, and several hours of quality cartoons. Who could ask for more? By the time
The Pink Panther
came on at ten-thirty he’d usually had his fill and was ready to move onto something else. Only retards watched that show, which was evidenced by the fact that Dana liked it.

But today had been different. Today, Mom had glided into the den not long after
Super Friends
started, before he’d even finished his second bowl of Lucky Charms. “Turn off the television, Bobby. We’re going to your Aunt Cindy’s.”

Bobby let the spoon clank into the bowl, the cereal forgotten. “What for?”

“To visit.”

Only the worst reason in the world.
To visit
was Mom lingo for
stay for a lifetime and do nothing but talk with Aunt Cindy while you slowly go crazy from the boredom of hanging out with your cousin Tanner.
Bobby and his cousin were nothing alike. Where Bobby loved to settle down somewhere quiet with his old friends the Hardy Boys—Frank and Joe were the best, practically real detectives just like he wanted to be when he grew up—or the Three Investigators or even, in a pinch, Nancy Drew (not that he would admit this to anyone, but he thought Nancy was as fine a specimen as Jayna the Wonder Twin and knew that he would be a
much
better boyfriend than Ned Nickerson), Tanner was loud and obnoxious and played football, and believed books were a source of punishment instead of pleasure.

“Why can’t I stay here?”

“Because you’re too young.”

“Mom, I’m practically
thirteen
. Jeez!”

“So you’re telling me you’re too old to watch cartoons, then?”

Mom logic.

“No fair!”

“You need to get dressed. We’re leaving soon.”

And now here he was, cruising across the river bridge instead of enjoying his one day of absolute freedom. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were going someplace else—even Grandma Rose’s—because he could have taken some books or his Erector Set and entertained himself. At his Aunt Cindy’s, those things would just get him called a fag in Tanner’s high-pitched (kind of girlish, really, when you thought about it) wispy voice. Tanner was too stupid to understand what irony was, Bobby thought.

The stump-filled water gave way to a dense forest of trees busy shedding their red, gold, and brown coats. Last winter, on the way to Huntsville for lunch one Sunday afternoon after church, he’d spotted a group of deer in these woods foraging for fallen acorns, white tails waggling in the gloomy growth. Today, however, he saw no signs of wildlife at all. Pretty funny, when you thought about it, since this place was called a wildlife refuge.

After a few miles the trees came to an end and the flat fields began, endless swaths of red clay stubbled with razed cotton plants. From time to time the station wagon passed one still waiting to be harvested, the white bolls stretching into the distance like a fresh snowfall. On the radio, the Village People quietly advised young men that they could do whatever they pleased at the YMCA.

“Feet up!” Mom said.

Bobby lifted his feet an instant before the station wagon bumped over a set of railroad tracks crossing the highway. The engine dropped in pitch briefly as his mom’s foot came off the gas, then surged again after the car had cleared the rails.

“Get yours up, Dana?” Mom asked, looking in the mirror at his little sister in the back seat.

“Yes’m. Luke’s feet, too.”

Dana was a weird kid, Bobby thought. She was nine and liked to read as much as he did—maybe even more—but her choices were far out things where kids visited other planets or found wrinkles in time or wardrobes that led to places that didn’t exist. Crazy stuff. When
Star Wars
had come out the year before, she’d gone to see it like ten times at the theater and spent endless hours making up her own stories featuring Luke Skywalker and the gang. It wasn’t a bad movie, but once had been enough for Bobby. Santa—aka Mom and Dad, but no one had told her dorkness that yet—had brought Dana a set of
Star Wars
action figures last Christmas and she always seemed to have one with her.

“Good. No bad luck for any of us today!”

There was a tree-covered hill in the distance to the right, almost a mountain by Alabama standards, bathed in the glow from the sun and so yellow from the changing hickory leaves that it looked like it was on fire. A black thread of road meandered lazily up its side.
Bet you could just about see forever from up there on the top
.

The Village People gave way to Steve Martin telling the hilarious tale of King Tut, and Bobby felt his spirits beginning to lift. The song made him think of the other best part of Saturday, the part a trip to his Aunt Cindy’s couldn’t ruin: sneaking out to the den after his parents went to bed and watching
Saturday Night Live
with the volume down low. Steve was on the show all the time, being wild and crazy with John Belushi and Gilda Radner and the rest of the gang. Bobby loved it, even though sometimes the skits the audience laughed the hardest at just confused him. By the time the station wagon passed the peeling
Welcome to Belleville
sign, he found his bad mood completely gone.

“Slug bug green!” Dana suddenly cried. Bobby had an instant to register the rusted green VW beetle coming toward them in the opposing lane before her tiny fist arced over the seat to punch him in the arm.

“Jeezit, numbnuts, cut it out! We weren’t even
playing
.” Bobby rubbed the spot where she’d gotten him, though it didn’t really hurt. Dana was little and couldn’t hit for squat.

“Maybe
you
weren’t playing, but I was.” Dana flopped back against her seat. To the figurine in her hand, she said, “See that, Luke? We just got ten free points.”

“Watch your mouth, Bobby,” Mom said, but he could tell she was trying not to smile.

Bobby threw a baleful look over his shoulder at his sister. “Didn’t count.”

“Did too.”

“Did not.”

“Knock it off, guys. It’s too early.” Mom turned the station wagon off the highway onto River Road—which was at least two miles from the river and named by someone stupid, Bobby thought—and took them into one of Belleville’s older neighborhoods. The houses in this part of town were small and had been built in the thirties and forties, bungalows that all looked the same except for cosmetic differences. Pecan trees spread their boughs across the roads, making a golden tunnel for the car to pass through, and multitudes of squirrels darted to and fro with reckless abandon through the tiny sun-dappled yards. Each house had a deep front porch spanning its width, massive painted concrete slabs resting on brick piers and decorated with potted plants and wicker furniture. American flags sprouted from the tapered square columns supporting the porch roof on a number of houses; Veterans Day was in two days.

Finally, the station wagon came to a stop at the curb in front of a white clapboard house with black shutters and a dark green porch slab. A wooden glider on chains hung from hooks in the ceiling, and on it sat Bobby’s cousin Tanner, a chunky sandy-haired boy of thirteen. A spray of freckles decorated his nose and cheeks, giving him the appearance of a much younger boy, but Bobby knew all too well his looks belied the teenager lurking in his skin. He thought his cousin was a butthole, though he’d never tell the larger boy that. He valued his life too much.

Tanner was hunched over, intently thumbing a pocket football game that was all but swallowed by his meaty hands, its faint electronic chirps like faraway birds.
Great
. Tanner looked up when the car door thunked shut, his gray eyes void of emotion and intellect. Bobby raised a hand, then let it drop when the older boy turned his attention back to the game without acknowledging him.

It was going to be a long day.

The front door opened and Aunt Cindy emerged from the house, untying the apron around her waist. She draped it over one shoulder and put her hands on her hips, watching the three of them come up the sidewalk with a broad grin on her face. Bobby never understood how a lunk like Tanner could have come from such a pretty, delicate woman. Maybe he was adopted.

“How do?” Aunt Cindy called. Then, from the corner of her mouth, “Tanner, put that thing away and say hello to your cousins.”

Tanner flipped a switch on the front of the game and it went silent. He set it on the glider beside him, then mumbled something—Bobby wasn’t quite sure it was hello—and regarded them sullenly as they approached the porch. Aunt Cindy pulled Bobby and Dana into her arms briefly, and Bobby caught the faintest whiff of her perfume. He tried not to think about the soft swell of her breast pressing against the side of his head, because that was gross. Mostly.

Aunt Cindy took Mom by the arm and led her into the house, talking so fast she sounded like an auctioneer. The two women had been best friends since they met on a double blind date at Auburn in 1961. Uncle Roger, Dad’s fraternal twin, had originally been set up with Mom, and Dad with Aunt Cindy. It became evident very quickly to all four of them that the Cupid wannabe had done a terrible job of matchmaking, and by the end of the night the two sophomore couples had switched dates.
The rest
, Mom had said when she told Bobby the story
, is history
.
Crazy enough to be an episode of
Love, American Style
, but true
.

Uncle Roger had been the second-string quarterback then, a walking slab of muscle who had gone soft after he graduated. Now he was borderline fat and always looked angry because his face was so red. He sold insurance, using old pictures of himself in his Auburn football uniform in his advertisements because folks still remembered him from his glory days. The ads didn’t seem right to Bobby, sort of like lying, but no one else seemed to mind. Football made people stupid, he knew.

Dad, on the other hand, had been a hippie-dippy back in the day. That’s what Grandma Rose—Mom’s mom—called him. Bobby wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, but he thought it involved long hair and LSD. Grandma Rose didn’t hold Dad in high regard, that was for sure. Bobby was just thankful that if his dad had been doing LSD it was a good thing he hadn’t jumped off a rooftop, like the kid in the film Mrs. Callaway had shown them in Health class. The guy had been on a
bad trip
, the narrator said, and thought he could fly. He had climbed a ladder in the gymnasium of his school and gone through the hatch onto the roof, where he promptly leaped to his death because the drugs made him think he had grown wings. Bobby remembered the tinny whine of his scream as he fell, made choppy by the ratcheting clack of the projector, and the way he laid in the parking lot with his leg crooked off to one side to show how dead he was. Drugs were for dummies, that was for sure, and since his dad worked as an engineer for NASA Bobby thought the chances were pretty good he wasn’t a dummy. Maybe Grandma Rose was wrong about him being a hippie-dippy. Maybe he was just kind of dorky. That would certainly explain Dana.

The screen door clapped shut behind the chattering women, leaving the three children alone on the porch.

“Hi, Tanner,” Dana said brightly. She still had the Luke Skywalker figurine, Bobby saw, holding it by one arm and letting poor Luke dangle like a monkey from a vine. From somewhere in one of the trees near the road a squirrel scolded them, its strident voice reminding Bobby of the guinea pigs in the pet department at the G. C. Murphy store.