Dreamland Lake (13 page)

“It’s a tramp,” I said, quiet, because your voice carries out in the open like that. And it scared me. We both started pulling on our clothes. When we were dressed, whoever it was on the bridge had walked a few paces in the direction of town and was sitting down with his legs hanging over the side.

I don’t know why it scared me. Just that it was somebody up there, watching us maybe. And our being naked and all. I wanted to head off downstream, away from the bridge, and maybe come out on the route and walk back home that way. I wanted to put some distance between us and the bridge. I don’t know now if I remembered about the dead man in the woods being a tramp or not. I don’t think so, but I was tense anyway.

But Flip was heading back toward the bridge, keeping close to the trees. He looked back once and motioned for me to follow. It was his I’ve-got-a-plan gesture. And like a sheep, I followed him. Like a dumb sheep.

Cutting along in a straight line, we were back by the bridge before I knew it. There was open territory just before you get to the bottom of the arches. And Flip shot across it and under the bridge. I realized that if the tramp was still up on the bridge, he could look straight down as we crossed under him. Maybe he could have been watching us all the way up from the
swimming place. I couldn’t tell for sure. But I felt his eyes burning into the top of my head as I broke cover and made a dash under the bridge.

“He’s still up there,” Flip whispered when I came up next to him. “I looked up and saw his feet.”

“What are we doing?” I whispered.

“Be quiet and keep up with me,” he muttered. Then he headed on, still staying next to the creek. I had to stay right on his heels to keep the branches from whipping back and cutting me across the face. We were moving so fast I couldn’t think about where we were going. I was wondering if the tramp had got up and turned around and might be watching us from this side of the bridge. I didn’t look to see, though.

So we were right back by the scuttled rowboat and the puff adder before I knew where I was. The snake was still there, and I threw on my brakes before I got up to it. Flip circled in on it and grabbed it by the tail. My knees nearly gave out on me. I wanted to beg him to leave it alone. But he’d already jerked it so that its squashed head flipped out from under the rock. It was the deadest snake you ever saw. And I was the scaredest kid.

“Come on,” Flip said, like I was supposed to know what he had in mind. “We’ll head up this side of the hill and come out right over the railroad cut. Maybe we’ll get there before he comes on down the track.” Then Flip started scrambling up the hill, dragging the dead puff adder behind him.

I stood there, mad, with tears in my eyes. Flip turned around and said, “Come
ON
!” in a hoarse whisper. So I did. At a distance. It was a tough climb. I kept Flip in sight ahead and above me, with the bloody-headed snake bobbing along behind him. It
must have been about three feet long because its head grazed the ground. At some places, if he’d turned loose of it, it would have dropped back on me. And why the thought of this didn’t stop me cold, I don’t know. I was just running and climbing because he was.

We were out of the trees and up in the high grass on top of the hill. Behind us, you could see a section of the tracks crossing the bridge, wavering in the sun and heat. Flip was running in a low crouch right up to the cut where the man-made cliff face dropped straight down to the tracks. He flopped down in the weeds and crawled up to the edge. I dropped down too, but circled way around to one side of him because I knew he was dragging that damned snake through the grass, and I didn’t want to come up on it all of a sudden.

So I got up to the edge of the cut a few feet nearer the bridge than he was. The sun was getting over in the west by then so I was about half-blinded by it. I had to squint to see if somebody was walking along the tracks. But I had to look all the way back to the bridge before I saw him. He was just getting up from where he’d been sitting. He was coming our way. Just a shape in the distance, dark, with a halo of light around him.

“He’s headed this way,” I said.

“Right.” Flip was rustling around in the grass, doing something with the snake.

I could just see this shape way off and thought it was funny he wasn’t carrying anything. I knew tramps didn’t carry all their gear in a red bandanna on the end of a stick in real life. But I had seen a couple before—live ones, I mean. And sometimes they had
old beat-up cardboard suitcases. But this one was just walking along, slow, with his arms free—a big guy. I inched back from the edge of the cliff.

I had time then to realize what we were doing. Or rather, what Flip was about to do. Throw the dead snake down on the tramp and scare the wits out of him. Or maybe, throw it down right in front of him. Then a funny thing happened to me. A couple of things. It was like that dream I’d had. The one where I was dreaming I was walking along with Flip but I was somewhere else at the same time—standing way off, watching. It felt like a dream too. The sun dazzling everything, making the whole world either pure light or black shadows. It was like I was the tramp, walking along down there, maybe knowing we were up above, maybe not. But I was walking along the track instead of the tramp, feeling the rocks through the holes in my shoes. I was the tramp and I was about to get a dead snake dropped on my shoulders—if Flip’s aim was any good. I could feel the snake hit me and the black spatters of snake’s blood on me.

And for the first time in my life, I thought something Flip had thought up was senseless. Not just not worth doing. Senseless. I was going to tell him not to do it, tell him he wasn’t going to do it. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the tramp, who was getting bigger and closer. So I put my head down in the grass and counted up to ten, which would bring the tramp ten paces closer. Then I was going to get up and stop Flip, who I could hear breathing.

But when I looked up, and then over the cliff, and then down at an angle, the sun wasn’t in my eyes anymore. And I was looking down at Elvan Helligrew. And he was looking up at me.

I stood up, and Elvan stopped. I thought for a
minute he was going to turn back. But it was too late. I was pretty sure I could read his mind. That he was remembering our dire warning about not following us around. That he was pretending he hadn’t really followed us out there and spied on us all he could. And maybe how he’d even let us see him on the bridge to show us how brave he was.

But Flip whispered, “Get your damn head down.”

“It’s Elvan,” I said. “It’s him down there.”

Flip poked his head out of the weeds to make sure. “For Chrissakes,” he said, “that’s better yet.” He rustled around, getting ready to let fly with the snake.

“No,” I said and walked over to him. He had the snake all lined up with the edge of the dropoff, ready to grab it and drop it. “We’re not going to do it,” I said to him, loud.

“Maybe you’re not, but I am.”

Elvan had stopped walking, so there was no big hurry. But Flip grabbed the snake just under the neck. And I stepped up and put my foot on his hand that was holding it. I was free of my snake phobia for the time being. And Flip looked up at me, more surprised than I’d ever seen him.

“No, you’re not,” I said. And I don’t think he even heard the shake in my voice. His hand opened out, even though I wasn’t putting much weight on it. He moved it away from under my sneaker, and he never took his eyes off my face.

Now—two years later—I can see the advantage I had right then. I can see what I might have been able to do with it. I might have been able to change things for all of us, for Elvan too. But I didn’t see it then. I wasn’t really ready to stop being a follower. Not yet.

Flip stood up, and I kicked the snake back into the
tall grass without looking at it. My foot tingled where my shoe touched the snake.

All this time, Elvan must have been standing down there wondering what in the hell was going on. But I turned away and walked up over the crown of the hill. I was shaking—maybe because of the snake. And I decided I’d walk a long way home, through some pastures away from the tracks. I didn’t care if Flip came along or not.

He did. We were over a woven-wire fence and walking along through a field spattered with cow pies when he finally said, “I don’t think we’d have done it.”

“You’d have done it, all right. Without thinking.”

“Yeah, I would have,” he said after a few more steps. “It’d of been a dumb-ass thing to do. You were right. This time.”

Summer was slipping away, and I’d been nagging my dad, when he was home, to take me on the truck with him. By August, he was still holding out, but getting quieter about it. Since he’s generally pretty quiet anyway, it took me awhile to realize he was getting even quieter. So I kept at him every chance I got, especially when Mom wasn’t around.

Finally, he gave in and said he’d take me on an overnight down to Memphis and back, but he couldn’t see why I wanted to go. He’d rather stay home if somebody gave him the choice.

When my mom got wind of it, she carried on awhile till Dad finally told her, “I give him my word, and that’s that.”

I’d wanted to have Flip along too, but I knew that wasn’t in the cards. With Dad, and the relief driver, and me, it was a full cab. As it was, one of us had to lie up in the bunk behind the seat while the other one rode next to the driver.

Flip and I had gotten over the snake business without going over it. It made a difference with us for awhile. We were a little bit more polite with each other. More careful with each other, anyway. So when I found out I was going to get to make the Memphis run, I told Flip I wished he was coming too. Since it meant he’d have to carry the route alone for a couple of evenings, I had to say something.

The afternoon we left I was pretty worked up, but I played it very low key around Mom. She was saying things like, “I don’t want you sitting up all night. You sleep in the bunk.” And, “I don’t want you eating that slop in those all-night truck stops. And no coffee.” And, “Don’t sit on the toilet seats in those places. You don’t know what you could pick up.” Talk about personal comments.

We got out on the road about sundown. It was Interstate 57, that cuts straight down the state to the bridge at Cairo. Pete Langbecker was relief driver, and he started out in the bunk. I guess he went to sleep right away; he’s even quieter than Dad so you can’t always tell when he’s awake. Technically, Dad’s his boss, but they’re buddies and play pinochle at the Elks whenever they’re both home. It’s a close friendship, I guess, even if they don’t talk much to each other. Maybe
because
they don’t talk much.

I started out sitting by Dad, and you’re way up
above the other traffic. Perched up that high you can see straight ahead over every car on the road. And you can spot trouble a mile off. It was hot even after sundown, but there was a wind. Hot and steady, coming out of the south to meet us. “I’ll be in ninth the whole way if that wind holds,” Dad said. He was talking about gears.

“What are we carrying?” I asked him.

He couldn’t remember. Truckers don’t do the loading anymore. So he told me to look at the manifest. It said we were carrying a load of knocked-down insulated fiberboard cartons for large kitchen appliances.

“Is that a good load to haul?”

“Everything’s about the same,” he said, “except heavy machinery than can shift on you.”

It’s funny about driving along at night. There’s all that time to talk, and you can’t think of too much to say. It’d always been so easy to think of things to talk about with Flip. But I was beginning to want something else.

South of Centralia, you start seeing the oil wells pumping out in the fields. They look like squatty, little dinosaurs with their heads moving up and down in a steady motion. We were rolling along at seventy, but, once in awhile, a car would pass us. If it dimmed its lights as it came around us, Dad would dim his. Then after they’d get past, some of them would hit their dimmers again as kind of a salute.

We had the windows down, and there was a strong smell of diesel fuel. But over it, you could smell open country. Ragweed, and dust, and an occasional whiff of barnyard. I was trying hard to stay awake and wondering when we’d switch off so I’d get the bunk. I thought maybe if I closed my eyes but stayed sitting
straight up, Dad wouldn’t notice I was napping.

He didn’t, I guess, because after awhile he cleared his throat like he was about to say something. Since he doesn’t talk all the time, you can usually tell when he’s getting ready. So I popped my eyes open. He eased forward from the seat and worked his shoulders around to loosen them up. I was still waiting.

“Your mother ever talk to you about things?” he said after awhile, never taking his eyes off the road.

“What things?”

“Oh—you know—about how you ought to act.”

“Manners?”

“No, not manners. I know she talks a lot of manners. She talks them to me.”

“Well, what then?” (I knew what then.)

“About how you ought to act to keep out of trouble. With girls.”