Neverland (28 page)

My brother.

The baby.

Governor.

Sumter! The
scream that came out of my mouth was a whimper.

“Beau?”

“Don’t even think about it, Beau. It’s why I had to put you here. But not for very long. Just tonight. I figure they’ll go looking for you, and it’s probably gonna rain, and I’ll make ’em think you ran down to steal a boat on accounta you’re mad at your daddy. They’ll leave him with the Weenie, and then I’ll figure a way of getting him away from her. After it’s over, after I’ve given him to Lucy, then I’ll get you out of there. Neverland will be everywhere then. My daddy, my
real
daddy, will make sure nothing hurts. You’ll see. It’ll be okay. I’ll make sure he don’t really hurt too much. Lucy
promised it won’t hurt too much. He’ll go to a place of pure innocence and never have to hurt
ever
. Know how he cries? Well, he’s
never
gonna cry again. You’ll see. He’ll be in bliss. It’s a real place. We’re all gonna be there. You know how he cries. It hurts to hear him cry so much. I know how he hurts—I can feel it. He ain’t never gonna hurt again, ever. It’s for his own good. And us. To sacrifice. ’Cause once you make the sacrifice, you know, it never’s a bad sacrifice, ’cause it’s always for something better.”

“I know you see my daddy sometimes. I know, I just know,” he repeated.

“It’s what Lucy wants.” His voice was growing more faint. He was walking away. “I’m gonna take him to the place of pure innocence, on accounta that’s what he is and what he’s always gonna be. It’s the final sacrifice of summer. It’s got to happen for the world to keep turning. It’s what sacrifice is for.”

I panicked for a long time, not for me, but for Governor. I squeezed my mind down over my closed eyes, trying to see with my mind’s eyeball so I could dream things awake the way I did in my sleep:
I could picture the house in an uproar, I could picture everyone being distracted through their tempers and rages. I could picture Sumter coming in at supper, and when my mother asks him, “You seen Beau this evening?” Sumter saying, “He chased after his daddy’s car almost all the way to the West Island. He told me he was so mad he was gonna run away. I tried to tell him not to, but he was mad. So he says he’s gonna go out and get one of the dinghys and try to take it out.” And Aunt Cricket saying, “Sunny, why’n’t you tell us this before?” And my cousin shrugging, “I dunno. I didn’t think he was really gonna do it.” Grammy Weenie saying, “Beauregard would never do a stupid thing like that. He’s a boy with conscience. Something you, young man, would not know about.” And Sumter ignoring her as he always did, as all of us always did: the old lady. Grammy Weenie, the surly old biddy in a wheelchair.

I could see it all in my mind’s eyeball, just like one of my dreams:

She would be spoon-feeding prunes to Governor. “Well,” she’s saying, “I’m sure Beau has more sense, and once he cools down he’ll be home. It’s been such a rough day.” Nonie, whispering to Sumter, “Is that really what he’s gonna do?” He would shrug. Sumter would keep them guessing as long as he could. Mama saying, “Well, I’m sure he’s just fine.” “Yes,” says Aunt Cricket, her face skewered with fake concern, “and don’t worry so much about the boy, Evvie. If he’s not in by nine, we’ll take a drive down to the boathouse and see if he’s there. How much mischief can a boy get up to on the island, anyway? It’s not likely there’s any place he can hide.” “Look!” Sumter is hollering, pointing to the kitchen window, “it’s
raining
.”

In that darkness, with my eyes sealed shut with dirt, I imagined all this. I tried not to think of the bugs that were probably crawling around on me. I tried to only think of Governor, of protecting him, of keeping him from harm.
Don’t hurt Governor, don’t you hurt him.

But who could protect Governor?

Who would know what harm was headed his way?

Lucy knew.

Whatever Lucy was.

But Lucy wanted the baby.

No, Lucy wanted a sacrifice.

It didn’t have to be the baby.

I had prayed to Lucy once before, and Sumter told me that Lucy only dwelt in Neverland—it was the temple. Prayers outside of Neverland would not work as long as Lucy was there.

I didn’t really believe.

But I knew I had to save Governor.

I lay for another hour, praying as hard as I could. Praying to a god that I would have to believe in for the moment. If there was a god in that shack, it would hear me. I would do it for Governor.

I did something I had never done before: Instead of allowing my mind’s eyeball to just roam, I worked hard to imagine what I wanted to be going on. I tried to see what I wanted to see, not just take the images presented to me.

I willed my thoughts to take form.

I imagined the crate in the earth above me. I imagined the creature that Lucy was, scratching at the wood, the skull, the horseshoe crab, the dead floating slaves, the fluorescent obscenity on the door to Neverland.
All right, Lucy, I’m gonna believe in you, I’m gonna believe in you and you’re gonna answer my prayer. You’re gonna be a good god and do what your follower says, because I’m gonna give you a sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

 

 

I kept trying to get my circulation going by squirming around. Although Sumter had been pretty tight with the cord, he hadn’t packed the earth all that much, and I was able to move my knees a little. I opened my mouth for air very much like a fish, and something small and feathery crawled in along my teeth, but then wriggled out again.

The small voice, in my head, the one that had abandoned me when Sumter banished me from Neverland, it was there again.
promise
?

Whether it was my imagination, childhood madness, or truly some dark god speaking to my mind, I said.
Yes, I will give him to you
.

And then I heard the door to Neverland slam open, almost off its hinges, as if a gale force wind had pushed it back.

I had called Lucy up.

All the coldness of the damp earth was gone. The mud against my back was liquid and warm, like loving hands massaging my spine and shoulders. Feeling came into my limbs like it never had before; my blood pumped through my veins, around my heart, just as if, instead of lying bound in the dirt, I was swimming out to sea. The earth moved around me, accommodating my form, and grubs and beetles touched the skin of my arms and legs with their feelers. I felt at once an absurd union with the ground in which I lay buried, and although fear overtook me, something else put my mind at rest. It was like music, this feeling, it was like a song that the earth was singing to me.

I saw her.

Then the vision melted, and the earth was again cold and wet.

Above me: a clomping of heavy feet, shaking the land with tremors at each step.

The voice was Sumter Monroe’s.

My cousin knelt above me, digging with his fingers, pulling clods of dirt off me, drawing my head up.

“I don’t care if you are my cousin,” he snarled. “How
dare
you! I don’t know how you did it, you bastard”—his lisp was coming through in his excitement,
you bath-turd—
“but now they know, damn it, now they know it all!” He untied my hands and feet. “Now you get out of here, and if you tell them you were in here, I’ll—I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” I challenged, rubbing my hands together.

“I’ll—” But he wasn’t able to complete his threat.

In the doorway was a drunken Uncle Ralph, looking like a mad grizzly bear. “Is
this
where you kids’ve been playing? What the hell have you been up to?” He shined his flashlight along the walls. Our fluorescent obscenities flickered as the light played across them. As if seeing the place for the first time, I felt a revulsion and shame: The place was filthy,
unclean
the way Grammy talked about leprous houses in the Old Testament. It smelled like dead animals. It smelled like milk that was turning. The ceiling was heavy with spiderwebs, the dirt floor covered with mold and sprouting fungi around the corners. “Looks like some animal’s been living in here,” Uncle Ralph said. He came over and pulled Sumter up by the scruff of his shirt just like he was a puppy and shook him violently. He tossed him to the ground; Sumter fell like a rag doll.

Aunt Cricket came in behind her husband. The beam from her flashlight played across all our faces. “Sunny?” she asked uncertainly, then to me, “Beau? You and Sunny just playing a game, isn’t that right?”

I looked from her to Uncle Ralph to Sumter, and they were all glaring at me.

But then Aunt Cricket saw the words on the wall: every single cuss word any of us had ever heard in our entire lives. Right there, scrawled in Sumter’s handwriting.

“Sunny?” Her face was stricken as if with sudden illness. Some knowledge poured across it. “What have you wicked, wicked children been up to in here?”

My mother stood in the doorway, holding Governor in her arms. “Beau? Are you all right, sweetie?”

I was out of the cords and standing up.

Uncle Ralph took the cord I’d been tied with and swung it like a whip against his son’s back.

Sumter didn’t make a sound.

“You goddamn pervert,” Uncle Ralph said.

“It’s not his fault,” I said quietly.

Uncle Ralph came up behind Sumter and slapped him hard on the shoulders.

“I said it’s not his fault!”

“You just shut up and stay out of this,” Uncle Ralph muttered. “Get up, Sumter, you’re coming with me.”

Sumter crawled like a baby over to the crate. He hugged himself to it. His eyes were not looking at any of us. He was already in another world. His lips were moving furiously but without sound.

He was praying to Lucy.

“Whatchu saying, boy?” his father growled at him. “What in God’s name are you saying? What in God’s name is wrong with you? I shoulda known! I shoulda known—you got to raise your own blood, you got to raise your own blood, not some goddamn idiot’s! I told you. Crick, I told you, but
no,
you wouldn’t listen, you wouldn’t listen, would you? And now look what we got on our hands—a pervert, an unnatural bastard!”

Sumter’s mutterings became a whispered chant.

I heard him; we all heard him. But he was not whispering for our benefit.
“Lights out, lights out, lights out, lights out.”

The fits began as soon as Sumter was taken from Neverland. Aunt Cricket, in spite of her faintness, swooped down to kneel between her husband’s wrath and her child. She cradled him in her meaty arms and said, “He’s had a horrible shock, Ralph. Let it be, for now. Let it be. Later we can sort this dreadful thing out.”

“Lights out,” Sumter whispered. He began sucking his thumb.

“Jesus H,” Uncle Ralph said. He turned to me as if it were all my fault. “You get up and get inside, too. You kids all need a good talking to.” He swatted at me with the back of his hand.

“My head hurts,” I said. “He hit me with the shovel.”

“He
what?
”

“He hit me with the shovel, look.” I felt for the lump on my head. There was no bruise. Neither was there blood as I had expected. Had I been hit at all? I was feeling dizzy, and drugged. Was everything inside that shed a hallucination? Was there nothing from there that was real?