The Year of the Storm (3 page)

T
he next day, Cliff and I met down at the pond behind my house just as the sun positioned itself high above us, signaling midday. The pond was nameless but popular with fishermen in the area for its brim and bass. Most of the fisherman came early in the morning or at dusk. Now the pond was still and empty, a dirty, slightly rippled sheet stretched across the field.

“What are those for?” I said, pointing at the binoculars around Cliff's neck.

“What do you think they're for?” He flashed me a particularly toothy and crooked grin, the kind that reminded me that in spite of all his parents' money, he would always find getting dates a challenge.

“No idea. Bird watching?”

“Close.” He held the binoculars up to his eyes. “Chick watching.”

“Okay. Sounds better than bird watching, at least.”

“I talked to Sarah Moss last night. She and her sister are coming to the lake today to swim.”

“You talked to Sarah Moss?”

Cliff tried to play it cool. “Yeah. She called. We talked. No big deal.”

I knew better. Girls did in fact call Cliff sometimes, but it was always for help with homework. It was summer, so that couldn't have been it. “Okay, come clean,” I said. “Why did she call?”

Cliff gave me a sheepish grin. “All right. She called to ask me if I'd be willing to type her up some notes on our summer reading books, okay? But I talked to her. That's what counts, right?”

“Sure. If you say so.”

“I do say so. And furthermore, I say that we climb this tree and get in position because Sarah and Rebecca are going to be here in bikinis. And Rebecca's like twenty. Let that sink in for a second.”

I shook my head. I'd been a part of Cliff's schemes before.

“I'm going to pretend you didn't just shake your head and roll your eyes,” Cliff said. “Two words: Golden. Opportunity.”

I shrugged. I felt tired and completely uninvolved even if there might be an opportunity to see female flesh.

“You ever stop and think that me and you are just losers, Cliff?”

“Of course we're losers, but we're losers with binoculars. Is there a problem?”

I shook my head. “I don't know. Maybe instead of hiding in a tree, we should actually stay out here in the open and talk to them.”

Cliff laughed, but I could hear genuine hurt behind it. “Easy for you to say. Your name isn't Cliff. You don't have a face full of pimples and a brain that scares girls.”

“There's nothing wrong with Cliff.”

“There's nothing right with it either.”

Sometimes Cliff did this. He got down on himself. Maybe I would have done the same with his particular roadblocks, but today I found it irritating. He had a mother and father, a giant-sized house. I didn't, and after last night, I found myself wallowing in my own self-pity.

Cliff must have sensed this because he smiled suddenly and patted my back. “Come on. I'll let you use the binoculars first.”

I shrugged and began to climb the tree.

—

W
e climbed this tree a lot, mostly when we pretended to be cops on a stakeout. Sometimes we pretended we were astronauts hanging on to a satellite in deep space after narrowly escaping our starship before it was sucked through a black hole. Sometimes, especially in the last few months or so when I began to feel the absence of Mom and Anna like two bullet-sized holes in my heart, I climbed up by myself and looked for them. I know that sounds crazy even for a kid, but that's exactly what I did.

When I reached the high, solid limb where I liked to sit, I scanned the area for anything to see. Deserted. No fisherman, no deer tentatively slipping from the dark world of the woods to the open sunlight for a drink in the pond, certainly no Sarah or Rebecca in bikinis. I repositioned myself on the limb so I could see out to the road and the cotton fields beyond. The clouds had moved on and the sun shone hot and bright on the rows of cotton, making them appear like silver liquid in the breeze. Turning back, I looked at the massive woods that lay behind the pond and my house. They stretched for a couple of miles before giving way to sloping fields and hills, and past that, County Road Seven, where Mom and Dad had forbidden me to go. It was filled with honky-tonk bars, loose women, and hard-drinking men. Dad would only shrug when I asked him about it and mumble that it was “no place for a boy.” Of course, his silence on the issue only increased my desire to see it. Yet that desire paled in comparison to the fascination I felt for the woods. I'd studied them so many times, wondering if they'd swallowed Mom and Anna whole, or perhaps they'd simply slipped away through some hidden crease in the trees. The little cabin was back there somewhere. When they first disappeared, the cabin had attracted quite a bit of attention. I can still remember the police tape and the constant flow of uniformed and plainclothes cops streaming in and out. Dad and I stood, tense with anticipation, watching for several hours before the sheriff finally sauntered over, winking at me, shaking my father's hand. “Nothing,” he said. Dad—this was still very early on—had taken this as good news.
Nothing
meant they were still alive. Somewhere along the way, this definition had changed. At least for Dad.
Nothing
had become synonymous with a kind of lingering and bitter regret, the weight of unending frustration—in short, no news began to equal bad news.

Some days, I liked to climb this tree and sit very still, dragging my gaze over the treetops, searching for the slight change, the little bump in the landscape where the cabin was. Then I'd be able to pick out the little smokestack on the top. According to Dad, the cabin hadn't been occupied for years, and in fact, he wasn't sure if it ever had been. This was about all I'd been able to drag out of him on the subject. Anything else I knew—or
thought
I knew—about the place was cobbled together from whispers, rumors, and innuendo. The gist of it was that the girls—those mysterious shadowy girls who seemed to haunt not only the woods, but the whole town—had something to do with the place. Whatever that might be, nobody said.

Something bumped my leg. I looked down. Cliff was balanced precariously on the limb below me, holding the binoculars up. “Take them before I fall,” he said.

I took the binoculars and put them to my eyes.

“See anything interesting?” Cliff said.

I scanned the pond. “Well, the girls obviously haven't shown yet.” I moved the binoculars up so I could see the woods. Slowly, I tracked them over the trees until I came to the place where the cabin was. I saw the patched shingles, the solitary, rusty smokestack. Panning down some, I saw kudzu climbing over the walls and onto the roof, covering everything in a mess of green.

“What are you looking at?” Cliff said.

“That old cabin.” I pulled the binoculars from my face and handed them back to him. “You ever seen a ghost?”

“Uh, did somebody say non sequitur?”

“Huh?” I hated when Cliff used big words.

“Non sequitur. Means moving from one idea to the next without any connection between them. The old cabin. Then the question: Have I ever seen a ghost? Which, by the way, I haven't. Have you? And before you answer, please explain what this has got to do with the cabin.”

“Nothing, really. It's just that the cabin is kind of spooky. The two girls and all.”

“The two girls? You mean the missing girls? That's just a legend, Danny. Folklore. If two girls really did go missing in these woods, I'm positive their bodies would have been found by now. Besides, even if the girls had gone missing and
had
died, ghosts don't exist.”

I shrugged, not wanting to argue the point. Anyway, that wasn't really what had been bothering me, and to Cliff's credit, he could tell.

“There's something else, right?” he said. Cliff had many faults, but he was a great listener, and more importantly, he knew me. My moods, my brooding silences. The hesitation in my conversations. He could read me like he could read his science book, which is to say irritatingly well. Still, I hesitated, not sure if I should tell him about the white-haired man I thought Dad had shot at, or about Anna. I decided on the man. The encounter with Anna seemed too personal for some reason. Besides, telling him about that would be like admitting she was a ghost, which would be like admitting she was dead. Despite the vague, almost dreamlike nature of my trip through the woods the night before, I didn't believe I'd seen a ghost. In fact, it felt strangely reassuring, like evidence that she was still alive.

“The other night there was a man at our front door. He had long, white hair. He was old. I don't know. Maybe not
old
old, but haggard, you know. Worn the hell out. He was dragging this oxygen tank thing around with him. Like—”

“Like Mr. Yates.”

“Yeah, like Mr. Yates.” Mr. Yates was an old man who used to be the custodian at the school before my dad took over for him when his emphysema became too much to deal with.

“Weird,” Cliff said, lifting the binoculars to his eyes. “But what makes you think he's a ghost and not just some loon?”

“I don't know. Lots of things, I guess.” In reality, it was one thing: Anna. The visit from Anna had seemed connected somehow, had made my thoughts turn to the supernatural. And then there was Dad shooting at what had to be the same visitor I had seen the night before. Dad was a crack shot and he rarely missed. Yet I'd seen the light from the man's cigarette from my upstairs window after the gunfire.

“Anyway,” Cliff said. “What did he want?”

“He just stood there. Like he wanted to knock on the door but couldn't decide if he should or not. The wind was blowing and it was raining and his hair kept flying everywhere. He was smoking too. Switching out hits from the oxygen with drags on his cigarette. He just stood there. It seriously creeped me out.”

“So you think this guy is a ghost?”

“I didn't say that. It's just weird. It's all too weird, like something out of a movie.”

“Did this apparition have a scar on his right cheek?”

“I couldn't tell. Why?”

“Long white hair, right? Messy. Greasy. Scruffy beard?”

“Yeah.” I looked down and saw Cliff looking through the binoculars.

“I think I see your ghost,” Cliff said.

—

I
zoomed the binoculars in on the man's face. If anything, he looked more frightening by daylight than he had a few nights ago. His scar was long; it ran from his right eye down his cheek until it disappeared beneath his shirt collar. He muttered to himself as he paced around outside the cabin.

“What's he doing?” Cliff said.

“Looks like he's moving in.” I panned out and saw that he was indeed moving in. He was carrying a large framed painting into the cabin. His pickup was filled with boxes and furniture.

“You've got to be pretty hard up to move into that place.” Cliff whistled. “No running water, lights. Jeez. I hope he brought plenty of books.”

I panned back to the truck. “I see a bed frame, so yeah, it looks like he's taking up residence.”

“Why do you think he came to your house the other night?”

I shook my head and lowered the binoculars. “I don't know.” What I didn't say was that I felt damned determined to find out.

WALTER

I
remember fourteen. Best and worst year of my life. Best because I learned how to be a man. Worst because I forgot how to be a boy.

The year was 1960. The year I met Seth Sykes.

Before Seth, I had friends, but they were the roughneck kind, the type of boys more interested in knocking out windows and kicking around seventh graders than doing anything worthwhile. I knew right away that Seth was different.

We liked to hang out at the pond. Me, Jake Rogan, and Ronnie Watts. The summer before, we'd built a little hut out of two-by-fours hauled over from Ronnie's place. We kept a good supply of cigarettes, moonshine, and one
Playboy
. May 1959. Had a sketch of three bathing beauties on the front. That magazine might have been the most looked-at periodical in the history of the world. I still compare every woman I see to the women in those pages. I suspect that's a sad thing in the end, but it's true, so there's no use in hiding it.

You might say it was sort of like our hangout, a place where we felt like men. It never occurred to us then that we didn't have the first clue about what it took to be real men. Ronnie, he had a saying he liked to always recite when he was sitting in the little fort, a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of Eugene Porter's moonshine in the other. “A man in his castle is a beautiful thing. All I need is some cootch and I'd have the world by its balls.”

That's where we were the day Seth stumbled across us. We'd been doing nothing out of the ordinary—smoking, drinking, talking about girls, doing the things we thought made us men. Seth had been running fast and ran plumb into our little fort we'd worked so hard to build. We didn't see him so much as feel the fort shake when he hit it.

Jake put out his cigarette and went to look.

Ronnie shrugged. “Some animal, I guess.”

Jake came back inside, lit another cigarette. “Men,” he said, “anybody up for kicking some queerboy ass?”

—

I
didn't believe Seth was gay. I'm not sure Jake even believed it at first. Yeah, he was different from us, but there were a lot of kids we went to school with that were different. Being from the woods like we were, we tended to see everyone as an outsider, and if you were an outsider, you were queer. It's just how we saw the world back then.

It's hard to find the right words to describe Seth.
Fragile
—that was the word that came to mind, though time would teach me this wasn't really the truth of it. No, truth was, he was as tough as thick rope. We called guys like that hard asses in 'Nam. He didn't look it, but Seth was a hard ass, through and through. Just took us a little while to figure that out, is all.

Jake wanted to make him pay for being in our woods and said we should track him down.

I told him it wasn't worth it, but that was like trying to convince an alcoholic that he didn't need another drink. Once Jake set his mind to something, he was going to do it.

“I saw this faggot,” he said. “He's as queer as a three-dollar bill and he's on our turf.”

That was enough for Ronnie, and I guess it was enough for me too. We went after him, running deep into the woods. We caught up with him ten minutes later at a little creek. The three of us stood on a hill, looking down on him. Seth sat at the edge of the water, his hands buried in his face. He was crying.

I don't think most people can pinpoint one certain moment when they change from a child to an adult. For me, though, it was easy. Not too long before, I would have joined Jake and Ronnie without a second thought. But for some reason, I didn't see any joy in ridiculing somebody else anymore. Especially somebody as hard up as this kid was. Maybe it was because my own family was changing—my old man was drinking more and had been out of work going on a year. Maybe it was just that I understood how sometimes a kid needed to find a place alone where he could cry his eyes out and not worry about being called a baby. Hell, maybe it was the way he cried. There was nobody here to impress—at least as far as he knew. Those tears weren't for gaining anybody's damned sympathy; they were real.

Years later, as a POW in Vietnam, I suffered moments like this when bawling my eyes out seemed like the only answer. But that was Vietnam. Even at fourteen, I knew Seth must have been up against some pretty heavy stuff.

There was something else too. Something in his face that I recognized. Something in his eyes, maybe. I couldn't place it, but for a second, I saw it clear enough to make me dizzy. Then it was gone, and I heard Jake's voice:

“A faggot and a baby. Does the little baby queer want his mommy?”

Seth looked up, his eyes going from hurt to defiant in a hot second.

Ronnie laughed. “Look at that hair. He's a homo all right. Hey, pussy juice? You ever heard of scissors? Or maybe you're trying to grow it out so you can put it in a ponytail?”

Jake snickered. My stomach turned because I knew that every joke they made and every threat they hurled at this kid would make my own life that much harder. Pretty soon I'd have to make a choice. I couldn't just stand here with them. Silence was the same as approval. I knew that, even at fourteen. Hell, I knew it more then than I ever would.

Still, I waited. They were just throwing out some insults. We'd done that to kids hundreds of times.

“I'll bet he's got tits and a pussy,” Jake said.

Seth stood up. “You won't say it to my face.”

Jake slapped me on the back and laughed. “Hell, I was hoping you'd say that.”

—

A
little later, we stood in a semicircle around Seth, me on the right, Ronnie on the left, and Jake in the middle, facing Seth directly. From this closer view, I saw that Seth had a dark complexion and even darker eyes. He'd stopped crying now, and despite his long, wild hair, he didn't look like a queer at all, not now. He looked like a kid, not too different from us save one thing. His eyes. I saw in those eyes something that frightened me a little. Later, I would see similar expressions in 'Nam. Guys who had seen too much. Guys who had stepped past some invisible line that the rest of us didn't even know was there, and once they crossed that line, they changed. A silence went with them wherever they walked, and they stopped caring about their own well-being. When Jake spoke to him, he didn't even flinch; those eyes stayed right on Jake's, not moving, full of something reckless, full of something I didn't have a word for yet.

Still don't, to tell the truth, though some days it feels like it's on the tip of my tongue.

Seth was thin and at least three full inches taller than Ronnie, who was tallest in our little gang. But Ronnie wasn't just tall, he was muscular—broad shoulders with arms like small tree trunks. He'd been doing Jake's dirty work for years. Just looking at Seth, I couldn't imagine him being able to take any of us, much less Ronnie. Then I looked at his eyes again. You ever seen a cat go all bug-eyed before it pounces? That was Seth, except his eyes weren't big or anything; no, truth was, they weren't much more than slits. Didn't matter, though; the intensity, the wild-assed focus was there. And I knew. No way one of us would take him down alone.

Jake stuck his finger in Seth's chest. Obviously, Jake couldn't read the same signs I could, or maybe he just didn't care.

“Where do you live, queer?”

Seth knocked Jake's hand away.

Ronnie stepped forward. Jake held his hand up.
Wait
, the hand said.
Just wait until I need you.
Ronnie nodded and glared hard at Seth.

“Touch me again, queer, and I'll kill you.” The thing about Jake was that he probably meant it. I'd once seen him hold a puppy over a fire by the scruff of its neck because it wouldn't stop barking. When the poor thing's backside began to smoke, the puppy squealed and shook and tried to bite him, but Jake held on, at least until the fire started to burn his hand. Then he took the puppy over to the pond and shoved him under. I thought he would keep him there until he was drowned, but that wasn't good enough for Jake. Jake wanted more. Jake always wanted more. He pulled the pup out and took him over to the fire to light him up again. This went on until the poor thing passed out. After that Jake tossed it aside, bored because he couldn't watch it suffer anymore.

It's hard for me to say nowadays just why I stuck with Jake as long as I did. My father liked to talk about family and the importance of sticking with your blood, but Jake was no kin of mine. Still, we'd spent enough time together that we might as well have been brothers, or at least cousins. I suppose it was loyalty as much as anything. At least that's what I liked to tell myself back then. The real reason—I know this now—is that there was part of me in Jake. A sick, twisted part that could stand by and watch a dog being tortured. Violence was a part of our lives back then. We didn't think twice about killing a rabbit or fox or any animal, really. There was some measure of comfort in watching something else suffer and knowing you didn't have to. This was in me as much as it was Jake. And when a thing like that gets inside you, it don't come out easily. Even when you want it to real bad.

So when Jake threatened to kill Seth, I had no reason to doubt he wouldn't try.

“Put your hand on my chest again and I'll knock it off again,” Seth said.

Jake pointed his finger at Seth's chest a second time, but there was a key difference. This time he didn't touch him. “What are you running from?” he said.

“Don't worry about it.”

“Prove you ain't a faggot.”

“Don't have to.”

It was like some kind of Mexican standoff. Seth was so cool under our pressure that I think it set Jake on edge. The fact that he didn't touch Seth again said something. I'd never seen Jake back down from anybody before.

“Look around you, faggot. These woods belong to me, Ronnie, and Walter. If we catch you here again, you're going home to Mommy with your nuts in a sling.
Comprende?
”

I thought it was over then. Jake was giving him an out. He didn't really want to fight this strange boy, not now. He'd wait until the odds were stacked far enough in his favor that he could humiliate Seth. It was never about just winning with Jake. He had to destroy the other person, kill their spirit. I'd seen him do it to some of the other boys at school before. But this was the summer. There wasn't a teacher here to break things up when they got tight. These were the woods, where a wildness hung in the air, strong as the scent of pine. Jake must have felt the difference. I know I did. Seth seemed too unpredictable, too intense, and out here anything could happen.

I thought it was over.

If it had been, things might have been different. Maybe I'd never have known about the slip. Maybe I wouldn't have survived 'Nam. Probably wouldn't have. The slip and Seth kept me alive over there.

It wasn't over, though. Seth said something that set Jake off. Something that I'd later wonder how he knew.

“You talk a lot about queers, don't you? I'll bet your daddy is taking it up the ass every day and night in prison. Maybe you just want to be like him.”

I'd seen Jake angry before, but usually he kept it at a slow boil, just under the skin, always hot, but never full tilt. I had no idea how fast he could move. His fist had been at his waist, just hanging loose one second, and the next it was slammed up against Seth's right cheek. He hit Seth four times before anybody could react. Seth crumpled to the ground.

“You don't know nothing 'bout my daddy,” he said, kicking Seth again.

I realized Jake didn't plan on stopping, so I reacted. That's something situations like this teach you. What you're made of. What you really believe. It's one thing to stand by and watch a puppy being tortured; it's not right, but it's a different thing than watching one person trying to kill another. I was proud to find out that particular bit of darkness wasn't in me.

I grabbed Jake in a bear hug, squeezing down on his chest as hard as I could. “Go easy, Jake. You've made your point.”

“That bastard. Wants to talk. About my daddy. I'll kill him!” Each phrase was punctuated with another kick to Seth's midsection. I finally succeeded in pulling him away. He cursed me and struggled to break free of my grip.

“Get him off me!” he shouted to Ronnie.

Ronnie looked stunned. He didn't move.

“Just stay put, Ronnie,” I said. “Jake needs to calm down before he kills somebody.”

Jake twisted violently under my arms, but I didn't let go. “Get. Him. Off. Me,” he said.

Ronnie shook his head.

“Remember three summers ago, Ronnie? Remember what those queers did to your—”

“Okay,” Ronnie said. “Enough. Let him go.”

I knew Ronnie could hurt me, but I also knew letting Jake go would get Seth hurt probably as bad or worse. I held on. Ronnie shook his head. “Your decision, Walter.”

He tried to come around behind me. I turned Jake, always keeping him in front, a barrier between Ronnie and me. Seth stirred, getting up to his knees, coughing, maybe even spitting up blood.

I couldn't keep this dance up forever, but maybe I could last long enough for Seth to get away. “Get out of here,” I said.

Seth made it to his feet but didn't go anywhere. Stubborn fool.

Ronnie lunged at me. I tried to move out of the way, but Jake wouldn't move with me and I was stuck. He slid through my arms and to the ground. Ronnie spun me around and I lost my balance, falling back into Seth. Seth caught me and shoved me aside before going for Jake. I hit my head on the base of an oak tree and watched from the ground as Seth managed one good lick in on Jake—a wicked shot to his nose—before Ronnie grabbed hold of him and lifted him high into the air. At first, I thought he was going to take him to the creek, maybe toss him in, but no, he walked upstream a little to where the bank turned muddy and soft. Then I knew where he was heading. For as long as I could remember there was a certain area along the creek that was like quicksand. Hell, there wasn't any
like
to it; it
was
quicksand. As a younger boy I'd thrown in rock after rock and watched, fascinated, as each disappeared from sight.