December Park

  I kissed the side of his face. His cheek was unshaven, rough, and his skin smelled like tobacco.

  “Before you head out,” he said, one arthritic finger pointing crookedly at the porch’s awning, “tell your grandmother I saw that poor excuse for a meat loaf she’s defrosting for dinner and I won’t have none of it. I won’t. I’m too old to eat leftover meat loaf. I’m just too damn old.”

  “I’ll tell her,” I said.

  He leaned to one side and slid a hand into his pocket. “Here,” he said, producing a ten-dollar bill. “Get one of them sausage and pepper dogs for yourself at the parade. But only if you promise not to smoke that cigarette you had tucked up behind your ear when you came out here.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good kid.”

  I thanked him, kissed the side of his face again, and fled back into the house.

  Adrian was waiting for me on the curb in front of his house.

  “I got bad news,” I said and told him I had to be home at nine o’clock.

  “But the curfew’s lifted for tonight,” he said.

  “Not my dad’s curfew.”

  “What about the fireworks?”

  “I don’t know, man.”

  We walked toward the highway, the day already hot and sunny. Down in the Superstore plaza, a few guys I knew from school zipped by on skateboards. One of them was Dieter Grosskopf, an Austrian exchange student and inventor of the smokeless smoke bag. It consisted of a Ziploc bag sealed shut with packaging tape and a McDonald’s drinking straw poking from it. When smoking in the boys’ lavatory at school, one need only to blow into the straw and fill up the bag, leaving no trace of smoke behind.

  “Hey,” Peter said, coming up behind us. He shook some Cracker Jacks into his mouth. “You guys hear about Mr. Van Praet?”

  “No,” I said. “What about him?”

  “He died last night.”

  “No shit,” I said. “How?”

  “Heart attack,” Peter said.

  “How’d you find out?”

  “Monica’s piano teacher is friends with Van Praet’s wife.” Monica was Peter’s eleven-year-old half sister. He tilted his head back and upended the box of Cracker Jacks into his mouth. Munching, he said, “Isn’t that wicked?”

  “Poor Mr. Van Praet.”

  “Who’s Mr. Van Praet?” Adrian asked.

  “He was our freshman geography teacher,” Peter said. “Now he’s worm food. Poor bastard.”

  Across the parking lot, Scott and Michael came out of the Quickman. Upon seeing us, Michael whooped and they both ran in our direction. Skidding to a stop mere inches from me, Michael proceeded to juggle—quite impressively—a bunch of wrapped Quickburgers.

  “Mr. Van Praet’s dead,” I intoned.

  “Our old math teacher?” Michael said, keeping his eyes on the burgers as he juggled.

  “Geography,” I corrected, snatching one of the burgers out of the air. This caused the rest to fall to the ground, which Michael scooped up.

  “You mean the Piper got him?” Scott said.

  “No,” said Peter. “Heart attack.”

  Scott looked momentarily crestfallen. “I guess he was a bit overweight.”

  “That’s what you get for eating unhealthy food,” Michael said and took a massive bite out of a Double Hermes Burger with extra cheese.

  The five of us cut across the highway and down the embankment into the Dead Woods. More signs had been posted since our last visit—Keep Out and Park Closes at Dusk. After a fusillade of springtime thunderstorms followed by several weeks of sunny days, the woods had become a veritable jungle. The trees were big heavy things bristling with leaves. The brook flowed steadily toward some distant point on the horizon accompanied by a chorus of frogs. Little brown shrimp streaked through the water.

  Just as we reached Echo Base, Scott slowed his pace.

  The headless statues stood upright in a rough circle about the clearing.

  We approached with caution and walked slowly around them. Only one remained lying on the ground, though it had been dragged a few feet from its usual spot beneath the chorded veins of roots and ivy and left in the center of the clearing in plain view. The other headless statues surrounded it, like witnesses at a crime scene.

  “Who would do this?” Adrian asked.

  No one said a word. There were other kids from school who knew about the statues, but they never really came down here, and most of what they knew had been told to them by older siblings. In the past year, we hadn’t seen anyone else hanging around down here.

  “Devil worshippers,” said Scott.

  “Cut it out,” I said. I stared at the statue lying on the ground, its concrete body ribbed with weeds.

  A heavy thud shook the ground as Michael knocked one of the statues over.

  We all looked at him, startled.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, stepping away from the fallen statue.

  I turned back to the one on the ground, crouching beside it. It was the one that we had carved our initials into. Scott and Adrian looked down at it from over my shoulders, and I knew they saw it, too.

  “Christ,” Scott said. “That can’t be a coincidence, could it?”

  Michael and Peter came around to the other side of the statue.

  “Oh, boy,” Michael said.

  “Maybe this one just fell over,” Peter rationalized.

  It looked pretty much on purpose to me, although I kept my mouth shut. I stood, swiping dirt from my knees.

  “Maybe Keener did it,” Scott said. “He and his friends sometimes come down here to smoke and drink, remember?” Then he spun around and raced over to a mound of upturned soil at the foot of a tree. He dropped to his knees and dug up the spot. Once he lifted out his bag of firecrackers, the relief was evident on his face.

  “What about the rest of the stuff?” Peter said.

  We checked our trash bags and the hidden beer cooler. As far as I could tell, everything was accounted for. It was mostly just garbage, anyway.

  “The head’s gone.” Adrian was standing on the fallen statue, surveying the clearing. He pointed to the niche in the tree, where he usually sat. “I left it right over there.”

  “It’s gotta be around here somewhere,” Michael said.

  Adrian shook his head. “Someone took it.”

  “That doesn’t seem like something Keener would do,” Peter said.

  Suddenly, the woods around us seemed to obscure hidden dangers. The foliage had grown in so thick Keener and his friends could be hiding here right now, just yards away from us, and we wouldn’t have been able to see them. Or perhaps someone even more dangerous than Keener . . .

  “It was kids,” Michael said. “Just some kids goofing off. We’re getting freaked out for nothing.” Yet it sounded like he was trying to convince himself of this most of all.

  Again, Adrian shook his head. He stepped down from the statue. “It was the Piper. We took it from him first, and now he’s taken it back.”

  For several seconds, no one said a word. The only sounds were of the birds in the trees and the bugs in the grass. Beyond the clearing, something splashed in the shallow brook, and we all jumped.

  “Look,” Scott said finally. “Are we gonna stand around here scaring ourselves all day, or are we gonna blow stuff up?”

  We decided to blow stuff up. Scott slung his sack of fireworks over one shoulder, and we crossed December Park. The park was desolate this afternoon, which was unusual for such a nice summer day, but in the wake of Tori Brubaker’s disappearance, it seemed the local teenagers had begun hanging out in shopping malls, movie theaters, and each other’s houses. Fear had reduced our humble city to a ghost town.

  We cut into the otherworldly darkness of the Solomon’s Bend Road underpass, our footfalls rebounding off the black cobblestones. Michael unleashed a cry of sheer glee, and the sound seemed to crawl up the curved stone walls while simultaneously pulsing in our ears. Peter unloaded the pockets of his cargo shorts, dum
ping G.I. Joe figures onto the ground, and Scott rifled through the bag of firecrackers.

  We wrapped one figure’s arms around a small cylindrical noisemaker with a fuse curling from the top. Peter set it down on the cobblestones and Scott lit it. When the fuse caught, Peter and Scott dispersed, giggling.

  It exploded, the noise so loud in the curved stone chamber that it was like being inside the barrel of a giant gun. Clutching our ears, laughing so hard that tears spilled down our cheeks, we stumbled out onto Solomon’s Field, the stink of gunpowder still in our noses.

  “I gotta see what’s left,” Michael shouted and ran back into the underpass. He returned moments later cupping pieces of the destroyed action figure in his hands, a look of utter fascination on his face.

  Scott rolled some cherry bombs into the palm of one hand. One by one, we lit them and threw them into Drunkard’s Pond. Each one exploded with a resounding whumph! and sent water geysering into the air.

  With one cherry bomb left, we decided to blow up the Park Closes at Dusk sign that had been staked into the grass. It was made of aluminum, so the most we hoped for was a sizable dent.

  Michael stripped off one of his shoelaces and tied the cherry bomb to the front of the sign. Scott handed his lighter to Adrian, who looked down at it hesitantly.

  “Go on,” I told him. “Just light it and run like hell.”

  He crept over to the sign, flicked the lighter—it took him several times just to arrive at a flame—then lit the cherry bomb’s fuse.

  “Run!” we all shouted.

  Adrian dropped the lighter and sprinted toward us. His oversized glasses bounced on his face, and his mouth was peeled back from his teeth in a terrified grimace I found utterly hilarious.

  The cherry bomb detonated with a boom that cracked the sky like thunder. One second the sign was a perfectly smooth aluminum rectangle; the next second, it was bent at a perfect ninety-degree angle. The shoelace whipped off into the air, and what remained of the cherry bomb’s shell rained down in charred, smoking remnants to the grass.

  We cheered.

  Market Square was alive. The carnival barkers catcalled to us, the wondrous odors of fried foods tantalized us, and a troop of girls wearing Holy Cross polo shirts giggled and pointed at us as we strutted by.

  We loitered around the game booths, scrambling for coins whenever we saw them glinting off the pavement. Once we had enough, we pooled the change into Scott’s hand, and he purchased five softballs to toss at a pyramid of ceramic bottles. Scott was a crack shot—he scattered the bottles with the second pitch. His prize was a ticket for a free falafel, which the five of us tore into like vultures, then washed down with a communal bottle of Pepsi.

  At five thirty, the parade started coming down Third Avenue. It was led by two women who carried a banner that read Harting Farms Chapter of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks and wore big floppy hats adorned with bright flowers. The Stanton School marching band followed, those kids sweating in their starchy blue and gold uniforms, their trumpets and trombones and bassoons blazing like fire in the sunlight, the snare drums resonating like machine guns.

  Next was a conga line of dog walkers, the owners waving to the crowd, the dogs looking hot and tired and overall miserable. A few motorcars, outfitted in red, white, and blue streamers and piloted by men in patriotic hats who grinned like they had femurs wedged into their mouths, brought up the rear.

  They all banked sharply onto Center Street. The marching band diverged, claiming its final position atop the risers erected in front of the bandstand. Then they broke out into a jazzy rendition of “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”

  There were a few older girls seated on bleachers beside the bandstand, drinking what looked like soda but was probably alcohol from clear plastic water bottles. One of the girls was Audrey MacMillan, who’d gotten drunk and driven her car off the road last October. The damage to her leg must have been extensive, since she still wore a brace.

  My gaze slid along the bleachers a bit farther until I saw Rachel Lowrey seated with some friends. She had her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and wore a purple blouse and faded pink pants. In her lap she cradled a fountain drink, and she sipped occasionally from the straw. She leaned over to Elizabeth Mosley and whispered something in her ear. Both girls laughed.

  Rachel turned away and looked right at me. For a moment, she seemed surprised to see me. I wondered if she realized that I had been staring at her, and I instantly felt self-conscious. Then she smiled and waved. I smiled and waved back . . . then quickly averted my eyes as a not-so-unpleasant tingle sprung to life in the center of my stomach.

  The Lambeth twins strutted over, each one sucking down a bottle of Cherry Coke. They wore Washington Bullets basketball jerseys and matching hats turned backward.

  Jonathan Lambeth kicked one of Michael’s sneakers. “Hey, butt cheese. You guys hear about Mr. Van Praet?”

  “Sure,” Michael said. “Can you believe it? A mountain lion in these parts?”

  Jonathan scrunched up his face in confusion—a gesture his twin brother mimicked. “Mountain lion?”

  “Yeah,” Michael said. “You heard he died, right?”

  “Well, yeah,” Jonathan said. “It was a heart attack.”

  Michael casually waved him off. “That’s just a rumor so people don’t start freaking out. Some mountain lion came down through western Maryland and was apparently living in the woods around town, eating out of trash cans. Old Mr. Van Praet was dragging his trash to the curb and—wham! The thing jumped out from behind a Buick and tore the poor son of a bitch down the middle like an old shirt.”

  The Lambeth twins stared at him. In a drawn-out, somewhat squeaky voice, Jason said, “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “You’re full of shit, Sugarland,” Jonathan said.

  “Am I?”

  “It would be in the newspapers and on TV.”

  “Unless the local authorities don’t want to incite panic.”

  “Oh yeah? How the hell do you know, anyway?”

  Michael jerked a thumb in my direction. “Mazzone’s dad is a cop, remember? Who do you think had to scoop up the body parts and put ’em in plastic bags?”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “My dad’s got an assistant who scoops up the body parts.”

  “There’s no mountain lion,” Jonathan said, looking at me.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I said. “No mountain lion whatsoever. It was a stroke.”

  “Heart attack,” Jason corrected.

  “Yeah,” I said, “a heart attack. Or whatever. Just no mountain lion.”

  Both Lambeth brothers eyed all five of us. Then Jonathan grinned. “You guys are a bunch of fucking assholes, you know that?” They sat down on the curb beside Michael.

  “Did you hear Sasha Tamblin’s got a band?” Jason said. “They’re playing later tonight on the bandstand.”

  “No shit?” Peter said. “What do they play?”

  Jason shrugged. “Guitars and shit.”

  “No, I mean what kind of music.”

  “I don’t know.”

  When the marching band completed its set, a local rock band took the stage. Despite the heat, the members were all grunged out in flannel and long pants with chain wallets. The lead singer looked like Michael Stipe, so predictably they opened with an R.E.M. cover.

  I went with Adrian and Peter to get hot dogs while Scott, Michael, and the Lambeth twins remained on the curb, tapping their feet to the music.

  “Whoa,” Peter said, snagging my shirt. “Take a look.”

  Nathan Keener and Eric Falconette stood smoking beside a row of portable outhouses. My heart seized in my chest as Keener looked in my direction. But he hadn’t seen me; he gave the finger to someone walking up the grassy incline toward the outhouses. It was Denny Sallis and Kenneth Ottawa.

  “There’s too many people around for them to start something,” Peter said.

  “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean I want to walk up
and shake the fucker’s hand,” I said. There was another hot dog booth on the corner of Center Street. “Let’s head over there.”

  We crossed the street and got in line. Adrian and Peter pooled their money, but they only came up with about three bucks. I took my grandfather’s ten-dollar bill from my pocket and waved it in front of their faces. Peter feigned a grab for it but I yanked it away.

  “If you guys buy a soda, I’ll treat you to the dogs,” I said.

  “Deal,” Peter said.

  I faced the front and was absently counting the people ahead of me when a pleasant voice said, “Hey there, Hemingway. How’s the writing going?”

  Rachel had snuck up beside me. She wore a red, white, and blue necklace made from links of construction paper, and she had gotten fireworks done in face paint on her left cheek.

  “Hi. Having fun?”

  “Yeah, it’s okay. How about you? I would have thought you guys were too cool for this.”

  “We are,” Peter said from over my shoulder. “We thought we’d do the city a favor and make a guest appearance.”

  “So,” Rachel said, locking eyes with me, “you working on any new masterpieces?”

  “I’ve got some ideas,” I said, thinking of the stack of manuscript pages currently on my desk. “How about you?”

  She crossed her eyes, stuck out her tongue, then laughed. “Nothing worth mentioning.”

  Her smile softened and I felt that I was staring at her too hard, so I looked toward the front of the line.

  “A bunch of us are going to the Shallows tonight to light some fireworks, if you’re interested,” Rachel said.

  “Thanks, but, you know, we’ve got some stuff to do,” I said.

  “That’s too bad,” she said. “You guys are always doing secret stuff.”

  “Don’t you gotta be home by nine anyway, Angie?” Adrian said.

  I smiled reproachfully at him.

  Adrian’s eyes went wide. “Oh,” he said, his voice a mere peep.

  “Listen,” I said, turning back to Rachel. “You probably shouldn’t walk down to the Shallows. I mean, if you go, you should get a ride.” I thought about how she would have to pass by the Werewolf House to get there, and I didn’t like the idea.