Green Boy (3 page)

She said, “I saw him the other day. He wants to get in touch with you, and I said no.”

I said quickly, “I don't want to see him, not ever.”

“I just wanted to warn you,” said my mother's distant voice. It sounded sad, and a bit scared. “You wouldn't ever go off with him, would you?”

“Mam!” I said, horrified. “Of course not!”

“Just watch out. But don't worry. Grand knows all about it. I love you, sweetheart. Is my baby there?”

“Here he is. I love you, Mam.” I gave the telephone to Lou, and as he listened he started to smile. They couldn't have a proper conversation, of course, but somehow Mam managed to have long talks with him, all her words punctuated once in a while with a hoot or a little grunt from Lou.

One day about a year ago, Mam had taken Lou to Nassau to see some famous American doctor who was visiting the hospital there. He examined him, and told her there was no physical reason why Lou shouldn't talk. He said it was psychological, and so were his seizures; that something was wrong inside his mind, and that he could probably be put right if she sent him away to live in some special school in the United States.

Mam said no, she'd rather have a quiet little boy who lived at home.

I used to think about that doctor sometimes and wonder if he was right. That was before I found out the things that were so strange and special about Lou, things no doctor would ever be able to understand.

 

Three days later, Lou and I went back to Long Pond
Cay. It was our first time together since we'd heard about the developers. You can't get to the cay except by boat, so I knew Lou couldn't have gone there without me unless Grand took him—and Grand had gone off to Nassau with Mr. Ferguson, the high school headmaster, to talk to the government's Lands and Surveys Office about saving the cay from development.

Me, I'd been staying in town for two nights with my friends from school, Lyddie and Kermit Smith. This happened every so often, whenever Grammie decided I needed a change from being way out where we lived—“in the sticks,” she put it—looking after Lou. The sticks seemed just fine to me, but that was Grammie, always thinking about ways to improve life for other people. Mrs. Smith was one of her friends from the bank, who said she was always glad to have me because I kept Lyddie and Kermit from killing each other. They were twins, about my age.

I'd asked the Smiths if they had heard about the Frenchman's plans, but they hadn't, and they weren't really interested. They'd never even been to Long Pond Cay—it was way up our end of the island, too far, too isolated.

“We sure could use some development,” said Mr. Smith heartily. He was a cab driver. “Jobs. Opportunities. Anything to keep you young people on the island when you finished with school.”

“You dreaming, Daddy,” Lyddie said.

“Off to Nassau, me,” said Kermit. “New York. Los Angeles.”

Lyddie grinned at her father. “You'll still have Trey around,” she said. “Writing some old book.”

I was glad to get back to the sticks, and to Lou.

We went out very early that next time. The tide was going out, but there was still time to get over to the cay before full low. It was a beautiful clear day, and the sky light blue, with a few tiny shreds of cloud that would grow, during the day, into round puffballs drifting in a long row. A pair of whistling ducks flew low over our heads as we puttered up the channel, though they weren't whistling; you could just hear the faint swish of their wings. I was surprised to see them in daylight; usually you see them when it's beginning to get dark. But lots of things were unusual, that day.

We landed, and the beach stretched ahead of us broad and gleaming white, as the tide crept out. Terns swooped in low, calling to each other. We went inland, across the storm-carved slabs of sandstone, through the scrub and the trees, to the lagoon in the center of the cay. The sand there felt different underfoot, soft, squishy, half-mud, with the little spiky shoots of new black mangrove poking up everywhere like nails.

Lou stood staring out at the shallow water of the lagoon, looking for the silvery flash of bonefish, as they butted their heads down into the sand hunting for crabs and shellfish. They feed on the ebbing tide, and again when it begins to come back in. Lou's always loved the
bonefish. He can already see a moving school of them quicker than I can. Grand said to me once, “We don't have to worry about him—for all his problems, he'll make a wonderful bonefish guide.” And so he will.

But I wasn't thinking about Lou then, just about the fish; like him, I was looking for that dimpling of the water that their tails make as they go headfirst down at the sand, and the quick glint as their silver backs catch the sun for an instant. There were none to be seen, though. The water was too low; it had retreated into gleaming pools and bays left among huge expanses of shining white sand-mud, and the schools of bonefish and snapper had gone out with the tide. Out into the open sea.

It must have been that hour between tides, when the sea is as low or as high as it will go, and everything is sort of suspended, waiting for the turn of the tide.

And then, as I stood there in the silence, looking out over the flats, I thought I saw the air begin to shimmer, blurring the edges of things, as it had that other day in the cave. My heart sank; I didn't want this to happen again. I shook my head and I blinked my eyes hard—but still the shimmering was there, the air wavering as if heat were rising through it.

The wet flats became a shining blur, and the line of palmettos and trees on the opposite side of the lagoon seemed to be reflected in it, double, like a mirage.

And gradually I began to hear that sound again, coming from nowhere, the sound like the wind in the
casuarina trees. It grew and grew, rising, whining, filling the shivering air, though when I glanced out of the corner of my eye at a casuarina I saw nothing stir, not a branch or needle move.

The noise filled my head; I wanted to put my hands over my ears. I was so scared that I felt sick. I knew I was on the edge of real panic, and I looked over quickly at Lou.

He hadn't moved. He didn't look the least bit frightened, this time. As I watched, he began to walk slowly forward, over the mangrove-prickled sand, toward the shining stretches of the lagoon. It was a sort of measured walk, not the way a kid moves, and as he went, he did something even stranger, more adult—ancient, even. He raised both his skinny arms into the air, spread wide, as if he were going out to embrace someone.

He stood very still, just stood there, holding his arms out like that. It looked so weird, it sent a chill through me. I moved nervously up toward him, a few slow steps forward.

Then all the sound stopped, and the air wasn't shivering, and there was dead silence.

And out there in the lagoon the water seemed to open, and roll back and disappear. We stood there watching, scarce breathing, and a great shining city rose up before us, growing out of the earth.

It sprang up with a noise like a high wind, a forest of tall towers and cliffs and gleaming straight lines: grey,
silvery skyscrapers, scraping the sky. Lou dropped his arms and turned to me; his face was a little boy's face now, frightened, and he grabbed my hand. It was as if he'd become a different person just for a few moments, and now abruptly he was himself again. On all sides the city was springing up, so that the buildings were all around us: we were held in a world of stone and concrete and black brick. Long Pond Cay was gone, and so was the sunlight and the blue sky. The whole world had changed.

I
stood there with Lou's hand in mine, on a grey concrete paving, in this strange Otherworld city that had swallowed us up as if we lived there, as if we had never lived anywhere else.

No sun shone there; the sky was a grey haze, what you could see of it. The air was very warm, and full of new noise. We were standing on a sort of small paved island where three roads met, two coming up from either side behind us and one stretching out ahead, with cars and buses roaring by us on all sides. I couldn't see a single person walking, anywhere.

Lou let out a high wail of fear. He was clutching my hand with both his own, so hard that it hurt. I looked at his face, all tight with terror, and had no comfort for him because I was in the same state myself. Everything was so different, so suddenly different, that I couldn't think straight. Where were we? What was happening? I wanted to curl up into a ball and hide, until it had all gone away. But I couldn't do that; I was in charge of Lou.

The air felt thick; it caught at my throat. I choked and coughed, but I couldn't hear the sound over the roar of the traffic thundering by. I tried to look at the buses—at least I supposed they were buses: big, sleek silver cylinders full of windows, flashing past in a white blur. Maybe we were in Nassau. Maybe it was New York. Or any big city.

But I'd been in Nassau, and what was going on around us was spookily different from a normal big city. There were no people to be seen anywhere. The cars flashed along in an endless stream, as evenly as if they were on rails, and they all seemed smaller than normal cars, and brightly colored, gleaming red, blue, yellow, orange, green. They rushed by so fast you couldn't see who was driving them.

Over our heads then something came humming loudly, low and fast, and we ducked instinctively. It was a tiny helicopter, much, much smaller than the U.S. Army helicopters that buzz our island every day looking for drug smugglers. I watched it fly away—and then it tilted, paused, curved round and came back toward us. I felt panic rising like a lump in my throat. The helicopter was coming straight at us, and there was nowhere to hide. It paused over our heads, roaring louder than the traffic, and a huge amplified voice came down from it.

“FOOT TRAFFIC BANNED ON THE ARTERY!” it boomed.

I looked frantically up and down the streets. There seemed to be no break anywhere in the moving streams of
cars, no way to cross over and escape. The helicopter started coming slowly down toward us.

But at the same time, suddenly a great cloud of black smoke puffed up from the pavement where we stood, swallowing us up. My eyes watered, and I coughed and spluttered, and clutched Lou close to me in alarm—and then, just visible in this dark fog, at our feet a wide disk swung up from the concrete, a kind of cover that I hadn't noticed was there. A man was leaning out of the round hole in the pavement, a bearded man with a black band tied round his forehead, his face anxious and intent. The dark smoke was billowing up out of a kind of cylinder in his hand; he set it down on the concrete and beckoned us.

“Come down, quick!” he shouted over the noise. “Both of you—come down!”

There wasn't time to think; I could feel Lou quivering, and I knew he was on the edge of a terrible seizure. The man looked as scared as I did—that was what made up my mind, I suppose. I pulled Lou over to the hole, and got down so I was sitting on the edge, legs dangling, and the man grabbed Lou into his arms as someone else's hands, down below, took hold of my feet and set them on some kind of ladder. I ducked inside, and the man came down with Lou. In an instant the cover crashed down over our heads and was bolted shut. The air was clear down here, and the roar of the helicopter was muted, shut out.

Lou was whimpering, in the bearded man's arms. “It's
all right, Lou,” I said automatically, stupidly. “It's all right—be still!”

But I hadn't the least idea whether anything was all right, or ever would be again.

We were standing in a kind of tunnel, with shiny damp walls lit by dim electric lights that stretched into the distance in a double line. There was a second man beside me, the one who must have grabbed my feet, but he was hidden in shadow.

The bearded man's face relaxed into a big grin. “Beat them!” he said. Suddenly he looked quite different, like a happy pirate. His teeth were very white, and his beard was golden, like the long hair tied down by the black band.

“Let's go!” said the other man, and he pulled forward a big trolley, a flat wheeled thing the size of a small automobile, with a low rim around it like a fence, and a double seat at the front with a steering wheel.

The bearded man put Lou down on the back of the trolley. “Get up, Trey,” he said, and I got up, without even wondering how he knew my name. All I could think of at that moment was that they had rescued us from the threat of the helicopter. They made me feel safe. Well, safer. I climbed over the little fencelike side and squatted down beside Lou. The two men jumped into the seat ahead, and we took off quite fast down the tunnel, into the dark. The dim little lights flashed by us like markers. The trolley made a humming noise, not like
an engine but loud enough to make it impossible to talk, not that I knew what to say.

We swung round a bend, and I reached out to keep Lou from falling. He let out a long high shriek, a sound that came out of fear and excitement and just letting off steam, and he clutched at me; sat there beside me, clutching my leg.

We went a long way. The air was warm and thick, and drops of moisture splashed down on us from the roof as we rushed along. We seemed to go on for miles, for hours, though I'm sure we didn't. It was like one of those nightmares when something goes on and on, or repeats itself over and over, even though part of your sleeping mind knows that you could change it, if only you could wake up. But you can't wake up.

Then there was light ahead of us, very faint, growing, glimmering on the rounded walls. It was enough to show that we were moving along inside a gigantic pipe, with a bunch of smaller pipes suspended from its roof, running along over our heads.

And then we came round a bend into a big space, where the small pipes all came together and ran up and down in a huge bank, all set about with control wheels and gauges and flickering screens, before taking off again in other directions, along other tunnel-pipes. Lights blazed down from the roof here, as if it was the only important part of this warren, the only part that needed to be seen clearly.