Wicked Cruel (10 page)

Dad pushed his chair back and set both hands on the table. He spoke evenly but with some heat. “I’ve had just about enough of this.”

“Save it for your students, Byron,” said Mom, who was much younger than her husband and had once actually been his student. “We don’t need another speech.”

“Is it really too much to ask to have one peaceful meal a day in this house?” Dad said. “I should run a tape recorder. We can play it back and you children could hear just how petty and
ridiculous
you sound. Really. Petty and ridiculous.”

Danny looked across at Claudine. He could tell that she was holding back a smile. He bit on his lip to stop from laughing. But he laughed anyway, and so did Claudine.

“Nice lecture, Byron,” Mom said. “Now sit still and eat your dinner.”

Danny grabbed the pepper mill and ground it onto his pasta. Claudine took a sip of water. Dad wound some spaghetti onto his fork and chewed carefully with his mouth tightly closed.

“And by the way,” Mom said, “I didn’t put any olives in the sauce.”

*   *   *

Danny washed his feet twice that evening, once at the beginning of his shower and once at the end. Then he sat at his desk near his bedroom window, leaving the light off.

The moon was up and it was shining brightly on Brickyard Pond, about fifty yards away. The pond was on the campus of Cheshire Notch State College, and it began at the edge of Danny’s backyard. The site of the pond really had been a brickyard at one time, more than a hundred years ago. It had produced the bricks for many of the college’s buildings before being flooded.

The legend was that one day a worker dug into the clay and sliced into an underground aquifer. Water burst into the brickyard so quickly that the man barely escaped. A team of horses got bogged in the mud and drowned. It’s said that on dark and rainy nights, you can sometimes hear the horses trying to gallop to safety.

Danny thought quickly of Janelle, the girl who sat one row in front of him and one seat over in class. Her dark, shiny hair was pulled into a tight braided ponytail, like a horse’s mane. She was always nice to him. She was nice to everybody.

He turned on his light, picked up a comic book, and flopped onto his bed.

He heard the sound of knuckles rapping on his bedroom door. Only one person rapped like that.

“It’s open, Dad.”

The door swung smoothly. Dad cleared his throat. “I have a few thoughts I’d like to share with you,” he said. He was holding an old book. It had no jacket, and the hard-cloth cover had faded to a ragged pink.

With his pointing finger, Danny pushed his glasses back up
on his nose and swung his legs off the bed, sitting on the edge. “I’m all ears.”

Dad took a breath and let it out slowly. His hair was short and mostly gray. He sat on the edge of the bed, too, but barely, as if he might jump up at any second. He scratched at his carefully trimmed beard and sighed. “I spoke to your sister, too, so don’t assume I’m only coming down on you.”

“I won’t.”

“You know …” Dad spread his hand and studied the palm. “I didn’t have the privilege of siblings. My parents were older, and I came along relatively late in their life, as you did in mine. Your mother and I, well … not to put too fine a point on it, but you were in some ways a gift we created for your sister. And
she
was a gift that was waiting for you to arrive.”

“Happy birthday,” Danny mumbled.

Dad raised his palm. “I hope—I
sincerely
hope—that you two will come to appreciate each other. And soon. This constant bickering has gone on far too long.”

“It’s no big deal,” Danny said.

“Nonetheless,” Dad said. He opened the book. “This poem is called ‘To My Sister,’ and I’d like you to listen to a portion of it.”

“Oh, God.”

“Just a few lines.”

“Is this Wordsworth again?”

“Indeed.”

Danny shut his eyes and dropped back on his pillow. “Lay it on me.”

Dad cleared his throat again. “This was written more than two centuries ago, but it’s terribly relevant today,” he said. “Especially in this household.” He began reading from the middle of the poem.

Danny rolled onto his face.
This is agony
, he thought.
Make him stop!

Dad stopped reading. Danny opened his eyes. “Is it over?” he asked.

“That’s the end of the poem, yes.”

“Praise the Lord.”

“Danny!”

“Sorry, Dad. Couldn’t they just speak
English
back then?”

“The finest,” Dad said. “Did you grasp what the poet was saying?”

Danny shrugged. “Sure.”

“He appreciated his sister, didn’t he?”

“Yes, Dad. I
get
it.”

“Good,” Dad said, carefully closing the book. “Good. All I ask is that you reflect on those lines a bit.”

“Will do.”

Dad stepped away.

“What did you read to Claudine?”

Dad stood still for a moment, deep in thought. “ ‘There Was a Boy,’ by the same poet,” he finally said. “It’s about a young lad, of course. Same age as you.”

Dad held the book to his lips. When he spoke again, his voice was very soft. “I read her the entire poem.… I’ll share the last stanza with you.”

Danny propped himself on his elbows to listen. He heard the toilet flush across the hall.

“The kid died?”

Dad nodded.

“Great. I’ll sleep real well tonight.”

“It has a broader meaning than death.”

“Okay. Tell Claudine to leave her gifts of gratitude outside my door. We’ll offer our mutual appreciation in the morning.”

“Just think it over, Danny,” Dad said. “A sister is a wonderful thing.” He hesitated in the doorway for a moment. Danny didn’t look up.

“This is a fragile volume,” Dad said, “from 1898. You’d find the same poem in some of the later editions in my office.”

“Oh.”

“It’s called ‘There Was a Boy.’ ”

“Right, Dad. I got it.”

Danny woke early and walked over to the pond. He could fish for a half hour before school. The pond was only the size of three football fields, but he’d caught a few small bass last summer.

This was the quietest and most remote part of the campus, with dirt paths and maple trees. The college’s performing arts
center was on the other side of the pond, but then there was a border of woods and no other nearby buildings.

The morning was cold—probably below freezing—and a chill mist was rising from the water. Red and yellow leaves were floating near the banks. Nothing was biting today, not even sunnies, but being alone in what passed for wilderness was one of Danny’s favorite things to do.

He didn’t quite fit in with other kids, and he knew it. He’d joke around with them at school, and once in a while he’d get in a game of basketball or touch football on a weekend. But he didn’t have a best friend or a group that he hung out with. Lonely? Sometimes. Maybe even often. But never out here by the pond.

He gave up on fishing after twenty minutes and walked to the arts center to check the posters. Sometimes there were events worth seeing.

The upcoming film schedule included
Night of the Living Dead
on Halloween. There was also a poster for the town’s annual Pumpkin Fest, which was a huge deal in downtown Cheshire Notch. That was only two days away.

And then Danny saw his father gazing at him from a black-and-white notice:

Danny figured he’d have to be there, even though he’d heard every poem his father had written about Mount Monadnock a hundred times. Over the years, a few of the poems had been published locally, in the
Daily Sentinel
, the
Monadnock Shopper
, and the
Cheshire Notch State College Literary Review
. The rest would be appearing in print for the first time.

Danny could see the mountain from here.

The town of Cheshire Notch, New Hampshire, sits in a valley and is mostly flat, so Mount Monadnock appears particularly regal as it overlooks the town. It has the classic Alpine shape, with a sharp peak, and its treeless, granite summit majestically reflects the sun’s rays.

Danny picked up a flat stone and skimmed it over the pond. It took one big skip and two shorter ones before sinking below the surface. The rings spread out and disappeared.

He and Claudine were the fourth generation of Morgans to live in the white clapboard house near the pond. Their father’s grandfather had built the house not long after the brickyard flooded over. The family history was sketchy prior to that.

Danny wanted to see those ghost horses some night. He’d heard that you could feel their fear as they struggled to escape the flood, see their flared nostrils and hear their desperate whinnying. And on certain nights they
would
break free, leaping from the water and racing circles around the path.

But he’d never seen them. And he’d spent lots of nights by his window, just looking out. Twice he thought he’d heard distant hoofbeats, but he was never quite sure.

Four members of the college cross-country team jogged past as Danny headed for home, shuffling through the fallen leaves.

“It’s late,” Mom said as he entered the kitchen. “Pour yourself some cereal and wash your hands. Claudine already left.”

“She always leaves too early.”

“Well, she likes to see her friends. Now get moving.”

Danny ran up the stairs and washed off the bait smell.
What friends?
he thought. Claudine wasn’t any more popular than he was.

He brushed his teeth and gathered his stuff for school, then leaned on the windowsill and gazed out at the pond. He let out his breath in a long, steady burst that fogged the window, then stepped across the hall to his father’s office.

“There Was a Boy” was easy to find. It was also easier to read than most of the poetry Danny’s father had imposed on him over the years. He scanned the lines:

“Danny!” called his mother. “You need to go!”

He closed the book and carefully put it on the shelf. Then he grabbed his backpack and ran down the stairs. Mom handed him a peanut butter sandwich and told him he’d better keep running.

Danny heard a distinct
pssshhhhttt
sound as he closed his locker. Luke was giggling. He was in Danny’s seventh-grade class and was seven inches taller and a whole lot stronger. It’d been Luke’s elbow that had caused that first nosebleed at school the day before. Luke said he didn’t mean it, but it was hard to see how. Danny had leaned over to pick up a pen that had dropped off his desk. When he came back up, Luke’s elbow happened to be in the aisle. When Danny
cleaned his nose out with his finger a couple of hours later, it started bleeding again.

Luke caught Danny’s eye and held up the bottle of soda, then started chugging it down. His friend Carter was doing the same.

“Ahhh,” Luke said, wiping his mouth. “Nothing like warm Coke.”

“Gross,” Danny said. “Why didn’t you just get a cold one?”

“You’ll see,” Luke said. “Warm is perfect.”

Danny followed Luke and Carter into the classroom. They had a few minutes to kill. Danny sat down and looked at Janelle. She was studying a sheet of paper, but she turned to look after a minute. She smiled at Danny. “How was your lunch?”

“Terrible,” he said. “Glop with tater tots. You?”

“I brought my own. But I like glop. Was it brown or gray?”

“A little of both. And some yellow.”

“Mmmm. Yellowish glop.”

“There’s probably some left over,” Danny said with a grin. “I could fish it out of the Dumpster for you after school if you want.”

“That would be great.”

Danny felt someone leaning toward him, and suddenly a very wet
buuuuurp
exploded inches from his ear. It smelled like sausages and warm Coke.

“That’s disgusting!” Danny said.

Janelle was laughing, so Danny tried to, too. Luke and Carter were high-fiving each other.

They burped and farted several times over the next half hour. Mr. Barnes asked Luke if he needed to see the nurse or use the restroom, but he didn’t say it with much sympathy.

Most of the kids in the class were very amused. Danny
might have been, too, if he hadn’t received a wet earful of it before class.

On Saturday morning there was a cold, light mist, but the sun was supposed to break through in time for the Pumpkin Fest. Danny liked going downtown early to watch them set up the scaffolding. There would be nearly thirty thousand carved pumpkins on those scaffolds, stacked as high as forty feet in the air. At night they’d all be lit, creating a spectacle that was hard to put into words. It was bright and orange and spirited.

Every school kid in town, every Scout troop, every youth group had spent the week carving jack-o’-lantern faces. Danny’s contribution had a big wide grin and two lopsided teeth. It had taken ten minutes to cut during homeroom. He’d been told it would be on Main Street near the Colonial Theater with the other middle-schoolers’ pumpkins.