Shadows Burned In (11 page)

She walked into Theron and David without realizing it, then
suddenly found she was boxed in. She looked directly at the kids chanting at
her, seemed to study their mouths as if trying to see the words themselves
coming out of them so she could catch them and throw them in the trashcan.
Theron was laughing and David asked, “Do you still sell magazine subscriptions,
Regina? I’d like a copy, please,” then laughed.

As she looked from one group of mockers to the other, the
girl’s eyes streamed. “My family ain’t got the money y’all do! We all have to
help out!”

“How about seeds, Regina the Va-jeena?” asked Theron. “Still
selling seeds? I’ll grow you something nice and big.”

All the children laughed now, repeating the chant. But
Regina had had enough. She turned to push her way through when a leg tripped
her. She went down with an “Ohhhhh!” The ring of children surrounding her
looked down and laughed.

That’s right, on your knees
, was the thought that
came to David’s mind. He was about to take up the chant again with the rest of
the crowd when he looked down at her and stopped. She was sitting on the
rumpled skirt of her sackcloth dress, her right knee exposed and bleeding, and
looking up at them with glasses so fogged and smudged from crying that she
couldn’t even see her tormentors anymore. The knee caught his attention. He saw
the blood and gravel from the lot ground into her flesh. The words of the chant
refused to come out of his mouth again as he stared at her.

“Regina, Regina, she’s such a va-jeena,” the children said
again. “She’s so poor she eats day-old farina!”

Hey
, David thought.
That’s enough
.

“Look!” said one of the girls. “She’s got her pretty dress
dirty!”

Another kid said, “Ah, too bad her momma can’t afford a
washing machine!”

Regina had lost the will to fight back now. She just sat on
the kickball lot and sobbed her defeat.

“Hey,” said David. “That’s enough.”

But no one heard him as they continued mocking the girl. One
of the boys drew back a leg.

“I said that’s enough!”

The crowd hushed as the dust from the lot began to settle
again. Within seconds there was only the sound of children playing across the playground.
And Regina’s sobbing.

“What’s up, David?” asked Peter Lasco, the boy who’d almost
kicked her. “It’s just Regina.”

“I know,” said David, “but that’s enough.”

“What’s your problem, man?”

David looked at Lasco. A bully if there ever was one. “I
don’t have a problem, Pete. But that’s enough all the same.”

Lasco walked up to him and thumped him on the chest. “Well,
well, well. Looks like Regina’s got a boyfriend.”

The children standing around laughed. All except Regina, who
still sat where she was, muttering something about how she’d be in trouble with
her momma because her dress had been ripped.

“I’m not her boyfriend, Pete,” said David. The thought
filled him with revulsion, actually. Regina Va-jeena’s boyfriend?

“Then you’re just a pussy all by yourself,” said Pete. “Maybe
I oughta put
you
in the gravel, boy!”

The rage boiled up out of him before David even knew it was
there. He advanced on the bigger boy quickly, reaching up and grabbing Lasco by
the shirtfront as the other boy stepped back, startled.

“Try it, Lasco!” David was screaming. “See if you can get me
on my knees. Go ahead and try it!”

Lasco backpedaled. One of the other boys started to grab
David around the neck, but Theron stepped up and said, “Leave it alone.”

“Get off me, you pussy!” Lasco was spouting. “Get off me
’fore I teach you a lesson!” He was trying to beat David’s hands out of their
locked grip, and the force of the blows brought David back to himself. The last
thing he remembered was telling the other kids to quit. And now he had Peter
Lasco ready to kick his ass. He let go of the bigger boy’s shirt. Lasco backed
up.

“Goddamn, boy, I’m gonna kick your ass!”

“Well, we have
several
violations of school code
here,” said a calm voice behind Lasco. The bigger boy froze. “Language, number
one, and fighting, number two.”

Lasco turned around. Principal Sinclair, a balding former
science teacher had his arms crossed, a cat in front of a mouse hole. And the
mouse was outside the hole, and the hole was boarded up. The principal looked past
the two of them and saw Regina still on the ground, crying.

“Regina!”

He brushed past David and Lasco, who gave David a look that
said,
If you get me in trouble, so help me, I’ll whip your ass
.

“What’s happened here?” asked Sinclair. “Are you all right?”

Slowly the children began to slink away from the scene of
the crime, but Sinclair had been a teacher for a very long time before becoming
an administrator.

“That’s far enough! All of you, in my office! Theron, help
Regina here to the nurse’s office. Let’s go,
all
of you! My office.
Now
.”

David and Theron walked home from school, and there was
silence for a long time. Finally Theron asked, “Will you get in trouble with
your dad?”

David shrugged his shoulders. “Probably not. The principal
was mad mostly at Pete. At least
I
didn’t get suspended.”

“No, but Sinclair
did
say he’d be talking to our
parents.”

David shrugged again dismissively. “He always says that. At
least I ain’t suspended.”

Theron nodded and put his hands finger-deep in the front
pockets of his jeans as they walked.

“Man, Miss McKinley was looking good today.”

David smiled. “Oh yeah.”

“I don’t think I can wait another month to drop a pencil.”

“Oh no,” said David. “But the eraser thing is out for a
while. I think she’s starting to catch on.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Theron sounded forlorn. Another
month
.

“Hey, there it is!” said David.

They both stopped and looked up the street. Theron’s eyes
went to the old mansion that had stood at that corner for longer than even his
father could remember, and Theron’s father had lived in Hampshire all his life.
Bob Taylor liked to say, “That house has stood strong since a time when Texas
was one nation, under Sam.” Whatever that meant.

The old mansion sat apart from the rest of the town despite
its location in one of Hampshire’s oldest neighborhoods. It stood on a lot a
full acre wide, with the house proper nestled on the corner farthest from the
sidewalk across a broad front yard of perfectly mowed grass. The white wood of
the house, outlined with baby-blue eaves, still shined in places on early
summer mornings. The oak trees dressed in Spanish moss shaded the old manse in
the warm, sluggish afternoons of July and August. In winter, the drooping
mimosas looked like old Christmas trees bent with age, mossy tinsel hanging
from them. They surrounded the four corners of the house like gargoyles on an
old cathedral, posted there as sentries, warning the evil summer sun to keep
its distance.

Still, the trees could not protect their mistress from wind,
rain, or time, and all three had had their way with her. The Old South
exterior, though still intact in design, had lost much of its grandeur. The
house was like the great-grandmother of the town. Stooped with age and having a
bit of memory trouble, she still lorded over her retirement-age children, who
respected her enough not to point out her creaking faults. The look of the old
place made David think there might be some home left in the house.

But then there was the caretaker of the place, Old Suzie
herself. She too was something out of the past, a woman who dressed like a man
and who had recently lost her husband to the “dipstick disease,” as Theron’s
mother called it. She told Theron what she meant was that some husbands, being
dipsticks, walked out on their wives when they got older and stupider, but
that’s not what Theron had once overheard his mom telling friends over
margaritas. After he’d left, Suzie had taken over keeping the gardens in the
back of the house and mowing the massive front lawn riding an old John Deere,
bouncing up and down and singing old Hank Williams songs into the wind and out
of tune.

David stared at the house and wondered, was it a grandmother
house, or a grandfather house? Before he died, David’s grandfather had always
told him great stories, and he wondered if houses were fathers or mothers or
both. He tried to peer past the windows, but they were too far away. That, plus
the conspiring shade of the gargoyle-trees kept him from seeing anything more
than his imagination wanted him to. Still, the house looked like it had great
stories to tell.
It must be a grandfather house
, David decided.

“Hey buddy, I just got an idea,” said Theron. “I think I
know what I want to do for our Halloween trick.”

David looked over at him, then followed Theron’s stare back
to Old Suzie’s house. Something in the pit of his stomach gurgled, though he
wasn’t really all that hungry. “What?” he asked, not sure he wanted to hear the
answer.

But Theron was smiling.

“I want to make me a haunted house,” he said.

Chapter 10

“You ain’t a baby anymore.”

“No, sir.”

David lowered his tone, lowered his eyes, slumped his
shoulders—everything but rolled over and showed his belly. Whatever it took to
get his father to let him out of the house tonight.

It was Wednesday.

Halloween
.

“Trick or treatin is for babies.”

“Yes, sir.”

His father stood in the doorway of his room, leaning against
the door facing

(preventing escape)

with his hands in his pockets and looking at the boy
disgustedly, as if he’d just stepped in dog shit he should’ve seen plain as day
there on the sidewalk.

“Going out is a privilege, son,” his father was saying.
“What have you done lately to earn the right to go out?”

David shrugged. The pity factor rarely, if ever, worked on
his father. But he’d play that hand for all it was worth.

“I folded the clothes yesterday after school. And loaded the
dishwasher.”

His father snorted. “
After
I turned off the TV and
reminded you of ’em,
sure
.” The old man’s voice was mocking.
Pull the
other leg
, it challenged. “Have you fed the dog? And picked up the crap?”

David nodded. “I fed her. I poop-scoop on Saturdays.”

His father cleared his throat. “I didn’t
ask
you when
you normally do it. I asked you if you
had
done it.”

“No, sir.”

“Then I suggest you get after it. Then ask me again if you
can go out.” His father straightened in the doorway. “Shoveling shit earns you
a lot of things in this world, boy. Best to learn that now.” He turned around
and headed back for the kitchen.

David sat on the bed a moment longer. He saw the added chore
for what it was. The toll. The offering. The tithe to the Father God. If he did
it
quickly
, before his father drank three beers. That seemed to be the
foul line in their little game. After three beers, everything went foul, out of
bounds.

He hopped off the bed and headed down the hall and through
the kitchen to the backyard.
At least Mr. Sinclair hasn’t called
, he
thought. While Pete Lasco had been suspended for three days, David had been
exonerated, largely because of Theron’s testimony. Regina Va-jeena hadn’t
helped him any, but then he didn’t figure she should have. Not after the way
he’d treated her for so long.

As he walked out in the backyard, he made a quick survey
around the fairly small fenced area.
Not too bad
, he thought. About half
a dozen piles.

His dog, a dark-brown collie mix, looked warily from inside
her doghouse till she saw and sniffed who it was, then came bounding out, a
fluffy fireball of energy ready to race around and play with the boy. David
smiled immediately when he saw her, and she trotted up to him and sat down,
looking up expectantly, as if to say,
What fine adventure can we have
together today, my friend?

He bent down and stroked her furry head, and she rolled her eyes
up and circled her nose around to lick his hand. His father had named her
Queenie for some reason he didn’t know or much care about. She was sometimes
the only friend he could talk to who would listen and not feel the need to talk
back.

“How are you, old girl?”

Queenie stared up and licked and panted. Her cocoa-rusty fur
was lined with silver now, her chin a prickly white. She was ten years old.
David had known her almost all his life. But still she acted like a puppy, and
except for a bladder problem whenever she got overly excited, he couldn’t tell
she was nearly seventy in dog years.

He knelt down and ruffled her ears, and she made a moaning
sound.

“Have you been a good girl?” he asked. “Have you been making
good poops?”

David always checked her stools to make sure she didn’t have
worms or anything. She was never allowed in the house, so she was more likely
to pick up something. David tried to do his best to keep up with her health.
Only rarely—like when the bladder problems began last year—would his father
spring for a vet visit.

“That’s my good girl,” he said. “I’ve got to scoop your
poop, then I think I’ll get to go out. The old man is in a good mood tonight.
Better take advantage of it, huh?”

Queenie stood and wagged her tail at the sound of his voice.
She licked his face. David stood up and walked into the garage, where the lawn
bag and shovel were.

As he scooped, he assessed the object of his cleanup.
Good
,
he thought.
Good firm piles
. He smushed one a bit with the shovel.
Nope
,
no worms
. David picked up the rest of the piles and sealed up the bag,
since it was full. His father would rather a partially filled bag stand open
with the poop smelling and attracting flies than seal it up half empty. So
wasteful as that was and all.

David washed off the shovel with the water hose, put it up,
patted Queenie on the head again, and went back in the house. He washed his
hands, looked himself over, and tried to think of any piece of the plot he
might have missed.

Okay, if I’ve remembered everything, we should have about
three or four questions, and then I’m free!

He walked into the living room, where his father was propped
up in his recliner, beer in his right hand, remote control in his left. The old
man had taped the Dallas Cowboys game on Monday night and was finally getting
around to watching it, though the boy never understood why he bothered. Usually
the Cowboys sucked, and that just made his father angry.

David was pretty sure he knew the line the old man would use
to greet him. He said it at least a jillion times during every Cowboys game.

“Dad—”

“Y’know,” said his father, “they ain’t played a goddamned
decent game since Landry left. Not
one
.”

“Yes, sir,” came the automatic reply. “Dad, I finished the
backyard. I scooped all the poop.”

His father looked at him.

“You tied it up in the bag?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was the bag full?”

“Yes, sir.”

“
Really
full?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You washed the shovel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dried it? To keep it from rusting?”

“Yes, sir,” David lied without hesitation. He knew he’d
forgotten
something
.

“All right then. You can go.”

Exultation filled the boy. The governor had called at last!

“And see if you can’t squeeze some of those bite-sized
Snickers out of those stingy bitches over on Maple Street. I like those.”

“Yes, sir.”

He turned away and tried not to break into a sprint as he
walked back to his room to grab his stuff for the evening’s adventure.

“And would you look at
that
? He couldn’t catch a ball
if his hands were flypaper!”

But David was out of earshot and already planning the night’s
events in his head.

He met Theron over at the high school in front of the
administrative building. By 7:30, the mid-fall sun was already mostly gone and
a cool breeze washed away the warmth baked into the pavement of the town’s
streets. Theron was dressed in a store-bought Spider-Man costume, and he and
David had pooled their money to buy David a Batman costume.

Dad would come unhinged if he knew
, David thought,
but
he don’t, so screw him
.

With their masks on top of their heads, they kneeled in
front of the admin building, getting ready to take inventory. In the distance
they could hear the shuffling feet of younger trick-or-treaters mingled with
the calls of parents to stay to the side of the road as they walked. Theron
dumped the contents of his trick-or-treat bag on the sidewalk.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ve got firecrackers. Always good.
Matches to light ’em. Rope. Toilet paper. What are we missing?”

David thought a minute. “I could’ve brought some dog poop.”

Theron rolled his eyes. “You mean you
didn’t
?”

David shook his head. “And I just cleaned up the backyard
too.”

“Aw,
man
. That would’ve been so fine. Right on the
front porch. Knock – knock – knock, light her up, and . . . aw, that would’ve
been
so
cool.”

“Sorry, dude. But I ain’t going back to the house.” He
thought his chances of recovering some of Queenie’s droppings without his
father noticing he was back were pretty good, actually. The old man would be
snoring in front of the television by now. But there was always the off chance
he might get caught, so he decided against the whole idea right then and there.

Theron nodded. He’d seen firsthand how David’s father could
be. “That’s okay. We’ve got enough. Come on.”

They pulled their masks down over their faces and walked
away from the high school, cutting across the parking lot and walking along
Second Avenue. Goblins, ghosts, and other members of the Justice League passed
them by. To all the world, Theron and David looked as intent as their fellows
on amassing a ton of sweets. To be honest, neither of them knew
exactly
what
was coming. But Theron knew he wanted to light a fire under Old Suzie’s
broomstick, and David was happy to be along for the ride.

Before long—perhaps, even, before they really
wanted
to
be—the two boys were facing Old Suzie’s house from the street. They looked
across the expansive front lawn, which would look immaculate until the first
freeze of the year would turn it yellow-brown. Suzie mowed in circled patterns,
and she must’ve mowed the lawn recently because the sweet, heavy smell of
freshly cut grass was in the air.

They stared at the house, trying to reconnoiter from here as
best they could. The long arms of the trees lifted and lowered with the wind.
In the distance they could still hear trick-or-treaters and their parents going
from house to house deeper in the neighborhood, but none ventured up Old
Suzie’s driveway. Still, there stood a pumpkin on her front porch—a massive
one, with evil eyes and missing teeth, a heavy candle flickering inside. Lining
the porch were several smaller pumpkins, each carved differently, with their
own birthday-cake-sized candles inside. A queen and her court, all in a line,
or so the giant wicked pumpkin and its entourage seemed. Someone had done a lot
of work carving them. The front porch light was on and already plagued by bugs.
Only a light or two was on inside the house.

“She’s probably in there watching her shows,” Theron said.
His voice seemed divided, part of him hoping he could guess her whereabouts and
the other part wanting the local stories about her being a witch to really be
true.

“Yeah,” said David. “Probably busy mixing a cauldron of
something in front of the TV.”

Theron giggled. “Double, double, toil and trouble, cauldron
boil and cauldron bubble . . . Can I buy a vowel?”

David snickered.

“All right, Batman, let’s go.”

David’s heart skipped a beat as he realized they were actually
going forward with the plan. Tonight they’d have their way with Old Suzie and
her house. “Right behind you,” he said.

They ran across the front lawn and made their way to one of
the oaks closest to the front porch. Panting and excited, they dropped down
next to the tree and, remembering every war movie they’d ever seen, darted
their eyes right and left to make sure no one had seen them. David’s eyes
focused on the trees around them, their limbs slowly waving Spanish moss.

David had the thought that he was in the Haunted Forest in
The
Wizard of Oz
. He wondered if the trees would reach out for him, hold onto him
until Old Suzie could come out and capture them. The trees looked taller all of
a sudden. And was it the wind or something else that moved their limbs just a
bit more than a moment before? But he took heart that he couldn’t see any
apples. Of course he couldn’t, these
weren’t
apple trees. Whew!

No ammunition
,
he thought, still thinking of the
movie.

“Hey!” Theron yell-whispered.

David turned to him.

“What are you waiting on? I
said
let’s get to the
porch!”

David nodded and followed.

Their costumes made being stealthy a challenge. Theron
almost tripped over something on the ground because of the limited vision
through his mask’s eye slits. But they made it and stepped carefully, almost
reverently, up on the porch. Since the light was on, they had to be especially
cautious. Theron stepped onto a board that creaked loudly, as if the house
itself were announcing visitors to Old Suzie. A thought went through David’s
mind that it was like ringing the triangle for dinner, like the cowboys used to
do out on the trail.

creak

(dinner’s here)

creak

(special delivery)

The skin on their arms pimpled up and the hair rose on their
necks. Theron thought he could actually feel his Spidey sense tingling.

What David could feel was exactly how full his bladder was.
“Now what?” he asked.

“Now, we knock,” said Theron. With his face behind the
Spider-Man mask, his voice sounded hollow and muffled.

Theron inched his way up to the door.

creak

(spider and bat at the door)

creak

(just the ingredients I was looking for)

Theron looked back at David and counted off on his fingers—one,
two, three.

knock – knock – knock

“Trick or treat!” they yelled in unison.

The boys jumped off the porch and darted around the railing
to hide out of sight. They positioned themselves so they could still see the
front door. A little out of breath, not so much from the running but because he
was scared to death, David tried to calm himself down.