Barnum Lake

Chapter Thirty-three
Barnum Lake

I awoke before dawn on Saturday morning, February 1st, to a litany of wind outside my window. The shadows of the naked elm tree branches coursed back and forth across the dead grass in the fractured haze of the moon like ghosts, unsure of what direction to take to leave this life. Although my bedroom was comfortably warm, I lay beneath the covers sweating as though I’d been asleep in an attic in mid-summer. As I blinked my eyes I tried to recall what manner of nightmare had visited me to turn my bedclothes into sopping washrags, but nothing came. I had awakened as though what I was looking out at was my first-ever vision. I suspected the sweating had something to do with Carol—haunting my sleeping subconscious—and so I prayed.
“God, if you refuse to answer me, at least don’t torture me in my dreams.” I couldn’t bring myself to thank Him for another day of life or even ask His blessing on this new one. I lay there for a long while staring out at the silver-gray sky, devoid of texture, wondering if I should get up and change into something dry. A sudden shriek of wind hit my window and more eerie shadows whisked past. I threw the covers aside, jumped onto the rug, and stripped the sheets. The wind continued to howl. I undressed, throwing my clothes into a pile at the foot of the bed, crawled on top of the first blanket and then pulled the others over me thinking I’d fall back asleep until dawn arrived to chase the gale away.

It was 3:00 A.M.

I awakened to the sound of voices. Outside my room—the stairwell off the back door to the kitchen. I blinked and glanced over at the clock on my nightstand. Nine o’clock. The voices became clearer as the shades of my deep sleep began to evaporate. They belonged to Jimmy and Mickey, laughing, calling back to someone on the main floor. My Mom. Yes. I could hear her muted voice, something she had been saying to them when I opened my eyes. “…drag him out of bed! Goddam kid. Nobody should sleep this late.”
“You betcha’, Mrs. Morley! We’ll each grab a leg,” I heard Jimmy say as the door to the basement opened with a hurried creak.
“Hey, wake up in there, you lazy good-for-nothin’,” Mick yelled. They entered my bedroom, awash with bright sunlight now. I glanced out the window and noticed a sky, light blue and cheerful. Both of them stopped at the end of my bed. They were dressed in blue jeans and sweaters, more appropriate for an early Spring day than the dead of Winter.
“C’mon, get up,” Jimmy said, “we’re headed up to Barnum Lake. We’re gonna’ do a little skatin. Mick’s gonna’ show us how to do a figure eight, kinda’ like what Inky tried to do on his belly!”
Mickey thought that was a great joke and pulled his sweater and shirt up to his chest. I looked over at his stomach and cringed.
“Pretty cool, huh?” he said.

It was not. A long purplish line with dots on either side where the stitches had been threaded, wound from just below his breast bone down to the top of his jeans.

“Whoa! That’s ugly. How’s it feel?” I asked him sitting up. “Turn on the light so I can see it better.” Jimmy darted around Mick to hit the switch on the wall, raking his index finger across Mick’s back as he did.
“SWISH! The steel cuts quick and deep!” he joked.
I pushed the covers aside and crawled to the end of the bed to have a close look at the scar. “That is…wow! Did Rosie, you know, put salve or something on it? I’ll bet she did. You two have been like Mutt and Jeff ever since you got back to school. How’d it feel to have her fingers massaging your stomach?” I laughed.
“Eat your heart out! She has hands that move like clouds. She’s an Egyptian princess!” Mickey said rolling his eyes and stroking his belly. “Hey, let’s move it. Get some clothes on, for gosh sakes! You always sleep half-naked?”
I looked down at myself. Well, no, not all that often. Only after…I felt my forehead, my arms, my own stomach. Dry as a bone, and thankfully normal. I peered over the end of the bed where I’d thrown the wet nightclothes several hours ago. Mickey had one boot planted on the pajama top.
“That was one weird night,” I said almost underbreath.
“Huh? What was weird? What happened?” Jimmy asked.
“Uh…nothing I guess. Think it was all just a dream…nothing. Okay, let’s go! Throw me those pants over on the chair. I want to see Mick light up the lake! What’s the temperature outside, anyway? You guys are dressed like it’s summer.”
“I dunno’. In the high twenties, I guess. Sun’s real warm, though. It’s perfect,” Jimmy replied throwing my jeans at me. “Where’s your skates?”
“I’m not sure…out in the garage somewhere, I think.” I pulled on my engineer’s boots and tied the laces in record time. “Ok, let’s get out of here.”

The night had been spooky; a strange, otherworldly fever, perhaps, that had hit me suddenly, then vanished just as quickly . Hopping up the steps I still felt the clamminess of my pajamas, and shuddered at the figures that had whizzed by my window in the wind. Jimmy, Mickey and me ran to the garage and conducted another of our frustrating searches through the mountain of junk. We found the skates, and then lit out of the yard, down the street. The sun was warm, and by the time we'd arrive at the lake in half an hour, I figured we’d be skating through slush. That was okay, though. At least we wouldn’t have to shovel snow or put up with TweedleChilds and TweedleYoung.

As if by fate…

“Hiya, fellas. Long time no see. Where are you going?” Allen sang out from the rear of his driveway as we passed by.
“We’re goin’ to the creek to look for hibernatin’ bears,” Jimmy answered.
“Ve-ry funny. No, really, where are you going?”
We stopped and looked at one another. Should we invite him and find a thin spot in the ice? Nah, he’d probably break through it and sink to the bottom, this time in water over his head, and never come up again. Then his mom would really be pissed at us.
“We’re taking our skates…see ‘em?…down to the pawn shop,” Mickey chirped. “After we collect our money we’re going to buy a crossbow and go looking for those bears. Want to come along?”
Allen thought about that for a minute. “Yes, maybe. There aren’t any bears down here in the city, though, you realize. We can still shoot at cans and trees and such, however. Let me go get my wallet. I’ll contribute—maybe for the arrows. Just wait here!” He dropped whatever he’d been doing and headed for the back door to his house.
“Crap! He believed you, Mick! What a dork! Let’s get outta here. I don’t want that nitwit tagging along,” I said laughing.
“Wait a sec,” Jimmy said. “He’s bringin' his wallet. We’ll get him to buy donuts and hot chocolate!”
“No way. Let’s go,” I answered. And so we took off at a run down the street, skipping across patches of thin, black ice riveted to the gutters, like three clumsy characters in a Laurel and Hardy movie, not quite sure if we were supposed to fall or not. I closed my eyes when we passed in front of Carol’s house, holding onto the back of Mickey’s sweater, imagining she was glued to her front window, waiting for me to flash by in tears. I saw her face—absolutely distraut, beckoning to me with eyes that had burned clear through my soul, and now refused to let me go. How I wanted to stop and run to her and touch her lips again. And then I thought of David, and what he’d said. How foolish I was to risk coming down this street. Even if I’d ripped my eyes out of their sockets, the eyes of my heart would have remained as sharp and penetrating as a hawk’s.
I pushed Carol’s face out of my mind and concentrated on visions of flying across the ice; playing crack the whip with Jimmy in the lead, Mick in the middle tethering me. As we passed by the block of stores on First Avenue and turned north on Knox Court, I squinted up at a sky without even a wisp of a cloud anywhere. The sun heated the asphalt street and sent ghostly tufts of steam rising. Someone’s dog shot out of their front yard, a portion of its frayed rope dangling from its neck. The animal chased us out of its territory with a ferocious amount of barking; a warning not to return. We slowed to a walk two blocks farther up the long incline of the avenue, out of breath and safely beyond the point where we thought Allen could catch sight of us, or the dog would have any remaining interest in our presence. Across the street on the west side sat a tiny brick church with a small spire reaching heavenward, and a black-framed billboard identifying the name of the congregation. “Christ The Savior Lutheran Church”. Below that the sermons for tomorrow’s services were announced.
“9:00 A.M. Jesus Walks On Water”
“5:30 P.M. Searching For Jesus”
“Hey, that’s where Mom thought your family went on Sundays,” I pointed out to Mickey. We stopped briefly and chuckled at the thought. Mickey looked around us on the ground for a rock, but fortunately for the sign there wasn’t even a pebble large enough to bother slinging at it. Anyway, two men were standing on the sidewalk a few feet away from it. We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the taller of the two, dressed in a black suit and clerical collar, pointed at it, scratching his head. Had Mickey found a decent rock he would have thrown it, that’s for sure, and we would have been off and running again. We shuffled on.
We arrived ten minutes later at the lake. It lay at the bottom of a steep, two hundred yard-long hill dotted with dead-looking elms, and conifers that refused to give up their color to the bleakness of the winter months. Tucked into a depression on the southwest end of the lake near the boundary of the park, Weir Gulch meandered in, two or three feet deep. Just below a thin layer of crystal clear ice we could see the current dropping down the slope to disappear into the lake’s shimmering, frozen covering. Across the surface of the lake small mounds of snow lay piled here and there, marking the efforts of earlier skaters who had cleared it in weeks past. A few hundred yards away, Federal Boulevard rose above the steep bank, alive with traffic at this late hour of the morning. We sat down near the edge beneath a tree and changed into our skates.
“Wonder if Allen put the puzzle together?” I laughed at the thought of him staring down Meade Street, wondering why we’d gone away without him.
Jimmy clinched the last knot of his laces, picked up a dirty scoop of snow from the base of the tree we sat under, and threw it at me. “You're a nasty, nasty boy, Skippy Morley. Was all your idea to run off an’ leave him, ‘specially when he offered to buy us donuts! Ya oughta’ be ashamed of yourself.”
Mickey followed suit with more snow, and then they bounded down the hill together and jumped out onto the ice. They whisked along in clumsy circles as they gained their bearings, rusty since the last time we’d flown like the wind across the frozen surface here. I watched in silence for a moment or two, then followed them out onto the sparkling surface of the ice. I met them seventy-five feet away from the bank. Both of them stopped as I leaned and dug the sharp edges of my runners into the ice beside the first low mound of snow.
“Who said it got too hot this week? This stuff’s hard as a block of granite,” Jimmy assured us, jumping up and down.
“Wasn’t me. Let’s crack the whip!” Mickey said, tossing his gloves onto the pile of snow.
“OK. I’ll lead the pack. Grab onto my hand," Jimmy said. "Skip, grab his!”
When we’d locked ourselves together in a chain, Jimmy dug the tips of his skates into the ice and we all took off, gaining speed as we shot across the ice toward the east shore. The shiish of our blades on the frozen surface was musical, the only audible sound except for the occasional clatter of studded tires on the pavement of Federal Boulevard a hundred yards away. Near the shoreline, Jimmy pumped his strong legs like the wheel connecting rods on a locomotive, and then leaned hard left in a sudden U-turn. Mickey flew behind him, tightening his grip on Jimmy’s hand, loosening it on mine. I knew what was next as I quickly entered the turn with rising momentum. Mickey yanked his hand free and I shot like a cannonball out of the barrel into the wall of dead weeds hanging down onto the ice. The crunch knocked me backward onto my rear.
“Oh, that was no fun!” I grabbed my belly with a forced laugh.
“Good show! Very graceful!” Mickey shouted from where he and Jimmy had stopped thirty feet away.
I rolled over onto my stomach, glanced at the ice beneath me, then pulled myself up onto my haunches. My reflection was dark and contorted in the rippled surface near the shore. Mickey skated over to me and stuck his hand out. “You ok? I didn’t mean to let go of you.”
“Liar. You wanted me to split my gut wide open so I could get stitched up like you!”
Mickey giggled. “Oops! You got me. Let’s race to the far end!”
“You’re on!” I said and took hold of his hand. He pulled me up, and we joined Jimmy, who was crouched low already, arms bent, and ready for the push off.
“On my mark,” Mickey said. “Last one to the north end has to kiss Sandra Baumgardner! Ready. Set. GO!”
Mickey and Jimmy lit out like a pair of Cheetahs. My rear skate raked the ice when I dug in and pushed forward, and I fell to my knee. By the time I’d regained my footing, both of them were twenty feet ahead of me and accelerating. I thought of Sandra. A nice girl in Jimmy’s class, but loaded with acne, and with hair that must have been dunked in an oil vat. I’d have to close my eyes and pinch my nose if they called my losing hand in the race. Before I’d gotten five feet in my futile attempt to make up the gap, a shout pierced the air from my left. Mickey heard it , too, and hesitated, allowing Jimmy to rocket on ahead.
“Hey fellas! I found you! Wait for me!”
Allen.

I stopped completely, knowing it was now impossible to salvage even a second place. Our pestering friend stood on the bank in his gleaming black skates by the inlet, one toe daintily poking at the ice.
“Wait up! I’m coming.”
Not that there was any hope of getting back into the race, but I wanted to thrash him good. Just for his persistence. Just for his stupidity in finding us. Just because he was Allen and wore horn-rimmed glasses. Mickey glanced in front of him at the back of Jimmy, then threw up his hands, turned, and motioned for me to come with him to drown Allen. We met a short distance away from the kid who was going to be led to the inlet somehow, and we stopped. Mickey furrowed his brow when he turned his head to me.
“Do you want the honor, or should I nudge him?”
“I think you’d better do it. Your mom probably won’t beat you half as bad as mine will if I do it.”
Allen tried to join us as we spoke, skating as though he had fifteen legs all working against one another. Why would God create such a drip, I wondered? Other than the glasses, his total lack of coordination, and his absurd devotion to being punished by us—what was it that made me want to pick on him? Especially in the light of what the Patterson Brothers had done to us over the months? It hit me that we were very much like them. They must have seen us as Allens.
“Wait, Mick. Leave him be. Let’s go get Jimmy—let that twirp hobble along after us if he wants.”
“Huh?” Mick curled up his nose.
“Yeah. C’mon. Let’s go.
“Hey Allen! Welcome aboard. We’ll see you over at the north end!” I gave Mickey’s arm a tug, and then we turned and sped off to catch up with the winner of the race. Allen clomped along, his ankles twisting with every step as if he were learning to walk in high heels.
Mick and I flew like the wind, expecting to see Jimmy lounging at the shoreline, laughing and ready to demand that we both kiss Sandra. As we approached the gentle dogleg turn fifty yards from the shore, a momentary shot of confusion fell on me. He wasn’t there. I scanned the steeper shoreline to my left where a tangle of brown vegetation hung onto the earth plummeting down into the ice. Mickey stopped dead, digging his skates into the frozen surface beneath us, grabbing hold of me. The force of it and my momentum made me fall to my rear with a thump. Mick’s outstretched hand pointed across the field of ice straight ahead. Halfway between us and the bank near a lone mound of snow I saw Jimmy’s head and arms break the surface of water, waving wildly as he tried to get a grip on the jagged rim of the broken ice above him. His face was the color of a clean sheet of paper. The beret he wore constantly lay bobbing like a cork in the churning water. He saw us and screamed in a high-pitched, exhausted tone, “Help me.” Then he lost his hold on the slick, water-drenched ice and disappeared.
“Jesus! He’s gonna’ drown! Quick, we gotta’ pull him out! What the hell happened? Jimmy, hang on!” Mickey screamed.
Jimmy reappeared once again, dripping and half frozen, his hands batting aimlessly at the churning water. Somehow he found the edge of the ice, cracking jagged pieces away each time he put any weight on it.
Mickey yanked the neck of my sweater. “Quick! Go find a stick or a branch—anything! Hurry.” He left me and shot forward, pulling his own sweater off as he did. I jumped to my feet and turned in a rush of panic toward the steep embankment behind us
“Oh sweet Jesus, get me a branch!” A long root, I thought…a hunk of abandoned rope. A limb! There, at the top of the bank. Its thick end sticking out, tangled among overgrown, dead grass and weeds. I raised myself up onto the serrated tips of my skates and exploded toward the wall of grass. When I reached it, two, three breaths later, I scaled it as if I had claws instead of fingers. I grabbed hold of the inch-thick woody end and yanked it, the steel tips of my skates buried in the side of the low cliff. The branch gave immediately and followed me downward again, onto my back atop the ice. I raised myself up and returned close to the spot where Mickey lay on his stomach, throwing his sweater out like an anemic lifesaver, over and over and over. Jimmy clung precariously to a semi-solid shelf, shivering. “Not enough. Closer. I can’t get my skates off…” He disappeared again when his grip failed, but somehow returned a short second later, gasping for air, exhausted from the struggle and the freezing water. Mickey scooted closer, roundhousing the sweater. It fell short again.
“Mick! I got it!” I screamed. Mickey turned his head as I tossed the branch. He released his hold on the sweater and snatched the long branch, then quickly shoved the end of it to Jimmy. Jimmy’s head was barely visible, now, but one set of fingers still clutched the ice. I prayed more fervently than I had ever prayed before. Mick raked the end of the branch across Jimmy’s knuckles.
“Grab it! God, please…” And then I saw Jimmy’s hand loosen slightly. He took hold of the slender end of the wood; a tenuous, feeble grip, as though whatever remaining strength and will to be saved was wrapped up in his frozen fingertips. The top of his hair barely poked through the water’s surface. His head popped up, and then the other arm. He took hold of the branch, but the look in his eyes seemed vacant.
“Skip, get over here, quick!” Mick shouted.
I eased forward to within a foot of Mickey, listening for any sound of cracking, any feeling of movement of the ice under my feet.
“I’ve gotta’ go help him. Take the end of this thing,” he said.
“No, Mick! Don’t do…”
“Just do it!” He sat up, ripped off his skates, and then began crawling toward Jimmy. “If the ice starts breaking under me just don’t let go. I’ll get him!”
I heard the sound of skates clomping on the ice behind me as Mickey closed the distance between himself and Jimmy. It had to be Allen. I turned my head and yelled at him, “Go for help, Allen. Run! Take your damned skates off and go find somebody. Now!”
“Oh gosh! Oh…”
“Go!”
Allen stared at the scene for a split second, and then as if he had been born to it, undid his skates and flew off like the wind. I turned back to Jimmy and Mickey. Mickey was at the edge of the hole, one hand on Jimmy’s fingers and the end of the stick. Jimmy’s head had gone beneath the water again. And then I heard our best friend’s death knell; a low, terrible crack, followed by several more in quick succession. The ice beneath Mick gave way. He rolled on his side as it split, and followed Jimmy under the water. A fraction of a second later Mickey re-emerged, gasping from the shock of the freezing water, still hanging on to the end of the branch. Jimmy didn’t come up with him.
“Hold on,” he said to me with a gasp. “I’m going back for him!” He shot head first under the water. I waited, eyes glued to the spot where they’d been. The black, broiling water calmed. It felt like minutes—too many minutes. Mickey was in trouble, too. And then he burst out, arms flailing, eyes wide open. He grabbed hold of the branch, and as he took in a huge breath of air, shook his head. “Going back. Lost him…”
“No, Mick! You’re turning blue already! I’m pulling you out. Oh God, Jimmy!”
Mick let go of the branch and dove under. Seconds later he resurfaced, gasping again. “I can’t see, I can’t find him. Goddamit!”
“Grab on, Mick. Hurry. You’re gonna’ freeze and die, too. Jesus, hurry up before you don’t have any strength left. Now!”
Mickey grabbed onto the branch. I dug the spikes of my heels in and pulled with all my strength. Holding onto the branch with his left hand, he found the solid edge and struggled out. He was half-frozen, soaked and shivering uncontrollably, but he was alive. I fell to my rear and cursed God through my tears. Behind him the waters breathed up and down, up and down, and then grew calm and serene, reflecting the mid-morning sun off the infinitely small ripples coursing across its surface.

Impressum

Texte: (c) Patrick Sean Lee, 2011
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 04.12.2011

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