Later, on the boat-ride back, our stringer empty,
totally skunked except for some pumpkin fish and bluegills we caught
with worms after giving up hunting the Big Ones, I dreaded having to
confront Mark and his inevitable stringer full of lunkers. His gloating
round face, his smug grin—these I could do without. So when we got back
to the cottage just after sunset, I was momentarily relieved that only
my mother was home. Mr. and Mrs. Morrison had been gone for about an
hour looking for Mark and Charlene, who had gone fishing together in
the cove, promising to be back no
later than 5:30. It was well past eight o’clock and they still weren’t
back. Phil and my aunt and uncle had spent the day in Glens Falls and
had not returned, so we knew Mark and Charlene couldn’t be next door
with Phil.
We spent that evening anxiously waiting for the Morrisons to
return. Mark’s cove was only a half-mile away, something was
obviously wrong. There was no phone in the cottage, so all we could do
was look for the high beams of their station wagon coming up the
country road. Robert and I played gin rummy while Dad drank successive
Rob Roys and Mom sipped a single Tom Collins she kept replenishing with
ice. At around 10:30 I asked if I could go outside and look for
Perseids.
“No. You’re not to leave this house,” my mother said.
“Oh come on, Mom, I’ll just be up at the clearing on
top of the hill.”
“You heard your mother,” said Dad.
“But there’s nothing to do.”
“We got a crisis here, Eddie,” he said. “I’m not
putting up with any backtalk.”
“Let’s play another game of gin,” said Robert, who
had already lost twice.
“How about fifty-two pickup?” I said, and scattered
the cards all over the floor.
“Hey! I’m not picking them up.”
“Edward,” my mother pronounced, like I was maybe
ten. “Go to your room.”
“Pick up those cards first or I’m comin’ after you.”
That was my father’s famous threat. I don’t recall that he ever hit me,
but then again I think a blow from him would have given me amnesia. I
picked up the cards and took the deck to my room. I started playing
solitaire on the bunk bed when Robert came in with some potato chips
and cokes.
“What do you think happened to them?” he asked.
“Nothing. Maybe they got lost. Maybe a perv, no
maybe they got abducted by aliens! Yeah that’s it, Rob, maybe you were
right and the
fireball I saw wasn’t a meteorite. Maybe a ship
crashed into the lake and—”
“Come on, Eddie, let’s play gin.”
“Nah, I’m playing solitaire.”
“Just don’t start mumbling like Phil,” he said,
handing me the cokes and climbing up to the top bunk with the chips.
The top belonged permanently to him since the time I fell off and
almost broke my neck. “I hope they’re all right.”
“Charlene especially, huh?”
“Shut up.”
“Give up, Rob. You don’t have a prayer against Phil.
Two years older, hip, cool—at least in her eyes. Versus nerd, her age,
old friend, same old same old.”
“Shut up.” He threw chips at me from above.
“You shut up.” As always, our conversation
degenerated from there, and we bickered for awhile just to keep our
minds off all the terrible things that could have happened to our
friends, until my mother came in and said, “All right you two, lights
out. No use staying up all night, is there?” From the living room Dad
piped in, “Hit the rack and no lip!” But I couldn’t sleep. I lay there
in the dark waiting for the reflection of the Morrisons’ high beams on
the walls and ceiling. I was dozing soon, and then I was fighting off
creatures that looked like mummies or more like the
Martians in that
fifties movie Invaders from Mars. Creatures
pawing me all over, I
thrashed out at them wildly until I found myself on the floor. I
remember waking up there, several of my knuckles bruised and abraded,
Robert’s head peering down at me from the top bunk, “Not again, Eddie.”
I was still lying there when a flash of light hit the ceiling and we
knew they were home. Robert was down the ladder before I could even get
up. We ran out to the living room where my father was snoring in the
rocking chair and my mother was already at the front door. |
