Neverland, p.16
Neverland, page 16
I shook my head. “You’re crazy.”
“Far as I can tell, this world’s a crazy place. Where’s Summer?”
“Sumter.”
“You know who I mean.”
“He’s ’round t’other side. What you want with him?”
She dropped her ice cream down on the asphalt. She had chocolate all over her mouth as she approached me. I was still wiping my lips, and my tongue was sour with the aftertaste of candy-apple spit-up.
“‘Member kissing me?”
“‘Course.”
“Whatja feel?”
I blushed. “Nothing.”
“Nothing? You taste anything?”
“Huh?”
“Like water?”
“Well, ’course I tasted water. When you kiss, that’s what you taste.”
“You tasted sea water.” She stood right next to me, and my skin both crawled and cried out for her touch. I wanted to do things you’re not supposed to do until you’re twenty and married, and I didn’t even know what those things were. She continued, “You tasted sea water, on accounta you’re like him. But he knows things you don’t, ’cause he’s more him than you are.”
My ten-year-old heart was churning like a washing machine. Her breath was sea water then, too—fresh and clean and all-surrounding. Her lips were parched and peeled back from crooked teeth.
“You tell him something for me.”
I whispered, “Yeah.”
“You tell him it’s not always good. Tell him some things never get better.”
“Like what? Like what never gets better?” I felt sweat crawling from my belly downward.
“Like dying,” she said.
“THAT GIRL’S downright crazy,” I told Sumter when I came back around front. “That Zinnia.”
“She’s here? She’s here? How could she’ve leaked out like that? She’s really here?”
“Yeah, and she told me to tell you dying’s not so great. Is she a nut or what?”
Sumter stared at me as if seeing me for the first time. “Beau, that means you can—” He thought better of what he’d been about to say. “If I was to tell you something, you keep it secret? On your sacred oath to Lucy and Neverland?”
“Sure.”
“She’s a ghost.”
“Yeah, huh.”
“She and her brothers. They’re dead already. They were sacrifices. The first sacrifices to Neverland. Didn’t I tell you that already? You sure I didn’t tell you already?”
Of course I didn’t believe him. He was so good at lies. We went around behind the Crack-the-Whip, but all that was left of Zinnia was the broken cone and a puddle of melted ice cream.
“So, do spooks like chocolate?” I asked him. “A ghost give us head lice, too?”
7
“Jesus God it’s hot,” Nonie said when we ran into my sisters near the Coca-Cola stand. “I wish we’d just go home. Maybe they’re divorced by now.”
“I wouldn’t mind going on the carousel again,” Missy said, “I have fifty cents left.”
Julianne Sanders hovered around our perimeter. She was smoking a skinny cigar and talking to the man who sold the Cokes. They were apparently old friends, and Sumter whispered to me, “Probably her boyfriend.”
“He can’t be. He’s white,” Missy said.
“He can be anything as long as he likes girls with hairy legs,” Sumter said. “Oh, Miss Sanders,” he called to her in that syrupy voice, and she turned and gave him a wise look. “We’re just gonna walk around a bit, we promise not to go too far.”
“You get into anything,” she said, looking us all over, but her eyes kept coming back to my cousin, “and you’ll get whupped.”
“Oh, Miss Sanders, we won’t get into anything. I promise you that, yes’m.”
“THREE lousy dollars,” Nonie said when we were well out of earshot from our babysitter. She kept her arms wrapped around her waist like she was hugging herself. She was walking stiff-legged and mad.
“I like the carousel,” Missy said as if she were the only human being in the world who did.
Nonie sniffed at this, “If you had your own horse, you wouldn’t have to ride some stupid wooden one.”
Sumter said, “I know why girls like to ride horses.”
Missy glared at him.
“I know what we can do for free,” he said. “We can go on the roller coaster.”
“Yeah, right. It hasn’t run since before you were born,” I said.
“I mean climb it. I bet we can see all the way across the world if we get far enough up it.”
Missy decided to stay on the ground and watch, but Nonie was up for the climb. I was not. I was a little afraid of falling and was not fond of most heights. But Sumter started to dare me, and if there’s anything I’ve always been up for, it’s a good dare. My hand was sweaty, and I guess that helped: I stuck to each piece of wood when I touched it. I felt like a fly on the side of a building. There was great suction between my sweaty palms and the splintery gray-white wood.
“It’s just like climbing up a ladder,” Nonie said to cheer me on.
“If you weren’t wearing culottes, we could look up your dress,” Sumter said.
“Gross,” she replied, scrabbling up faster, until her behind was just a pale blue dot rising toward the sun.
Sumter stayed with me to both coach and taunt me. “Just think, when we get to the top, we can see the whole world. It’s not so far up, so don’t wuss out on me, cuz, or I’ll pry your fingers back one by one.”
My joints seemed to pop every time I made a move, and my arms were sore from reaching. Splinters scraped across my fingers, and I was sure at any moment I would fall and break my neck.
“Stay with me,” my cousin said, “Lucy’ll make sure you’re okay. We’re part of Neverland.”
“Yeah, huh,” I grunted. “We’re not exactly in it now. This ain’t one of your tragic shows.”
I heard a small voice in my mind, or maybe he said it aloud, “Where I am is Neverland.”
WE DIDN’T reach the top, although we got close to it. Nonie stopped first and said, “End of the line here, look.” Above her, one wooden slat was cut off from another. We could not go farther unless we went sideways for several yards and then climbed up and over.
“Look down,” Sumter said.
“Jesus,” Nonie gasped.
I clutched the wooden bar between my fingers and shut my eyes tight. The heels of my Keds dug into the lower shelf I was standing on.
“Beau, open your eyes. It’s beautiful. You can see everything!”
“I’m gonna fall,” I said.
“No you’re not. I told you, Lucy’ll make sure you’re okay.”
I opened one eye, and then the other.
Below us, we did see the whole world, the whole wide world of Gull Island.
“I see it,” Nonie said. “There it is, the Retreat!” She had one arm hugging a pole and the other stretched out, pointing. I looked in that direction.
“I see Neverland,” Sumter added.
I didn’t want to tell either of them this, but as I looked down, feeling my stomach swooping as if it were falling without my body attached, I saw more than just the shack, even through the trees.
I also saw Grammy Weenie in her chair, sitting out beside the shack.
The climb down went slower and was scarier, at least for me.
Julianne Sanders stood below us with Missy, shouting, “You are gonna break your neck! Come down right now or I am going to whup you! Watch your step—wait until I tell your daddies, just wait till then!”
8
So of course we got in trouble. Sumter got spanked with his daddy’s belt, and Nonie and I got no supper that night. But we were already grumbling about the grown-ups anyway, so this was like throwing gasoline onto a campfire.
And then the unthinkable occurred—perhaps what was to be, for my cousin, the final straw. The thing that sent him over the edge.
It was just after supper, and Nonie and I had just gotten swatted by Aunt Cricket for sneaking downstairs and swiping Oreos from the pantry. Sumter came barreling into the kitchen like a locomotive and ran smack into his mother. He was crying hard, but there were no tears to come out.
“He’s gone,” he gasped, sounding weaker than I’d ever heard him; his lisp had returned, also.
“Who’s gone?” Aunt Cricket hugged her son against her skirts. “Tell me, Sunny, who’s gone? Daddy?”
Sumter was clutching her, enraged. He stomped his feet on the linoleum. It felt like a small earthquake. “Bernard! Bernard’s gone, that’s who!”
Nonie shrugged and whispered to me, “Big deal.”
Sumter heard her and glanced back, pointing at her. “You took him, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
“Give me a break. I haven’t even seen your dumb old bear since Tuesday. Have a cow, why don’t you.”
Sumter let go of his mother and lunged at Nonie, knocking her down. She yelped. He had his hands around her neck and was strangling her. Aunt Cricket moaned, “Sunny, Sunny, oh, dear God,” but was not going to interfere.
“Get off her,” I said, tugging at the nape of his T-shirt. “I said get off.”
“Traitor,” Sumter snarled at me. He swatted at me with his fists, and I fell on him and started wrestling around.
“The bear’s probably where you left it in—”
“Beau.”
“I wasn’t gonna—I was gonna say in the car, you dumb—”
“Beau.”
I heard his voice in my head. Remember your oath. Neverland. Remember your oath.
In my own head I asked him: How did you do that?
He didn’t answer.
We struggled for a while longer, batting at each other’s chests and faces with our half-curled fingers. We fought in ways that did little real damage, although I would later see the scratches across my face because Sumter had not clipped his fingernails in a while.
In our fighting my shirt got ripped, and I fell off him, to the side, taking great heaving breaths. Sumter sat up and brushed himself off.
“Oh, Sunny.” His mother lifted him up, almost into her arms, but he was too heavy. I could tell she wanted to cradle him. She brushed her fingers through his shiny hair, his head pressed back against her breasts.
And it struck me, then, about their resemblance.
Not only did he not look anything like Aunt Cricket, but when she held him, it was as if he were a pet, a doll, and not her son, as if she never saw him as a child at all, but as something she didn’t understand, something she could not comprehend—so she held him close to her breasts, not for comfort, but so that she wouldn’t have to look at his face.
Because he did not look anything like her at all.
9
“All right, goddamnit, so I threw it out.” Uncle Ralph didn’t look back from the television set in the den. “A boy his age shouldn’t be playing with dolls, and I was so dog-tired of looking at it.”
“Well, just go back and get it.” Aunt Cricket stood firm. She tapped her toe on the floor, up, down, up, down. The small den was dark and smelled of pine and mildew and Uncle Ralph’s dirty feet. The TV set was its only light. I watched from the doorway. Upstairs, Sumter was pitching a fit in his room. You could hear things hitting the floor; you could hear his fists banging against the walls.
“I told you I threw it out. It’s gone for good,” he said. In his right hand he scrunched up a Budweiser can.
“Well, you just tell me where it went.”
“Cricket, you are a piece of work, you know that? A goddamn piece of work. I pitched it. Off the bluff. It’s probably sleeping with the fishes right now.”
Grammy Weenie wheeled up alongside me and grabbed me by the wrist. “Go tell your cousin to calm himself. Tell him I will not tolerate a temper tantrum.”
I wriggled out of her grasp and hurried along the hall to the staircase. Missy sat at the bottom of the stairs and watched me step around her. I took the stairs two at a time, sliding my hand up the banister. All this over a dumb teddy bear. I was in my socks, so I slid on the landing, skidding down the hall like I was ice skating. I came to Sumter’s room and tried the door. Locked.
“It’s me.”
I heard things hitting the walls, glass breaking, feet stomping, hands slapping. Something thudded against the other side of the door—he’d thrown something at me, but the door was in the way.
“Go away, you traitor.”
“I am not a traitor, now you open this door.”
“You probably told them everything, anyway.”
“You know I didn’t.”
“Go away, you hear me?”
“Sumter, Grammy says she wants to see you.”
“She knows where she can go.”
But even as he said this, just on the other side of the door, I felt another door opening in my brain and someone was digging around with his grubby little fingers. I heard Sumter’s voice inside me say, You hate all of them, too, don’t you. Beau? Grown-ups are bad. Lucy wants us. We can be with Lucy. We just need the right sacrifice.
10
In my dreams that night I was looking over the edge of the bluffs. I was wearing my underwear and I had a flashlight in my hand. I was looking for something down among the rocks and sea. It was night out, and the sea and sky had merged into one rippling purple robe, with a white stitch down its middle where the full moon reflected off it. Down below, something was coming out of the water.
Climbing up the side of the bluff.
Before I saw what it was, I heard it growling.
It was Bernard, the teddy bear, his button eyes gleaming fiercely when I shone my flashlight down on him.
A dark streak ran down his furry muzzle.
Blood.
EIGHT
Commandments
1
The next morning, Sumter had his teddy bear back. It was more raggedy than before, with thistles around its ears as if it had been caught in the underbrush. Its paws were covered with mud, and it had lost its left eye. But it was still Bernard, and Sumter kept it close to him. He would not explain how he managed to retrieve the thing from where his father had tossed it. But there were other things going on at home besides a teddy bear. Something new, a silence, had crept into the house. The fights were still there, but under the surface, like smoldering embers. Our parents were always at war, with each other, with alcohol, with the humidity, and the wars all began the way wars do: with a single shot, and this filled with bourbon or gin or blackberry brandy. We children had no wars, and still we had our fort, our hideout, our way of escaping.
Why could I not resist going to that shack?
Sumter spent all his days there, alone, away from the rest of us. During the better part of the day I would feel no compulsion to go there. The daylight world attracted me, with long walks on the beach, riding to town with my father on some mindless errand, watching television while I bounced Governor on my knee. Missy was progressing through the basics of knitting with Mama, and Nonie decided the best use of her time was to lie half naked across the gritty beach and darken. The grown-ups didn’t start drinking until three or four. Julianne did most of our cooking and read aloud from Gothic novels down on the rocks while Nonie tanned. In other words, we spent our days in a relaxed state of boredom as if we were satiated drug addicts. Grammy Weenie became ever more silent, wheeling in her chair around the halls, stroking her hair with the dreaded silver-backed brush, reading silently from her Bible, watching the road from the front window as if expecting something most peculiar to amble up her driveway.
But the nights were different.
As the light faded in the evening, I’d begin picking up Sumter’s radio signals in my brain. His voice, eating away at my own, Lucy wants you. Neverland. Now. Come. I would look across the dinner table at him through the steam of Julianne’s leek soup. He would be helping himself to more mashed potatoes. He would not even be looking at me, and still I heard him in my head.
“You children go play,” one of the grown-ups would say, “before it gets dark.”
Sumter would be out first, and Julianne, more often than not, would shoot me a look that said beware!, but I would successfully ignore it. The grown-ups had no warnings: They were having after-dinner drinks.
2
As I went out the front door one night, later than usual because I had to kiss my baby brother good night to keep him from crying, I thought I saw a ghost. She was white and pale and shiny like a grub under a rock. But it was only Aunt Cricket in a white cotton nightgown. Holding her bourbon-filled glass in the air, she said, “It’s okay, really, to have a sip or two, isn’t it, Beau? My doctor in Atlanta says that it’s good for the blood pressure, and when you’re a grown-up, there’s a lot of that going around, you know?” She sat in the front room, on the sofa, her legs curled up under her. The room was in twilight, warm like an oven, and quiet, even with the tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh of the electric fans encircling her. Grammy sat across from her and me, asleep in her chair, for she often slept early.
I said, “Aunt Cricket?”
“Yes?”
“Why do grown-ups like the taste of bourbon?”
She thought for the longest minute, and I was about to take off thinking she’d forgotten the question, when she replied, “I guess it’s because we have to like it. When you’re all grown up, you’ll know. When you’re just a child like yourself, you do what you want, you have choices. But when you grow up, Beau, I will tell you now, it ain’t fun. I never do what I want. You know something, honey? I never do what I want. I’ve always done what I have to do. I have to like the taste of bourbon, and hey,” she said with that drunken Southern twist that’s so appealing and so disturbing, “I ain’t feeling no pain right now. Nothin’ hurts, you know?”
“I guess,” I said.
“You boys play nice, don’tcha?”
“Yes’m.”
“Be ’specially nice to my boy. He was born on a bad day, and his daddy never plays nice with him.”
