Chapter 5

1

The place was typical. It reminded Adam of Pug’s house, right down to the tree in the yard and the steep gable over the front door. Grampa pulled in front and then did a quick U further down the road. It was recon more than anything, and the initial fear was that the accident on Woodvine that left Mr Wilson dead might have brought cops to the house to deliver the bad news. But there was nobody in there.

            The Audi will never pull up in front of that house again. It’ll be scrap metal by the end of week. It was the sort of thought he expected would greet him, but something about its finality nearly brought him to the verge. Not of tears, no, but of a sort of non-acceptance. He’s a stranger. A friendly face, but somebody you never said a word to. He was just always there. Waddling down the sidewalk in the blistering summer heat, sweating, evoking those jokes an older version of him would strain not to laugh at to portray some form of maturity.

            “Kinda sad, isn’t it?” grampa said. He pulled against the curb across the street.

            “What happens to his house?” Croak asked.

            “Probably go into probate to determine the beneficiary of his estate,” Lewis answered. “Assuming he had that in his will. Hell, from what you boys’ve said, and guessing based on a diet of those god-awful meatballs, I’d say it was morally expected of him to have some sort of planning done for his death.” He scratched the scruff on his chin. “You gotta wonder if ambulance chasers are hounding fat guys to represent their eventual estate.”

            “I dunno, why don’t you ask Pug?” Danny joked and Chels barked in the back when she heard her best friend’s name.

            “So, there it is. Now what?” Grampa asked.

            “I just wanted to check something.”

            Grampa looked at Adam with a skeptical arch in his brow. “You guys not letting me in on some secret here?”

            There was a line drawn. The boys all knew it. It was an agreed upon dictum in boyhood to leave the parents outside of the circle. But to Adam, grampa was just one of the boys. And maybe that amounted to his comfort in having the man join them on their quest. For discoveries of this nature required the contrast of naiveté and the wisdom and experience of the man-child. At least that’s what the Goonies taught them. Hell, Adam might even suggest that Pug adopt some variation of the Truffle Shuffle while grampa chowed down on a Baby Ruth, just to cement the analogy.

            “It’s the last thing we have left,” Pug piped up. “Summer’s almost gone. This is our hurrah.”

            There was more than truth to the statement. Because it acted a sort of eulogy to what this foursome meant to each other. That’s what Adam knew. Reedy Creek brought them together, sure, but adolescence didn’t play by the rules, so if hearts were broken, that was just the hormones. And school. Two of the biggest assholes known to man.

            “Once I see what I think I’m going to see, I’ll tell you exactly why we’re here,” Adam finally said. He opened the car door, knowing the guys in the back were staring at him, not understanding if he meant to divulge anything or if it was just a diversionary tactic. He went across the street. He was just a kid. Insouciance to his step but purpose in his stare. He came to the front lawn; the grass was long, unkempt, and would remain that way until somebody procured landscapers to prep the property for the market. Migration for the ethanol distillery would have the place sold fast. Especially since the guy didn’t die inside.

            The tree was the perfect place for a swing. An arced bough shaded most of the driveway. He could imagine a rope knotted around the branch tied to a plank beneath, dangling in synchronicity with the wind. But there was something else in its place.

            The eye of a crow.      

            The black lens. Something you’d never see if you weren’t looking for it. That’s how the misdirection worked. It would be the same on the front porch. You don’t expect to look up and find a camera in your own home. On your property. So you don’t look. He quickly went up the front walk to the steps. The porch was worn, the balustrade almost peeling from the nosing on the stairs where the paint had begun flaking. The shot they’d seen on the tape was pointed at the front door; it was how they saw the address. There it was now. 964. Adam turned and looked up toward the soffit.

            There was another. A camera. The same as the farmhouse, only here the wire was not cut. It was neatly weeded back into the soffit plank. He felt his heart thud because there was a wider conspiracy at play here. Wasn’t there? Did ol’ scarface put that up there? Did he climb the tree? Those wires look official, though. As if they were installed upfront. Planned. In the blueprints.

            And that idea invited a scary thought. This wasn’t the only house being watched.

            He turned and ran back to the Tercel.

            “You okay?”

            Adam ignored his grampa and turned to look at his friends. “They’re the same. Mr Sub. The farmhouse. All the same cameras.”

2

He read Orwell’s 1984 a few times. It was a real page turner, but back then it was truly only ammo against the threat of the Soviets and the sort of super state implied by Communism of the Stalinist variety. Hell, he’d never had a television until it was truly a requirement of 50’s suburbia when Eisenhower’s interstates and the redundancy of two Chevies in the port drained the cities and created a sort of cultural backyard where dads mowed and moms gardened while the kids put on their Fess Parker coonskin caps and ran around playing cowboys and Indians; here and now, though, there were goddamn cameras in trees and homes, and it had Lewis utterly convinced that technology had gone too far. The Stasi’s come home to roost. It was a sobering thought, but he looked at Adam with a queer understanding. Doesn’t matter who’s in the White House. The fucking surveillance state is upon us.          

            “It’s why we even went to Mr Sub, grampa. Or even came here. Cause we wanted to see if they were the same.”

            “And they were,” grampa said, not so much repeating what his grandson said as he was trying to believe it himself. Because something else had come of the confession. Not just the trust that could integrate him into their clique beyond the role of supervision, but rather the reminder of what he’d often see on his walks. When the mind wandered.

            It’s why you walk in the morning. Because sometimes, sometimes you have the most wonderful dreams. Back when Barb was a little girl, before she would protest CFCs all while spraying a coif in her hair, and your wife would sit with you on the front porch with lemonade and a cigarette, cause everyone was smoking, everyone, but back then you didn’t know it would kill her. Those dreams are the best, because back then there was hope things could be normal. So you walk with those thoughts and you look at the trees and remember the sycamores, the chirp of those birds, and you usually see something, some sort of reflection. And you sometimes take a close enough look to notice something glass in the tree staring back at you. But then it doesn’t matter, because then your grandson hasn’t told you what he’s found. No. Because then it’s just nostalgia.

            “But the thing was, like, wired into the house,” Adam said. “Like it’s always been there. Maybe the wires are in the tree too. I didn’t really see.”

            “Adam,” Danny said, and Lewis knew the boys in the back were trying to stall him. Were trying to keep under wraps whatever adventure they were truly on. But he knew from the tone of Adam’s voice that whatever it was they’d stumbled on needed much wiser eyes to determine an answer. And he’d had his scuffs as a kid. Hell, Roosevelt’s Depression left much to the imagination back then. So whatever the boys had found was perhaps just a re-tread of his own shenanigans.

            “It’s okay, guys. Whatever this is, ya don’t have to tell me. I know how boys are. I was one once.”

            Pug chuckled, probably more out of respect than anything, but Adam only exhaled. “Grampa, we found something.”

            “Adam, please.”

            This time Adam turned to look at Danny. “I don’t care, man. I just...think about it. If the wire’s a part of the install, I mean...” He stopped for a moment. He was out of breath. And visibly nervous. Because he had stumbled onto something. This wasn’t about seeing a dead man in his car. This was about seeing something that would enlighten him, enlighten them all, of the intention to put cameras in and outside of the dead man’s house while he was still living. “I don’t think Lazarus put the cameras there...but he knew of them...and...he knows who did or how else would he even have the goddamn tapes?”

            “Adam,” Lewis said, taking the boy’s shoulder. They were still parked across the street of what had become ground zero. “What did you find?” Now he needed to know. Because it scared Adam. And he was here to protect the boy.

            Adam and Patty. It was why he ever came to Reedy Creek.

3

It was the sort of anger that nearly suffocated him at the farmhouse. Looking into the Jew’s eyes pinpointed the doubt that was really only his way of suggesting that he keep his yapper shut, and it brought his blood to the boiling point. Were it not for his grampa, he probably would have leaped over the seat with both fists clenched. He felt the man’s hand on his shoulder and for a moment there was peace. And comfort.

            “What did you find?”

            He sat there for what felt like hours, contemplating what he could say. What he should say. Because, no matter what, there was that line. The same line he’d soon cross when he was a dad. He wasn’t sure why it happened, and supposed there was no clear answer, but one day you just stopped thinking like a kid. Maybe it was responsibility. Maybe it was when the allowance stopped coming and you had to pave your own way. Or maybe it was age. Either way, you just stopped seeing life’s little adventures and you got stuck into a routine. But his grampa was different. Maybe he wasn’t always that way. Maybe when he was just a dad, a husband, his habits made him blind to childish proclivities, but now, without gramma in his corner and the tail end of his life spent in the Creek (without a paddle), he’d opened up his eyes to the possibilities beyond the habitual infliction of adulthood and responsibility.

            “When I hit my homer yesterday, I...we...we couldn’t find the ball. No matter how hard we looked. It’s just woods back there, grampa. We knew we shouldn’t have gone in. And we stayed out all summer. But we...I...wanted that ball.”

            Danny sighed in the backseat. He knew the Jew didn’t think this was a good idea but he didn’t care. He’d just let the shithead stew in the mistake Guidry made throwing inside twice in a row. Because yesterday the Sox finally put the beat on the Yanks. Yeah, and look at all the good it’s done you. He thought of the tapes under his bed and shivered.

            “We found an old farmhouse,” Croak said.

            He saw the big whoop reaction in his grampa’s eyes and knew it wasn’t enough just to say it.

            “No, grampa...you have to see it for yourself.”

4

Maybe he should have clued in when Pug stayed in the Tercel.

            “I’m not taking Chels back, Adam, and I’m not leaving her in the car alone.”

            He didn’t ask why because he was going to see anyway. He was told not to take the route through Fenway since the coppers might still be on site cleaning up Mr Wilson’s mess. Plus, there was a trap of deadfall on the outer skirt of the field he’d have trouble climbing down. He saw the brambled branches when he ventured to watch the boys play ball at what Adam called Fenway. The boys did a great job with the field, and the clearing was perfect for batting practice. He wouldn’t claim to know the future, but he suspected Adam would one day play in front of thousands of cheering fans. Because the kid had talent. That truth was unavoidable. And he knew the other boys suspected the same thing or they would not have made him the indisputable ringleader. So he took State 34 outside of the Creek where the forest truly stuck out against what made Reedy Creek so understandably boring; its lamenting, roiling plainness with only quills of corn and those obelisks that jutted over everything with domineering exactitude, spewing smoke and churning science.

            He pulled into a gravel road that must have, at one time, served a farmhouse that had since gone belly up and killed the engine in the shade of some pines ten minutes later. Just so Pug and Chelsey wouldn’t suffocate.

            But what he saw now made sense of why the kid wouldn’t want to bring his dog. Because it was the perfect excuse for why he didn’t have to come.

            It was far enough away from 34, and shaded by a copse of trees street side, that the few motorists who might come by this way would never, for the sake of curiosity, make a judgment call to pull over and inspect. No, there were more interesting places to take a piss. Plus, the Creek usually repelled traffic beyond the chemists and nerds who wanted to make a living doing the sort of alchemy that would so astound Newton in his search to transmute lead into gold. Now it’s corn. Corn into gold.

            “Jesus,” Danny said. His voice was muffled. They had all thrown their hands over their mouths. Croak gagged and turned away. Only Adam looked perplexed as they stared down into the pit.

            There were tire tracks around the soft dirt, chaffing grass into clumps. Most of what had been dug up was still piled against the back trees, scarring some of the trunks with torn viscous where the frontloader had driven a little too close. Inside the hole there was a thin blanket of undisturbed dirt. And swaths of flies that looked like vaporous smoke. It was only the irritating hum of wings now. And the stench of rotting, and already rotted, animals that had been pushed or dragged into this final resting place, only partially buried far enough out of town that the stink wouldn’t bear too strongly on industry.

            “Are these the ones from yesterday?” Adam asked.

            Croak didn’t say anything. His eyes were watering with the strain that was keeping him from breathing. Because the air was thick here. Lewis had seen some shit. It’s why he was and would still be concerned that these boys had seen Wilson all busted up in his Audi. But the realization that the sight of the man was the last thing on their minds made this apparent discovery the fruit of their shared conviction. And there was more, wasn’t there? He thought so. Because the boys hadn’t seen this. They’d come a different way. So he was walking into something with them, making this their secret.

            There were animals in that hole. A lot of them. All dead. What hadn’t been completely buried did not move beyond the vicious appetite of the flies creating the illusion of movement. He saw bones. Hollowed sockets. It was a mass grave. Like something the Nazis were up to when you were just a scrub in Morocco.

            “I don’t think so,” Danny said. “These are older.”

            Lewis didn’t hear any certainty in the boy’s tone, but he believed him nonetheless. Maybe Adam’s meant to play ball, but Danny the Jew, the kid’s bright. The boys turn to him for the tougher answers. And he usually has them, doesn’t he? He thought so.

            “Where’s the farmhouse?” Lewis asked, not wanting to stand here anymore, but understanding this wasn’t the last of it if Adam’s question was any confirmation. And didn’t he ask you if the Creek had a slaughterhouse yesterday? Is this what he meant? It probably was. He wouldn’t bring it up. Now was not the time for talking.

            “Come on grampa,” Adam said, and he backed away from the hole. He couldn’t take his eyes away. He was curious. As a boy, he should be, but he would not voice any questions. The house was up ahead. Far enough away from the grave it made Lewis wonder why they’d chosen the spot beyond its exclusivity within the trees. The mess of tire tracks continued. Back and forth. The boys kept to the fringe where the woods created the natural clearing in this place that could have once been farmland. Considering the bulk of corn being grown in and around Reedy Creek for the distillery, it surprised Lewis this place wasn’t being used. But the ground had a scorched earth feel, as if some invaders had left it barren. Perhaps somebody allergic to corn. Ha! And it was out of the way. A secret. And as he kept to the boys’ path within the line of trees he started noticing the same things the kids had yesterday when they’d stumbled onto this place.

            Birds. Dead birds.

            “They’re still here,” Adam said, his voice disjointed.

            “So there were more.” Danny touched the tree next to him. He leaned against the trunk; they were shaded inside the woods and beyond the sparrows and crows, which looked as if they’d just dropped from the sky, the house’s front yard was littered with those creatures that chose this odd place as their grave. Nobody would conceive of collecting such things as ornaments.

            “My God,” Lewis uttered, trying to muffle what he knew would frighten the boys because he was supposed to be steadfast. Hell, he was already battle worn. He always told Adam he’d seen dead bodies. The question to one who’s returned from war is always the inevitable cliché: Did you kill anybody? It’s usually asked by those young enough to consider the query fair game, because the psychology of war is never on the cusp of thought. And he had killed some gooks in Korea. And he would forever remember them by their idiom because that’s how you kill. Even when it’s for country, the commonality of humanity made the de-humanizing a necessity or the nightmares would never cease. Because people existed outside of ideas as well. He would forever drape himself with the stars and stripes, but sometimes that wasn’t enough to clear one’s conscience. Right now he wanted a smoke. That’s all he could think of.

            This is what the boys saw. This is why Pug elected to stay behind this time. Because they came back this morning with Chels while Mr Wilson was going for the very last drive of his life. And then what?

            “What did you find here?” Because you came back. A second time. You came back because you’re boys. I would have. I would have been scared, but sometimes the curiosity is far stronger, because curiosity is a compulsion to know. And that compulsion will never stop itching until you scratch the spot. He rubbed his forefinger against his middle. He used to hold his smokes here. Now it was just a tic. Something he didn’t readily notice but now, now that he was staring at those poor animals bathing in the never ending sunlight, shaded only by the very parasites that were feeding on them, he knew starting up again wouldn’t be a terrible idea.

            “We went inside that house. And we found a box of VHS tapes.”

            “They were of Wilson.”

            “Yeah,” Adam nodded. “They were surveillance tapes. Somebody was keeping tabs on the guy.”

            “Why? What was on the tapes, Adam?”

            “He was doing drugs, grampa. Somebody kept tapes of him doing drugs.”

            He couldn’t scold the boy. Not here. Not now. Because he thought the animals may have been a tactic. If there were tire tracks, and a fucking hole just down the field, then somebody was organizing this charade. Once the animals are too decomposed, perhaps they’d be replaced with new ones. The frontloader’s probably in a shed around back or something. And these things scare people away. Unless they’re young boys. Curious young boys. He couldn’t believe Adam had gone into the place. He could not. Because the implications of having been caught were too terrible.

            Especially if you’re right, Lewis. Especially if you’re right about this place.

            He looked at the windows. He would realize how new they looked, just as Adam had when he first came upon this place. And this would strike him as odd as well, because the place was ramshackled. Off the grid. And the windows would have been thousands of dollars. A waste. There’s new money at this place, Lew. And money combined with small town boredom means a different trade’s found Reedy Creek along with the corn.

            Lewis Forsmythe served in the US Army and took his penchant for duty to a different force. He was a cop. Retired.

            “I want to see the tapes,” he said. And the four of them left the way they’d come. The way of the tire tracks.

5

He thought it was pretty strange they found another gravesite. Grampa even said the animals were an older breed, having been pushed or dragged by a Bobcat away from the farmhouse and into a grove set far enough back to deter any smells from suffocating explorers, unless there was an unfortunate turn in the wind. He wasn’t as hell bent against bringing grampa as Danny, because there was partial relief at the idea of unloading some of the anguish and curiosity they’d all felt once seeing Wilson’s dead body in the car, and then blurred some on the tape hunching over a table to snort a drug Pug had only ever heard about while eavesdropping.

            You weren’t going to watch those again. Never again. Yes, and neither should they. Because that was a world they had no right seeing. He knew when his parents closed their bedroom door that barging in would only reveal to him a side of his folks he didn’t dare want to see or know about. He wasn’t so daft not to know parents had secrets. That not everything you saw on the surface was what made a person tick. He didn’t agree with Adam now, and to think it was his grampa that wanted to see the tapes as well elected a sort of disappointment in what he would have hoped might become a supervisory rein on the tail end of this summer, whose adventurous climax was leading them down a trail he was not sure he wanted to uncover.

            So he had them drop him off on Main, near enough to BB’s Rental that he could bug his sister to maybe call his mom to pick him up. Yeah, because you sure couldn’t use the walk. No, he wasn’t going to think about what exercise he should be doing, not now, because even with the other guys so indifferently watching a dead man parade his vices on TV without any sort of consent, Adam’s discovering those damn cameras were all the same had him wondering how far the commonality stretched.

            “You sure, Pug?” Adam asked.

            He wanted to hope his leaving might actually mean something. That the boys in the car cared. But another part, a more realistic part, considered what the future just might have in store once the leaves started falling and school let in, and he knew what could happen once Adam realized there were rules to popularity. You started to evaluate your associates when you had an image to upkeep. Slimer’s on your shirt. Yes, because he liked The Real Ghostbusters. He wasn’t one to cast away his interests for the sake of some wider cultural dictate. Then why aren’t you wearing your CTR ring?

            He didn’t have an answer for that one. At least not a good answer. Peer pressure sometimes always wins. It did when he sucked on the end of that Winston and saw the approval in Adam’s eyes. Sometimes pressure just has to win. But he could not go back and watch those videos. Maybe that was his line, and he sure hoped Adam respected that. They could poke fun of him all they wanted about it, as long as they were doing it as his friends. And not because everybody else was doing it.

            Pug walked Chels up Main. It was late afternoon now and he could start to feel that September chill that meant autumn was coming. It was a summer for the ages, he’d always say, and a baser part of him wanted to return to that one day when he followed Lazarus and found Fenway, because that was the doorway that opened up the summer to the sort of friendship he would certainly write about one day. Because Pug wanted to be a writer. A novelist. Maybe like James Michener. Or Robert Ludlum. He was intrigued by Stephen King, but his parents didn’t have any of his books at home…and maybe that particular genre was too scary for him. Until you saw the animals. And Mr Wilson’s dead eyes. Maybe horror is right up your alley. He was always on the lookout for those what-ifs that could transpire into a three act short that might just make his father proud or have mom pat him on the back wondering where he got his ideas. So this was certainly something to think about. The why. That was always the most important word in his quiver: why are things this way or that? The Jew was always the answer guy, but his stemmed from a form of practicality. No, Pug’s answers came from the part of the imagination that considered the zany repercussions when actual reason no longer sufficed.

            So they found another gravesite full of rotting animals and even grampa’s in on the adventure…and you want out to, what, see your sister?

            He wasn’t sure. He walked up to the movie store and listened to the bell jingle above the door. The place was pretty empty, and it smelt of stale popcorn and cardboard; it was the sort of smell that defined teenage indifference. Chels sniffed at the base of a display rack. He saw Angela over by a poster of Marty McFly standing half in and out of the DeLorean. She was talking to a guy in an Indians ball cap, faded jeans tucked into sneakers with the sort of perfunctory appeal that assumed it took some time for the guy to look as dishevelled as he did.

            “Horace, you’re not supposed to bring her in here.”

            Chelsey barked at the guy making his moves and he only half-heartedly smiled, throwing Pug the ol’ murderous glare that would prove he’d be on the watch for the little shit once the pretty girl no longer held sway. Pug didn’t care. He pulled back on the leash and Chels reared. He’d already spotted a couple of the cameras. There were probably more. Those black lenses that revealed a wrapped reflection of the place below.

            “She’s fine, Ange.”

            “So what, you and your dumb friends want to watch Weird Science again?” That was Croak’s suggestion, and it turned out to be a good one. There was a quick shot of boobs he nearly missed had Adam not been quick on the gun and paused the tape; and Kelly Lebrock made parts of him antsy enough that he could barely sit down. The potential suitor laughed. It was a dumb laugh. Pug wondered why guys (and girls) had to play dumb to impress.

            “The cameras in here, do they go into a backroom or something?”

            “What, who cares?”

            “I’m just curious. Like, are they going to some security feed somewhere? Did the manager hire outside security?”

            Angela exhaled and looked at the guy in the Indians cap, who seemed interested in the conversation only insofar as he could check out Ange’s body while she looked with disdain at her brother. “I don’t know, Horace. Geez. There’s nothing in the back but stock. I’ve never seen TV monitors here besides the ones we play movies on.”

            It was strange. Small town politics didn’t require the sort of coverage that would hardwire homes with closed circuit cameras. If anything, places like Reedy Creek were habitable enough to ensure nobody remained true strangers for long. And there were four cameras in here, in almost every corner. He didn’t suspect shoplifting was a huge problem. And unless the manager was monitoring his own employees for misdeeds, even this sort of investment seemed overblown. Once Adam saw the cameras at Mr Wilson’s, the one thing he did specify was checking your own home for them as well. What could it hurt?

            Somebody’s in the business of selling secrets. It was an idea that came to Pug in a flash, and the image of such a market stretched across his mind, not much different than the video store, only these racks would show covers depicting the very person whose secrets the tape would reveal.

            “Ah, shit, there goes ol’ Scarface.”

            In a moment of what could only be called serendipity, Pug saw Lazarus out the window, casually strolling by BB’s, his hands in his pockets, the sort of nonchalant gait of one who couldn’t very well know that a customer of his was being taken to the morgue. He’d care only if he meant to blackmail the guy with those tapes. And when he does find them missing, if they are his, what would he do to get them back? The thought terrified him. Because in the market of ideas, one’s secrets would command top dollar.

            Pug pulled Chels back to the entrance. The bell dinged as he left. Lazarus was heading up toward the Branch Streets onto Deermont Arc where the suburbs weaved on arterial roads. From above Pug guessed the Creek looked like a leaf, with the stem serving the main drag, and the resulting veins dotting those streets he and the guys would cycle, exploring the sporadic woods where rumors held there’d been cougars spotted. Because they were just dumb enough to confront that sort of animal with only Danny’s Easton and assurance of some boyhood invincibility. The last time you followed Scarface you discovered heaven. Maybe this time you’ll find hell.

            He could only shake away the morbidity of that thought. And a police cruiser pulled up alongside the guy, who was wearing only a black sweatshirt and dark jeans, his hair pulled back in a ponytail that splashed into his hoodie. The cruiser flashed its lights and Lazarus stopped, looking down at the Chevy Caprice. Pug stopped and watched. He could see the back of the cop’s head. Is that the Sheriff? He thought it could have been. Why wouldn’t the big guy pull over to accost somebody like Lazarus?

            Yes. There he was. Sheriff Napolitano climbed out of the driver seat, hitching his pants, and he strolled over to the sidewalk, leading Lazarus to the backseat. There was no resistance. Pug didn’t think there was much of a point to resist. Not now. He knew that could only mean more trouble. The Sheriff didn’t extract his cuffs, so it wasn’t an arrest. Maybe just a lively chat?

            Napolitano shut the backdoor, looked around, nodded his head in Pug’s direction as if to notify the kid had been spotted and it wasn’t worth the boy’s time to question official police business. And then the Caprice sped off.

6
Croak got the first call that night.

         “Mom coming home tonight?”

          “She jetted off with some douche who brought her flowers.”

           Saturday night. Date night. Croak should have known. Damn...he really needed to ask her something.

           “Fuckin’ guy said hi like he wanted to be friends,” Randy snickered. His feet were up on the kitchen table. He was eating a sandwich. He’d left the mayo and deli meat on the counter, and there it would probably remain until his mom got home. If she came home. Sometimes she’d wander in quietly in the morning and pretend she’d come from her room. But Randy told him their mother was in a lot of rolodexes. Whatever that meant.

            Croak was busy looking around the house. Remembering the angles and vantage points from the surveillance tapes. The cameras would be high, out of the way. He’d gone from room to room, checking the corners, looking for what Adam called crow’s eyes. There was nothing in his room. Nothing in the tree outside either, that he could see. And what if there was. All there’d be footage of is Randy sucking down Winstons while he spied on Pug’s sisters sun bathing. He checked the family room, checked the hallway and the ceiling by the landing to the second floor. He scanned the kitchen as well, above the oak cabinets. Looking for any kind of reflection that meant somebody had tried to hide glass up there.

             But there was something, wasn’t there? Even despite how much he wanted to disbelieve how real things had gotten, there was one eye, listless in the shadows, trying to be unapparent but failing once it was discovered.

             It was in his mom’s room.

             You don’t see what you don’t expect to see, Grampa had said while he watched Mr Wilson snort lines off his kitchen table. His counter. Because it was Adam’s insistence that they all check their homes. Croak felt sick to his stomach. The invasion hadn’t hit home while watching Wilson because it didn’t affect him; he was just partaking in what grampa would have called a perverse form of voyeurism. But now that he could reasonably picture somebody doing the same with his mom, watching on a crappy TV, making the sort of crass judgments he was guilty of flinging at Wilson, he wished he’d gone with Pug.

             “What are you doing?” Randy asked through a mouthful of ham.

             “Looking for something.” He wouldn’t say more. “You notice anything in your room? Something like in the ceiling...”

             “You on shrooms?” Randy laughed. “Jesus, man, you and your chums are on some shit.”

             “No, seriously, Randy. I’m not kidding.”

             “Neither am I.”

              His phone rang. It was Pug.

7

“Just the one.”

            “Where was it?” Pug asked.

            “My mom’s room.”

            “Man,” Pug exhaled. How she could have missed something like a camera wasn’t exactly a testament to her blindness, but rather how little we actually see in the world to which we’re so familiar. Because he’d found one in his parents’ room as well. There could have been more. “Me too. Up behind the bed. My mom bought a headboard, so it like shadowed the lens. But it’s there. Sort of buried in the ceiling, like in a pinhole. I was lucky I found it. But I knew what to look for.”

            “Pug, I feel sick. What if there are tapes of my mom? Your folks?”

            Pug only nodded, not wanting to say anything out loud on the matter for what it might mean. “Did grampa watch?”

            “Yeah. He did. I wasn’t sure we should have showed him. I know Danny was dead set against it, but...I’m glad we did.”

            “Why?”

            “Because he was just as shocked as we were.”

            Pug could tell Croak was disturbed. When he got home he was on that initial high of seeing Lazarus get swiped by the Sheriff, and for some time he just sat in his room with a pad of paper, writing the initial paragraphs of what he thought might make a killer story. The guy who sells secrets. Sells your privacy. First he blackmails you, then he finds the highest bidder. Chels sat at his heel while he furiously scribbled, his hand cramping with what he would forever call the Writer’s Spasm, and when the idea felt spent, he remembered what Adam suggested they all do and he checked the house for the same cameras he saw at BB’s.

            “There was something else though, Pug.”

            Pug wiped his forehead. He was sweating. He was visibly upset. He knew that. When his mom asked him what was wrong, he didn’t know how to answer her. He knew she would see through his lie so he just guessed he might be coming down with something. Which could very well be true.

            “We dug into Adam’s backpack and found some older tapes. From earlier in the summer. They were of a different guy. Not Wilson.”

            “What?”

            “Yeah. And I think I recognized him too. He picked up my mom. For a date.”

            Pug looked at his mom in the kitchen. She was just finishing the last of the dishes. His dad was watching television. He wanted nothing more than to confess to them of what they’d found, of the camera in their room, of the guy who’d died that morning in a car crash who coincidentally starred in some surveillance tapes they’d found at a secret farmhouse surrounded by dead animals in a horrific array of decomposing fencing that screamed KEEP OUT. But they hadn’t, and that made all the difference.

            “What’s going on, Croak? I mean it. Who’s doing this?”

            There was silence. Because even guessing would not have sufficed. Pug supposed that was his job anyway as the resident writer. But he didn’t want to go that route. He didn’t want to put his stamp on this. Not out loud at least.

            “Do you think it’s Lazarus? Do you really think he—”

            “Could do this?” Croak finished, as if he was thinking the same thing. But he didn’t see the guy being escorted by the Sheriff of Reedy Creek. “Grampa said he didn’t know, but he did tell us to stay away from him. He actually said to stay the fuck away from him.”
            Usually Pug would have laughed. But when an adult swore in front of a kid that generally meant one of two things: either you were in trouble, or they were just as confused (and scared) as you were and cursing was just frustration marking the occasion. And to consider grampa was in the dark with them widened that abyss substantially. Because Adam told them when his grampa left the army he became a cop. And cops should know the underbelly. They’re familiar with it. So when an adult told you to stay the fuck away from somebody that was usually the last thing you did. Because an adult’s confusion just ups your curiosity significantly, and what was youth without the ambition to rebel.

            “We’ve gotta do something about this. We have to.”

            “Yep,” Croak agreed. For the first time in the conversation his voice cracked.

8

“You shouldn’ have shown grampa.”

            “I wanted to.”

            “That wasn’t your right, Adam. It’s not always your fucking right to do everything without asking. We should have put it to a vote.”

            “What’s wrong?” There was silence on the other end. He could tell by the tone of his voice that the Jew wasn’t all there. Or if he was, he was just using this as an excuse to get mad. Because he was okay with it. By the end, when they’d watched the last tape together, each of them studying grampa while he watched the footage, they felt released of the pressure that had positioned itself in a heady weight on each of them, because as far as they were concerned, they’d stumbled not just on a private world, but a part of the adult world they were never supposed to know existed.

            “You know we found something we shouldn’t have. And no matter what, no matter how your gramps acts in front of us, he’s one of them. He’s an adult and he knows what we’re doing is wrong. He knows he has to do something about it.”

            “But he won’t,” Adam retorted. He didn’t know why he was getting so mad. But that was wrong, wasn’t it? Because his grampa wasn’t just some rando adult, no, grampa was somebody Adam needed in his life because of what his father wasn’t. A guy who could teach you to play catch. A guy who’d put on the mitt and toss around the ball before supper. He knew Croak would have said the same. But for some reason having a father that wasn’t a father was worse. Because the only excuse was that the bastard didn’t like him. At least Croak could blame the absenteeism on a piece of shit that just upped and left. No, your dad stayed. But he might as well not have. “You saw his face. He was just as confused as we were. The only thing he told us was to stay away from Lazarus.”

            “And what now? Do you think he’ll let us go to Fenway? Even if we’re taking our gloves, he’ll always suspect we’re going back to the farmhouse. Because it’s what he’d do if he was a kid. And he knows it too.”

            Adam looked down into his knapsack. It was sitting at his feet. One kick would securely stow it under his bed. Inside there were tapes of Wilson and some other guy. The other guy was on drugs as well. Not just the nose candy, but something he shot into his arm with a needle. Somebody Croak recognized…maybe. He didn’t quite elaborate, but the quick-to-the-gun response having seen him stroll into his kitchen with a similar paper bag was enough to provoke further questioning on the matter. Because these tapes were of their town. These were their people. Behind closed doors.

            “Danny, what’s up? This isn’t about grampa. Or just grampa.”

            The Jew exhaled on the other line. “I want to know what’s going on in this place, Adam.”

            “I do too. But don’t call me just to look for a fight. Grampa’s one of us. He always has been. My dad’s the asshole. Grampa’s always been aces. If we found something…dark, he can help.”

            “I found three.”

            “What?”

            The Jew said nothing for a moment and Adam wondered if he’d been crying. Because there was a crack in his voice. He sounded like Croak. Maybe he should take the nickname.

            “I found three cameras. You told us to check, so I did. Because Wilson’s place was hardwired and I was curious. And I found three. One in my parents’ room. Another on the lamp post. Directed toward our house. The third was in the family room, above my dad’s desk.”

            Adam had made the request. But he hadn’t found any at home. Even grampa helped, checking places like lamps and the shadowy corners where people tended not to look for fear of finding spiders or those creepy crawlies it would be far easier to ignore for the sake of one’s sanity. Nothing. Nada. His mother asked him what he was doing and he told her he was looking for Black Widows. It was the first thing that popped into his head and she only muttered something to the tune of “boys,” shaking her head as she whisked Patty to his high chair. So he’d assumed based on what he came up with that his friends would have the same luck. And he forgot about it. Because you’re not doing drugs, nobody’s interested in what you might be up to behind closed doors.

            “In your house?” It was the only thing Adam could say. Because everything had just changed. Everything. He looked at those tapes again, dates plastered on the stickers.

            “What do I tell my parents, Adam? Somebody could be watching my mother getting undressed. Some sicko might be enjoying that. I can’t…”

            Adam listened to Danny breathe. He was trying to mask what had become long sobs. This was something the Jew had been dwelling on. Letting the anger and curiosity stew.

            “Have you heard from Croak or Pug?”

            “No.”

            Was Danny a one off? Or were his folks up to no good when they thought nobody was watching? That’s what Danny’s thinking too. He’s thinking his dad…his mom, maybe they came home with a paper bag as well, tucked under the arm. Closed the bedroom door and went to town on whatever Lazarus packed for them. He would not bring that up now. Because he knew that would crush Danny. It would because he was thinking the same thing, and allowing the idea to break the sound barrier would somehow make it realer. The plan started taking effect now. The plan a boy makes when he considers his options before breaking the rules.

            “I want to find that ugly asshole, Adam. If he’s behind it. I don’t care that grampa told us not to. We have to. And if it’s not him, I want to find who it is.”

            “I know, Danny. I know.”

            There was a knock on his bedroom door.

            “Just a minute.”

            He thought it was grampa, and before he could ask Danny for his permission to bring up what he’d found to the old guy, the Jew only said: “don’t tell him. Please. This time. Because if something is up with my folks, Adam, something that would mean putting a camera in their room, I don’t want him to know. Not until I know for sure. Because then he’ll have to be the adult. He’ll have to tell us to stay out of it, take the tapes to the police. And there’s no reason I could listen to him, and I don’t need that on my plate too…”

            That was it. That’s why he was so angry. Because it was incumbent upon grampa to do the right thing, and in a way they were taking the law into their own hands, weren’t they?

            “I won’t, Danny. I promise. Look, I gotta go. You up to checking with Pug and Croak? See what they found?”

            “I will.”

            Danny hung up and Adam’s door opened.

            It was his father.

            Adam quickly kicked his bag under the bed while the man stepped inside, looking around the room. Adam couldn’t control how he felt. The reaction to seeing the man, wondering if he’d heard any of his conversation with the Jew.

           “You should tidy your room, Adam. It speaks measures of one who keeps a tight ship.”

            Small talk. It was the gesture of one trying to break the ice, and Adam felt the palpable tension like electricity humming through a torn cord. What does he know that he’s not telling you?

            “I spoke to Sheriff Andy. He said you were around to check out that car accident today.”

             The man was glowering down at Adam. Studying him. Because that’s all he was to the man. A specimen. “You ever read some of the stuff your dad’s written?” Danny once asked. “My dad read his book and he said your pops is...well, fucked in the head. Excuse my French. Said he talks about something called eugenics…and I guess he argued for it. At least in some cases. Cause there’s too many people and too few resources.” Adam hadn’t known what that meant, and when he did look it up in the encyclopedia, fearing what he might discover, he learned his dad was like a Nazi. Cause the book said Hitler advised for the same sort of policies. Forced sterilization. Population control.

            “Yeah…we saw it when we were leaving the ballpark.”

            “I don’t like you boys playing out there. It’s dangerous. Right on the skirt of those woods where bears have been sighted. Sheriff thinks the driver swerved to miss one. Scared it away, but what if it hadn’t?”

            “Dad…it’s just baseball.”

            “There’s a field at the school.”

            “The older kids smoke up there. We tried to play and they chased us away”

            “Then I’ll have Andy drive by and have a look. That might scare them away.”

             There was no bear. Adam knew that. And for some reason this little talk convinced him of something else. His dad knew there wasn’t one either. The bears are dead by the farmhouse, or buried in the hole in the grove. And you have to get Lazarus to open that steel door for you. Where there’s the hum on the other side. Adam was a good enough judge of character to realize his dad didn’t want him at Fenway. He just didn’t know why. Not yet.

             The man touched Adam’s shoulder and gave the room one last look. “I’m sorry you had to see what happened. Are you okay?”

            “Yeah, I think so.”

            His dad nodded. He was so quiet. Adam only looked at the man’s fingers. To gauge how they healed after what those men in the suits did to them. “Your mom and I are glad you found friends here. It’s safe in Reedy Creek. I hope you know that.”

            Adam thought about his nightmares; he thought about the sound of his father’s fingers breaking, the sound of the man’s screams muffled through a closed closet door. He thought about home, that place, the ago, and he understood what his dad was talking about. He understood because Reedy Creek was their respite, their haven, because home wasn’t. His dad had ruined home for the family. Who his dad was, what he’d written in that book, it took everything away from them. And here they were.

            “I do.” That was that.

9

It was a platoon that made the mistake they were the good Koreans and not the bad. And the result was death by fire with their hands bound on Hill 303. It was the NK tactic, no matter their response to General MacArthur. Lewis understood the indignities of war, but then he understood the indignities of men. He wasn’t a part of the cavalry service who would reciprocate on the advance, but he’d heard after the United Nations mop up that the North Koreans would claim stricter restraints on their malfeasant discontents. Whatever that meant. What Lewis knew came to light again today, reminding him that progress was not always linear.

            Sometimes people on the wrong side use tactics to convince those on the right not of their justness, but of their monstrosity.

            When he saw the animals at the farmhouse, the ethos of war would remind him of the sort of tactics the enemy had at its disposal. And fear would always reign. Because somebody killed those animals. It wasn’t some happy accident. They were there to distract from the house behind the same way open graves with dead POWs should mystify interlopers hoping to avoid confronting those monsters responsible for such an act.

            If he was right, there was a monster in Reedy Creek.