Gemini Summer (2 page)

four

When Charlie River began digging in the summer of 1964, people thought he’d lost his mind. He went at it in such a fever, attacking the earth with his shovel. He tore up the whole front lawn, digging down through the sod, then down through the dirt. He worked in the daylight, and he worked in the dark.

On the first day of his digging, Mrs. River and the boys watched him from the kitchen window. They saw him flinging dirt as far as the driveway, his shovel like a catapult. They heard it grinding through the earth, scraping on the stones.

“He looks like Mike Mulligan,” said Danny.

After the first ten minutes, the Old Man’s shirt was black with sweat around his armpits, and black along his spine. A gray dust floated at his feet, and with each push on the shovel he grunted.

None of them would go and ask what he was doing. He looked angry, his face red, his forearms bulging. He was like that when he shoveled snow in winter, except his breath would be puffing white like dragon’s smoke, jetting from his nostrils.

He worked until nightfall that Saturday, and started again Sunday morning. All through the week he kept at it. When he wasn’t pumping septic tanks, the Old Man was digging up the garden.

five

Being the son of the septic man made life difficult for Danny River.

There were kids who called the Old Man’s truck “the poop-mobile” and held their noses when Danny went walking by. They called him Polluto and Danny Riverbottom. And those were the kids who
liked
him. They never came down to the Hollow, they never called at the old gray house, but they liked Danny River a lot.

The ones who didn’t—the mean kids—called him names that Danny could never speak aloud. He had once written the worst of them on an old matchbook that he found on the street, printing carefully in pencil, and then had thrown the matchbook from the middle of the big bridge, to watch it tumble into the Hollow. There were times when the mean kids teased him so much that Danny nearly cried.

Then there was Dopey Colvig—son of Creepy—who’d been living for a year and a half at the northern end of the Hollow. Creepy Colvig was a construction worker. He went to work every day, driving through the Hollow in his station wagon, in his hard hat, leaving his boy to look after himself. Not one person in Hog’s Hollow found a single thing to like about Creepy.

But Dopey was worse. He had a huge empty head with no brains inside it. He talked in sounds—in grunts and howls—that no one but Creepy could understand. He was too stupid to go to school, and so he never left the Hollow.

Dopey liked things that were shiny and sparkly. He had stolen the hood ornaments from half of the cars in the Hollow. He had swiped bottles from porches and a pair of silver scissors from Mrs. Elliot’s sewing basket. Everything he took disappeared into the Colvig house and was never seen again.

Older than Danny, younger than Beau, Dopey was huge for his age. He was meaner than mean. For no reason at all, he hated Danny River, and he guarded his end of the Hollow like a troll, lurking on the paths through the cottonwoods, waiting for Danny to pass. At any moment he might leap from the bushes or jump up from the wooden bridge. Once he chased Danny through the woods with a realtor’s sign, swinging it like a broadaxe, smashing through the bushes on Danny’s heels.

Danny had grown up in Hog’s Hollow. He had lived there since he was three months old, so it was the only place he knew. But it had changed for him when the Colvigs arrived, and he kept hoping they would move on, as they had always been moving on. Ever since Dopey had arrived, it was like having an ogre living at the end of the Hollow, blocking the trails that led to the heights and the school. For the last year and a half, Danny hadn’t once walked along there without being afraid that Dopey would catch him. He only felt safe with Beau at his side.

six

Through the last, long weeks of the summer of 1964, Danny and Beau were never apart. They built a fort in the woods, and each swore to the other that they would never tell anyone where it was. “Not even under torture,” said Beau. They rode their bikes to the swimming pool and down to the park.

One day they went looking for bottles, to cash them in at Kantor’s store.

They went up Highland Creek. Danny tied his shoes around his neck and waded through the stream. When they came across a shopping cart upended in a pool, they dragged it out to carry the bottles.

They found thirty-seven altogether, nearly one for every yard of creek. Beau said it was like digging for gold in the Klondike. Then Danny said when he got a dog he’d maybe call it Klondike.

Beau laughed. “Yeah, sure.”

“It’s a good name,” said Danny. He was rinsing out a bottle in the stream.

“Yeah, but you might as well forget it, Danny. Mom’s never going to let you have a dog.” Beau stood up like a charioteer on the back wheels of the shopping cart. “You should be bugging the Old Man, not Mom.”

“Aw, the Old Man doesn’t want a dog.” Danny shook the bottle empty and brought it up the bank.

“He had one once. In the navy,” said Beau. “I seen a picture.”

“Where?”
said Danny, unbelieving.

“In the green box.”

“Yeah, sure. You never looked in there,” said Danny.

“I did so.” Beau stepped off the wheels, took the bottle, and put it in among the others. “I looked
all
through the box.”

“’Fraid nay,” said Danny.

“’Fraid so, Bozo! It was a black dog with white legs.”

Danny waded through the creek as his brother pushed the cart. They were coming near the little wooden bridge where Dopey Colvig often waited.

“That’s why Dad’s digging, you know,” said Beau.

“Yeah, sure. Because of his black
dog
with white
legs
.” Danny made a spitting sound as he kicked at the mud.

“No, because of the war,” said Beau. “I don’t know, exactly. But I think that’s why, because of what he saw in the war.”

“You don’t
know
what he saw,” said Danny. “Nobody knows.”

“Yeah, but it made people weird. Like Mr. Kantor,” said Beau. “You know Steve Britain? His dad wets his bed.”

Danny giggled. “He told you that?”

“Yeah.”

“Holy man,” said Danny. “If the Old Man wet his bed, I wouldn’t tell anyone. Not anyone.”

“Steve’s dad wakes up screaming sometimes,” said Beau. He got Danny to help him push the cart up the hill. “This one time, Steve woke him up in his chair, and he took hold of Steve and threw him against the wall.”

“No fooling?” said Danny.

“I seen the bruises.”

“Holy man.” Danny shook his head. “It makes the Old Man look sort of normal.”

seven

They wheeled the cart from the Hollow to the streets. Danny thought it was like coming out of the wilderness, as though they were Lewis and Clark. He had to walk ahead, guiding the cart, because it kept turning by itself.

It was a block to Kantor’s. The boys pushed the cart right inside, and Mr. Kantor got up from his stool behind the cash register.

“Oy, it’s you?” he said. “And I thought my day wouldn’t be exciting?” Everything that Mr. Kantor said sounded like a question. “Did you rinse those bottles?”

“Yes,” said Danny.

“You couldn’t have rinsed your feet?” said Mr. Kantor. “You think the store sweeps itself?”

Danny looked down. Flakes of mud were falling from his legs and his trousers, from the wheels of the cart and its metal frame. Mr. Kantor was like a kind man hiding in a mean one, and Danny felt bad about the mud. He tried to kick it underneath the counter.

Mr. Kantor examined each bottle, squinting over the top of his little spectacles. Six he pushed aside, shaking his head. “I should give you money for no deposit?” Then he took up a short pencil and licked its tip, and added numbers on a slip of paper.

The boys spent their money right then, filling little brown bags from the boxes of candy near the counter. Danny took jawbreakers that would change color in his mouth, and caramels, and a packet of Munsters cards. Beau picked wax pipes full of juice, and a yellow sherbet fountain that looked like a stick of dynamite.

Mr. Kantor stood above them with his neck bent like a buzzard’s, but he kept smiling. “Have you got your dog yet, Danny?” he asked.

“No,” said Danny, counting out caramels.

“What are your parents thinking? Every boy should have a dog,” Mr. Kantor said. “Dogs are always your friend no matter what. Dogs are good. People, they can be animals, you know. Trust me, I’ve seen it.”

He emptied the bags that the boys had filled, and counted the candies. Danny watched his long fingers rolling the jawbreakers, and couldn’t help staring at the blue numbers tattooed on Mr. Kantor’s arm. He’d always wanted to know why they were there but hadn’t yet felt brave enough to ask.

The boys left with the cart, their six rejected bottles rattling inside. At the top of the hill, where the path led into the woods, Beau told Danny, “Get in.”

Danny didn’t want to at first, but Beau insisted; he said it would be fun. So Danny clambered into the cart and wedged himself along its length. Then Beau pushed it forward an inch, drew it back another.

“Three, two, one,” he counted, and Danny shouted, “Ignition!”

“Blastoff!” said Beau, and down the hill they went.

The cart veered madly, tilting round the corners. It crashed through a bush and leapt from a root, and the bottles bounced round Danny’s knees. It very nearly went tumbling over the cliff—thirty feet down to the creek—but skidded aside at the last moment. Beau came stumbling behind it, his arms straight out; he could hardly keep up with the cart.

Danny hurled the bottles at trees and boulders. They spun into bushes, bounded up, and spun again, and before they stopped he was past them.

He shot over the bridge on two wheels. Then the path went uphill, and he was airborne at the top, flying for a moment with the last two bottles floating weightless beside him. Then he landed with a crash and kept going, out of the woods, onto the grass beside the road. He thought the cart would carry him clear across it, so he cried out for Beau to stop him. He was heading for the Colvig house.

He looked back but couldn’t see Beau. The cart bounced and rattled over the boulevard, and Danny now was truly frightened. He imagined rattling across the street and up the Colvigs’ driveway, smashing into Creepy’s garage. But suddenly, like a miracle, the cart flopped on its side and spilled him onto the grass.

Beau came up a moment later, panting and laughing, and collapsed at Danny’s side. Danny could hardly believe he’d ridden the whole hill; no one had ever done it before. He told Beau what it had been like to shoot over the bridge. And Beau told him how he had looked from behind—like Colonel Steve Zodiac. “Like Colonel Zodiac!” Beau shouted.

Danny held up the last of the bottles. “Watch, Beau!” he shouted, winding up with his arm. He cried,
“Achtung!”
like one of the little blue Nazis in the
G.I. Combat
comics, and lobbed the bottle—now a hand grenade—high and far. It twinkled in the sunlight as it spun end over end, then exploded on the road into a million white shards that skittered across the pavement. “Kaboom!” cried Danny.

They righted the cart. The front had dented inward, and they tried to bend it out again. Then Danny looked up and said, “Uh-oh.”

Beau swallowed. “Creepy Colvig.”

The man came across the road in his shorts and sleeveless undershirt. His arms and legs were covered with black hair, and his muscles—and his stomach—bulged. He was carrying a shovel on his shoulder.

Danny had never been so close to Creepy Colvig before. He could smell the man’s sweat and see how his hairs sprouted right through his undershirt in places.

“Who busted that bottle?” said Creepy Colvig.

“I guess I did,” said Danny.

“Then guess who’ll clean it up.”

Creepy Colvig threw down the shovel. He made sure that Danny found every speck of the million shards. “Sweep them up!” he ordered. “Put them in the shovel.”

Danny was crying before he was halfway finished. He had to get down on his knees and gather the glass with his bare hands. He could feel it digging into his skin, and as he crawled back and forth his jawbreakers and caramels dribbled from his pockets. His eyes were blurred with tears, but wherever he turned he saw Creepy’s feet in front of him, in sandals with straps, in white socks that had fallen in rolls round his ankles. Beau was just standing there, not saying anything.

When at last he stood up, when Creepy went off with the shovel full of glass, Danny’s knees were scraped and white. Like his hands, they were bleeding.

He didn’t say a word to Beau all the way home. They didn’t even bother with the cart; they just left it in the grass. Beau put his arm on Danny’s shoulder.

They found the Old Man digging. It was after five o’clock and he was home. Almost knee deep in the ground, he looked up. “Danny boy, what have you been doing?” he asked.

“It was Creepy Colvig,” said Danny. His eyes started blinking; he couldn’t help it. Then suddenly he was blubbering, with his nose running and his face feeling hot as fire. “Creepy Colvig made me—”

“
Mister
Colvig,” said the Old Man. He didn’t care for Mr. Colvig any more than anyone else in the Hollow, but he hated that nickname.

“Yeah,” said Danny. “He made me pick up broken glass, ’cause I smashed a bottle, Dad. He made me pick up all the pieces.”

“He did, did he?” The Old Man let his shovel fall. He came and knelt in front of Danny, then grabbed Danny’s hands and looked at the palms. “Were you there, Beau?”

“Yes,” said Beau.

“What did you do?”

Beau’s answer was so quiet that he had to say it twice, and then his voice was still tiny. “Nothing,” he said, looking down at the dirt.

“Why not?” said the Old Man.

“I was scared of him, Dad.” It looked as though Beau, too, might start to cry. “I wanted to, but…” He shrugged.

“That’s all right, son.” The Old Man stood up. He gave his cap a twist, then climbed from the hole. “You two go inside,” he said. “Get your mother to look at those hands, Danny.”

He turned his back, and off he went in his jangling walk, with a streak of black sweat down his spine. Danny wiped his eyes and his nose. “He’ll fix him, won’t he, Beau? He’ll teach him a thing or two.”

“Yeah,” said Beau. He looked up at the sky.

“Creepy won’t bother us anymore, will he?”

“He better not,” said Beau. “’Cause if he does, I won’t just stand there like a rat fink, Danny. I won’t let him do that again. Not him, or Dopey neither. If they try to hurt you, I’ll fight back.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Danny.

They went together into the house, and when Danny shouted for his mother she came thundering from the basement, plucked by the noise from her novel and the plantations of Georgia. She looked at Danny and, in her voice like Scarlett O’Hara, said, “Great balls of fire!”

Mrs. River told Danny to sit on the kitchen table. She sent Beau to fetch tweezers and the bottle of iodine, and began to pick bits of glass from Danny’s skin.