Wait Until Twilight (2 page)

“That wasn’t cool?”

“Cool? That was cool?”

“Sure.”

“I wanted artistic cool, about an intriguing-life-story-in-the-South cool, not batboy-in-the-
National Enquirer
cool,” I say, while taking off my tie.

“I guess it’s true what they say. There are monster babies around
these parts.” David raises his hands zombie-style and stumbles forward.

“Let’s get out of here.” We walk back to the Dairy Queen, where we had left his maroon Cavalier convertible parked. I get in the passenger seat and lay my head back. “Shit, I should have gone with my dad,” I say.

“Where’d your dad go?” He rolls the sleeves of his blue T-shirt up to his shoulders and lights a cigarette, letting his free arm dangle out the window.

I roll my sleeves up to my elbows. “After the service he wanted to take me out for lunch.”

“Why didn’t you say so? We could’ve come any time.”

“I needed to finish this video project. I was desperate. But not that desperate.” I sit back up. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“You said something strange or interesting. Pretty strange, no?”

“Would you just drive?” David takes us out of Underwood into the countryside, over the small wooden bridge spanning the narrowest part of the swamp, North toward downtown Sugweepo. It’s a pretty quiet town, not much excitement, a lot of the small-town blues. I look at the name of our town on a sign with an arrow and remember reading a description in the AAA guide:

“W
HAT’RE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT
your project?” David asks.

“I’ll figure something out.” With the spring air coming in through
the windows and the slight smell of honeysuckle and wisteria, I begin to feel normal once more. Normal. I miss feeling normal.

“You goin’ out to the mall tonight?”

“I’ll stay home with my dad.”

D
AVID PULLS INTO MY SUBDIVISION
and down past all the houses. My house is up on the left. After I get out of the car David says, “Hey, I didn’t know it’d freak you out like that.”

“You’re not the only one. I’ll see you at school.” I go inside, and Dad’s out of his Sunday clothes watching a Braves baseball game. He’s aged a lot this past year. More wrinkly, more gray hairs on a slightly balding head, a little hunched over but still sturdy. I immediately feel guilty for ditching lunch, so I decide to make it up to him. “How’d it go?” he asks from the couch, his Sunday sweatpants and sweatshirt already on.

“I just saw something. Something I never want to see again. I don’t want to even think about it.”

“Sounds pretty awful.” He smiles. “Did you get an idea for your video thingy?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You goin’ out tonight?”

“No, no.”

“Good, I got some steaks we can put on the grill. Get out of that monkey suit and watch some of this game. We’re up three-one.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I
GO TO CHURCH
, something I started doing regularly after Mom died. It’s funny—I started and Dad stopped, which I can kind of understand. I go to remember and he doesn’t to forget. There were times when she managed to get us all to go, but Dad usually just
let Jim and me sleep in. Though I loved sleeping in on Sunday mornings, I always felt a little guilty knowing Mom wanted us all to go. I can’t say I really believe in anything at all, but I go for her sake now. I know she’d like it if I went, and it’s a good time to let my mind wander. That morning I try to think of another idea for my video project. Seeing as how there’s less than a month of school left, and Robert, my ex-partner, has forsaken me to work on his waterfall film with his evil twin, I need one quick. Those strange little babies still sit around the edge of my memory, but it isn’t like a real memory, more like something I had seen on television or a movie. Nothing to see here, move on, I think to myself, and instead start paying attention to the goings-on when the singing of the hymns begins. What amazes me is how you could take a bunch of people who don’t necessarily believe in anything and have them sing these hymns together and it sounds so good. It doesn’t matter whether they believe or not. It’s the song that’s pretty, not them or what they do outside of this church. I even sing, though my singing voice isn’t so good. In fact, it’s terrible, but it’s like I’m singing in place of my mom. It makes me feel closer to her, somehow. We sing a rendition of “Upon the Vision of the Holy Trinity,” and then the preacher gives a short sermon ending with an invocation of the Holy Ghost.

With an idea for a video project seemingly a million miles away, I drive home. I got a cherry-colored Tempo that was handed down from my brother Jim, who went off to the local college, the West Georgian. After I park in our driveway, I walk down the street, still wearing my church clothes, and play basketball with some neighborhood kids. They’re all younger than me, so I just horse around with them. It’s a lot easier shooting some round ball than coming up with an idea.

I
ASK
M
R
. P
ECK ABOUT
my idea block during art class when Monday rolls around. Mr. Peck’s by far my favorite teacher. He’s a big burly
man in his late fifties with these big muscle arms from years in the navy and time spent after school in the weight room. He wears large square plastic glasses and has long sideburns. Very old school. He doesn’t talk much, but on that day he says some useful things to me. “If you think too much about it, you get all confused,” Mr. Peck tells me.

“So think less?”

“That’s right. You see those buzzards?” Mr. Peck points to a table of students through the glass window of his office. “All they do is talk and goof around in class. They’re gonna get low grades, and they deserve it! But the opposite, trying too hard, is no good, too. Just try letting the idea come to you.”

I take his advice and try not to think about it, focusing on my other classes. And then it slowly begins to work…

Later in the week at gym the ever-bearded Coach Gaily makes us go out onto the football field instead of letting us play basketball like usual. “You pissants need fresh air, whether you like it or not,” he tells us. “C’mon! Hup hup hup!”

When we all get out there, he takes us through some calisthenic drills: deep knee bends and jumping jacks, toe touching, the whole shebang.

There’s a chorus of whining from the class: “Coach, why you makin’ us do this?”

“Yeah! How come we ain’t shootin’ hoops?”

“Aww Coach!”

“This is stupid!”

“You gonna make us do this the whole class?”

“Shut those mouths! You need it whether you like it or not,” says Coach.

I notice that among the few students spread out in the bleachers, one girl’s wearing this bright red shirt and eating a banana. It’s my friend Melody. She’s a tall coffee-skinned black girl, maybe a mulatto,
but I never asked. It doesn’t matter. She has male admirers of every race, origin, and ethnicity. In fact, she’s one of the prettiest girls in our grade. And she’s one of the smartest. I know she gets good grades. But she doesn’t hang around with the other popular, pretty girls like Susie and Katy. Sometimes she hangs out with the black girls, but most of the time she’s alone. Most everybody likes her, and she’s nice to people and happy most of the time. I’ve accused her of being a lone wolf, which makes her laugh. The thing about Melody and me is that when we’re at school we don’t talk. We act like we hardly know each other. It’s something we’ve never even talked about but always done from middle school. It’s almost like we don’t want anyone to know about our friendship because people would dirty it up with their talking and imaginings. She looks very relaxed up there, like she’s perfectly safe without a care in the world. I like the way it looks, and it stays in my mind for some time.

“Keep your mouths closed and finish this, then you can do whatever you want, ants!” says Coach.

There’s a unanimous, “Okay Coach!” We finish our jumping jacks and then are set free. Some kids play football, some stand around talking, and others go up to the bleachers to sit down. Right next to me Joe is telling Clay how his dad is getting him a dumbbell set from Kmart. Joe’s a crazy kid one grade ahead of us. He’s just in our PE class because of time conflicts in his schedule. They keep talking about some of the protein and amino-acid supplements they’re taking. Susie and Debbie, two of the popular, pretty blondes in our class, stand next to me sharing a Dr Pepper with Will Young. Will’s like six feet four inches tall, with long blond hair and, when he’s not swimming on the swim team or playing bass in a local rock band, he’s usually smoking weed. Will comes over and grabs for their soda, but Susie jerks it from him. Sensing danger, I jump out of the way, and the can flies behind me. Luckily, hardly any of it comes out of the can. Will runs over to it
and picks it up off the ground. After a quick examination he dusts it off and has a long drink.

“Eww!” say the girls.

I begin to walk away, looking for a pickup football game, when I hear a fizzing sound and then feel something sprinkling on my back. Will’s shaken the can up and is splattering it on me.

“What are you doing, Will?” says Debbie.

He’s laughing like it’s some funny joke. I come up to him and push him in the chest. He just tries to splatter me again before running away, laughing his ass off. I run after him but eventually give up. It’s just going to piss me off more, and he’s really fast. I go up to the locker rooms to change T-shirts. Brad’s in there, toweling off from a workout with a few upperclassmen. Brad’s a big guy with longish red hair whom I’ve known, along with Will, since elementary school. He has hopes of being groomed into the starting quarterback of the football team one day. He’s definitely the jock of us three, having already made the varsity football team and become a letterman. But he’s a little bit of a nerd, too. I don’t know anyone who’s read any more books than him. “What’re you doin’ in here?” he asks. I show him my soda-splattered shirt, and he smiles.

“How the hell am I friends with that guy?” I ask.

“I’ve asked myself the same question. I think it’s because we’ve known him too long now to break free. Don’t fight it.”

“Maybe that’s it.” I open up my locker across from Brad’s and pull out a white T-shirt. “So what, now that you’re varsity football you can just skip class and get all pumped up?”

He lowers his voice and whispers, “It pays to be a dumb jock, man.” Then he laughs. “You should go out for varsity basketball.”

“I got to keep my straight A’s, and there’s my SATs. Anyways, I just don’t feel like it.” I head for the sink to rinse out my T-shirt.

“Hey!” yells Brad.

“What?”

“Tell David I got someone who needs a small loan.”

“Now you’re in on his loan-sharking scheme?”

“Five percent for each person.”

“Yeah, whatever.” I rinse out my T-shirt and hang it up in my locker before going back out to the football field.

T
HAT NIGHT AN IDEA COMES
to me in a dream…

I’m shooting my short film for Mr. Peck’s art class. But it isn’t a film shoot. It’s a war. I’m the leader of a small band of warriors who are fighting a revolution against a tyrant dictator and his large army. A group of their soldiers corners some of my warriors in a field of golden wheat. Many of my men are already dead, but the few who remain are brave. They keep fighting in the face of insurmountable odds. The problem is, they’re wearing red shirts, which make them too easy to see. So I tell them to duck down under the tall wheat blades so they can’t be seen. They follow my orders and disappear into the wheat. There’s this huge machine gun right outside of the wheat field that has been killing many of my warriors. It’s helmed by the enemy general, a man resembling Will, with a Fu Manchu mustache. Out of frustration and fear of having all my warriors killed, I bum-rush the main gun and cover it with a black tarp, which somehow magically turns it into a video camera. Instead of killing my warriors, it’s filming them. But when I look in the camera, it’s those deformed babies wriggling toward me…

And I wake up.

T
HE NEXT DAY
I
TELL
Mr. Peck about the dream, sans the babies at the end. He tells me, “I read one time about a scientist trying to figure
out a formula but failing for two years. Then one night the answer came to him in a dream. Looks like the same thing happened to you but a heck of a lot earlier. Work on it and see what you find.” So that entire week I focus on trying to get my idea together. I write down my dream in detail and recruit the school drama club to help. They sure as hell like the idea of being in a short film. Getting all the props is the hardest part. Army fatigues and fake machetes for the tyrants and soldiers, red sweatshirts for the revolutionaries, not to mention a big fake gun. With the help of David and Will we drive our cars with the drama students out to a wheat field I found a few hours southwest of Sugweepo. There I shoot the whole thing on handheld video. I get them to act out the scene in my dream with the soldiers looking for the red-sweatshirted warriors, while the general with the fake Fu Manchu mustache stays back with his big fake gun. We shoot for the entire day, and then when it’s all over, I take everyone out for pizza.

After we finish, I go over to Will’s house. I’d left a few old tapes from my handheld there in his basement when I made use of their DVD burner. Will’s older brother is down there painting all the walls white. Leaning against a dry white wall are stacks of his Monet-type Impressionist paintings.

“The tapes are on the desk over there,” he says. “I peaked at some of the footage. Looks good.”

“Thanks.”

“What’s up with those baby things at the beginning of the second tape?”