Flyers (9781481414449) Read online

  That evening we watched the sun go down over the city from the top of the World Trade Center, and it was after midnight before we got home. A few times during the day I caught myself thinking about how nice it would be to be in New York with Katie. Not that I wasn’t having a good time with Bo, but being there with Katie would have been like something out of a dream. Someday, I thought, and couldn’t help but smile. I smiled too when I thought about having all of July and August stretched out in front of me like a blank canvas just waiting for all kinds of good things to be put down on it.

  Bo had the next day off too, and we decided to go to the old Rexleigh covered bridge outside Salem. I think a combination of things put that idea into my head. First, it had been a long winter and I was eager to revisit all my old favorite swimming spots. I may have thought of this particular one first because of Ethan putting beavers on my brain, and that was the place where the summer before a kid had actually been attacked by a beaver while swimming and his mother had to beat the thing off his back. Also, I was starting to think it might be a good place to bring Katie. Maybe that seems strange—thinking about bringing a girl you practically worship and haven’t even asked out yet to swim at the site of an unprovoked beaver attack, but when I got to thinking about the other kinds of swimming spots where I could bring her, the options seemed limited. There was a quarry outside of town, but that was the kind of place where kids went to drink and fight—not to mention that it was illegal to be there, and Katie didn’t seem like the type who would appreciate being arrested on a first or second date. The cliffs in Schaghticoke were spectacular for daredevil diving, but they weren’t as good for just hanging around and swimming and talking. The covered bridge just seemed right—it was a wholesome family kind of place, like something you’d see in a Grandma Moses painting, which wasn’t surprising since Grandma Moses hadn’t lived that far from there. I figured Katie would love it.

  The covered bridge had a few boards missing—deliberately missing, most likely, so you could dive off the side. I’ve always found the quick plunge to be the best way to get wet, so I headed up to the bridge. Bo was right there with me. As far as I could tell, no one else was around.

  “You think that beaver thing hurt the crowds here?” As I said this, I was leaning out through the gap in the boards, checking for any signs of beavers guarding the place.

  “Maybe,” Bo said. “I read that when Jaws first came out in theaters, a lot of people were afraid to go into the ocean.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I still think about that whenever I’m on Martha’s Vineyard.” I looked around some more. “You know, we could do that whole Jaws thing here, but do it with a beaver instead of a shark. As kind of a spoof.”

  Bo laughed. “Remember Piranha?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Wasn’t it Piranha where that fish came sailing out of the water and clamped itself onto that guy’s face? You really can’t go too wrong with flying attack fish.” I took off my sneakers and tossed them out over the water and onto the shore where we’d stashed the rest of our stuff. Then I looked back inside the bridge at Bo. “For my money though, the Big Daddy of all goofy horror films is still Killdozer. That film rules.” Bo and I had always had this thing for bad films—we loved them almost as much as the great ones. When we were younger and staying over at each other’s houses, we’d always go through the TV listings trying to see who could find the best worst late-night film. We both claimed credit for Killdozer

  Bo pulled off his sneakers and nodded. “Another sure thing—a bulldozer with an attitude.”

  “And Fess Parker,” I added.

  “Wrong,” Bo said. “Fess Parker was the guy who played Davy Crockett. Clint Walker was the guy in Killdozer.”

  I was about to argue the point but decided not to. Bo was almost always right when it came to that kind of thing. “Have it your way,” I said as if I was doing him some big favor. Then, stepping out through the gap in the side of the bridge, I did one last beaver check. “Well, here goes nothing.”

  Two seconds later I realized it may not have been beavers that were keeping the crowds away. That water was cold. I’d forgotten just how cold the Battenkill could be. All that water was runoff from the mountains of Vermont, and it went a long way toward explaining how they could have such a long ski season there.

  Bo hit the water right after I did, and his reaction was the same as mine. We both hightailed it for land.

  “This was your idea, I think,” Bo said after we climbed out of the water.

  “It seemed good in theory,” I said, grabbing my towel and handing Bo his.

  We dried off as fast as we could and put our shirts and sneakers back on and then lay out in the sun for a while trying to soak up some heat. Then we grabbed Bo’s camera bag out of The Tank, figuring as long as we were there we should get some file footage of the bridge and the Battenkill and the surrounding area. We already had some footage from the previous fall, but in early June the place had a whole different look. Plus, it might not be that deserted again for the rest of the season. Over the years we’d stockpiled tons of footage from different places and never passed up a chance to get more. We never knew when we’d need some of it for establishing shots. These are the shots you use to show where your scene is supposedly taking place-like in The Beverly Hillbillies when they’ll show you the front of the huge mansion and then cut to a scene in the kitchen. The thing is, the kitchen isn’t even in the mansion, but everyone watching believes it is. A good filmmaker is a little like a magician; he knows that what you see is what you think you see, and not necessarily what’s actually there. Pop always tells me it works pretty much the same way in real life.

  • • •

  On our way back from Rexleigh, Bo and I swung by the hospital to see Mr. Lindstrom. I’d been over a number of times that week, but he was always sleeping. Pop told me they were keeping him pretty well drugged up, and I wondered if it might not be for their benefit as well as his.

  It took us a few minutes to find the right room. First he’d been in intensive care, and then he’d gone into some kind of an open ward where if you wanted any privacy your only option was to pull a curtain around your bed. Knowing how Mr. Lindstrom felt about people in general, not to mention the fact that he couldn’t sit up to pull the curtains if he wanted to, Pop had arranged for him to have a private room as soon as one opened up. I didn’t know if Mr. Lindstrom had any insurance or if he could afford a private room, but I knew none of that would make any difference to Pop. He’d take care of it.

  Mr. Lindstrom looked so pale and fragile lying there that, for a second, I thought we’d landed in the wrong room. I couldn’t get used to seeing him when he wasn’t in his overalls and an old cap. We walked over closer to the bed. I was pretty sure he recognized us. His eyes seemed to come to life somehow and he tried frantically to sit up. He got so agitated that at first I was afraid he’d have another stroke. I hurried over and sat in a chair near the head of the bed and put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t try to get up,” I said. “Bo and I just came by to see how you’re doing.” He relaxed somewhat back onto his pillow, but his eyes still had an urgent look to them. His hair was thinner than I remembered it being, and his face was somehow different. He was moving his mouth, and it took me a minute to realize the difference was that half his face was paralyzed; it just sat there like a mask. If anything, this had the effect of making the other half of his face seem even more animated.

  “Ayn-yee,” he said, struggling to get whatever it was he was trying to say out. “Ayn-yee.”

  I studied him as he tried to form words. At first I thought I’d been mistaken, that maybe he didn’t know who I was and he was just spouting gibberish. But there was something about the intensity of how he was trying to speak that made me think again. When he drew a blank with me, his eyes traveled over to Bo.

  “Ayn-yee,” he kept saying, really pouring himself into the effort. “Ayn-yee.” His eyes swung back to me and he reache
d for my hand and squeezed it. He didn’t seem to have much strength even with his good hand.

  I glanced over at Bo and could tell by the look on his face that he didn’t have a clue either.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Bo said. He got off his chair and came up near me at the head of the bed. “Do you think you can write it?” he said to Mr. Lindstrom.

  At this, Mr. Lindstrom squeezed harder on my hand. “Umm,” he said, nodding as much as he was able to. “Ummmm.”

  Bo had already reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the notepad he always carried to jot down ideas for filming or notes about things we’d discussed. A million times I’d told myself I should do the same thing, but the idea hadn’t caught hold with me yet. It struck me as funny. I was the writer, and Bo carried the notepad around.

  Bo crouched down by the bed. The first couple of times he placed his pen in Mr. Lindstrom’s hand, it dropped onto the mattress, but on the third try he got a good grip on it. Then Bo held the notepad down in front of his hand. The whole thing felt like it took forever and seemed to call for everything Mr. Lindstrom had. His breathing became harder, and beads of sweat were standing out on his forehead. I leaned over the mattress, but from that angle I couldn’t make out what he’d written.

  Finally, Mr. Lindstrom dropped the pen and slumped back on his pillow. Bo turned the notepad around in front of us and both our heads leaned in to study it, almost doing one of those Three Stooges deals where their heads clunk together. It wasn’t the most legible writing in the world, but there was no mistaking what it said.

  “Andy,” I said out loud, and when I did Mr. Lindstrom got excited again and found my hand and gave it another squeeze. “Ayn-yee,” he managed to say one more time.

  Bo and I looked at each other. And I could tell right away that the name on the pad didn’t ring a bell with him any more than it did with me.

  • • •

  Late that night I finally made it over to check on Mr. Lindstrom’s house. I don’t know if I’d actually planned on going inside or if I was just going to check it out from the front, but when I got there I realized there was no way I was going in alone. Ethan and Pop had gone to dinner and then over to the hospital, and Bo and Rosasharn and even Jeremy (he’d finally managed to talk to the right Amy) all had dates and had left earlier to see a movie in Saratoga. They asked me to go with them, but I wasn’t crazy about being the odd man out. I’d tried Katie one more time and missed her again, and I still hadn’t left a message, I don’t know-maybe I was afraid that if she knew I was calling her, she’d have an excuse all prepared why we couldn’t go out—especially if it were true that her best friend had the hots for me.

  Except for wishing I could be with Katie I didn’t mind being on my own for a while. Earlier in the evening Bo and Rosasharn and Jeremy and I had set up at Blood Red Pond to shoot a couple of simple filler scenes. As soon as we took a break to eat, I took the offensive with Jeremy, trying to knock him off balance before he had the chance to do the same to me.

  “Brie?” I said, holding it out in front of him. Brie was exactly the kind of thing guaranteed to make Jeremy crazy. I wasn’t crazy about it myself. It was too strong, too much like something gone bad. But I’d made sure I had some in the cooler when I’d packed it up for the evening.

  “Yuppie chow.” Jeremy slapped my hand out from under his nose. “Mice won’t even eat that stuff.”

  I opened the package so it could breathe and stuck it back under his nose.

  Jeremy slapped my hand away again, harder this time, and got up and took his plate of food to the other side of the fire. I considered this a victory of sorts, but Jeremy hadn’t thrown in the towel yet. He’d just retrenched.

  He poked Rosasharn. “You know how Gabe-boy always thinks he’s so smart. Well, I was reading some teacher magazine at Bo’s that said they gave a math test to kids all around the world and the Irish scored second from the bottom.”

  “That’s the civilized world, Jeremy,” I told him. “Your people didn’t even get to take it.” Actually it would have been hard to say exactly who Jeremy’s people were. His ancestors came from all over Europe, and he even had a little American Indian in him. I used to get him going by calling him the human mutt. Then, it seems, someone told him about the dangers of inbreeding, and he started feeling more secure in his diversity.

  “How’s your sister-uncle-cousin?” he said, getting in a lick about my pure Irish bloodline.

  Rosasharn smacked him. “I can’t believe you’d bring her up now. Didn’t you hear? She died yesterday.”

  Jeremy smacked him back. “Shut up, ya tub.”

  And so it went on like that. And the funny thing is, Bo, who never argues with, insults, or mocks anybody, gets a bigger kick out of this than any of us. I swear he does. He always sits there with a little smile on his face taking it all in. Sometimes I even have the feeling we’re staging these rank-athons just for his benefit.

  Anyway, after the others left to get ready for their dates and pick up the girls, I stayed there reading by the fire. I’d probably been reading a good two or three hours and was almost to the end of my Emerson book when I got the idea to check on Mr. Lindstrom’s house. It was time for me to head home for bed anyway, so I put out the fire, packed up what little stuff I had with me, and started out to the road.

  Ordinarily, to get to Mr. Lindstrom’s house from the pond, I would have taken the lane through the woods. Not only was it shorter, but I liked the soft feel of the grass and dead leaves and pine needles under my feet, and I loved walking under the big old trees that canopied the lane, at times so thickly you felt like you were walking through a tunnel. But that night I decided to take the long way around. Looking back on it, I remember noticing how pitch dark it had been and how quiet—you know, the kind of quiet where in the movies some guy always says it’s too quiet. Also, I remember that as I was sitting by the fire, I looked up from my book a couple of times and had the strange sensation that I was being watched. Maybe I’m only remembering these things because of what I saw afterward and what I’ve since found out, but I don’t think so. Feeling any kind of uneasiness about being in those woods was unusual for me. After all, I grew up thinking of these woods as my own backyard. Maybe the whole idea of being watched had been planted in my head by Ethan’s new habit of staring out into the woods, or maybe it’s like Bo always says, that everything in the universe is connected, and because of this I knew something was up before I even knew I knew something was up.

  Anyway, the creepy feeling I’d developed while sitting around the campfire stayed with me even after I was out of the woods. When I walked by the spot where Walter Owens had found Mr. Lindstrom, I felt a chill go up my spine. All I could think of was what it must have been like for him lying out there all night, not completely unconscious, but probably not all there either, so it must have been like being stuck in some kind of nightmare—one where you’re not even sure where you are or what’s happening and all you know for sure is that you can’t move. I hurried past and tried not to think about it. That’s why, when I finally found myself in Mr. Lindstrom’s yard looking up at his house, it took me so much by surprise.

  At first I thought the light in the upstairs room was off. A closer look revealed that it wasn’t, but the shade had been drawn, allowing only a sliver of light on either side.

  I took a step back, and then another. A minute later I was out of the yard and on the road.

  Thirteen

  I started for home at a quick walk, but before I knew it I was jogging. Then, when I reached the stretch of road in front of Mr. Lindstrom’s old barn, I all of a sudden remembered the thing Ray McPherson claimed to have seen scooting across the road there, and cranked it up another notch. I felt foolish, but I hit my lawn at a full run.

  After I landed on the porch and had the security of the porch light overhead, I started feeling a little more rational again. First, I decided, I’d ask Pop if he’d been over to Mr. Lindstrom’s taking care of thin
gs, or if maybe he’d finally heard from Mr. Lindstrom’s daughter and she’d been around. And if we didn’t come up with a logical explanation, we could go over and check on the house together. Things don’t seem nearly as ominous when you’re with somebody else, and that’s especially true when that somebody is Pop.

  Our house was quiet and, except for the center hallway, dark when I stepped inside. At first I thought both Pop and Ethan were already in bed. Then I heard the creak of Pop’s chair in his study. I figured he hadn’t heard me come through the door or else he would have run out to greet me. Generally whenever one of us steps through the door, it’s a real homecoming for Pop.

  I walked over to the study to say hello, but before I got there a familiar piano melody wafted out, and then I heard Shane MacGowan’s voice. I sighed. Pop was holed up, listening to the Pogues again.

  I’d bought Pop that Pogues CD a few Christmases ago. Pop’s tough to shop for, but one thing you could always count on was Irish music—the good stuff, though, not the kind of grandmother stuff most people think of when you mention Irish music. Bo and I had gone to Celtic Treasures in Saratoga that year and the guy had said that if Pop was really true-blue Irish, he couldn’t help but love the Pogues. He grabbed the disc and offered to play it for me, but I’d had such good luck with the Liam O’Flynn CD he’d recommended for Pop’s birthday I bought the thing without listening to it. Afterward, I wasn’t sure if I’d done the right thing.

  The best song on the CD is called “Fairytale of New York,” and when Pop heard it for the first time that Christmas, it actually brought tears to his eyes. I can’t describe it exactly, but in some way it was as if he was seeing his own life in that song. It had hard drinking, a touch of sentimentality, and it most definitely had Pop’s sense of humor. It had one more thing that always got to Pop: the story of a perfect love that had somehow taken a turn for the worse. The whole thing was Pop to a T. Not only that, but Shane MacGowan, the lead singer, even sounded just like Pop, having the same raspy, wistful voice that had always been Pop’s trademark. Anyway, from that day on, whenever Pop would fall into a certain mood, he’d go into his study, plug in that Pogues CD, and play that song over and over.