December Park(173)

“Don’t be too late,” he said, reclining back on the bed.

What difference does it make now? I wondered.





While having a smoke, I walked down to the end of Worth Street where the pavement turned to crushed gravel before dead-ending into a fan of overgrown shrubs, wildflowers, and the fences that surrounded the quarry. I thought about Nathan Keener’s truck, which was still parked at the curb on Haven Street. It hadn’t been moved in weeks.

As I approached the fence, I found what I had expected—the padlock chaining the gates had been popped. The chain lay in a rusted coil in the gravel, the sprung lock beside it like some medieval torture device. I eased one of the gates open just wide enough to permit access and crept inside.

The quarry was no larger than a crater left behind after the demolition of a large house. When we played down here as children, Charles and I used to pretend it was the sarlacc pit from Return of the Jedi. I crossed over to the edge and peered down at the sludgy brown soup at the bottom of the pit. There were crevices in the stone walls, and some of them were big enough to hide in.

Or to hide someone else.

Carefully, I crawled down into the pit where a shelf of limestone extended over the drop. I peeked into the larger gaps in the rock, but the darkness made it impossible to see anything inside. I thought of the holes in the cliff face at the ass end of Harting Farms. How far did they go? Were there tunnels just below the surface of the earth crisscrossing every inch of the city?

There was nothing down here. Nothing I could see, anyway.

I climbed out of the pit, my sneakers kicking up dry white clouds of dust and rolling loose pebbles down into the pool of mud at the bottom. Crickets trilled and the sky was afire with countless stars. As I tramped through the bushes and overgrown grass, something misshapen and unnatural poking up from a patch of kudzu caught my eye.

I went to it, bent down, prodded it. It rocked.

It was a boot. Someone’s Doc Marten. Scuffed clasps and worn leather. I had stared at these boots on Mischief Night as Nathan Keener approached me while his friends held my arms.

It was Keener’s boot.

(If anyone ever hurt you or tried to hurt you, I would snap their neck. I would bury their corpse in the quarry at the end of our block. I would leave them there for the rats.) I stood and surveyed the quarry and the dense woods that surrounded it. It had become fully dark in just a matter of seconds, making it difficult to see anything beyond the mere suggestion of things. All around me, a chorus of insects lit up the night.

Sucking one last time on my cigarette, I chucked the fading ember down into the quarry. It sizzled when it hit the water.





Back at the house, I pulled my bike out from the patch of ivy and wheeled it up the Gardiners’ driveway. I was propping it on the kickstand on the front porch when the door opened. Startled, I looked up to see Doreen Gardiner luminescing out of the darkness.

“Hello,” I said quietly.

She stood framed in the doorway, her face a colorless mask. She glanced at the bike. “What’s this?” Her voice was just barely audible.

“My bike. I’m leaving it for Adrian.”

“Won’t you need it?”

“I’m sixteen. I’ll be getting my license soon. Besides, he’s gonna need it if he keeps hanging around with the guys.”

“He had a bike back home, you know,” she said.

I offered her a wan smile but said nothing.

“He’s never had lots of friends. Maybe that’s my fault. I mother him too much.” She stepped out onto the porch. She wore nothing but a man’s thin white T-shirt and longish shorts. “Thank you for being there for him.”

“Sure,” I said.

“You know why he doesn’t have a bike here?” she asked.

“Yes.” My voice shook.

“He told you about what his dad did,” she said, and this time it wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I answered nonetheless.

She fingered the horrid scar on her neck. “He did this, too. With a knife from the kitchen. But it didn’t kill me. If it had, we would have all been dead.”

She took another step closer to me. I was powerless to move.

“I found them in the car together, the engine running and the garage door shut. He’d carried Adrian straight out of bed and strapped him in the backseat. Then he got behind the wheel and turned the car on, reclined the seat, and closed his eyes,” she said with the detachment of someone reciting a poem from memory. “I was able to get Adrian out in time. It was very lucky I found them.”

One of her hands came up, and before I could flinch away, she caressed the side of my face. Her hand was cold but not ungentle. That was when I noticed tears in her eyes.

“He’s very lucky to have a friend like you,” she said. “Please don’t forget him.”





Mounting the rear porch steps at the house, I shook a cigarette from the cellophane, then froze as movement off to my right caught my attention. I jerked around to find my father’s silhouette slouched in one of the wicker chairs.

“Oh.” I dropped my arms in an effort to hide the cigarettes.

My father leaned forward, and the moonlight played across the left side of his face. I was shocked by how ancient he looked. “Got an extra one for me?”