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Two boys on the brink of
manhood, Hank Morgan and Peter Harlan, watched as Hank’s
elderly neighbor shuffled down the cracked and crooked
sidewalk, cradling something in a crumpled sack. The boys
leaned against handlebars, almost transfixed as Hank’s
elderly neighbor made his way into his driveway and around
the back side of the house. Resting at the stop sign across
the street, both boys were sweating and winded from their
ride. They looked at each other, shared a curious glance,
and then brought their gazes back to the old man’s yard.
“I bet it’s booze,” Hank
said, brushing a damp swatch of blonde hair from his
forehead.
“No way, not that old
codger. Probably kill him.” Peter shook his head as he
talked. He was taller and thinner than Hank, one of those
boys who grew too fast for his body to keep up. “He’s a
weird old dude, though.”
Hank shrugged his
shoulders with a frown. “C’mon. Mom’s not home yet. I
want to show you something.”
Peter consented with a
nod, and they raced across the street, dropping their bikes
next to Hank’s front stoop. The Morgan house sat squarely
in an aging, but stylish neighborhood. Hank’s dad, a used
car salesman for one of the dealerships on the south edge of
town, insisted that the old bungalow was a “keeper”, an
“investment in the family’s future.” When she was feeling
brave, Hank’s mom would ask “a keeper of what” and Mr.
Morgan would grumble and huff to the spare bedroom to “work
on something.” On the bad nights, after he had a few beers
after work, he would strike his wife before storming up the
stairs.
“Only I figured out what
the son-of-a-bitch is ‘working’ on in there,” Hank whispered
to Peter.
Peter’s forehead
wrinkled a little—he wondered what the whispering was for,
but nodded and followed his buddy.
Hank crept upstairs and
down the hallway. Late afternoon sunlight washed across the
carpet from a window at the far end. He opened a door,
slipped inside, and motioned with one hand for Peter to
follow. The room was empty save for a desk, computer, and
stack of file boxes in one corner. Hank slid open the
closet door.
“Mom doesn’t know about
Dad’s stash. She’s completely in the dark.” He pushed a
few trash bags—stuffed to bulging with “winter things”
written on the side in broad strokes—out of the way. “Check
this out,” Hank said, pulling a vacuum-bagged dress from the
rack.
“This is what you
brought me to see?”
Hank rolled his eyes.
“No stupid. It’s Mom’s wedding dress sealed in plastic for
all eternity.” He shoved it aside and scooted a small
cardboard box away from the back wall, revealing a small
door. He bent down, flicked the latch and pulled the door
open in one motion. His arm disappeared inside the little
black space, only to reappear momentarily holding a liquor
bottle. Hank held the bottle up for Peter.
“Johnny Walker? What’s
that?” Peter asked, studying the label as he turned the
bottle in the light.
“I dunno, whiskey or
something. Booze. The old man likes to imbibe.” Hank’s
hand flashed to his mouth in a drinking gesture. He reached
into the hole again. “That’s not all.” When Hank’s arms
reemerged this time, they held a brown box. With some
effort, he pulled the box out of the closet. He flipped
open the top flaps, and lifted a black pistol.
“It’s a Glock,” Hank
said, beaming.
Peter brushed the barrel
of the gun aside. “You’re pointing the damn thing at me.”
“It’s not loaded, here.
God, if it was…sometimes I’d like to scare him. You
know, really scare him.” The gun clicked with a dull snap
as Hank’s finger squeezed down. His eyes blew wide and then
deflated to normal size. He set the gun to one side.
“That’s not the best of it.” He reached into the box and
pulled out a magazine.
“Playboy,” Peter
read, a smile sprouting on his thin face.
“Dad’s little secret
stash,” Hank said, picking up the bottle of Johnny Walker.
He opened the bottle and took a quick swig, screwing up his
face with the taste. Peter took the magazine in his hands,
opening the pages in a dainty grasp as though they would
shatter.
“Do you think this is
normal, I mean, hiding stuff like this from your mom?”
Hank shrugged. “Either
keep a few little secrets or go nuts and run off—sorry.” He
glanced at Peter. “I wasn’t talking about your dad. I
mean—a least your dad never smacked your mom around…”
“No big deal.” Peter
looked down as his shaking index finger traced the
silhouette of a busty centerfold, but stopped abruptly as a
slamming door echoed from downstairs.
“Here,” Hank said,
grabbing the magazine and tossing in the box, adding the
pistol, and shoving the lot back into the secret chamber.
He re-capped the bottle and slid it in after.
“Henry?” Mrs. Morgan
called from the foot of the stairs.
“Coming, Mom. Pete’s
here.” Hank crammed the last plastic bags in place and
pushed Peter from the room.
“Hey, I better head home. Mom’ll be expecting me.” Peter
started when they were safely in the hall. He paused for a
moment. “What do you really think that old guy was
carrying?”
Hank smiled. “Maybe his
Playboy collection.”
#
The next day at school,
Hank lingered at his locker between each passing period,
stretching out the time he had to loiter in the hallway. He
stood with his locker door propped open just a bit, leaning
against the empty neighboring locker with a crooked grin.
Peter found him just before they both had PE—sixth period.
“Hey Hank. We should
hustle, you know. PE. Mr. Fraiser’ll make us run if we’re
late. Maybe give us detentions.”
“Right,” Hank said
through his self-satisfied smirk. “Right, Pee-Eee. Mr.
Fraiser—what an asshole.”
Peter started to turn
around, but Hank’s grin lured him back. “Look, did you
think about the old dude anymore last night?”
“What?” Hank’s roving
eyes didn’t find his friend. He nodded to a couple of
seventh grade boys that approached slowly from the other end
of the hall.
“The old guy.” Peter
looked at the ground. “I dreamed about him last night.
Kinda creepy.”
“Right.” Hank reached
out with one open hand. “Twenty-five cents. Each.”
The two seventh-graders,
both scrawny with a child’s puzzle of zits on their moony
faces, slipped a quarter into Hank’s outstretched hand. He
motioned with his head for both to come closer and opened
his locker a little more. Both of their faces flushed red,
redder than the zits, and their eyes swelled like water
balloons. Peter craned his neck to see, but couldn’t get
past the other boys.
“That’s enough fellas,”
Hank said with a chuckle. He pulled his locker nearly
shut. “What was that you were saying, Pete?”
“What’s in there?”
Peter latched onto the door with his long fingers.
“Hey, that’ll be a
quarter—”
Peter wrenched the door
from his friend, flipped it open with a bang, and beheld the
centerfold from the Playboy he’d gawked at the
previous afternoon. “Hank—”
The bell rang and both
boys scurried to class.
#
They made plans to spy
on the old man while serving detention for Mr. Fraiser,
their PE teacher. After the detention bell signaled sweet
freedom, both boys pedaled to Hank’s house as though driven
by a pack of wild dogs. They surveyed the old man’s house,
and, after determining he was absent by the dark windows,
took up a listening post in the bushes adjacent to his
backyard.
“He always comes in this
way. Never enters the front door.”
“Wait.” Peter brushed a
bead of sweat from his forehead. “He’s coming.”
With planetary
regularity, the old man shuffled around the corner, this
time toting a cardboard box. The carton was rectangular,
about as tall as a glass tumbler, but much wider. He
carried the box with ease, stopped not twenty feet from
where the boys lay hidden in leaf and shadow, turned and
looked right at them. Peter felt his heart at the back of
his throat. He nudged Hank.
“Did you see that,” he
whispered, almost inaudibly.
The old man stared for a
few minutes, smiled wide with stained teeth, and then walked
to the root cellar door leading under his house. He set
down the box with a dull clank, a tell-tale sign of glass
inside. After unlocking the padlock, he carried his prize
down the dark stairwell, reemerged, and replaced the lock.
He glanced toward the boys again—winking this time—and
entered the rear of his house.
Peter almost heard a
voice, low and indistinct. What are you waiting for,
boys?
Hank and Peter lay in
under the bushes for a long time, simply sweating and trying
to regain control over their renegade heartbeats.
#
Friday afternoon found
both boys riding the bench during PE. The rest of the class
broiled in a heated dodge ball match, but Peter’s awkward
limbs didn’t afford the agility necessary for dodge ball
success. Hank had been smacked in the nose while
daydreaming about Miss October.
Releasing the grip on
his sore proboscis, Hank turned to Peter. “The old man left
this morning. Tossed a suitcase in the back of that
clunker station wagon of his and took off.”
Peter shrugged his
shoulders.
Hank pinched his nose
and wiggled it back and forth. “I thought you might want
to, you know, sneak over and see what he’s got stashed down
there.”
Peter raised his
eyebrows, but his eyes were far away.
“Pete? Earth to Pete?”
Hank nudged him with an elbow. “You in there?” He
frowned. “I checked out the lock on that cellar door. We
probably can’t budge that, but the hinges are held in place
by a few screws. With Dad’s cordless drill—”
A sharp whistle cut into
Hank’s words. “Hey, Morgan…Harlan. Get back in here.” Mr.
Fraiser waved both of them into the game. “Let’s hustle.”
Hank hopped to his feet
and glanced at his friend. “Tonight. After dark. I’ll
meet you behind my place. You can sneak out, right?”
*****
“What’s that for?” Peter
asked, waving a hand at the bottle of Johnny Walker from Mr.
Morgan’s secret cache.
“Courage.” Hank
swallowed a swig, shook his head violently, and offered the
bottle to his friend. “This is to scare the old man if he
comes back.” Hank lifted his shirt to reveal his father’s
pistol tucked into his waistband. “Still can’t find the
bullets. God, if I only had a couple of fucking bullets.
Maybe one for Dad when he comes home on a bender.” He made a
gun with his thumb and forefinger. “Bang. I’d save the
other for Fraiser. Bang. Right in his smug face.”
Peter shook his head.
Against his better judgment, he’d lied to his mom, telling
her he was tired and wanted to go to bed early. She took
his temperature and tucked him in, and fifteen minutes later
he pedaled through dark streets to Hank’s neighborhood. The
old man’s house loomed black and silent like some monstrous
thing resting on its haunches. But it wasn’t the house they
would enter—it was the cellar beneath.
Talking a flashlight
each, the boys squeezed through the hedge dividing the
Morgan house from their destination. Peter volunteered to
wear the backpack carrying the cordless drill as long as
Hank would do the dirty work. They crouched next to the
slanted cellar door, wide and white under the waning moon.
Hank worked the drill onto the first screw and clicked it
on. Peter flinched at the mechanical whirring noise.
“God, you’re a chicken
shit.” As each screw slipped loose of the door, Hank
dropped them in a side pocket.
Peter’s underarms were
sticky with nervous sweat and he shifted from one foot to
the other in a slight rocking motion. “C’mon, Hank,” he
muttered.
“Here, hold the door.
Make sure it doesn’t slide.” Hank motioned and Peter pushed
his hands against the rough, peeling paint. After three
more screws, Hank stood back. “All right, let’s see what we
can find.” The boys lifted the door together and flipped it
toward the lock as though the latch became a hinge,
revealing a set of concrete steps leading into an inky sea
below.
“Now or never,” Hank
said, snatching up his flashlight and descending into the
hole.
Peter teetered for a
moment, caught by the bitter odor of dirt and mildewed
wood. Some other smell rose from that yawning pit,
something old and foul and dark. He swallowed hard, poked
his flashlight ahead of him, and followed his friend into
the waiting cellar.
“Empty jars.” Hank
swept his beam around the cellar, a smaller space than he’d
expected. On each wall save for the entrance, stood simple
wooden shelves lined with mason sized jars. They glistened
and sparkled in turn as the light brushed past them. Each
appeared empty.
Peter, emboldened a bit
by the lack of any real carnival grotesqueries, stepped out
of the stairwell and wrapped his hand around a jar.
“They’re sealed though. Look.” He titled the top toward
his friend. “Mom told me about canning, and how Grandma
would seal the jars when she was a little girl.”
Across the cellar, Hank
kicked the empty cardboard box they’d seen the man with the
night before. “This is bullshit. He’s supposed to be
hiding some sweet little treasure down here, not empty
fucking jars.” With the end of his flashlight, Hank tapped
a jar on the end of one shelf; it made a hollow clunk and
wobbled on the edge.
Peter’s arm burned—not a
painful, hand-in-flame sensation or chemical burn—more of a
gentle tingling, a sleepy nerve feeling. The feeling
started in his hand, the hand holding the jar, building
slowly, crawling to his shoulder before spreading down his
chest and back. For a moment, he thought he could hear a
whisper, something small and indistinct—almost a voice
uttering his name—but the crash of shattering glass broke
the moment.
“Shit!” Hank jumped
back. “It’s like the god-damned thing jumped off the
shelf—I didn’t hit it that hard.” His face flushed and then
filled with a claxon red as he looked at Peter. He clenched
a fist, stepped over the broken glass, and advanced toward
his gangly friend. His other hand fondled the pistol grip
under his shirt. The peripheral glow from Hank’s flashlight
smudged grotesque shadows on his cheeks and forehead. “What
did you say?”
Peter, still holding the
other jar, stumbled back a few steps. “Nothing, Hank.”
“Leave my father alone,
Peter!” A thin stream of spittle launched from Hank’s mouth
as he snarled. “At least he’s man enough to stay with his
family.”
“What’s with you?”
“I’m tired of you being
such a jerk.” Hank blinked hard and shook his head, turned
to the stairs, pointing his flashlight toward the opening.
“I’m getting the hell outta here.” He staggered up the grey
steps.
Feeling as though he’d
been kneed in the gut, Peter slipped the jar he held into
his backpack, scanned the cellar again, and hurried up the
stairs.
*****
Before the boys split
for the evening, Hank replaced each screw, securing the worn
door back to its hinges. He had left without goodbye—hadn’t
said a word since both boys were in the cellar. They didn’t
hang out that weekend; when Hank called, twice, Peter told
his mom to take a message. Peter spent the weekend
shuttered in his room, brooding and alone. Mrs. Harlan grew
concerned by Sunday afternoon—a wet, grey day. After lunch,
Peter had stretched out on his bed reading back issues of
his favorite comic books. The empty jar rested safely in
the back of his underwear drawer.
“Hey buddy.” She
slipped into his bedroom, skirted around a pile of dirty
clothes, and plopped on the corner of the bed.
He grunted—an impartial
grunt, neither sending a “glad to see you” message or a
warning to leave him alone.
She took a breath and
sighed, trying to ignore her motherly fear of losing touch
with her boy. After her husband left five years
ago—vanished with only a hand scratched note, “goodbye”—she
fought a rising anxiety that Peter would grow to resent her,
blame her for his father’s absence. Or worse, maybe Peter
would vanish, too.
“Peter, I’m surprised
you haven’t talked to Hank—”
“Yeah.”
She looked at her boy,
trying not to see her husband’s face. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m fine.” He didn’t
look up from his comic.
She stood, her limbs
heavy as though infused with wet cement. “All right,
buddy. You’ll tell me if something is wrong? If you need
something?”
He nodded absently.
After she shut the door,
Peter slipped from bed, rummaged in his underwear drawer,
and pulled out the jar. He heard the voice again, the low,
muffled whisper. He thought about his father, pictured him
as he was in the photos on the mantle in the living
room—young, handsome, and utterly present. The voice in the
jar, it had to be his dad.
*****
During school on Monday,
Hank fought hard to catch Peter’s attention, but Peter
nursed wounds from Friday’s rough treatment, avoiding his
friend as much as possible. PE rolled around, and the boys
landed on opposite sides of the line. Peter caught one red
rubber ball, felt rage swell in his chest like fire, and
launched it at Hank. Hank had been trying to talk again,
walking dangerously close to the line, and the ball caught
him square in the face. He jerked, staggered, and tumbled
forward, clutching his nose.
“My node is broke,” Hank
muttered as a drop of blood plopped on the gym floor.
The whistle screamed,
and Mr. Fraiser barked, “Harlan!” He motioned for Peter, and
the boy obeyed, blushing. “Harlan, get your buddy cleaned
up. If the bleeding doesn’t stop, I want you to escort him
to the nurse. Now!”
Hank dropped to a bench
in the locker room, still holding his nose, and Peter tossed
him a towel. “Thanks. Second time I’ve been nailed in the
nose in the last few days.”
Peter shrugged.
“You’re still mad.”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
Hank released his nose
and blotted it with the towel. “Yeah, I guess I was a jerk
on Friday. I don’t know…I don’t know why.”
Peter crossed his arms
and frowned.
“When that jar broke, I
guess I just got scared.” Hank titled his head forward. “I
heard a voice.”
Peter thought of the
whispers from the jar in his underwear drawer. “Voice?”
“Yeah, I thought it was
you. Asking what kind of man I was. Mocking my dad. I
thought about the booze, magazines, and the gun.” Hank
shook his head slowly. “But then it said something about
you, too. It made me hate you—I didn’t even want to
look at you. For a moment I thought about the gun, if it
was loaded…”
Peter shuffled his feet.
“What, what did it say?”
Hank shook his head. “I
can’t really remember.” He glanced at Peter, noted his
disbelieving frown, and said, “really. I can’t remember.
Look, do you still have the other jar?”
Peter nodded.
“I think we need to put
it back. Tonight after school.”
*****
Peter leaned on his bike
and felt the empty jar in his backpack. He waited across the
street as the old man shuffled past Hank’s house, carefully
treading over the cracks in the worn sidewalk. His arms
were empty this time, no mystery package nestled under the
crook of an elbow. The man stopped, turned to look at
Peter, and nodded with a lopsided smile, a knowing, crooked
smile. I know just what you need, the old man seemed
to say with his smile. Peter swallowed and tried to nod
back. The smile wouldn’t come.
Once the man disappeared
around the corner in his yard, Peter sped across the street,
dropped his bike, and burst into Hank’s place without a
knock. The front door was open, and Peter had grown
comfortable with entering his friend’s house as though it
was his own. His only hesitation came at the foot of the
stairs. The jar had been silent when he came home, and
because of that silence, he decided to bring it to Hank. If
he heard the whisper again, he would have kept it, hid it
away from the world. Reaching into the backpack, Peter
tried once more to make the thing speak, to encourage the
faint whisper. Nothing. He continued up the stairs.
“’bout time,” Hank said
as Peter popped through his doorway. “The old man’s back.
We’re stuck with the jar. We didn’t even clean up the mess,
the broken glass.”
“So?”
“I dunno. Makes me
nervous. How I felt that night. It wasn’t right.” Hank
leaned against the window frame. “If that damn gun was
loaded…” His voice trailed away.
“Do you think he
knows?” Peter slipped the back pack from his shoulder and
leaned it against a wall. “He smiled at me, kind of
funny—like that day we hid under your hedge.” He shuddered
slightly. Without conscious thought, he reached into the
bag, pulled out the jar, and set it on Hank’s desk. “I
heard voices, too.”
“What?”
“Just whispers, really.
Whispers.” Peter dropped to the corner of Hank’s unmade
bed. He touched the lid of the jar with one finger.
You can’t take it
back now.
“What did you say?”
Peter jerked his eyes to the window.
“Nothing. Nothing. You
were talking about the jar.” Hank pointed.
He wants to take the
jar for himself.
Peter’s hand wrapped
around the glass. “You can’t have this one.”
“What are you talking
about?” Hank stepped closer.
He doesn’t want you
around. He thinks you’re weak, Peter.
“I’m not weak.” Peter
sprang to his feet.
Hank froze. “I didn’t
say you were weak. What the hell is eating you?”
Peter picked up the jar,
wrapping his fingers around the lid. “Nothing. I keep
thinking about my dad.”
Weak. You should go,
Peter. Leave and not come back. He doesn’t want to be your
friend anymore.
Hank turned to look out
the window. He watched as the old neighbor shuffled from
his backdoor to his cellar. “Maybe tomorrow.”
You’ll have to show
him, Peter. Show him you aren’t weak.
Peter backpedalled
toward the door, cradling the jar under his arm. “I just…I
need to go to the bathroom.” Hank turned to look as Peter
slipped into the hallway. Leaning against the wall outside
Hank’s room, Peter twisted the lid. A small pop sounded
from the jar, followed by a faint hiss. The voice came much
clearer.
Good. Hurry—time to
go. But first, leave something for him.
Peter rushed into the
Morgan’s spare bedroom. The gun was easy to find, still
nestled on top of Mr. Morgan’s box of old Playboys.
Hank had replaced it after they snuck into the cellar on
Friday. Peter leaned against the wall next to the closet
and turned the jar over. Three brass cartridges tumbled to
the carpet, bullets for the Glock.
Good, good. Load the
gun, Peter. One for Mr. Morgan. One for Mr. Fraiser. One
for good measure.
Hank stepped into the
hallway, calling for his friend. “Pete?”
Peter laid the loaded
gun on top of the box.
Come on, boy. I’m
waiting for you. Time to go. Vanish.
He placed the jar on the
carpet, swallowed, and slipped one foot inside its narrow
rim. As the foot slipped into the jar, it shrunk—pinched
together like a wad of tissue paper. Tears started to
tumbled from Peter’s eyes. He balanced one hand on the
floor and slipped the other foot inside the jar. With a few
twists of his torso, Peter worked the his body into the
jar.
When Hank opened the
door to the spare bedroom, he first noticed the empty jar
lying in the middle of the floor. He stepped inside,
glancing around the room. “Pete?” he called weakly. His
eyes rested on the gun.
Pete’s gone, Hank.
Poof, like his dad. Take the gun.
Hank glanced at the
jar, nodded, and wrapped his fingers around the pistol
grip.
Three bullets, Hank.
One for your dad…one for Fraiser…one just in case.
Below, the kitchen door
slammed. “Hank? I’m home,” Mrs. Morgan called from below.
Just in case
someone gets in your way. |
