The Longest Month
The children will tell you
it's December,
the days crawling by like years
as new snow beckons
outdoor thrills
and Christmas looms
always justthisclose
but never
close
enough
or perhaps, if they considered,
they'd argue for May,
when the browngrey dullness
of winterscapes have
exploded
into blooms of color
and sunlight
and the warmth calls to them
to run
leap
play
but only
through schoolroom windows.
Children will tell you
and children are sure,
but there are matters in this world
beyond childish comprehension:
months into the seasonal gloom
when the memory of first flakes
has lost all of its charm
and cantankerous rodents
dream peacefully
of spring
after condemning the rest of us
to waking worlds of winter,
when bitter chill and
blasting snow
keep crocuses sleeping
past expiration dates,
when false lovers' holidays
foist pretend fire
into the silent kilns of
empty hearts,
ever-growing snowbanks
remind us of
what we learn each year
what melts away with the banks
each spring:
hell is not a place
of fire
and searing burning crackling
pain
hell is a landscape
endless, frozen,
cold
barren--
those whose eyes are open
are vouchsafed
a vision of it each year
if they choose to see.
February will end
and color return to the world,
but the wise
the adults
the seeing
know that it is the warmth and colors
that are the illusion,
as much as the
prognostications of
that weary woodchuck
and the flimsy arrows of
the churlish cherub,
and the chill of the
longest month
lives within us
waiting
waiting to freeze
to restrain
to pierce
the hearts of
those who believe in
spring
and joy
and love.
They do not exist.
They are cruel fabrications
thrust into the mind
by the devilish
interminable
monotonous
lonely
empty
snowbound month
of February.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Friday, September 11, 2009
Eternal Tears
Eternal Tears
The crackle of a classroom speaker.
Dozens of small voices, stilled
by the sudden intrusion,
stop at once.
A silence.
No movement in the room but
the rhythmic metronome of the teacher’s ruler
swinging back and forth in her craggy hands.
The crackle sounds once more,
and our faces turn in unison,
in anticipation,
towards its source.
A small, broken voice—
recognizable but not normal,
not the rich, strong voice usually carried into the room that way,
but a fragment of it,
a shell, without depth,
cracking like the speaker itself—
interrupts the silence.
“Bow your heads in prayer,” it says.
Confused eyes stare at the oval grill
awkwardly jutting out of an ancient beige wall.
The voice, more broken now, continues.
“We have just received word that the President has been shot.”
Vaguely we try to recall just what a President is—
visions of white-haired men in blue coats leap out of history books into
our brains, blur, roll into each other. Names, mostly from holidays,
flash through our minds.
And one more…
Again the electronic crackling,
as if the speaker itself does not wish to hear the news:
“President Kennedy was shot this afternoon in Dallas.”
A pause. A sound like weeping. “Pray for him.”
Dozens of eyes,
glassy,
confused,
watch the teacher sit in stunned silence at her desk,
tears welling in her gray eyes,
the ruler grasped still tightly in her palm,
some connection to the world which has ended so abruptly.
Her face quivers, the gray in her hair even duller,
and her head slips to the desk.
We look at each other, recognizing
that something is terribly, unalterably wrong,
and bow our heads as well.
Eternity goes by.
No sound in the room but the humming of the clock
and the almost imperceptible click of its hand
every minute.
An airplane in the distance rattles the blinds on the window.
Somewhere a woman is calling someone,
her pained voice reaching out into the bright autumn sky.
Somewhere a baby is crying.
And we sit, heads on our desks, unsure exactly
what it all means,
still as we have ever been, waiting.
Waiting.
And the history book images flood back in:
Abraham Lincoln was a President who had been shot, but that was long ago,
very long ago,
and the quaking voice from the speaker had said, “this afternoon.”
Voices from the mind: fathers’ voices, mothers’ voices,
in dinner conversation,
working around the edge of a roast,
red and dripping,
saying something about a new age, a new life for the country,
a new hope.
The speaker comes to life again, startling us out of our thoughts;
the voice is choking back tears.
“President John F. Kennedy died this afternoon in a Dallas hospital.”
Wailing from somewhere down the hall.
Silence in the classroom.
Our faces blank, our minds blank.
All silent.
The speaker fades.
In the halls, there is silence.
Something terrible has happened, something
which will shape and define our lives.
So young, but we know that.
And we file quietly to our buses,
no tears in our eyes.
On this day, the tears are left to the grownups.
On this day, it helps to be a child.
And the buses roll through empty streets,
early afternoon traffic
stilled by the flickering blue light
of the television screens all are staring at,
and we go home to the arms of our waiting mothers,
and the blue lights transfix us too.
Perhaps some of us cry then.
Perhaps some of us wait
for the scratchy images
of a frigid November morning
with a horse-drawn carriage
rolling along the street lined
with men in black and
women in dark veils and
the young boy raising his hand
in a silent salute,
or perhaps we wait until the small flame
begins its eternal vigil,
solitary on the hillside,
or perhaps we never cry at all,
and return to our desks
on Monday,
bursting with children’s vigor,
forgetting what we have seen
and heard,
not fearing the next crackle of the tiny speaker.
But there are some memories,
stark or vivid,
that haunt and cling and will not let go.
And there are some tears—shed or withheld—that never go away.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
prologue
A cool breeze taunted the few plants that somehow managed, despite the altitude, to flourish on the outcropping where she sat. Winter’s chill had relented long ago and the cliffs and crags no longer held any remnants of the snow that, only months before, had helped to shield her from outside view. Not that she really needed help; she could easily manage to stay hidden. In all of these years, that at least was something she had become very, very good at.
Below her, a seasonally sporadic line of cars traversed the meandering roadway that cut through the mountains toward Ostbergen and Aldamia Castle. Tourists, she thought, and wondered for perhaps the millionth time why Myra permitted it, why indeed Myra had arranged for it. Wouldn’t St. Aldamia’s be better served if its location had remained a secret, if the castle had remained, as it was for centuries, closed to the public? But ever since Myra, with her ridiculous ideas, had ascended to the leadership of the Council, things had been…askew. If she had been the chair instead…
But that was not the way it had played out. And now diminutive Myra was running the show. How long had it been now? She couldn’t quite remember. She stared down at the tiny cars, like so many ants winding around the long, twisting road whose only destination was that tiny mountain hamlet. These cliffs were no good for skiing, and she had made darn sure they were unattractive to mountain climbers, though she supposed Myra too had taken precautions in that area. So Ostbergen’s only charm was its remoteness, its quaintness, its authenticity, and…the castle.
For centuries only her people had known about its existence, and it should have stayed that way. Now it was an elite tourist destination, not very accessible but highly desirable, and for the several months of the year in which the roads up to the town were passable there seemed a never-ending stream of people coming to fill the small town with visitors and the castle with…what? History buffs? Architecture fanatics? Art lovers? Thrill seekers? Surely Aldamia Castle offered something for all with its centuries-old, complicated, highly unusual structure and the rumors—patently untrue but fostered by the villagers—of ghosts.
She had to give Myra one thing: it took brass balls to invite the world right into the building that housed both the school and Council headquarters and still manage to keep both hidden from them. There had even been that BBC documentary on the place, “The Hidden Beauty of Aldamia Castle.” She laughed aloud at the thought of it. They had no clue what they had not been able to film. Like, for example, the dragons that were housed in the rear of the castle grounds. That might have made a fun bit of footage. But there had been no great winged beasts on the BBC; the documentary had instead focused on the castle’s mysterious and shrouded history and some of the incredible artwork that lay within its walls. It was just as well. Let the dragons alone. They didn’t ask to have the bloody world brought into their private space, after all.
She had not been on the Council when Myra opened up the castle, though she understood that it had been, to some degree, a reaction to her mistakes. Interaction with the rest of the world, the new Council leader had said, will help us all to become better citizens of that world. As if we ever had existed outside of the “rest of the world,” she thought. Their people had been a part of all of world history, had played prominent roles in much of it that had usually gone pretty well undetected, as Myra still decreed that they should. So what was the big deal?
Myra had changed the school calendar to make sure that all children were educated in their home country in whatever was the normal way for their cultures and spent only a fraction of the year at St. Aldamia’s. And even while they were here, outsiders were around. They were never as insulated as they once had been, as she had been, as Myra had been. And their world was suffering as a result. She had seen it, watched it happening now for years. The signs were everywhere.
The “rest of the world” was imploding. Surely Myra could see that. Surely she knew and understood that. And surely she knew also that the magic was not strong enough anymore to do anything about it. It had been spread too thin. If she had been successful on that day, so many years ago, if she had managed to consolidate the powers of the magic, it all could have been so much better. She could have seen to it. But not Myra with her egalitarian insanity. She was destroying everything.
The cars slid silently along the road into Ostbergen. She allowed her eyes to follow the little dots back along the trail as it made its way through the mountains. Finally, her long gaze found what she was looking for. There, she thought. That would be one way to do it.
Smiling, she stood up and moved back up over the outcropping to a ledge near the top of the cliff face on the other side. She looked across the great chasm that divided her from another wall of rock, pockmarked with small craters from what appeared to be hundreds of direct mortar hits. Nothing was stirring on the other side. Withdrawing a small wooden wand from her cloak, she casually flicked it in the direction of the wall. A flash of light flew from its end, hurtling across the divide, opening yet another hole in the rock face. Nothing was there, but that didn't matter. This time, she was just taking out her aggression.
The wand disappeared back into the cloak in a movement so subtle as to be almost invisible. Then, turning, she waved a hand at the face of the cliff on her own side, and a large section of the granite faded into a shimmering red before vanishing altogether, revealing the mouth of a hidden cave.
She looked back at the pockmarked cliff opposite her. “I will find you,” she snarled. “I’m closer than ever.”
The cliff made no reply. She spun back around and walked through the opening, waving a hand behind her as the shimmering rock face faded back into a solid wall once again.
Below her, a seasonally sporadic line of cars traversed the meandering roadway that cut through the mountains toward Ostbergen and Aldamia Castle. Tourists, she thought, and wondered for perhaps the millionth time why Myra permitted it, why indeed Myra had arranged for it. Wouldn’t St. Aldamia’s be better served if its location had remained a secret, if the castle had remained, as it was for centuries, closed to the public? But ever since Myra, with her ridiculous ideas, had ascended to the leadership of the Council, things had been…askew. If she had been the chair instead…
But that was not the way it had played out. And now diminutive Myra was running the show. How long had it been now? She couldn’t quite remember. She stared down at the tiny cars, like so many ants winding around the long, twisting road whose only destination was that tiny mountain hamlet. These cliffs were no good for skiing, and she had made darn sure they were unattractive to mountain climbers, though she supposed Myra too had taken precautions in that area. So Ostbergen’s only charm was its remoteness, its quaintness, its authenticity, and…the castle.
For centuries only her people had known about its existence, and it should have stayed that way. Now it was an elite tourist destination, not very accessible but highly desirable, and for the several months of the year in which the roads up to the town were passable there seemed a never-ending stream of people coming to fill the small town with visitors and the castle with…what? History buffs? Architecture fanatics? Art lovers? Thrill seekers? Surely Aldamia Castle offered something for all with its centuries-old, complicated, highly unusual structure and the rumors—patently untrue but fostered by the villagers—of ghosts.
She had to give Myra one thing: it took brass balls to invite the world right into the building that housed both the school and Council headquarters and still manage to keep both hidden from them. There had even been that BBC documentary on the place, “The Hidden Beauty of Aldamia Castle.” She laughed aloud at the thought of it. They had no clue what they had not been able to film. Like, for example, the dragons that were housed in the rear of the castle grounds. That might have made a fun bit of footage. But there had been no great winged beasts on the BBC; the documentary had instead focused on the castle’s mysterious and shrouded history and some of the incredible artwork that lay within its walls. It was just as well. Let the dragons alone. They didn’t ask to have the bloody world brought into their private space, after all.
She had not been on the Council when Myra opened up the castle, though she understood that it had been, to some degree, a reaction to her mistakes. Interaction with the rest of the world, the new Council leader had said, will help us all to become better citizens of that world. As if we ever had existed outside of the “rest of the world,” she thought. Their people had been a part of all of world history, had played prominent roles in much of it that had usually gone pretty well undetected, as Myra still decreed that they should. So what was the big deal?
Myra had changed the school calendar to make sure that all children were educated in their home country in whatever was the normal way for their cultures and spent only a fraction of the year at St. Aldamia’s. And even while they were here, outsiders were around. They were never as insulated as they once had been, as she had been, as Myra had been. And their world was suffering as a result. She had seen it, watched it happening now for years. The signs were everywhere.
The “rest of the world” was imploding. Surely Myra could see that. Surely she knew and understood that. And surely she knew also that the magic was not strong enough anymore to do anything about it. It had been spread too thin. If she had been successful on that day, so many years ago, if she had managed to consolidate the powers of the magic, it all could have been so much better. She could have seen to it. But not Myra with her egalitarian insanity. She was destroying everything.
The cars slid silently along the road into Ostbergen. She allowed her eyes to follow the little dots back along the trail as it made its way through the mountains. Finally, her long gaze found what she was looking for. There, she thought. That would be one way to do it.
Smiling, she stood up and moved back up over the outcropping to a ledge near the top of the cliff face on the other side. She looked across the great chasm that divided her from another wall of rock, pockmarked with small craters from what appeared to be hundreds of direct mortar hits. Nothing was stirring on the other side. Withdrawing a small wooden wand from her cloak, she casually flicked it in the direction of the wall. A flash of light flew from its end, hurtling across the divide, opening yet another hole in the rock face. Nothing was there, but that didn't matter. This time, she was just taking out her aggression.
The wand disappeared back into the cloak in a movement so subtle as to be almost invisible. Then, turning, she waved a hand at the face of the cliff on her own side, and a large section of the granite faded into a shimmering red before vanishing altogether, revealing the mouth of a hidden cave.
She looked back at the pockmarked cliff opposite her. “I will find you,” she snarled. “I’m closer than ever.”
The cliff made no reply. She spun back around and walked through the opening, waving a hand behind her as the shimmering rock face faded back into a solid wall once again.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Aldamia's Heart Ch 1
Chapter 1: Rough Flight
No matter how much everyone in the family teased her about it, Ella absolutely hated dragons. It didn’t really matter that, if it were not for the family’s dragon, Mynot, she’d probably be stuck at home in Willow Springs with the other kids from her school worrying about tan lines and which bikini to wear to the municipal pool instead of sailing over this mountain range heading for the castle in Ostbergen. Castles were overrated, too, and this particular one merely led to another summer of “dodge the tourists.” Even the thought of seeing Winton again did little to alter her mood.
“Stop daydreaming, Ella,” her mother’s voice called from behind, piercing the rush of the wind and the dragon’s beating wings. “Pay attention to Mynot’s movements! I swear, child, you get worse all the time! I’m amazed you didn’t fall off last year and I don’t wish to start this vacation with your funeral.”
Vacation, Ella thought. As if. A vacation involves time to hang out with friends and go to malls and pools and play video games and maybe even take in a concert or a movie. A vacation involves sleeping until you happen to wake up and then relaxing all day. A vacation involves fun. And if it does include traveling, there’s sightseeing or beaches or boats. There certainly is not studying and classrooms and failure and bloody dragons.
Ella looked back over her shoulder at her mother and father, sitting behind her on the dragon’s back, holding tight to the harness. Her mother sat immediately to Ella’s rear, her red dress somehow managing to stay in place and her long golden hair flying freely in the breeze. Her father, in back of her mother, was spending the ride as he did most of their trips, desperately trying to get his wife’s hair out of his mouth and eyes.
“Mmmphlgmma,” he said, pulling the hair from his face.
“I quite agree, Dear,” her mother responded. “Now mind your father, Ella.”
Ella tried to imagine that she was anywhere else. She closed her eyes and pictured a sleepover at her best friend Jessica’s house during spring break. Renée and Kaitlyn had been there too, each of them trying, as always, to shock her friends. And they might have succeeded in shocking each other, but none of them could ever shock Ella. Not that it was all that easy to shock a fourteen year old whose parents subscribed to every cable channel known to man and didn’t believe in such things as parental controls, even if they didn’t also take annual jaunts on dragonback. Jessica’s tales of her boyfriend Bill’s hilarious attempts to seduce her (“and he actually took off his shirt and pounded his chest like Tarzan!”) did nothing for her, and Kaitlyn’s offer of a sneaked cigarette wasn’t even tempting. They had no idea what life was like for Ella, the only child of the only witch family in Willow Springs.
They did not know that she never invited them to her house because it would have been somewhat difficult to explain the pixies and gnomes in the back yard, which her parents had tried for years to remove with only sporadic success because they were so attracted by the crystals that caused the unusual chartreuse aura emanating from the middle of the living room. The crystals, which supplied the power for the entire house, would also have been hard to explain. So would the dead fish in the aquarium. And that was not even taking into account the dragon that was sometimes in residence in the shed.
Why her mother could never keep fish alive was beyond Ella’s comprehension, and why she insisted on trying again and again was not even a thing worth contemplating. It was just her mother. And the number of former fish that had piled up over the years, if anyone had bothered to count them, would have been astonishing. No matter what day it was, there had to be at least ten or twenty of them floating around on their backs in the tank, waiting for someone--usually her father--to zap them into wherever dead things went when he zapped them.
No, her friends had no clue, and that was for the best. Though she really missed Jessica right now, and would much rather have been lying in her friend’s bedroom sharing secrets about the boys at school than doing what she was doing now. Ella looked down at the lights of a small village below her. Swiss? she wondered, but the truth was that she had absolutely no idea where they were right now. They had come out of the dragonway, that she knew because she could see the stars again, but there had been nothing at all to provide any kind of bearings. Not for the first time she cursed herself for paying so little attention in her astronomy class last summer in Ostbergen. Perhaps if she had studied harder she might be able to figure out where they were. But who wanted to study during summer vacation? It was bad enough that she had to spend each summer in this castle in the middle of nowhere without thinking about taking classes at St. Aldamia’s School for Freaks.
St. Aldamia’s School was probably not the worst part of Ella’s summers—when she was less irritated about having to go, she could admit that being in the castle was kind of cool in a Hogwarts-on-steroids sort of way, and as far as crappy parts went there was that bit about having to climb onto this dragon with its stench of old burnt embers, after all--but she certainly could have done without it. The courses were interesting, usually, since they were about subjects practically unheard of in normal school, but the reality was that she was simply no good at this witch stuff. No matter how hard she tried, Ella could not master any of it. There were many times when she was absolutely convinced that she was adopted.
Her friends didn’t have to worry about weird parents. Jessica’s parents, for example, were completely normal, as far as Ella could tell. Mr. Lange wore a business suit each day and traveled into the city to some kind of office to do some kind of Real Person work, and Mrs. Lange sold real estate in Willow Springs. Real estate, she thought ruefully. Can’t get more real than that. More completely and absolutely normal. Ella and Jessica had even helped her to hold open houses on occasion. Jessica’s room had a cute white four-poster bed with lots of frilly coverings, a matching dresser, and enough stuffed animals to start her own zoo. And none of them came randomly alive when you played with it. Renée’s and Kaitlyn’s rooms were pretty much the same. Different décor, different posters on the walls, but all of them normal rooms for normal girls. And their parents, who were all good friends, probably would never have let them near Ella if they had known what the adults at 191 Mill Run Terrace did for a living, which at any rate was nothing that her friends’ parents would recognize as work.
William Corrigan, Ella’s father, was a scientist. Kaitlyn’s father was also a scientist, but not like Ella’s. Mr. O’Brien did some kind of experimental physics work in a government lab. Kaitlyn had tried to explain it once, but Ella was pretty certain that her friend didn’t actually know what her father did for a living. Ella would have been perfectly happy not knowing what her father did, but she knew it all too well. For the past few years, he had made his living cataloguing and studying miniature tornadoes, which were always whipping around his study, upending bookcases and things. As far as Ella could tell, this was a bizarre occupation even for a witch, but her father always said that it was the niche occupations that were the safest in case of a recession. (“If I’m the only expert on miniature tornadoes, they can’t very well get along without me, can they?”) It never seemed to bother William Corrigan that most of the witches in Ostbergen (and, as far as Ella knew, everywhere else) did not know that miniature tornadoes even existed; nor did it seem to upset him that his efforts to catalogue the things were doomed from the start, since each one he trapped in his study destroyed all of the files from the previous ones.
Ella’s mother, Martha, besides her repeated debacles with the fish, wrote scientific articles for Witch Worldwide, a weekly magazine that delivered the news from around the witching world in addition to exploring interesting experiments, spells and creations from witches everywhere. Occasionally, her articles explored current controversies, such as the recent series she had written outlining about the five millionth recurrence of the Male Witch Controversy. So many witches lived the vast majority of their lives outside of the community, she told Ella, and they start picking up the silly habits of the people they associate with, people who think that they have to have a separate name for male witches, using words like “mage” or “warlock,” for example. Martha Corrigan’s series of articles forcefully made the point that both men and women had been known as witches within the community for a thousand years and there was no need at all to change that, “especially not to appease a population of outsiders who don’t even believe we exist in the first place.” And she especially hated “warlock,” which she saw as a perfect argument for her point of view, since the word meant “oath-breaker” in ancient Scottish and was used as a means to insult those believed to be witches.
Ella thought that her mother’s job, at least, made sense, and almost seemed like something her friends’ parents might do. If you didn’t count the fact that she wrote these articles in letters of fire that her wand pulled from the air and then, once she was finished, sent them to Ostbergen with a huge sweeping whoosh of her arm that caused them to swirl suddenly together, tighter and tighter, until they flared up in a silent (but very bright) explosion and disappeared into the dragonway. That, Ella thought, might be a bit difficult to explain.
Once, in a huff because she had again been unable to find a really good explanation for Jessica when she wondered why she couldn’t come over for the day, she had asked her mother why in heaven’s name she didn’t simply use the computer and send her stories by e-mail.
“Where’s the fun in that?” her mother replied and, watching the fiery letters whirl toward their inevitable micro-supernova, Ella could offer no reasonable reply.
Looking down from Mynot’s back, Ella saw the lights of Ostbergen. It was always easy to tell which lights were Ostbergen’s because they were the only lights Ella had ever seen that danced a joyful welcome as you flew overhead. There were a few pairs of headlights bobbing along the remote mountain road leading to the town, tourists coming for the scenery or for a chance to see the famous Aldamia Castle. Tonight Ella could swear that she heard music, too, but she did not have the guts to mention this to her parents. You can’t hear music from several hundred feet in the air while seated on the back of a dragon whose wings are pounding away in their own deafening rhythm, and Ella didn’t want to sound as if she might be losing her mind in addition to whatever else her parents must think of their daughter by now.
What a disappointment she must be to them. Martha and William Corrigan, so important to the Ostbergen witches, the world’s largest leadership coven: leaders, educators, well-known figures, known even to Myra Pendragon herself. And their daughter, who should be readying herself to follow in the family footsteps, is holding onto this stupid dragon for dear life, hearing music that can’t be there, and praying that she won’t fall off and embarrass them yet again.
Still, what she couldn’t be hearing sure sounded like the right place; it was the same ubiquitous New Age music that Ella always found warm and welcoming when she arrived, and the same music that she always grew tired of by the end of the first week because it was everywhere. No matter where you were, except in the classrooms themselves, it seemed that you could hear that music. And always the same kind, too. No rock. No rap. (God forbid!) No blues. No pop. Not even any country. Just endless Enya clones providing the soundtrack of the summer. Kids in the 60’s had the Beach Boys. In the 70’s there were the Eagles. The 80’s had Springsteen. In every era, there were bands and singers rocking the summers. But here in Ella’s world, in Ella’s life, well, the Eagles and Beach Boys would be pretty welcome, in her opinion. Heck, she’d settle for Britney Spears. Anything with a beat.
“Are you all right up there, Ella?” came her mother’s voice. “We’ll be landing soon.”
“I know, Mom,” Ella responded, forgetting the music that still seemed to sift through the air. “I see the lights.” She often found herself wondering why her mother insisted on telling her every little thing as if she were a little girl who couldn’t see things for herself. From behind, she heard what must have been a sigh.
“I love those lights,” Martha Corrigan said. “Don’t you, William?”
“Mmbleghurf,” came her father’s reply.
“Hold on, now,” Martha said. “We’re going down.”
This was undoubtedly the very worst part of flying on dragonback. Ella braced herself for the dive, and silently thanked her mother for pointing out the obvious this time, as the dragon suddenly rolled to its left and went into what any neutral observer would categorize as a free fall. Ella buried her face into the hard scales and gripped the harness with fingers that were turning whiter by the second, thinking that maybe it wasn’t all dragons she disliked; maybe it was only this one. After all, she really wasn’t well acquainted with many others. And then, almost as soon as it had started, it was over, and Mynot suddenly righted himself and landed softly on the grass outside of the castle that housed St. Aldamia’s. Ella turned and saw that her parents’ faces were as white as hers must have been. Her mother swallowed hard, gradually released her grip on the harness, and turned to her husband.
“Dear,” she said, the color returning to her face, and her hair, after the free fall, looking almost dazzlingly alive and remarkably un-disheveled, “do you think that we might see Mildrick about Mynot’s landings? I don’t understand how this dragon ever managed to get out of passenger training.”
Ella’s father, his face also regaining color but a pale green instead of its normal pink, slid from the dragon’s back and stood, doubled over, on the ground. Ella thought he might throw up, but he managed to compose himself and said, barely audible, “Yes. A good idea, definitely.”
It was the longest speech he had made all day.
As her parents began to unpack their baggage, Ella turned and looked up at the dragon’s face, its red eyes gleaming with its internal fires, its snout exhaling smoky breath.
“Do you think that’s funny?” she asked.
The dragon’s wings softly beat the air, and the sudden movement sent William Corrigan to the ground beneath a large suitcase that, suddenly jolted, began singing “I’m a Traveling Fool.”
“No,” came the dark, echoing voice of Mynot from somewhere within Ella’s head. “That is funny.”
No matter how much everyone in the family teased her about it, Ella absolutely hated dragons. It didn’t really matter that, if it were not for the family’s dragon, Mynot, she’d probably be stuck at home in Willow Springs with the other kids from her school worrying about tan lines and which bikini to wear to the municipal pool instead of sailing over this mountain range heading for the castle in Ostbergen. Castles were overrated, too, and this particular one merely led to another summer of “dodge the tourists.” Even the thought of seeing Winton again did little to alter her mood.
“Stop daydreaming, Ella,” her mother’s voice called from behind, piercing the rush of the wind and the dragon’s beating wings. “Pay attention to Mynot’s movements! I swear, child, you get worse all the time! I’m amazed you didn’t fall off last year and I don’t wish to start this vacation with your funeral.”
Vacation, Ella thought. As if. A vacation involves time to hang out with friends and go to malls and pools and play video games and maybe even take in a concert or a movie. A vacation involves sleeping until you happen to wake up and then relaxing all day. A vacation involves fun. And if it does include traveling, there’s sightseeing or beaches or boats. There certainly is not studying and classrooms and failure and bloody dragons.
Ella looked back over her shoulder at her mother and father, sitting behind her on the dragon’s back, holding tight to the harness. Her mother sat immediately to Ella’s rear, her red dress somehow managing to stay in place and her long golden hair flying freely in the breeze. Her father, in back of her mother, was spending the ride as he did most of their trips, desperately trying to get his wife’s hair out of his mouth and eyes.
“Mmmphlgmma,” he said, pulling the hair from his face.
“I quite agree, Dear,” her mother responded. “Now mind your father, Ella.”
Ella tried to imagine that she was anywhere else. She closed her eyes and pictured a sleepover at her best friend Jessica’s house during spring break. Renée and Kaitlyn had been there too, each of them trying, as always, to shock her friends. And they might have succeeded in shocking each other, but none of them could ever shock Ella. Not that it was all that easy to shock a fourteen year old whose parents subscribed to every cable channel known to man and didn’t believe in such things as parental controls, even if they didn’t also take annual jaunts on dragonback. Jessica’s tales of her boyfriend Bill’s hilarious attempts to seduce her (“and he actually took off his shirt and pounded his chest like Tarzan!”) did nothing for her, and Kaitlyn’s offer of a sneaked cigarette wasn’t even tempting. They had no idea what life was like for Ella, the only child of the only witch family in Willow Springs.
They did not know that she never invited them to her house because it would have been somewhat difficult to explain the pixies and gnomes in the back yard, which her parents had tried for years to remove with only sporadic success because they were so attracted by the crystals that caused the unusual chartreuse aura emanating from the middle of the living room. The crystals, which supplied the power for the entire house, would also have been hard to explain. So would the dead fish in the aquarium. And that was not even taking into account the dragon that was sometimes in residence in the shed.
Why her mother could never keep fish alive was beyond Ella’s comprehension, and why she insisted on trying again and again was not even a thing worth contemplating. It was just her mother. And the number of former fish that had piled up over the years, if anyone had bothered to count them, would have been astonishing. No matter what day it was, there had to be at least ten or twenty of them floating around on their backs in the tank, waiting for someone--usually her father--to zap them into wherever dead things went when he zapped them.
No, her friends had no clue, and that was for the best. Though she really missed Jessica right now, and would much rather have been lying in her friend’s bedroom sharing secrets about the boys at school than doing what she was doing now. Ella looked down at the lights of a small village below her. Swiss? she wondered, but the truth was that she had absolutely no idea where they were right now. They had come out of the dragonway, that she knew because she could see the stars again, but there had been nothing at all to provide any kind of bearings. Not for the first time she cursed herself for paying so little attention in her astronomy class last summer in Ostbergen. Perhaps if she had studied harder she might be able to figure out where they were. But who wanted to study during summer vacation? It was bad enough that she had to spend each summer in this castle in the middle of nowhere without thinking about taking classes at St. Aldamia’s School for Freaks.
St. Aldamia’s School was probably not the worst part of Ella’s summers—when she was less irritated about having to go, she could admit that being in the castle was kind of cool in a Hogwarts-on-steroids sort of way, and as far as crappy parts went there was that bit about having to climb onto this dragon with its stench of old burnt embers, after all--but she certainly could have done without it. The courses were interesting, usually, since they were about subjects practically unheard of in normal school, but the reality was that she was simply no good at this witch stuff. No matter how hard she tried, Ella could not master any of it. There were many times when she was absolutely convinced that she was adopted.
Her friends didn’t have to worry about weird parents. Jessica’s parents, for example, were completely normal, as far as Ella could tell. Mr. Lange wore a business suit each day and traveled into the city to some kind of office to do some kind of Real Person work, and Mrs. Lange sold real estate in Willow Springs. Real estate, she thought ruefully. Can’t get more real than that. More completely and absolutely normal. Ella and Jessica had even helped her to hold open houses on occasion. Jessica’s room had a cute white four-poster bed with lots of frilly coverings, a matching dresser, and enough stuffed animals to start her own zoo. And none of them came randomly alive when you played with it. Renée’s and Kaitlyn’s rooms were pretty much the same. Different décor, different posters on the walls, but all of them normal rooms for normal girls. And their parents, who were all good friends, probably would never have let them near Ella if they had known what the adults at 191 Mill Run Terrace did for a living, which at any rate was nothing that her friends’ parents would recognize as work.
William Corrigan, Ella’s father, was a scientist. Kaitlyn’s father was also a scientist, but not like Ella’s. Mr. O’Brien did some kind of experimental physics work in a government lab. Kaitlyn had tried to explain it once, but Ella was pretty certain that her friend didn’t actually know what her father did for a living. Ella would have been perfectly happy not knowing what her father did, but she knew it all too well. For the past few years, he had made his living cataloguing and studying miniature tornadoes, which were always whipping around his study, upending bookcases and things. As far as Ella could tell, this was a bizarre occupation even for a witch, but her father always said that it was the niche occupations that were the safest in case of a recession. (“If I’m the only expert on miniature tornadoes, they can’t very well get along without me, can they?”) It never seemed to bother William Corrigan that most of the witches in Ostbergen (and, as far as Ella knew, everywhere else) did not know that miniature tornadoes even existed; nor did it seem to upset him that his efforts to catalogue the things were doomed from the start, since each one he trapped in his study destroyed all of the files from the previous ones.
Ella’s mother, Martha, besides her repeated debacles with the fish, wrote scientific articles for Witch Worldwide, a weekly magazine that delivered the news from around the witching world in addition to exploring interesting experiments, spells and creations from witches everywhere. Occasionally, her articles explored current controversies, such as the recent series she had written outlining about the five millionth recurrence of the Male Witch Controversy. So many witches lived the vast majority of their lives outside of the community, she told Ella, and they start picking up the silly habits of the people they associate with, people who think that they have to have a separate name for male witches, using words like “mage” or “warlock,” for example. Martha Corrigan’s series of articles forcefully made the point that both men and women had been known as witches within the community for a thousand years and there was no need at all to change that, “especially not to appease a population of outsiders who don’t even believe we exist in the first place.” And she especially hated “warlock,” which she saw as a perfect argument for her point of view, since the word meant “oath-breaker” in ancient Scottish and was used as a means to insult those believed to be witches.
Ella thought that her mother’s job, at least, made sense, and almost seemed like something her friends’ parents might do. If you didn’t count the fact that she wrote these articles in letters of fire that her wand pulled from the air and then, once she was finished, sent them to Ostbergen with a huge sweeping whoosh of her arm that caused them to swirl suddenly together, tighter and tighter, until they flared up in a silent (but very bright) explosion and disappeared into the dragonway. That, Ella thought, might be a bit difficult to explain.
Once, in a huff because she had again been unable to find a really good explanation for Jessica when she wondered why she couldn’t come over for the day, she had asked her mother why in heaven’s name she didn’t simply use the computer and send her stories by e-mail.
“Where’s the fun in that?” her mother replied and, watching the fiery letters whirl toward their inevitable micro-supernova, Ella could offer no reasonable reply.
Looking down from Mynot’s back, Ella saw the lights of Ostbergen. It was always easy to tell which lights were Ostbergen’s because they were the only lights Ella had ever seen that danced a joyful welcome as you flew overhead. There were a few pairs of headlights bobbing along the remote mountain road leading to the town, tourists coming for the scenery or for a chance to see the famous Aldamia Castle. Tonight Ella could swear that she heard music, too, but she did not have the guts to mention this to her parents. You can’t hear music from several hundred feet in the air while seated on the back of a dragon whose wings are pounding away in their own deafening rhythm, and Ella didn’t want to sound as if she might be losing her mind in addition to whatever else her parents must think of their daughter by now.
What a disappointment she must be to them. Martha and William Corrigan, so important to the Ostbergen witches, the world’s largest leadership coven: leaders, educators, well-known figures, known even to Myra Pendragon herself. And their daughter, who should be readying herself to follow in the family footsteps, is holding onto this stupid dragon for dear life, hearing music that can’t be there, and praying that she won’t fall off and embarrass them yet again.
Still, what she couldn’t be hearing sure sounded like the right place; it was the same ubiquitous New Age music that Ella always found warm and welcoming when she arrived, and the same music that she always grew tired of by the end of the first week because it was everywhere. No matter where you were, except in the classrooms themselves, it seemed that you could hear that music. And always the same kind, too. No rock. No rap. (God forbid!) No blues. No pop. Not even any country. Just endless Enya clones providing the soundtrack of the summer. Kids in the 60’s had the Beach Boys. In the 70’s there were the Eagles. The 80’s had Springsteen. In every era, there were bands and singers rocking the summers. But here in Ella’s world, in Ella’s life, well, the Eagles and Beach Boys would be pretty welcome, in her opinion. Heck, she’d settle for Britney Spears. Anything with a beat.
“Are you all right up there, Ella?” came her mother’s voice. “We’ll be landing soon.”
“I know, Mom,” Ella responded, forgetting the music that still seemed to sift through the air. “I see the lights.” She often found herself wondering why her mother insisted on telling her every little thing as if she were a little girl who couldn’t see things for herself. From behind, she heard what must have been a sigh.
“I love those lights,” Martha Corrigan said. “Don’t you, William?”
“Mmbleghurf,” came her father’s reply.
“Hold on, now,” Martha said. “We’re going down.”
This was undoubtedly the very worst part of flying on dragonback. Ella braced herself for the dive, and silently thanked her mother for pointing out the obvious this time, as the dragon suddenly rolled to its left and went into what any neutral observer would categorize as a free fall. Ella buried her face into the hard scales and gripped the harness with fingers that were turning whiter by the second, thinking that maybe it wasn’t all dragons she disliked; maybe it was only this one. After all, she really wasn’t well acquainted with many others. And then, almost as soon as it had started, it was over, and Mynot suddenly righted himself and landed softly on the grass outside of the castle that housed St. Aldamia’s. Ella turned and saw that her parents’ faces were as white as hers must have been. Her mother swallowed hard, gradually released her grip on the harness, and turned to her husband.
“Dear,” she said, the color returning to her face, and her hair, after the free fall, looking almost dazzlingly alive and remarkably un-disheveled, “do you think that we might see Mildrick about Mynot’s landings? I don’t understand how this dragon ever managed to get out of passenger training.”
Ella’s father, his face also regaining color but a pale green instead of its normal pink, slid from the dragon’s back and stood, doubled over, on the ground. Ella thought he might throw up, but he managed to compose himself and said, barely audible, “Yes. A good idea, definitely.”
It was the longest speech he had made all day.
As her parents began to unpack their baggage, Ella turned and looked up at the dragon’s face, its red eyes gleaming with its internal fires, its snout exhaling smoky breath.
“Do you think that’s funny?” she asked.
The dragon’s wings softly beat the air, and the sudden movement sent William Corrigan to the ground beneath a large suitcase that, suddenly jolted, began singing “I’m a Traveling Fool.”
“No,” came the dark, echoing voice of Mynot from somewhere within Ella’s head. “That is funny.”
Parkland: Summer... vi: no parking
Parkland: summer...
vi. no parking
There was a parking space on the other side—she could see it over the smaller car in the lane next to her—but Maureen Walters could also see the silver Camry sidling up toward the opening and, yes, there were its turn signals. Another opportunity lost. And she was already late. What were all of these people doing here at eight in the morning? She could understand this if she were in New York, or even Boston, but this was Manchester; things were more civilized here, more laid back.
There were supposed to be bloody parking spaces at 8 AM!
Still stopped at the light, Maureen allowed her eyes to slide shut for a moment. Calm down, she thought, then repeated it out loud. “Calm down.” As if, at the sound of her own voice, something deep within her would be able to shut down the pounding that was taking over her skull. As if, with two audible syllables, she could somehow forget why she was trying so desperately to find two white lines to stick this stupid minivan between. As if she could even remember what “calm down” meant.
The light turned green and the minivan slipped forward with the traffic. Ahead, Maureen could see what appeared to be an empty spot on the right. She detested parallel parking the van, but a quick glance at the building to her right told her she had no other choice. 1180. Already two blocks away. Pulling the minivan aside the Jeep just past the opening, Maureen said a silent prayer. She was horrible at this and she knew it; there was simply no need for her to use this particular skill in Parkland or any of the other towns she normally frequented. And a trip to Manchester usually meant the Mall of New Hampshire, not Elm St. And certainly not wherever the heck she was right now.
The minivan eased backwards, and Maureen cut the wheel. Instantly she realized she had misestimated the angle for the turn, stopped, pulled forward, slipped into reverse, and tried again. A second attempt, at a much wider angle, left her so far from the curb that the van was still in the driving lane. Cars were beginning to line up behind her, waiting for the crazy lady to finish her ludicrous efforts at parking. Her head pounding as if one of her son’s rock bands had taken up residence in there, she tried again. This time, she made it, and the van settled into a space that, if not perfect, was at least passable. One man gave her the finger as he drove by, but she hardly cared. If I were stacked up back there, I’d give me one too, she thought.
Walking back toward the address she had memorized, number 925, she realized that she was not rushing the way she thought she ought to be. It was 8:15, and the appointment had been for 8:00; she should be running. But then she knew the reason she was taking her time. Whatever the doctor had to say, she did not really want to hear it. If it had been good news, she was sure he’d just have called and told her, not made her come all the way in to an office she had never even been to before at this absurd hour. If it had been good news, he’d have been eager to deliver it. But there can’t be a whole lot of joy and eagerness in having to tell a lifelong patient that she has cancer.
Too quickly, Maureen found the auburn awning she remembered passing moments earlier and read the sign on the window: Manchester Oncology. Oncology, she thought. Doesn’t even sound like a real word. Study of something out of Tolkein, maybe. The Oncs. He had wanted her to meet him here because he had asked Doctor…what was her name? Provencher? to second his diagnosis.
“It’s a cancer clinic,” he had said, “but that doesn’t mean this is definitely malignant.”
But the stark white letters in a font that probably should be called Medicinal Bold said Manchester Oncology, and as she found, in the neat and orderly listing of physicians, the name Olivia Provencher, written in the same antiseptic style, her earlier sense of foreboding only increased. Olivia. Her mother’s name. The name of the woman who had given her birth, nursed her, fed and clothed her, read to her, cried with and for her, and never lived to see her only daughter walk down the aisle. The name of the mother who had died of breast cancer when Maureen was only seventeen.
Standing at the doorway of Manchester Oncology, Maureen Walters could not see through the windows the comfortable chairs of a waiting room, the station beyond where a receptionist awaited, now glancing a bit puzzled at the woman half-dazed outside at 8:20 in the morning, or the warm, inviting décor—modern artwork in gently whirling colors, oak cabinets, books and plants—that made the waiting room seem so unlike the hospital tones of the writing on the door. Maureen Walters saw none of this; she was looking at the hospital bed in the middle of the large room, the IV bottles dripping drip drip drip into the arm of the skeletal woman—was she even a woman? it was so hard to tell—lying there. She was hearing the moans, mostly gentle, but sometimes, mostly at night when she was supposed to be asleep but how could you sleep? how could you sleep when she was lying there, when she was crying that awful way? sometimes then worse, much worse.
A soft voice jolted her. “May I help you, Ma’am?”
Stunned, Maureen saw that the young receptionist had left her station and was standing in the now-opened door and addressing her, a concerned expression on her face. She turned to the woman, who must have been all of twenty-four, her whole life ahead of her—no notion of fatal diseases on her horizon—and managed to smile.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was…a bit lost there for a second. It’s…it’s my first time here.”
The receptionist clearly had seen reactions like this before, though whether this extreme or not, Maureen couldn’t tell. She did not betray any alarm and her previous concern vanished completely, replaced by a soft smile.
“You must be Mrs. Walters. We’ve been expecting you. Dr. Thibodeau and Dr. Provencher are waiting for you.”
Maureen’s surprise must have registered clearly on her face because the receptionist went on.
“We don’t have a lot of appointments this morning.”
Then why the crud did I have to get here so early? Maureen thought, but kept it to herself. Following the young woman, she walked into the office and sat down only as long as it took to fill out a form. Then a nurse appeared and ushered her into a small but comfortable office. She had expected an examining room, but this was nothing of the kind. No metal table with a thin layer of paper and a seemingly even thinner layer of cloth, no stirrups, no wall of cabinets and drawers from which to withdraw sometimes frightening instruments, not even a blood pressure cuff on the wall. This room had a mahogany desk with a leather chair behind it, books and photos on a beautiful matching hutch, and two very inviting microfiber chairs for visitors, into one of which Maureen slipped easily.
She had to wait only moments before the door opened and the two doctors walked in. Dr. Provencher, as her photos had already revealed, was a fit and attractive woman around forty. The pictures showed her, a man Maureen assumed to be her husband, and two pre-teen daughters at the ocean or in the White Mountains. One was clearly taken on the Mt. Washington, a touristy cruise ship that plied Lake Winnipesaukee and sailed out of Wolfeboro. Next to her, Dr. Thibodeau, Maureen’s own OB/Gyn, looked a bit ragged. His fifty-some years had not done much for his body, and she knew from past experience that the only photos in his office were formal shots of graduations and his own wedding. Maureen was not sure Dr T could find Lake Winnipesaukee on a map.
“Good morning, Maureen,” her doctor was saying. “This is Dr. Provencher. I’ve told you about her.”
The oncologist—Maureen could no longer bring herself to smile at the sound of the word—shook her hand and said, “I hope he has not said anything too bad.”
At this, Maureen responded, “He said that if I had cancer you would be the one to help.”
The doctors exchanged glances.
“You weren’t exaggerating, Harry,” Dr. Provencher said. “She doesn’t beat around the bush.”
Maureen’s doctor laughed. “In twenty-five years I’ve never known her to be anything less than utterly blunt.”
“That’s right,” Maureen interrupted. “And I don’t really want sugar-coating. Just tell it like it is, OK? It’s 8:30 in the morning and I’ve been up since 4. I really just need to know.”
Dr. Provencher nodded gently. Motioning the other doctor to the second visitor’s chair, she moved to her own seat behind the desk. Upon sitting, she withdrew a file from one of the drawers and opened it, spreading some of its contents on the desktop.
“This is the report on your mammogram, Mrs. Walters,” she said. “Dr. Thibodeau already showed you the troublesome areas that alarmed him and led him to request the biopsy.”
The doctor indicated several dark patches on the X-ray, shadows that looked to Maureen, as they had before, like smudges, but apparently meant life or death.
“And here,” she continued, “are the results of the biopsy, which arrived late yesterday afternoon. I went over them when I arrived this morning. This unusual early appointment is a favor to Dr. Thibodeau; I am not usually here until noon, but he knew how anxious you have been.”
So get on with it, Maureen thought, but again held her tongue.
The doctor drew a quiet breath. “I wish I could say something different, Mrs. Walters, but the fact is that at least two of these tumors are in fact malignant. We need to get them out, and we need to do it right away.”
The room was silent for a minute. Then Maureen Walters’s voice filled it.
“Will I die?
Dr. Provencher smiled. “Eventually. But if I can help it, not for a good long time. Unless the cancer has spread into the lymph nodes, which we can’t know until we go in but frankly I doubt it given the placement of these tumors, we should be able to wipe this out completely in a year or so.”
In the car, driving back on 128 heading through more of the eternal road construction—two seasons in New England: winter and road construction—Maureen’s head swam with thoughts of radiation and chemo and hair loss and prosthetic breasts and long-term recovery. Passing Parkland High, she suddenly thought: The oncologist is cutting into me. She’s going to remove my oncs. The absurdity of the wordplay made her smile. I’ll be oncless. Well I’ll still have the left one. I’m going to be one-oncked. Something in her wanted to laugh, and she gave into it, letting the air out of her lungs in an explosion of sound. But the sounds that filled the minivan were not laughter, and Maureen Walters, having given in, had no choice but to pull over to the side of the road even in the middle of the damn construction zone and allow the tears to soak her shirt and the cathartic waves of sobs to peak and subside.
vi. no parking
There was a parking space on the other side—she could see it over the smaller car in the lane next to her—but Maureen Walters could also see the silver Camry sidling up toward the opening and, yes, there were its turn signals. Another opportunity lost. And she was already late. What were all of these people doing here at eight in the morning? She could understand this if she were in New York, or even Boston, but this was Manchester; things were more civilized here, more laid back.
There were supposed to be bloody parking spaces at 8 AM!
Still stopped at the light, Maureen allowed her eyes to slide shut for a moment. Calm down, she thought, then repeated it out loud. “Calm down.” As if, at the sound of her own voice, something deep within her would be able to shut down the pounding that was taking over her skull. As if, with two audible syllables, she could somehow forget why she was trying so desperately to find two white lines to stick this stupid minivan between. As if she could even remember what “calm down” meant.
The light turned green and the minivan slipped forward with the traffic. Ahead, Maureen could see what appeared to be an empty spot on the right. She detested parallel parking the van, but a quick glance at the building to her right told her she had no other choice. 1180. Already two blocks away. Pulling the minivan aside the Jeep just past the opening, Maureen said a silent prayer. She was horrible at this and she knew it; there was simply no need for her to use this particular skill in Parkland or any of the other towns she normally frequented. And a trip to Manchester usually meant the Mall of New Hampshire, not Elm St. And certainly not wherever the heck she was right now.
The minivan eased backwards, and Maureen cut the wheel. Instantly she realized she had misestimated the angle for the turn, stopped, pulled forward, slipped into reverse, and tried again. A second attempt, at a much wider angle, left her so far from the curb that the van was still in the driving lane. Cars were beginning to line up behind her, waiting for the crazy lady to finish her ludicrous efforts at parking. Her head pounding as if one of her son’s rock bands had taken up residence in there, she tried again. This time, she made it, and the van settled into a space that, if not perfect, was at least passable. One man gave her the finger as he drove by, but she hardly cared. If I were stacked up back there, I’d give me one too, she thought.
Walking back toward the address she had memorized, number 925, she realized that she was not rushing the way she thought she ought to be. It was 8:15, and the appointment had been for 8:00; she should be running. But then she knew the reason she was taking her time. Whatever the doctor had to say, she did not really want to hear it. If it had been good news, she was sure he’d just have called and told her, not made her come all the way in to an office she had never even been to before at this absurd hour. If it had been good news, he’d have been eager to deliver it. But there can’t be a whole lot of joy and eagerness in having to tell a lifelong patient that she has cancer.
Too quickly, Maureen found the auburn awning she remembered passing moments earlier and read the sign on the window: Manchester Oncology. Oncology, she thought. Doesn’t even sound like a real word. Study of something out of Tolkein, maybe. The Oncs. He had wanted her to meet him here because he had asked Doctor…what was her name? Provencher? to second his diagnosis.
“It’s a cancer clinic,” he had said, “but that doesn’t mean this is definitely malignant.”
But the stark white letters in a font that probably should be called Medicinal Bold said Manchester Oncology, and as she found, in the neat and orderly listing of physicians, the name Olivia Provencher, written in the same antiseptic style, her earlier sense of foreboding only increased. Olivia. Her mother’s name. The name of the woman who had given her birth, nursed her, fed and clothed her, read to her, cried with and for her, and never lived to see her only daughter walk down the aisle. The name of the mother who had died of breast cancer when Maureen was only seventeen.
Standing at the doorway of Manchester Oncology, Maureen Walters could not see through the windows the comfortable chairs of a waiting room, the station beyond where a receptionist awaited, now glancing a bit puzzled at the woman half-dazed outside at 8:20 in the morning, or the warm, inviting décor—modern artwork in gently whirling colors, oak cabinets, books and plants—that made the waiting room seem so unlike the hospital tones of the writing on the door. Maureen Walters saw none of this; she was looking at the hospital bed in the middle of the large room, the IV bottles dripping drip drip drip into the arm of the skeletal woman—was she even a woman? it was so hard to tell—lying there. She was hearing the moans, mostly gentle, but sometimes, mostly at night when she was supposed to be asleep but how could you sleep? how could you sleep when she was lying there, when she was crying that awful way? sometimes then worse, much worse.
A soft voice jolted her. “May I help you, Ma’am?”
Stunned, Maureen saw that the young receptionist had left her station and was standing in the now-opened door and addressing her, a concerned expression on her face. She turned to the woman, who must have been all of twenty-four, her whole life ahead of her—no notion of fatal diseases on her horizon—and managed to smile.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was…a bit lost there for a second. It’s…it’s my first time here.”
The receptionist clearly had seen reactions like this before, though whether this extreme or not, Maureen couldn’t tell. She did not betray any alarm and her previous concern vanished completely, replaced by a soft smile.
“You must be Mrs. Walters. We’ve been expecting you. Dr. Thibodeau and Dr. Provencher are waiting for you.”
Maureen’s surprise must have registered clearly on her face because the receptionist went on.
“We don’t have a lot of appointments this morning.”
Then why the crud did I have to get here so early? Maureen thought, but kept it to herself. Following the young woman, she walked into the office and sat down only as long as it took to fill out a form. Then a nurse appeared and ushered her into a small but comfortable office. She had expected an examining room, but this was nothing of the kind. No metal table with a thin layer of paper and a seemingly even thinner layer of cloth, no stirrups, no wall of cabinets and drawers from which to withdraw sometimes frightening instruments, not even a blood pressure cuff on the wall. This room had a mahogany desk with a leather chair behind it, books and photos on a beautiful matching hutch, and two very inviting microfiber chairs for visitors, into one of which Maureen slipped easily.
She had to wait only moments before the door opened and the two doctors walked in. Dr. Provencher, as her photos had already revealed, was a fit and attractive woman around forty. The pictures showed her, a man Maureen assumed to be her husband, and two pre-teen daughters at the ocean or in the White Mountains. One was clearly taken on the Mt. Washington, a touristy cruise ship that plied Lake Winnipesaukee and sailed out of Wolfeboro. Next to her, Dr. Thibodeau, Maureen’s own OB/Gyn, looked a bit ragged. His fifty-some years had not done much for his body, and she knew from past experience that the only photos in his office were formal shots of graduations and his own wedding. Maureen was not sure Dr T could find Lake Winnipesaukee on a map.
“Good morning, Maureen,” her doctor was saying. “This is Dr. Provencher. I’ve told you about her.”
The oncologist—Maureen could no longer bring herself to smile at the sound of the word—shook her hand and said, “I hope he has not said anything too bad.”
At this, Maureen responded, “He said that if I had cancer you would be the one to help.”
The doctors exchanged glances.
“You weren’t exaggerating, Harry,” Dr. Provencher said. “She doesn’t beat around the bush.”
Maureen’s doctor laughed. “In twenty-five years I’ve never known her to be anything less than utterly blunt.”
“That’s right,” Maureen interrupted. “And I don’t really want sugar-coating. Just tell it like it is, OK? It’s 8:30 in the morning and I’ve been up since 4. I really just need to know.”
Dr. Provencher nodded gently. Motioning the other doctor to the second visitor’s chair, she moved to her own seat behind the desk. Upon sitting, she withdrew a file from one of the drawers and opened it, spreading some of its contents on the desktop.
“This is the report on your mammogram, Mrs. Walters,” she said. “Dr. Thibodeau already showed you the troublesome areas that alarmed him and led him to request the biopsy.”
The doctor indicated several dark patches on the X-ray, shadows that looked to Maureen, as they had before, like smudges, but apparently meant life or death.
“And here,” she continued, “are the results of the biopsy, which arrived late yesterday afternoon. I went over them when I arrived this morning. This unusual early appointment is a favor to Dr. Thibodeau; I am not usually here until noon, but he knew how anxious you have been.”
So get on with it, Maureen thought, but again held her tongue.
The doctor drew a quiet breath. “I wish I could say something different, Mrs. Walters, but the fact is that at least two of these tumors are in fact malignant. We need to get them out, and we need to do it right away.”
The room was silent for a minute. Then Maureen Walters’s voice filled it.
“Will I die?
Dr. Provencher smiled. “Eventually. But if I can help it, not for a good long time. Unless the cancer has spread into the lymph nodes, which we can’t know until we go in but frankly I doubt it given the placement of these tumors, we should be able to wipe this out completely in a year or so.”
In the car, driving back on 128 heading through more of the eternal road construction—two seasons in New England: winter and road construction—Maureen’s head swam with thoughts of radiation and chemo and hair loss and prosthetic breasts and long-term recovery. Passing Parkland High, she suddenly thought: The oncologist is cutting into me. She’s going to remove my oncs. The absurdity of the wordplay made her smile. I’ll be oncless. Well I’ll still have the left one. I’m going to be one-oncked. Something in her wanted to laugh, and she gave into it, letting the air out of her lungs in an explosion of sound. But the sounds that filled the minivan were not laughter, and Maureen Walters, having given in, had no choice but to pull over to the side of the road even in the middle of the damn construction zone and allow the tears to soak her shirt and the cathartic waves of sobs to peak and subside.
Friday, June 13, 2008
parkland ch 5
v. fat raindrops
“You’ll never guess what I saw today downtown, before the rain started.”
Taryn’s brown eyes were practically glowing, but she was trying to act as if she were talking only about the weather instead of some kind of hot news. She never even stopped looking at the television’s 57th repeat of some random episode of One Tree Hill, which anyway I think she had memorized.
I waited for her to continue, but it was clear she was waiting for me.
“OK, Taryn, I’ll bite. What did you see?”
She still looked at the TV. “Not so much ‘what’ as ‘who,’” she answered so softly that the pounding rain outside nearly drowned her out.
“Who?”
Even Taryn couldn’t maintain her stoic expression this long, and she fought to hold back a smile.
“Who?” I asked again, louder, more insistent. She always played these games; it drove me crazy. “Come on, Taryn! Who did you see?”
She turned her face toward me. “I saw Brian with Caitlin Richards.”
“Caitlin Richards! What were they doing?” My brother had not shown any interest in any girl since Mary Martha Connelly had dumped him at a graduation party from Carter Junior High. And Caitlin was one of the most popular girls in the sophomore class, as far as I could tell.
“Walking toward the park, holding hands,” she giggled, turning back to the television. I could see the tease starting again and I didn’t want to deal with it, so I reached over and exploited Taryn’s major weakness: the girl is about the most ticklish person I’ve ever seen. You so much as aim a curled finger in her direction and she starts burbling. And if you want to get her to tell you something, well, frankly it’s pretty easy.
“OK, OK,” she stammered between fits of uncontrolled laughter. “Stop!”
“Only if you stop playing games and tell me what you want to tell me,” I said. When she nodded agreement, I stopped the attack. “Now talk, Taryn, or the tickle monster returns.”
She held a hand out, fending off an imagined attack as she caught her breath. “I saw them walking down the street in front of Barfey’s,” she said. “I followed them to the park but I don’t think they ever saw me. They were too busy looking at each other.”
“You’re not just messing around here?”
“Honest to God! Anyway, when the rain started, that sudden enormous downpour, they ducked into the old gazebo. I was near the ladies’ room and I stayed under the eaves.”
This was getting very interesting; I could sense potential blackmail material coming from Taryn’s story.
“Did you see anything else?” I asked.
She smiled that same smile. “You mean besides the kissing?”
“They didn’t!”
“Yes, they did. I mean I couldn’t see if there were tongues involved or anything--”
“Gross!” I swear, sometimes I think I must still be a fourth grader. We were laughing and talking over each other without even listening, having a great time (and leaving Lucas and Nathan and the rest of the Tree Hill gang to their own devices) when the door opened and in walked a thoroughly drenched Brian. He stood there, framed against the dark afternoon skies, water running off of him from everywhere.
“Hi, Squirt,” he said, peeling off his soaked t-shirt. “Hi, Taryn.”
“You don’t need to impress us with your hot bod, Bri,” I said. Taryn nudged me and almost soundlessly added, “We’re not Caitlin,” and we both cracked up. Brian, who had not heard her, looked at us as if we were aliens.
“I’m never going to understand girls,” he said. “Tell mom I’m in the shower,” he added, heading up the stairs.
When he was gone, Taryn and I started plotting ways to use our new intelligence, but we had not gotten very far when the phone rang. It was Anna. She was upset about something.
“Have you seen Jonathan?” she asked.
“Not today,” I said. “Is something wrong?”
There was a pause. “No. I don’t think so. I mean, we kind of had a fight about...something...and he ran out into the rain and drove away.”
Jonathan hated getting caught in the rain. Once, when the three of us were out walking, he had made us huddle under a stand of pines for over an hour until the downpour had stopped. And if there was anything he hated worse than being rained on it was driving on a day like this. He had a recurring nightmare about an accident on a rain-soaked road. He must have been very upset if he had gone out into the storm instead of sticking around until it ended.
“Did you try his house?” I asked. Cupping my hand over the phone, I whispered to Taryn, “It’s Anna; she’s looking for Jonathan.”
“It was the first place I called,” she answered. “His mom answered and said he hasn’t been home all day. I thought he might have come to you.”
“No, I haven’t seen him, Anna. What did you--”
Taryn’s voice interrupted me. “Kristen, there’s a car. I think it’s him!” She ran to the window and stared out, trying to see through the curtain of rain. “He’s getting out. It is him!”
Anna was almost frantic on the phone. “It’s him? Is it?”
“Taryn says it is.”
I could almost see her relief through the phone. “Kris, could you just talk to him? He’s so...I think he’s very confused.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Himself. Me. Everything. Talk with him.”
There was a knock on the door. “OK, Anna. OK. I’ll call later.” I put the phone down as Taryn opened the door, revealing Jonathan, his long hair flattened against his face, his clothing as wet as Brian’s had been. Even through the maze of his matted hair, I could see that his beautiful eyes were sad, and I knew that rain was not the only thing dampening his face.
“Hi, Jonathan,” I said, and Taryn echoed me.
“Hi,” he said. “I’ve, uh, been driving and, um, I just thought I’d stop in. Are you guys here alone?”
“Bri’s upstairs. Mom is with Rachel at her dance lesson, and Dad isn’t home yet.”
He nodded. “Is that One Tree Hill?” he asked.
I switched the TV off. “Yes, but it’s almost over. We weren’t really watching anyway.” A puddle was forming beneath Jonathan’s feet. “Let me get you a towel,” I said.
Taryn almost leapt toward the stairway. “No, I’ll get it. Just a sec!”
“No,” he said, stopping her in her tracks. “No, I...I really can’t stay. I have to get home.”
And without another word he opened the door and walked off into the pounding, egg-shaped raindrops that exploded around him on our sidewalk. I called after him, but he didn’t respond. Maybe he didn’t even hear me. But I know he saw me as he backed out of the driveway without so much as a gesture. When his car had turned the corner, I closed the door and went back inside. Brian was at the top of the stairs.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“Jonathan,” I said quietly. “He just...stopped by.”
Brian sort of snorted. “That kid is just weird,” he said, and went into his room before I could reply. Taryn touched me gently on the arm.
“Are you OK?” she asked. “You look strange.”
I turned to see her look of concern. “What was that all about, Taryn? Anna says something is wrong with her and Jonathan, and then he shows up here like that. I’ve never understood why Brian doesn’t like him, but that really was weird.”
Taryn ran her fingers through my hair, looking into my eyes. “He had a fight with Anna?” She turned and walked slowly into the living room. Pulling back the curtain, she stared silently out into the deep rain. I sat on the couch, equally silent. The rain’s droning seemed a constant sheet of sound, punctuated only by the occasional thunder in the distance.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, finally.
She let the curtain drop gently and turned toward me. “You’ve always liked Jonathan.”
“So?” I asked.
“So,” she smiled and sat next to me, “it’s going to be a very interesting summer.”
“You’ll never guess what I saw today downtown, before the rain started.”
Taryn’s brown eyes were practically glowing, but she was trying to act as if she were talking only about the weather instead of some kind of hot news. She never even stopped looking at the television’s 57th repeat of some random episode of One Tree Hill, which anyway I think she had memorized.
I waited for her to continue, but it was clear she was waiting for me.
“OK, Taryn, I’ll bite. What did you see?”
She still looked at the TV. “Not so much ‘what’ as ‘who,’” she answered so softly that the pounding rain outside nearly drowned her out.
“Who?”
Even Taryn couldn’t maintain her stoic expression this long, and she fought to hold back a smile.
“Who?” I asked again, louder, more insistent. She always played these games; it drove me crazy. “Come on, Taryn! Who did you see?”
She turned her face toward me. “I saw Brian with Caitlin Richards.”
“Caitlin Richards! What were they doing?” My brother had not shown any interest in any girl since Mary Martha Connelly had dumped him at a graduation party from Carter Junior High. And Caitlin was one of the most popular girls in the sophomore class, as far as I could tell.
“Walking toward the park, holding hands,” she giggled, turning back to the television. I could see the tease starting again and I didn’t want to deal with it, so I reached over and exploited Taryn’s major weakness: the girl is about the most ticklish person I’ve ever seen. You so much as aim a curled finger in her direction and she starts burbling. And if you want to get her to tell you something, well, frankly it’s pretty easy.
“OK, OK,” she stammered between fits of uncontrolled laughter. “Stop!”
“Only if you stop playing games and tell me what you want to tell me,” I said. When she nodded agreement, I stopped the attack. “Now talk, Taryn, or the tickle monster returns.”
She held a hand out, fending off an imagined attack as she caught her breath. “I saw them walking down the street in front of Barfey’s,” she said. “I followed them to the park but I don’t think they ever saw me. They were too busy looking at each other.”
“You’re not just messing around here?”
“Honest to God! Anyway, when the rain started, that sudden enormous downpour, they ducked into the old gazebo. I was near the ladies’ room and I stayed under the eaves.”
This was getting very interesting; I could sense potential blackmail material coming from Taryn’s story.
“Did you see anything else?” I asked.
She smiled that same smile. “You mean besides the kissing?”
“They didn’t!”
“Yes, they did. I mean I couldn’t see if there were tongues involved or anything--”
“Gross!” I swear, sometimes I think I must still be a fourth grader. We were laughing and talking over each other without even listening, having a great time (and leaving Lucas and Nathan and the rest of the Tree Hill gang to their own devices) when the door opened and in walked a thoroughly drenched Brian. He stood there, framed against the dark afternoon skies, water running off of him from everywhere.
“Hi, Squirt,” he said, peeling off his soaked t-shirt. “Hi, Taryn.”
“You don’t need to impress us with your hot bod, Bri,” I said. Taryn nudged me and almost soundlessly added, “We’re not Caitlin,” and we both cracked up. Brian, who had not heard her, looked at us as if we were aliens.
“I’m never going to understand girls,” he said. “Tell mom I’m in the shower,” he added, heading up the stairs.
When he was gone, Taryn and I started plotting ways to use our new intelligence, but we had not gotten very far when the phone rang. It was Anna. She was upset about something.
“Have you seen Jonathan?” she asked.
“Not today,” I said. “Is something wrong?”
There was a pause. “No. I don’t think so. I mean, we kind of had a fight about...something...and he ran out into the rain and drove away.”
Jonathan hated getting caught in the rain. Once, when the three of us were out walking, he had made us huddle under a stand of pines for over an hour until the downpour had stopped. And if there was anything he hated worse than being rained on it was driving on a day like this. He had a recurring nightmare about an accident on a rain-soaked road. He must have been very upset if he had gone out into the storm instead of sticking around until it ended.
“Did you try his house?” I asked. Cupping my hand over the phone, I whispered to Taryn, “It’s Anna; she’s looking for Jonathan.”
“It was the first place I called,” she answered. “His mom answered and said he hasn’t been home all day. I thought he might have come to you.”
“No, I haven’t seen him, Anna. What did you--”
Taryn’s voice interrupted me. “Kristen, there’s a car. I think it’s him!” She ran to the window and stared out, trying to see through the curtain of rain. “He’s getting out. It is him!”
Anna was almost frantic on the phone. “It’s him? Is it?”
“Taryn says it is.”
I could almost see her relief through the phone. “Kris, could you just talk to him? He’s so...I think he’s very confused.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Himself. Me. Everything. Talk with him.”
There was a knock on the door. “OK, Anna. OK. I’ll call later.” I put the phone down as Taryn opened the door, revealing Jonathan, his long hair flattened against his face, his clothing as wet as Brian’s had been. Even through the maze of his matted hair, I could see that his beautiful eyes were sad, and I knew that rain was not the only thing dampening his face.
“Hi, Jonathan,” I said, and Taryn echoed me.
“Hi,” he said. “I’ve, uh, been driving and, um, I just thought I’d stop in. Are you guys here alone?”
“Bri’s upstairs. Mom is with Rachel at her dance lesson, and Dad isn’t home yet.”
He nodded. “Is that One Tree Hill?” he asked.
I switched the TV off. “Yes, but it’s almost over. We weren’t really watching anyway.” A puddle was forming beneath Jonathan’s feet. “Let me get you a towel,” I said.
Taryn almost leapt toward the stairway. “No, I’ll get it. Just a sec!”
“No,” he said, stopping her in her tracks. “No, I...I really can’t stay. I have to get home.”
And without another word he opened the door and walked off into the pounding, egg-shaped raindrops that exploded around him on our sidewalk. I called after him, but he didn’t respond. Maybe he didn’t even hear me. But I know he saw me as he backed out of the driveway without so much as a gesture. When his car had turned the corner, I closed the door and went back inside. Brian was at the top of the stairs.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“Jonathan,” I said quietly. “He just...stopped by.”
Brian sort of snorted. “That kid is just weird,” he said, and went into his room before I could reply. Taryn touched me gently on the arm.
“Are you OK?” she asked. “You look strange.”
I turned to see her look of concern. “What was that all about, Taryn? Anna says something is wrong with her and Jonathan, and then he shows up here like that. I’ve never understood why Brian doesn’t like him, but that really was weird.”
Taryn ran her fingers through my hair, looking into my eyes. “He had a fight with Anna?” She turned and walked slowly into the living room. Pulling back the curtain, she stared silently out into the deep rain. I sat on the couch, equally silent. The rain’s droning seemed a constant sheet of sound, punctuated only by the occasional thunder in the distance.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, finally.
She let the curtain drop gently and turned toward me. “You’ve always liked Jonathan.”
“So?” I asked.
“So,” she smiled and sat next to me, “it’s going to be a very interesting summer.”
parkland ch 4
iv. fine young men
Jared Walters pumped his arm twice before releasing the ball, its arcing flight almost perfect as it fell into Bill Harlow’s hands thirty yards down the field, deep in the end zone.
“Yes!” Jared hollered. “I should be playing quarterback!”
Bill fired it back almost effortlessly, a long line drive that reached Jared almost before he could react.
“I don’t think so,” he snickered, following his pass toward his friend. “That’s my job, Dude. Stick to D. You’ll be All-American where you are.”
Suddenly, Jared cut left and then sharply right, dodging imaginary defenders and shielding the ball with one hand as he drove down the field, his other arm straight ahead like a fullback in a cartoon bowling over his opponents. Bill stepped aside, laughing, as Jared charged past him.
“Yep,” he said. “Defense.”
Jared crossed the goal line, raised his hands into the air in fantasy celebration, and did a kind of shuffling victory dance that ended with a sharp spiking of the ball. He turned to face Bill.
“Definitely,” Bill said.
“Oh, shut up,” Jared laughed back. “I’ve seen worse celebrations.” He shoved Bill playfully.
“Maybe,” Bill retorted. “But you’ve never seen worse running.”
Before Jared could react, Bill took off for the other end of the field, daring Jared to catch him. Jared raced after him, finally catching him around the forty yard line and dragging him down. Both boys fell to the ground, their breath heaving, their laughter exploding in the still early June air.
“You guys shouldn’t be out here,” a loud, throaty voice called from the sidelines.
“Sorry, Coach,” Jared yelled, picking himself up. “We were just goofing around.”
Steve Edmunds was the kind of teacher who was simply known as “Coach” to anyone who had ever had him on a team or even taken his phys-ed class. In class or on the field, he was a strong motivator and leader. He possessed both an innate understanding of teenage behavior and a clear sense of how to moderate it. No one in his classes ever failed to pay attention to Coach if they wanted to do well. And if they didn’t care, they still didn’t cross him. He could be harsh when he needed to be, and his legendary sideline anger had almost gotten him fired a couple of times, but his job was safe in Ashton as long as his teams stayed competitive, and they had only had one down year in the last nine. In fact, last year’s team had won the state title in a rout over Timberlake, which had come into the game undefeated, giving AHS its first ever football championship. And that was with a team of mostly juniors. He had only three starters graduating this month, and every reason to think they could repeat in the fall.
Watching as his starting quarterback and All-State linebacker jogged off the field together, he found it difficult to decide whether to reprimand them for the kind of rough off-season play that could end up hurting one of them or commend them on their positive attitudes and their obvious enthusiasm for the sport. Both of them were personal projects of his. When they had come to him in the fall of their sophomore years, they had been full of such ego that he thought they’d never be able to become team players. Too much success too early. Both were junior high stars who came into the high school highly touted and lived up to their billings, leading the freshman team to its best season in years. But the success and adulation their status created among their peers made both boys cocky, and both boys fully expected to walk onto the varsity team in starting roles in the fall.
That August, as the two-a-days started, he watched his hotshot sophomores as they interacted with the upperclassmen. It did not take long for the coach to know that he had a problem on his hands. The seniors especially resented Bill and Jared, and it did not help that the younger boys not only believed themselves to be better than anyone else, but actually were. Jared was already bigger and stronger than most of the senior boys, and Steve could not even remember when he had last seen a quarterback who could throw with the kind of accuracy Bill Harlow possessed. Still, he knew he needed to take them down a notch or two in order to help them fulfill their potential on varsity. If he didn’t, they’d implode the team instead of leading it to victory.
A discussion with his co-captains made him more certain of the problem.
“It’s a tough call, Coach,” said Armand Boucher, the senior wide receiver and offensive captain. “Harlow’s got the arm, but Dickinson has been on the team two years and worked hard. And the way Harlow and Walters strut around like they own the place hasn’t won them any points.”
Steve turned to his defensive captain. “What do you think, Mike? Would Walters help us or hurt us?”
Mike Darius, second year starting tackle and one of the top ten students in the school, contemplated his answer. He looked at the furrowed brow of his coach, a man he had seen in more tight situations than he could even count, a man he respected more than his own father, an attorney in Concord who spent far too much time in the courts and not enough with the family. He knew Coach’s mind as well as anyone could, and he knew what thought was traveling across it.
“Coach, Jared is a great player. So is Bill. And they may lead this team to a serious shot to be state champs.”
Mike noted the way that Armand was holding his breath, waiting for him to finish, but ready to pounce. Coach looked placid, but Mike knew better.
“But not this year,” he said, and his co-captain relaxed and breathed more easily. “If they play varsity, they have to start, and if they start, it would tear us apart.”
Armand sensed an opening and joined in. “Besides, Coach, they should be with the other sophomores. Think of how good that team could be in a couple of years.”
Steve looked at his team leaders. “You know that they are probably better than Dickinson and Martino.” The boys nodded. “And you might go further this season if you have them on board.”
Mike’s face was firm. “I know, Coach. But we’re a good team. We were last year and we will be again. Maybe not state quality, but we could win conference. I’ve been listening to the guys, and I really think we’ll have a mutiny if the sophomores start.”
Steve’s facial expression never changed. “Thanks, guys,” he said. “That’s just about what my own observations told me. I just wanted to hear it from you.”
When the team rosters were announced, the names of Bill Harlow and Jared Walters were indeed listed as starters, but for the junior varsity. They were on the call-up list as back-ups for varsity, which meant they’d see a lot of lower level action but practice as much as possible with the older boys. Steve watched as the seniors read the notice and patted each other on the back. He also saw the sideways glances at the sophomore duo who sat, together but apart from everyone else, their heads hanging so low that they did not even see him approach.
“You want to know why, right?” he asked quietly.
Jared Walters looked up, wiping his damp eyes with the side of his hand. “Yes,” he said, his voice quivering.
Steve felt sorry for the boy, and for his friend. They were the best; he was sure of that. But sometimes that was not enough. “You boys are both going to be great one day. Maybe next year. Maybe even later this year. You have the physical stuff that great players are made of.”
The two boys listened, intently, not even trying to interject a word.
“What you don’t have is the mental maturity to go along with your physical maturity. It’s not really your fault,” he continued, anticipating an interruption. “You’re young. I don’t really expect that of sophomores. But I don’t usually play them on varsity either. You know that if I play you varsity, I pretty much have to start you. What would be the point in having two players with your potential sitting and watching? Better for you to play. But I’ve been watching both of you, and this is what I’ve seen for two weeks: you are very strong players, but you are far too arrogant. You don’t work with the team; you work for yourselves. And I can’t have that. A quarterback and a linebacker have to be team leaders. You may be talented, but you aren’t ready to lead. Not on varsity.”
Neither of the boys bothered to hide the fact that he was crying.
“Play with the kids your age, boys, the kids you’ll be working with for the next three years. Learn to lead. Learn that talent gets you on the field, but leadership gets you respect.” He paused. “OK?”
Jared and Bill stood up and looked at Steve. For a moment, he was afraid that he had misjudged them, that this would break their spirit. He was afraid they might quit. But the two just stood there, looking at him. And finally it was Bill who spoke.
“I’ll make you proud of me, Coach.”
Jared nodded his head in agreement.
Steve breathed a sigh of relief. Another bullet dodged. He smiled. “Good for you. And I want you practicing with varsity once your practice ends for the day. Got it?”
That was almost two years ago, and Steve had since watched as Bill and Jared not only had matured but had blossomed. Both had seen varsity action late in their sophomore years, filling in for injured players on a team that lost the conference championship in the last game of the season. But then, as juniors, on a team with only three senior starters, everything had come together for them. After an early season loss, they never trailed again, scoring first in every game and winning five of their last six by over two touchdowns. The much-anticipated championship game against Timberlake had been over by half-time. Ashton had won 44-7. And Coach Edmunds finally had that giant state championship trophy for his trophy case.
As Jared and Bill passed him, coming off of the field, Coach just smiled, slapped Bill on the back and said, “They have to work on the grass this summer. You guys can’t be out here until practice starts in August.”
Bill turned his head without slowing his stride. “No problem, Coach.”
Steve Edmunds watched with a satisfied smile as they turned the corner out of his sight. Even if the Harlow boy’s parents and their hyper-evangelism sometimes proved a bit difficult to take—the prayer dinner they insisted on having for the entire team the night before the Timberlake game came to mind, a potential legal mine field that Coach had only navigated successfully with the help of the school administration—these boys had been worth the trouble. As he turned away, Steve Edmunds congratulated himself on having helped to mold such fine, upstanding young men.
Jared Walters pumped his arm twice before releasing the ball, its arcing flight almost perfect as it fell into Bill Harlow’s hands thirty yards down the field, deep in the end zone.
“Yes!” Jared hollered. “I should be playing quarterback!”
Bill fired it back almost effortlessly, a long line drive that reached Jared almost before he could react.
“I don’t think so,” he snickered, following his pass toward his friend. “That’s my job, Dude. Stick to D. You’ll be All-American where you are.”
Suddenly, Jared cut left and then sharply right, dodging imaginary defenders and shielding the ball with one hand as he drove down the field, his other arm straight ahead like a fullback in a cartoon bowling over his opponents. Bill stepped aside, laughing, as Jared charged past him.
“Yep,” he said. “Defense.”
Jared crossed the goal line, raised his hands into the air in fantasy celebration, and did a kind of shuffling victory dance that ended with a sharp spiking of the ball. He turned to face Bill.
“Definitely,” Bill said.
“Oh, shut up,” Jared laughed back. “I’ve seen worse celebrations.” He shoved Bill playfully.
“Maybe,” Bill retorted. “But you’ve never seen worse running.”
Before Jared could react, Bill took off for the other end of the field, daring Jared to catch him. Jared raced after him, finally catching him around the forty yard line and dragging him down. Both boys fell to the ground, their breath heaving, their laughter exploding in the still early June air.
“You guys shouldn’t be out here,” a loud, throaty voice called from the sidelines.
“Sorry, Coach,” Jared yelled, picking himself up. “We were just goofing around.”
Steve Edmunds was the kind of teacher who was simply known as “Coach” to anyone who had ever had him on a team or even taken his phys-ed class. In class or on the field, he was a strong motivator and leader. He possessed both an innate understanding of teenage behavior and a clear sense of how to moderate it. No one in his classes ever failed to pay attention to Coach if they wanted to do well. And if they didn’t care, they still didn’t cross him. He could be harsh when he needed to be, and his legendary sideline anger had almost gotten him fired a couple of times, but his job was safe in Ashton as long as his teams stayed competitive, and they had only had one down year in the last nine. In fact, last year’s team had won the state title in a rout over Timberlake, which had come into the game undefeated, giving AHS its first ever football championship. And that was with a team of mostly juniors. He had only three starters graduating this month, and every reason to think they could repeat in the fall.
Watching as his starting quarterback and All-State linebacker jogged off the field together, he found it difficult to decide whether to reprimand them for the kind of rough off-season play that could end up hurting one of them or commend them on their positive attitudes and their obvious enthusiasm for the sport. Both of them were personal projects of his. When they had come to him in the fall of their sophomore years, they had been full of such ego that he thought they’d never be able to become team players. Too much success too early. Both were junior high stars who came into the high school highly touted and lived up to their billings, leading the freshman team to its best season in years. But the success and adulation their status created among their peers made both boys cocky, and both boys fully expected to walk onto the varsity team in starting roles in the fall.
That August, as the two-a-days started, he watched his hotshot sophomores as they interacted with the upperclassmen. It did not take long for the coach to know that he had a problem on his hands. The seniors especially resented Bill and Jared, and it did not help that the younger boys not only believed themselves to be better than anyone else, but actually were. Jared was already bigger and stronger than most of the senior boys, and Steve could not even remember when he had last seen a quarterback who could throw with the kind of accuracy Bill Harlow possessed. Still, he knew he needed to take them down a notch or two in order to help them fulfill their potential on varsity. If he didn’t, they’d implode the team instead of leading it to victory.
A discussion with his co-captains made him more certain of the problem.
“It’s a tough call, Coach,” said Armand Boucher, the senior wide receiver and offensive captain. “Harlow’s got the arm, but Dickinson has been on the team two years and worked hard. And the way Harlow and Walters strut around like they own the place hasn’t won them any points.”
Steve turned to his defensive captain. “What do you think, Mike? Would Walters help us or hurt us?”
Mike Darius, second year starting tackle and one of the top ten students in the school, contemplated his answer. He looked at the furrowed brow of his coach, a man he had seen in more tight situations than he could even count, a man he respected more than his own father, an attorney in Concord who spent far too much time in the courts and not enough with the family. He knew Coach’s mind as well as anyone could, and he knew what thought was traveling across it.
“Coach, Jared is a great player. So is Bill. And they may lead this team to a serious shot to be state champs.”
Mike noted the way that Armand was holding his breath, waiting for him to finish, but ready to pounce. Coach looked placid, but Mike knew better.
“But not this year,” he said, and his co-captain relaxed and breathed more easily. “If they play varsity, they have to start, and if they start, it would tear us apart.”
Armand sensed an opening and joined in. “Besides, Coach, they should be with the other sophomores. Think of how good that team could be in a couple of years.”
Steve looked at his team leaders. “You know that they are probably better than Dickinson and Martino.” The boys nodded. “And you might go further this season if you have them on board.”
Mike’s face was firm. “I know, Coach. But we’re a good team. We were last year and we will be again. Maybe not state quality, but we could win conference. I’ve been listening to the guys, and I really think we’ll have a mutiny if the sophomores start.”
Steve’s facial expression never changed. “Thanks, guys,” he said. “That’s just about what my own observations told me. I just wanted to hear it from you.”
When the team rosters were announced, the names of Bill Harlow and Jared Walters were indeed listed as starters, but for the junior varsity. They were on the call-up list as back-ups for varsity, which meant they’d see a lot of lower level action but practice as much as possible with the older boys. Steve watched as the seniors read the notice and patted each other on the back. He also saw the sideways glances at the sophomore duo who sat, together but apart from everyone else, their heads hanging so low that they did not even see him approach.
“You want to know why, right?” he asked quietly.
Jared Walters looked up, wiping his damp eyes with the side of his hand. “Yes,” he said, his voice quivering.
Steve felt sorry for the boy, and for his friend. They were the best; he was sure of that. But sometimes that was not enough. “You boys are both going to be great one day. Maybe next year. Maybe even later this year. You have the physical stuff that great players are made of.”
The two boys listened, intently, not even trying to interject a word.
“What you don’t have is the mental maturity to go along with your physical maturity. It’s not really your fault,” he continued, anticipating an interruption. “You’re young. I don’t really expect that of sophomores. But I don’t usually play them on varsity either. You know that if I play you varsity, I pretty much have to start you. What would be the point in having two players with your potential sitting and watching? Better for you to play. But I’ve been watching both of you, and this is what I’ve seen for two weeks: you are very strong players, but you are far too arrogant. You don’t work with the team; you work for yourselves. And I can’t have that. A quarterback and a linebacker have to be team leaders. You may be talented, but you aren’t ready to lead. Not on varsity.”
Neither of the boys bothered to hide the fact that he was crying.
“Play with the kids your age, boys, the kids you’ll be working with for the next three years. Learn to lead. Learn that talent gets you on the field, but leadership gets you respect.” He paused. “OK?”
Jared and Bill stood up and looked at Steve. For a moment, he was afraid that he had misjudged them, that this would break their spirit. He was afraid they might quit. But the two just stood there, looking at him. And finally it was Bill who spoke.
“I’ll make you proud of me, Coach.”
Jared nodded his head in agreement.
Steve breathed a sigh of relief. Another bullet dodged. He smiled. “Good for you. And I want you practicing with varsity once your practice ends for the day. Got it?”
That was almost two years ago, and Steve had since watched as Bill and Jared not only had matured but had blossomed. Both had seen varsity action late in their sophomore years, filling in for injured players on a team that lost the conference championship in the last game of the season. But then, as juniors, on a team with only three senior starters, everything had come together for them. After an early season loss, they never trailed again, scoring first in every game and winning five of their last six by over two touchdowns. The much-anticipated championship game against Timberlake had been over by half-time. Ashton had won 44-7. And Coach Edmunds finally had that giant state championship trophy for his trophy case.
As Jared and Bill passed him, coming off of the field, Coach just smiled, slapped Bill on the back and said, “They have to work on the grass this summer. You guys can’t be out here until practice starts in August.”
Bill turned his head without slowing his stride. “No problem, Coach.”
Steve Edmunds watched with a satisfied smile as they turned the corner out of his sight. Even if the Harlow boy’s parents and their hyper-evangelism sometimes proved a bit difficult to take—the prayer dinner they insisted on having for the entire team the night before the Timberlake game came to mind, a potential legal mine field that Coach had only navigated successfully with the help of the school administration—these boys had been worth the trouble. As he turned away, Steve Edmunds congratulated himself on having helped to mold such fine, upstanding young men.
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