The Legend of Devil's Creek, page 4
Despite his best effort to suppress it, a smile broke out across Riddley’s face.
“Fear of the unknown,” Bacavi said again. “For next class, I want you all to think about where evil comes from. Use Mr. Riddley’s answer as food for thought if you like.”
A moment later, the deep ring of the great chapel bell echoed from far across campus.
*****
Walking out the main doors of Beale Hall and into the sunny fall day, Riddley heard Chapman call out, “Hey, Riddley! Sandhurst! Wait up!”
Turning to wait, Riddley noticed Sandhurst, the serious guy who sat at the front of the class and had talked about Kant, turning around a couple of steps behind him.
“Hey, what are you guys up to?” Chapman asked as he caught up. “We’re going to shoot some hoop at about four o’clock down at the intramural courts. If you guys come, we might be able to get some three-on-three going.”
“Oh, ” Riddley said, doing his best to seem genuinely interested.
“Have you guys met each other yet? Justin, this is Pete Sandhurst. Pete, Justin Riddley.”
“How’s it going?” Riddley said, shaking Sandhurst’s hand, immediately worrying that his attempt at a handshake was misaligned and weak, his greeting stupid and unnatural. Sandhurst was a big guy, at least as tall as Riddley, with a tough-looking physique like Chapman’s. But his eyes barely met Riddley’s before he resumed staring at his own feet. His shyness seemed odd, given his otherwise intimidating appearance.
“You guys should come by,” Chapman said. “Lazko and Boyd and I are thinking about getting a team together for the fall intramural tournament. If we win, we get our team picture on the wall in the gym. Fame, glory, women throwing themselves at us, and all that good shit.” Riddley nodded in feigned enthusiasm. “Anyway, if you guys play, we’ll have one of the tallest teams for sure. We’ll dominate the boards. Come by, alright?”
“Yeah, I’ll try to make it,” Riddley lied.
FOUR
Riddley woke, flat on his back, to the sound of his phone ringing. He’d dozed off while reading a physics text in bed in his dorm room as the sun was going down. Now it was dark. Dazed, he grabbed the handset of his phone and held it to his ear, staring in half-focus at the Irish flag tacked to his ceiling. He bought it at a Seattle record store years earlier in an unexplainable, fleeting surge of Celtophilia. It was his only decoration.
“We missed you at hoop,” Chapman said.
“Oh—oh yeah, I had to catch up on some reading,” Riddley mumbled. It made him feel better that his story was true, though he’d had no intention of playing basketball in the first place.
“Well look, I’ll be at your place at eight. We’re going into town to grab some pizza, and you’re going with us.”
“Ah, well, I still have to do some—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Chapman interrupted. “We’re only going for an hour. Have you eaten?”
A pause. “No.”
“A man’s got to eat! I’ll pick you up at eight.” He hung up without waiting for an answer.
Riddley lay there, still holding his phone against his ear. He was glad Chapman seemed to like him, but worried that Chapman and his friends would decide he was a douche bag as soon as they spent any time with him. His stomach began to churn.
He rolled out of bed and opened his closet to find something to wear. He wanted to impress whomever he was meeting, but without looking like he was trying to. He tried on three different shirts, fully buttoning and tucking in each one, checking his look in the mirror from all conceivable angles, only to decide that none of them looked right. One was obviously out of style. Even he could tell. Another had sleeves that were too short. The third was a nice-looking pressed button-down he kept for job interviews, but he’d be overdressed if he wore it. They were just going for pizza.
Fifteen minutes later and still shirtless, Riddley heard a loud knock at the door. Oh, crap.
Chapman threw the door open and stared. “What’s up, man? You going bare-titty?”
“No.”
“Just finish waxing?”
Riddley looked confused. “No.”
“I told you I’d be here at eight, didn’t I? ”
“Uh, yeah. ”
“Are you having trouble deciding what to wear?” he asked, now grinning.
“No, ” Riddley said, too emphatically.
“Hey, alright, whatever. How about you get a shirt on and let’s go.”
Riddley, coloring, threw on his job interview button-down and they went out the door. “We have to grab Sandhurst,” Chapman said as they ascended the cement stairwell to the fourth floor. “He lives right upstairs from you.”
Chapman knocked on Sandhurst’s door, and after a wait that seemed about five seconds too long, Sandhurst opened it, greeting them with a surprised, almost disbelieving expression.
“Did we, ah, interrupt something?” Chapman asked, eyebrows raised as they entered. Sandhurst looked bewildered. “What is it with you guys? I said eight o’clock, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry,” Sandhurst mumbled, grabbing his jacket from off his desk chair.
Two fishing poles leaned against the wall, and a fishing net hung from the knob of his closet door. On his desk were different colored clumps of what looked like animal fur and feathers, along with a pair of forceps mounted to a plastic base sitting under a halogen lamp.
“What is all this shit, Sandhurst? Do you torture animals?”
“Huh?”
“All the fur and feathers and shit.”
“Oh, no. I tie fishing flies. Look,” he said, picking one up—a tiny hook festooned with brown and black feather barbs. “This is a caddis. Good for trout.”
“No shit? Well, good for you. Can we go now? I’m starving.”
*****
They cut across the lower campus, continuing on toward the waterfront of old Port Baker. The sun had just gone down behind the Olympic Mountains, and the cirrus-streaked sky was lit up in the dazzling pink and purple bands of the Indian summer sunset. The cool air was taking on the night’s perfume of seawater and fallen maple leaves. Riddley could see a ferry moored at the terminal below them, the glow of its windows and running lights reflecting off the calm, glassy water of the cove. Though they were still several blocks up from the waterfront, in the quiet calm of evening, Riddley could just hear the low hum of the ferry’s engines, its enormous stern prop turning just enough to keep the boat hugged against the ramp as vehicles boarded.
The Frigate Bird was an ancient tavern in the center of town, across from the waterfront on a street otherwise occupied by a used bookshop, cafe, small hardware store, candy store, and two native art galleries. It took up the entire first floor of a building Riddley guessed was one of the oldest in town—probably erected during the Yukon Gold Rush days, when the port served as a jumping-off point for prospectors bound for the Skagway, Alaska trailhead. Chapman claimed that it had great pizza and cheap beer.
The dimly lit interior was long and narrow, with a high ceiling of pressed tin and walls of exposed brick. As they entered, warm air laced with the aroma of baking pizza crust and roasting garlic filled Riddley’s nostrils. An ornate, mirror-backed wood bar ran half the length of the tavern. Tall, red vinyl-upholstered booths lined the opposite wall. There were two pool tables and a dartboard crammed into a smaller back room.
Riddley’s attention was drawn to old black-and-white photographs hanging from the walls, framing groups of stern-faced men with Victorian-era moustaches. Some held long two-man handsaws and stood next to unbelievably large felled trees out in the forest. Some were dressed in coveralls and stood around wood plank carts stacked high with salmon, out at the ends of long-vanished wharves of Port Baker’s waterfront. Maybe it was just the portrait-posing custom of the era, but none of the men in the old photographs was smiling. In fact, for the most part, Riddley thought they looked downright unhappy. Silent, somber ghosts of Aubrey Island.
“What are you all dressed up for?” Boyd asked as they arrived at the booth Boyd already occupied. Riddley stiffened, then looked down at his own clothes. The question struck him as odd, given that Boyd’s clothes seemed at least as dressy as what he was wearing. Before Riddley could come up with a response, Lazko strode up to the table with an enormous, overflowing, frosty glass pitcher of beer in one hand, a tower of pint glasses in the other. “Hey, dudes.” He was wearing the same sweatpants he wore on the first day of philosophy class, and looked like he hadn’t shaved in three days.
Lazko filled four of the six glasses and shoved one down toward Riddley without bothering to ask whether he wanted a beer. Riddley worried the bartender or waitress would ask to see his ID—like the rest of them, he was under 21—but nobody else seemed concerned. Having emptied the pitcher, Lazko left to get another. And just as Riddley began to wonder who the sixth pint glass was for, the brown-eyed brunette from philosophy class walked through the front door, smiled as she made eye contact with Chapman, and strode up to their table.
“Hey, guys.”
“Hey, Cath,” Chapman said. “Hey, have you met Pete and Justin?” he asked, gesturing to each of them. “This is Catherine. She’s in our philosophy class.”
“Yes,” Riddley said with a little too much volume. “I mean, no, we haven’t met. But I recognize her—you—from class. “ Stop. You sound like an idiot.
Sandhurst just nodded.
“Hey, I liked what you said today in class,” she said to Riddley. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard Bacavi actually compliment someone.”
“Thanks.” Riddley’s face flushed.
Catherine stood there as if expecting Riddley to say more. He didn’t. Then Lazko rejoined them with another pitcher and got to work filling the remaining glasses.
“So these two just transferred in,” Chapman said. “And I actually went to high school with Riddley here.”
“Right on,” Boyd said. “Are you already declared?” He took a lip balm out of his pants pocket and applied it in the quick, mechanical little movements Riddley had already come to expect of him.
Riddley paused, hoping Sandhurst would speak first, then answered, “No, but I’m thinking about business finance or accounting.”
“Lazko and I are both doing finance,” Boyd said. “It’s pretty dry.”
As he spoke, Boyd’s eyes continuously scanned the room, as if he were looking for someone more interesting to talk to. Sometimes his eyes settled, for a moment, on his own reflection in the gilded mirror behind the bar. He hardly gave Riddley a second glance.
“Yeah. I guess it’s supposed to bring a bunch of job opportunities, or teach you how to run a business or whatever,” Riddley said.
“Lazko here is going to be a businessman,” Chapman said, smirking.
Riddley thought Lazko looked a little like a cave man. A hulking, rough-looking guy, with a thick brow ridge that gave his face a permanent scowl. He always seemed to have his lips slightly pursed. Riddley thought it made him look slow-minded.
“Go ahead and laugh dude. I’ve got five ideas. Five major business ideas.”
“What are they?” Riddley asked.
“I can’t tell you right now. Someone would steal them.”
That drew a snort from Boyd.
“To his credit,” Chapman said, “despite being a bake-head, Lazko does have a perfect 4.0 grade point average. He’s an idiot savant.”
Lazko locked Chapman in a stare; impassive, but not without menace.
“Can’t you tell us at least one of your ideas?” Catherine said.
Lazko remained quiet for a moment, his expression absent. “Okay, but you’re all my witnesses that this was my idea. So if any of you steal it, I’ll sue your ass.”
“Whatever.”
Lazko sat quiet again, deliberating. “Alright. Well, you know how they can grow human ears and shit on the backs of rats now?”
“Huh?”
“It’s true,” Boyd said. “I saw a show about it on cable. If you lose an ear in a car accident or something, they can grow you a new one on the back of a rat, then harvest it and graft it to your head. And it’s an exact replica of your own ear.”
“Get the hell out of here,” Chapman said.
“No, really. They use your DNA.”
“So what’s your idea then?” Chapman asked.
“A bed of boobs,” Lazko said.
“A what?”
“A bed of boobs.”
“Bed of boobs?”
The table went silent.
“Think about it,” Lazko said. “If you can grow ears, you should be able to grow boobs. Then my company will turn them into a bed.”
“What?”
“Think how awesome it would be to sleep on a bed of boobs.” Lazko closed his eyes, his expression blissful. “Even to just roll around on it.”
Chapman laughed. “That’s your idea—a bed made out of human boobs? How the fuck is that going to work?”
“We’d keep DNA samples. You could order whatever you want. Small and firm if you have back problems. Big soft ones if you like a waterbed kind of thing. In a few months, you’d have your custom-made bed.”
“How do you keep them from rotting after you harvest them or whatever?”
“Formaldehyde, maybe. I don’t know. I’ll have to Google it.”
“Yeah, you should Google ‘harvested human boob preservation,’” Chapman said, smiling broadly. “I’m sure there are a bunch of web sites full of tips and advice.”
“You’ve taken a lot of chemistry classes,” Lazko said to Catherine. You could help me figure out what chemicals we could use.”
“Lazko—” She paused with her mouth hanging open, ready to speak, shook her head, and then just said, “No. No, I don’t, uh … .”
Boyd and Chapman were grinning as though they’d expected nothing less bizarre of their friend. “Lazko, you’re fucking sick,” Boyd said with a laugh.
“Dude, it’s not like we’d be harvesting them from people. Boobs aren’t sentient.”
“Far as you know,” said Boyd. “I’ve seen some where I’m pretty sure—”
“That’s just—,” Catherine said. “I’m sorry I asked.”
“Whatever, dude. I’m going to be rich. Just think how many people, how many guys, would buy something like that. Especially if you could pick whose boobs, like from a famous movie star or whatever.”
“Okay, Dr. Mengele,” Chapman said. “You’ll let us all know when your stock is going public, ya?”
“So where did you transfer from?” Catherine asked Riddley.
“Big California school.”
“What made you pick St. Jerome’s?”
“It’s smaller. Closer to home.”
“What about you?” Catherine said to Sandhurst, who was staring intently at one of the old black-and-white photographs of fishermen on the wall of their booth. “Peter Sandhurst.”
He turned. “Huh?”
“What’s your story?” she asked.
Again, Riddley found her striking. But something in her eyes troubled him just then. Was it the sadness he’d seen before? No, that wasn’t it. It was longing. Longing as she talked to this Sandhurst guy.
“My story?”
“Yeah, what are you studying, where are you from, and all that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I like philosophy, I guess. Makes me think.”
“Did you know any of these guys in high school?”
“No. No, I was living in Oregon before I moved here. Small town. Went to community college and transferred here after I got my A.A. But I didn’t really grow up in any particular place. I’ve sort of wandered around a lot.”
Riddley thought Sandhurst sounded awkward responding to Catherine’s questions. At least I’m not the only one.
“So what brought you here?” Boyd asked.
Sandhurst shrugged.
Boyd continued to stare at him. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Why does anyone go to college?”
“To meet women. And so you don’t have to be a ditch digger.”
“But why did you pick St. Jerome’s?” Catherine asked.
“Lots of reasons.”
“Such as?”
“To get away from my parents, I suppose. And I’ve always liked the island. I used to fish here when I was a kid.”
“All the way from Oregon?”
“No, I used to live near here. A long time ago. I guess it still feels as much like home as anywhere.”
“I’m trying to get these two trees to come play hoop with us,” Chapman said, nodding toward Sandhurst and Riddley. “We’d have the tallest motherfucking frontcourt in the league.”
“What about you?” Sandhurst asked Catherine.
“I’m studying Japanese.”
“Did you grow up with any of these guys?”
“No, I’m actually from here. From Port Baker.”
“Really?”
“My family has been here for four generations, if you can believe that. Since before the college was even built.”
“Is your last name Baker?”
“No—Broussard. Baker was a British naval officer on one of the first European ships to explore the area.”
Riddley wanted to ask her about the history of the town, but the very thought of doing so made his throat tighten so much he was afraid he’d squeak like a guinea pig if he tried to speak. Anyway, she and Sandhurst seemed suddenly quite focused on one another.
Boyd and Lazko left the table to shoot pool in the back room. As Riddley took a big sip of his beer, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Boyd pausing mid-step to smooth down the hips of his pants with his palms. He checked his look in the giant wall mirror by the door to the restrooms, making quick turns to view it from different angles.
“Those two live together?” Riddley asked Chapman.
“Yeah, isn’t that funny? The only things they have in common are an unhealthy obsession with video games and smoking dope. They’re the odd couple.”
“Yeah?”
“One time I caught Boyd actually ironing a hooded sweatshirt, if you can believe that. And he has impressionist paintings on the walls in his bedroom. He doesn’t like them, but he thinks women do, so there they are. Meanwhile, Lazko’s never used an iron in his whole life, and his bedroom is a hepatitis shit pile of dirty laundry and pizza boxes. He sleeps on a futon pad on the floor, and his only pieces of furniture are upside-down milk crates that his TV and stereo sit on. You have to come over and see their house,” he said shaking his head. “The tension between the two of them is hilarious. They’re good guys, though.”
