Chapter
4
As he drove, he consulted the hand-drawn
map Jack had sent him. He thought once again that he should have gone on line
for a real map.
But he hadn’t, so he followed Jack’s map to
the letter - until it called for him to turn the wrong way onto a one-way
street. He was forced to take several side streets growing increasingly
frustrated before he found himself following the directions on the map again.
The route took him gradually up the west
side of the valley. He passed Carthage University, built on the slope a century
before to overlook what had once been the small town of Carthage.
Back then, the university had been
surrounded by woods. Now, it was hemmed in by the ramshackle homes and
apartment buildings that seemed to thrive around most universities. They housed
students not content to live in dorms, graduates not ready to move on with
their lives, non-students attracted to the freer - or more gullible - ways of
students.
The houses gradually thinned out as the
slope grew steeper. Frank continued up one twisting road. A few houses, set
back from the road, were visible amid the trees. Finally, Frank saw Jack's
place.
The house sat on a spur of land that
jutted out from the hillside. It was a large house, dominated by a tower facing
the university.
Frank remembered the house's history as
Jack had outlined it in a letter. In 1885, the university has expelled a
student who frequented the city's bars more than he did classrooms.
Old Bill - as Jack called him - fought his
expulsion, lost, then left for New York City. There, he had forged a successful
career as reporter, then a novelist, and always as a drunk.
Finally, the former student returned to
Carthage in 1910 a wealthy man. He built the house on the slope above the
university, complete with the tower. He'd spent the last years of his life
sitting in the windowed top floor of the tower, drinking, triumphantly
proclaiming, as Jack liked to quote him, “So I can always look down on that
breeding ground of mediocrity.”
After the man had finally died -
appropriately, in the tower where his body sat for a week before it was
discovered - the house had passed through a series of owners. Eventually, it
had been carved into apartments for students.
Jack had discovered the house while a
graduate student at the university. He had eventually graduated from the
school, but not the house.
Now an employee of the university radio
station, he shared the top floor apartment with several graduate students and a
hopeful but still unpublished poet who worked in the university library.
And, he had said with satisfaction, the
apartment included the tower.
Frank surveyed the building. The lower part
was covered with gray vinyl siding that ended abruptly at the windows of the
second floor - as if whoever had been doing it had run out of siding or money
or both. The next tier was covered with dirty yellow asbestos siding. It was
broken away in several places to reveal weathered wood beneath.
Just below the roof on the main part, wide
wood planking wrapped around the house. The wood was badly in need of painting.
The tower, meanwhile, was sided with jagged brown wood shingles.
Frank smiled. Just the kind of place Jack
would call home.
Frank had met Jack Plantir at Kashong
College. Frank was a freshman, a “townie” from nearby Bluff Hills. Jack was a
sophomore, but Frank's age: he had graduated from high school a year early
thanks to advanced placement courses and a few classes at a community college.
Jack was from Long Island, the middle son of
a wealthy family. His father was an investment lawyer who worked for a major
firm in what Jack, in the mold of fellow New York City area students, simply
referred to as “The City,” as if there could be no other city in creation.
On the other hand, Frank was the oldest son
of what was in good times a lower middle class family. His father and uncle ran
a woodworking shop that as long as Frank could remember had been on the verge
of bankruptcy.
Frank was 6 foot, prone to being overweight
due to sedentary ways and a sweet tooth, while Jack was 5’8” wiry, a former
runner who had to quit after a broken leg had not healed properly, giving him a
permanent limp.
Despite their difference, the two had become
close friends – outsiders on the campus in their own ways, and both rebelling
against fathers in their own ways.
When Jack had graduated a year ahead of
Frank, he left for Carthage to begin graduate studies in radio journalism. “I
have a face for radio,” he'd explained.
The two still kept in touch and got
together on a regular basis, though. In fact, it was during a Christmas visit
to the McMann homestead that plans for the summer were hatched.
Frank had graduated the year after Jack
and had found a teaching job at Geneva High School just a few miles north of
Bluff Hills. But under New York state law, he had to earn a master's degree if
he wished permanent certification as a teacher.
Thus after completing four years of
teaching, and a few satellite courses, he was ready to begin his studies in
history at Carthage University's summer session. And conveniently, one of
Jack's roommates - an anthropologist - was gone for the summer to a dig in
Israel. So Frank was to use his room.
I wonder which room is mine, he thought as
he stood outside the house. He hoped it wasn't in the tower.
Frank entered the front door into what had
obviously once been a foyer back in the days when the building housed only the
novelist. Three of the walls were covered with thick, flowered wall paper that
had been fashionable 50 years before to help conceal holes in slat and plaster
walls. On three sides, the ceiling was graced by ornate wooden molding. The
front door itself was thick oak. Frank ran his fingers across it
appreciatively, the wood worker in him lamenting the layers of paint that
concealed the wood's beauty.
The far wall was made of drywall, painted a
nondescript white. A cheap presswood door had been added to provide an entrance
to the first floor apartment.
He headed up the stairs, past the entrance
to the second floor apartment to the third floor. Even before he read the names
on the door, Frank knew it was Jack's apartment.
In
the center of the door was a picture of a large, snarling Doberman Pinscher. A
sign next to it read, “Go ahead: Make his day.”
Frank smiled, and then rang the doorbell.
It barked like a large dog.
The door swung open even as the bell was
barking.
“You rang?” Jack said in a sepulchral tone.
Frank was shocked by Jack's appearance.
Always thin, he now looked gaunt. His skin
was pasty, his eyes, sunken and surrounded by dark shadows, and his hair,
stringy. Frank was reminded of picture he'd seen of cancer patients.
On cue, Jack coughed. A raspy, deep cough.
“You look awful,” Frank said.
Jack cleared his throat. “You look like
something I spat up.”
Frank tossed his bags on the worn couch,
carefully avoiding the spot where the stuffing was coming through. Indeed, most
of the furniture had the appearance of cast offs and hand-me-downs - typical of
student apartments. There was even a large book case made of boards and cinder
blocks.
“No, seriously,” Frank said turning to Jack,
“You really look sick. Are you okay?”
“Damn cold. I got it last fall, and I
haven't been able to shake it. Sort of like the clouds. You know we haven't had
a sunny day here in months.”
“Seen a doctor?”
“Yeah. He gave me some antibiotics. The bug
killed them. Like some coffee?”
The two wandered into the kitchen. Frank
noticed that Jack's limp had grown more pronounced.
“This is the kitchen that novelist added to
keep his drinks cool, right?” Frank asked, more to make conversation than out
of real interest.
“Right. He used to spend the day in his
tower and he didn't want to have to walk all the way downstairs to get his
drinks. Hey, want to see the tower?"
Before Frank could answer, Jack limped to a
narrow door that at first looked as if it should lead to a closet. But when
Jack opened it, Frank saw stairs.
"It's kind of tight in here,"
Jack warned as he started up. Frank followed.
It was tight, with 90 degree turns every
few steps. The air was stale and close: Frank soon found himself sweating.
Suddenly the stairs ended, opening to a
small room with windows on four sides. As Frank ascended the last steps, he
could see the valley through the windows.
Jack opened a door that included one of the
windows in it. "Check this view."
Frank followed him out onto a narrow
balcony that looked out over the valley. In the distance, he could see through
the haze the university and the city stretching out before him. Below, he could
see the ground nearly four stories away.
He
clung to the wall, not approaching the edge.
"Old Bill used to sit out here and
stare for hours at the university," Jack explained. "He had a clear
view of the old administration building from here. He even had them take out
some trees so they wouldn't block his view. I think he used to spit at it.
Rumor has it he even fired a few shots at it one night with a shotgun."
Jack leaned over the edge of the railing.
Frank's heart began to pound even harder.
"This is the highest inhabited point in
the valley," Jack added. "In the winter, when there's no leaves in
the trees, you can see from one end of the valley to the other with
binoculars."
Jack looked at Frank, who was still
clinging to the wall.
"Sorry, I forgot," Jack said
quietly. "Let's go back in."
What he had forgotten was a story that
Frank had told him one night. When Frank was 6, he and his family had gone to
Niagara Falls. As the family pressed near the edge of the viewing area railing,
someone from behind pushed and Frank had slid under the rail, over the edge,
bashing the back of his head on an outcropping. He’d come to a stop ten feet
down on a bush clinging to the side of the ravine. He had hung there for close
to ten minutes, his screams drowned out by the water of the falls roaring just
20 feet away.
Finally a ranger had been lowered down by
rope to get him. When he got up, his mother had said, "That was a stupid
thing to do."
But what Frank had told no one was as he
hung on the bush, he had actually felt himself still falling. Not to the
ground, but into a dark opening, like a mouth that waited for him. And in that
mouth, he saw people, thin, drooping, stumbling along. When they saw him, they
began to swarm, to circle him, their eyes glowing feverishly.
And somehow he knew they wanted to attach
themselves to him.
Until he became like them.
That was the beginning of the dreams.
Nightmares that woke him screaming. Moments
during the day when daydreams
suddenly
became more real than the world around him. Until he learned, after months of
struggle, not to see, just to ignore them.
But they still came back, sometimes.
Especially when he looked down from heights.
They entered the tower again.
"I think the kettle is boiling,"
Jack said. "Like to make it Irish?"
"Yeah," Frank said softly.
When they went back down, Jack started to
pour the water into cups.
"I'll be right back," Frank said.
"I want to stow my stuff," he explained, though they both knew that
wasn't the real reason he wanted to be alone.
"Sure. Your room is the one just to
the right of the entrance."
He picked up his bags and walked into the
room.
Frank slung his bags onto the bed. He'd
unpack later, he thought. Instead he sat down on the bed and rubbed his forehead
for a moment, feeling his breath flow in and out.
Finally, he looked around the room. A few
posters on the wall – mostly of third-world musicians and such sites as
Stonehenge and a Mayan temple. A large picture of Bob Marley hung over the bed.
Then
he glanced at the dresser. A skull sat there, wearing a ski cap with an old Obama
campaign button pinned to it.
Frank's gaze was drawn to the hollow eye
sockets. A chill passed through him. He felt as if he were being watched.
By feverish eyes.
Pax et bonum
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