Dreamland Lake (15 page)

Everybody with last names starting with A through C was in the same homeroom—from Loretta Armbruster to Clarence Cochran. I was right there in the middle. And, of course, Flip, being a T, was in another homeroom. So we didn’t get together until the real classes started for the day.

What you didn’t want to keep locked up safe in
your locker, you kept in your homeroom desk. Nonessentials. It was one morning about the third week of school when I reached in my desk for my notebook and pulled out a little package instead. All neatly wrapped up in brown paper and twine. No name on it or anything. There was just time to get it open—with Mary Beth Borden snooping over my shoulder to see what it was all about.

Inside the wrappings was a little box, jewelry store sized. I could feel Mary Beth’s hot breath on my neck as I opened it up. First, there was a layer of cotton. Then a folded-up note, which I transferred to my shirt pocket as it was—to Mary Beth’s disappointment. Then another layer of cotton. And in the bottom was a medal. I pulled it out. It was a ribbon-covered bar. Hanging down from it was a gray part like a coin. Very familiar. Like the knife at the bridge. The same laurel leaf wreath circled around a very authentic swastika. “Here we go again,” I said, but not to Mary Beth.

The first class was Social Problems. We sat in a friendly circle in there, but with assigned seats. Flip’s was directly across from me. There wasn’t time for any real communication, but he looked right at me, nodded, and tapped his chest. I got the message. He’d received a medal too, which was no surprise. Then I remembered the note, and as I pulled it out of my pocket, I saw that Flip kept staring at me, waiting for me to read it if I hadn’t already.

Elvan had decided to disguise his handwriting, which was pretty pointless, but I guess he thought it helped build up the mystery a little. The only thing it did was make it hard to read. But Elvan didn’t want too much mystery:

I crumpled it up and gave out a big disgusted sigh for Flip’s benefit. He just shook his head.

At lunch, we compared notes and medals. They were pretty much the same. I was all for marching right back to Elvan’s table and dumping them in front of him. “I told you it’d be like this,” I said to Flip. “We’ll have him on our backs for years if we don’t stop him right now.”

“I know it,” he said. But that’s all he said.

I started to get up then, but Flip grabbed hold of my arm. “Sit down. Not now.”

“Well, not at 5:30, either,” I said to him. But I might as well have saved my breath.

Because at quarter after five we were heading out Jefferson Avenue with the main gates of Marquette Park at the end of it. Flip had been too quiet while we carried the route. Afterward, when he just turned down Jefferson Avenue like it was understood between us that we were going to meet Elvan, I finally got mad.

“Where do you think we’re going?”

“To meet Elvan.”

“I’ve got a better idea.”

“What?” Flip said, like he didn’t want to hear it.

“Let him stand out there waiting for us a few hours. That’ll cure him of planting anonymous notes.”

“I doubt it,” Flip said, and I guess I did too, but I didn’t like to admit it.

“But, dammit, if we meet him out there according to
his
instructions, he’ll feel more like Hitler than ever. I’m for not giving him the satisfaction.”

“It’s not for giving him any satisfaction,” Flip said. “We’re the ones going to get the satisfaction if anybody does.”

“It’d satisfy me just fine to go home.”

“So go.”

I got as far as starting to turn off on the last cross street before the park gates. I was getting tired of playing by Flip’s rules. But that wasn’t so bad. I hated playing by Elvan’s.

“But if we don’t go,” Flip said to my back, “we’ll be making a mistake for two reasons.” I stood there. He knew he had me. I knew he had me. “First, he’ll just keep after us if we don’t scare him off for good. And second, we won’t be satisfied if we don’t find out what he’s got to say that he’s so anxious to tell us.”

That turned me around. “Look, Flip, you don’t really think he has any evidence, do you? It’s just something he’s thought up to say. Right?”

“How do we know till we hear?”

“What we’re going to hear from him is a bunch of bull. What I want to know from you right now is do you think Elvan killed the dead man?”

Flip just stood there, looking at me.

“Do you think he killed the dead man, and now he’s decided to confess to us?” I said, loud.

“No,” he said, finally. “No motive. And no guts.”

“All right then, why play along with him.”

“I told you why,” Flip said. “To scare him off. For good. We don’t need him.”

“Then let’s get it over with,” I said. And Flip
strolled off into the park like he didn’t particularly care whether I came along or not.

“We’ll play by your rules—one last time,” I said. But maybe I didn’t say it out loud.

Looking back, I think I knew right then that making the break with Elvan was going to break off the friendship between Flip and me too. I don’t know. It’s hard to tell about friendships. I haven’t had a close one since. Maybe I only knew it later. But now, it seems right that I knew it when we walked through the park. That something was happening. Or something was over. Something that didn’t have much to do with Elvan at all. Like from then on, Flip and I wouldn’t have each other to lean on as usual. Like game time was over. For good.

The swans were two white blotches out on Dreamland Lake. They floated out there like plastic toys, hardly moving. And the other ducks were all clustered together next to the shore. It was as still as a picture. Or like one of those little scenes in a glass paperweight before you shake it up and the snow falls.

The sun was just setting behind the woods and shining through the trees and the fancy ironwork on the bridge over the lake. It all looked so normal that it seemed artificial.

We went into the tunnel of branches, moving like a couple of Indians. My heart was pounding, and that made me feel like a fool. I wanted to ask Flip if he thought Elvan was already there, but I didn’t want to make a sound. We stopped when we got to the creek and looked across at the clearing. It looked empty. But then, it had looked empty the day we took the pictures too. I didn’t give the dead man a
thought. All I could think of was which tree Elvan might be back of.

Flip cleared the creek first. There weren’t so many leaves on the ground. The trees hadn’t even started to turn much yet. Instead of marching up to where the dead man had been, Flip settled down on the roller coaster block. The one with the swastika carved on it. He seemed cool, but he was looking around.

“Well, which tree is he behind this time?” I said, low.

“Who knows? Let him have his fun.”

“Maybe we’re early.”

“We’re about on time.”

“Maybe he’s not . . .”

“Shut up,” Flip whispered. “Listen.”

But there wasn’t anything to hear but the breeze in the trees and a honk or two from the ducks.

We could see a little section of the shore path curving around from the far side of the lake. Just a narrow open place in the trees. We both watched it, even though he could have been coming up on us from any direction. It was a warm evening, and the lake smelled like the sewage treatment plant only milder.

Pretty soon, we saw him coming around the edge of the lake. He just took a couple of steps where we could watch him, but it was Elvan all right. Ambling along, taking his time. Maybe even stopping to have a look at the swans. Because it seemed like a long time before he battered through the trees on the other side of the clearing. He wasn’t creeping this time.

“Hey, buddies,” he said. And waved. He was wearing a pair of outsize corduroys. You could hear the little rasping sound they made on the insides of his legs when he walked straight across where the
dead man had been. Toward us. “You bring the medals?” he said, walking up close.

“Yeah, we got them in our pockets, Elvan,” Flip said, easing off the concrete block. “Want them?”

“No, that’s okay,” Elvan said. “You don’t really need any identification.”

Then he dried up—like he hadn’t thought things out past that point. The three of us were just facing one another, toes almost touching. After awhile, Flip said, “What about this so-called evidence you’ve got up your sleeve, Elvan? Want to tell us about it?”

Elvan started kicking backward, digging his heel in the dirt. He looked nervous, playing it by ear. All I could think of was that it was boring. Standing around waiting for him to think up something to invent. He was a slow thinker.

“Yeah, well, you guys pretty much have the picture,” he said, looking at the ground. “I mean you guys found the knife, so I guess you pretty much have the picture.”

“What picture?” Flip said, standing up straight so he’d be as tall as Elvan.

“Well, I mean I could fill in some details. I mean if you want the details.”

“Anything you want to tell us, Elvan.”

“Well, here’s the way it was. Like this. I was out here in the woods, doing some exploring, oh, sometime last winter. There was a lot of snow on the ground. I forget the day. And I had my knife with me in case I might need it. You buddies know the one I mean. And I was right here in the woods, back there in the open place. You know the place. Well, I heard something behind me. Something suspicious. I heard this footstep in the leaves right behind me, so I turned around quick. It was this tramp. A real mean-looking
guy. Dangerous-looking with red eyes. And he started coming for me . . .”

Elvan was talking faster, and his face was lighting up like it did sometimes when he was really wound up. Once he got his story going, he was enjoying it, beginning to believe it himself.

“. . . So I pulled out my knife and let him have a look at cold steel and . . .”

“Wait a minute, Elvan, hold on now,” Flip said. “You mentioned snow on the ground, but then you said you heard the tramp’s step in the leaves. That doesn’t figure. I don’t think we believe that, Elvan.”

His face sagged. He swallowed and looked confused, just like he’d looked back in grade school if the teacher ever called on him. He thought a long time before he answered. You could see the wheels turning, very slow. “Yeah, well, there’s leaves
under
the snow. There wasn’t too much snow.” Then instead of going on with the story, he just looked at Flip and me, like he wanted us to okay this part before he went on.

“Then what happened when the tramp saw cold steel, Elvan?”

“Well, he told me to hand over the knife and any money I had on me. He said he needed money for something to eat. He could tell it was a valuable weapon. The knife, I mean. It is.”

“Sure, it is.”

“Well, then he made a grab for my throat since he saw I wasn’t going to give up my knife. I mean I was armed and I’ve studied combat warfare. Hand to hand fighting.” He slowed down again then. Like he didn’t exactly know how to handle the big moment in the story.

“What happened when he grabbed you by the neck, Elvan? What’d you do then?”

“Well, then I had my knife in my right hand, see? Down low. And I brought it up fast and jammed it into him. I mean it really happened fast. Self-defense.”

“Where’d you jam it into him, Elvan?”

“Right over there,” Elvan said, waving his arm backward. “Right where you guys found him.”

“No, Elvan, I mean where in his
body
did you jam it?” Flip said, very patient-sounding.

“Oh, I see what you mean. Well . . . right into his . . . gut. Right into his big, soft gut.”

He shut up then. And looked at Flip, then at me. His little eyes were as big as they could get. It was evening then, and his eyes looked black in his round face.

“That about it, Elvan?” Flip said. “That about all you have to tell us?”

“Yeah, well that’s about all I can think—remember. I mean he was dead. No question about that. There was a lot of blood on the snow.”

“And the leaves,” Flip added.

“Yeah, on them too.”

Flip zipped up his windbreaker and said to me, “Okay, Bry, it’s getting late. Let’s shove off.” Like Elvan wasn’t even there with us. I was ready to go. I started to reach in my pocket to give Elvan his medal back.

But when he saw we were about to pull out, he yelled out at us, “Hey, wait a minute!” For a second, his voice had that sound it had when we were at his house—commanding, sort of. “You guys wouldn’t tell on a buddy, would you?”

And Flip turned around to him and said, “What’s to tell, Elvan?”

Elvan opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Then his face collapsed. It looked too small for his body. But we waited, and so, finally, he said to me, “It’s true. Every bit of it. You believe me, don’t you, Brian?”

“No,” I said.

But he was looking at Flip again. “I wouldn’t lie to you guys. I wouldn’t put you on.” He grabbed Flip’s arm. “You’re my best buddies.”