Revenge of the Manitou (5 page)

Mrs. Novato
laid a reassuring hand on his arm. “I shouldn’t worry about it too much, Mr.

Fenner
.
A
lot of the children have been having bad dreams of late. I think it’s become
the class craze to have nightmares. Children are very psychologically
suggestible, and I think they’ve gotten themselves into what you might call a
state of, well, very mild hysteria.”

Neil looked
across the porch toward the classroom. The children all looked normal enough.

They were
giggling and playing around just like ordinary kids, and they certainly didn’t
seem to be suffering from any kind of collective breakdown.

“Have you
talked to the school doctor about them?” he asked Mrs. Novato. “I mean, as far
as Toby’s concerned, I wouldn’t like things to get any worse.”

“I can call the
doctor it you like,” agreed Mrs. Novato. “But I think he’ll simply confirm my
opinion that this is some kind of passing fad.”

Inside the
classroom, the children were playing cowboys and Indians, and pretending to
shoot at each other with their fingers. Neil grinned, and said, “I shouldn’t
bother, Mrs. Novato. It looks as though they’re pretty healthy to me. Mind you,
I don’t know how you manage to keep control.”

“It comes with
practice-and iron discipline,” laughed Mrs. Novato.

Neil said,
“Okay. If you could just keep an eye on Toby for me, I’d appreciate it.”

“Sure thing.”

He had just
turned to leave the porch when he heard one of the children calling above the
hubbub of the classroom-calling something in a high, piping voice that
penetrated the shouting and laughing and pseudo “gunfire.” It wasn’t Toby. It
was one of the other children-a small dark-haired boy in a green T-shirt.

He was calling,
“Where’s Alien gone? Where’s Alien gone? Did Alien go for
helpT

Neil felt a
chill, prickling sensation around his scalp and wrists as if all his nerves
were shrinking.

He turned back
to Mrs. Novato and barked, “Mrs. Novato-Mrs.
Novatol
”

The teacher
blinked at him uncertainly. “Yes, Mr.
Fenner
? Was
there something else?”

Neil could
hardly find the words. He was breathing in tight, suffocated gasps, and there
seemed to be something pressing on him.
Too much gravity, too
much air.

And all the
time, over the noise of the classroom, the boy was calling: “Has anyone seen
where Alien went? For the love of God, where’s Alien’]”

“Mrs. Novato,”
said Neil, “could I speak to your children for just a couple of minutes?”

Mrs. Novato’s
helpful expression tightened a little. “I’m afraid we have to start class in
just a moment, Mr.
Fenner
. I really can’t-”

“Mrs. Novato, I
think it would help them. I think this, whatever it is, this hysteria-well, I
think it’s a little more than hysteria. I think I should talk to them, just for
a few minutes.”

Mrs. Novato’s
smile had now faded altogether. She was standing in the classroom door with her
hand on the doorknob and Neil could see that she was quite prepared to close it
in his face if he became too insistent.

“You’ll really
have to talk to Mr. Groh, the principal,” she told him. “I’m not authorized to
let anyone speak to the class, unless they’re a qualified lecturer or teacher.”

“Alien!”
shouted the boy. “Where did Alien go?” Neil’s hands were shaking, and there was
sweat on his upper lip. He wiped his mouth against his sleeve, and he said to
Mrs. Novato, “One minute, and that’s all. I promise you. And if I start to say
something you don’t like, you can throw me out.”

Mrs. Novato
looked more bewildered than anything else. Neil said, “Please,” and at last she
sighed, as if she were really allowing this against her better judgment, and as
if she couldn’t understand why all the complicated things in life had to happen
to her.

She led him up
to the front of the class, onto her small plinth, and she raised her hands for
silence. Neil felt unexpectedly embarrassed in front of all these expectant
childish faces. He looked for Toby, and spotted him at last near the back of
the room, sitting next to a pale girl with dark hair. Toby was openly pleased
to see his daddy standing up there, but puzzled too.

The boy sitting
in front of Toby was obviously asking him, behind his hand, what his pop was up
to, standing nervously in front of the eight-year-olds at Bodega school-house,
his mind crowded with fears and dreams, and Neil wished he could have answered
that question himself.

Mrs. Novato
rapped her ruler on the desk for silence, and said, “Class, I want your
attention for a moment. Mr.
Fenner
here, Toby’s
father, wants to speak a few important words to you. It’s about the bad dreams
that some of you have been having, so I believe you ought to pay close
attention.”

Neil coughed,
and found himself blushing. “Thank you, Mrs. Novato. It’s kind of you to let me
speak. All I want to say is, Toby’s been having some pretty unpleasant
nightmares lately, and Mrs. Novato tells me that some of the rest of you have,
too. Would you be kind enough to put up your hand if you’ve been having
nightmares?”

* There was a
silence. The children stared at Neil, expressionless. Mrs. Novato gave a
twitchy little smile, and said, “Come on now, children. You know that one or
two of you have.
Petra, how about you?”

Petra, the
little girl sitting next to Toby, raised her hand. So did Toby. Then, one by
one, others raised their hands. Ben
Nichelini
, Andy
Beaver, Debbie
Spurr
, Linus Hopland, Daniel
Soscol
.

Every child in the class of twenty-one.

Mrs. Novato
glanced worriedly at Neil, and said, “I had no idea that all of them-”

Neil looked around
the class.
Twenty-one young, serious faces.
They may
have been normal, well-adjusted, boisterous kids, but they weren’t putting him
on. There was no sniggering or whispering. They were all sitting there with
their hands raised, and not one of them smiled.

“Okay,” said
Neil, hoarsely, “you can put your hands down now.”

Mrs. Novato
said, “This is most upsetting, Mr. Fen-
ner
. I can’t
imagine what’s going on.”

“That’s why I
wanted to speak to them,” Neil told her. “I believe that something’s happening
here that’s more than bad dreams.”

He turned to
the children, and he tried to speak as reassuringly and quietly as he could. “I
don’t want to take up too much of your tune,” he said, “but I’d like you to
think about these dreams as a land of a class project. The more we find out
about them, I think the better chance we have of discovering why you’ve been
dreaming them, and what they are. I’d like you all to spend a few minutes .at
home tonight, and write or draw what you saw in your dream. Think hard, and remember
whatever you can. If you can think of any names you heard in your dreams, jot
them down. What you write or draw doesn’t have to make any particular sense.
Just put down whatever comes into your mind.”

Mrs. Novato
said, “I’m not at all sure that Mr. Groh is going to approve of this, Mr.
Fenner
.”

“Why not?”

“Well, he
doesn’t want to antagonize the parents. Some of them are pretty touchy about
nonstandard projects, you know.”

Neil took in
the class with a wide sweep of his arm. “Mrs. Novato, did you see how many
hands went up?
Twenty-one out of twenty-one.
Don’t you
think we ought to make just a minimal effort to find out what this is all
about?”

The classroom
was quiet, except for sporadic coughs and the shuffling of sneakers.
Then Mrs.

Novato said,
“All right, Mr.
Fenner
. I’ll give it just one try.
But I don’t think the children ought to do this at home. They can draw their
dreams right here in the classroom, this afternoon, during their drawing
lesson. It should improve the results, too. Not all of them have crayons and
paper at home.”

She lifted her
hands toward the class, and clapped them once, briskly. “Now then, children,”
she said, “I want you all to say good morning to Mr.
Fenner
,
and then I want you to open your geography books to the big color map of
northern California, which is on page twenty-five.”

The children
sang, “Good morning, Mr.
Fenner
,” and Neil said
“Thanks” to Mrs. Novato and left the classroom. On his way out, he gave Toby a
quick, secret wink.

Outside in the
school yard, it was growing hot. The weather was unusually warm for September,
way up in the high seventies and the low eighties. Through the dusty glare,
Neil glanced across at the fence where Toby had seen the man in the long white
coat, but the scrubby grass was deserted. Neil could see why Mrs. Novato hadn’t
believed anyone could have been standing there. The fields were wide open for
hundreds of feet, and the first patch of cover Was a sparse group of thorn
bushes, at least three minutes’ hard running away.

He walked over
to the fence and examined the ground. It was hard clay, too rough to show any
footprints. He believed that Mrs. Novato hadn’t seen anybody, but he also
believed that Toby was telling the truth. Tough little boys didn’t go fainting
for no reason at all-and come to that, unimpressionable fathers didn’t go
imagining old men’s spectral faces for no reason at all, either.

He went slowly
back to his pickup truck, and sat behind the wheel for a while, thinking. He
had a feeling that something wasn’t right-the same feeling you get on a warm
day, when a storm’s beginning to build. He looked in his rearview mirror a
couple of times, half-expecting to see the man in the white duster standing by
the fence, but nothing appeared. After a few minutes, he turned the key in the
ignition and drove off toward the bay, and another day’s work.

Although it was
warm and clear in the valleys, there was a foggy chill out on Bodega Bay, and
Neil wore his windbreaker while he finished off varnishing the White Dove’s
afterdeck and cabin doors. Old Doughty wasn’t far off, smoking his pipe and
watching the coast-guard cutters from under his peaked nautical cap, and over
by the gift shop a party of Japanese tourists were proudly having their picture
taken in front of Bodega Bay’s well-worn collection of whales’ jaws and sharks’
teeth. As Neil put the last licks of varnish on the doors, Doughty got up off
his perch and came strolling along the jetty. He paused by the White Dove’s
berth, and stood watching Neil for a while, puffing and gurgling at his pipe.

“I reckon
you’ve got yourself a few good hours’ work in that beaten-up tub,” he remarked.
“I never saw anyone handle a craft so badly, the way that Mr.
Collings
knocked her about. I was damned surprised he never
drowned himself.”

Neil shrugged.
“It’s his funeral,” he said, noncommittally. Doughty grunted. He was nearly
eighty, with a big, wrinkled face that was weather-beaten to a dull red color.
He wore the same navy-blue reefer jacket that he had worn the first time Neil’s
father had brought him down to the jetty twenty years ago and hefty fisherman’s
rubbers. There was a time when he had operated a fishing fleet of his own, but
that was long before most people could remember.

“I don’t know
why you bother fancying that boat up so nice,” Doughty said. “You know that
he’s going to knock her about just as bad next summer.”

“I do it
because he pays me,” replied Neil.

Doughty sighed.
“You’re not like your father.
Nor your grandfather, for that
matter.”

“I never said I
was. And from what I’ve been told about my grandfather, he drank a bottle of
rum a day, and smoked five cigars before breakfast.”

“What’s wrong
in that?” Doughty wanted to know.

Neil laughed.
He slicked varnish across the bottom of the cabin door and set down his brush.

“They always used
to tell stories about the
Fenner
family on the wharf
here,” said Doughty. “I remember when I was round about ten years old, my pa
pointed out your great-grandfather Jack
Fenner
to me,
and told me not to displease him, on account of he’d thrown three fishermen
into the bay for offering him undersize lobsters.”

“I’ve heard all
the stories,” said Neil, tidying up his paint cans. “I freely admit that I’m
the most colorless
Fenner
that ever lived.”

“You’re not the
worst, though,” said Doughty, tapping out the
dottle
of his pipe against a wooden upright.

“So I suppose
you’ve got something to be thankful for.” “Oh, yes? And who do you reckon was
the worst?” Doughty fumbled in his pocket and brought out two pieces of
saltwater taffy. He tossed one to Neil, and
unwrapped
the other one himself. He said, “I have to suck these slow, you know, otherwise
they get themselves snarled up in my dentures.”

Neil came
forward and clambered up onto the jetty. “You still haven’t told me who
was the worst
Fenner
of all
. I bet
he wasn’t as bad as the worst Doughty of all.” “Oh, he sure was,” said Doughty,
shaking his head. “The
Doughtys
was clergy
originally, from Plymouth, England.

Highly peaceable folk.
But the
Fenners
were tough farmers, tough settlers, and vigilantes. The
Fenners
did more to settle Napa Valley than George
Yount
, and
most folks say that George
Yount
was the father of
Napa Valley.”

Neil and
Doughty walked side by side to the parking lot, where Neil let down the back of
his pickup and heaved out three coils of fresh rope.