My Magic Summer

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

It had been a brief goodbye. Like I said, my dad wasn’t much on ceremony. But I sensed the somberness in him as he kept up a poker face with a slight smile and patted me on the shoulder.

“Connor, be good now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t give your uncle too much trouble.”

Willard chimed in here. “Oh, we’re gonna have a lot of fun! He’s no trouble.”

“Thanks, Will.” He looked back to me. “Remember to say your prayers.”

“I will.”

“Be good. And…” He searched. “Enjoy your time here, you know? Don’t be afraid to meet people.”

“Okay.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, Dad.”

We hugged. He shook his brother’s hand and then drove away, out of my life for some time.

Uncle Willard immediately sparked up. He slapped me on the back, grinning. “Dad’s gone. Let’s go fishing!”

* * *

We walked three-quarters of a mile down to Hud Creek. Once there, Uncle Willard took off his shoes and waded into the mud, a man with no tools or, as far as I could see, a plan. “I notice that we didn’t bring any fishing rods,” I said.

“Very astute, young man.” He pointed his finger at me. “Very astute.” He looked down at the mud below him. “This is good. No crocs here.”

An alarming thing to worry about. I looked around nervously.

“Is that a concern?”

“Nah. Not now. But I’ll tell you a whopper in a bit. Old Napoleon, Emperor Gator!”

He walked into the water up to his mid-calves. I held the bucket, waiting for further instructions. “You gotta keep in mind, a catfish isn’t like any other fish. Consequentially and not coincidentally, you don’t catch them the same way, either. Some people don’t think there’s a game at all. Say there’s no hunt in it. I don’t agree.”

“I don’t know what you mean. And how do you catch them, anyway? Are we going to fish with dynamite?” I grinned. What a concept!

“No.” He laughed. “No, that’s illegal in this county. It’s not…oh there’s one!”

“You see a catfish?”

“I feel a hole with my foot, which is even better. Fishing for catfish, I don’t even call it fishing. It’s called noodling.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see. Here!”

He ducked under water and squirmed around for a moment. I was puzzled and amused. By all appearances, he was trying to catch it by hand.

After a few seconds, he emerged out of the water, victorious, with a catfish as big as…well, a cat, dangling off the end of his arm.

“Whooo! This is a big fella.” He smirked with glee, unshaken.

“That’s…whoa!” I gasped.

“Get over here, man. Check on this!”

I walked over with the bucket, and he dropped it in. I stared at the flopping fish in fascination.

“So, you just…reached into the hole and grabbed it?”

“Reached right in! You feel around with your foot, find that sweet spot, then take the plunge. Shoot your arm right down. No fear.”

“So, you want them to bite you?”

“Ain’t nothing but a thing! ‘Gum’ you’d be more accurate, being that a catfish doesn’t have any teeth.”

“It’s weird.”

“Yeah.” He chuckled. “I guess it is. You want to give it a try?”

“Uhh….”

“Well, don’t answer right away. Let’s give the muck some time to settle.” He reached into the bucket and gave the fish a reassuring pat. “Here we go, big fella.” He picked up the fish and cradled it like a baby. “Catch and release.” He tossed it back into the water. I smiled, and my apprehension melted away. Most of it anyway, as I still wasn’t sure about a fish’s mouth up to my elbow. But I was glad I wouldn’t have to watch it die. It could all be fun.

And it was. There I was up to my knees, arm deep in a gigantic lake monster with whiskers. It felt weird and gross, but not scary. It tickled more than anything else. After I had my fun, I set the guy back into the water and watched him swim away, as if he could shrug off the experience as easy as I could. Like he didn’t just have a human arm down his throat, but it was par for the course.

“It’s you and nature,” Uncle Willard said as we sat on the grass, watching the creek. “No poles, no flies, no boat even. I bet that’s how cavemen fished.”

“Maybe they used rocks,” I said.

“Yeah, and they were hunting plesiosauruses or whatever Cretaceous leviathan may have swum those shallow waters back then. But the point is the same. When you noodle, there’s nothing but you. Your ingenuity, your body, your mind. So, you deserve it if the fish comes to you. That’s God saying this one’s on the house.”

* * *

After noodling, Uncle Willard wished me luck as I went off to find a job. He was still in the Navy, but the reserves now and occasionally reported back to Corpus. During the week, he worked at Ulman’s Printer’s as an in-house electrician. He offered to drop me off wherever I wanted to go. The library was fine with me.

“I don’t think you’re going to find a job there. I figure they’re still all staffed up. Mrs. Brigsby’s been there since I was a kid.”

“Well, if they don’t have jobs, it’s still pretty close to town,” I said. “And there’s more treasure in the pages of a book then in all the Whataburgers in the world.”

“Smart kid.” He grinned, tousling my hair.

Still Bayou Public Library looked, indeed, a modest place, but much appreciated. The books were well-kept, and they contained that pleasant musk of old glue and new laminate I always found intoxicating.

I had made it to their Clive Barker section and was pleasantly surprised they had more than one book. I perused The Great and Secret Show when a boy about my age came around the corner with a respectable stack of Redwalls.

“Impressive collection, my friend.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I worried I might have sounded silly.

He was a tall, pudgy guy with mousy brown hair.

“You’re into Redwall?”

“A little.” I shrugged. “I prefer Narnia, as far as talking mice are concerned.”

“Don’t you mean talking lions?”

“Talking anything. Reepicheep was a talking mouse and awesome.”

“I should go back to Narnia,” he admitted. “I went as far as Prince Caspian.”

“Not your cup of tea?”

“It’s a good cup. But they kept changing the order. That’s annoying, you know. Like, Prince Caspian used to be number two, now it’s number four? How’d that happen?”

“It’s chronological. The Magician’s Nephew takes place first, but I think he wrote it last. Maybe second to last.”

He shrugged, considering it. Then he pointed to the book in my hands. “What are you on now?”

I held it up; its red cover graced with demons, beckoning any prospective reader to a literary voyage worth taking. “The Great and Secret Show. I read this one already, but I want to reread it, because I hear he’s coming out with a sequel this year.”

“Who is?”

“Clive Barker.”

“Oh yeah. Horror guy, right? Like Stephen King?”

“More British. And he’s gruesome, bloody, and…” I looked down. “…sexual.”

He smirked. “Nice.”

“I guess. I mean, there are no pictures or anything.”

“Yeah, but you can imagine, right?” He took it from me and looked through the pages. “What’s this one about?”

“It’s hard to describe. And it’s been a while since I read it. But there are two guys, I think they’re scientists or mystics or something. Anyway, they find this potion, or maybe they make it, but they drink it and it turns them into…I don’t know, superbeings. Like they’re pure spirit. And powerful. Then they become enemies. One good, one evil.”

“Sounds cool. Then what happens?”

I smiled. “If you want to know how it ends, you’ll have to read the book to find out.”

He laughed.

“I can dig it. I’m Billy, by the way. Billy Soderbergh.”

“Connor Whelan.”

He looked at his watch and glanced around before looking back to me. “You hungry, dude?”

Little Caesar’s (Pizza! Pizza!) stood about four blocks from the library. After filling out a library card application form, we set out for lunch. I walked and Billy biked at a walking pace beside me the whole way. We continued talking about our favorite books (he was also into R.L. Stine but found Bruce Coville more for kids), and he pointed out some of the finer points of Still Bayou after finding out that I was new and visiting. Across the way, for example, hung an old iron cast bridge (“Tetanus Bridge” Billy called it), ideal for jumping into the questionably shallow creek below. I made a mental note to reevaluate my courage for such an endeavor later.

“Yeah, it’s my day off,” Billy said as we walked through the big glass doors of Little Caesars. He waved to the guy behind the counter, a tall, bored type with a buzz cut. Billy didn’t get a wave back, and he stopped to contemplate his previous statement. “I guess that’s lame. I mean, who goes to work when they don’t have to?”

“Nah, it’s cool.” I was excited to be making friends with a guy who worked at a pizza place. He seemed like a good guy to know. “I mean, it’s great pizza, right?”

“How about we find out?” He walked over to the counter. “How are today’s selections, Chuck, my man?”

Chuck rolled his eyes. “Same as always, Billy. Same crud.”

Billy and I went halfsies on a medium half cheese/half pepperoni and sat at a little orange table, discussing the finer points of the Dune franchise. “They’re pretty good,” I said. “I mean the first one, especially. He created this entire universe. The spice that lets you fold space, the Fremen, the giant sandworms. I dig that. The sequels got a bit weird, though. Like, God Emperor of Dune. Paul’s son is four thousand years old and turning into a sandworm? I don’t know.”

“I read the first one. I don’t know what his problem with men is,” Billy said sharply. “It’s always the women who are the strongest. The women are the wisest. The women are the ones who can drink…”

“The water of life,” I finished for him.

“And only the women can keep their hand in the pain box? And if you take your hand out, you’re not a human being?”

“Yeah, that’s a stupid test.” I agreed.

“So didn’t Clive Barker do Hellraiser?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah, he did.”

“That’s been on my list for a while. You seen it?”

“Nah. It’s Rated R, so…”

“Oh, no problem.” He grinned. “I’ll hook us up.”

* * *

The Blockbuster didn’t smell better than the library. It smelled different. Like the clean, new plastic of video cassette tapes. Everything had been beautifully laminated. The carpet, blue with sprinkles of confetti. I instantly felt at home.

“It’s this way,” Billy beckoned, leading to the horror aisles.

There they were. All the monsters and beasties and Freddies and Jasons. The blood and the guts. Chainsaws and knives in silhouettes. Creepy little men with claws for hands and hooks for noses next to bug-eyed aliens made of rubber. There were bikinis, too. As I noticed the cheerleaders and sorority girls on the boxes, potential victims one and all, surely, I realized these movies now contained an entirely different thrill to go along with the pure visceral horror that had haunted me since I was a child.

And there we saw him.

“Pinhead! All right!” Billy said, picking up the tape. The white demon, with the nails in his skull and a box of Hell in his hands, sneered at us.

Billy handed me the video case. I examined the images of hooks and flesh and strange, pierced devils with fear and desire.

“Right on,” I agreed.

“You think that hurts? Having all those nails in your head?”

“I think that’s part of the point. Like, they’re all about pleasure and pain?”

“Sick, dude.” He loved it. He put the video back and picked up the plain Blockbuster cartridge behind it, which contained the actual video tape.

I followed Billy to the counter, unsure how we were to proceed. “Are you seventeen?”

“In September.”

“Me, too.”

“Sweet.”

“So, how are we renting it?”

“Family privilege.” He smiled as we reached the clerk, whose lighter blonde hair and freckles did not conceal that he was clearly related to Billy.

“What are you doing here, Billy?” Scott (according to his name tag) asked.

Billy put a couple of crinkled dollar bills on the counter. “Finally checking out Hellraiser!”

“It’s messed up,” Scott warned dispassionately.

“Nice.” Billy grinned.

I looked at the dollar bills as Scott took them. I turned to Billy. “I’ll pay you back.”

“It’s cool, man.”

“Nah, I’m trying to get a summer job.”

“I’ll hook you up there, too!” He lit up. “Hey, Scott!”

Scott worked the computer, checking out the tape. “Yeah?”

“You still hiring?”

Scott glanced at me in either suspicion or boredom. “Maybe.”

“Could you hook Connor up?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. You got any experience?”

I smiled sheepishly. Truthfully, I had never had a job before, which explained part of my eagerness. “I’ve seen a lot of movies?” True, but I said it as a question, because I hardly thought that sufficient experience.

Scott nodded, satisfied. “Yeah, I’ll see what I can do.”

* * *

Billy lived a couple streets over from Uncle Willard, on Austin Lane, a neighborhood crowded with weeping willows. He paused his bike by his mailbox to point across the street. “That’s where Laura Beckham lives.”

“Okay.”

“No, dude, she’s hot.”

I nodded. It’s not that I didn’t believe him, but I had absolutely nothing to contribute to that. So, I said, “Cool.”

“Yeah.” He looked wistfully over at her house. The porch swing swayed slightly in the breeze. “She’s like, half Norwegian and half Indian. That’s a super-hot combination. You know, scientifically.”

“If you say so.” I didn’t know anything about that.

“Or, uh, Native American. I guess,” he corrected himself.

“Okay.”

“We grew up together. Well, mostly. She went to prep school in California, but when she came back, she was…” He held out his hands in front of his chest, illustrating his points. “I guess there’s something in the beaches out there.”

“Nice.” I nodded, though my cheeks were warm with embarrassment.

“Anyway, she’s going out with that a-hole Wayne Duggins.”

“Bummer.”

He looked from the house to me, appreciating my sympathy. “It is a bummer. Thank you.” He sighed as he locked up his bike. “I think she’d be better off with a guy like me.”

“Or, better yet, you specifically.”

He slapped my back. “Let’s go, man.”

Hellraiser was pretty cool and hardcore R-rated. Extremely violent and in a bizarre way. This wasn’t Arnold mowing down bad guys with a machine gun. These were weird British demons ripping open their victims with hooks, mutilating them into all sorts of grotesque designs. There was a dark artistry in their deformations. You didn’t want to see it, but you couldn’t look away.

“Nasty, dude!” Billy grimaced as Frank sucked the lifeforce out of another victim.

He turned to me. “Would you do it?”

An odd question because nothing in that movie looked like anything worth doing. “Do what?”

“Like, if you had a box, say that could open other worlds, give you powers to talk to people from beyond here, go someplace you never knew existed.”

“They’re talking about pleasure and pain. They’re sick monsters,” I countered, but he was painting an interesting picture.

“Yeah, I mean, not these guys. But something else…” He drifted off and gazed back at the screen.

Of course, I didn’t realize this at the time, but that vague question would become more relevant than either of us imagined.