Co-Cola Playground

The great cut in the hill was orange with vertical tooth-marks from the excavator that had torn away the clayish soil. The tree line that marked the top started with the trunks eking out their places in the soil maybe fifty feet from the floor. The edge of this hill was at the top of the place where the machine had cut away soil for three days. It made room for the new ball fields, and left those great gnawing toothmarks from the front of its bucket in the bright orange clay as if it were some beast that ate dirt.

At the top of the edge stood the pine-pole Scout building, tucked back in the field pines and occasional longer needled blue green white pine, punctuated by a great shagbark hickory tree, one of the few in the community. There at that place was where a young man had killed himself, a child burdened beyond life by his sins at so young an age.

Standing there, by the hickory tree where they found him hanging, looking down and out at the school, you could see the softball diamond, and the kickball field and then the school. There was space between the playing fields going from the bright orange clay that got slick when it rained to the slightly pinker sand and clay around the edge. That space had a scrubby edge of sedge grass, worn to a nub by the children’s feet, and yet necessary to keep separate the playing fields. They were lucky, these children, to have a contained space in which to discharge their energy and compete with one another, and where children in the community could come play when school wasn’t in session.

His neck was bent at a crooked and peculiar bent, one that reminded her of how that old mean red hen’s neck had looked when her Great Aunt Hillie had broken its neck and right before she chopped it plumb clean off at the shoulders with the hatchet. She could wring easier than she could chop, and Clarice refused to hold the terrorized hen for her.

Virgil, young man of 15, had been caught doing something with Lige Stewart’s prize ewe that is reserved for two-leggeds. Chances are that many other adolescent boys and perhaps adult men did the same thing, but Virgil? He got caught. And never heard the end of it for six months and thirteen days—even the preacher took it up, talking about the sin of bestiality as an immortal mark of the devil. Virgil was doomed.

People laughed at him—and some baaaaa’d at him—as he walked, at school and they say even his older brother taunted him. On the thirteenth day of the sixth month after his sister caught him in the act, he climbed that hill to the hut he helped build as he qualified for Eagle Scout, used a rock to toss a rope over the bottom limb of the shagbark hickory tree, tied the long end around the tree, fashioned a noose, stacked up some rocks he could stand on and stepped into the noose and off the rocks. Instantly his neck snapped, and he no longer heard the taunting or felt the searing shame that had come to rule his life. The new ball fields would have been his last view of this earth.

At the edge of the playground, the land dropped down maybe two feet to the classrooms with the big tall windows with the hoppers at the bottom. This was the brand-new addition, the three classrooms and a new cafeteria with a breezeway on the inside courtyard to the old building.

In later years, they had given up more of the edge of the playground for the portables, classrooms made of trailers, and now, it was terraced to help manage drainage issues, with ribboned rows of raised earth. It looked trashy compared to its former sedge-broomed self, with these squat square metal classrooms, two single-wides somehow seamed together planted on top. They were nondescript beige corrugated boxes, with black asphalt roof tops and windows down one side.

The windows all faced each other, so children could stick their tongues out at each other and teachers could make semi-public their punishment. Public education was indeed public.

The old building sat beyond these new rooms and the lunch room, with the inside sides facing a tiny grassy courtyard that led up to the great tall windows. This old building, a brick one-story building with great tall windows and a tiny cupola on top in the middle. It reeked of nearly half a century of people, green sawdust, and purple duplicator fluid, and sat farthest from the eye’s view from the top of this carved, toothed bluff with the hanging tree.

It survived the first World War, the Great Depression… the Second World War, the horrifying polio epidemic that twisted, gnarled, and paralyzed children, some of whom were lucky enough to go the Children’s Polio Hospital, the only one in the US, a mere 30 miles and another world away. It survived families coming, going, dying, and wrestling with their demons and darkness as they pursued lives in this tiny farming community in the edge of the county, residents labelled cabbage-heads by anyone who lived further in, in town.

The school knew, as it had every day for every school since it opened its’ doors in 1915, that it was about to be the ten AM recess. Children would pour out of doors and spill onto the playground, the smaller ones running like sugar ants on a watermelon; the oldest ones, sauntering to show their cool. They would run, and shriek, playing tag, crack the whip, and cluster in groups to talk. But today? The school knew: such a recess it would be.

Clarice was on the playground for recess, dawdling and drawing in the dirt, feeling the energy around her, and periodically traveling outside of herself to Watch from the bluff where a particular pattern of light near the Scout hut drew her. She was also watching herself Watch the other primary grade children mill in the free time for visiting friends, playing simple games, and shrieking at the pitch of a high tinny whistle with a sweet melody of laughter woven in.

Until, that is, the big Ennislaw boy, a few years older, much much bigger, lumpier, and considerably duller than the other primary grade children began to cloud over. His usually sullen visage twisted, darkened, and contorted to a deep lightning-eyed scowl as he focused on a child far younger and slighter than he.

Loy Locklear was a cute little boy: his skin was a little more olive than everyone else’s except the Mason children’s. People wondered about who had been in the woodpile in his family: maybe some Black or Greek, Greeks who had been rumored to come through in the late 30s, ending up in Queensboro. Loy’s dark hair was very curly—not nappy- or kinky-curly, but wavy like the waves in an old 1940s pompadour, without the pomade. His eyes were green, absolutely the color of a good olive flecked with gold.

He was thin, but not in a sickly way, and yet not wiry either. Planky, more angular than lanky, with the disjointed look of a child who wasn’t quite comfortable in his own skin. But he was clearly a child comfortable in his soul. The Ennislaw boy stepped back to lunge, then shove and throw Loy to the ground. He stood imperiously over Loy, glowered at his form, and walked away as if nothing had happened.

The air paused. The high tinny voices of a once-happy recess stopped. The leaves quit shaking and the bumble bees halted their wings. There was no noise as he lay there. Everything was waiting to exhale either in relief or horror.

It was horror. The skin on the meat of his right palm was gushing blood, flesh laid back like a filleted perch from the river. The lummox who lunged at him had done such a good job that Loy’s breath had been knocked out of him and he had yet to gasp and suck in air. His olive complected skin became more and more sallow with each passing second.

To Clarice, Watching outside of herself, it looked like he was hovering over himself in terror trying to gasp, with great excitation around him, that flowing moving Light seeing its shell for the first time. Unsure of itself, unsure of its unboundedness, it was a combination of frantic and curious.

That—the Light that he was instead of his form—was what was excited, like an octopus with many more arms and no hard edges sparkling softly. The luminescence was brightening and dimming, shimmering electrical connections at the finest, purest, level, overly excited by its self-awareness as Self.

Clarice directed her Self to this “Self-outside-self” for the first time. She showed herself, extending her compassion to the edge of her Light. Whatever it was at the Scout hut would have to wait. Loy, the Light Loy, joined in her Light, and with a grunt, his breath came back and he gasped for air eyes wide open as if waked from the dead.

She merged back in with her own flesh. As everyone began to shriek in their highest voices and run towards the classrooms, she began to run towards Loy. She squatted down beside him, catching just the edge of this reality rent by another, and slowed to a near stop where Loy lay trying to get his lungs in order. His cut hand spilled blood on the ground, and even though the rest of him heaved up and down, it did not yet move as his chest did.

She squatted down beside him, pulling her skirt down with one hand to cover her spraddle, looking directly in his eyes which had turned to see his now blood-soaked hand with the fileted flesh of his hand laying open and now focused on her. She was on the side of his cut hand.

“I seen you,” he said, ‘but it warnt you like this!”

“I saw you too,” she said. “Hold my hand. Now.”

He reached up his bloody hand to her, moaning and turning sick green as she took it in hers.

The teachers and recess assistants were busy grabbing frightened children and looking towards the old building she saw Mr. Carnahan striding towards them with his tie waving behind him, white First Aid kit under his arm and waving at her to get away.

“Say ‘Thank you’ now,” she said, getting fierce. “Now!”

“Thank you?” Loy said as she held his hand. There was no more blood, none where there had been on him, the ground, or on her. There was no cut, nor scar nor even redness where the cut had been. There was only one grimy small hand, with ragged dirty fingernails, a slightly torn plaid shirt, and big hurt feelings. There was no blood on Clarice, nor on the ground.

Clarice let go, got up and ran. Ran. With her eyes white with terror, and her heart leaping out of her chest. She tried to scream and act like the others had, without success.

Arriving in front of Loy, Mr. Carnahan didn’t even notice that something was perilously different, for he had never seen the blood in the first place.

But over by the basketball hoop, bent a little and with rotting gray cotton netting, Miss Likert had seen it all. She stood imperiously with her arms akimbo, wrapped up in her light cardigan sweater, wind ruffling the knee length skirt of her shirtwaist dress. And she knew there could be none of this.

“Witchcraft! Witchcraft, I tell you. That child is possessed. Simple as that. She can. Not. Stay. Here.” Miss Likert was leaning over Mr. Carnahan’s desk. Her index finger was pointing at him fiercely, shaking with anger and fear. “She cannot stay here.” And she thumped the desk with that shaking forefinger with each word.

She straightened imperiously, a square box of a woman in a modest shirtwaist dress replete with a belted waist. She crossed her arms stiffly. The Lord Godamighty had spoken.

“Miss Likert, I know what I saw. There was not and did not appear ever to have been a cut. No blood anywhere. Maybe the children were so frightened that they only thought they saw a cut!” He was exasperated with the whole thing.

“Mr. Carnahan, I seen it too.” Mrs. Campbell poked her head around the corner. “He was bleeding like a stuck pig. A piece of co-cola glass cut him. And when she took holt of his hand, it all went in reverse. Just went in reverse and undid itself. Never saw anything like it before. Just like Jesus healin’ the sick.”

Her head, preceded by the body she didn’t show, went back around the corner. Everyday stuff. Everyone ought to expect masterful healing. It was, after all, God’s Promise.

Miss Likert stood glowering over his desk. Mr. Carnahan’s head was cradled in his hands. She glared at Mrs. Campbell’s disappearing face, arms still crossed in defiance. “Hmph. Work of the devil is more like it.”

Meanwhile, back in the classroom where they expected her to be, Clarice sat—body and all—acting as if nothing had happened, she worked on her sums like a good second grader. She tried not to kick her legs back and forth. This was without much success, partly because her feet didn’t reach the ground, partly because she was terrified by what had just happened.

Soon, though, she noticed that there were whispers and stares. Then Mr. Carnahan called on the squawk box and asked Miss Suddeth to come to the office. Miss Suddeth told the class to keep working, and waited until the Teacher’s Aide for the hall came in to relieve her. She disappeared for what seemed like an eternity.

When she returned she was pale and could barely look at her class. She shuffled papers, took a deep breath, looked down and resumed teaching, teaching awkwardly because she knew that Clarice was in the class. Clarice who might be an angel or who might be the devil incarnate. As she began to move from math to reading, putting away one set of papers in favor of another, about to reach for her teacher’s edition of Fun with Dick and Jane, her arm froze.

If she moved to reading, the children would have to talk. Out loud. And that mean that That Child, Clarice, would have a voice. For heaven’s sake, she could already outread every child in her class.

Not only did it mean that Clarice might say something, it meant that the other children might speak as well. And that meant that there might be questions. This would not be Fun, with Dick and Jane or anyone else for that matter.

As she stood with her arm frozen in space, the class fell silent in waves. The students began to lean towards each other, whispering forward and sideways and every way except to Clarice. And as Miss Suddeth slowly lowered her arm with a puzzled look on her face, Clarice knew that even a dog knows where it isn’t wanted.

Clarice hung her head, assured in herself that what had happened was Right and Correct and yet deeply ashamed of being so different. Yet the draw of the different pattern by the Scout hut kept tugging her. She was bound by both the deep shame and the Knowing that she should climb the bluff to Scout hut. Soon.

Head hanging, she walked home kicking every rock she saw and wondering what her mother—worse yet, her grandmother—would think and do. She was strictly forbidden by her family from “Doing Things” as they called it. And here she had gone and done a very big “Thing.” And she knew she was about do another.

Clarice slipped gingerly opened the soft pine screen door, and slipped inside to go to her room. She heard her mother’s steps and froze. It was hard to stay in her body, to face her mother’s storming countenance. It was like looking lightning and thunder in the eye, if it had an eye. Clarice knew she had to redeem herself somehow. She rubbed the toe of one shoe against another, looking at the floor.

“As if we are not already in enough trouble. As if!” Her mother hissed the words out like the biggest maddest black snake Clarice could imagine. “Do you know that they have kicked you out of school?! You are not even old enough to be kicked out of school, but because they saw you Do Something, they have decided you are dangerous!” Her mother was pale with fury.

“Mama, I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” Clarice began to cry, big tears rolling down her face. He was hurt, and you and Gram said to always be a help. I just wanted my friend to be OK.” She was sobbing so hard she hiccuped.

“Go to your room and do your homework.” Her mother barked the instruction and Clarice obligingly slunk down the hall to her room. Her energy spent from the crying, she fell asleep. Her homework would wait.

She began to dream, deep in this hard sleep that felt. She couldn’t wake from this dream, and it felt as if her limbs were lead, heavy, muffled. The women came to her, dressed in plain clothing like the women of her community wore, took their aprons up and covered their arms with them, crossing their arms akimbo as if they had on flimsy mufflers to somehow keep warm.

Clarice didn’t recognize any of them at first, until she saw they were her dead relatives from way up higher in the hills than where she lived now. She felt the scorching blaze of their eyes and watched as they turned their backs on her, all but one. The one faced her, and walked towards her in this dull and heavy dream, her dream-feet not touching the ground. It was as if she was gliding. “Come, Clarice,” she said, “come with me. Let me show you something.”

She reached her hand out to Clarice, who took it and walked with her. They disappeared into the woods, the woman humming as they walked. Clarice felt paralyzed in her sleep, able only to do as she was told.

“Sit.” They had come to a spot in a yard not their own, a swept and not grass yard, with a small picnic table under a large white oak tree. “I am Esme. I am from your grandmother’s past. My job is to show you something that will help you with your family.” Esme reached down into what Clarice thought might be a pocket in her dress. She pulled out a small black book with a ribbon around it.

She held it up. “This is what you’re looking for. When you find it, you’ll find what was stolen from your family. It will restore right relationships with them. You will be a hero, and it will help you be able to go to school and stay in school. Look for light.” She spoke slowly and with emphasis.

Clarice looked at the little black book Esme held up. There was no printing on it, and it was tied as if it was too fat for its’ spine. The bottom right corner was worn. She couldn’t see any edges of paper, only the black leather that wrapped around whatever precious contents it contained.

The dream ended as quickly as it came. It simply disappeared. Clarice felt the weight lifted off her and rubbed her eyes as she woke up. She sat up, got off the bed and smoothed the covers. She stood up, stretched, and with her head a little higher, headed to the kitchen.

“What’s for dinner, Mama?” Clarice had her hand on the door frame to the kitchen. “Can I help?”

“It’s ‘may I.’ And we’re having salmon croquettes with green peas.” Her mother didn’t even look up. “Go outside and play. Be home before dark.”

Clarice was elated. Whatever exile she was in, this made it more tolerable. She remembered the little black book clearly, and decided to look for it. She trotted back to the school, and went back to the playground, to the spot where she had drawn circles in the dirt. They were still there. She sat down in the middle of them, and left her body to Watch. She scanned the bluff, and when she Looked at the Scout hut, she could see that peculiar energy, a blueish light like a small orb on the Southeast corner.

She went to it, and when she got there, the blueish orb led her to a spot at the base of the shagbark hickory tree where Virgil had hung himself. It was grown over. The orb settled on the ground and went into the soil.

Clarice found the end of a branch and began to dig away at the dirt. She dug carefully and then a little more frantically as the light began to fade. Only four inches below the surface she ran into a metal box that she dug out carefully. How was she going to explain it to her mother? Would she have to tell her about Esme?

As she excavated the box, she got more and more excited. It almost glowed. She extracted it, and on finding it to be heavy, held it against her to carry home. She left it underneath the white pine tree and decided to wait until tomorrow to explore what was in it.

Clarice went in, calling out “Mama, I’m home! I’m going to get ready for supper!” as she headed for the bathroom to clean her hands and nails so as not to give herself away.

After dinner she did her homework and went to bed, and the next morning, got up to go to school—only she couldn’t go to school. There were meetings her mother had to attend to perhaps re-enroll her. While her mother was away, Clarice retrieved the box and pried it open. It was filled with the little black book she had seen in her dreams, but that was not all. There were stacks of bills, and silver dollars, which was what had made it so heavy.

She set it on the kitchen table, and when her mother came home, she stopped in her tracks when she saw it. It had clearly been dug up. It had clearly been opened. It was clearly lots of money. It was her Uncle’s money from running white likker, hidden in secret tanks in his car. It had been stolen 23 years, three months, and two days before, nearly bankrupting the family.