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Freshwater Boys
By Adam Schuitema OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2014 Delphinium Books
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-1326-1
CHAPTER 1
NEW ERA, MICHIGAN
You start with a name, and the rest follows: youth and age and the scattering of ashes. The town was named in the 1870s. Darryl read the brief history on the menu's back cover at the Trailside Restaurant. He'd read it before. A local doctor/sawmill owner had been fascinated by the dawning of that wondrous technological time: telephones, typewriters, elevators. Darryl was twelve years old and, sitting in the restaurant, was a little young yet to notice that some people in town—some sipping coffee in the vinyl booths around him— still waited wearily for that dawning to end and the full daylight of a new era to begin. He was a little young to notice that only a handful were content with the time—with the dawn—and felt it was the moment when the light was near-perfect.
Darryl Pickle thought a lot about names because of his own. He'd checked the phone book, which covered everyone along Lake Michigan from Ludington down to New Era and as far east as Walkerville and Walhalla, but his family was the only Pickle. He'd heard there were a few in Muskegon and a few more in Grand Rapids, but he'd never checked the phone books in those cities. And he thought a lot about the word "hermit," which he'd always found funny, and the name Joseph Doornbos, which was the name of the hermit down the road.
He'd once asked his dad what a hermit was, and found out, "A hermit's a man without a woman or anyone else," which made Darryl think of a lot of people he knew, mostly divorced uncles on his mom's side. But they weren't hermits. They weren't like Joseph Doornbos, severed from the earth and sky as much as from family and friends.
Darryl stayed close to the earth. For his birthday—in addition to a video game, a bright silver compass, a pair of flannel slippers, and some other assorted clothes—his parents had bought him a new dirt bike. His birthday was in June, and he washed the bike every day, even now at the end of August. Part of what makes summer so perfect up here in the country—especially for kids whose parents both work full-time—is the freedom to get on a bike and vanish for hours. Darryl took it everywhere, through town and out of it, and especially to the woods by his house.
He searched for uncommon trees and animals. Sometimes he'd park the bike at the edge of the woods and wear his new flannel slippers into the moist rot of moss and dead leaves and fallen branches. The bottoms of the slippers were leather, and he pretended they were moccasins that helped him walk without sound. The woods made him feel invisible to the outside, but the moccasins made him feel invisible on the inside. He held the shiny compass in one hand, though he knew the woods by heart, and they were too small to ever get lost in. In the other hand he held a field book that helped him identify different trees. The beeches were his favorite, their smooth silver skin and almost muscular trunks like the legs of elephants. A few of them were along what people called Refrigerator Trail, because an old refrigerator had been dumped among the brown leaves. These beeches were larger than any others he'd seen in the area, their huge limbs diverging from the squat trunks close to the ground and curving upward on all sides so that they looked like monstrous hands, or a jail cell.
Darryl often brought a spiral notebook into the woods with him. He hunted without guns. He crept along the trails, which were overgrown from under-use, and tried to catch a glimpse of something rare. When he spotted an animal, he marked it down in the notebook, each sighting a vertical pencil mark next to its name. He didn't count squirrels or common birds like robins or even cardinals; there were too many. But he'd seen seventy-five white-tailed deer in his life, fifteen at once, gathered at twilight in his neighbor's cherry orchard. He'd counted a few falcons and owls, wild turkeys, and several raccoons. Once he came across a white llama, being led down the trail by a girl who lived with horses down the road. He didn't count the llama; it seemed like cheating since it wasn't native. He always hoped to find a bear, but knew there weren't any for at least a hundred miles this far south.
His rarest find was two bald eagles that he'd seen at Claybanks Park on the lake, one circling above the trees and one later perched high in the branches farther down shore. That night, he wondered if he'd just seen the same eagle twice, but he didn't erase the two markings in his notebook. It was easier to tell his family that he'd actually seen two, instead of clouding a good story with doubt.
Darryl liked to be alone. He enjoyed hanging out with his older brother, Jesse, sometimes, but outside of his family he didn't have any real friends. Jesse always had to be with people, always had to have background voices and someone to ricochet his jokes and observations and even his moments of silence off. Darryl slipped away when Jesse's friends came over. He went inside when the guys were out, outside when they were in. Jesse played football and basketball. Darryl's favorite sports were distance running and swimming—no teammates really necessary. He played board games by himself, jumping with the black checkers as well as the red, trying his hardest to win both ways. Last school year at lunch, when he finished eating and other kids started to wander in cliques through the cafeteria or sit across from each other to play paper football, Darryl would go to work with sharpened gray pencils on a pad of plain white paper, sketching the trees and animals from the woods. His favorites combined both, birds in maple branches or deer peeking out from behind birches.
The fall and the school year were coming—both too quickly. It already felt like midSeptember. Scattered maples through the county were turning already, flaring out in an orange that seemed gaudy with the asparagus fields and most everything else still green. The cherries throughout the local orchards had fallen more quickly than usual, and the apples were already getting big and red, the slim branches bending down as though strung along with heavy ornaments. The weather was unusually cool. Acorns cracked with metallic sounds, bouncing off the hood of his dad's Buick. Darryl's stomach felt light and nervous. He didn't want to return to school.
He spent most of the last weeks of vacation on his dirt bike. Each morning, his dad walked the three blocks to his job at the canning company, and his mom walked the two blocks to the Reformed church, where she was the secretary. They left Jesse and him lists of chores. Darryl often had to pick up something at the hardware store, and even though there was one in New Era, he usually used the excuse to ride three miles to the True Value in Rothbury.
He rode the straight stretch down Oceana Drive. New Era is in Oceana County. It's another sly name meant to convince outsiders, and even locals, of a great importance in the area, as if the lake a few miles from here was really the fifth and unnamed ocean, that if you charted a course west for the horizon, you'd not only hit the shores of Wisconsin but also continue onward to Japan and Russia. On warmer summer days, the country road wavered in the sun as if seen through gas fumes, mirages both north and south. On cooler days, a sharp wind swooped through the open fields. Halfway to Rothbury, Darryl would skid onto the shoulder of the road to ensure that a dust cloud rose from his back tire. He went to the hardware store out of town so he could stop and look up at the bus.
The yellow school bus rested on top of a sand dune back from the road—an inland dune forgotten perhaps by ancient waters. It looked as though the bus itself had been washed onto the top and marooned after a great flood. Its wheels had sunk into the soft sand, and its windows looked covered on the inside with black plastic. The side read MUSKEGON PUBLIC SCHOOLS. The black paint of the letters was flaking off, revealing an inner, silver skin. This was where the hermit, Joseph Doornbos, had lived for fifteen years, since before Darryl was born.
The hermit was rarely seen, and even then it was from afar, from the road below, as he wandered around his property at the top of the dune. Darryl had spotted him once. It was like the eagle sighting, both startling and, later, something he began to doubt. He'd expected the hermit to have long hair and a ratty, unkempt beard that nearly dragged in the sand as he walked. But from a distance he looked clean-shaven and either bald or with a head of very short white hair. A loose T-shirt hung from his gaunt frame, tucked into brown work pants. He must have been well over eighty years old. And he must have seen Darryl that day, watching him from the road, because he froze for a moment before quickly shuffling to the far side of the bus, disappearing like a deer.
Everyone toyed with the rumors. Darryl even heard them tossed about at home, around the dinner table. He and his family tried to guess what the hermit lived on, if he had any family, and why he chose isolation. Darryl thought hard about the last question. Before this, he'd never thought about adults being completely alone, and he'd never considered they could die that way.
"What's he eat?"
"I don't know."
"Someone must bring him food."
"Who?"
"Who knows?" said Darryl's dad. "I hear he's rich, so he can buy all the help he needs. Like an eccentric millionaire. I think his granddad was a lumber baron. Maybe he just eats all that money and jewels of his. Feeds on dollar bills like white bread." He took a fierce bite out of his roll. They all laughed.
More than the hermit himself, the rumors of what he kept inside the bus were the most fascinating, and speculative. The treasure theory was popular, among kids and adults. But Darryl's mom thought the bus was probably stripped empty to its essentials inside and that the hermit had forsaken the material and devoted himself entirely to God. Kids Darryl's age liked to think more grimly, that the hermit was a murdering kidnapper, that there were children's dead bodies sitting upright in all the rows of the bus, seat belts clicked shut across their cold laps. Kyle TenBrink and Randy Dodge claimed they'd snuck up there when the hermit was away and that the inside was lit with a kerosene lamp. They said they'd seen a decapitated chicken in a rusty cage, a puddle of blood collected in a pan underneath it. Stepping through the dim bus, they could read in sloppy redness the names of victims, past and future, written like finger paint on the inside walls.
"One said Pickle," said Kyle TenBrink, retelling this in the cafeteria last school year.
"Of course," said Randy Dodge, " 'cause Pickles are tasty."
Darryl eventually left for a table in a distant corner of the room to work on his sketches. He didn't believe the story. He didn't believe the hermit would ever leave in the first place, and if he did, he wouldn't leave the bus unlocked. And he didn't believe Kyle and Randy had the guts to check anyway. Sitting at a corner table, Darryl softly shaded the bark of a beech tree with his pencil and got frustrated because he could never get it to look three-dimensional. He made sure to stare at his work and not look up until lunch was over. He didn't worry about murdering kidnappers, just about kids like Kyle TenBrink and Randy Dodge.
* * *
The secrets soon eroded like sand. Darryl, Jesse, and their parents went to the Trailside Restaurant on the second-to-last Saturday morning before school started. They did this every week. The boys tried to steer their thoughts away from school, but a cold front still draped the lakeshore. They ate pancakes with more syrup than their mom thought was necessary, and she and their dad commented over and over about how good the coffee was today.
The place was filled with farmers, friends from the canning company, and members of their church congregation. Deputy Martinez entered through the glass doors wearing his glimmering badge and his brown uniform. He took off his brown hat to reveal thick black hair, combed straight back. He shook hands with people and waved to others as he made his way among the cluttered wooden tables and chairs to the counter for some coffee. Darryl's dad stood and followed him to the counter to pay the bill. The two of them shook hands and smiled. They talked. Darryl wiped syrup from his chin with his fist and tried to read lips. He couldn't. His dad and Deputy Martinez had gone to school together, and sometimes they still hung out on Sunday afternoons to watch football. His dad looked surprised and shook his head. Deputy Martinez nodded, spoke some more, and waved his hand at something beyond the walls of the restaurant.
A few minutes later, Darryl's dad returned with a toothpick in his mouth and a handful of peppermints for the boys. His eyes said he had news.
"Our old friend Mr. Doornbos passed away yesterday."
"You're kidding," said Mrs. Pickle.
"Who's that?" asked Jesse.
"Your hermit."
"He's not my hermit," said Jesse.
"He's not my old friend, either," said Darryl. Unlike Jesse, he hadn't forgotten the hermit's real name.
"You know what I'm gettin' at," said their dad. "Jorge just told me. They got a call from his daughter and found the body yesterday morning. Sent it to a funeral home."
"He has a daughter?" their mom asked.
"Guess so. She's an old bird herself, but I guess she lives just up in Pentwater. Jorge said she used to bring Mr. Doornbos food and such."
The family stood up from the table and walked outside into the bright, cool light. It reflected off cars and shop windows. Across the street, one of the early turning maples was lit in autumn red. The Pickles walked the few blocks home.
"What are they doin' with the bus?" asked Darryl.
"I don't know," said his dad. He was sucking on his toothpick, flipping it over with his tongue, nearly scraping the roof of his mouth with the sharp points. "Gettin' rid of it somehow. I guess the daughter owns all of it now, and she wants to sell the property. Nobody's gonna want that thing straddlin' the hill."
As they approached home, Darryl and Jesse began to walk a little faster, ahead of their parents.
"Slow down, boys," called their mom. "You're not goin' anywhere for a while. Play inside or play ball out in the yard."
"Why?"
" 'Cause," said their dad, "we know where you'd head to if we let you take off on your bikes. I don't want you up there by that bus." He slid the toothpick from his teeth and threw it into the grass. The boys turned back toward the house, looked at each other, and spoke without words.
* * *
On Monday their dad was back to work, their mom was behind her desk in the church office, and Darryl and Jesse were like other kids in town, gone on their bikes. Jesse was the only kid Darryl ever rode with. He rode his dirt bike, and Jesse rode their mom's old Schwinn with the metal basket on the front. His own bike had a busted chain. Jesse wanted a promise that Darryl would trade on the way back, but Darryl wouldn't do it.
"It's my bike. You'll just have to look like an old lady."
"I could still beat your ass in a race."
They raced in the cool August morning, and the wind chilled their arms and legs. They refused to wear jeans or long sleeves just yet. They raced, but they would have ridden fast anyway because their mom came home early for lunch, and although she was never suspicious of their being gone, she always got suspicious when she saw them leaving. Jesse's bike couldn't compete with Darryl's, so Darryl held back and taunted him in one of those rare moments when the younger brother had the power. He cupped his hand over his mouth to amplify his voice. "If you raced a pregnant lady you'd come in third."
"I'll turn around," said Jesse, struggling and standing up as he pedaled to get more power. "And if I do, you won't dare check out the bus alone, so you'll never find out what's inside."
"I'm just kiddin'," said Darryl. It was true. This was one thing he didn't want to do by himself.
Oceana Drive was busy with cars and semis, and a county sheriff's car even passed, maybe Deputy Martinez. Darryl was nervous. They rode to the inland dune where the bus rested on top like a tarnished, crooked crown.
"It's wide open," said Jesse. They'd expected yellow police tape to be wrapped around the trees and strung all the way up the hill, blocking off the land. But it looked the same as always. Darryl's anxiety faded a little. It started to feel less like a crime.
"We should go up the back side," said Jesse. "Someone will see us goin' right up the front."
"Is there a trail through the woods on the other side?"
"I don't know. I think there's Christmas tree farms back there anyway. We'd get caught cuttin' through there, too."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Freshwater Boys by Adam Schuitema. Copyright © 2014 Delphinium Books. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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