Rick Moody - Demonology

— Make sure the pin is still in the handle, Gerry volunteered from higher ground. — Or you’ll discharge chemical foam all over the house.

— Shut up, Abramowitz, Mars said. — What are you, fire safety commissioner or something?

— Yeah, Henderson said, — buzz off. This fire extinguisher’s been in this house longer than you’ve been in this town. You jerk. If we wanted your opinions, we’d torture you.

Their remarks emboldened him to push by, to descend. His relatives had been oppressed in every country in Europe. His suffering was immemorial. And there was no time to dwell on slights, because Polly Firestone was waiting by the screen door that led to the porch, and, beyond the porch, into the woods. She’d disposed of her sheets.

— You’re still late.

The forest beyond her, beyond the porch. Remember it? There used to be forest in Fairfield County. A little forest anyhow. Woodpeckers, foxes, turkeys, muskrats, skunk cabbage, trees thickly competing, trees for climbing. The idea of tree-climbing outlasted the moment when it was age-appropriate to climb trees, well into your teens, you were alone in the woods, in the density of woods, you had one eye out for the right arrangement of boughs that would reward your nimbleness. Conifers were better than decid uous trees. They dropped their mattress of needles below. Here was one, on this very spot, and before you could get too panicky about the heights involved, you were halfway up the tree, never mind stories you heard, that kid in the wheelchair, that one who fell to his death, you were halfway up the tree, with a view. Just like all those real estate people were always saying. You had a view. I’m what I see, lord of what I see, I’ll give it back sometime, I’ll be a kid again, later, a kid who cant do anything right, cant say the right thing, cant put a sentence together or sing in tune, a kid cutting through the woods, on the way home, but for now I’m surveying the expanse of my empire. That forest you remembered with a catch in your throat was itself a falling off from a prior forest, a primeval forest that was more grand, more impenetrable, more wild than the forest you remembered. The moment you sentimentalized, therefore, was a watered down conception of something more genuine that preceded your nostalgia by centuries. Thus, any true account of a suburban forest should feature a neglectful hunter grinding down a home-rolled cigarette in a bed of pine needles, underneath the very tree you once climbed, this after he has drunkenly fired thirteen times into a white-tailed deer fawn, to make sure it won’t move anymore, after which he vomits during disembowelment of the animal. Its for the best that we ’ re out here pruning the weaker individuals of this herd today because otherwise these animals will get into your gardens and eat your landscaping. The hunter grinds out the stub of the cigarette in the bed of pine needles, and the woods burn.

In the case of the Fosters’ Halloween party, the ignition was different.

Polly led him out, down the steps, and then they were at the bank of the creek. All the time Gerry had spent in the house, in the consideration of its interiors, turned out to be time squandered. If the elusive center of the party could be said to be anywhere, according to the barometers like median chatter decibels, recycling potential, egg fertilization percentages, and so forth, it had to be here at the bank of the Fosters’ creek. The waterfall — a dozen feet of glacial moraine with a froth overspilling it — emptied here, into the creek, which in turn went meandering into town, under the Boston Post Road, over by the Good Wives’ Shopping Center (where they filmed The Stepford Wives), down into the Five Mile River, which emptied into the Sound, which emptied into the Atlantic. A host of the invitees from Nick Fosters Halloween extravaganza were gathered in this vicinity. On the banks. In a window upstairs, an LP skipped in its last groove. No one made an effort to correct it. Carnival dynamism was the eminent force: The center of the party was wherever the greatest amount of intoxicants was located, and therefore here was the missing keg, in the shallows of the river, where it was cool, and one of the girls who had come with Polly Firestone, Nancy Van Ingen, was knee-deep in the creek, handing effervescences of beer back to the celebrants on dry land. Nancy’s beige corduroys were wet up above her knees. Her carelessness seemed oddly seductive. There was an expectation in the air, Gerry recognized, and it had to do with more than beer. Polly Firestone accepted his pile of sheets.

— Someone’s going over the waterfall in a barrel.

— No, stupid. Her face obscured by a mound of bedding.

— What’s your costume anyhow?

— Florence Nightingale, Polly said. — Or maybe I’m a fresh tampon. Just put on one of these.

— A sheet?

Was it a toga event? A stylized reenactment of ancient Greek civilization? Or a Mayan sacrifice? An impromptu surgery on the first volunteer? Or were these the chasubles of priests, these sheets? The hooded garments of southern prejudice? It wasn’t that anyone was taking off their nondescript corduroys, but they were all beginning to wrap the Fosters’ sheets around them, the doubles, the full-size sheets, the queens from the guest rooms. It was surprising that the kids would look this stupid. You almost never found that among teens. Their objection to being Young Republicans was that Young Republicans dressed badly. Gerry wasn’t sure he could do it, wear a sheet, but his hesitation was interrupted, when Julian Peltz called to him, suddenly, from behind a nearby spruce. He could see one of Peltz’s hands, plump, diminutive, beckoning.

— Be right back, Gerry said to Polly Firestone, who no longer listened. She was complaining to Lynn Skeele about having to read Henry James for English class.

If it was the last good conversation that Gerry Abram-owitz had with Julian Peltz, it was still more troubling than good, as conversations were when friendships sheered apart. Julian led them out toward the winter tee of Old Man Foster’s practice course. Peltz was quiet where he had been prolix; pale where he had been rosy; uncertain where he had been witty and sure-footed. Moonlight had brought some crisis down upon him. Though the front yard had been like a crowd scene from some movie, it was empty now. There were just the two of them, the boys of Darien with the unusual surnames. The groundskeeper had doused the flaming pumpkins, or switched them off. There were just a few exterior spotlights. If, in the backyard, facing the creek, adolescence was arriving at its crescendo, elsewhere in Darien it was business as usual Two boys sat at the edge of a tee. They hadn’t soaped a window, they hadn’t rung a doorbell and fled, they hadn’t beaten a smaller kid, they hadn’t stolen anyone’s candy, they hadn’t smoked pot, they hadn’t seen vampires.

— Time to tally up? Gerry said. He was trying to be good-natured, though the circumstances no longer seemed to merit it.

— Okay. Peltz hesitated.

— Let’s see, I had a longish chat with Dinah Polanski. About some book she was reading.

— Dinah Polanski?

— I know, I know. Maybe it was going to be the best I could do for the evening. How did I know? Anyway, I didn’t go through with it. She wanted to talk about college. I saw Sally Burns asleep on a chaise longue. She looked beautiful. She probably wouldn’t care, since she was asleep, right, but I got all cowardly and couldn’t do anything. Dee Maguire was with her too. I saw the Fosters’ cook in the pantry. She didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Who else? Polly Firestone. I used all my debating skill. Not a chance. She’s sort of nice, though. So it was just a lot of conversations, really.