Scott Spencer - A Ship Made of Paper

He realizes that the candle is pointing right at him, that it is going to fire into his face, and he jerks his head away and quickly pushes the can-dle forward.

He scrambles up.Then, in the darkness, against all probability:he hears a voice.“Hey, what are you doing?”He looks up at the sound and sees Hampton standing at the top ofthe hill.

There is an instant when Daniel is almost wild with relief.It is as if he loves Hampton as much as he loves Iris.

The Roman candle ignites, and the first fireball from it rises and flies, making a sound like air being sucked out ofa pipe.It launches at a forty-five-degree angle and never reaches the sky.It strikes Hampton and buries itselfdeep into the softest part ofhis throat.Hampton just stands in place.There is enough moonlight now to see his expression.He is stunned, hurt.His mouth opens.His hand clasps the object in his throat, but he doesn’t appear to be trying to pull it out.It’s almost as ifhe’s holding it in place.His legs buckle and then they are useless.He sits down, heavily, his head falls forward and then his body tilts to the side.

He topples over and starts to roll.

Daniel runs up the hill, shouting.But even now his progress is impeded;he looks over his shoulder, back down at the pond.He is still in the grip ofthe notion that Hampton, another Hampton, the real Hamp-ton, is in the water, he can’t quite shake it.Though now the clouds are moving quickly and the moonlight is streaming down, and Daniel can see what he could not see before—in the water is a partially submerged log, the top halfofa tree that has been snapped in two by the storm, its gan-glia ofdead branches surrounded by leaves.

Six months pass.The spring is winding down, reverting to the insolent, unpredictable nature with which it began, cold one day, warm the next.Though the schools have weeks before closing for summer, the Leyden teenagers are behaving as iftheir vacations have already begun, prowling the streets beginning in the late afternoon and staying in their packs through the evening.Now it’s about four in the afternoon, a bright, mild day, the sky like a child’s drawing, and Derek Pabst drives his patrol car through Leyden’s small commercial neighborhood, past the Koffee Kup, which seems to serve everyone in town who drives an American car, and then past theTaste ofSoHo, where most ofthe cus-tomers drive imports, and then pastWindsor Hardware, which has be-gun stocking more Italian crockery and ornate English fireplace utensils.

For the most part, the stores on Leyden’s little Broadway are the same ones that were there when Derek was a boy—the Smoke Shop, Moun-tain Stream Realty, Buddy’s Card Shop, Candyland, Donna’s Uniforms, the WindsorPharmacy, Sewand Vac, Kirk’s VarietyStore, Finand Feather, Tack andTackle, and the Stoller and Hoffman InsuranceAgency.

Derek cruises through town without expecting to see anything he will have to react to.Except for traffic violations, he has never seen a crime in progress in his twelve-year career.He has been, for the most part, after the fact—showing up after a house has been burgled, after a wall has been covered with graffiti, after a wife has been smacked around by her drunken husband.Finding MarieThorne in the Richmond woods last November had been the most dynamic moment ofDerek’s career, and the satisfaction of that feat was all but cancelled by, first ofall, her not wanting to be found, and, secondly, by the hideous accident that took place in those same woods a halfhour later.Nevertheless, Derek remains alert as he makes his custom-ary rounds.You make your presence known, you show the flag.It reminds people they are living under the rule oflaw, it makes everyone feel safer, it brings out the best in them.He stops at the town’s central traffic light, where Broadway intersects with Route100,the county’s main road that goes south to NewYork City and north toAlbany.The wind swings the hang-ing traffic light back and forth like a censer.A processional ofhigh school kids crosses the street in front ofhim, fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds in cargo pants and tank tops, a mixed group ofboys and girls, horsing around, shoves, laughter, their skin glistening, all ofthem in hormonal overdrive.

As is Derek himself.Spring always awakens his longing.He thaws like a river, his blood rushes, he can hear it as he lies in his bed and waits to fall asleep.The constellations wheeling in the spring skies seem to exert undue influence on him.It is not only that he is seasonally overcome with lust, but that the lust itselfhas such a melancholy weight to it.He watches the teenagers as they make their way through the white lines of the crosswalk and come percolating up onto the sidewalk.Is that Buddy Guyette’s daughter in those pale, distressed jeans? My God, the ass on her.He feels a little twist ofsensual agony.Then he sees Mercy Crane, whose father is also a Leyden cop.She is alone, walking with her eyes cast down, wearing baggy clothes to hide her shape.She looks dejected, her hair hangs lank and dirty over her eyes, she slings her backpack over her shoulder and holds on to the strap with one hand.

Mercy looks up, sees Derek through the sun-struck windshield, with its reflections ofrooftops and upside-down trees.She raises a practically lifeless hand in greeting, ekes out a tiny smile.

Derek drives another quarter mile and turns into the driveway leading to the Richmond Library, originally funded by Ferguson Richmond’s family a hundred years ago.Now it’s a public library, funded halfby the state and halfby the town.It’s a pleasant old brick building, with some-thing ofthe Russian dacha about it, flanked by locust trees.Derek likes to come here to smoke in private, sitting on the hood ofhis car, savoring the taste oftobacco, letting the nicotine simultaneously jack him up and cool him down, and think about his life.A few years ago, the town built a basketball court behind the library, and though the cement has cracked and the baskets aren’t regulation height, there’s often a decent pickup game going on for Derek to watch while he smokes.

He steers his car with the heel ofhis left hand, using the right to pluck a cigarette out ofhis breast pocket.As he swings around the library and approaches the court, he can hear the excited young male voices, the pounding ofthe ball on the cement, and then he sees something that gal-vanizes him, sends a rush ofadrenaline through him.

TwoAfrican-American males, fifteen to eighteen years old, one tall, the other taller, one thin, the other thinner, one black, the other blacker, and both ofthem fitting the description oftwo ofthe escaped Star of Bethlehem boys who are still at large.Unsnapping his holster strap as he gets out ofthe car, Derek walks quickly toward the basketball court.It’s a two-on-two full-court game, shirts versus skins, both the black kids have their shirts off.Derek approaches from the north and the action is under the south basket, so no one sees him right away.But then some-one makes a basket, the ball is taken out ofbounds, and the flow ofthe game reverses.Derek is still fifteen or twenty yards from the fence sur-rounding the court.As soon as he knows he’s been spotted he breaks into a run, shouting,“Hey, you, stay where you are.Don’t move.”

The white boys do as they’re told, but the blacks know better.They practically fly through the gate on the south end ofthe court and into the cornfield that’s on the Richmond Library’s eastern edge.In the past, the corn would not have been knee-high this time ofyear, but the farmer who normally harvests these thirty acres moved toArizona, and last year’s crop, ten feet tall and dark brown, is still standing.The boys are invisible.

Derek doesn’t bother to chase them in.As a boy, he ran from friends, rivals, and even the police through this very same field ofcorn, and he knows exactly where the boys will emerge—they will take the natural path that empties out onto the open land right behind theVFW post.He walks quickly back to his car, but before he gets in he shouts at the white boys:“You be here when I get back.”