Jokers Club (4 page)

“It could be the talk of the town,” Dale said. “We could become living legends.”

Martin turned to face him. “Or dead ones if we get caught.”

“We won’t get caught,” Oliver stressed. “Not as long as you all do what I say and don’t screw up. Besides, what could they do to us? We’re just kids.”

“So what’d you have in mind?” Geoff asked.

“We bring him to Heifer’s house. Lean him up against the door and ring the doorbell. When he opens that door, the Colonel will scare him so bad he’ll crap his pants.”

“Who’s Heifer?” Jason asked.

“Police chief. Thinks he’s such a big shot. His name’s Hooper, but he looks more like a Heifer.”

“He’s huge,” Lonny clarified.

“Like what Woody’s going to look like if he doesn’t stop eating,” Oliver laughed. Only Lonny joined in.

Oliver told Jason about the last prank the Jokers Club had pulled, when they poured bubble bath powder into the town fountain the night before Memorial Day weekend. When the fountain was started up the next morning, the bubbles overflowed onto Main Street creating a traffic mess on the opening of the summer tourist season. Heifer had accused the club of the prank and tried to scare them into confessing, but they held strong. He said he had been looking forward to a chance to get back at the chief.

“I love it,” Dale said.

Oliver scanned everyone’s faces. No one else said a word, so Jason remained silent, though he had a gnawing feeling inside that this was just so wrong and nothing good would come of it.

“Then let’s go,” Oliver said. “Lonny, you get the lower half, I’ll get the upper.”

“Careful you don’t wreck him,” Geoff said.

“How much worse could he get?”

“He’s wicked light,” Lonny snorted as they lifted the body out of the casket.

“That’s because they take out all the insides before they mummify someone,” Geoff scoffed.

Woody turned away. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Let’s go,” Oliver commanded.

*   *   *

They were seven shadowy figures racing through the moonlit cemetery, and if anyone had spotted them and the body they carried, they would have thought ghouls had come out for a night of Halloween mischief. When they climbed to the top of the Pines, they stopped and looked down the hill at the chief’s house on Elm Street.

“Let’s think a minute,” Oliver gasped, setting the Colonel down and propping him up against a tree. They sat down around it in silence, Lonny pointing out the chief’s small ranch-style house to Jason.

Geoff broke the silence. “There are too many trick-or-treaters around. They’ll see us.”

“I know,” Oliver agreed. “We have to get down to the ravine behind the house and launch our attack from the rear when the coast is clear.”

“But what if we get spotted bringing him across the street?” Jason asked.

Oliver thought for a moment, and Jason hoped that maybe they would change their minds about the whole thing.

“I’ve got it. We’ll just walk right across the street.”

“We can’t do that,” Woody said. “We can’t just walk across the street carrying a corpse.”

“We won’t be carrying him. He’ll be walking with us.”

“You lost me.”

“One of us gets on each side of him and holds him upright by the arms. The rest bunch up around us, and we just march across the street.”

“Sounds okay,” Dale said.

Oliver handed Woody the flashlight. “You’re gonna stay here and be the lookout, Woody.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the slowest. And what we’re doing calls for speed. Now what you’re gonna do is sit right here and keep an eye on the street, make sure the coast is clear. Whenever the street is clear of people, you turn the flashlight on. If there’s anyone on the street, then turn the light off. We’ll lay low. As long as we see that light’s on, we’ll know it’s okay to move. You got it?”

“I got it.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Want me to repeat any of it?”

“I said I got it.”

“Let’s go then.”

“I’ll stay with Woody,” Martin offered. “Help him keep lookout.”

There were a few trick-or-treaters down the street by Shadow Drive, but they paid no attention to the group of boys that crossed the street and the taller, strange figure in the middle of them. They disappeared between two houses and into the cover of the ravine directly behind the chief’s house. The Colonel lay on the ground beside them. Oliver crept over to Jason.

“Nightingale, you keep an eye on Woody’s light, okay?”

“Got ya.”

“I’m gonna take a peek in the back window,” he said to the others. “See what Heifer’s up to.”

A few leaves crinkled beneath his sneakers as he slowly crossed the back yard toward the house and the lit window in front of him. He gripped the window ledge with his fingers and lifted himself up on his tiptoes till his eyes peered into the living room.

Jason lay there watching him, part of him nervous about getting caught, but part of him excited about being out here in the dark with no adults around to tell him what to do. He felt free. He had never been the daring type, but this was exciting.

Oliver turned, scrunched down, and scurried back to the ravine.

“He’s just sitting there watching TV,” he told them. “Stuffing his fat face with Halloween candy.”

“Probably won’t be able to get out of the chair to answer the door,” Geoff said.

Jason looked up to the Pines, to the beacon there. “Light’s on,” he softly called out.

“Then let’s move. Mudge, you get to the second side window. You’ll be right behind Heifer’s chair. Let us know if he moves.”

When Lonny was in position, he peered in the window, and then waved them on. Oliver led the way with Geoff and Dale carrying the Colonel. Jason took up the rear as they crept alongside the house, low and around Lonny to the front corner by a shrub. Looking over the green barrier, Jason could still see the flashlight beam. He glanced over his shoulder at Lonny who gave them the okay sign. They crept around to the front of the house, keeping beneath the windows till they reached the front door.

Jason glanced up into the dark Pines. …Wait, the dark Pines? The Pines were dark
!
“The light’s out,” he cried.

Oliver looked up.

“There,” Dale exclaimed, pointing.

A group of kids just turned the corner onto Elm from Autumn Avenue.

“We gotta move fast,” Oliver said.

They stood the Colonel up on the front stoop.

“Lean him against the door,” Oliver said, “so he’ll fall forward when it’s opened.”

They did and Oliver rang the doorbell.

“Let’s book it!”

The five boys sprinted across the street and up the hill into the Pines. When they reached Woody and Martin they stopped and turned to watch. They saw the door swing open and the Colonel fall forward. That was followed by a loud scream.

Their laughter was interrupted by Oliver: “Let’s get the hell outta here.”

They followed Oliver down the west bank of the Pines and onto Autumn Avenue. When they reached the street, they assumed a casual, but quick-paced walk toward town.

“We’ll hang out down on the boardwalk,” Oliver said. “Make believe we been there all night. Harass Carrothead a bit if he’s there.”

“That was awesome,” Dale said when they reached the boardwalk.

“We will be remembered for this one,” Woody spurted out between gasps and laughs. “Even though nobody will know we did it.”

“Well, Florence,” Oliver said. “What do you think?”

Jason looked from face to face.

“I think I’m going to like being in this club.”

When I finally stopped typing, my fingertips felt as if they had been resting on a hot stove. I leaned back in the chair and looked at the filled pages. It felt good. I had gotten past that first line, the line I had written back in July when I got the letter from Martin Peak.

The letter surprised me because I hadn’t heard from Martin in a few years, hadn’t even realized he had my New York address. When I opened the letter, I first noticed there was no salutation, just my name at the top in bold, striking letters. The letter was to the point, no questions of how I’d been and what was new. It just matter-of-factly stated Woody had been placed in a mental institution in upstate New Hampshire. The whole letter was very impersonal, except for the last sentence:
And you know why.

I stared at that sentence for days before understanding what bothered me most about it: It seemed like an accusation.

It was then I decided to visit Woody.

Paul Woodman had always been a fat kid. We kidded him about it a lot, but his weight didn’t really bother any of us, except maybe Oliver who always seemed particular about the people he let hang around him. The bigger Woody grew, the less Oliver seemed to notice him. Maybe it was just that, since it was Oliver’s tree house, he was afraid Woody’s mass would send it crashing to the ground. Oliver might have even kicked him out of the club except for the fact that Woody was a darn good baseball player. He was a catcher on the same Little League team as me, and his meaty arms enabled him to knock a lot of balls over the centerfield fence. Oliver admired anyone with athletic ability.

Fat certainly ran in Woody’s family. I remember the first time I was invited over to his house for dinner. They served chicken, potatoes and corn on the cob. It looked like they cooked three or four whole chickens. Everyone in the family got at least three baked potatoes apiece. The plates were so full the corn hung off the edge, dripping butter onto the tablecloth. I looked at the heaping mounds of food in front of me, and then glanced at Woody. He had cut open his baked potatoes and mashed them into a massive blob, then took a half a stick of butter and plopped it on top. Watching the family eat in a frenzy of flashing teeth jack-hammering through the corn, stripping chicken from the bones and gobbling down potatoes, skin and all, I thought I was going to vomit.

Woody seemed like he wasn’t ever going to stop getting bigger. But he did. After the Jokers Club broke up, we all kind of grew apart. Nothing was ever the same. Woody became introverted. Maybe it was the adjustment to high school, I’m not sure, but I noticed he was starting to lose weight. It was gradual at first. I don’t even think anyone else noticed. But then Woody started wearing fewer oversized sweatshirts than normal. One day in school, it occurred to me he didn’t bounce as much in the halls. By the time it became noticeable, the weight seemed to melt off him. When graduation rolled around, he had trimmed down to our size. It was then I realized all that fat had distorted how tall he was.

After graduation, Woody moved somewhere up north, and I never saw him again until I got the letter from Martin.

The place was called Acorn Estates, a brick building crawling with ivy and sunk in a pine-tree bog. What better place to hide away the lunatics of New Hampshire. I drove up there in a rented car.

I was greeted in the waiting room by Woody’s doctor and led down a long white corridor. The walls were white, the ceiling was white, the floor was white and the doors were white. I thought I’d go snow blind. As we passed various doors, I noticed each had a little rectangular window in them, barely big enough to look into or out of. I wondered what the inhabitants were like behind those doors. Passing one door, a face popped up to fill the frame of the window. It was a woman; her eyes, like those of a frightened animal, watched me as I continued along my way.

We took a few rights and a handful of lefts as the labyrinthine hallway led me deeper into the bowels of the asylum. As we continued, a thought crept into my mind. What if this wasn’t a doctor beside me, but a patient? What if I’d been tricked? I had no idea where he was taking me; the place had become a maze and if the inmates’ doors were to suddenly spring open, I wouldn’t be able to find my way back. I felt warm and sweaty and had the sudden urge to scream, but was afraid to stir the crazies lurking all around me, like being in the midst of a bees’ nest. The doctor only looked at me and smiled. Why was he smiling?

We finally came to the end of a hallway, to a door labeled: Recreation Room. Once inside, I saw about a dozen patients all wearing the same light-blue garments resembling hospital scrubs. There was a group of four playing ping pong, an old man playing checkers alone, and some others milling about. The doctor directed me to a lone individual sitting on a couch by a window, and I was not prepared for what I saw.

Though his shirt and pants were loose and baggy, his face and arms gave me the clue I needed to his condition. He wasn’t just skinny. He was like a set of bones that decided to throw on a layer of flesh at the last minute. He could have been made of wax held too close to a flame, causing his skin to melt and adhere to its frame. I could almost hear the sideshow barker:
See the Skeleton Man!

“Woody?”

His gaze turned from the window and the patients playing croquet on the lawn beyond and fell on me. There appeared to be no recognition in it. This isn’t Paul Woodman, I thought. They’ve brought me to the wrong man. Then his head nodded, ever so slowly, as it dawned on him whom I was. His attention returned to the activity outside. I almost turned and left right then.

“Not checking in are you?” he said, his voice soft.

I laughed but then it occurred to me he might not be joking. I shook my head but realized he wasn’t looking at me, though I wasn’t sure he was even interested in my answer.

“You know, they’re really lousy croquet players.” He continued staring out the window. “They don’t even know the rules.”

I wanted to sit down on the couch next to him, but was afraid to. He looked so fragile, as if he would crumble in my arms if I touched him. “What the hell happened to you?” I wished I could have chosen my words better.

He looked at me and stared into my eyes for the longest time. “Nobody plays by the rules anymore,” he finally said. He looked back at the croquet game. “You know, there are some people here so crazy they shouldn’t let them have those mallets.” He looked at me. “I’m not nuts.”

“I know.” I didn’t sound convincing.

“I have problems, that’s for sure. But I’m quite sane.” His eyes wandered around the room. “A lot of the people in here are freaking nuts.”

I did sit down beside him, carefully. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

He looked at me. “I almost died, you know. Died from not being able to eat. Pretty fucking stupid, huh?”

“But I don’t understand.”

He looked at me, puzzled. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

I shook my head.

He looked straight ahead, his eyes narrowing, as if he were conjuring up an image. “It’s not that I don’t want to eat. It’s not like I don’t get hungry.” His voice rose as his body trembled. “Food disgusted me. The thought of eating. The thought of opening a refrigerator door horrified me. I just couldn’t eat.”

“Is that what this is? Are you punishing yourself?”

He returned his gaze to me. “I thought at least you would understand.”

“It’s been over with the club for a long time.”

“Not for me. It’s never ended for me.”

“So you’re going to destroy yourself? Is that the answer?”

“I’ve gotten some help here. I’m starting to eat normally again.” He chuckled a bit. “Though I doubt I’ll ever reach the proportions of my younger days.”

“Well, that’s one good thing about this,” I laughed.

“There’s nothing funny about any of this.” His upper lip curled in a sneer. “Nothing at all.”

I suddenly felt uncomfortable. “I should probably be going now.” I stood up from the couch.

“You can come and go at will. You should be glad to have such control of your life. But they said I’ll be out of here in a few weeks. Then I’ll be in control again. You’ll see.”

I turned to face him. “You just got to get it in your head that it wasn’t our fault.”

“We’ll all pay for what we did.”

*   *   *

As the doctor led me back out through that maze of halls, I noticed that same woman’s face in the cell door window I had seen on the way in. Her eyes had an utterly mad look. A look that seemed to appear in Woody’s eyes with those last words he had spoken. I began to wonder if he truly was sane.

Every time I thought about the last time I saw Woody, it gave me the willies. I tried very hard to forget that visit, but it’s no use. Just like I couldn’t forget the last time I saw Jason Nightingale.

As I leaned back in the chair, I smelled a faint odor of peanut butter, probably drifting up through the heating ducts from some deep recess of the inn. I closed my eyes and thought back to one warm summer day when Dale Carpenter took a brand new jar of chunky peanut butter from his house and the two of us, spoons clasped in tight fists, raced up to the Pines. There we sat with our backs against the warm, smooth surface of the boulder, the jar between us. There was a hiss of air as Dale opened the jar and the scent of peanuts roasting in the hot sun floated up to our nostrils. We admired the smooth surface of the peanut butter, interrupted only by the speckled bits of crushed peanuts, like a thick wave settling on a coral bed.

We hesitated, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Then Dale broke that perfect surface with the tip of his spoon, scooping a long trench as the peanut butter curled up onto the spoon. Soon our utensils dug furiously into the jar and before long we leaned back against the rock, our bellies full, our mouths and throats clogged, the jar half empty. It wasn’t long before we raced back down the hill in search of a beverage to scrape the coating from the roofs of our mouths.

Many times we would steal away a jar of peanut butter from either of our houses, our mothers never suspecting why they had to replenish the supply so frequently.

A soft tapping of my door returned me to the present and I stared at the source of intrusion for a moment, (
Don’t open it. Don’t
.) anticipating who it might be. I wanted it to be Woody. I wanted to see he was all right.

“Come in,” I finally said, and the door creaked open slowly revealing the grownup version of my peanut-butter partner.

“I heard some typing earlier, so I didn’t want to intrude,” he said.

I strode across the room and wrapped my arms around Dale, holding him tight, not wanting to let go. It was so good to see him. It had been so long.

When I released him, he was grinning. “The Big Apple hasn’t made you feminine has it?”

“I guess kissing you would be out of the question right now, huh?” We laughed. I looked into his face, at the lines and creases around his eyes and mouth. He was aging, and I hadn’t expected it. He had been the best looking one of us, handsome, even pretty, if guys could be pretty. Now he was no longer the young kid eating peanut butter. Was this what was happening to me? To all of us? “How the hell are you?”

“Doing okay,” he answered, nodding. “Things are pretty routine. You know how married life is.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, it’s nothing to brag about.”

“How is the wife?” I sat down on the end of my bed.

“She’s um … well … She’s good. She’s good.”

“Now I’m supposed to ask you about your job, isn’t that how the routine goes?”

“God, it’s been so long. You look terrific.”

How deceiving looks can be, I thought. “I’ve really missed you.”

He paused for a moment, and I wondered if maybe I was being a bit too maudlin. He meandered over near the desk, and I felt an urge to rush past him, to snatch the papers away. I didn’t want him to see what I was writing about. I wasn’t sure why.

“We’ve really been strangers,” he finally said.

“That’s what we get for growing up. We have to go our separate ways and lead mature, adult lives.”

“Well, we can forget all about that this weekend. We’re the Jokers Club once again.”

“Maybe that isn’t such a great idea.”

His expression soured. “We had some great times for a while there. That’s what we’re here to celebrate.”

My mind wandered back to the days of the club, to the simple, fun times. I remembered summer nights, running through the warm crisp air, the whole quiet town our playground, nothing to fear. The night was ours to do as we pleased.

“You’re right.”

He looked down at the typewriter. “Where’d you dig up this relic?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I didn’t know you were still writing. What are you working on?”

I jumped up and gathered the papers. “No fair peeking,” I said, trying to make light of it. “It’s nothing, really. Just fooling around.”

He stepped over to the window and looked out. “Great view you got. Mine looks out the back. Have you seen anyone else?”

“No,” I answered. “I was really anxious to see Woody, see how he’s doing.”

Dale didn’t answer.

“Let’s go downstairs,” I finally said. “See if anyone’s around.”

When we walked through the door that led to the den, we saw Lonny Mudge. He stood in front of the fireplace of the paneled room, beneath another deer head that hung over the mantle. He was dressed in a nice suit and tie, but his clothes looked rumpled, as if he had slept in them. Though his tie was knotted up firmly beneath his collar, it hung askew, revealing his shirt buttons. One was either missing or unbuttoned, exposing a small spot of hairy flesh. He face was unshaven and his hair, much shorter than his younger days, looked … funny.

Beside him was a portable bar filled with all kinds of liquor bottles, mixers and an ice bucket. He held a drink in one hand and used the back of the other to wipe drops of liquid from the bottom of his thick mustache.

“Hey guys, look at this,” he waved at the drinks, a grin on his face. “All this booze has been set out for us. And it’s free.”