Paradise Lost

Everyone thinks I don’t go into the lake because I fear water. In a sense that’s true, I do fear water. In particular, this water: Seneca Lake — the longest and deepest of the Finger Lakes. But not because I’m afraid I’ll drown, I’m actually a very good swimmer. I don’t go into the lake because I know what’s down there and they do not. So, here, on the south shore of the lake, I sit and watch small white waves roll in while other people swim. The clear and deep, chilly blue waters of the ominous lake are not for me. Nor, I suppose, not for Corey either.

It’s been more than forty years, but I can still hear the sounds from the 4^th of July celebration, the year of our bicentennial. Practically every man, woman, and child of Watkins Glen came out to celebrate. There were firecrackers on lawns, bottle rockets in alleyways, and sparklers in the hands of every wild child racing up and down Franklin Street. NASCAR drivers stood by their shiny new race cars signing autographs while talk of a real professional firework show over the lake at dusk quickly spread from neighbor to neighbor. It was small-town America at its finest, all decked out in red, white, and blue. Corey and I were not going to miss out!

I first met Corey Madison on the playground near the lake when we were both six. He and his mom had just moved to Watkins Glen and lived three blocks down from me on Decatur Street. Corey was a chubby little kid with honeysuckle-blond hair, fierce blue eyes, and a considerable limp due to one of his legs being longer than the other, all because of a viral infection when he was four. Somehow the infection caused his left leg to stop growing for a while. “By the time it started growing again, my right leg was already two inches longer.”

Despite having just met (and his bum leg) we played together for hours that day. Corey told me about his dad and how he died in a car accident the night before his sixth birthday, just two months earlier. “That’s why we moved here. To get away from where it happened.”

“That’s terrible, Corey. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I still have Mama.”

It’s accurate to say I liked Corey from the start. Most kids in our neighborhood teased him about his plus-size body and nerdy limp, but not me. Meeting Corey was like discovering paradise. Although, I soon learned, Corey perpetually drew the short straw.

Pete Slater was one of Corey’s short straws. Once a well-paid prison guard in Elmira, Pete fell off the wagon, hard, as the story goes. By the time he arrived in Watkins Glen in ‘74, he was jobless, penniless, yet conveniently handsome. Enough so, he got the attention of pretty Shirley Madison, Corey’s mom.  

Shirley worked at Dusti’s Bar & Grill. It was the sort of place where people like Pete, hayseeds mainly, could shoot darts, play pool, and get totally soused at any time of day. Pete could be found there most days. He typically wore a navy blue bandana on his head, tied off in a knot at the nape of his neck. It kept his long, mud-black hair out of his face, I guess. But what I remember most about him are his ugly tattoos. The worst was a devil’s head wrapped in serpents, smack dab on the side of his thick neck. Black, red, green, and threatening. I hated it and I hated Pete. But, just about everyone in town hated Pete. “Brute, swine, vermin, thug...” Words typically used to describe him just three months after he hit town. So, when he disappeared a couple years after marrying Shirley, not too many people lost sleep worrying. “Adios muchacha,” was the most common sentiment.

A day before the bicentennial, in an unusual display of generosity, Pete managed to obtain all sorts of illegal fireworks from Pennsylvania for Corey and me. We were planning on lighting them. All of them. Most girls were afraid of such things, but not me. Heck, I was twice as brave as Corey and everyone knew it, including Corey. When we’d go searching for night crawlers to sell down at the dock — two for a penny — it was me who scooped up those slimy fat bastards while Corey held the flashlight. He wouldn’t touch them; said they’d make him puke if he did. Another time, when we were eight, all my friends sat huddled on our front lawn watching my mother snip away at my long, shiny black hair until it was “boy short.” It made no never-mind to me, but Corey bawled his eyes while scooping up that raven-colored hair and carrying it home in his hip pockets. Yeah, Corey was odd that way; all sentimental and not very brave. Until the early evening of July 4, 1976, rolled around. A night I’ll never forget.

It was about six o’clock when I arrived. The firecrackers were lined up in their driveway. Naturally, Corey was waiting for me; he needed someone to light them. I cut through the breezeway and knocked on their back door, but no one answered. I knocked again. When still no one answered, I pressed my face against the window to get a peek inside. That’s when I saw Shirley collapse after Pete hit her across the face with his closed fist.

Just about everyone in town knew that Pete Slater hit his wife on a regular basis, but it was the first time I’d ever witnessed it. Poor Corey had probably seen it dozens of times which must have been heavy on his mind when he came screaming from the living room, lunging at the giant of a man before him.

Before I knew what was happening, my hand was on the doorknob, turning it, until I was well inside their kitchen, part of the mayhem. Pete easily repelled Corey’s advances and seemed to enjoy the sport. But Corey was as mad as a cat left in the rain, the sights of which I’d never seen before or since. “I’m going to kill you, Pete!” he screamed, frantically slapping away at Pete. Shirley lay crumpled on the black and white tiled floor, crying and bleeding into a kitchen towel while I stood still like a statue of Sacagawea trying to figure out what I should do next.

Then Pete, I’ll never forget, threw back his head and began to laugh, shamelessly. That crazy-ass, serpent-wrapped devil tattoo on his neck laughing right alongside him…or so it seemed. “That’ll be the day when a pansy-ass cripple like you gets the better of me,” he taunted, his grin now coldly demented.

I thought I might pee in my pants but instead, I screamed, “Corey, stop! Let’s go outside and light the firecrackers.”

“Yeah, and don’t forget where them firecrackers came from, sweetheart. A gift from yours truly.” Pete sneered, pounding his thumb to his chest, offering an outstretched hand to Shirley. “Get up!”

Shirley, with a look of sheer terror smeared across her bloody face, scrambled backward, away from his reach. Seeing this, Corey suddenly vanished into a back room. When he returned, I could hardly believe my eyes. Less-than-brave, twelve-year-old Corey Madison stood stone cold in the middle of the room, his feet shoulder-width apart, bottom lip curled under with a .38 Special pointed straight at Pete Slater’s head.

“Okay, let’s all calm down,” Pete sputtered, veins in his neck throbbing. “Everything’s cool. Put down the gun.”

Corey never flinched and even Shirley, still cowering on the floor, remained deadly quiet. “Shirley!” Pete barked. “Stop crawling around like a fucking maggot, get up, and talk some sense into your stupid son!”

Obediently, Shirley grabbed the top of the kitchen table, pulling herself up, attempting to stand. She was rocky. “Corey don’t do this,” she pleaded as she continued trying to steady herself. “Put down the gun, honey. Everything’s going to be alright…”

But Corey didn’t seem to be listening to her, or anything, as he stood in what looked like a trance, both eyes fixed on Pete, chin up, shoulders back, hands firmly holding the gun.

Pete returned Corey’s unbroken gaze but somehow managed to reach behind his back, dragging Shirley by her long, red hair. “Tell him again, Shirley! Tell him…”

CLICK!

Pete was interrupted by the deafening sound of the pistol being cocked.

“Let go of my mother!” Corey demanded. Then, to everyone’s shock, he fired a live round high above Pete’s head, erupting in our ears with a loud and powerful BANG!

With the sudden and dramatic tip of the scale, Pete finally surrendered to Corey (or, to the gun) by letting Shirley loose. Quickly, she scrambled backward, away from Pete. I don’t know how she knew what was about to happen, but she screamed, “Corey, don’t!”

It was too late.

As the words parted her lips, and the neighbor’s firecrackers began to bang and pop again outside, the gun went off again. This time hitting Pete squarely between his eyes.

Pete collapsed to the floor. Bright red blood quickly began to pool around his head. Corey’s mouth flew wide open, and he dropped to his knees. Shirley released a high-pitched, primeval sound, like a wolf’s howl, and crawled across the floor to Corey. Me? I threw up on top of my bright yellow Converse and covered my face with my trembling hands.

Instinctively, we all scrambled to the far end of the kitchen with our backs against the wall — as far from Pete, and all that blood, as we could. We must have remained there for ten or fifteen minutes, maybe longer; suspended in time with our shared state of shock.

Shirley finally spoke, breaking our eerie silence. “Corey, look at me,” she said, gently running her hand over the top of his head. Silent tears streamed down Corey’s cheeks. “We need to get rid of Pete’s body. Do you understand?”

Events now seemed to unfold very slowly as Corey and I sat wide-eyed depending upon Shirley, the only adult, to take the lead. I thought about running home when Corey whispered, “Yes, Mama, I understand.”

“Okay, good…that’s very good. You’re doing great. Don’t worry about anything. Everything is going to be just fine, as long as you both do exactly as I say. I promise.” Corey nodded again.

Then Shirley spoke directly to me, her voice hushed but completely clear. “Olivia, honey, you need to stay and help us take care of things. Do you think you can do that, sweetheart? Help us?”

My mouth opened but no sound came out.  It was all so frightening. I couldn’t speak. But I must’ve said something to satisfy her, I just don’t remember what.

Shirley then took the gun, still in Corey’s hand, and wrapped it in a brown paper sack. “Corey, go into the bathroom and pull down the shower curtain for me.”

Corey did as she asked, returning with the plastic shower curtain. Shirley spread it next to Pete’s body. As instructed, we rolled Pete onto it and wrapped him up, tightly. “Like a burrito,” Shirley said.

After his body was wrapped and tucked into a corner, we began washing the kitchen floor on our hands and knees with bleach; scrubbing and wiping until our hands split, and our eyes burned. When finished, Shirley gathered our blood-soaked rags and took them outside to the firepit.

About this time, many of Corey’s neighbors were outside, gathering their lawn chairs and coolers as they walked to the lake to watch fireworks. Shirley, now shockingly cool as morning dew, calmly smiled in their direction as she doused the bloody rags with lighter fluid and lit a match. Poof! They were gone.

“We’ll just wait for it to get dark outside. I’ll pull the truck out of the garage, and we’ll move him when the coast is clear,” Shirley began.

“People still be outside then, Mom. That’s when they’ll be returning home from the fireworks,” Corey said. “They’ll be out getting drunk and setting off more firecrackers for hours … don’t you think?”

“You’re right, Corey,” Shirley said. “We’ll just have to wait until after midnight to make our move.”

“My parents will wonder where I am,” I said, terrified and hoping the simple truth would excuse me from further bedlam.

Shirley was ready. “Let me call them and tell them you’re going to spend the night, okay honey?” (Yes, she called me ‘honey’ for the second time that night, as if I were still an innocent child.) “You’ve spent the night here before so I don’t think your parents will mind. I’ll tell them that you and Corey are having such a good time that you’d like to stay longer, and it’s okay with me if you spend the night on our couch.”

I still wanted to run but all I could manage to say was, “Okay.” 

At Shirley’s insistence, we played several games of Yahtzee or tried to, on the shag-carpeted floor while we waited. A game I now refuse to play, ever. When “after midnight” finally arrived, we looked outside and discovered the neighbors were, in fact, back inside their homes — lawn chairs, coolers, and themselves all tucked in. All was normal, yet nothing was normal.

Shirley backed her pickup up to the breezeway door. We struggled with the weight of Pete’s burrito-wrapped body while we carried it outside, knocking over house plants and even a lava lamp. Once the corpse was finally inside the pickup, Shirley drove down Decatur Street, without headlights, towards the lake. Corey sitting next to her, me next to him.

At the lake, Shirley turned off the engine and yanked two cinder blocks out from the back of the truck. Corey gathered rope and we helped him tie off the blocks, wrapping everything around Pete’s body and tucking the gun inside the shower curtain. Shirley told us to wait while she borrowed a speedboat from the dock. Back then, many people in Watkins Glen were very trusting; they’d leave keys to their boats where anyone could find them. Shirley took advantage of the status quo and motored through the darkness with me, Corey, and a very dead Pete beside her. The macabre drone of the small engine propelling us further into the lake — and madness — was the only sound we heard.

Four hundred yards out, Shirley cut the motor and we all pushed the corpse — laden with heavy blocks — off the starboard side. We leaned forward, wide-eyed, watching a large ripple spread across the still waters while the body of Pete Slater sank some six hundred and seventeen feet into the black abyss.

None of us uttered a single word while Shirley turned the boat around and drove back to shore.

Later that morning, tossing and turning on the couch, the unforgettable sound of Corey’s gun kept echoing inside my head. I tried to make sense of it all. Why Corey fired that second fatal shot I just couldn’t understand. Pete seemed to be surrendering. Perhaps Corey finally had enough of his stepfather’s cruelty. Or, maybe, it was the terrifying image of his mother, bloodied and bruised by her husband’s hand again, that pushed him over the edge. I considered everything I could think of. Had Corey intended to kill Pete? Or had his finger accidentally slipped? Did he even think about what may happen to him if he did kill Pete?

These questions ran through my mind all night long. But I never concluded a thing. All I knew as I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, was that Corey killed Pete with one, perfectly aimed and well-timed shot — magically muffled by the sounds of a Fourth of July celebration in town. Paradise lost.

When the glorious sun, my savior, finally flooded through the open windows — and after I promised both Shirley and Corey I’d never tell — I ran home, barefooted, as fast as my non-calloused feet would carry me. (I never could bring myself to wear those yellow Converse again.) I ran past the neighbors’ houses, past the chilled, steel blue water of the lake, past the dock, past the playground, trying to forget how my best friend shot and killed his stepfather right in front of my eyes!

As the days slowly passed, Corey and I began seeing less and less of one another. It had become clear to us that nothing could ever be the same. The innocent days of our childhood had slipped away, and soon were nothing more than a distant memory. Shirley and Corey moved away the following fall to a small city nestled at the top of the lake. I never heard from them again.

I’m an adult now, a spinster, still living in the same house I grew up in with my now elderly parents. “Such a shame that Olivia Spencer never married,” I’ve overheard the same neighbors from 1976 say as they pass me on Franklin Street. “She was such a lovely child. Never pegged her to turn out like this. Such a shame…”

So, here, decades later, I sit alone on the gritty beach and listen to the sounds of the waves hitting the south shore of Seneca Lake. Now and again, swooping in from the direction of Decatur Street, a helpless little wisp of wind forms this way and that, riding upon some mysterious breeze, swirls around my head. It’s then I worry that old, tattooed Pete may one day float up to the surface of the lake.

I pound my fists into the sand and force myself to close my eyes and forget!

Perhaps the underground currents of the imposing Finger Lake will be kind to me. Take Pete up north, about thirty-six miles, and let my old friend Corey and his mother deal with him all alone this time.

But then, that’s only fair. Don’t you think?