3rd Place- THE BARD OF FISHKILL CREEK- Donna Kathryn Kelly- Cary, Illinois

THE BARD OF FISHKILL CREEK

The guilt is getting to me. So, when my mom asks me why I’m not eating any of my pancakes, I don’t respond. She repeats herself and when I still don’t say anything, she says: “Henry, answer me. You’ve hardly eaten anything. Are you feeling ill?”

“I’m just not hungry,” I say.

             “Are you okay?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” I say. But I’m really not.

 I’m thinking of Joe’s face from last night when he had walked back with Howie and Orville. How he hadn’t even looked ashamed. How he had seemed happy - ecstatic, even. This still stuns me: how he had walked so swiftly and confidently beside Howie and Orville, shoulders back, swinging his arms along his sides, swaggering, almost. It was as though he had finally been included in something important and had accomplished something that I hadn’t done. I could see the delight in his eyes, a championing of breaking free of the confinement of my shadow.

            I had been waiting for them in the twilight, not far from the church on the big hill. All three of them had practically rushed by me, had not acknowledged me at all. They had been laughing and smirking, and breathing heavy, and they hadn’t said much in front of me at first.

 Orville had simply grinned and announced: “Mission Accomplished!”

They had made cryptic one or two-word comments to each other, secret guy talk, mostly grunts and nods. We were half-way to Joe’s house when they started dissecting what had happened, and speculating aloud whether Howie had hit it with one shot or two.

“Did you see the way it darted off at first?” Joe had asked Howie. “I don’t think you hit it the first time. I think it’s the second shot that hit it.”

“He hit it the first time,” Orville had said authoritatively. “That was a death run. That’s why it was swerving around like that. Its heart was still pumping; that’s how it was able to run. It would’ve died from that first hit, but it’s good Howie shot it again, just to make sure.”

The conversation had been making me sick, and I almost doubled over, but somehow, I kept walking. I had the nerve to ask a question: “Mr. Jones wasn’t outside when you did it, was he?”

“No,” Joe had said.

            But Orville had barked at him: “Don’t tell him nothin’.” And then, to me, he had said: “If you wanted to know, you would’ve been there.”

            And he’s right. I don’t want to know. I don’t want anything to do with what they did, or might have done. But still, here it is at the breakfast table. Nagging at me. The thought of Mr. Jones’ pain when he realizes what they did fills me with such sorrow and disgust that I can’t eat. Images inflict agony, too: like the grotesque, satisfied look of the completed-kill on their faces, their happy sneers. The thought of what they have done makes me nauseous: it wraps around my intestines, squeezes hard, makes me feel like I’m carrying a stomach full of shimmying snakes.

            And the more guilt that I have over not having done something to stop them, makes me hate Orville more and more. It was his idea, after all. He’s the one who convinced Joe and Howie to go along with his plan, to kill Ms. Jones’ dad’s squirrel. Not that he had any problem with Mr. Jones at all. He doesn’t even know Mr. Jones. None of us even know the old man’s first name. Everyone just calls him Mr. Jones and he must be close to ninety-years-old, because his daughter is in her late sixties or early seventies. He rarely comes out of the house at all these days, and I haven’t seen him in years, but he used to go to church on Sundays when I was in first or second grade, though he hasn’t shown up there in a long time.

            Once, when I was little, maybe four or five, my family had sat next to him in the back-row pew, and I must’ve been staring at his face, because my mother had tugged on my sleeve and told me to stop it. And then, after church when we got home, she had scolded me and told me to never stare at a person like that again and that my gawking at Mr. Jones had probably made him feel uncomfortable.

            I had asked her what was wrong with his face, and she had told me that his scars were from smallpox, and I asked her what had happened to his eye, and she had said that was from smallpox, too. His left eye looked like a hardboiled egg, and kind of protruded out of its socket. I asked her if he was blind, and she had said that Ms. Jones had told her that he could see out of his right eye, but not the left one. I had asked her if I could get smallpox from sitting next to him in church and she had told me no, and that I had already been vaccinated for smallpox, so I had nothing to be concerned about anyway. She had admonished me again that it was unkind to stare at people who looked different, and that it was cruel to do so.  

            Truthfully, I had forgotten all about Mr. Jones until Orville had started talking about Ms. Jones’ dad. Ms. Jones lives with her dad in a humongous house on the main hill, and they have a big piece of property. They have lived there for years together, just the two of them. Ms. Jones had never married, and her mom had died when she was young. Ms. Jones didn’t have any siblings, and she had just stayed in the house in which she had been born. I heard she had been an English teacher years ago, but ever since I can remember, she has run the church choir and taught piano lessons in her house.

            She’s been my piano teacher for the past couple of years, and I walk up the big hill to her house on Wednesday afternoons for my lesson. I am not a very good piano player, and in fact, I really don’t even like playing the piano, but my mom says there’s some value in a man learning to play a musical instrument. So, I really don’t have any say in the matter. Anyway, the lessons aren’t too bad, and they only last a half an hour and usually, Ms. Jones gives me a glass of lemonade or iced tea afterwards and lets me spend the rest of the afternoon in her dad’s library.

            We have a library in our house, too, but the Jones’ library is about four times the size of ours. Our house is a lot bigger than any of my friends’ houses, but it is nothing like the size of the Jones’ mansion. My mom says that the Jones family’s wealth comes from inheritance, but that it also comes from their millinery business, which dates back to the mid-eighteenth century. The Jones’ library has wall-to-wall bookshelves that stretch up to the ceiling, with a rolling ladder, so that you can reach the top row. There’s a magnificent fireplace with brass lions’ heads that stretch out on either side of the mantle, and a sitting area that looks like it should be in a castle. There’s a burgundy-tufted sofa and matching chairs gathered around the fireplace, and there are also two separate reading-areas on either side of the room with leather-backed chairs surrounding small, oval tables.

There’s also a long wooden library desk that stretches out before the bay window that looks out over the front lawn. Sometimes I bring a pen and a journal with me and I write at the desk. Mostly, I write short stories, but I’ve written a couple of plays, too. And last summer, I was even able to see one of my plays performed. It was a short comedy script, with just three actors, so I had Joe, Howie, and my little brother, read the parts in the gazebo in our back yard, while I directed them. The only audience was my parents, Joe’s mom, my Aunt Susan, and Howie’s sisters. They all sat in chairs on the lawn in front of the gazebo and they laughed at all the right parts.

 Seeing and hearing their reactions to my words, made me decide that’s definitely what I want to do when I get older: be a playwright. I don’t know if I’ll make any money at it, but I think I have some stories to tell and that maybe I’ll be good at it. My dad thinks so. I’ve let him read my plays and he tells me that I am a gifted writer. He even calls me “The Bard” sometimes; but for some reason, this makes my mom angry. She tells my dad that he should be encouraging me to go into business, like him, and that he shouldn’t be encouraging me to write silly make-believe stories.

            Ms. Jones lets me spend as much time as I want in the library, and sometimes I lose track of time and stay there reading until it’s almost dark. I’ve never seen her dad in the library though. I’ve never seen him at all in the house. He must just hide or stay in his room when I go there. I sometimes wonder if he’s scared of me, if he remembers that I’m the impolite kid who stared at him years ago in the back pew of the church. Maybe he thinks I’ll gawk at him again. This makes me sad, thinking about this, because I don’t like to hurt anybody’s feelings, and I hope I hadn’t hurt his, even though, judging by what my mom said all those years ago, I probably had. 

            “Are you going over to Joe’s this morning?” my mom asks, picking up my plate and scraping the food remnants into the garbage can.

            “No,” I say.

            “Why not?” she asks. Her back is turned to me, and she is washing my plate. I can tell she knows there is something wrong, even though I can’t see her face. I used to go to Joe’s all the time, and I’ve barely seen him this summer, ever since he and Howie started hanging out with Orville.

            “Just don’t feel like it,” I say. Part of me doesn’t want to see Joe ever again. He’s been my best friend since we were five. But now, I just see that look on his face from last night, and when I think of what he and Orville and Howie did, the thought of it repulses me.

            “Well, what are you going to do today?” my mom asks, turning back around, hands on her hips.

“Don’t know,” I say, shrugging.

“Well, remember, I’m going to be gone until seven or eight, and your dad is going to be working late,” she says. “I’m taking your brother to New York to get dress clothes for school.”

“I know,” I say. “I remember.”

“Well, you’ll be on your own for lunch and dinner,” she says, “so you’ll have to fix yourself something.”

“I know.”

She looks at me, clearly perplexed. Her face softens a little. “Are you sure there’s not anything troubling you?”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, you start school in a couple of weeks. So, I would think you would enjoy these final days before you go back, and it’s going to be a beautiful day outside. Why don’t you go fishing with Joe?”

“I just don’t want to,” I say. “Besides, I have my piano lesson with Ms. Jones this afternoon. I don’t want to get all muddy and then have to clean up again before I go over there.”

She nods, continuing to study me. “Are you excited about starting sixth grade?”

“Sure,” I say, but I don’t have anything more to say about that, so I don’t.

I ask to be excused and when I do, she just nods, says nothing. That sinking feeling in my stomach, that terrible wrenching pain, is still there. I’m sure it’s going to grow even worse throughout the day. I’ve got to come up with an excuse to get out of this piano lesson. I just can’t face Ms. Jones: her intelligent eyes, her stern, but somehow reassuring, voice. I feel so awful, almost like I’m the one who is responsible for what happened. Yet, I’m not the one who did anything wrong. Or am I? 

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The idea had emerged two days ago. We had been skimming stones across Fishkill Creek when Orville had suddenly tossed one at a bullfrog sunning himself on a large branch. The rock had pelted the creature on either his head or body; and, whether out of fear or pain or both, the stunned frog had jumped into the water. Orville had snickered, evidently pleased with his disruptive and, perhaps deadly, precision.

            “Why did you do that?” I had asked, indignant. 

            “Because I could,” Orville had said, sneering.

            When I had just stared at him, shaking my head, disgusted, he had asked: “What? What’s your problem, Henry? It’s just a damn frog. Who cares about a frog?”

            I had seen on his face that he had been delighted at my revulsion. There was a darkness in his eyes, a reckless void: something I had never seen in anyone’s eyes before.

            “Bullfrogs – they’re ugly creatures,” Orville had said, returning to skimming stones. “You know what that bullfrog reminds me of? That old rich guy that lives up on the hill.”

            “Yeah, Ms. Jones’ dad,” Howie had added. “He does look like a bullfrog!”

            “Yeah, with all those pock marks all over his face,” Orville had said, his eyes narrowing. “He looks just like one of those bullfrogs.”

             I had not seen Mr. Jones in years, despite having gone to his house every week for my piano lesson, so I had been surprised that Orville had ever seen him. Orville had only lived in town for a couple of years. He was from Pittsburgh, but his dad had lost his job, and his family had moved here to live with his aunt. His dad works for my dad now, on an assembly line in my dad’s factory. Sometimes I think that’s part of the reason why Orville hates me so much.

            I had asked: “How would you even know what Mr. Jones looks like, Orville? You’ve never even seen him before.”

            “Yes, I have,” Orville had said. “I’ve seen him a bunch of times: him and his scary face and that balloon eye or whatever it is that’s sticking out of the socket.”

“Yeah,” Howie added. “It looks like the side of an egg or something where his eye should be.”

“Howie and I are doing yard work for Ms. Jones, Tuesdays and Thursdays, every week, from four-thirty to six o’clock, aren’t we, Howie?” Orville asked.

            Howie had nodded. “Going on three weeks now.”

            “I’m tellin’ you, that lady is so rich, she pays us better than what we could make in a factory, just to trim trees and pull some weeds,” Orville had said. “Too much money, that one has. No one should have that much money.” He had paused and then had said: “And every time we’re there, the old man comes out on the back porch to feed his gimpy little squirrel. The thing only has three legs.”

            “Yeah, it’s like it’s his pet or somethin’,” Howie had said. “He even has a name for it. He calls it Silky.”

            “Yeah, Silky,” Orville had scoffed. “What a dumb name for a squirrel.”

            “He feeds it every afternoon at the same time right around when we’re about to go home,” Howie had said. “At dusk. He pours out like a whole bunch of nuts and seeds for this thing, and then he stands out there waiting for it, but it’s always right there in the trees waiting for him to come out. Sometimes he calls to it, but usually the thing just darts out from the trees and then it runs over to where he’s standing. It’s not even afraid of him or anything. And it just starts gobbling down all of the food, and the old man stands there for a few minutes talking to it. And then Mr. Jones just goes back inside, and the thing just keeps eating out there by itself until it’s finished. It’s like a whole routine they have, the two of them. Every evening at dusk.”

            “Haven’t you ever seen it before, Henry?” Joe had asked. “You go over to the Jones’ house for your piano lessons.”

            “No,” I had answered. “I don’t know what they’re talking about. I’ve never seen Mr. Jones when I’ve been over there, and I’ve never seen a three-legged squirrel.”

            “Well, you’re lucky then,” Orville had said, and then he had thrown a rock particularly hard against the water, so that it just torpedoed into the low creek. “I hate lookin’ at both of them: that scarred-up old man and that three-legged rodent. They both disgust me. How old is that guy anyway? Like a hundred?”

            “I think he’s probably like ninety-somethin’,” Joe had said.

Orville had leant down, picked up another rock, skimmed it against the water. Then he had turned around, with a malicious glint in his eyes, and had said: “You know what I think? I think we should just shoot that damn squirrel so then the old man will just stay inside from now on and we won’t have to see his ugly mug. He won’t have any reason to come outdoors if he doesn’t have to feed that thing.” And then, as if he had been thinking about it for some time already, Orville had looked at Howie and said: “We could use your new BB gun.”

            Howie had just turned twelve only a few days’ prior, and he had already proudly displayed for us his favorite birthday gift: a 1915 No. 12 Model 24 Daisy Single Shot BB gun. I could tell that Howie was less than enthusiastic about Orville’s proposal to use his new weapon to shoot the squirrel. But despite any reservations Howie may have had, he had just shrugged, looked down at the ground, and had mumbled, “Sure.”

            It’s hard to explain how I felt just then, but it was really one of the worst feelings I have ever had in my life. It was like I knew I should do something to try to stop them, but I felt powerless to do so. And then there was this overwhelming feeling of guilt, even though nothing had even happened yet. I wanted to stop Orville’s idea from steamrolling, but it was almost as if, as soon as he had uttered it, it was going to happen, no matter what I had to say about it. I had been trying to find the right words to convince them that what they were talking about was cruel, but, within seconds, Orville had already instructed all of us to meet him at the church on the hill the next evening right around dusk and he had directed Howie to bring his gun with him.

            All night long that terrible feeling had eaten away at me, and I had barely slept. I had thought about telling my dad about Orville’s plan, but I was afraid that he wouldn’t let me hang out with Joe or Howie anymore, or that they would know it was me who had told on them, and then I wouldn’t have any friends. I really didn’t know what I could do, other than confront them, and try to tell them that what they were going to do was wrong.

            So, I had met them on the hill by the church, but the conversation had gone about as well as it had when we had been down by the creek skimming stones. Even though I had tried to find the words to convince them not to go to the Jones’ house and to leave the squirrel alone, my words had come out halting, incomplete, choppy, confusing. My mind had wanted me to say one thing, but my tongue had said something different, almost as if a vice had been holding it down. In the end, Orville had announced that it was clear I didn’t want to go and that I should just stay behind at the church and wait for them to return, so as to not disrupt their operation.

            Ultimately, they were only gone for about fifteen minutes, but it had seemed like an hour. I had thought about running over to the house, knocking on the door, warning Ms. Jones about what they were going to do. But, instead, I stayed by the church like Orville had directed me to do. It was just a squirrel, after all, right? A rodent? Maybe even a rabid squirrel at that. Who knows? Why should I have to go through sixth grade with no friends just to save a squirrel?  

            This is what I tell myself, over and over, when I walk to Ms. Jones’ house for my piano lesson. I had thought about telling her that I feel sick, and that I need to postpone it, but that would probably seem suspicious to her, and I don’t want her to think I had anything to do with Silky’s execution: that is, if she even knows about it. Maybe she and Mr. Jones don’t even know that Silky is dead yet. That’s a possibility. But what if she does know? What if she asks me if I know who might have killed the squirrel?

            When I knock on the door, I can tell right away that there’s something wrong. Her face looks like my mom’s after she’s been crying: red nose, blotchy cheeks, watery eyes. She doesn’t say anything about what’s bothering her until after the lesson though. She says that I won’t be able to use her dad’s library today, because he’s in there reading. She says she’s sorry, but that I can use the library next week after my lesson.

 I’m almost out the door when she says: “My father’s been in the library with the door shut all day, ever since he found his squirrel dead out on the back porch. He’s distraught, really. My father loved that squirrel, fed it twice a day. Once in the morning and once at dusk. Today, after breakfast, he had gone outside to feed it, and that’s when he saw it lying there. Two shots in its tiny body. He says someone had to have intentionally shot and killed it. But who would do anything like that? What kind of person would do something so cruel?”

              It feels like she may be scanning my face to see my reaction, but I might just be reading into something that isn’t there. Still, I feel nervous, and I say: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” I almost say, I didn’t know your dad had a squirrel, even though I did know. I stop myself, though, wait in silence, just about to leave her house.

            She says: “Mrs. Carlson next door says it was three boys. About your age. She saw them hiding in the mulberry bushes. She didn’t get a good look at them, though.”

            I nod and I feel her eyes burning through me, though it may be my own guilty conscience. I think about Mr. Jones’ finding Silky dead in the back yard, and it makes me overwhelmingly sad. I tell her: “I know who killed Mr. Jones’ squirrel. It was three of my friends.”

 I name names. It’s the right thing to do. I should have stopped them from doing it in the  first place, and the least I can do is to make sure she knows who did it. I tell her what I know and, when I’m finished, she doesn’t look relieved or sympathetic. Instead, she looks sad and angry at the same time. She asks: “You knew that they were going to shoot Dad’s squirrel and you didn’t stop them?”

 How can I explain that I tried, but that my words had come out wrong? Or is that really even true? Hadn’t I been afraid that I would lose my friends if I had tried to convince them to not go through with it? Isn’t that really why I had bungled the messaging?

            “I couldn’t stop them,” I say. “They wouldn’t ever have listened to me anyway.”

            But I can see in her eyes that she thinks otherwise: that she’s wondering, how can I possibly know that, if I didn’t even try?

I’m still a kid, but I know when an adult has made up their mind on something. And I can tell that I’ll never be invited to take another piano lesson with Ms. Jones again.  

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Nothing ended up happening to them. I guess Ms. Jones must’ve been afraid to tell anyone what I had told her. Maybe she was scared that Orville and Howie would retaliate against her or something. But they both had continued working on her lawn, even after the new school year started. I figured she must’ve not told Mr. Jones, because I can’t imagine that he would’ve wanted them to keep working there if he had known.

The only one who had to deal with any consequences, was me. Kind of like I had predicted when I had seen Ms. Jones’ reaction after I had told her who had killed the squirrel. A day or so after my last lesson, she had sent a polite letter addressed to both of my parents, telling them that she no longer wished to teach me piano, and suggesting a couple of names of other potential instructors in town. Her correspondence had been short and to the point, and it had made no mention whatsoever of Silky the Squirrel or why she was no longer willing to teach me.

Both of my parents had seemed puzzled by Ms. Jones’ correspondence, my mother more so than my father. I overheard them discussing it after dinner one night, and they had argued a bit about it, because my mom had wanted to ask me about why Ms. Jones would send such a letter, and my dad had been trying to get her to just leave me alone. My mom had ended up coming into the front parlor, where I had been playing checkers with my little brother, and she had asked me to come into the drawing room.

“O-h-h-h-h, you’re in trouble,” my brother had said to me, and my mom had told him to go upstairs to his room.

The conversation with my parents had been brief. My dad had been sitting in his favorite chair next to the fireplace, smoking his pipe, and my mom had been sitting across from him on the sofa. She had asked me to sit down, so I sat down alongside her. My mom informed me that she had received a letter from Ms. Jones and that I wouldn’t be going to her house anymore for piano lessons, but not to worry, because Ms. Jones had provided some names of other instructors. She then handed me the letter, and I skimmed over it silently.

I had looked up, and before my mom could ask me if I knew why Ms. Jones was terminating my piano lessons, I said: “I don’t want to go to piano lessons anymore. It doesn’t have anything to do with Ms. Jones. It has to do with me. I don’t like playing the piano. The whole time I’m there, I’m thinking about other things that I’d rather be doing, like writing plays.”

“A-h-h-h-h, yes,” my dad had said, leaning back in his chair, smoking his pipe. “There it is. The Bard has spoken.” 

But sometimes my mom really doesn’t seem to hear anything that I have to say. And, so, she had tried to argue with me. “But Henry, Ms. Jones always tells me what a wonderful student you are, and how well you’ve progressed with your piano playing. Why wouldn’t you want to continue your lessons under a different instructor?”

“Mary,” my dad had said to her firmly. “Let the boy be. He doesn’t want to take piano lessons. Let him read his books, let him write his plays.” He had looked over at me then, his dark eyes twinkling, his pipe in his mouth, and he had winked.

My mom had looked disapprovingly at him, but my dad had excused me from the room, and that was the end of it. I don’t have to take piano lessons anymore, which I suppose, is kind of an upside of this whole thing. But, on the other hand, I miss reading the books in Mr. Jones’ library and writing on the big library desk, and I honestly miss spending time with Ms. Jones, too. She was always nice to me.

I sometimes wonder whether it would’ve been better to have not told her. It didn’t really seem to have helped anything by telling her what happened, anyway. All it did was make her not like me, even though I wasn’t even there when my friends killed the squirrel. Orville and Howie are going about their lives as though nothing happened at all. Ms. Jones didn’t even fire them for what they did. So, what did I get out of any of this? Why did I stick my neck out and tell her the truth? Maybe I should’ve just kept my mouth shut, and not have said anything.

But then again, what they did never should have happened in the first place, so part of it is my fault. I should have had the courage to stop them. I should’ve told Ms. Jones or my dad or even my mom what they were going to do, before they had done it. I shouldn’t have waited until after the squirrel had been killed. There are consequences to not speaking up. I have learned this. I will never again remain silent about something that I think is wrong. It would’ve been much better to have tried harder to convince my friends to not go through with it. Instead, I have been left with the weight of knowing I could’ve done something more to try to stop them, but didn’t.

Besides, I ended up losing my friends anyway. I spend most of my days alone now. Everything changed after the night they killed Silky. It was never the same after that. I could tell from the moment that I saw them walking over the hill at the church that it would just be the three of them from now on and that I would be an outsider. I could see it in their eyes, in the way they walked together, and I could hear it in their laughter: Their shared experience, and my lack of participation in it, would always be held against me. I would never be accepted by any of them again, including Joe, even though he had been my best friend since first grade.

Other than when I’m at school, I spend most of my time alone, writing my plays and my stories. I even wrote a three-act play script called The Killing of Silky the Squirrel, but I changed the names in it. I don’t use Howie or Orville or Joe. The only name I use that is real is Silky: I guess as kind of a tribute to him in a way, since he was the one who ended up dead at no fault of his own. But he gets killed by a slingshot in my script, not a BB gun, and he’s the pet of an old woman, not an old man.

The play has helped me figure a lot of things out. I know now that I’d rather be alone than hang out with a group of guys that go around killing a squirrel for some kind of sick fun. I’d much rather be reading a book or writing a play, than carrying a secret inside about what next cruel act my friends might be planning. Writing my script, has also made me wonder whether Ms. Jones didn’t tell anyone who had killed her squirrel, because she thought that my friends might retaliate against me, not her. Maybe it was really me that she was worried about, not herself. I guess I’ll never know what her reasons for keeping silent are, since she’s probably never going to talk to me again.

I walk alone on the bridge above Fishkill Creek. It’s a wooden bridge with a steep curve and I stand at the top of it. I don’t have anyone to read lines with anymore, other than my younger brother, but I don’t want to share this play with him anyway. There are a lot of rumors swirling around town about some boys killing a squirrel a few weeks ago in the Jones’ back yard, and I don’t want my brother to read my script and figure out who the characters are. He might tell my mom, and then I’d have to show her my play and then she’d know why Ms. Jones canceled my piano lessons.

So, I read my lines alone, aloud. I cast them into the moody sky before an audience of bullfrogs. I am an actor for a moment on my own stage, the safe arms of the wooden bridge over Fishkill Creek.