Chapter eight

Playmates

The early 2010s brought profound joy to the children of Farley Street. It was a particularly happy time for Zeke. He expanded his trust in his friends and his belief in Zig and Zag’s wild tales. Zag, too, grew closer to Zeke, telling him fantastic stories and feeding his fancies. When Halloween finally rolled around, Zag told him the origin of the famous jack-o’-lantern.

“It comes from my homeland, you see. People used to carve faces on turnips back in Ireland. So, when Irish immigrants brought this custom to America, they started using the much more abundant and tasty pumpkin, placed a lit candle inside, and thus, the jack-o’-lantern was born!”

Zeke absolutely loved Zag’s funny stories. He also loved Halloween. The Halloween tradition loved best by the children of Farley Street was dipping apples in hot caramel sauce and rolling them in crushed peanuts which made for a yummy fall treat. Another ritual they enjoyed was bobbing for apples. It was a fun game where children leaned over a huge barrel of water with several apples floating inside. They were blindfolded, with their hands tied behind their backs, as they tried to bite an apple and pull it out of the water. The child who picked the most apples would be announced as the winner. Among the Farley Street kids, Kai was the best apple picker.

One time, during the apple bobbing game, Leia got into a fight with Gael and threw him into a barrel full of cold water. The barrel was so small, and Gael was so fat, he got stuck and couldn’t get out. He felt breathless and began panting. He was almost brought to tears. After a short while and a few good laughs, Leia pulled him out. Nobody knew where a small girl found such immense physical strength. Another time she forced Gael to help her with target practice by balancing an apple on his head while she shot at it with a BB gun. Poor kid.

• • •

Mothers are a perceptive bunch, and Mrs. Copeland knew her child had a crush on Leia. She was concerned about him, though, as there was something about Leia that she secretly suspected went beyond that tomboyish persona. Nevertheless, Leia loved the turkey shooting farms, the way she liked the smell of grease in the garage. She loved the sound of guns and the shrieking turkeys. The children were told the turkey that was shot would be their actual Thanksgiving Day turkey, though it was never the case. Zeke, an incredibly gentle soul and a die-hard animal lover, always avoided these farms and their brutality. He politely declined any and all invitations to go to the turkey shooting farm and proudly announced he would be a vegetarian.

It was during the fall that Maya, too, began to experience her first crush, and it was none other than Kai. Even though he was six years older than her, Maya grew infatuated with him. She would want to hold his hand and plant kisses on his cheeks. Kai, too, thought she was a cute kid, so he let her hang around him — up to a point.

Love was in the air. All the changes in the lives of these children affected Zeke in ways he couldn’t really put a finger on. He could smell the fragrance of love everywhere he went. It increased his pining for something unattainable, something he could not explain. Maybe that something was love, maybe not. Though she was five years older than him, he had always been fond of Nora, the proverbial “girl down the street.” She was just like him — unassuming, dreamy, lost in her own world. He always loved her company, which had now grown into a longing he simply couldn’t understand.

Naturally, these years of innocent felicity did come to an end as Zeke entered adolescence — that time of a child’s development when his or her full understanding of life changes. He had never even tried to fit in with children outside of Farley Street. He was always the outcast, the pariah. The neglect of his peers made him feel like he was an alien, a stranger in his own world.

It was during these years that he really started to hate the idea of Christmas. Though he had always been a very spiritual and sensitive boy, he began to loath December 25th, the day of his birth. He hated how millions and millions celebrated that day, yet there seemed to be no one who cared about him that day outside of his mother. As mature of a child as he was, he still could not shake the feeling that he had to share his birthday with what he learned to be the Christ Child, the Light of the World, whatever that meant.

“So, wait. Jesus isn’t Jesus? Jesus is Christ and Christ is a light? I’m totally confused.”

In a way, having his birthday on Christmas traumatized him. Seeing other children get love, admiration, and presents on their special day made him bitter at the idea of having his own happiness overshadowed by the spirit of Christmas. His feelings toward Christmas would ultimately lead to great changes in his life, but he was still unaware of that.

Zeke was never a great student, but he had a profound insight, a universal presence, and a pleasing personality which made him a favorite of most of the teachers at school. He triggered a maternal instinct in them. They cared less about his marks and more about protecting his innocent, fragile, and vulnerable self.

Around the same time, he began having very bizarre dreams. He could see strange places and figures as if he were traveling to different places in time and space. While in that twilight state between dreaming and being fully awake, he often heard chirping sounds behind his ears, as if giggly little fairies were gossiping around him. An ordinary person would go insane. In one such dream, he saw himself flying above the clouds early in the morning when he could suddenly hear Nora’s voice. She was calling him and asking him to play with her. He looked down and saw the corn maze near his home, where he’d often played as a child. He searched for her, trying to follow the laughter that led him there. He soon found a much younger version of her running and hiding behind the crops. Her hair fell over her face and blew in the wind like waves in an ocean. Her beautiful, angelic face shined like a star as soft rays from the morning sun kissed her skin. He could see a beautiful rainbow-colored halo around her. Then he would wake up.

“How is it my dreams never end? They always leave me wanting more…”

At night, he would still look up at the sky, wondering where he had come from. He still felt a connection to the stars. He also loved the smell of books. His thirst for knowledge beyond his regular schoolbooks led him to more interesting and unusual topics. He searched for books that could tell him about the stars, galaxies, and other planets. He knew he was searching for something he wasn’t fully aware of, something that was hidden in the unconscious layers of his mind. He went to the city library and opened a random book. On the front page of the book, the following lines were written in bold:

“When the student is ready, the master will appear.”

• • •

A few years had passed. Now in her late teens, Nora had turned into a grown-up young woman. Not only did she shy away from the neighborhood children, but she also avoided the company of her parents and her brothers. She was growing distant from everything and everyone by the day.

Zeke, on the other hand, was now entering his teens and didn’t know if all the hormonal rush he felt every time he caught a glimpse of her could be termed “love.” He was going through so many internal changes and was quite pensive about them. He was often found sitting alone near a boat docked in the harbor or roaming around Fort Michilimackinac.

Mrs. Copeland would often come to Tartal House to share her two cents. “You have a strange little boy, Mrs. Tartal. Does he plan to become a cloistered monk?”

Audrey also noticed the changes in her child but chose to keep quiet about them. She was reeling from her own troubles. To deal with the stress from the garage and the disappointment at home, Ben started drinking heavily, which was taking its toll on Audrey. They often had fights, and she had begun to think her husband now loved his moonshine more than her.

“Audrey, you’re pissing me off catering to Zeke the way you do. He’s a pansy. I’m going to have to rough him up a bit.”

“Like hell you are!” Audrey was clearly coming into her own and not the demure and deferring wife she once was. “You lay a hand on that kid, you’ll be pulling back a bloody stump!” She was very protective of her prodigy and was willing to do whatever it took to keep him safe.

“Don’t you sass me, Missy! I’m the head of this family and this kid is making me look bad.”

“Oh no, you do that plenty well on your own — the way you drink, cuss and stumble all over the place. If anything, you make us look bad!”

Then they both would storm to opposite ends of the house and not speak to each other for days. The cycle just perpetuated itself with no end in sight.

• • •

Northern Michigan was always a thriving, four-seasons playground. In spring, the blossoms bursting on the cherry trees were a sight to behold. In summer, the myriad of lakes, beaches, and golf courses would all come to life, along with the magnificent shoreline encompassing the state. Everybody knew somebody who had a boat. Fall was magnificent with the changing colors, pumpkin patches, hayrides, corn mazes, “haunted” houses, and of course, Halloween. Every year, in anticipation of Christmas, there were numerous tree farms where one could board a hay tractor, scour the fields for the perfect evergreen tree, chop it down, load it onto the truck bed, head to the lodge to have hot apple cider and cinnamon doughnuts, then return home to decorate the tree for Christmas.

Christmas Eve turned into a memorable event for Zeke as he could see, meet, and speak with Nora for an entire evening. It was his birthday the next day, but Nora’s presence always made it bearable. The following day, Boxing Day, wasn’t quite the same, though. Nora disappeared with her friends and would often go missing for days. Christmas and New Year’s thus often felt meaningless and miserable to him. Nora stayed away from her house for most hours of the day throughout the year anyway. Zeke pined for her, eagerly awaiting a glimpse of her, even if just once a day. He would stay awake all night just to see her open the gates to her house in the middle of the night and silently sneak in. It was turning into an obsession for him.

Zeke enjoyed watching the New Year’s Eve celebrations on TV, but he wasn’t too impressed with people getting drunk and acting stupid. There was enough of that at home. In early February, the entire nation was glued to their TV screens for America’s favorite annual pastime, the Super Bowl. Zeke enjoyed football somewhat, mainly for the strategic aspect of the game, but he felt the sport was too rough overall. He loved playing and watching soccer, however, and one of his favorite moments in the game was “Sudden Death.”