What does it mean when someone dies?
I was thinking about that a lot.
Sometimes I thought about Mom and me, about how we were all that we had left. And how I felt guilty about that without really knowing why. And also that I was afraid, somehow, that whatever it was that Jeff had felt, I would feel it, too. Like it was contagious. And then I thought back to the beginning of Evie, Evie entering the Deepthorn, lost, alone. Only it wasn’t Evie disappearing into the trees, it was Jeff. And that gave me a glimmer of hope. Like he could come back.
I wanted him to come back.
But I was worried that if I went after him, I’d get lost, too.
Sometimes I’d go down to the creek and imagine that it wasn’t a creek, but a river or a lake. And that off in the distance I could see tiny lights blinking. And I imagined that there was something else out there, an apartment building or a neighbourhood or a whole city, where everyone is different, just slightly. Like, it’s not easier or better there, it’s just different. And in that world Jeff is like me, confused and maybe struggling, but still alive. And then I think, maybe I’ll write a novel and it will be the life that I want Jeff to live. And it won’t be a perfect life. Just a life. But as if I could change it. As if representation was more than fantasy. And then I think, is that why it’s so difficult to figure out what I’m doing with this documentary? Is that why it means so much to me?
* * *
On Saturdays or on Mom’s days off during the summer, when we were kids, she used to take us to this park on the edge of town. Just a swing set and a jungle gym and some benches, but it felt special because the park was near a creek and little forest. The forest has recently been cleared, now it’s just sand and piles of dirt, ready to accept the housing development that they’re building next year, which, I’m told, will surround the park in concentric rings of crescents and cul-de-sacs and detours and long, leaning lanes cutting across from Fourth to the highway.
Behind the park there was a path that led over a stream and into the forest, where it meandered and criss-crossed over itself before coming out of another exit about a hundred metres away. But you could also follow the creek deeper and deeper into the bush on a separate trajectory. If you followed it that way, the creek walls got higher and higher, like a sort of trench, and you’d have to make the decision to walk along the top, which was sometimes difficult, depending on how thick the forest was, or right alongside the creek itself, which was the more dramatic route, but didn’t always offer a dry place for you to set down your feet, although if you were really careful you could pick your way across some of the less shallow areas, or, since the creek was pretty narrow at times, wedge yourself across the banks.
By the time Jeff was thirteen, he would usually just wander off to the creek as soon as we got there, leaving me to play by myself. I would have rather gone off with him, but I felt like with him gone someone had to entertain Mom, so I usually played on the swings while she watched. Maybe that’s weird. But the way Mom always announced that we were going to the “good jungle gym,” even though it wasn’t much different than any of the others in town, made me feel that it meant something to her, like she was doing something special for us. Even though we’d probably dubbed the park “good” arbitrarily one morning when we were feeling bratty and she was dragging us somewhere else.
The last day I can remember all of us going there together, I had been feeling so generous that I had even allowed Mom to push me on the swings. I was ten by then, and old enough to find that a little bit humiliating, but Jeff had been a dick in the car and I wanted to make up for it. I don’t remember what he’d said exactly, but he was pretty snipey then. Often the smallest comment would set him off. Even just asking questions about what he’d done at school could cause a mega fight, because Mom would keep pressing and pressing even though it was clear that he didn’t want to talk about it at all. And instead of giving in and telling her about his day he snapped and turned it back on her. I always felt like it was my responsibility to smooth things over, like my being good would somehow reassure Mom that Jeff was okay and that she could leave him alone. Or that Jeff would see that there was a way to get along with Mom without causing things to escalate so quickly. But I know that Mom didn’t feel like Jeff was okay, that he had surprised her or astonished her somehow, so that now she was always ready for him to explode, even when he was just minding his own business, like he was a psychopath or a killer that had snuck into our home.
After a while, Mom went to sit down on a park bench somewhere and I kept swinging. I was finally able to go as high as I wanted. But I started thinking about Jeff and wondering what he was up to.
The forest was usually abandoned, and even the park itself was pretty quiet on that particular June afternoon. I don’t think it even occurred to Mom to be worried. Durham is sleepy, and even if it’s hard not to notice that there are plenty of sketch people around, when you really start to look for them, it’s also easy enough to pretend that they don’t exist if that’s what you’d prefer.
Maybe she should have been more worried, though.
It wasn’t much of a forest, or at least that’s what I’d always thought, but I’d always gone in with Jeff, and when I was with Jeff I felt brave, like nothing could hurt me. Which was maybe stupid since he was only three years older than me and he was just a kid, too. And if I went in with him there was at least one thing that could hurt me, and that was him, and he often did, turning and whaling on me out of nowhere or running off and pretending like he had abandoned me. I always knew when he’d run off that it was just a game, but that didn’t stop me from playing my part and crying like it wasn’t.
Once I got farther up from the park, and I could no longer hear the cars passing on the road, or see the field or the swings, once I realized that Jeff was going to be harder to find than I’d thought, I started to get scared. I called his name and hoped that would dispel my fear, but when he didn’t appear and there was no answer, not from him or from the forest itself, it just made things worse. It felt like the birds and the plants and the insects were holding their breath, as stupid as that sounds, like they were waiting for something to descend on me, waiting for me to screw up so that they could catch me when my guard was down and tear me to shreds. It also wasn’t out of the question that it was Jeff waiting, that he was just behind a bush and he was going to jump out at any moment and make me shit my pants, which was comforting, in a way. But not really comforting. Only more comforting than the alternative.
I tried to keep cool as I kept looking for him, fighting the panic that threatened to overtake me at any moment, as I imagined all kinds of dangers, from the relatively benign — but much more probable — lurking animals, to crazed child-killers, to supernatural horrors that were completely undefined in my imagination, but which somehow terrified me the most, filling up all of the negative space with a kind of profound and focused malevolence that I had somehow deeply offended or betrayed. I imagined for a minute that I wasn’t looking for Jeff, but for myself, like it was my own body that was lying somewhere among the ferns. And not to say that I was looking for a body, although the thought had crossed my mind that whatever was waiting for me in the forest had gotten Jeff, too. In any case I was ready to panic and run screaming at any moment, and it took everything I had to stop that from happening.
Jeff would have seen that I was falling apart. He could smell my weakness. He knew when I was ready to cave, usually, well before I did. He had it down to a science: my psychic pressure points were ingrained in his DNA. You get that when you’re an older brother, I think. So even if he hadn’t planned on surprising me, it would have been impossible for Jeff to resist if he was spying. The fact that he hadn’t jumped out yet was disconcerting, either because I was walking into a really exceptional trap or because something was actually wrong.
I don’t know what I was imagining, but I also didn’t want to clarify that too much for myself either, because to think about the horrors waiting for me was, to a certain extent, to bring them into being.
There was a place in the forest he liked to go, along the creek bed, where the banks were steep, and the vines — raspberry bushes, I think — thick overhead. The creek was narrower there and there was a little room to move around. Not far away enough that he wouldn’t have been able to hear me calling for him, but I headed there, anyway.
Where Jeff liked to go. I didn’t, not especially. But I could see the appeal. The place seemed enclosed, like a fort or a home, but it also seemed menacing to me, like it belonged to someone else and they could come home at any moment. It was hard to get there, at least without getting wet or falling on your ass. At times the creek went right to either bank and the only way to cross was to inch across slippery tree trunks or to nimbly skip across the tops of the least-submerged rocks.
The first time we’d gone that way had been weird, too. It was midsummer, and we’d spent all of this time navigating the creek bed, which seemed private and secret and almost magical because we were discovering it for the first time, and then we heard voices, hushed voices, speaking intimately, like we were waiting outside someone’s kitchen or bedroom, and we stopped. I must have been seven or eight, and the idea of meeting anyone in the forest terrified me, but Jeff wanted to keep going. After watching him push forward for a while I reluctantly followed him, because the alternative — missing out or being alone in the forest or being called gay or a pussy, later — was much worse.
There were three teenagers where the creek narrowed, two men and one woman. A couple and another man. Maybe I should say two boys and a girl, but they seemed like men and women to me then, although more dangerous because men and women didn’t seem capable of the same kinds of things that I knew teenagers were. One boy was leaning against the creek wall and the other two were sitting on a log pushed up against the bank. All of them were smoking, the couple sharing a single cigarette and the boy with his own and sparking a lighter in his hands.
“Look, Paul,” said the boy standing by himself, when we rounded the final bend.
“How did you guys get here?” asked Paul.
We just stared at them quietly. Jeff gestured behind us.
The girl laughed. “They look so confused.”
I wanted to leave immediately, but I could see that Jeff was in awe, either of the little space and how it expanded out and felt secret, or of the teenagers themselves and what they stood for: death, sex, secret knowledge.
The first boy barked and Jeff flinched.
“We own this forest,” said Paul.
“No you don’t,” said Jeff, quietly, as if he couldn’t be sure.
“You aren’t allowed here,” said Paul.
“That’s not true,” said Jeff.
He wanted so badly to belong, even when he had no business belonging. I thought I saw tears forming in his eyes.
“Guys,” said the girl. “Come on. Be nice.”
“This is nice,” said Paul.
“Fuck you,” said the boy, to us.
“See?” said Paul.
“Go home,” said the boy.
“We don’t want to,” said Jeff, picking up a stick and, for a second, holding it in a vaguely threatening way. Then thinking better of it and whacking it idly against the creek bed instead.
“What’s your name?” Paul asked me.
I just looked at him.
“His name is Kent,” said Jeff.
“Can he talk?”
“Yeah,” said Jeff.
“What?”
“I said ‘Yeah.’”
“You can talk?” asked Paul, looking at me.
I nodded.
“He probably shouldn’t be here,” said the boy.
“Yeah,” said Paul. “We’re bad.”
“Maybe you can stay, though,” said the boy, looking at Jeff.
“Jesus,” said the girl, rolling her eyes.
“Don’t mind her,” said Paul.
“Yeah,” said the boy. “She’s on her period.”
“You asshole,” said the girl.
“What’s your name?” asked the boy.
“Jeff.”
“You seem cool,” he said.
Jeff shrugged. He knew he didn’t seem cool.
I could tell we were losing.
“Smoking is bad for you,” I said.
“Is that right?” said Paul, taking an exaggerated drag.
“We know it’s bad for us,” said the girl.
“Are you going to tell?” asked the boy.
There was a moment of silence, as if Jeff was actually considering the boy’s words. Was he going to tell on them or not? And, if so, to whom?
“Hey,” said Paul. “Come over here.”
Somehow, without our noticing, Paul had put his hand up the girl’s shirt. It looked like a surprise to her, too, and she was trying to squirm out of his reach, but he was holding her close with his other hand.
“Do you want to feel?” asked Paul, looking at Jeff.
“Stop it,” said the girl. “Come on.” She tried to hit him away, but he adjusted his grip so that he was holding back one arm with his far hand and the other one back with his shoulder. That arm was pinned between them and she tried to manoeuvre it out.
“C’mon,” said Paul. “They feel pretty good.”
“Can I feel?” asked the boy.
“No,” said the girl, finally ripping Paul’s hand out from under her shirt and pulling the material back down to her waist. She got up and walked to the other end of the clearing. But first she grabbed the cigarette out of Paul’s mouth and threw it into the water.
“Fucking asshole!” she said.
Paul shrugged.
“Look at him, he’s so scared,” said the boy.
Jeff was really scared, I could see that. He was still staring at Paul.
“How old are you?” asked the boy.
Instead of answering, Jeff turned and ran. I looked at them for a minute longer, unsure what had just happened. I think they were surprised, too.
Finally, the boy laughed. “That was so fucked up, Paul.”
“I know,” he said.
Somehow they’d forgotten all about me.
“That kid is going to have a wet dream tonight,” said the boy.
The girl just looked at Paul.
“That wasn’t okay,” she said.
“Ugh,” said the boy.
“He wasn’t going to do it,” said Paul.
“You’re right he wasn’t,” she said.
The two boys laughed. Paul was lighting another cigarette.
“Like. What the fuck,” she said.
“It was a joke,” said Paul.
“It wasn’t very fucking funny.”
“I thought it was funny,” said the boy.
“See?” said Paul.
She gave him the finger.
“Like, what the fuck,” said the boy, in an idiot voice.
“Fuck off,” said the girl.
There was a moment of silence. My heart was pounding. I wanted Jeff to come back, to show them up, to prove that he was better than they thought he was. That he was better than they were. But I knew that he wasn’t coming back. And that it was an impossible dream.
“Don’t say ‘fuck,’” I said, instead.
The girl jumped a little when she noticed me.
“I thought he was gone,” said Paul.
“Don’t say ‘fuck,’” I said again.
For a minute it was quiet. Then the boy grinned. Paul started to laugh.
And then I ran back the way we came, just like Jeff had.
* * *
Then I’d been scared, too, going back down the creek on my own, so scared that I hadn’t been watching my feet while crossing over a log and slipped and soaked myself. And made things much worse digging out one of my shoes from the muck in the creek bottom. Jeff got in trouble for that, of course, when I came back, stoically limping in my dripping clothes, because he was supposed to be watching over me, and Mom and him got in a huge fight and he ran out of the car when we pulled into the driveway, and didn’t come back until later that night, well after dinner, which Mom said she wouldn’t have let him eat, anyway, when we were at the table without him. Although when he came in the door she told him about the Tupperware full of lasagna in the fridge and he put some on a plate and ate it cold in the dark kitchen (he didn’t bother turning on the lights), working slowly, I could tell, while Mom and I watched Law & Order in the living room, dropping his plate in the sink with a crash when he was done, which got Mom on her feet. He whispered sorry loudly from the kitchen, but everyone knew it wasn’t a mistake, and Mom told him to go to bed, and me to go bed, which I did immediately, not even hesitating, and which he did only after muttering something which my mom asked him to repeat and which turned out to be, when he finally said it, “I was going to bed.”
We’d been back to the creek lots of times afterward and though I always thought the teens would be back, not without some hesitation, we hadn’t seen them once. Not even from a distance. Though Jeff wouldn’t admit it, I think they were why he insisted on going there week after week. He wanted to see them again. I don’t know why. Or what he was trying to prove.
I made my way up the creek slowly, occasionally calling his name. My fear was different than it had been back then. I was alone and something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. I was afraid that he wouldn’t be there and I wouldn’t know what to do. I couldn’t search the whole forest by myself. I’d have to get Mom, and then even if we did find him it would be a huge deal and he’d probably run off again.
Eventually I started to hear a low sort of mewling coming from down the creek. Little breathy squeaks that sounded like they were coming from a hundred miles away. Which obviously couldn’t have been possible, it was just the way that the sound dispersed into the air. It reminded me of this time I had been mowing the lawn and noticed only when it was too late — just as the lawn mower passed over — that the movement between the blades of grass I had assumed was the wind wasn’t the wind at all, but a baby bird straining to be fed. I turned off the lawn mower and went inside, afraid to move it forward or backward, afraid to disturb the site of the massacre, until Mom came home from work and yelled at me for leaving the lawn unfinished, the mower out on the front lawn. When I reluctantly went back to the mower and moved it off its little square, I couldn’t find any traces of the little bird at all, which felt like a miracle, even though I was certain that the bird was dead. Even though I hadn’t been able to hear the bird at the time, because of the lawn mower noise, obviously, the mewling that I heard now sounded like what I imagined the bird must have sounded like, the sound which I had heard over and over in my dreams. If there was a baby bird on the ground, maybe I could manoeuvre it back into its nest somehow, with sticks or leaves or something, without the mother bird noticing. Small atonement. I forgot about Jeff for a minute and began scanning the ground.
But when I rounded the bend in the creek it was Jeff I discovered, lying on his side, half his body in the creek, his head on the far bank. He was staring into a middle distance and he was the one mewling. His head was bleeding, and the blood was running down his neck and staining his shirt.
I didn’t want to touch him because I was afraid I might make things worse. Also because I was afraid to touch him. Because he was bleeding and I was scared and I didn’t know what to do. He didn’t look real to me. It was like he had crawled out of my imagination. I thought maybe if I closed my eyes and told myself he wasn’t real that he would go away, like a bad dream, and I’d find him farther down the creek bend, waiting where he always was, and he’d call me a loser for getting so afraid over nothing, just a walk in the woods.
He somehow managed to look at me but he was only able to make more of that mewling sound, infinitely more disturbing than from the bird in my dreams.