Skeleton Crew

II. After the Storm. Norton.

A Trip to Town.

'Jeee-pers,' Billy said.

He was standing by the fence that separates our property from Norton's and looking down our driveway. The driveway runs a quarter of a mile to a camp road which, in its turn, runs about three-quarters of mile to a stretch of two-lane blacktop, called Kansas Road. From Kansas Road you can go anywhere you want, as long as it's Bridgton.

I saw what Billy was looking at and my heart went cold.

'Don't go any closer, champ. Right there is close enough.' Billy didn't argue.

The morning was bright and as clear as a bell. The sky, which had been a mushy, hazy color during the heat wave, had regained a deep, crisp blue that was nearly autumnal. There was a light breeze, making cheerful sun- dapples move back and forth in the driveway. Not far from where Billy was standing there was a steady hissing noise, and in the grass there was what you might at first have taken for a writhing bundle of snakes. The power lines leading to our house had fallen in an untidy tangle about twenty feet away and lay in a burned patch of grass. They were twisting lazily and spitting. if the trees and grass hadn't been so completely damped down by the torrential rains, the house might have gone up. As it was, there was only that black patch where the wires had touched directly.

'Could that electrocute a person, Daddy?'

'Yeah. it could.'

'What are we going to do about it?'

'Nothing. Wait for the CMP.'

'When will they come?'

'I don't know.' Five-year-olds have as many questions as Hallmark has cards. 'I imagine they're pretty busy this morning. Want to take a walk up to the end of the driveway with me?' He started to come and then stopped, eyeing the wires nervously. One of them humped up and turned over lazily, as if beckoning.

'Daddy, can electricity shoot through the ground?' A fair question. 'Yes, but don't worry. Electricity wants the ground, not you, Billy. You'll be all right if you stay away from the wires.'

'Wants the ground,' he muttered, and then came to me. We walked up the driveway holding hands.

It was worse than I had imagined. Trees had fallen across the drive in four different places, one of them small, two of them middling, and one old baby that must have been five feet through the middle. Moss was crusted onto it like a moldy corset.

Branches, some half-stripped of their leaves, lay everywhere in jackstraw profusion. Billy and I walked up to the camp road, tossing the smaller branches off into the woods on either side. it reminded me of a summer's day that had been maybe twenty-five years before; I couldn't have been much older than Billy was now. All my uncles had been here, and they had spent the day in the woods with axes and hatchets and Darcy poles, cutting brush. Later that afternoon they had all sat down to the trestle picnic table my dad and mom used to have and there had been a monster meal of hot dogs and hamburgers and potato salad. The 'Gansett beer had flowed like water and my uncle Reuben took a dive into the lake with all his clothes on, even his deck-shoes. In those days there were still deer in these woods.

'Daddy, can I go down to the lake?' He was tired of throwing branches, and the thing to do with a little boy when he's tired is to let him go do something else. 'Sure.' We walked back to the house together and then Billy cut right, going around the house and giving the downed wires a large berth. I went left, into the garage, to get my McCullough. As I had suspected, I could already hear the unpleasant song of the chainsaw up and down the lake.

I topped up the tank, took off my shirt, and was starting back up the driveway when Steff came out. She eyed the downed trees lying across the driveway nervously.

'How bad is it?'

'I can cut it up. How bad is it in there?'

'Well, I got the glass cleaned up, but you're going to have to do something about that tree, David. We can't have a tree in the living room.' “No,' I said. 'I guess we can't.' We looked at each other in the morning sunlight and got giggling. I set the McCullough down on the cement areaway, and kissed her, holding her buttocks firmly.

'Don't,' she murmured. 'Billy's—” He came tearing around the corner of the house just then. 'Dad! Daddy! Y'oughta see the ' Steffy saw the live wires and screamed for him to watch out. Billy, who was a good distance away from them, pulled up short and stared at his mother as if she had gone mad.

'I'm okay, Mom,' he said in the careful tone of voice you use to placate the very old and senile. He walked towards us, showing us how all right he was, and Steff began to tremble in my arms.

'It's all right,' I said in her ear. 'He knows about them.'

'Yes, but people get killed,' she said. 'They have ads all the time on television about live wires, people get-Billy, I want you to come in the house right now!'

'Aw, come on, Mom! I wanna show Dad the boathouse!' He was almost bugeyed with excitement and disappointment. He had gotten a taste of post-storm apocalypse and wanted to share it.

'You go in right now! Those wires are dangerous and—”

'Dad said they want the ground, not me—”

'Billy, don't you argue with me!'

'I'll come down and look, champ. Go on down yourself.' I could feel Steff tensing against me. 'Go around the other side, kiddo.'