The Monsters of Templeton (47 page)

And Sol, Sol was the big winner, Sol the childless, three-time divorcee with a sudden daughter, wowzers, Willie Upton, Amherst and Stanford graduate, smart as all get-out, beautiful, a girl who even babysat for us when our own children were small. Who would have thought that all this time, when we thought we knew of all the affairs, the old hurts, the wounds, that Sol could hide something as big as an affair with that old hippie Vivienne Upton? He didn't know about his daughter, of course. But that Willie has restored his faith in his own pecker, his virility, his manliness. No more ground tiger's penis, no more tisanes of strange black herbs slipped to him under the counter at Aristabulus Mudge's pharmacy. That Sol could make a child like Willie was worth three dead marriages, as he said yesterday, unable to contain his grin.

We all hooted, we all ran a little faster. And then yesterday, Big Tom said something that made us all quiet again for two good miles. We ran in silence, in awe. We didn't even spit. We didn't even fart. We were struck with joy that was as big as the Templeton we were circling on our run, on our loop, spread before us.

Even now, on our run today, we are so glad, we see it as if it had happened before us: Big Tom's meth-head daughter swimming alone at three in the morning, sleepless in withdrawal, swears she went under the dark water once. She opened her eyes. She looked in the person-size face of a small white monster, staring at her curiously and waving its fish tail. She says it was much like our monster, our vast haul that morning in July, but in miniature. The girl forgot to tread water, sank lower and lower, and the monster sank right along with her. The girl looked at the big, bulging belly. The dancer's neck. The feet with articulated phalanges. The little monster opened its mouth with its inkblack teeth, and Big Tom's girl swears it smiled.

The girl was so relaxed she almost took a breath. She almost let water into her lungs and let herself drown. But she didn't, she kicked up, kicked to the surface, passed that little monster that accompanied her up. She took a big, fresh lungful of air. The monster swam back with her to the dock, and looked up at her as she climbed out. She never once felt fear, the girl said. It was not out to harm her. It just wanted a friend. Before the monster flippered back to its depths, she reached out a finger and felt the downy skin. And she was washed with happiness like honey. The monster grinned its inky grin again, and away it dove.

So. We ponder this as we run. We have a monster in the lake again, a baby, an offshoot of our old one. We probably should tell the authorities, but we can't make ourselves, we can't bring back the divers, the scientists, the media, we can't give it again to the world. It is ours, Templeton's. We will keep it close.

We will swim on Lake Glimmerglass on the Fourth of July next summer, take out all our motorboats and float in the lake. Drunk, we will dive into the water when the sun sizzles out over the west hills, and the bats flit above, and the brass band at the Firemen's Carnival on Lakefront Park will start up, and the smell of cotton candy will blow out over the lake, and we will gather there in the water as the launch at Fairy Springs begins to send bright fireworks into the night sky. We will kick and kick in the water there, run in the water together, watching the bursts reflected on the water around us in gold and green and red, and we will swim and watch the stars when the fireworks fall, and we will feel good, we will feel glee, because below our feet, there will be swimming a white monster, a beautiful thing, brushing its back on our feet, young and naughty. And it will be Templeton's. It will be ours, and ours alone.

ON THE DAY it Dies, the Monster Thinks of:

fish and fish and fish and fish and fish;

the darkness soon lightening, the sun soon opening its eyes;

how it will soon see the wriggly duck-bottoms from below;

now the pain rising dark and terrible from the monster's deepest parts;

and how it will soon see the people legs kickety-kicking up there in the bright surface and how it loves to watch the legs kickety-kick and how it always hopes the people belonging to the legs forget to go up into the air and begin to sink;

how the people sink and scream bubbly underwater screams and hurt the monster's ears, and then they stop screaming and thrashing;

how the monster darts like a minnow to the limp and falling body, puts out its hand and catches the falling person;

how upon falling into the monster's hand the person's face would soften and the person would stop screaming and thrashing and a peaceful look would come over it;

and how the monster loves them, those pretty unmoving people, takes them and strokes their hair like moss and holds their smoothness to its chest and lets the warmth of those tiny bodies touch the cold of its big body;

now the pain, the searing, the terrible pain;

and how sometimes the little dead people would come untethered from the lakeweed the monster had tied them in so they wouldn't go floating up into the broad air, for even when they turned purple and their flesh fell off, the monster loves them;

and even when their flesh is polished off with water and leaves only their gleaming bones, the monster even still loves them;

now the pain the pain the pain the terrible pain;

and when the monster only has the delicate bones left, it cradles them and carries them to the little shelf near the tower of stones that the men had built only a few heartbeats ago, where the monster keeps its beautiful bones and it sweeps the mud from the many bones and places the new bones beside the other bones and gently presses them into the clay there;

now another rip of pain;

and the monster makes a sound and watches three months' worth of air leave its mouth, watches the huge bubble spin toward the surface to explode;

how the monster has no strength to go the great distance from the dark depths to the bright air for another breath;

now the pain, faster now, deeper, darker;

the nights the monster spent with its ear twenty feet below the surface, listening to the roar of the people of Templeton, breathing and moving and speaking, the fishes and the leaves wiggling in the trees;

the pain, darkest now;

now the monster's gaze is darkening and it is beginning to float upward through the thick water and into the thin;

and one last wrench of pain;

now a tiny blinking thing in a pool of spooling blood, a queer, pale thing with a long neck, with the monster's own hands;

now the vast ancient monster and the small new monster stare at each other;

and the vast monster floats upward, away, and the last thing it sees is the little monster snapping with its black teeth at a little fish going by;

and as the vast monster's membranous eyelids go down, it remembers the music of the surface, that intricate music of wind and human and animal and other;

how with that music the monster was not all alone, not alone, for a while;

how the darkness falls even as the monster floats into the light, thinking of music;

how the darkness falls and the water is pricked with dawn-light;

how it is good

and it is good

and it is good

Acknowledgments

MY DEEPEST THANKS to...

all the people at Hyperion and Voice who worked so hard and made this book stronger, but especially my champions, Pamela Dorman, my brilliant editor, and Ellen Archer, Voice's publisher, both of whom believed in this story from the beginning;

Sarah Landis, associate editor extraordinaire, Beth Gebhard, Voice's publicity director, and my own publicist, Allison McGeehon;

Bill Clegg, my agent, who flew to Louisville and won my eternal adoration;

The UW-Madison MFA faculty: Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Ron Kuka, Judith Claire Mitchell, Rob Nixon, and Ron Wallace;

With a special thanks to Lorrie Moore, who is lovely and wise beyond belief;

My buddies in the program, among whom Steph Bedford, Christopher Kang, Anna Potter, and Rita Mae Reese gave more than I could ever return;

Kevin A. Gonzalez, a friend in need and deed (indeed);

Yaddo and the Vermont Studio Center, havens for hungry writers;

Anne Axton and the University of Louisville Creative Writing department for the astounding gift of the Axton fellowship;

All my friends whom I neglected when writing took over, especially Katie Harper and Jaime Muehl;

My midnight skinny-dippers Lisa (Senchyshyn) Trever, Meghann (Graham) Perillo, and Jeff Dean;

The original Running Buds: Pat Dietz, Donny Raddatz, Jerry Groff, Mikey Stein, Bobby Snyder, and Bill Streck, whose whip cracked all the way to Wisconsin;

My husband, Clay, gentle giant, first reader, and favorite person in the world;

Adam and Sarah, my siblings (and the fire in their bellies);

Cooperstown, and all the people who live there, have lived there, or loved the village even a little;

And, last and best, my parents, Gerald and Jeannine Groff, for their boundless love, support, and foresight for giving us such a gift of a hometown.