Tommy felt the baby lifted from his arm...
In the Primal Library
When we were twelve, Bobby Milton and I rode our bikes to the library to look at naked pictures in the National Geographicmagazines they kept on the second floor. We would go after school, in the autumn of our seventh-grade year, before the weather turned too cold for boys on bikes. Bobby’s older brother, Nate, told us about the pictures of bare-chested native women. Being dumb and horny and without access to real nudie mags—Bobby’s dad was a youth pastor at the Baptist church and my dad was in Hawaii with his secretary—we scurried up the creaking stairs to the magazine room and spent an hour or so flipping through the glossy pages.
The Springdale Carnegie Library was an imposing structure of stone, a tomb filled with dusty, creaking innards. The woodwork, though intricate and beautiful, had weathered years of schoolchildren’s abuse. Railings groaned with the slightest provocation, floorboards rubbed against one another with wails and whimpers, and the whole place reeked of yellowed paper and mildew. The second floor, where the magazines waited in tall cardboard sleeves, was illuminated by a few naked bulbs and always rested in uneasy shadow.
We stayed long enough for the sun to skirt closer to the horizon, almost vanishing from the narrow windows—just long enough to find other pictures under the yellow magazine covers, grotesque cave paintings from Lascaux in France and artists’ renderings of Neanderthal man. Pictures that inspired an imaginative game of chicken, Bobby and I conjuring the poor Neanderthal into some hunched creature of the shadows, a man-beast that chomped and crunched on the bones of little boys who remained on the second floor past dark.
"He’s got awful teeth," I’d say, "yellow-saw teeth, for grinding and tearing."
Bobby countered: "A big, flat forehead and black eyes for seeing at night."
"Hands as big as your head."
"Muscles and veins popping through his skin."
"Face like rough leather."
"Looks like a bear, extra hair all over."
"He bites his prey on the neck and tears out the jugular."
Our original purpose lost, we pushed our hideous descriptions until one of us broke and bolted for the stairs. We clambered onto our bikes and rode to my house because it was closer. On the way, every crooked tree limb reached out as the gnarled hand of our prehistoric man-thing; we collapsed on the front lawn, heaving and panting until our hearts slowed and our panic crackled into laughter.
Winter came, and our trips to the library stopped. Bobby’s father was transferred, and I lost the courage to climb to the second floor. In time, I forgot the Neanderthal man’s smashed face.
It’s a shame how some things can be forgotten.
Six years later, when I took Stacy Pfiefer to the second floor under the guise of studying for a physics exam, the memories of our man-thing resided in the most primitive folds of my brain. Stacy said she wanted to study—alone—and my broiling hormones permitted one motive.
"We need a quietplace to study," she had said.
I heard, I want to be alone with you, Nick, and my heart quickened.
But once she spread her homework across the walnut table in the reading room, once she flicked on the little lamp and started reciting equations, once she pushed me away when I started nibbling her neck, I knew my interpretation of "quiet place to study" had landed wide of the mark. I was aroused, though, perhaps prompted by memories of the twelve year old who had climbed those creaking stairs with his buddy to sneak a peek at a naked breast in an old magazine.
After one more failed attempt at romance, Stacy pushed me away and said, "Look, mister. I’m here to work. I thought you understood." Her face distorted in the dim light.
"Sorry," I said, happy in the shadows because she couldn’t see the bulge in my jeans.
Embarrassed and horny, I excused myself, intending to relieve a little tension in the bathroom. There were three rooms on the second floor: The big periodical reading room, with its boxed copies of old magazines and racks of newspapers, the nonfiction collection on the other side of the building, and the small alcove between with the stairs on one side and a tiny storeroom and toilet on the other.
Stacy had just the one lamp on in the reading room, so as I stumbled toward the bathroom I smacked my foot against a heavy object, nearly dropping to the floor. My eyes adjusted gradually, and my arousal was lost to curiosity. I lifted a yellow-bordered copy of National Geographic; the box was full of them, for sale—a nickel apiece.
What’s more, I recognized the cover: Paintings from that cave in France, bizarre renderings of men and animals from prehistoric times. The memories started to flicker: Bobby and I, boys of twelve; the shadow-men we imagined. I flipped the magazine open, hungry to find the picture of our Neanderthal that inspired so much childish terror.
"Nick?" Stacy called from the next room. "You all right?"
"Yeah, fine. I’ll be back in a minute."
"Hurry, okay? It’s a little spooky in here. I heard a noise."
"It’s an old building," I said.
I turned every page, but couldn’t find the picture. I knewthat magazine. We’d looked at it so many times. Confused, perplexed, and just a little frightened, I moved to the doorway of the small storeroom, reached inside the opening, and felt for the light switch.
The light flickered, illuminating the room like a flash of lightning, and went out. A blown bulb. In that moment, I saw images on the walls—misshapen paintings, black-and-red stylizations of deformed, not-quite human, things. There were other beasts engaged in carnal acts with the man-things. Smears of blood. Elongated arms, legs, genitalia. The walls spread in twisted, pornographic cave paintings—not the hunting images from National Geographic. Twisted. When the light flickered off, I was momentarily blinded, but the images remained, lurking behind my eyes.
My heart lodged in my throat.
I opened my mouth, ready to call for Stacy, but a thumping sound stopped my voice, followed by a heavy crash, like a body hitting a hardwood floor. My limbs became stone; terror crept up my spine and locked onto my brain stem—the primitivebrain. I was twelve again. I stumbled away from the dark room, glanced to my right, to the reading room where I’d left Stacy. Black shapes shifted across the lamplight. I fled, crashing down the stairs and through the front door.
I left Stacy alone on the second floor. I climbed into my car and drove away like Bobby and I rode our bikes—spurred by fear, frightened by every misshapen shadow along the quiet, neighborhood streets. I breathed for the first time in my driveway, panting like a child.
I rested my head against the steering wheel and waited for my heart to stop its assault.
After a few moments, I laughed. I pounded the steering wheel and laughed at myself, pricking my courage and replacing my fear with embarrassment. The paintings had been figments of my imagination, memories of those afternoons years ago, when I was a horny, stupid kid. When the light popped, I was startled. No body hitting the floor, just the protests of an old building. I glanced at the clock on my car’s dash. Nine o’clock, the library’s closing time.
Stacy was going to be pissed.
I worked through excuses, writing my script for Stacy, trying to find a reason for my sudden flight. As I turned down the final street of my return trip, flashing red-and-blue lights screamed. Police lights—and an ambulance. I parked and wandered toward the lights, drawn like a Neolithic primitive to the fire. A small crowd had gathered, watching as she was wheeled out on a gurney, covered with a sheet. Our shadows were blown obscene by the flashing lights—strange shapes dancing across the parking lot and lawn.