“You think that scrawny little dipstick is the bully around here? Give me a break.”
“Not the bully. The bully’s target,” Tommy answered. “He’ll lead us to the bully.”
“Only if the bully is out there sitting on the fence,” Mike scoffed.
Rule Number Three actually had three steps. The first step was to figure out who the bully—or bullies—were. The second was to give them the hairy eyeball, which would allow them a chance to just steer clear of you. Step three, depending on the effect of the hairy eyeball, was to pound them after school if necessary. Of course, that only worked with boys. Girls had another way of bullying, but dealing with girls involved a different set of rules anyway.
The bell rang. When they lined up to go back into the classroom, Ricky stood next to them and said, “You lucked out. Bobby Patterson is out sick. Mostly he picks on the Kraut, but he likes to give new kids what he calls his ‘initiation.’”
“Thanks for the warning,” Tommy said, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Mike grinning.
Rule Number Four was to not raise your hand too much, and not at all on the first day, but each answered politely when called on, so the teacher didn’t focus on them too much and after a while, neither did the other students.
At lunch Tommy almost ticked off Mike again by sitting down at a table where Anton ate. But Ricky sat down with them, and so did a couple of the girls. At that point, Anton got up and emptied his half-eaten tray into the trash, then left the lunch room. The girls giggled. Mike smiled at them, but Tommy wished they had picked somewhere else to sit. Mike was more interested in girls than he was, which wasn’t saying much, since Tommy wasn’t really interested in them at all. Following Rule Number Five, take two weeks to figure out which guys like which girls and vice versa, they mostly ignored the two at their table.
When Tommy finished eating, he looked around the playground for Anton, but couldn’t see him.
• • •
“What is it with you and that kid?” Mike asked when they were walking back to class.
“I don’t know. I think it’s kind of interesting that he came from Germany.”
“What’s so interesting about Germany? His dad could be a Nazi.”
“Or he could have come here to escape the Nazis. You don’t know.”
“And there’s that wall there now. They shoot people trying to get out of Germany.”
“You’ve got it mixed up. As usual. The wall divides Berlin. The communists won’t let people leave East Berlin.”
“Fine, Mr. Know-it-all,” Mike said, and walked ahead of him.
• • •
Mike never stayed mad at him for long, though. Later in the afternoon, when the teacher announced that they would be playing dodgeball, all tension between them evaporated.
They loved dodgeball.
They ended up on opposite teams, because the teacher had the students count off by twos, with all the ones on one team and the twos on the other. That was okay. Ricky ended up on Mike’s team, Anton on Tommy’s. The teacher lined up six big red rubber balls on the center line and blew her whistle. Everyone raced for the balls and began to get people out. One of the girls threw a ball at Anton, getting him out almost immediately, which apparently wasn’t unexpected by anyone, including Anton. Although Rule Number Two meant they held back a lot on that first day and allowed themselves to be taken out, Mike by getting hit, Tommy by “accidentally” stepping into the dead zone, they were still among the last to go out.
By the end of the game, they were friends again. Mike didn’t even mind it when Tommy showed him a map to explain where the Berlin Wall was, and how Germany was divided.
The next day, Bobby Patterson returned to school, and Tommy just missed getting into his first fight during that morning’s recess. He would have been happy to knock Bobby flat for the way he picked on Anton, but Mike intervened. Mike was bigger than Bobby, who was about Tommy’s size, but Tommy knew that size wasn’t what kept Mike out of fights. Mike had this look he could give you that told you directly and sincerely that you would really, really regret throwing the first punch. Bobby was the kind of kid who might have gone ahead and risked it with another kid, but he didn’t risk it with Mike.
“About Anton—” Tommy began.
“After recess,” Mike interrupted, still giving Bobby the look, “you will be the first person to suggest that people stop calling Anton ‘the Kraut.’”
“What?!” Bobby protested.
“I mean it.”
That was all it took.
“Thanks,” Tommy said, when Bobby moved off sulkily.
“Don’t thank me,” Mike said. “I only did it to save myself some time. I know you. You would have been in another fight before the end of day, defending that little pipsqueak.”
If Anton was surprised that Bobby Patterson was his new champion, he didn’t show it. None of the other kids objected when Bobby said there would be no more calling Anton anything but Anton. “Or Tony,” he growled at one point, and shot Mike a glance. Mike didn’t argue with that, except to say to Anton, “You mind if we call you Tony?”
Anton shook his head.
None of it was the big deal Tommy had thought it might be.
Maybe that was because everybody had bigger problems on their minds. President Kennedy had held a special news conference the night before, about the Cuban missile crisis. Kids at school were talking about the duck-and-cover drill they had been through that morning and looking suspiciously at airplanes that happened to fly over the schoolyard—which was extra dumb, since they were so near the base that planes flew over all the time. The kids were too busy repeating twisted versions of their parents’ fears about the missile crisis to get excited about rude nicknames for Anton. Tommy could tell that even the teacher was upset about Cuba.
Maybe all the nervous energy helped that afternoon’s dodgeball game seem more intense. Anton got out first, as usual. By the end of the game, it was Tommy and Mike on one team, Bobby on the other. Tommy saw Mike intentionally fail to dodge a ball thrown by Bobby, and do it very neatly, so that it looked as if he had tried to avoid it—the ball just barely clipped him. Tommy was so lost in admiration that he failed to see the next throw coming at him, a throw that got him out.
Bobby apparently wasn’t the dodgeball winner very often, because when they congratulated him, he didn’t seem to know how to respond.
• • •
Tommy slept over at Mike’s house that night.
“I think that kid’s dad beats him,” Mike said from the lower bunk bed.
“Anton’s?”
“Naw. Bobby’s.”
“How do you know?”
“When we were playing dodgeball today, his shirt rode up on his back. He had belt marks.”
Tommy lay in the darkness with his fists clenched, wondering if there was a way that he could win a fight against Bobby’s dad. He mentioned the idea to Mike.
“Forget it,” Mike said.
“I can’t sleep.”
“You need a scare. Something to take your mind off it.”
This, Tommy knew, was Mike’s standard cure for troubling thoughts. You did something scary, survived it, and then you ended up feeling not so bothered by anything else.
“I can’t sleep either,” Mike admitted, when Tommy didn’t answer.
“Bobby’s dad bothers me more than Cuba.”
“I know what you mean.”
Tommy drew a resolute breath. “So, we going to hop fences?” He was always sure they’d end up arrested or shot or bitten by a dog when they hopped fences. Serial trespassing as you quickly entered and exited one suburban yard after another had its thrills, but . . .
“No. Let’s go through the cemetery.”
Tommy shuddered. “That should do it,” he said. He climbed down from his bunk and change
d from his pajamas into his clothes.
• • •
The cemetery wasn’t far away. It was a little chilly out, so they wore jackets. They also carried flashlights, although they didn’t use them as they made the walk, relying on streetlamps. Leaves tumbled through the air and danced across lawns and sidewalks, as a gentle breeze moved among branches overhead. A faint smell of wood smoke mixed with one of damp earth and grass, the scent of autumn.
The cemetery was surrounded by an old wrought-iron fence with spaces between the pickets not quite wide enough to squeeze through. The pickets were topped with spikes, none of which were really sharp enough to hurt anyone. Mike had found a spot where several of the spikes had long ago been broken off. Mike gave him a boost up, and he was over. He tried to hide his fear that Mike would now just take off and leave him trapped. Mike didn’t do that, of course—had never done anything like that—and so Tommy reached through the spaces in the bars and made a stirrup of his hands to boost Mike up in turn.
Tommy turned his flashlight on.
“Careful!” Mike whispered. “Keep it down low and be ready to turn it off if we hear someone coming.”
“I’m going to scream my head off if anyone or anything comes near us!”
Mike started laughing. He was trying not to laugh out loud, so he was shaking, holding his hands over his mouth as he doubled over. Then he snorted. That made both of them laugh, and trying not to make any noise only made them laugh harder.
Suddenly Mike stood up straight. “Shhhh! Listen!”
Tommy fell silent.
All around them, trees rustled in the breeze, which had grown stronger, but that was all. Tommy looked at his friend and said, “Mike! Stop trying to scare me!”
Mike grinned, then shrugged. “That’s what we’re here for, right?”
So Mike started telling ghost stories. He told the one about the girl who stuck a knife in the grave of a mean old man on a dare—something Tommy could never imagine doing, even on a dare—and unknowingly pinned her skirt to the grave, so that when she tried to leave she thought the old man was trying to pull her into the grave with him.
And the next day, Tommy thought, knowing the way Mike would tell the story as well as the story itself . . .
“And the next day,” Mike said in a voice of doom, “they found her dead on the grave—she had died of fright!”
Even though he knew the story, Tommy shivered.
Then Mike told another one Tommy had heard about a million times before, about someone giving a beautiful hitchhiker a ride, and lending her his jacket, and dropping her off at her house. Came back the next day, and her father told him that his daughter was dead. “‘She died exactly a year ago last night,’ he said. ‘Right where you say you picked her up.’ And the guy didn’t believe the dad, but then the dad took him to the graveyard where she was buried, and there on her grave . . .”
Clean and neatly folded . . .
“. . . clean and neatly folded was the guy’s jacket!”
Tommy shivered again.
They had been walking as Mike told his stories. The cemetery was old and the gravestones took on menacing shapes in the darkness. Tommy figured they were about halfway to the other side and thought it was time to turn back. He started to say so, but Mike suddenly said, “Shhh!”
Tommy froze in place and glanced at Mike. There was a look on his face unlike any Tommy had ever seen.
Tommy’s mouth went dry.
“Listen!” Mike said.
But that wasn’t necessary.
Tommy heard it too.
A soft voice, making a sad sound. Not a moan but . . . singing a song, a sad song. The sound came from the other side of an elaborate monument.
Tommy was so frightened he felt physically ill, as if he were going to vomit right there in the cemetery. Only the thought of what might rise up from the ground all ticked off at him for barfing on it kept him from shooting his cookies.
The breeze died down for a moment. He caught a few words of the lyrics.
“Du liebes Kind, komm, geh mit mir! Gar schöne Spiele spiel’ ich mit dir . . .” Suddenly he didn’t feel sick anymore.
“Anton!” he yelled, along with a lot of cusswords.
Mike looked at him wide-eyed, then jumped half out of his skin when Anton’s pale face appeared around a corner of the carved granite.
“You shouldn’t swear so,” Anton admonished. “This is a sacred place.”
“I wasn’t swearing at the place or anybody in it but you!”
“Still . . .”
“What are you doing here?” Mike asked, finally finding his voice.
“I might ask the same.”
“I asked you first.”
Anton shrugged.
“How did you know it was him?” Mike asked.
“He was singing in German.”
“How could you tell?”
“That new show I’ve been telling you about. Combat.”
“Was your dad a Nazi?” Mike asked Anton.
“No,” he said, looking fierce. “My family had nothing to do with Hitler.”
Mike looked ready to challenge him on that one, so Tommy quickly said, “What was that song you were singing?”
“‘Der Erlkönig.’ There are many versions of it. I like that one.”
“If you say so,” Mike said.
“What’s it about?” Tommy asked. “It sounded sad.”
“It is very sad,” Anton said. “It’s about a child and a father and a goblin.”
Tommy and Mike exchanged a look. Neither made the cuckoo sign, because it was already obvious Anton was crazy.
“Why are you here?” Mike asked again.
“To meet you.”
“Now that’s just a lie,” Mike said. “We didn’t know we were coming here until a little while ago.”
“Maybe I know things about you. Things you don’t even know about yourselves.”
“Like what?”
“Do you know of changelings and stolen children?”
“Kidnapped, you mean?” Tommy said.
“Not exactly. Stolen by enchantment.”
They both shook their heads.
He studied them for a moment, then said, as if he never intended to answer their questions or even the one he had posed to them, “Let me tell you about the song I was singing. It’s taken from a poem by Goethe. It takes place a long time ago, when people lived closer to the real world.”
“What do you mean?”
“They lived closer to nature, near forests, and saw wild animals and . . . other things that live in forests. They saw death, too—especially of children. Look around here, at the older stones. Many children are buried here.”
“Killed by things that lived in the forest?” Tommy asked.
“Most were killed by disease. Sometimes . . . sometimes by other things. Some were killed by things nearly forgotten but still very real.”
“How do you know?” Mike asked, not keeping the scorn out of his voice.
“It is my business to know about children. And the things that harm them.”
Mike and Tommy exchanged another look. “You’re just trying to scare us,” Mike said, with not quite as much confidence as Tommy might wish. “It’s dark and windy and we’re in a graveyard. We don’t need you to tell us lies to spook us.”
“Dark and windy.” Anton smiled a little. “In the poem I was telling you about, a father rides through the forest on just such a night, holding his son before him. The boy hears the Erlkönig calling to him, sees him moving alongside them through the forest, and is frightened.”
“Stop it,” Mike said.
“His father tells him not to be afraid, it’s only a wisp of fog, the wind in the leaves—but the Erlkönig keeps whispering to the boy, ‘Dear child, come with
me! Very lovely games I’ll play with you!’”
When he spoke the part of the Erlkönig, his voice changed. To Tommy’s ear, it sounded deep and soft and . . . wicked. Almost as if the words were carried by more than sound, were spoken somewhere inside him.
He stepped back, as did Mike, but Anton moved closer.
“The boy pleads with his father,” he went on, “who gently scoffs at his fears. Then the Erlkönig decides that if the boy is not willing, he will use force to carry him away. The boy begins to cry and moan that the Erlkönig has harmed him. The father rides faster, at last afraid—but too late. When he reaches his home, his son lies dead in his arms.”
Mike and Tommy took off running.
“Pay attention to your dreams!” Anton called after them, except it was as if he had not shouted, but whispered in their ears.
They only stopped running long enough to boost each other over the fence, and then they ran all way back to Mike’s street. Just as they came up to the big oak in front of Mike’s house, a figure stepped out of the shadows.
Anton.
They were too winded to scream.
“I won’t hurt you. I’m only trying to protect you.”
“How did you get here so fast?” Mike said, doubled over and panting.
“Pay attention to your dreams,” Anton said again, and again Tommy felt his voice all the way through him. Anton stared at him a moment, his eyes sad, and walked away.
Tommy watched him, still scared, still out of breath, but finding himself feeling sorry for him. That kid was strange, but he was troubled, too.
Tommy and Mike didn’t say anything to each other, not even once they were in Mike’s room, changed into pajamas, and back in their bunk beds.
They had plenty of blankets on each of their beds, but it seemed to take a long time before Tommy felt warm again. He lay in the darkness, eyes wide open. Old neglected toys in the corners of Mike’s room suddenly changed from worn, familiar friends into shadowy creatures, the minions of the Erlkönig. A J. Fred Muggs chimp looked positively evil, and the silhouette of a Howdy Doody doll made Tommy really wish he had never seen “The Dummy,” a Twilight Zone episode in which a sinister ventriloquist’s dummy came to life.