that we could not understand them at all or what malevolence they might harbor toward us.
Very slowly, then, we sidled our way among them, and they didn’t attempt to block our path. However, they did do something, or seemed to do something. This was to lightly press their bodies against ours as we passed. That turned out to be worse than any brute physical encounter we could have had with them—their touch. For they were not stiff and rigid as we expected, not the hard, plastic toys we might have neatly torn apart, bloodlessly dislodging their seemingly prosthetic limbs. Instead, we found that they were soft, very soft. Their shapes felt as if they were giving way as they lightly pressed themselves against us. But they were also swivel-headed dummy-things—freakish unrealities like their town and maybe everything having to do with small country. Did they even exist as our minds conjured existence, both our own and that of all else within our perception? What were these things that seemed to be all appearance and no substance? Fortunately, such questions did not paralyze us.
Once my friend and I were on the other side of the smalls, we ran without pause to where we commenced our terribly misconceived incursion into small country. The rest of the night we spent shivering with cold and fear in the lavatory hut at the old park on the edge of town. The only time we spoke was in the morning. Just before we parted for our respective homes, my friend looked at me with an abysmal expression on his face and said, “My dad will kill me if he ever finds out what we did.”
“Yeah,” I said, drawing out at length that single, stupid syllable, exhaling it in a dead voice.
***
Not long after our misadventure, my friend moved away with his family. And before the end of that school year, those signs went up with the simple faces on them. They first appeared at the edge of town and then proceeded for some miles along the open road beyond. I made a point of going around and finding all the signs I could, noting which direction their arrows pointed to indicate small country. I saw that people still went to the old park. They must have been aware that small country wasn’t far away, but that made no difference to them, not as it did to me.
A few weeks before it was time for the new school year to begin, I received a letter from my friend. It was hand delivered to me by my mother, who first took a moment to interrogate me about any packs of cigarettes I might have hidden in the basement, which was where I happened to be at the time, lying on an old sofa we had down there. After that night in small country, my friend and I tried smoking cigarettes for a while. I think we both wanted to do something we’d never done before, something to make us feel we had changed and were no longer those kids who talked so much about the smalls. I kept the last pack of cigarettes we shared, and my mom found them. I hadn’t even smoked since my friend moved away.
I was elated when I got his letter, which was only a single page. But I read that page countless times, savoring its words and even reciting them in my friend’s voice. There was nothing more in the letter than my friend’s banal depiction of the new place he was living and the school he would be attending. That was enough to relieve the sense of demoralization I felt since he had gone. I wrote back to him, of course, and that initiated an exchange of letters between us, and even some phone calls. I told him that I still had the last pack of cigarettes we shared, even though my mother had taken them. What I never asked him was whether he had made any new friends.
In mid-winter, I opened the latest missive from my friend after a hiatus during which he had answered none of my letters. What I read in it revived a kaleidoscope of memories and emotions, none of them welcome to my still delicate state of mind. The news my friend related was that his father had disappeared about a month
Very slowly, then, we sidled our way among them, and they didn’t attempt to block our path. However, they did do something, or seemed to do something. This was to lightly press their bodies against ours as we passed. That turned out to be worse than any brute physical encounter we could have had with them—their touch. For they were not stiff and rigid as we expected, not the hard, plastic toys we might have neatly torn apart, bloodlessly dislodging their seemingly prosthetic limbs. Instead, we found that they were soft, very soft. Their shapes felt as if they were giving way as they lightly pressed themselves against us. But they were also swivel-headed dummy-things—freakish unrealities like their town and maybe everything having to do with small country. Did they even exist as our minds conjured existence, both our own and that of all else within our perception? What were these things that seemed to be all appearance and no substance? Fortunately, such questions did not paralyze us.
Once my friend and I were on the other side of the smalls, we ran without pause to where we commenced our terribly misconceived incursion into small country. The rest of the night we spent shivering with cold and fear in the lavatory hut at the old park on the edge of town. The only time we spoke was in the morning. Just before we parted for our respective homes, my friend looked at me with an abysmal expression on his face and said, “My dad will kill me if he ever finds out what we did.”
“Yeah,” I said, drawing out at length that single, stupid syllable, exhaling it in a dead voice.
***
Not long after our misadventure, my friend moved away with his family. And before the end of that school year, those signs went up with the simple faces on them. They first appeared at the edge of town and then proceeded for some miles along the open road beyond. I made a point of going around and finding all the signs I could, noting which direction their arrows pointed to indicate small country. I saw that people still went to the old park. They must have been aware that small country wasn’t far away, but that made no difference to them, not as it did to me.
A few weeks before it was time for the new school year to begin, I received a letter from my friend. It was hand delivered to me by my mother, who first took a moment to interrogate me about any packs of cigarettes I might have hidden in the basement, which was where I happened to be at the time, lying on an old sofa we had down there. After that night in small country, my friend and I tried smoking cigarettes for a while. I think we both wanted to do something we’d never done before, something to make us feel we had changed and were no longer those kids who talked so much about the smalls. I kept the last pack of cigarettes we shared, and my mom found them. I hadn’t even smoked since my friend moved away.
I was elated when I got his letter, which was only a single page. But I read that page countless times, savoring its words and even reciting them in my friend’s voice. There was nothing more in the letter than my friend’s banal depiction of the new place he was living and the school he would be attending. That was enough to relieve the sense of demoralization I felt since he had gone. I wrote back to him, of course, and that initiated an exchange of letters between us, and even some phone calls. I told him that I still had the last pack of cigarettes we shared, even though my mother had taken them. What I never asked him was whether he had made any new friends.
In mid-winter, I opened the latest missive from my friend after a hiatus during which he had answered none of my letters. What I read in it revived a kaleidoscope of memories and emotions, none of them welcome to my still delicate state of mind. The news my friend related was that his father had disappeared about a month
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