{"id":158,"date":"2009-10-29T06:13:25","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T12:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/?p=158"},"modified":"2016-07-12T12:15:07","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T18:15:07","slug":"excerpt-from-invisible-fences-by-norman-prentiss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/excerpt-from-invisible-fences-by-norman-prentiss\/","title":{"rendered":"Excerpt from Invisible Fences by Norman Prentiss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from
\n Invisible Fences<\/em>
\nby Norman Prentiss<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"There\u2019s an invention for today\u2019s dog owners called an invisible fence. It\u2019s basically a radio signal around the perimeter of the yard, and if the dog steps too close to the signal, it triggers a device in the animal\u2019s collar and delivers a small electrical shock. Perfect Pavlov conditioning, just like I learned back in ninth grade psychology class. But it seems a bit cruel to me. The dog\u2019s bound to be zapped a few times before it catches on. Dogs aren\u2019t always as quick as we are. Hell, growing up we had a mongrel lab that would probably never have figured it out: Atlas would have barked at air, then -zap!-. Another bark and charge then -zap!- again. I loved that sweet, dumb animal.<\/p>\n

Still, I guess for most dogs the gadget would work eventually. Inflict a little pain and terror at the start, and then you\u2019re forever spared the eyesore of a chain-link fence around your front lawn.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Big Street\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was growing up, my parents invented their own kind of invisible fence for me and my sister. All parents build some version of this fence\u2014never talk to strangers, keep close to home after sundown, that kind of thing. But my parents had a gift with words and storytelling that zapped those lessons into my young mind with a special permanence.<\/p>\n

My father taught Shop\u2014excuse me, Industrial Arts\u2014at Kensington High School, so I guess that\u2019s where he built up his skills with the cautionary tale: don\u2019t feed your hand into the disc sander; keep your un-goggled eyes away from the jigsaw blade, and other Greatest Hits. But listen to his rendition of that old stand-by, \u201cThe Big Street\u201d:<\/p>\n

He walked me and my sister Pam to the divided road on the north end of our community. I was six, and Pam was three years older. He stopped us at the curb of McNeil Road, just close enough where we could hear the cars zip by, feel the hot wind of exhaust or maybe get hit by a stray speck of gravel tossed up by a rear wheel. A half-mile down, on the other side of McNeil, was a small shopping center: a single screen movie theater, Safeway grocery, People\u2019s Drugs, and a Dairy Queen, among other highlights. In the other direction visible from the top of this hill was Strathmore Park, with swings, monkey bars, and a fiberglass spider with bent-ladder legs. We could visit these wondrous places anytime dad drove us there, but we were never, ever, to cross the Big Street on our own.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, let me tell you about a boy who used to live the other side of the road,\u201d our father said. \u201cAbout your age, Nathan. He crossed back and forth over this Big Street all the time.\u201d He swung his arm in front of him, parallel to the road. \u201cLooks like a pretty good view of the road in both directions, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

We both craned our necks and followed the swing of his arm. Pam nodded first, and I did the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you\u2019d be wrong. Some of those cars come up faster than you think.\u201d As if to confirm his point, a blue truck rattled past. \u201cWhen you do something a lot, you get pretty confident. Over-confident. This boy, he\u2019d run across early that morning without a hitch, like usual. On his way back, he was standing right where we are now. Looked both ways, I imagine, or maybe he forgot that one time\u2014we don\u2019t know for sure. What we do know . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

Dad dropped to one knee, the toe of his right sneaker perfectly aligned with the edge of the curb.<\/p>\n

\u201cSee right there, where the gutter doesn\u2019t quite match the road? Not too close, now, Nathan.\u201d He stretched his arm out like a guard rail, and I leaned against it to peer over. The blacktop of the road had a rounded edge, about an inch higher than the cement gutter, but the asphalt was cracked or split in a few places. One spot, it looked almost like somebody\u2019d taken a bite out of it. I guessed that was where Dad wanted me to look.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis foot likely got caught in that niche, and the boy tripped into the road. The black van might have been speeding, might not. But it wasn\u2019t entirely the driver\u2019s fault, was it?\u201d<\/p>\n

I swallowed hard, my throat dry. I\u2019d have loved a Misty or a dip cone from Dairy Queen, but I sure didn\u2019t plan on crossing the Big Street to get it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSee that dark patch in the road?\u201d<\/p>\n

I leaned forward again, and my T-shirt felt sweaty where my chest pressed against Dad\u2019s outstretched arm.<\/p>\n

\u201cCounty trucks cleaned things up, best they could, but you can\u2019t always wash away every trace of blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

A shadowy stain appeared beneath the rumbled flashes of painted steel, chrome, glass, and rubber tires, a stain wet and blacker than the grey-black asphalt, in which I could almost distinguish the outline of a boy, just my size.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d heard the story before,\u201d Pam told me that afternoon. We had separate bedrooms in our small house on Bel Pre Court\u2014a luxury a lot of our friends didn\u2019t enjoy\u2014but I was in and out of my sister\u2019s room all the time. She even let me use the bottom shelf of her bookcase to store a few Matchbox cars, a robot, and a plastic astronaut.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally? Did you know the kid who got hit?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I heard it before from\u00a0Dad.<\/em> Two years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pam had fanned baseball cards in front of her on the bedspread. She\u2019d invented this game of solitaire: traded players, constructed her own all-star teams, grouped them in batting orders, then shuffled the cards to start again. Often she waited long minutes between each shift of card, as if the game required intense, chess-like concentration. She never could quite explain the rules to me, but I didn\u2019t mind: I wasn\u2019t that keen on sports like Pam was, and I was happy she still managed to talk with me while she played.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe kid wouldn\u2019t need to cross the road,\u201d Pam said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuh?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the good stuff\u2019s already on his side. Movie theater, playground, burgers and ice cream. Why cross?\u201d<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t thought about that. \u201cMaybe he had friends over here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNope. The friends would all be visiting his side, where the fun stuff is. They\u2019d be the ones who got whacked by the\u00a0black van.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She said \u201cblack van\u201d in a sing-song voice. I didn\u2019t understand why she\u2019d make a joke, go so far as to imagine more kids killed while crossing McNeil Road.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw the stain on the road,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

Pam switched two baseball cards, then flipped another one face down. \u201cProbably a car broke down on the side of the road, leaked a little oil. Check our own driveway, and you\u2019ll find a few stains there, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot like that stain,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe showed us where it happened, Pam.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pam had pretty much destroyed our father\u2019s story with logic. She was three years older, obviously a little more worldly than I was. But I don\u2019t think I was naive to side with my Dad. More than logic, it was the\u00a0story<\/em> that convinced me. The confirming details of the cracks in the asphalt, the boy-shaped stain on the road, summer\u2019s heat and the rushing cars making me dizzy\u2014just like must have happened to the careless young pedestrian in Dad\u2019s account. Maybe it wasn\u2019t true, okay, but it could be true if somebody didn\u2019t follow the rules. Accidents happen. We may not all have friends who\u2019ve chopped off a digit or two with the buzz-saw in Industrial Arts class, but if a couple circles of red marker on the shop tile, scrubbed into faded realism after hours, help the teacher point the next day and shout, \u201cThere! There\u2019s where the fingers rolled off and bounced like link sausages onto the floor!\u201d\u2014well, strictly true or not, such lessons are worth learning.<\/p>\n

No way was I going to cross the Big Street on my own.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

\u201cDope Fiends\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The next summer, Mom staked a claim to her own span of our invisible fence. Dad came up with most of the stories, so in retrospect I\u2019m grudgingly proud of Mom for thinking this one up.<\/p>\n

A deep stretch of woods formed a natural barrier behind our house. Dad had a few gems about kids getting lost, bitten by snakes, or swollen and itchy from a patch of poison ivy\u2014all of which generally kept us from setting up camp in there. We wandered into the woods sometimes, peeling bark off trees, flipping logs to look for ants or pill bugs, poking a stick at a rock to make sure it\u2019s not a bullfrog. As long as we didn\u2019t go near Stillwater Creek, we didn\u2019t get in trouble. The creek had its own persuasive power: it was muddy, shallow, and stank of sulfur, so Pam and I steered clear without being prompted.<\/p>\n

But Mom, overcautious, decided we shouldn\u2019t venture into the woods at all. One rainy day, she called us into the living room where she typically sprawled out on the sofa and watched her \u201cplays\u201d on CBS. \u201cTurn down the television, would you? I\u2019ve got something serious to talk with you kids about.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the rain outside, and the shades pulled down, the living room was pretty dark. The main light source was the television, which reflected a kind of campfire glow on Mom\u2019s face as she talked. \u201cThere are dope fiends in the woods,\u201d she told us. \u201cI heard about them from Mrs. Lieberman.\u201d<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

I have to explain a few things about my Mom before I go any further.<\/p>\n

When I was three years old, my baby sister was born. I remember playing with her, in particular a game where Pam and I lined up plastic bowling pins around the rim of Jamie\u2019s crib. She\u2019d wait for us to finish, then knock them over with her tiny fists, and laugh and laugh. That\u2019s mostly what I remember, the laughing.<\/p>\n

Jamie had to go to the hospital when she was about fourteen months old, after a really bad cough developed into something more serious. Apparently they put her in a croup tent, a plastic covering that kept away germs and allowed doctors to regulate her oxygen. I never visited her in the hospital, but my parents later told me how much Jamie hated that tent. I imagined her beating at the plastic covering with her fists, but too weak to laugh or even breathe.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember what my parents said the last night they returned from the hospital. I know they must have agonized over how they\u2019d break the news to us, my Dad no doubt holding back his natural tendency towards the grisly, giving us the soft version of Jamie drifting painlessly off to sleep and never waking up; how babies were innocent and always went to heaven, so she\u2019s with God now, and we\u2019ll always have our memories; Mom convincing us that we\u2019re all right, that we\u2019d never get that sick, and Mommy and Daddy would always be there to protect us, and nobody\u2019s dying, not anytime soon that\u2019s for sure, we promise; and all the time both of them trying not to cry themselves, knowing if they messed this moment up it could haunt me or Pam for the rest of our lives.<\/p>\n

I know they worked really hard on what to say, and I\u2019m sad I don\u2019t remember any of it. But I was only four, and memory keeps its own protective agenda for a child that age. Just the bowling pins, and the laughter.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a Polaroid of me and Pam taken the day of Jamie\u2019s funeral. Pam\u2019s in a frilly peach dress, holding a small bouquet of daffodils. I\u2019m wearing a tan suit\u2014a handsome little gentleman, in a heart-breakingly tiny clip-on tie. We\u2019re standing next to the grave marker, which has a hole in the center where Pam will soon place the daffodils. According to my father, before Pam had the chance to fit the stems into the grave marker, I kneeled down to peer deeply into the hole. \u201cJamie\u2019s down there,\u201d I said, then waved. \u201cHi, Jamie!\u201d<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

But I was talking about my mother.<\/p>\n

After Jamie\u2019s death, not right away, but gradually, my Mom became more and more withdrawn. She didn\u2019t have a job, and never learned to drive, but she used to go shopping with my father, or went with us on day trips to visit relatives in Silver Spring or Tacoma Park. She also maintained a small garden out front, and played bridge twice a week with neighboring housewives. After the tragedy, she told Dad she didn\u2019t feel like talking with family about Jamie, not for a while at least, and somehow that ended her drives to the grocery store, as well. The bridge games slipped to once a week, and then just the gardening. And then not even that.<\/p>\n

Agoraphobia<\/em> roughly translates to \u201cfear of open spaces,\u201d but that\u2019s not exactly right. It\u2019s a kind of depression that, in my mother\u2019s case, at least, was more about avoiding interaction with other people. Dad and Pam and I were the notable exceptions. She didn\u2019t want to see anyone else, and she didn\u2019t want anybody else looking in\u2014which explained why she lowered the living room shades, even during the middle of the day. Eventually she refused to leave the house for any reason\u2014certainly not for the psychiatrist visits that probably would have helped her, if people hadn\u2019t frowned so much on therapy in those days, or if my Dad had been strong enough to force her into treatment. His version of \u201cstrong\u201d was letting her have her way, adding cooking and cleaning to his breadwinning duties, with Mom on occasional assist with the child care when absolutely necessary.<\/p>\n

But more often than not, it was us kids doing things for her. Mom spent most of her time on that sofa, to the point that it\u2019s hard for me to recall her in motion. Certainly she must have moved from the bedroom to the living room on occasion, definitely needed to use the bathroom like the rest of us. But mostly things were brought to her: a cup of water with ice and a bendable straw; Diet Rite Cola in the tall glass bottle; two peanut butter and banana sandwiches for lunch, the crust removed; and a small plate of Oreo cookies with a mug of milk for her afternoon snack. She had a remote for the television, but mostly watched the soaps and local news on channel 9, and if either Pam or I were passing nearby when she wanted to switch, she\u2019d have us turn the channel.<\/p>\n

Mom\u2019s other entertainment was newspapers, with a special fondness for the crossword puzzle and the Word Jumble. She\u2019d store the day\u2019s puzzle folded over like a napkin on her TV tray, next to a plate of food, and worked during the commercials or during an especially slow-moving plot on\u00a0As the World Turns<\/em> or\u00a0The Edge of Night.<\/em> Some days she didn\u2019t finish the puzzles, or didn\u2019t skim her way through the rest of the newspaper sections. Stacks of newspaper piled next to her beside the sofa, beneath the TV tray, and at her feet; Mom could never keep straight which stack was the most current, so when Pam asked for today\u2019s Sports page or I wanted to read the comics, we each had to choose a pile to sort through.<\/p>\n

Dad taught summer courses. Even between terms he went to school on a nine-to-four schedule to use their shop equipment for woodworking projects he solicited via purple, mimeographed ads stapled to telephone poles throughout our neighborhood. All for the extra money, of course, but just as likely because the day-dark house bothered him in ways it wouldn\u2019t bother little kids who didn\u2019t know much better.<\/p>\n

At least, not usually. But that overcast, rainy day when Mom told us about the dope fiends, the bleak, shadowy living room gave her words the chilly certainty of a midnight-whispered campfire ghost story.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

\u201cThe police found needles in the woods,\u201d Mom said. We stood next to the couch and Mom sat up, a striking change from her usual horizontal posture. \u201cJust thrown on the ground where kids like you could step on them in your bare feet. They found rubber tubing, also. These dope fiends tie tubes around their arm to make the veins stand out, then use the needles to inject drugs into their bloodstream.\u201d She lifted her crossword-puzzle pencil and mimed jabbing it into her forearm.<\/p>\n

Due to my twice-yearly doctor visits, I was already plenty scared of needles. I never escaped without some vaccination or another\u2014for polio, German Measles, chicken pox, whatever. After losing Jamie, Mom wasn\u2019t taking chances with me or Pam. I hated the awful tension when the nurse squirted a faint arc of fluid over the sink before she plunged the stinging needle beneath my rolled-up sleeve. The needle was too long and thin; I worried it could snap off inside my arm and hurt forever.<\/p>\n

The idea of tying a tube around your arm sounded even more complex and painful to me. Who would do something like this on purpose?<\/p>\n

Fiends, of course. A much better word than \u201caddict\u201d for kids. The word addict scares adults, because it\u2019s all about loss of control\u2014our fears that we\u2019d drink or gamble or screw against logic, throw money we don\u2019t have into greedily programmed machines or wake up late mornings with a monstrous hangover and an even more monstrous bedroom companion. Kids don\u2019t fear addiction (they don\u2019t have much control over anything to begin with); better for them to visualize some tangible bogeyman, like the monster\u00a0under<\/em> the bed or evil trolls who live beneath storybook bridges.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know you kids would never be foolish enough to try drugs,\u201d my mother continued. \u201cBut if you run across a group of dope fiends, they may force their drugs on you. Chase you down, and whoosh!\u201d She jabbed her pencil in the air towards Pam for emphasis, then towards me; I jumped back in nervous reaction.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe police haven\u2019t caught any of the dope fiends yet, so they\u2019re still out there.\u201d She pointed at her main sources of information: the television, in its rare moment of flickering silence; disorganized towers of newsprint; and the end table telephone, her daily link in epic half-hour conversations with her two remaining friends, Mrs. Lieberman and my Aunt Lora. \u201cIf I hear anything more, I\u2019ll let you know. Until then, I want you both to stay out of those woods.\u201d<\/p>\n

I nodded first, without waiting to see Pam\u2019s response.<\/p>\n

This was before a president\u2019s wife told us to \u201cJust Say \u2018No\u2019,\u201d before \u201cYour Brain\u201d sizzled sunny-side-up in an MTV frying pan. But even then, in the post-hippie 1970s, drugs were dialed pretty high on a kid\u2019s panic-meter. I was too young to grasp the concept fully, of course, and stirred my own fears into the mixture. When my mother mentioned the \u201cparaphernalia\u201d found in the woods\u2014hypodermic syringes, rubber tubes, empty glass vials of medicine\u2014she may have said something about medicine caps. Or maybe the \u201cdope\u201d idea was suggestive enough. My third grade mind somehow latched onto caps, conflated it with the image of a cartoon child in the corner of a schoolroom, a pointed dunce or dope cap rising from his head. I imagined predatory older boys donning these caps as the proud symbol of their gang. They patrolled the woods behind our house, seeking new initiates\u2014would toss syringes like darts at your exposed arms or neck, then would force you to the ground and press their ignorance into you, lowering it like a shameful cap onto your struggling head. Ignorance was even more terrifying to me than needles. I was a slightly<\/p>\n

overweight boy, uncoordinated at sports and generally unpopular at school. To be stupid\u2014to be unattractive and awkward and picked-on\u00a0and<\/em> stupid\u2014was the worst fate I could imagine. Smart was all I had.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

And yet I was stupid enough, later that summer, to let Aaron Lieberman and my sister talk me into visiting those woods to search for abandoned needles.<\/p>\n

Click here to read more about this book!<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Click here to read an interview with the author about this book!<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from Invisible Fences by Norman Prentiss There\u2019s an invention for today\u2019s dog owners called an invisible fence. It\u2019s basically a radio signal around the perimeter of the yard, and if the dog steps too close to the signal, it triggers a device in the animal\u2019s collar and delivers a small electrical shock. Perfect Pavlov … Continue Reading! “Excerpt from Invisible Fences by Norman Prentiss”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts"],"yoast_head":"\nExcerpt from Invisible Fences by Norman Prentiss - Cemetery Dance Online<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/excerpt-from-invisible-fences-by-norman-prentiss\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Cemetery Dance Online\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"18 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.cemeterydance.com\\\/extras\\\/excerpt-from-invisible-fences-by-norman-prentiss\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.cemeterydance.com\\\/extras\\\/excerpt-from-invisible-fences-by-norman-prentiss\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Cemetery Dance Online\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.cemeterydance.com\\\/extras\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/30439c850dbb0e44ac4d2ddd09fb2d61\"},\"headline\":\"Excerpt from Invisible Fences by Norman Prentiss\",\"datePublished\":\"2009-10-29T12:13:25+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-07-12T18:15:07+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.cemeterydance.com\\\/extras\\\/excerpt-from-invisible-fences-by-norman-prentiss\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":3545,\"commentCount\":1,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.cemeterydance.com\\\/extras\\\/excerpt-from-invisible-fences-by-norman-prentiss\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.cemeterydance.com\\\/Merchant2\\\/graphics\\\/00000001\\\/prentiss01.gif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Book Excerpts\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.cemeterydance.com\\\/extras\\\/excerpt-from-invisible-fences-by-norman-prentiss\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.cemeterydance.com\\\/extras\\\/excerpt-from-invisible-fences-by-norman-prentiss\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.cemeterydance.com\\\/extras\\\/excerpt-from-invisible-fences-by-norman-prentiss\\\/\",\"name\":\"Excerpt from Invisible Fences by Norman Prentiss - 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