“Right,” I said. Never waste time eating when you could be reading too.
“Well this was right after…you know about him and Donna?”
“Yeah, he asked her for sex.”
“So it ran across my mind that I might be his next choice. Really embarrassing to think he would have started with her and then I was second choice.”
I smiled. Terry would hate to be second at anything.
“But he wanted to talk about the book. That was all. He sat down. Across from me. I looked around, but nobody seemed to notice, so I didn’t tell him not to. I was curious, that’s all. I mean about what he would say.”
“I can understand that,” I said.
“He told me he was reading it, and I asked why. He said he’d taken it out of the library because his grandmother asked him to.”
“I heard she died.”
“It was her favorite book, and she was blind, so she wanted him to read it to her. And then, like you heard, she died. Before he finished. But he was determined, I guess, to finish it anyway. By himself. Sort of in her memory. I thought that was sweet.”
“But it was too hard for him.”
“Yes, it would have been. Well, then he asked me to…I don’t know…he wanted me to help him with it.”
“Help him? How?”
“He said he wanted to discuss it. But, you know, he wasn’t the sort of person you could discuss a book with. I had a feeling he wanted me to sort of explain it. Walk him through the story. Help him finish.”
“So, did you?” I thought I knew the answer.
It didn’t come right away. “I didn’t have time,” she said. “I was taking a senior-level lit class, and advanced science too. Pre-calculus. And really…” It was hard for her to say this, I could tell. “He was kind of needy, and if people had seen me sitting around with Cale, they would have thought I was doing what Donna wouldn’t.” She looked at me, and I could see it bothered her.
“It’s O.K.,” I said. It crossed my mind to say At least you got a Miata out of it. My mind runs that way, but I had enough sense to keep my mouth shut. “Look, you couldn’t have known. He shot the librarian, anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well, she was on his case about returning the book. And he wouldn’t.”
“How do you know that?”
Of course I couldn’t tell her, so I just asked, “Do you ever think you were lucky he didn’t shoot you?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “And then I wonder if maybe he was just out to shoot somebody, not a specific person. Everybody thinks he was trying to get back at Donna, but I don’t know. How could he have known she was going to be there? But then if he didn’t have any special targets, if he was just mad at the world, I wonder…if it would have made a difference if I’d been nice to him.”
“Probably not,” I said. But of course that was just me being nice to her.
chapter twelve
AFTER DINNER, I finished my homework and the article on the football game too. That left me looking at the book sitting on my desk. There was nothing on TV, so I surfed the net for a while. I discovered that Colleen had a Facebook page. It didn’t tell me much, except the names of the groups and movies and TV shows she liked. I’d have to remember to like them too, if the subject came up. Besides Gossip Girl, she also liked Once Upon a Time. Really? All right, I could forgive her. I could forgive her for anything if she ever spoke to me again.
I stared at the picture of her, remembering what her boobs felt like. Too bad she wasn’t one of those girls who take naked selfies in the bathroom mirror and then email them to their boyfriends, who promptly post them online. Or maybe she was that kind of girl. I would be glad to help her with that. Somebody would tell me. North would know.
I found a website that promised to have a plot summary of Look Homeward, Angel. It turned out that it just gave you the summary of the first part of the book. To get the second and third parts, you had to pay a fee. I should have known nobody would read the whole thing for free.
I learned from the summary that the first part of the book ends when the hero is twelve. For such a young kid, he certainly had his mind on sex a lot. He didn’t actually have any sex, but he thought about women he knew who were cheating on their husbands, and also about prostitutes. That made me think that if I somehow read farther into the book, he might actually have sex. But probably not. Ms. Hayward wouldn’t have been able to assign it if it did have sex in it.
Which only made me think about Colleen some more. I sent her a message asking if she would be my friend on Facebook. Made me feel like a complete dork. I went to bed and read some more of Look Homeward, Angel. There was one good thing about it: it made me fall asleep. Reached page 64.
I got up in the middle of the night and looked to see if Colleen had agreed to be my friend. No response yet.
Sunday was a wasted day. I sat in front of the television watching football with my dad. Bonding. I tried to read the book at the same time, but that was pointless. As long as there was anything to distract me, I couldn’t pay attention to the rushing torrent of inchoate words cascading down the milky-white, brittle pages. There. I started doing it too. That’s the way he writes.
Sometime in the afternoon, about the thirtieth time I checked, Colleen did accept my Facebook friend offer. For some reason, that made me feel a lot better. I almost phoned her again, but I decided why take a chance on spoiling my mood? She might think I was stalking her.
During a commercial, I asked my dad how much of the book he remembered. He said not a lot. I asked if he remembered what happened to the angel of the title. It seemed to me there was almost nothing in the book about it. So why the title?
He told me that at some point the stone angel that is made by the hero’s father is bought by a woman who runs a house of prostitution. She puts it over the grave of one of her girls. Dad couldn’t remember why. Which was interesting, because in Hamilton’s cemetery, the angel is over the grave of a woman who, by the standards of that time, must have been a sinner.
“Why did you get so interested in this book?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” I didn’t tell him that it was because Cale had been reading it. Good thing Susan wasn’t around, or she’d have blabbed.
“It’s not going to do you any good to read it,” he said.
That’s why Dad writes about business. He thinks you should only read books that tell you stuff you need to know.
What did I need to know? Nothing. But what I wanted to know was why Cale shot those people. I admit it.
Thinking about it that night, I realized who could give me some information I needed to know.
After social studies class, I asked Mr. Barnes if I could interview him after school. He gave a kind of nervous giggle, which he did quite often. Kids had learned to imitate it so that as soon as he giggled in class, about five echoes would come from around the room. That often made him giggle a second time, setting off a chain reaction.
“Why would you want to interview me?” he asked.
I realized I had taken the wrong approach. “I’m one of the editors of the school newspaper, the Treasury,” I replied. “And we’re doing a feature story every issue about outstanding teachers.”
He gave me a kind of crooked smile. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to use me for such a feature.” But I could see he was ready to believe me. Everybody loves to be flattered, my dad says.
“Oh, sure we would,” I told him. “How long have you been teaching here?”
“Fourteen years,” he answered.
From the looks of him, I had thought it must have been twice as long. His suit looked older than that. “Well, see, that probably makes you one of the teachers who’s been here the longest.”
“Bob Nosker and Mary Hayward have been here longer,” he said.
&nbs
p; “O.K., well, I’m sure we’ll get to them,” I said. “But my assignment is to interview you.”
He finally agreed to meet me that afternoon when school was out.
I decided to cover my ass by telling Terry what I was going to do.
“If you were going to interview somebody, you might have picked an interesting person,” she told me. We were eating lunch. I would much rather have sat with Colleen, but she was with the rest of the cheerleaders, and I didn’t have enough nerve to crash their table.
“Don’t you think he’s interesting?” I asked. I was only half-listening, because I was watching Colleen to see if she might be looking in my direction.
“No, and neither do you,” she said. “Would you mind looking at me when you’re talking?”
I shifted my eyes.
“I know what you want to do,” said Terry. “You want to ask him if Cale knew who was going to be in the library that day.”
I knew Terry was smart, but I didn’t think she could see through me that easily.
“Listen,” she said, “I’m sorry I told you about me and Cale.”
“I won’t mention it to anybody else,” I said.
“One of the reasons I’m sorry is that it just made you more eager to ask people about him.”
“I probably would have asked Mr. Barnes anyway,” I said.
“The only way you might find out what motivated Cale was to read whatever he wrote on his computer. But you can’t do that, so give it up.”
I was tempted to say that she had already told me one of the things that might have motivated Cale. And then there was the story about him and Donna. That was motivation. But I didn’t bring that up. I wanted to stay friends with Terry. And be managing editor. “Anyway,” I said, “I just wanted you to know that I’m going to write an article about Mr. Barnes.”
“If you do, don’t mention anything about the kids he sent to the library.”
I nodded. To die, I thought. It’d be a bit too dramatic for the Treasury.
Colleen’s locker was in the same row as mine, and I followed her as she went to get her books for the first class after lunch. “Hey,” I said.
She looked at me with what I thought counted as a smile. “Hey.”
“Did you think about Friday night?” I asked her.
“Yeah, oh yeah, it was fun,” she said. It was a real smile now.
“I meant next Friday,” I said. “You want to go out again?”
“Oh, well, I have to see what North wants,” she said.
“What does that have to do with it?” I wondered if she thought she wouldn’t be safe with me unless North went along, but that seemed ridiculous.
“Sometimes he likes to trade,” she said. “But I’m sure it would include you. He’s always asking about you.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what “trade” meant, but I was more interested in the other thing. “Asking about me? What does he ask about?”
She looked away, as if she realized she shouldn’t have said that. “Oh, you know, just how you’re doing.”
“How am I doing?”
“You’re doing fine,” she said with a smile that was intended to remind me of last Friday. And it did.
The second bell rang, meaning we were already supposed to be in class. “Let me know about Friday,” I said.
chapter thirteen
“DID YOU GROW UP in Hamilton?” I asked Mr. Barnes. Start with a few softballs, Dad always says. Puts people at ease.
“Yes,” he said.
“So you were a student at the high school at one time?”
“Yes, but don’t mention the year.” He giggled nervously. I had to suppress the urge to giggle in return.
We went on like that. He went to college at Penn State, and I gathered he taught somewhere else for a while, but finally returned to Hamilton. Probably the only place he could get a job. He lived with his mother. And still did. Pathetic.
“What made you decide to teach social studies?” I asked.
That set him off. It was clear that history was a big deal with him, and he was ready to talk about it all afternoon, as long as somebody was there to listen. Unfortunately, that somebody was me. It was like being with Mr. Gregorio again, except this time on a world scale. Who knew that teachers liked to talk?
I realized I was going to learn a lot about Western Civilization unless I could steer the conversation around to local matters. Just as he was getting started on the importance of the Magna Carta, I took a chance on a question that Mr. Barnes probably wouldn’t like: “Was Cale Peters one of your students?”
I thought I had lost him for a second. He even forgot to giggle. He looked annoyed. “He was, but I don’t see what that has to do with this interview.”
“No, I just wondered if you knew him well,” I said.
“Evidently not,” he said. “Although he did show an interest in history.” He kind of softened, remembering that.
“Was he working on any projects for you at the time?” I asked. I didn’t have to say at the time of what.
Mr. Barnes nodded, slowly. “He wanted to research the background of a story connected with a monument in the local cemetery. An inappropriate story, actually.” He giggled, thinking about it. “I don’t usually allow students to work on subjects that are inappropriate, but he was eager, and I thought it would motivate him. He needed motivation.”
“By inappropriate you mean, sexual.”
He giggled again. “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way. It was a local scandal.”
“I heard. About Sally Dennis and Martin Crapper.”
Mr. Barnes looked at me as if I had suddenly turned into a vampire. “How do you know about that?” he asked.
“I heard the story,” I explained. No sense in telling him who from.
“Well, then you know that the Crapper family is still sensitive about it.”
That told me something I hadn’t known, but it was nothing compared to what he was about to tell me.
“I didn’t know there were any Crappers left,” I said. Hearing myself say that made me giggle, and I almost lost him. He looked at me suspiciously, as if I were mocking him. “It’s just that the name…” I tried to explain, “sounds funny.”
“That’s why they changed it,” he said.
I nodded. “What did they change it to?” I asked.
“Craft,” he said. He giggled, but not in a good way. “One of the girls who was killed…that day…was one of them. Sharon Craft.”
At home, I took another look at the picture of Sharon Craft in the memorial issue of the Treasury. I decided she wouldn’t have looked as pretty if her name had been Sharon Crapper. Wanted to be a veterinarian. Was there any connection between her and Cale? Did he have a dog?
Working on my homework that night, I suddenly had a brainstorm. It seems obvious to me now, but I hadn’t seen it before. Mr. Gregorio had told me that Sally Dennis’s baby had been born blind. And Cale’s grandmother was blind.
When did the tombstone say Sally died? I couldn’t remember now. Was it possible that her baby and Cale’s grandmother were the same person?
I knew it sounded crazy, but it suddenly seemed very important to find out.
I told my Dad I was going to the store to get something. He was watching some show, and didn’t grill me about what I was going to buy. It was only about nine o’clock anyway.
The drive was about fifteen minutes from my house. I probably passed no more than ten cars headed in the other direction. Hamilton was really a dead little burg, especially on weeknights.
I turned off and passed through the iron gates of the cemetery. As far as I could see, it was empty. Except for the people who were there to stay, of course. I wished I had Colleen along. Although then Sally Dennis wouldn’t have seemed to be the top item of importance.
In the darkness, I couldn’t read the dates on the statue’s pedestal from my car, so I parked it and got out. I’m used to the city, where there is some noise at all times. Traffic, people yelling at each other, TVs… But here it was utterly silent. I could hear my shoes trampling down the grass as I walked between the gravestones. I had brought a flashlight and kept shining it along the ground. I was afraid I’d step on something and fall. The light flickered across the names of people who had died long ago. People who were underneath my feet right now. And of course I couldn’t help thinking that the ghosts of some of them might be roaming around in the dark.
Finally I reached the statue, and shone my light on the base. There were the dates: 1905-1927. Sally had died in 1927, and her baby was no more than a year old. So the baby could easily have been alive two or three years ago, when Cale’s grandmother was alive.
Of course, there were still a lot of things I had to find out. The baby might have kept Sally’s last name, or maybe she was adopted by a family and taken their name. And later, she could have gotten married and then would have had her husband’s name. I didn’t know any of those names. It could all be just a far-fetched coincidence.
I shone the light upward. Even though the statue’s face was angry, it was still angelic. I wondered if it had been modeled after Sally’s face. Again I noticed the book she was holding in her left hand. It was open, and even though she was looking in the direction she was pointing—the Crapper family crypt—it seemed as though she had just been reading something in the book.
All of a sudden I wanted to see it. I had to turn off the flashlight and put it in my pocket so I could use both hands, and even then it was hard to reach the top of the pedestal. When I reached it, I stood on tiptoes, but couldn’t see the pages, so I grabbed hold of Sally’s left arm and started to pull myself up.
A voice cried out, “Hey! You! Get off there!” I looked in the direction it came from, and a flashlight shone back at me. It was some guy on the other side of the cemetery, but he sounded as if he was in charge. A guard? Shit. Who knew there was a guard? Where was he on Friday nights?
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