Convicted Innocent
Page 13
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“Distract me,” Lewis rasped after his friend had helped him lie down again, for sitting had proved too uncomfortable.
The priest’s thoughts were still windswept by what the policeman had asked of him, and watching Lew – a normally powerful, confident man now so very weak and afraid – didn’t help calm them. For the umpteenth time, he wished his pipe weren’t broken.
“How?” David asked.
“Tell me a story,” his friend wheezed. “A memory, a fiction, a dream—doesn’t matter.”
“I can do that.”
He paused only briefly before spitting out the first thing that flitted through his brain, a tale from nearly 20 years past.
“Do you remember the first time you came home with me from school?” David began. “I’d have been nearly 12, and you would’ve just turned 13. It was before you grew so unearthly tall, and before we decided we’d rather be men than boys.”
Lewis nodded briefly as he bit back another harsh cough.
“We tried so hard that summer to escape my sisters. Agatha was too busy with her beau to bother with us, I think, but Lucy and Margaret were determined to torment us, and Cat wanted to join us on all our adventures.”
“She was very persistent for such a tiny creature,” Lew murmured, closing his eyes. A faint, fleeting smile broke up the clouds in his expression.
“Very.” David chewed his lip for a moment, thinking. “One day, we decided to go fishing. The river was higher than I’d ever seen it – before or since – from unusually heavy rains, and the current was quick. The shallows along the bank still made for good fishing, though, and I think we were there from dawn until nearly evening, up past our knees in the eddies.”
“Did we catch anything?” his friend whispered.
“I think we must’ve since we stayed there all day. And what a day it was! I remember the water sparkled in the middle of the river, and the sunlight was so brilliant it made us squint except when we stood under the willows near the shore. The breeze always smelled like fresh hay and damp rocks and growing things, and the air hardly had a man-made sound upon it.”
David fell silent for a moment. Speaking the idyllic scene sent an image of such beauty through his mind that the priest wanted to take a moment to enjoy it, hoping Lewis could as well.
“But the day soured,” his friend put in with a whisper, his brow furrowing faintly in memory. “We argued.”
“We did,” the priest returned, the recollection startling him. He hadn’t remembered until the policeman mentioned it. “It was something childish. About our fathers, I think.”
“I punched you.”
“T’weren’t the first time. Wasn’t the last, either.” David pursed his lips and wondered if he ought to interrupt himself and start a different tale. This wasn’t the happy story he’d originally aimed for, even if it did strangely parallel their current predicament.
“I don’t remember what happened next.” Lewis opened his eyes, curiosity momentarily chasing away all other concerns.
“Well, we began fighting in the shallows,” David replied, capitulating in favor of his friend’s interest. “Our violence was a wrestler’s brawl – all shoving and grappling. You and I were a much more even match back then.”
The priest paused for a moment, the echoes of that summer day darting rapidly and hotly through his brain. Shaking himself, he went on.
“Our fight ended when I pushed you away as hard as I could. You stumbled and fell and struck your head on a rock or a log, or something similar just under the water. And then the current caught you. It was very strong, even in the knee-deep shallows, and you went spinning away in a heartbeat.”
“Oh.” The policeman’s gaze was searching. “You saved me?”
David shook his head. “Lord, I tried. I could barely keep myself afloat, let alone you as well when I dove after you. The current pulled us out to the middle and kept trying to drag you under. Either of us could’ve swum back to the shallows without much trouble, but you were out cold and I couldn’t swim far with you. And if I’d let you go, you’d have sunk. We were stuck. So Catherine saved us.”
“Ah. Yes…she’d followed us that day and played under the trees while we fished.” Lewis raised a brow quizzically. “How, though? She was far too small – no more than four or five years old.”
“Yes, but she was old enough and big enough to run to fetch help.”
“It was a half-mile back to your house,” he whispered.
“The road passed nearby. She fetched some passing cart driver and he came to help us.”
“Ah.” Lewis paused, his eyes half-open and thoughtful. “I remember being ill for a week afterward.”
“Might have something to do with swallowing half the river. Certainly didn’t help that everything upstream was pastureland: makes for very unpleasant runoff.”
Despite everything, Lewis smiled. “That entire week, you made jokes about me drinking my weight in cow piss.”
“—And for much of the rest of the summer.” David found himself smiling as well.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more grateful for a child’s meddling, then.”
The priest rubbed his eyes. “I’d give a kingdom to have one meddle in this mess.”