Joel stopped in his tracks, trembling, his teeth chattering in erratic bursts, then ran back to his clothes. He grabbed his jeans from the pile, letting his underpants and shirt tumble to the ground. His hands shook so violently that he could barely hold the jeans up to step into them. The heavy material stuck against his wet skin. He tried to stuff his feet into his sneakers, gave up, and began to run toward the highway, still struggling to fasten the jeans. There would be another car coming soon. There had to be.
As he ran, he paid no attention to where he stepped. He looked down once, after tripping and picking himself up, to see that his big toe was bleeding, but it might have been someone else's toe. He felt nothing. A thistle beneath his left foot only made him move faster ... up the hill, his lungs pumping. The air seemed to hold him back exactly as the water had earlier.
By the side of the highway, he doubled over, vomited again, and then stood erect. He had to get help. Maybe Tony could still be saved if he got help. The road climbed away from the river on each side ... empty ... bare. There wasn't a single car or truck in view. The only movement anywhere was a black crow wheeling high in the sky.
Joel turned toward home and began to run blindly up the middle of the highway. He could feel the river just behind him, a presence, a lurking monster waiting to pounce. A monster that swallowed boys. Joel increased his speed, his heart hammering against his ribs, his bare feet slapping against the dark pavement.
Chapter Six
JOEL WAS HALFWAY UP THE HILL BEFORE another car crested the rise at the top and started toward him. It was a big, old boat of a car, blue with silver fenders, a red and orange flame painted on the hood. Joel planted himself in the middle of the lane, waving his arms. The blue car swerved toward the opposite side of the road, and he lunged to stay in its path, determined not to let it get away. The car came to a screeching, vibrating halt, inches from his extended arms.
"What in the hell do you think you're doing?" the driver yelled. He was a teenage boy, probably eighteen or nineteen, with a lot of dark hair and bare, muscular arms.
"Please," Joel gasped, but then he couldn't say any more. He stood doubled over the car's hood, trying to catch his breath, trying to get the words past his throat. "Please," he repeated.
"The kid looks sick," a blonde girl said. She was sitting next to the boy, so close that she could have been sharing the driving. She leaned forward as she spoke, peering through the windshield at Joel.
"In the river," he managed to say, pointing. "Please, come."
"What's in the river?" the boy asked, attentive now. "What're you talking about?"
Joel shook his head, unable to speak again. His face felt numb.
"You mean somebody's drowning or something?" The boy leaned forward, gripping the wheel.
Joel nodded dumbly.
"Get in!" the driver ordered, reaching back and swinging the door open for Joel.
Joel stumbled around the car and slid into the backseat, pulling the door shut again. The blonde girl turned and stared, her mouth working methodically around a wad of purple gum. She looked scared.
The car started up with a screeching of tires, barreled down the road, and skidded to a stop on the gravel shoulder just before the bridge.
"Who'd you say it is?" the boy demanded, already out of the car and jerking open Joel's door. "A friend of yours?"
"Yeah," Joel said, finding a bit of voice as he climbed out of the car. "His name's Tony."
"Where'd he go in?"
"I'll show you," Joel said, and he headed for the riverbank at a stumbling run. The bigger boy ran beside him, the girl next to the boy, her hands fluttering in front of her like large moths.
The sight of the river, the faint, dead-fish smell of it, made Joel's knees buckle when he got to the bank again. The boy grabbed his arm and held him up.
"Here?" he asked, setting Joel back on his feet.
"There's a place where it gets deep ... right about there." Joel pointed in the direction of the spot where he thought Tony had gone down.
The boy pulled off his shirt. "How'd he get in there anyway?" he asked.
"We were swimming out to the sandbar, and when I looked back ... he wasn't there. I ... I tried to find him. I really did." Joel choked as he spoke, his chest heaving in something like a sob, but he wasn't crying. His eyes were perfectly dry, and though he was shaking, his insides were frozen into a dead calm.
The boy had kicked off his shoes and his jeans. He stepped into the river, then paused, squinting at the muddy water.
"This his clothes?" the girl asked, approaching with Tony's blue shirt cradled in her arms as if she thought she had rescued Tony.
"Yeah," Joel answered, resisting an impulse to tell her to keep her hands off Tony's things.
The boy plunged into the water, skimming beneath the surface, humping up and diving more deeply still.
"You be careful," the girl called toward the place where her boyfriend had disappeared.
Joel and the girl stood side by side, waiting. Joel wondered for a moment if he should be back in the water looking, too, but the memory of the current pulling at him, holding him down, turned his legs to lead. He couldn't move toward the river again. The boy was going to find Tony, anyway. Joel was certain of it.
The first time the boy surfaced, Joel called out excitedly..."Tony!" But the teenager's hands were empty, and Joel stifled a second, more forlorn cry.
"The current probably took him that way," Joel called, pointing toward the bridge, and the boy nodded and ducked under again, swimming farther out this time and emerging downriver ten or fifteen feet.
He stayed with it, turning in every direction, diving again and again until his chest heaved and he staggered when he stood. His girl friend paced on the bank, cracking her gum steadily. "Be careful. Be careful," she said occasionally, more to the surrounding air than to her friend.
"You won't find anything there," she called desperately when he swam almost to the middle of the river once. "He wouldn't have gone that far out."
"But what if he did?" Joel demanded, and the girl didn't answer. She looked as though she were about to cry.
Joel stood on the bank and called helpful directions, but finally, despite Joel's encouraging suggestion to try "just a bit farther down," the boy began wading toward shore. His head was lowered so the water sheeting off his hair wouldn't drip into his eyes.
"You aren't quitting, are you?" Joel asked, the knowledge that he had quit already lying heavily in his gut.
"Yeah," the boy gasped, picking up his shirt and wiping his face with it. "I'm quitting."
"But you can't," Joel wailed. "You just can't!"
The boy shrugged. He spoke between deep, quavering breaths. "Look ... do you know ... how long ... it takes somebody ... to drown?"
Joel didn't answer. He hadn't thought about it. Besides, he didn't want to know.
"About five minutes, I'd say." The boy bent over, resting his hands on his knees. "About five lousy minutes!" More deep breaths. "Maybe even less."
Joel turned away, walked along the bank a few feet, but the boy's voice followed him.
The boy was beginning to breathe more normally now, and the words came out in larger clumps. "And how long was it before you even got me down here? Ten minutes? Fifteen?"
Joel couldn't respond.
"And do you know," the boy went on, straightening up slowly, "how hard it is to find anything in a river like this ... how fast the current would pull somebody along? Maybe next week a body'11 wash up at one of the dams ... or next month."
"We're not looking for a body," Joel said, turning back fiercely. "It's Tony we're looking for!"
The boy used his shirt to shear the water off his chest and arms. He shook his head. "Sorry, kid," he said.
Joel went rigid. What was this guy saying? Sorry? What was he sorry about? He didn't even know Tony.
"Dumb kids," the boy muttered as he tugged on his jeans. "You shouldn't have been swimming in the river in the f
irst place. You both should have known better. Didn't anybody ever tell you how dangerous rivers are?" He stuffed his feet into his shoes, wrung his wet shirt out. "Well," he said, "you'd better finish getting dressed and come with me."
Now it was Joel who was beginning to have trouble breathing. "Where are you going?" he asked.
"To the police station." The boy's voice was harsh, angry, as if he blamed Joel for what had happened. "When somebody drowns, you've got to report it to the police."
When somebody drowns. The words reverberated through Joel's skull like a scream. But he only repeated, dully, "The police," and stared at his own feet. What would the police say? They would want to know what Joel and Tony had been doing in the river in the first place. They would want to know what Joel had done to lose his friend that way.
Maybe he could call his dad at work first ... before he went to the police station. His dad would be good at explaining things. His dad would ... what would he do? "You're on your honor, Joel." That's what he had said. "You'll be careful the whole way? You won't go anywhere except the park?" And now Joel had proved what his honor was worth, what he was worth.
"Come on, kid," the boy said, and though his voice was still rough, it wasn't unkind. He knew. He knew what sort of questions the police would ask, what Joel's father would say, and Joel could tell the boy was feeling sorry for him.
"No," Joel said, shaking his head vigorously and pulling on his shirt. "You go on. I've got my bike here. I'll go report it to the police. No sense you getting involved."
"He's right," the girl said. She held her chin up and spoke with authority, though there were tears running down her cheeks. "There's no sense. Besides, if we go back into town, I might get into trouble. I called in sick to work today, remember? To go with you." She placed an extended index finger in the middle of the boy's chest.
"But it's gotta be reported," the boy said, stubbornly. "And the kid's parents have to be told, too."
At first Joel thought the boy was talking about his parents, about telling his father and mother, but then he realized the boy meant the Zabrinskys. Joel hadn't thought about Tony's parents up until now. For an instant he imagined ringing the Zabrinskys' doorbell, and he saw Mrs. Zabrinsky, her face tired, her eyes already sad, coming to the door. When the door opened, though, it was Mr. Zabrinsky standing there, a heavy, leather belt in his hand. Joel could feel the cold sweat breaking out along his sides. If the police didn't get him, Tony's father would for sure.
"I'll go to the police," he said. "I promise."
Chapter Seven
JOEL LEANED INTO HIS BIKE, PUSHING AS hard as he could, almost running up the hill. His heart drummed in his ears. The boy and his girl friend were still sitting in their car, probably arguing about whether or not to go to the police. Their presence behind him in the road made the skin between Joel's shoulder blades and up the back of his neck feel tight and bunchy.
When the car finally pulled away, rumbled across the bridge and up the opposite hill, Joel quit pushing and dropped across the handlebars, gasping for breath. After a few moments he looked back. The car was gone. Heat wavered off the empty road.
He began to push his bike again, more slowly now. When he was three fourths of the way to the top, a small red car crested the hill and started toward him. Joel straightened up, freezing his features into what he hoped was an image of innocence, of nonchalance. Still, when the car passed, he had to turn away. If the people in the car got a good look at his face, they would know.
His mother had always told him that he was the worst keeper of guilty secrets in the world. When he was a little kid, if he walked past her with a snitched cookie in his pocket, she would take one look at his face and say, "Joel, what do you have in your pocket?"
Now everybody was going to look at him and say, "Joel, why did you go swimming in the river? Joel, what did you do to your best friend?"
And what kind of questions would the police ask? What would they guess without even asking?
Joel stopped in his tracks, his heart beginning to hammer again. He couldn't go back. He just couldn't!
He jerked his bike around, facing it down the hill and away from town, away from the police, the Zabrinskys, his parents. He climbed on, standing with all his weight on one pedal so that his rear wheel fishtailed as he moved out. This time he would build up enough speed to make it to the top of the other side of the valley without having to get off once to push.
His father had given him permission to ride his bike all the way to Starved Rock State Park. He was going to ride to the park.
A line of fire measured the tops of Joel's thighs. He pedaled steadily, glancing neither to the right nor to the left, images flashing through his brain. The woods at the park were dense. He could hide his bike easily ... and then himself. Maybe he could even find a cave in the bluffs that he could stay in. He could live on berries and roots the way the Indians had done. They had hidden out on top of Starved Rock bluff to get away from an enemy tribe, but he couldn't do that. There were footpaths and fences on top of the bluffs now ... tourists, too. Anyway, an enemy tribe had trapped the Indians up there, starved them to death, giving the park its name.
A semi roared past, the suction of the huge wheels tugging at Joel and at his bicycle. All he would need to do would be to loosen his grip. The truck would take care of the rest.
Joel stopped pedaling, steered onto the shoulder, and dropped heavily off the bike. What was he doing? Did he really think he was going to hide out? And if he found some place to hide in, how long could he stay? Until he grew up ... or died? But it wasn't his fault, was it? Just because he didn't follow his father's orders, that didn't make what happened to Tony his fault.
His father was the one who had said it was all right to ride to the park in the first place. Joel hadn't even wanted to go.
And then there was Tony, crazy Tony, insisting on swimming in the river when he couldn't even swim that well.
Joel expelled a long breath. He felt lighter, somehow. He glanced both ways, then walked his bike across the road and started back in the direction he had come from. He would go home. That was where he belonged ... no matter what had happened.
He began to pedal again, his bike in the highest gear so the least movement on his part propelled him the farthest. Home, the narrow tires sang against the pavement. Home.
There was one thing he needed, though. He needed to decide what to tell his parents—and the Zabrinskys—when they asked about Tony.
He could tell them ... he could tell them that he and Tony had started to ride their bikes out to Starved Rock. He could tell them that Tony had stopped when they were crossing the bridge. It was so hot. The river was there ... cool and wet. Tony wanted to go swimming.
It was the truth, wasn't it?
And then he could tell them how he'd tried to talk Tony out of going into the river. And he could explain that Tony wouldn't listen, because Tony never listened once he had made up his mind. But then Joel would remind his father of the promise he had made that morning. He would say that he told Tony he couldn't go down to the river with him.
He would tell how he had ridden on to Starved Rock by himself. The day was hot, though, and it wasn't much fun riding so far without Tony, so he'd turned around to come back.
The explanation assembled itself in Joel's mind, logical and complete. Why hadn't he thought of it before? What had made him run away? He loosened his clenched fingers, one at a time, from the handlegrips and kept pedaling toward home.
But when he arrived at the top of the ridge overlooking the Vermillion River again, he stopped and stared at the road, the bridge, the wall of trees nearly obscuring the water. If only there were some other way to get home. He didn't know another route into town, though. Besides, the fire in his thighs had moved into his calves, his shoulders were cramped, and any other route home would undoubtedly be longer than this one.
Joel squeezed the hand brakes and began to creep down the steep hill toward the bridge, the
brake pads squealing lightly against the wheels.
Tony had stayed behind to go swimming. That was what Joel would tell everybody. But if he had really ridden on to Starved Rock when Tony had gone down to the water, he would have stopped to check on Tony on the way back ... because he wouldn't know.
Joel reached the bridge, still holding the bike in tight control, and pedaled slowly across, keeping his eyes carefully on the road. At the other side, though, he hesitated, stopped, wheeled his bike down the embankment, and propped it against the understructure of the bridge. He would just check ... so people wouldn't look at his face when he explained and know he hadn't even checked.
Tony's BMX was still there, carefully obscured in the long grass.
Joel walked slowly toward the riverbank, keeping his mind carefully blank. The whole thing could have happened the way he had it figured out. It all made sense.
A squirrel scolded in a nearby tree. The river made a burbling sound, almost as if it were laughing.
There were Tony's clothes scattered haphazardly along the ground, exactly where they had been dropped except for the shirt the girl had moved. One sock hung from a nearby bush; the other lay in the midst of a patch of violets.
Sighing over Tony's carelessness, Joel gathered up the clothes, folded them, put them into a neat pile. He folded the pale blue shirt last and laid it on top of the rest, then surveyed the results of his work.
Something was wrong. Tony had never folded his clothes in his life, not unless his mother was standing over him anyway. Joel reached down and mussed the shirt.
As he straightened up, the gleaming surface of the water caught his gaze. The river was unchanged, innocent.
For an instant Joel couldn't breathe. His throat closed, and the air was trapped in his chest in a painful lump. He lifted his hands in surprise, in supplication, but when the breath exploded from him again it brought with it a bleating moan.
On My Honor Page 3