"The fight?"
She nodded. "It was Brad Meyers who started it."
At last he remembered. He simply hadn't made the connection before. Bradley Meyers, Merridale's own Peck's Bad Boy. Not that he was much worse than a lot of the rowdies who hung out around the town—he was just a bit more obvious about it. Jim frowned as the brief paragraphs in the Messenger's police log came back to him. Meyers must have been arrested by the town police four, maybe five, times in the past few years, twice for fighting at the Anchor, Jim recalled, a night spot unused to brawls. It was run by Leo and Emeric Jerney, Hungarian refugees. Though it had a separate bar where all classes seemed to gather, there was also a fairly reputable dining room adjacent, so the Jerney brothers were always quick to clamp down on loud swearing or any signs of fighting. However, that hadn't stopped Brad Meyers from luring a nonresident trucker out to the parking lot, where he broke the man's jaw and lacerated his face on the lot's rough gravel. Leo called the police, but the trucker wouldn't press charges, although Meyers wound up spending the night in the single cell at the Merridale police station. There was a similar incident at the Anchor that got thrown out of Lansford County Court when Meyers's alleged victim never showed up to testify. There were rumors, never proven, that Meyers had persuaded the man not to show. The only other run-in that Jim remembered was the vandalism charge that had been filed by Jacob Groff, who lived in the apartment above Meyers. According to the police log, Meyers had been playing his. stereo at an excessive volume, and when old Jake rapped on the floor several times, Meyers stormed up to the third floor and kicked Jake Groff's door in, then went back to his apartment. That stunt had cost Meyers a six-month suspended sentence and a hefty fine. Jake Groff had moved soon after.
"He's a prick," Beth said.
"How come you know so much about him?"
"I know a lot about all the kids at Hatch. And their parents, present or absent. Bonnie Meyers spilled her guts out to me quite a few times when we had problems with Frank."
"You never told me."
"Confidential."
"Oh, sorry. Now you're a priest, huh?"
"What's wrong with you?" she said, her voice dangerously close to losing control.
"My son's dead," he said simply. "I killed my son."
Her eyes widened. "Don't say that," she said. "Don't even think it."
"It's true."
"That's stupid. Why do you say that?"
His eyes filled with tears so that he could no longer see to drive, and he pulled the car off the street. And then he told her what he had told no one before, about trying to get the children out, and seeing the fire, and leaping from the bus. "I jumped," he said. "I don't even remember doing it, but I did. I let them go . . ."
"There was nothing you could have done."
"I don't know how long . . . I don't remember how long it was. . . There might have been time. . . ."
"No," she said firmly. "There was no time. You couldn't have done anything." Her eyes bored into his, and for a moment he believed her. "You couldn't have saved them, Jim. No matter what you'd done. You did everything you could." She gazed at him, wanting it to be the truth. "Didn't you?"
"You did."
He nodded, his mouth slack-jawed. "Yeah," he said quietly.
Each was so intent upon the other that neither one noticed the green Volkswagen slowly pass them.
~*~
The following week there was a hearing into the cause of the accident, the blame for which was placed solidly on Henry Martin, whose brakes had locked on the ice, sending him skidding into the bus. His truck had been found nearly fifty yards away from the burned bus, his nearly severed head protruding from his splintered windshield. At the hearing, Jim Callendar answered the questions put to him listlessly, automatically, until the presiding magistrate asked a question that made him blanch. "Mr. Callendar," he said, "from what you've told us and from the evidence we've seen, would you agree with me that you did everything you could to avoid the accident and save the children?"
Jim did not answer immediately, and Beth straightened in her chair, expectant, wary, fearful. The small group gathered in the room sensed her discomfort and Jim's unease, and the room became very silent.
"I couldn't have avoided it," Jim said. "There was . . no way I could have avoided it."
"And afterward," the magistrate said. "You did all you could for the safety of the passengers, isn't that true? You said you tried to get them out, after all."
Jim sat looking at the man as though he were a stern, unforgiving father before whom he dared have no secrets. "I jumped. "
The room stinted. Faces turned to one another and then back toward Jim. "You . . . jumped?" the magistrate asked.
"Off the bus. I saw the fire and I jumped . . . leaped off." His voice was hushed, as though he wanted only the magistrate to hear. To hear and give him absolution.
"But you . . . were in danger. Of being caught by the fire yourself. Isn't that true?"
"I . . . don't know. I don't know how long I was . . . in the air."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Callendar, I don't—"
"Don't you see?" Jim hissed, his eyes wide. Each word came painfully slowly now, as if explaining to a child. "If I jumped . . . and landed before the fire was . . . was big, then it was wrong, then I did wrong, but if when I hit, the fire was where I would have been standing, then it wouldn't be so bad, but I . . . don't remember!" His voice was shaking now, on the point of tears. "I don't . . . remember . . . landing. I was just there, and the fire was . . . it was . . . Oh, Terry . . .” He broke down in sharp staccato sobs, and Beth put an arm around him.
"He doesn't know what he's saying," she said, her own voice nearly breaking. "It's been such a shock . . . everything . . . it's been too much . . ."
"I understand," the magistrate said kindly. "Mr. Callendar, no one blames you for anything that happened. There are occurrences that are tragic, unfortunate, but no one is really to blame, and most certainly you can't be held at fault for what happened. No one is accusing you of a thing. If the fault lay anywhere, it lay with Henry Martin, who has already paid the highest price he could. Now, my advice to you” —and he cleared his throat, as if embarrassed that Jim had not ceased crying—"my advice to you is to stop holding yourself responsible for what happened to your son and to the other children. You could . . . It's simply not realistic," he finished weakly.
After a few formalities, the hearing was adjourned. Only three of the other parents had been present—Rodney Miller, Angie Gianelli, and Brad Meyers, who had been sitting in the back wearing a bulky fatigue jacket. Miller and Mrs. Gianelli rose and left the meeting room immediately, their faces stony. Brad Meyers sat and watched the Callendars leave with Bill Gingrich. Jim seemed unaware of his presence, but Beth noticed his gaunt face, wiped clean of any expression, and shivered as though the cold outside had crept into the overheated meeting room.
By the time they reached the car, Jim's tears had dried and Beth felt some of her self-confidence returning. "Well, Bill," she said tightly to Gingrich as they climbed inside, "did you get a story?"
"That's not fair, Beth," he replied. "That's not why I came. I came because you're my friends."
"Is that compatible with honest journalism?"
"Beth," Jim said weakly, "that's enough."
"No. I want to know if you'll print it, Bill. What Jim said."
Gingrich glared at her. "No."
"Because you're our friend?"
"Because there'd be no point. I'm concerned with the outcome, not how it was arrived at." Gingrich shook his head and looked at Jim. "Though why you ever gave that goddamn mea culpa is beyond me."
"I could have done something," Jim whispered.
"Stop it!" In the confines of the closed car Beth's cry was painfully loud. "Will you stop it! It wasn't your fault!" Jim bit his lip and stared at his hands in his lap.
"Oh, Jesus," sighed Beth. "Jesus. Will you take us home please, Bill?"
It was late
in the afternoon when Gingrich dropped them off. Beth went directly to the kitchen to make dinner, which was usually Jim's job. But today he simply sat in the living room in front of the TV set and watched a talk show. They exchanged as few words as possible that evening, and went to bed early, without kisses or embraces.
That night, as on all the nights since the accident, sleep came hard to Jim, and when he could attain it, sleep was no longer a flat black, but a dark and muddy gray, like burnt charcoal, its texture not smooth, but viscous. He allowed himself to sleep only lightly, fearful that he would dream. But his dreams could have been no worse than the conscious memories that he replayed over and over. Bobby Miller's shattered hole of a face, the cries of "Mama, Mama" from the dark cave of the bus, that other mindless call, and he thought again and again, Was it Terry? Was he in there waiting for me? If I had stayed, could I have gotten him out, gotten them all out? Was there time; was there time? and he would tell himself that it was over and done and didn't matter anymore, because nothing could change it now, so go to sleep and forget.
But it did matter. He knew that. And beyond that he knew that it was the only thing that mattered. The feeling bound him with chains stronger than love or sex or hunger, and he identified it, quickly and correctly, as guilt. He had to bear it; no one could take it from him, strip it off his back like a tired, patched coat. He chose it and wore it, thought it would he his forever, and decided the best he could do was to live with it, as others went through life sightless, or on crutches, or in hospital beds. But it was his mind that was crippled, and he soon learned that any sympathy he expected to receive came hard to those who were sound of body.
The news of his admission at the hearing spread quickly through the town, and people who had been friendly to him before still smiled, but with a studied tolerance and a look of wary suspicion, as if not quite sure whether the man in front of them was really the same person they had known all these years. The fact of the accident itself did not separate him from them. That alone would have been dismissed in a year or so; it would have been remembered as a tragedy, but Jim's name would not have been as inextricably and permanently linked with it.
What made the difference was the dark doubt that he had expressed publicly about himself and his actions. If one were an adulterer or a thief or a cheat—or a coward—one kept it to oneself. It was the admission as much as the suspicion that made the people of Merridale shun him. Rumors were rampant. Bill Gingrich heard them but did not communicate them to Jim. One ran that he had never been thrown from the school bus at all, but had crawled out immediately once the bus came to rest. Another crueler one intimated that the children were found burned to death piled up against the back door of the bus, and all would have escaped alive and unharmed if Jim had not run.
Though Jim heard none of these, he could feel the tone of the community easily enough the first few days after the hearing. He could not bring himself to face anyone at first, and called Bill Gingrich to tell him that he had written neither of the columns Gingrich needed for that week's Messenger. Gingrich listened quietly, then said, "Can I count on you for next week?"
"No, I think we'd better just forget it for a while."
"How long?" Jim didn't answer. "Don't do this to yourself, Jim. Don't do it. You've got to get out. You can't lock yourself away."
"I've seen them. Seen their faces."
"Fuck them! Whoever they are!" There was silence on the line, and Gingrich thought Jim might have quietly hung up. "You there?"
"Yes."
"I want to talk to you. I want you to meet me—”
“Can you come here?"
"No. Out. At the Anchor."
"I can't."
"Yes, you can."
"No. I won't drive. And Beth's at school."
"I'll pick you up."
"Be there in ten minutes." And Gingrich hung up.
At Jim's house, Jim followed Gingrich fearfully, almost blindly, into his car. It was four in the afternoon when they entered the Anchor, and only a few workers from early shifts were seated at the bar. Gingrich guided Jim to a booth at the side. The bar, already quiet, became more so as they entered, and when the conversation resumed, it was in a low hum, with frequent sidelong glances at Jim. Gingrich returned the glances with glares, but to little effect. When he looked at Jim he was surprised to find him smiling. It was a small shy smile that hinted of self-satisfaction. Jim looked at Gingrich.
"They're talking about me," he said.
Gingrich nodded. "Yeah. They probably are." He paused. "That bother you."
"No." Jim shook his head. "They should be. After what I did."
"What are . . .” Gingrich began, but the waitress was beside them, smiling at Gingrich, trying to smile at Jim. They ordered beers. "What are you talking about?" Gingrich asked when they were alone. "After what you did?"
Jim looked at him, no longer smiling. "It's simple, Bill. I'm not going to be punished for what I did. Not by the law. So they'll punish me."
"They? They? Who's this 'they'? These clowns?”
“The town. Merridale."
"Jesus Holy Christ, what do you need to be punished for? You didn't do anything wrong."
"I think maybe I did."
"You don't know."
"I don't remember. Wouldn't I be more apt to forget what I didn't want to remember?"
Gingrich looked at Jim for a long time. "I'm not going to be able to talk to you, am I?"
"What about?"
"The weather, what do you think?"
"Talking about what happened can't change anything.”
“Talking about it could change you."
"I don't want to change. Not now." He looked expectantly at the men at the bar. Their voices were growing louder, the intonations harsh.
"You want to leave?" Gingrich asked.
"No. I want to drink my beer." They sat in silence, Gingrich refusing to leave until Jim was ready to go with him. The men kept talking, kept looking, though none of them spoke directly to Jim. When the beers were gone, Jim and Gingrich left. They did not talk to each other on the short drive back to Jim's house, and Gingrich was both confused and angered by the constant half smile, half smirk on Jim's face. He didn't call Jim again, and he received no more columns.
Jim and Beth still talked. When two people who have been so close for so long suffer a loss, it is mere romanticism for one to assume that a house becomes steeped in tragic silence. There were admittedly more times than before when no words passed, but conversation, if only out of necessity, went on. Smiles were given and accepted, and even an occasional laugh was heard. They had one serious discussion after the hearing, in which Jim told her that he would no longer drive a school bus. Not ever. She accepted it and told Mary Spruce the following day. Mary had seemed so relieved that Beth was certain she'd been about to suggest to her that it would be best if Jim no longer drove.
Beth didn't push him when she got home in the evenings, and later she wished she had. He was spending his days reading and watching TV, and when she asked, over the dinner he'd made, if he was working on his columns, he told her that he wanted to take some time off from them to get his head together about a few things. She nodded acceptance, understanding far more than he suspected she did.
She had thought long and hard about the course she would take with him. In a way, his reaction to the accident and her concern for him made her own grief easier to bear. She had loved her son deeply, and his loss had literally stunned her when the policeman had arrived with the news. Terry had been their child, enjoying the time he spent with his mother equally as much as the greater time he'd spent with Jim, and at first she had been jealous over what she interpreted as Jim's refusal to share his grief with her. It was only later she realized that it was not grief he was hoarding, but guilt, and that she could not share it.
Her love for her husband forced her own grief into the background. She grieved, but inwardly, her outside energies conserved for the battle it would take to free
Jim from his demons. At last she determined that her greatest contribution would be to do as little as possible. She would love him, support him, but would not force him. He was all she had left now, and she could not bear the thought of driving him away. This proscribed inactivity became the most difficult thing she had ever tried to accomplish. Beth was a doer, a mover. She could not sit still. It was difficult for her to read a long book, or watch television without a magazine in her lap. So for her to sit back and watch while her husband sorted out the bits of his life made her want to scream.
It got no better, and a week before Christmas she decided to get rid of Terry's toys. She had already boxed a good many things, but the boxes of the child's clothes and toys still sat in the now bare-walled room next to their own, and she thought it would be best to banish them for good and turn the room into something other than the vacant memorial it now seemed. But when she told Jim of her plans to give the toys and clothing to a child welfare agency in Lansford, his face soured. "Why do we have to give them away?"
Why not? she thought. He's dead. Our boy's dead. But instead she shrugged. "I thought, since it was getting to be Christmas, that maybe the agency could use them. It seems foolish to have them here when someone could be using them."
Jim's mouth straightened and his lips went white. "I don't want to give them away."
"Why not?" In spite of herself, she could feel her anger growing.
"I . . . just don't want to. They're all we have."
"We can't keep them forever. We have our memories." His face puckered like a child's about to cry.
"We can use the room for something else," she went on, giving him no chance to respond. "A sewing room, a little study . . . We could put the desk in the basement in there."
Jim looked away from her and walked out of the room. When he did not return, she loaded the boxes into the trunk of the car and opened the windows of what had been Terry's room, as if the chilling wind could blow away the pain that still remained.
Christmas was miserable. Jim's parents came up from Florida, where they had moved two years before. Both of them wore martyred looks throughout their three day visit, breaking the masks with the required smiles as they opened their presents. Beth got Jim some books he had expressed interest in, and some sweaters. He gave her only one present, a moderately expensive gold wristwatch he'd bought before the accident. She kissed him, put it on, and kept it on.
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