by Jim Shepard
He finished getting dressed and tramped downstairs. “Here he comes,” he heard his grandmother say.
He went into the downstairs bathroom instead and stood pointlessly over the toilet, listening to them murmur in the kitchen. The new shower curtain had a surprisingly intense smell that he couldn’t track down. Then he could: pool liner. A kid’s pool, a wading pool.
“You want coffee?” Nina called from the kitchen. “We made coffee.”
“Ma, let the kid take a leak,” his mother said.
He flushed the toilet and came into the kitchen. Nina was wearing a white sweat shirt with FBI in big red letters across it. Underneath the red letters it said FULL-BLOODED ITALIAN in little green letters.
His mother gave him a big smile as he sat down.
“What’re you smiling at?” he asked.
“Listen to you. What a mouth on you,” Nina said.
His mother put an English muffin in the toaster for him. “So, Ma,” she said. “You wanna go to this pottery demonstration or not? ’Cause I’m goin’.”
“That’s terrible,” Nina said. “Who’d want to demonstrate against pottery?”
His mother waved her hand once, like there were gnats around, and told her it wasn’t that kind of demonstration.
They went on talking. He still didn’t have his coffee. He kept feeling he had to wash his face. He imagined he projected a bitter silence, but they didn’t seem to be noticing. His grandmother finished a story she’d been telling about an escape artist on the news. They’d put him in a box and put dirt and cement on the box and the box had collapsed and crushed him. Could they imagine? It was horrible.
“How was your date?” he asked his mother.
They both stared at him. The English muffin popped up.
“I don’t think that’s much of your business,” his mother finally said quietly.
He got up and hunted around the cabinets the way Audrey hunted in the tall grass. He left the muffin where it was.
“You looking for anything, you let me know, now,” his mother said.
“I’m gonna go over Brendan’s,” he said.
“You gonna eat your muffin?” she said.
“No,” he said.
“You gonna have any breakfast at all?”
“No.” He left the kitchen.
Brendan was still a little pissed at him, but he came around. Todd brought over the lacrosse helmet, and Brendan ignored it. They were sitting in the kitchen and Brendan’s mother kept giving Todd sympathetic looks that puzzled and annoyed him. Brendan’s little brother, Taylor, was playing guns outside with two friends.
Brendan’s mother hunched to look out the window. Across the yard, Taylor was sitting on one friend and beating him on the head with a plastic gun. Brendan’s mother called to him and wanted to know why they had to play so violently. Why didn’t they play where they didn’t shoot anybody?
“How do you play cops and robbers and not shoot anybody?” Taylor called.
His mother looked a little stymied by that. “Why don’t you just question Mickey?” she finally said.
There was a silence outside, while the kids apparently thought it over. Brendan rolled his eyes at Todd.
“Aw right,” Taylor called. Then he said, in a quieter voice, “But if he doesn’t listen, then we can kill him.”
Brendan snorted. Brendan’s mother finished cleaning the counter and then she left.
Brendan emptied two packets of presweetened Kool-Aid into two cans of Coke Classic. They could hear his brother making the sound of machine-gun fire outside. They sat there slugging the Cokes.
“I can feel my teeth like dissolving,” Todd said.
Brendan nodded. “Isn’t it great?”
They walked down to the park near Milford Beach. Todd wanted to tell him what was going on. The rain had stopped and the sun was out. The grass was still wet. Their sneakers were soaked. Todd’s were the Nikes his father had bought him, and the soles were separating at the instep.
They sat on two big tree roots and watched little kids play football. They knew one of the kids, a fourth-grader named Woods. Woods was wearing his PEE WEE jersey and his name was sewn on the back upside down, so that it read SPOOM.
“You left the lacrosse helmet at my house,” Brendan said. He was wearing a CLYDE THE GLIDE T-shirt that reminded Todd of his JUDGMENT DAY tank top.
“You can hang onto it,” Todd said. He never thought he’d get out of the mess he was in, except by some magical luck. He felt the need to be kind while he waited for that to happen, as if the world would recognize it and take care of him.
The kids in the football game ran a sweep. It looked like recess getting out. Both teams milled around for ten yards and fell in a heap. Todd looked over at Brendan’s T-shirt every so often, glum about the way everything seemed an ironic reference to his secret.
“I’m goin’ to Yankee Stadium tonight,” he said. Then he realized it sounded like bragging.
“Yeah?” Brendan asked.
“You coulda come, but we couldn’t get another ticket,” Todd explained.
Brendan nodded, watching the game. “We got Ad Altare Dei tomorrow night,” he said.
Woods, with his red PEE WEE jersey, was running toward them. He planted to cut and was piled on from behind. He yelled and got up and hopped around on one leg. Todd flinched, remembering soccer tryouts the year before, his knee twisting with a little crick that sounded like someone a few feet away cracking a nut. The sound scared him down to his feet. His father had taken him to the doctor and the doctor had handled his leg casually while he talked, like a length of hose.
“He all right?” Todd said.
It looked like he was. He was walking around on both legs like he had a sliver in his foot. “Remember, before confirmation, when we heard we were gonna get slapped in the face by the bishop?” Brendan said. “And we joked about like a fight breaking out?”
“Or that he’d belt us across the face,” Todd said.
“We didn’t get anything like that,” Brendan said. He ripped up some of the wet grass and piled it on top of his sneakers.
Todd watched Woods stand on one foot and swing his other like it was a pendulum. You’re a great son, he thought. Here you’re supposed to be so upset about your father leaving and how often do you think of him?
“What’s the worst thing you ever confessed?” he asked Brendan.
The ball bounced over to them and Brendan kicked it back with his foot. “I don’t know,” he said.
“If you did something really terrible, would you confess it?” Todd said.
Brendan looked at him. “Why? You do something? What’d you do?” He sounded enthusiastic.
Todd told him nothing, but by then his face was red and he’d given himself away. Brendan stayed after him and made fun of him, and when Todd got up and said he had to get back, Brendan followed behind, guessing what it could be: Stealing? Sacrilege? Praying to Satan? It was only after Todd got home and waved good-bye and repeated that he had to go in, he had all this stuff he had to do, that he realized that none of Brendan’s guesses were as bad as the real thing.
He sat out in the front yard an hour early, waiting for Bruno to show up. He had his glove with him for foul balls. His mother was in the living room with the window open, on the other side of the screen. In the afternoon sunlight she was just a shadow that came and went.
“When’s the game start?” she asked.
He shrugged. He was matching Japanese maple leaves to one another. He’d pulled them off the little tree she’d planted.
He heard her clunk something around in the living room. “I’m still not sure this is a good idea,” she muttered.
He checked his wallet. He had only five dollars.
You have enough money?” she asked.
“I have enough money,” he said. Across the driveway, near the telephone pole, sparrows trooped around on the weedy part of the lawn.
“It’s like you’re out almost all the tim
e now,” his mother complained.
“I’m not gonna say anything,” he finally said. She left the window.
Bruno’s Buick turned onto the street and pulled up the driveway. Bruno got out and flipped him a new Yankees cap. It sailed end over end and landed in the grass. “You wear it,” he said. “Me, I’m not committing myself till we have a five-run lead.”
He asked if Todd had his glove. Todd held it up. “Joanie?” he called.
He was looking at the side of the house and listening for an answer. Some birds cheeped. “Where’s your mother?” he finally said.
Todd said she was in the house.
Bruno looked disturbed at the news. “We’re goin’. Good-bye,” he called. He waited another minute and gestured Todd toward the car. When they got in, he looked like he was deciding something and then started the car. “Your mother mad at me?” he asked as he backed down the driveway. “She say anything to you?”
Todd said she hadn’t. After a little while he volunteered, “I don’t think she wanted me to go tonight.”
“You got that right,” Bruno said.
“J’ou eat yet?” he asked a few minutes later.
Todd nodded. He hadn’t, though. Why he did stuff like that, he had no idea.
“We’ll grab something, anyway,” Bruno said.
Todd spread out on the leather seat. It was a dealer car and had the new-car smell.
Bruno yawned so widely his eyes watered. He made a loud chewing noise and straightened up. “When’s your birthday?” he asked. “I had a good idea for a present.”
“It’s already over,” Todd said. “May eleventh.”
“The eleventh? I was born the eleventh, too.”
“The same day?”
“The same day.”
They got up on I-95, heading south. Traffic was heavy. “It was like two weeks after my dad left,” Todd said.
“Happy birthday,” Bruno said.
“Really.”
A big red Jeep Cherokee swerved alongside them. The windows were open, and the bass whoompf of the stereo was amazing even from there.
“What a day,” Bruno sighed.
“You didn’t sell anything?” Todd asked.
“It’s not the not buying,” Bruno said. “It’s the bustin’ ’em off that gets you.”
Todd looked back at the road. He didn’t know enough to talk about it.
“One guy today, he comes back in: ‘Hey, this Skylark option package you just sold me, I just saw it in the paper a lot cheaper at Valley Motors.’ I need these comparison shoppers, right? Next he’ll be kicking the tires. I go, ‘Valley Motors, jeez, you know, you’re welcome to comparison shop with them, but it’s only fair to warn you we had some dealings with them, we found some serial numbers filed off, you know what I’m saying?’”
He hit the turn signal, and they headed off the Sears exit in Bridgeport.
“What’s that mean?” Todd said.
The Buick rolled down the ramp and stopped at the light. It was idling funny and shook. Bruno pumped the gas. He said the numbers filed off usually meant the cars were stolen. Somebody’d probably hijacked a truckload of new ones and sold them to the dealers.
How could he just tell people that about them? Todd asked. Wouldn’t they complain? Bruno said not if it was true. Todd thought about it and asked how he knew it was true.
Bruno shrugged and told him he wasn’t getting all the trade secrets tonight. The light changed and he went straight a block and hung a right. He hit the automatic door locks. Someone broke a bottle in an alley they passed.
“Where we goin’?” Todd said.
“Little diner,” Bruno said. “You’ll like it.”
They were in a lousy part of Bridgeport. Todd was still thinking about his story. “Does Valley Motors know you’re doing that?” he asked.
Bruno shrugged again. “Hey, the buyer’s gonna go, ‘Hey, I hear you have stolen cars here’?
“See, what Valley Motors gets, they deserve, because stealin’s wrong. Am I right?” Bruno asked. “What’d you, lose your voice?”
“No, it’s wrong,” Todd said. He was afraid to look up.
It was starting to get dark. They were driving along under the highway. There was nothing around but an abandoned car and a chain-link fence. A page of newspaper rose in the wind and floated in front of them. Todd was getting a clogged feeling in the back of his throat from swallowing so much. “Why’re we goin’ here?” he asked.
Bruno pulled over next to a concrete highway support that went up into the darkness and out of sight. He cut the engine.
“Why’re we stopping?” Todd asked. He had one hand on the seat next to him, the other on the door handle. His glove was on the seat between them.
“I wanna talk, before we get to the diner,” Bruno said.
Todd rubbed his face with the flat of his hand and tried not to panic. “Won’t we be late for the game?
“Don’t worry about the game.”
Todd could hear the traffic high above them. He looked around. He could make out a streetlight opposite the car, but the light on its cross arm was smashed. “Is it safe here?” he asked.
They’d be all right, Bruno said. Nobody was going to touch this car.
Todd asked why not. They heard a noise. Two black kids paraded by, eyeing them. Bruno waited until they were past. Then he settled in his seat, facing Todd. He spoke slowly, like Todd was going to have trouble following. He said, “Here’s the deal. I need for you to talk to me about what happened the night you drove home from your confirmation party.”
Todd froze. He had four fingers curled around the door handle. His eyes were on the dashboard. The traffic way above his head made a threshing, regular sound.
“The night Tommy Monteleone was killed. I need for you to talk to me about what happened.”
Todd made a show of concentrating. He sat forward in his seat. He folded his hands between his thighs as if he were praying.
He looked straight out the windshield in front of him, terrified. He said, “We just drove home.”
It was completely quiet. The number changed on the digital clock. Bruno folded his arms, like he was going to try a different tack. “Let me explain something to you,” he said in a low voice. “What we’re involved with here is a serious thing. A guy was robbed, and he was killed. And I’m giving you an opportunity. What is your opportunity? Your opportunity is the opportunity to tell the truth.”
Todd opened his mouth and Bruno held up one finger. “Don’t”—he paused—“tell me something if it’s not the truth. The truth is what we’re here for. Capiche?”
Todd nodded. He was crying. “We just drove home,” he said.
“You can help me right some wrongs,” Bruno said. He held his index finger and thumb up together in the darkness in front of Todd’s face like he was holding a spice for Todd to sniff. “It’s not right to the guy who was robbed and killed. And it’s not right to the other guys who invested in him. You hear what I’m sayin’?”
“How do they know there was money?” Todd said.
“What’re you tellin’ me?” Bruno said. As he got angrier Todd got more scared. “You want to see the police records? You want to go down see the police records?”
Todd interlocked his fingers in his lap and sniffled. He leaned hard into the door.
“Then what is this ‘How do they know’ shit? What is that? Where’d you learn that? In school?”
“I’m sorry,” Todd said. He rolled down his window and rolled it up again. “Is the diner near here that we’re goin’ to?”
Bruno licked his lower lip and scratched the razor stubble on his chin. Todd could hear it. “You don’t want to talk about it,” Bruno said. “This is a traumatic thing. This I understand.”
“We didn’t do anything,” Todd said miserably.
“You’re what,” Bruno said. “You’re eleven years old. What do you think’s gonna happen to you? It’s an accident, you’re driving along, bip, there he is
. Nothin’ you could do. You got out, see if you could help, there was this envelope.”
“No,” Todd said.
“You tell me, or you tell the cops. You tell me, I tell the cops something else.”
Todd wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.
“You know what I see when I look at Todd? I see a boy who wavers. A boy who vacillates. This is not the time for vacillation. I know you’re saying, Be safe. I’m saying, This is not safe. Do you understand? That’s the subject of our evening together: this is not safe.”
Todd swallowed. “We’re not goin’ to the game, are we?” he said.
“There is no game,” Bruno said. “Not for you.”
He turned off the dashboard lights. It was now totally dark.
Todd said, “We may a hit something.” He didn’t recognize his voice. “We stopped, we didn’t see anything.”
“You may a hit something,” Bruno said out of the darkness.
“We may a hit something.”
“What’re you telling me?” Bruno said. “You wouldn’t know? You see his head? You wanna go down the police station see pictures of his head?”
Todd started crying again.
Bruno opened his car door and the overhead light went on. He didn’t get out. After the darkness Todd had to shield his eyes with his hand. “I hurt your feelings?” Bruno said. “Is that what I did? I hurt your feelings? Tell me again: you hit somebody by mistake. You tell me that again.”
“I told you,” Todd said.
“You tell me again.”
“We mighta hit somebody by mistake. We heard a noise. We thought maybe it was a dog or something. We got out, we didn’t see anybody.”
Bruno nodded. He kept nodding. The door was still open. “You don’t respect me,” he finally said.
“It’s the truth.”
“Get out of the car.”
“Get out of the car?” Todd said.
Bruno leaned across him, scaring him, and opened his door. Todd was already leaning against it and almost fell out. “Get out of the fucking car. You don’t respect me, get outta the car. I don’t want anything more to do with you.”
“How’m I gonna get home?” Todd said.