by Newman,James
“True,” Mike laughed. “Good point.”
“Friggin’ Sal. Betcha a million dollars his liver looks like that roadkill you scraped up last week over on Bartleby.”
“But he’ll never change.”
“Nope. His kind never do.”
Sheriff Burt Baker walked past my chair then, and I could have reached out and touched him. Loose change jingled in his pants-pockets. His gun belt squeaked with his movements. The weapon looked so impossibly huge, there at his waist. I couldn’t stop staring at it.
He glanced back at me. I gasped as our eyes met.
Burt Baker reached to pour himself a cup of coffee then from the brewer atop the file cabinets.
“This stuff any good?”
“I wouldn’t,” Mike replied. “It’s probably toxic by now.”
“What else is new.”
Baker poured himself a cup of coffee before turning back to Mike and me.
“So what’s going on here?” he said.
“I, um…you—” I started, but I could say nothing else. I wanted to run from that place, wanted to flee down Main Street, wanted to leave this town and never look back. But I couldn’t. My feet felt as if they had melded with the cold, hard floor. My knees were like Jell-O.
“Pretty slow day here at home-base,” Mike said. “Mr. Kyle was just—”
“You’re Dan Mackey’s brother,” Baker interrupted. “Darlene’s kid.”
The murderer’s eyes seem to burn into my soul. I felt like a mouse about to be devoured by a big, ugly snake. The old acne scars around Sheriff Burt Baker’s dark features seemed deeper than ever before, his flesh mottled and craterous.
I wanted to spit in his face. Even where I sat, across the room from him, I was quite sure I’d hit my mark.
“I…um…y-y-yeah,” I said at last, through clenched teeth. “Th-that’s me. R-right.”
“That brother of yours, he’s one hell of a basketball player.”
I nodded, stared at that picture of Mike’s twins again and wished I could be in there with them.
“I watched him win the State Championship for Stokely High last year,” Baker said. “Swear to God, I’ve never seen a white boy play like that.”
I said nothing. Just kept staring at that picture of Disneyland.
“You play?”
“Wh-what?” I squirmed beneath Sheriff Baker’s penetrating gaze.
“Your brother the only athlete in the family? Or do you play too?”
How I wished he would stop looking at me. His eyes narrowed, as if he were interrogating me. I wanted to hide under Mike Linder’s desk and never come out.
“Just him,” I wheezed.
“Yeah. You look like more of a bookworm. Probably like to read, draw, crap like that?”
I said nothing. Just squirmed in my seat, felt a salty trickle of sweat drip down my forehead and into my right eye. It burned there, like acid.
“Hm,” the sheriff said finally, no longer interested in whether I planned to follow in my brother’s footsteps or pursue more artistic interests like reading and drawing and crap like that. Thank God. He walked to the desk next to Mike’s, sat his cup of coffee there (COPS DO IT “BY THE BOOK,” read the logo on the side), and eased into his chair. He opened a manila folder atop his desk and his brow creased as he studied some paperwork inside there.
I began to breathe again. Tentatively.
“So, anyway,” Deputy Linder said. “You had something on your mind, Kyle. What was it you wanted to tell me, buddy?”
The sound of a single raindrop outside the building might have been louder than my whisper at that moment. I could barely hear my own voice. Not that it would have mattered anyway, as my thoughts came out so jumbled and incoherent: “I…I need to…need t-to t-t-talk to you…we…D-Dan said…you…b-but…I…”
Sheriff Burt Baker looked up from his desk, smirked at me, and then turned toward Mike.
He said, “That must have been his bike that night.”
I felt a sudden wet warmth in the crotch of my Fruit-of-the-Looms. A chill ran through my body like shards of ice cutting straight to the bone.
Sheriff Baker offered me a haughty smile before returning to the paperwork on his desk.
I exhaled loudly, realizing that Baker hadn’t said anything about my bike at all. I had misunderstood him. Instead of “that must have been his bike that night,” he’d simply said to his deputy, “Cat must have his tongue, right, Mike?”
It should have been funny. I should have stifled a chuckle of relief. But I didn’t.
My terror got the best of me.
And so I did it.
I chickened out.
“Nevermind, Mike,” I said. I shot to my feet, almost knocking over my chair. My voice was thick with tears as I backed away from the desks, moving for the door. “It’s n-nothing. F-forget it. I…I have to go. I…I h-have to…M-Mom…”
“Kyle?” Mike started. “What—”
“I forgot I, um…I have to b-be somewhere,” I said. “I have to g-go. I’m s-sorry.”
Deputy Linder’s brow furrowed as he watched me retreat. “Okay. If you’re sure…”
Sheriff Baker winked at me.
The hairs on the nape of my neck stood up. I fumbled for the door, never turning my back on the men until I was out of the building.
I collided with an old man in a soggy gray jogging suit as I staggered out of the Sheriff’s Department and turned to flee toward home. His wide yellow eyes glared into mine and he smelled of Old Spice overkill.
“Watch where you’re going, junior!” he snapped at me.
But I barely even heard him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mom came into my room that night while I lay in bed half-heartedly thumbing through a Superman comic book. I didn’t mind her visit, though her true motives remained a mystery to me long after she was gone. I hadn’t really been reading my comic book anyway. The whole time I tried to follow Superman’s adventures around Metropolis I could only think about what Sheriff Burt Baker had said to me earlier that day.
You look like a bookworm. Probably like to read, draw, crap like that?
Never in my life had I known true hate before then.
I loathed everything he represented. Everything he was about.
Lies. Hypocrisy. Murder and deceit.
Finally I tossed my comic book aside, deciding I abhorred Clark Kent and his alter ego nearly as bad as I hated Sheriff Burt Baker. Mr. Goody-goody in his red-and-blue tights always did the right thing. Superman wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything.
And then I saw Mom standing in the doorway.
At first she just stuck her head in the door tentatively, as if she were some vampire disguised as my mother and thus could not cross the threshold into my domain without an invitation. She coughed softly, twice, to get my attention.
“Kyle, are you awake?” she asked, even after she saw me lying there with the light on.
“I’m awake.”
She had just gotten out of the shower. Her hair lay across her shoulders in wet black curls. She wore her favorite teal bathrobe, and she smelled like strawberries. Despite her hard cheekbones and the crow’s feet around her eyes, I could see the gorgeous woman my mother had once been. Beneath her tired exterior I could envision the stunning Southern belle who had stolen my father’s heart in high school, and I was quite sure that if Mom would only allow her beauty to shine more often through the ugly veil of her addiction, she would have been the most beautiful lady on Earth. To me, at least. If.
“I see you’ve cleaned up your room,” Mom said.
“Yep.”
“Looks good. Except for the funny book lying in the middle of the floor.”
I shrugged, didn’t even wince like I used to do when she called them “funny books.”
She leaned over, picked up my Superman comic and set it next to my lamp. She took a second to adjust it so it was perfectly square with the edge of the nightstand, as if admiring fine art.
“You should take care of these, Kyle,” she said. “You never know, they could be worth a lot of money some day.”
Mom made herself comfortable beside me on the bed. I felt a pang of embarrassment when her robe fell open slightly and I glimpsed a pale inner thigh stippled with light freckles and maybe even a hint of dark pubic hair. I cleared my throat, looked off toward my closet, and though Mom pulled her robe tighter around herself she didn’t seem to notice my embarrassment. I felt a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Not a pleasant thing for a child to notice, that. Such unwanted sights force a growing boy to recognize his mother as Woman, with parts no different from those ogled during clandestine peeks at his cousin Toby’s Playboy collection, smooth pink places identical to those he will one day kiss and touch in the way adults kiss and touch one other behind closed doors.
I shuddered, mortified by such unwanted revelations.
I suddenly found myself wondering if Mom had done It with anyone since Dad died.
That would be like spitting on my father’s grave, I decided. I could never handle such a thing.
“My darling Kyle,” Mom said. “It seems like only yesterday when I brought you home for the first time. You were so tiny…just two big, blue, curious eyes staring up at me from that blanket.”
I said nothing. Didn’t know how to respond. I just lay back, listened to Mom’s voice, and felt an odd sort of comfort in the way it fell into a mellow rhythm with the sound of the rain outside. It reminded me vaguely of those old jazz records Dad used to love when he was home on leave, the ones he would listen to in the den every Saturday night with a glass of Scotch in one hand and a thick novel open on his knee.
“I remember how proud your big brother was.” Mom offered me a sad little smile, but she seemed so far away. “He wanted to take you to school for Show-and-Tell.”
One hand caressed my cheek. My mother’s skin was soft, still warm from her shower, but something about her fingernails made me uneasy. They were the nails of a person who no longer feels it is worth the effort to maintain every minute detail of her appearance. The nail on Mom’s right birdie finger was broken off at its tip—as if she had used that digit too many times in the past, and those years of wear and tear were finally beginning to show—and the polish she had last applied on all of her fingernails was cracked and chipped like the paint of a building condemned many years ago.
Mom’s eyes were wet. She looked like she might start crying any moment, or perhaps she had already wept for a spell but had taken the time to compose herself before she came into my room.
“Mom?” I said. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s just peachy,” she said, though her cheerless tone belied her words. She adjusted my covers, pulled them up to my chest. “I just wanted to talk for a moment. Can’t a mother check in on her baby boy before bedtime?”
I resisted the urge to scoff at her “baby” comment. I couldn’t help it. It was a boyhood reflex, that immediate desire to insist I haven’t been a baby for a long time, thank you.
“You were probably eight or nine years old the last time I tucked you in. Do you remember?”
I nodded, tried to recall the last time she had done so. It had been even longer than the three or four years she estimated, I thought, though I did not argue with her.
“Kyle—”
“I miss it,” I said, before she could go on.
“What’s that?”
“I miss it. The way you used to tuck me in.”
She looked shocked. “Gosh. Really, sweetie? I guess…I guess I just assumed you were getting too old for me to do that anymore.”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
I meant it. Despite my distaste for her “baby boy” comment just a few seconds previous, I did not ever want to grow up. Not if growing up meant being alone when the darkness came. No, during those last few days I had decided I could wait as long as necessary.
Mom sniffled, leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. Her wet hair hung in my face. I breathed in the aroma of the Head & Shoulders she had used a few minutes ago, and unlike the strawberry soap I had smelled when she first came into my room, this new scent nearly made me sneeze. She hadn’t quite rinsed all of the shampoo out of her scalp, and there was something a bit too cloying about that smell, like a powerful chemical in which my mother had bathed, hoping to wash away her deepest darkest secrets.
“That girl’s funeral is tomorrow, you know,” she said from out of nowhere. As if she had just remembered it, and hadn’t been dwelling on that sad event all day like everyone else in town.
“I know,” I said.
“It’s supposed to be a pretty day, too. Supposed to clear up quite a bit.”
“Really.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Mom laughed, but there wasn’t the slightest bit of humor in it. “A beautiful day for a funeral.”
I could see it in her eyes. My mother and I were thinking the same thing. I was only five years old the day we buried my father, yet I recalled the whole terrible affair no less vividly than if I had been ten times that age. It had been such a bright, sunny morning. Almost everyone who came to Dad’s funeral had worn sunglasses. I’ll never forget that one trivial detail for as long as I live. The sun had created a beatific halo effect behind each of the mourners as they stood above my father’s grave, an effect that seemed to denote flawless sincerity, yet how could I trust all those giant, sweaty-browed grown-ups with their expressions of sympathy and promises of prayer if I could not see their eyes?
Mom looked off toward my bedroom window, at the raindrops slithering down the glass like so many wet, silver worms leeching away at our modest home. The storm hummed a low, mournful song above our heads. Tears gathered in the corners of my mother’s eyes, but they never spilled down her cheeks.
“Are you going?” I asked her, when I thought she might sit there like that forever, just staring out at the rain.
“To the funeral?” Mom sighed. “Oh, to be honest, Kyle, I haven’t even thought much about it. I suppose I should. Everyone else will be there.”
“Probably,” I said.
“I’d have to take a couple hours off work, though, and Mr. Norton would never allow me do that.”
I stared up at my mother, heard her teeth grinding together as she sat there on the edge of my bed in her own little world. I could tell she wanted a drink. Couldn’t wait for it. She would undoubtedly imbibe the second she left my room. I felt strangely hollow inside about that, though, and wondered if I really cared at all anymore. Perhaps that was the most frightening thing about the whole situation—the utter apathy with which I had grown to view Mom’s affliction in those days when I had so many other trying matters on my mind.
“I thought I might go,” I said.
Mom blinked at me.
“To Cassie Rourke’s funeral. If it’s okay, I mean.”
She gave a little shrug, but did not offer her blessing just yet.
“I didn’t know her,” I said, “So maybe it’s dumb. But I’d like to pay my respects, ya know? It seems like the right thing to do.”
Mom reached over, caressed my cheek again. She nodded slowly, and there was something almost sarcastic in her tone when she assured me, “If you want to go to the funeral, Kyle, I’m not going to stop you. In fact, I think that would be quite commendable.”
I frowned.
Finally she stood, messed with my covers again until they covered every inch of my body up to my nose.
“Comfy?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Good.” She yawned, turned to leave. “Get some sleep, sweetie. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“It’s okay.”
“I love you, Kyle. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”
I wasn’t lying. I did believe her. I never doubted for a second that my mother loved me, despite all the fights and the hard times her addiction had inflicted upon us. Mom just had a hard time showing
us her love back then. I’m sure it wasn’t easy without my father around, trying to raise two boys to be good honest men in a world that was anything but good, a world that grew more dishonest with every passing day. But Mom did love me. I was sure of it.
“Everything I do, Kyle, I do it for you,” she said, so low I could barely make out her words beneath the never-ending drone of the midnight rain outside. She swept her wet hair out of her eyes, tucked several locks of it behind her small, red ears. “For you and Danny. I may not always make the right decisions, or know all the answers, but I try. I try damn hard.”
“I know,” I said.
“I’d do anything for my sons.”
“I know.”
She crossed her arms in front of herself, as if the temperature within my bedroom had dropped to several degrees below zero. “That’s my job, you understand? To take care of my boys. And a mother’s job is never done.”
I wished she would leave. I had no idea what she was talking about, and where minutes before I had enjoyed my mother’s company I now felt uncomfortable beneath her glassy wet gaze and all this talk of taxing motherly duty lasting into eternity.
“Anyway,” Mom said, “I love you. Sweet dreams, hon.”
I watched her turn out my bedroom light and walk out of my room then, her shoulders slumped.
She moved down the hallway like a ghost in the night. Silently. As if she had never been there at all.
I lay awake in the darkness for a long time after that, wanting to cry but not sure if I should. I did not know if those few awkward minutes my mother and I had shared together were entirely good or bad, and perhaps that was the most frightening thing of all.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
That night I dreamed of Cassie Belle Rourke’s funeral, and when I awoke at 3 a.m. gasping for air, my pajamas soggy with cold sweat and piss, I could only lie in the darkness until dawn. So afraid.
In my nightmare, Cassandra Rourke’s funeral was held out at what I once called my Secret Place. Old Father McKinney from the First Lutheran Church of Midnight officiated. Everywhere I looked the Snake River Woods were filled with citizens who had come to see Cassie Rourke laid to rest. Where there was no more room to stand around the Well and throughout that grove in the middle of the forest, folks sat atop the Old Shack’s rusty tin roof. Several of them were even perched in the trees around me, unmoving black shapes watching the proceedings at hand.