I cheated once and looked up at my mom. She just got her hair cut short. I don’t like it. But I keep saying I do. I want to be supportive. A lot of her weight is in her face. She has very big cheeks. Usually they’re pretty red. Yester day even more so. I worry about her. I think it’s a blood pressure thing. I quick looked away again.
Then we picked up our food, and I took a big bite of burger and ate four fries all at once. They were really cold, but I didn’t care. I wanted to get numb. I wanted to eat so much that I couldn’t feel. I didn’t want to feel anything at all. There was nothing good to be felt. Any feelings I had were going to be bad ones.
Now and then I glanced at the kitchen phone, sitting on the wall. But it never made a sound. It never told me anything about Sam.
By about nine o’clock at night, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to know. But I was afraid to call Will’s house. What if his father answered? What if Will was being punished in some horrible way and couldn’t come to the phone?
I’m not big at talking these things out, but I got so twisted up and confused that I actually asked my mom what to do. I could tell by the look on her face that she couldn’t stand not knowing, either.
“I will call Will’s father. That’s more appropriate. Besides, I want to give him a piece of my mind.”
I just died inside. So much for the idea that this day couldn’t get any worse. This is why I never ask advice from a grown-up. In case that doesn’t go without saying.
I sat at the kitchen table, frozen in my misery, while she made the call. Then, worse yet, somebody answered.
I heard her say, “Mr. Manson?”
Then, “Yes, this is Lila Boyd. Ernie’s mother? I just wanted to know if they ever found your son Sam.”
Then, “Oh, they did? That’s just wonderful!”
But the wonderful didn’t last for long.
For the next five minutes or so—which felt like an hour, by the way—a string of little comments from my mom. With long, long silences in between. Long silences. Ugly silences. Horrible silences.
“Oh. Oh, no. … Oh, that’s just terrible. … Oh, I’m
so sorry. … You must feel just terrible. … Why didn’t he … ? Oh, he did. … Oh my. … That does give you an awful lot on your mind, yes. … Well, I don’t know, Mr. Manson. That’s really not for me to say. … Well, I guess that’s up to a judge to decide. … Of course. … I’m so sorry for your loss. … How is Will holding up? … I see. … Well, I’m so sorry, Mr. Manson. We’ll keep your family in our prayers.”
Believe it or not, all through this, I still held out hope. Or denial. Whatever you want to call it. Will said the kid could swim. I kept thinking she’d hang up and say he was in the hospital or something. Something not really so bad as all that.
She hung up the phone and started to cry. The denial broke up like a thin crust of ice when you step on it. Worse yet, when I step on it. My stomach just got heavier and heavier. And it felt like everything was being sucked out of my world. Whatever I used to half-ass survive on. Gone. And the inside of my brain got more and more tingly, like the world was getting farther and farther away.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why didn’t he just swim?”
“He got caught on his own hook. Two of the hooks on his … what do you call it?”
“Treble?”
“Yes. Treble. Two of the hooks went through his jeans. And the line was tangled on some part of the boat. Or pinned under it or something. I guess he wasn’t strong enough to break the line.”
“Why didn’t he just take off his jeans? Come up without them?”
“They think he tried. His jeans were down around his knees when they found him. And he had one boot off. I guess he couldn’t get his jeans off over those big boots. And then I guess he just … ran out of time.”
We both just sat there, for a long time, not saying anything. I had this image in my head of Sam floating in the water, at the end of his own rig. Tethered down to the boat. Right underneath us. The whole time we were putting on our life vests. Putting that red on the stringer. That whole time, the kid was down there. Right underneath us. Running out of time.
“You didn’t exactly give him a piece of your mind,” I said. I was surprised I said it. Surprised I said anything. It wasn’t a complaint. I totally didn’t want her to.
“Well, that’s hardly the time. When he’s just lost his younger boy. Besides, he has much bigger problems than me. He just got out on bail. They arrested him for child endangerment. He might have to go to jail.”
I got busy wondering what Will would do if his only parent went to jail. Where he would live. If he’d have to go back to L.A. If I was about to lose my best friend. While I was doing that, my mom started to cry again.
She didn’t even know Sam. I knew him. Why wasn’t I crying? Even though I hated to cry. Still, maybe I should. Maybe I was being totally the wrong kind of person. Maybe it was really bad not to cry.
“When I think how that could have been you,” she said. Then she hurried over and smothered me in a hug. Crushed me. “You’re all I’ve got, Ernie. I just don’t know what I’d do.” She didn’t let go, either. She just kept me there. Smothered. Crushed. Suffering. I guess hell lasts a long time. An eternity, they say.
I felt almost like my two Big Macs and my mountain of fries were about to make a return appearance. But it was like that day in Mr. Bayliss’s office. It didn’t get bad enough to throw up. But it never really went away, either.
Later that night I went online to check my e-mail. Hoping I had something from Will. I didn’t, though. I really, really wanted to know if he was okay. Well, that’s stupid. Of course he wasn’t okay. I knew that. I guess I mean I needed to know how okay he wasn’t.
I just kept sitting there, staring at the screen, running send-and-receive cycles. Hoping this would be the time. It was almost one in the morning. But I knew I’d never sleep if I went to bed.
All of a sudden I got that jingle that means someone is trying to instant-message me. It made me jump. It was Will.
The message said: welcome to life in the manson family
That’s how Will writes on the Internet. No caps, no punctuation. All lowercase. About a month ago I started doing mine in all uppercase, sort of to make fun of him. I don’t think he caught on to why. It just sort of stuck.
I wrote, OH MY GOD ARE YOU OKAY WHAT DID HE SAY TO YOU
Then I waited. Too long, I thought.
you wont believe it
TRY ME
he said sam was all i had he said sam was all i had since your mother left us i just gave him this look like dad like think what youre saying finally i said what the hell am i
WHAT DID HE SAY
nothing just looked at his shoes
THATS HORRIBLE WILL
thats life in the manson family
I didn’t think he should make a joke about a thing like this. But I didn’t know how to say so.
ARE YOU GONNA BE OKAY
the last thing i said to him was he was an idiot i hit him and called him an idiot last words nice huh
HE KNOWS YOU LOVED HIM
how could he know that i didnt even know i loved him i thought i hated him i did hate him right up until that swell hit
While I was sitting there trying to think of what to say at a moment like that, he typed: promise me you wont tell anyone
WHAT
i said promise you wont tell
NO I MEAN TELL WHAT
that it was my fault
IT WASNT YOUR FAULT WILL
promise you wont tell that i was the one who capsized the boat and we didnt even wonder where he was until longer than it takes for a person to drown
IT WASNT YOUR FAULT IT WAS A FREAK ACCIDENT
promise
YEAH, I typed. I PROMISE
I still couldn’t get to sleep. I kept thinking how horrible that would feel. To be holding your breath, trying to get the hooks out of your jeans. Trying to break the line
. All the time knowing you’re running out of time. And then, when you finally do, what then? You have to breathe. You can’t not breathe any longer. So I guess you give up and breathe water? It just seems like the most awful, horrible way to go.
Sometimes I would almost get to sleep, but I’d have these dreams like the kind you have when you’re half awake. Really vivid stuff. In one I saw Sam’s body floating over the boat, his eyes open. A few last bubbles coming up out of his mouth. And then all of a sudden it was me. I sat up really fast, and Peaches was up on the bed with me, and she jumped. I didn’t want to go back to sleep, but after a while I did. I dreamed I saw the lingcod sneaking up on me from around my bedroom chair. Swimming in the air, coming after me.
After that I sat up and wrote all this down in my journal. It wasn’t even quite three o’clock in the morning when I started. Usually I write in my journal for about a half hour. But now it’s after five-thirty.
I’m not even going to try to get back to sleep.
November 9th
8:00 p.m.
Uncle Max came at ten o’clock this morning. Woke me up. So much for never getting back to sleep. But still, I’d only had two or three hours, and my eyes felt like they had sand in them, and my stomach was a little upset. It has been since yesterday. It still is. I’m beginning to think it always will be.
Peaches woke me, actually. When she heard the sound of his truck. I opened my eyes and she was up on the bed, trying to get a look out the window. Making little noises in her throat—grrrfff—with her tail going like mad. Peaches loves Uncle Max.
I sat up and tried to get my brain working. Then I went downstairs and let him in.
He looked me up and down. “Am I disturbing your beauty sleep?”
“I had a little trouble sleeping last night.”
“Understandable.”
Uncle Max is around sixty-five years old. Twenty years older than my mom. He’s really her half brother, from when their father—my grandfather—was married before. So he’s sort of like a grandfather to me. I call him my uncle, and he is, but he fits in that grandfather space. I got rooked on real grandparents. All four died before I was born.
He still has all his hair, but it’s snow-white, and his beard is white and bristly. He reminds me of the pictures I’ve seen of Ernest Hemingway. He has this special way of talking, like an actor. Very dramatic. I always picture him holding a human skull and talking right to it, like in a Shakespeare play.
Peaches was wiggling all around his feet.
“I heard about what happened with the other boy.”
“Oh. How?”
“Lila called me. So do I need to properly ream you out for going out on a tiny boat in big swells with just another couple of kids? It was pretty damn stupid. Or did Lila cover that sufficiently already?”
“Oh, she gave it to me good, all right.”
“Figures. Lila does like to beat a subject to death.”
“Hey. That’s my mother you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, and she’s my baby sister, too, and I love her to pieces, but does she beat a subject to death or doesn’t she? I ask you.”
I felt a little smile at the corner of my mouth. What a weird feeling. I thought I might never smile again.
“Introduce me to your new friend,” Uncle Max said.
At first I thought he meant Will. But he already met Will. “Huh?”
“The fish, dense boy. The fish.”
“Oh. Right.” Some friend.
We worked together to pull it out of the fridge and take off the plastic wrap.
“Now, that,” Uncle Max said, “is one truly beautiful beast.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, I am not kidding. It’s magnificent. You don’t think so?”
“I think it looks like a monster.”
“Well, it’s fierce. It’s a big, ferocious predator. But ferocity can be beautiful.”
“Hum. Wow. I don’t know.” But I was really trying to look at it his way. I was really trying to see beauty in that fish. But the ugliness of yesterday got in the way. They just stayed all tangled up together in my head.
“Well, I think so, anyway. Get me your fillet knife. I’ll show you how this is done. We may have to put it on newspapers on the floor. I don’t think the counter will be big enough. So hold tight to that dog.” He looked down at Peaches, and so did I. Those little white curls, and those stubby legs. Like a poodle with some dachshund or basset or both. Silly but cute. “Oh, all right, hello, Peaches.” He always says it the same way, kind of grudgingly. And Peaches always falls all over herself with joy. “Why does that dog like me? I never give her the time of day.”
But Uncle Max likes Peaches right back. He just doesn’t like to admit it.
While he was filleting the fish, while I was holding tight to the wiggling dog, he said, “Tell me all about how it felt to catch this beauty.”
All of a sudden it got hard to swallow. And my gut tingled the way it did when I was in trouble. “Well, at first it just felt like I was snared up on the bottom.”
“Uh-huh. I see, I see. Then what?”
“Um, I don’t know. Then I reeled it in.”
“How did you get it into the boat without breaking the line?”
“Oh. Sam had a net.”
“Sam—that’s the boy who died?”
He looked up at me. I never answered. I just looked right into his eyes and thought maybe he knew. Maybe he saw right through me. I didn’t know what else to say about how it felt to catch this fish. How would I know? So I said nothing at all.
“Well, I was hoping for a romping good fish story, and that one sucked, but I understand. It was a rough day and you don’t care to talk about it. Fair enough. Make yourself useful, then. Fire up that deep fryer and cut up some French fries. I’ll make my famous beer batter. Now don’t give me that look. I’m not corrupting you. It’s only a little beer, and the alcohol cooks away anyway. I’m going to make us the biggest, most golden brown mountain of fish-and-chips you ever saw. And I’ll lay you odds we still won’t have polished off half of this beauty.”
While he talked, I was busy looking at the half-filleted fish. Trying to see beauty.
We sat down to lunch, and I took a bite of the fish. Carefully. Like I half expected it to bite me back or something. It was terrific. Hot and crispy outside and really fluffy and moist and fresh inside. Just fell apart in my mouth. I wolfed down two pieces before my mom broke the silence.
“So, Max,” she said, and I could already smell trouble. “Did you have a talk with Ernie about things?”
“Yes. I did. And we’re done with such things. He’s heard enough now.”
“I hope you’re right. After all, he could have been killed. Going out all alone—”
He cut her off in mid-sentence. “He was there, Lila. He knows how dangerous it was. It scared him more than it could ever scare you. You want to keep reaming him out for it so he’ll think twice before doing something like that again. But he’ll never in his life face a dangerous situation without feeling the fear of that day. You don’t have to put the fear of God in him, Lila. God installed it directly. Yesterday. Now it’s time to show him some support. He’s had a trauma. He needs comforting.”
At first she said nothing at all. Just shoveled in a few French fries. Then she said, “I suppose you’re right, Max. As usual.” She sounded hurt.
He reached over and put his hand on top of hers on the table. “I know you’re just trying to protect the boy and take care of him. But take care of his insides, too. Just because he survived doesn’t mean he’s okay.”
She nodded.
“Speaking of which,” he said, turning his attention back to me, “how’s your friend Will doing with his insides?”
“Not good,” I said.
My mother looked up suddenly. “You talked to him? When did you talk to him?”
“Just a little bit on the Internet last night. I think we both had trouble sleeping.”<
br />
Then the table went quiet again. Just when I wanted it not to. I wanted to talk some more about Will, and how he wasn’t okay. But I couldn’t. Because I couldn’t tell anybody what he’d said to let me know he wasn’t okay. I was sworn to secrecy. So I just sat there and said nothing.
I looked at that big platter of fish in the middle of the table. All golden brown and steamy. And I thought, Uncle Max did it again. He taught me to see beauty in that fish. It didn’t look like the devil at all to me now. Now that it was beer-battered and fried to perfection, it looked really magnificent.
I took two more pieces.
Uncle Max helped me get the other half of the fish into the freezer. He cut it into serving-size pieces—big servings, our-house servings—and handed each one to me, and I wrapped them in plastic wrap and put them all in a giant ziplock freezer bag.
“Should I leave you with my recipe for beer batter?”
“Uh, no. No thanks, Uncle Max. It was delicious. But I think with the other half I should … you know … bake it or something.” He didn’t say anything, so I felt like I had to. I just had to spit it out. “I’m trying to lose weight.”
When I looked up, he was looking right into my face. He’ll do that sometimes, just look at you for a long time before he says anything. Like he’s trying to work something out. “Good for you, Ernie. My apologies. If I’d known, I’d have fixed lunch some other way.”
“Oh, no, it’s okay. It was delicious. Besides, you didn’t know.”
“I’m surprised Lila didn’t tell me.”
“Well. That’s because she …” I just kind of ran out of steam and never finished.
“Because she …,” he said, trying to lead me to it.
“Doesn’t know.”
He put down the fish fillet and the knife and turned and looked at me full on. I wanted to sink right through the floor. “Why have you not told your mother? Isn’t that pretty key? She can’t support you if she doesn’t know you need support.”
Diary of a Witness Page 4