“Again, like Katie.”
He sits silent for a moment and then cocks his head as if to consider something. Then gazing straight ahead, he says, “No, not like Katie Cooper.”
“What do you mean?”
“You talkin’ about the guy who supposedly saw Katie with ol’ Slim Jim by the railroad tracks?”
“Yeah.”
“Never happened.” He shakes his head and gives a dismissive wave of the hand.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about that night she was found. I’m not even sure there ever was an anonymous tip. And even if there was, I don’t believe any-body saw any-thing.”
The day that Katie went missing, the entire town had searched for her. Then, early the next morning, an anonymous tipster had called the Sheriff’s Office to say that they had seen a transient who had come to town a few weeks earlier walking down the railroad tracks with Katie. It was that tip that led the Sheriff to Katie’s body.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because while the whole town was out looking for Katie that night, Moose and I was drinking a six-pack behind the lumberyard and saw that hobo Slim Jim come loafing by ‘bout eleven o’clock. We sat and watched that goofy SOB walk through the Halpern’s backdoor and come right back out about five minutes later with a jar of peanut butter, a spoon, and a gallon of milk.”
Sticking my fingers in my ears to clear out the wax would be cliché, but that’s what I feel like doing.
“Are you telling me that Slim Jim was innocent of murder because he was guilty of stealing?”
“Kind of funny when you say it like that—ironic like.”
He laughs and takes a swig of beer before continuing.
“Gaines, you gotta ask yourself … does that sound like the behavior of a man who had killed a little girl? Even Slim Jim—dumbass that he was—would have known enough to get the hell out of Dodge. Instead he goes for a midnight snack?”
Behind Charlie, Old Man Keller orders another Jack Daniels and Coke then pays us a greeting.
“Hey boys, how ya doin’ this evening?”
“Fine, thanks. Yourself?” I ask.
“Can’t complain. Another day above ground.”
Stan places the Jack and Coke in front of him and Keller snatches it up in greedy little grass-stained hands. He turns back toward his table and lifts his glass in a toast.
“You boys be good now.”
With the Old Man back at his table, I shift my attention back to Charlie
“Why didn’t the Halperns ever report anything?”
“Report what? A missing gallon of milk? They probably never even noticed. Slim Jim walked into a dark house and walked out of a dark house.”
The door front slams shut behind me as unknown patron number one leaves the bar. I peek over at Keller who is coddling his drink and chomping on ice. The Old Man smiles and nods.
“Why didn’t you and Moose tell Sheriff Buck?”
“Now, that’s a fair question. I actually thought about it. I did,” he says with a rehearsed nod. “But Moose talked me out of it. We would have caught ourselves some serious licks for sneaking out and drinking like that. Hell, we were only, what, thirteen? Plus Moose said that Slim Jim still could have done it and we’d be risking our necks for some psychopath who we already knew for sure was at least one kind of criminal.”
I imagine the entire scene in my head, trying to make sense of it. I can see Moose and Charlie leaning up against that old lumberyard shed, drinking Old Milwaukee or Pabst Blue Ribbon or whatever they could get their underage hands on. Along comes Slim Jim, walking under the moonlight in his torn pants and blue-jean jacket.
“Why wouldn’t you guys have called him over when you saw him? He was your buddy, you hung out with him earlier that very day, didn’t you?”
“Well, for one we figured he would have wanted some of our beer. For two, playing with Ol’ Creepy in the park in broad daylight is one thing. Hidden behind that barn at night is something different altogether. Especially that night.”
So Charlie and Moose had watched everything. Everything that happened that night and the days that followed. And they knew.
“I know I should have said something. Even knew it then. But it was easier not to. And with every day that passed, it got easier. An easy decision to make, a hard secret to keep. Know what I mean? Like something heavy was hung on me that night and I’ve walked with it ever since. Shit, you realize that up until this very moment Moose and I were the only two who had ever known that secret? And for the past seven years it’s been mine alone.”
He drained his beer.
“Hell, I feel a little bit lighter already.”
“I don’t know, man. It doesn’t add up. Why would someone lie about seeing Slim Jim that day? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know, Gaines. I guess you gotta ask yourself what motivates a man to say something he know ain’t true. No reward. No glory really. What was in it for him?”
He motions for Stan to bring another round of drinks over.
“And let me throw one other thing at ya there, Gaines. You know that Slim Jim is RIPing out in the Willow Grove cemetery, right?”
“No, I didn’t know that, but so what?”
“So, he died in prison. He didn’t have any friends or family to claim his body—not here in Willow Grove anyway. The only way he gets a plot and a tombstone in Willow Grove is if somebody pays to bring his body back here and pay for the burial. Would take a person feeling a whole lot of sympathy to do something like that.”
“Or someone feeling a whole lot of guilt.”
“Exactly.”
Stan sets down two more beers in front of us.
“On the tab, Stan,” Charlie says as he rises from his bar stool. “I’ve gotta hit the head. Maybe you’ll have the mystery solved by the time I get back, Sherlock.”
For the two hours that followed, Charlie and I made like we were best friends once again. After all the talk of Katie and Slim Jim, we returned to the comforts of remember when and whatever happened to so and so. We laughed and slapped each other on the shoulders, but Katie Cooper was walking around in the back of my mind the entire time.
As I walk home in my drunken stupor, I feel heavy. Heavier than the alcohol. Heavy like that secret that Charlie had hung around my neck. If Slim Jim didn’t kill Katie, who did? And what would have led someone to pay for his burial if not the gnawing guilt of a killer’s conscious?
Still echoing through some back corner of my mind was another question. The question that Swinging Girl had asked me that very first day in the park.
What are you doing here?
I was starting to think the answer to that question was much different than I had originally thought. Like this trip wasn’t about Ethan at all. Like it was about Katie Cooper.
I’m on my way to moving on, but the moving on comes slow
And I can’t get past the gettin' past cause the gettin' past won’t go
I’m just walking down this old dirt path that keeps on circlin’ round
And when I take two steps forward only one foot hits the ground.
One foot walks with Satan and one walks with the Son
And I’m right there in between holding hands with either one
One may walk on fire and flame or one may walk on cloud
But wherever I may be walkin’ it’s with one foot on the ground.
I’ve got a heart that flies with angels and a soul that bears the load
Of a mind that keeps me human, keeps me reaping what I have sowed
I’ve got an angel-scar on my left leg and he steps in silent sound
But wherever he may take me, I keep that right foot on the ground.
One foot walks with sinners and one foot walks with saints
And while one foot walks the skies above, one’s tied down with chains
My angel-scar he guides me, keeps me moving Heaven-bound
But
his wings will never lift me while this right foot’s on the ground.
When Mom and Dad got married, Grandpa and Grandma gave them this house as a wedding gift. They had raised their children in this home and now their children’s children would be raised here as well. When my parents divorced eleven years later, Grandpa and Grandma bought it back from them. This was The House of Gaines, after all. In the years that I had lived here, nothing new had gone up and nothing old had come down. It was a place and time frozen in state, perfectly preserved like some ice-age victim woolly mammoth. There wasn’t a stone I hadn’t kicked or a tree I hadn’t climbed. I knew every house on every street and every person in every house.
And then Katie Cooper came along and I—like some overbearing island tour guide—took it upon myself to show Katie the ins and outs of the town. I walked her downtown to the United Methodist Church and let her know that the Sunday service started at nine a.m. I told her how the Corwin’s was the place to go when you were hungry and your mom wouldn’t give you a snack because Mrs. Corwin always offered visitors apple pie or almond cookies or buns fresh from the oven and still warm. I showed her every hidden path and every shortcut and warned her about the unfriendly people like Lyle Weber and Abigail Simpson, who would holler at you if they caught you cutting through their yard.
On the last day of our tour, I took her to the train tracks where I made a big production out of digging around in my pockets for change. Truth was, I had exactly two coins in my pocket—each a shiny new copper penny.
“Here you go,” I said holding it out. “A brand new penny. See, it says 1981 right on it. Mine does, too.”
“Neat,” she said. “What are we going to do with them?”
“You’ll see.”
I bent down and pressed my ear against the cold rail and Katie did the same.
“Hear that?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“A train.”
We hopped up, laid our pennies on the tracks, and waited for the big yellow dragon to thunder through with its fire of roars and whistles. When it did, it left two squashed and warm keepsakes in its wake. I handed one to her.
“Here, don’t lose it.”
“What do we do with them?” she asked.
“Nothing. You just keep them.”
“Oh, you mean like a souvenir?
“Yeah, like a souvenir. Or a friendship thing.”
“Cool! I’ll keep it forever.”
“Put it somewhere safe.”
“Come on,” she said. “I should probably go home.”
The tour had ended. There was nothing else that I could offer Katie Cooper. I’d shown her everything I knew.
When I got home that evening, I put that penny in my Treasure Box (an old shoebox I kept hidden under my bed) along with some other of my most prized possessions: a wristwatch with my name inscribed on the face of it, postcards from traveling friends and family, a Buffalo Nickel, and few other odds and ends.
I found out later that Katie ended up losing her penny. I had always meant to get her another one, but never got the chance.
A few days later it was Katie who was revealing secrets of this town to me.
“Come on, I want to show you something.”
She tugged me along, though I was anything but reluctant. Katie led me to the train tracks and we walked them west out of town.
She wore a large, wide-brimmed garden hat that I had not seen before and it made her seem older. The hat should have looked ridiculous on her and it probably did to any other beholder, but not to me. To me, it glimpsed the future and I imagined how nice it would be to someday walk by her side with my own silly hat. For whatever reason, the hat was a sombrero and I daydreamed of a mustachioed future-me walking hand-in-hand with Katie on my right and my donkey on my left. I giggled.
“What’s so funny?”
I glanced at her hat and quickly looked away.
“Are you laughing at my hat?” she said aghast, pulling the sides down over her ears. The only way she could have looked cuter in that moment was if she were holding a wet puppy.
“What? No! I was just … I was just remembering something funny, that’s all.”
“Don’t you lie to me, Tucker Gaines, you were laughing at my hat and I know it. You think I look silly.”
I felt my face flush and I knew that with Katie there would never be a secret I could keep or a lie I could tell.
“No, Katie, you don’t look silly. It’s just one more kind of way you look pretty.”
It was very ‘aw-shucks’ and I surprised myself by saying it.
She stopped in her tracks and turned to me. Her eyes were wider and greener than I had ever seen them and she had a look of all smiles and all tears. She kissed me on the cheek and suddenly I felt all smiles and all tears myself, which confused me.
“Katie, I’m going to marry you some day.”
I said it because I didn’t know what else to say in that moment. I also said it because I meant it. More earnest words I would never speak.
She did not respond, but there was something like bliss to the look she gave me. She sniffed, lowered her head, and wiped her nose on a rolled-up sleeve. Then she grabbed my hand.
“Come on. We’re almost there.”
She led me back through a dense thicket of bushes and shrubs that didn’t scratch or scrape as we passed through. Like background music, summer made its sounds for us. Tweets and chirps from above, whistles and croaks from around.
Once through the undergrowth, we stopped and she handed me her hat. I followed her through waist-high grass and then she stopped, turned and faced me.
“Close your eyes.”
She squeezed my hand and a tingle shivered through the whole of me. I decided that I could probably give up sight forever if this was the trade-off.
“Almost there. No peeking.”
We stepped forward and dewy leaves brushed my face. I passed from light to shade, from hot to temperate.
“Ta-da!” she said with a wave of her wrist. “Open your eyes.”
And when I did, what I saw was so beautiful it actually frightened me—because what I was seeing was so unfamiliar to me and so improbable to Willow Grove that I seriously questioned whether it was heaven.
I thought back on my day, but couldn’t remember dying.
What was this place and how could I not know of it? This was my town. It was so picturesque that if I had seen an apple and a serpent you could have convinced me we had stepped into the Garden of Eden. There was a small pond with dark waters that reflected the splendors of nature that surrounded it. Plants and flowers I did not recognize. Colors I did not even seen before. Sounds that must have been music. Music that danced across me until it seeped through my skin and was soaked up by my insides.
“Where are we? How did you find this place? When—I mean, when did you even have time?”
We had been together almost every day since Katie had moved to town two weeks prior and already I had fallen deep within the spell of her charm. I was spending more and more time with Katie, less and less with Charlie. We took long walks and had longer conversations where we told each other all of our most favorite things and then all of our least. I told her what pests my brother and sister were and she told me how she wished she had brothers and sisters. That it was better to be pestered than lonely.
Sometimes we would entertain each other with lies and stories, spoken in foreign accent and whispered with dramatic flair. We conversed under tented-blankets, high in trees, lying in the grass amongst a field of dandelions. We shared secrets, made promises, and laughed at the silliness of boys and girls. And now this. This Garden of Willow Grove.
We stole away to this secret place every chance we could. To splash in the pond. To be still in the grasses. To be together. Katie was sweet and kind and good. Good like the fishes of the seas and the birds of the sky. Good like Eve before the apple.
Katie Cooper was the greatest good I ever knew.
The same
summer that Katie Cooper came to Willow Grove, a tall thin transient we came to know as Slim Jim also drifted into town. The first time I saw Slim Jim, he was playing with Jeff and Mary Jo Welp. I thought he must be a visiting uncle or something, because I had never seen him before. Mary Jo was on top of Slim Jim’s shoulders and Jeff was chasing them around the yard. He caught them and they all tumbled and rolled around on the ground together in laughter.
A couple days later, Katie and I were playing outside when Slim Jim again showed up at the Welp’s. This time, there were three or four other kids from the neighborhood, including Charlie
Katie and I watched from the other side of the street as Slim Jim and the other neighborhood kids played tag. Slim Jim seemed to be the main target to be “it,” and he was an easy target, as he did not run fast. Not because he was slow, but because he wanted to be caught.
After Charlie tagged him, Slim Jim chased after Mary Jo who flopped and giggled when Slim Jim wrapped his arms around her from behind and tackled her to the ground.
“I’ve got you now,” he roared as they fell together.
And all the kids jumped on top, pushing and pulling at Slim Jim to free Mary Jo from his grasp.
When the laughter subsided, Slim Jim looked over at Katie and me. His eyes darted back and forth between us, but finally settled on me and he asked me my name.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Tucker!” my friends all shouted.
Standing up, he brushed himself off and finger-combed the top of his head, fixing the left-to-right part in his hair. There was a hole in his jeans at his left knee and his grimy white t-shirt was half-tucked, half-untucked. He must have been six-foot-two, but was thin and not physically intimidating. His eyes seemed unnaturally wide open, the right one more so than the left, and his lips were parted in a perpetual smile. He had a neighborly quality about him. Almost Mr. Rogers neighborly. He stuck out his hand in a gentlemanly way and introduced himself.
“Tucker, I’m Jim. Your friends here have taken to calling me Slim Jim on account of how I’m so skinny, I s’pose. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
He offered a hand and I took it.
Where the Broken Lie Page 5