It’s only now that I understand the real gravity of being missing. Of being gone. It’s only now that I get a taste of what absence can invite. The angry, taut knot of not knowing.
For some reason, my mind pulls away and I think of the other side of town. I think of Eliza Wishart not knowing where her sister is, living with that button of panic in her chest. And to think that I have the means to take that away hurts me like nothing else ever has.
And I think of Laura. The heavy ghost. So horribly vivid in my mind. And I think of that single word of apology, of admission and regret, tattooed into that eucalypt where she no longer hangs. Sorry. I look at my mother’s face and all I can think about is Laura and Jasper and their plans to leave this town, to start again in the city, to fill it up and live big together. And I just think it is such a shame. No one deserves to have their dreams end like that. Then I think of Mrs. Lu, and I think of Jeffrey leading her out of the hall just hours ago. And it’s too much. Far too much. This whole horrible alloy of sadness. And everything spills out of me. Like a stutter at first, and then I’m at it like my mother. It all catches up. I crumble and I weep. At the worst of moments, when I’m headlit and center stage, when all of Corrigan is staring at me, I’m blubbing like a girl. And I can’t stop. My mother cradles my head roughly. She smells like wine and perfume and something sour and sweaty I can’t pinpoint. My shoulders are quaking. I’m glad Jasper’s gone. If he were here to see this, I’d die.
The thought of him finally allows me to straighten my back a little. I sniff and get some control. I look over to our veranda, that soft light. I’ve got to be strong enough to hold out against their questions.
My mother grabs my hair and shakes me again, speaking forcefully through her teeth.
“You stupid, stupid boy! Everyone was so afraid. Everyone was so afraid, Charlie. Where did you go? Where have you been? What happened?”
By this time, my father and a fair portion of the neighborhood have surrounded us. I’m so embarrassed. By all of this. All of them talking around me and about me like I’m not even here. Like I’m a child who doesn’t know any better. Their mild admonishments and bullshit concern suddenly just make me angry. It’s like I’m surrounded by clucking parents. I want to kick at their shins and tell them to piss off and run back to my room. They don’t know what I know. The lights behind me have attracted insects. I slap something away from my cheek. Some idiot kneels down and grabs me under the jaw and places his palm on the top of my head. It’s Keith Tostling. He inspects my face, particularly my eyes. Like he’s a bloody physician, which he’s not. I don’t know who he’s fooling, or impressing—everybody knows he shears sheep for a living. I shake him off and take a step back, bumping into the man who had my shoulders. I accidentally stamp on his foot.
“Whoa, easy, sport.”
Finally, my father presses through and puts a hand across my shoulder. He does that thing where he thumbs my cowlick. I’ve never loved him more than now.
The sarge leans toward my father and says they’d like to talk to me now. My father nods.
“Of course.”
We walk into the house. He looks at me strangely. I can’t quite place his expression. Confused and thoughtful, maybe. He doesn’t say a word.
I look over at An Lu, who is returning to his home, his hands behind his back, his chin on his chest. I wonder what he’s thinking. There’s something about his posture that convinces me he’s judging me poorly. I feel so ashamed. I feel like everyone in this town is disappointed in me.
And that’s when I resolve it, with my father’s hand on my back. When Jasper Jones goes, when he leaves town after this mess is over, I’ll be going with him. I’ll be leaving too. Leaving Corrigan behind. For good.
wasn’t killed.
But I was tortured. I was thrown in the hole. They imprisoned me in my room up until this morning. It was supposed to be until after the New Year, but after a brief hearing I’ve been granted parole for good behavior.
It’s the day after Boxing Day and the start of the Country Week Cricket Carnival. Jeffrey has been made twelfth man for the main team, but it’s no sudden admission of his ability: they just need someone to run errands without complaint. In the same way, the seniors team always give a jersey to Neville Schank, a cricket tragic who has Down syndrome and performs menial tasks with pride and enthusiasm. Not unlike Neville, Jeffrey is the embodiment of excitement. He’s been round twice this morning, his whites starched stiff, begging me to try to make it down to the oval. Both times I had to remind him I was grounded. But to my surprise, my parents have relented and they’ve let me out early. My purgatory has ended. I can stand in the sun. It’s been a long couple of weeks.
That night, after we came inside, I was expecting to be thrashed to death. Instead, our living room was full of tense, cautious concern. The house smelled of lamb fat and cold gravy. I still felt sickly and drunk, but sober enough to act straight. The police stayed: two locals and one from the city who wore a gray suit and a hustler’s hat. My mother perched on the edge of our couch. Turned out she’d arrived home and noticed my lamp was still on. After knocking on my door to no response, she’d burst in to find my room empty, my louvre plates stacked beneath my bedsheet. Then she panicked.
My father stood in the kitchen doorway and looked on as they asked me questions. They asked me if I’d been with Jasper Jones.
I was terrified, but something kicked in me. I discovered a gift for lies. I looked straight at them and offered up the best story I could muster. It was like I’d clicked opened my suitcase and started spinning a thread at my desk. Weaving between the factual and the fictional. It was factitious. And Jeffrey was right, it was all in the delivery. I had them. I’d reeled them in. They all nodded like it was truth, writing it down on a yellow pad.
I started talking about Eliza Wishart.
Blushing, I told them I was very fond of her. I told them that I hadn’t been able to sleep that night. I was beset by thoughts of her, worried and alone. I told them I kept thinking of her lying awake too, wondering where her sister was, whether she was all right. I couldn’t bear it any longer. I told them that all I wanted was to comfort her, because I knew she was upset. So I snuck out with the intent of going to her house, just to talk to her, just to see if she was okay. To my surprise, they nodded, taking it in. Growing confident, I furthered my lie by saying that I’d been to see her before, on the day I’d said I was at the library, but I’d been too embarrassed to admit it at the time. I figured my saying so might give credence to this lie should they investigate it, given that Eliza’s mother had seen me with her that day.
I also told them that I had failed to make it out there tonight. As soon as I’d noticed the patrol vehicles, I stopped and hid from them in a nearby front yard. I didn’t want to get into any trouble, so I slowly made my way back home the long way, hoping to slip back in without being caught. At no point had I thought the patrol cars had been for me. Which was true.
I was relieved to look up and see that everyone had swallowed the whole thing. Jasper Jones was in the clear. Laura Wishart was still lost. The city cop clapped his yellow pad shut. They nodded to themselves.
Then Sarge leaned in and spoke to me the same way he would talk to Neville Schank. Slow and officious and patronizing, which I was more than happy to absorb, considering. He told me I was a very lucky boy. That Corrigan wasn’t as safe as it used to be. I couldn’t just wander about at night on my own. The streets were dangerous. He said that although my intent may have been admirable, it was still wrong and foolhardy to set out on my own. That I should have used the telephone, or visited during the day with my parents’ permission. He winked and reminded me that Romeo and Juliet didn’t have a happy ending. But if either one of them had exercised some common sense and clear thinking, they might have come out all right.
The sarge might be a philistine, and his advice might have been hackneyed and pointless, but there was something comforting in his expansive frame an
d his certain tone. And glancing across at my mother, who looked like a snake poised to strike, I almost wished he wouldn’t leave.
Hoisting himself up, he smiled and ruffled my hair.
“He’s a good kid,” he told my parents, winking at me again, as though he were only ever here to give an appraisal of my character. Then he nodded once and collected his hat.
I remember thinking that if I hadn’t seen the cuts and bruises on Jasper’s face for myself, I wouldn’t have thought for a second that this burly paternal copper was capable of locking up an innocent boy without charge and beating him. If Jasper Jones hadn’t shown me the cigarette burns on his shoulders just hours before, if I hadn’t touched their ugly pink pucker with my fingertips, I wouldn’t have suspected this man to be the monster he was. My top lip wouldn’t have curled up at the edge as he turned his back and showed himself out.
And he’d never imagine I was partly responsible for quietly dropping Laura Wishart’s body to the bottom of a still pond. He would never narrow his eyes and suspect me of being a loyal friend and ally to Jasper Jones, the poor bastard who had been victim to such assumptions his whole life.
After they left, the room felt empty and hot. I sat with my head bowed. I tented my fingers and waited.
Then it began.
First, my mother rose and pointed and told me I was grounded until well into the New Year. I wasn’t to be out of her sight for a second. This time, I didn’t answer back. I didn’t complain. Her voice was quietly charged.
It started civil, and then suddenly erupted. The strange thing was, I was virtually absent from the fight. My mother was furious, but not at me. She began screaming at my father, worse than ever. She gestured wildly, crying, throwing things. I sat stunned. She called him a poor parent, a useless husband. She accused him of not caring for either me or her, not for anyone other than himself. Said he locked himself in the baby’s room night after night, and couldn’t give a shit about how she or I felt. She said he was so distant and self-involved that his own son could walk out in the middle of the night and he didn’t even know. She asked him what sort of man he thought he was. She asked him what he thought it was like for me to grow up with a father who had no love for his family. She held her arms toward me like I was an art exhibit and said it was little wonder I was so insolent and disobedient, that I was probably just vying for his attention.
I sat there, frowning. Part of her may well have apportioned my father some blame for not hearing me sneak out, but it really looked like it was just an opportunity for her to be vindictive, to get some shots away. I was shocked by the injustice, bewildered by the scene. I felt horribly guilty and so sorry for my dad, knowing that I had brought all this upon him. It was really all my fault. I wanted to intervene, to yell and tell her she was wrong, but a sly part of me was relieved that it wasn’t my arse being gored.
My father looked nonplussed anyway. He just stood stolidly in the doorway, leaning on the doorframe. He volleyed nothing back and took it all in. He looked at her in that same faintly curious and disappointed way, the same expression he’d greeted me with outside.
Still, I wanted him to hook in. I wanted him to step up with a fierce piercing gaze. I wanted him to state his case. Firmly and fairly. Tell her that she didn’t know what she was talking about. I wanted him to take umbrage with her questioning of his heart and his loyalty. But he didn’t. He absorbed it all. And she got away with saying all those awful things. And again I was left to wonder whether he would ever stand up for what he believed to be right.
Toward the end, she was hysterical, my mother. Out of control. She began blaming Corrigan for everything. It was harming her family. It wasn’t safe anymore. She said we needed to get out, start somewhere else. Then it clicked for me. I knew what she was doing.
And maybe my father did too. Finally, he pushed off the doorway and stood straight. He was so calm.
“Ruth, there are things in this world that you don’t think I know, but I do. For now, I think it’s time you went to bed. You too, Charlie.”
“Don’t start telling him what to do now! Me either!”
My father just sighed and closed his eyes. He looked down at me.
“You shouldn’t have heard all this, Charlie. However, you and I will talk later. I’m very angry at you.”
“Oh, you’ll talk later!” My mother swayed unsteadily on her feet. I wondered if she’d as much to drink as I had. “You’ll talk behind my back and you’ll blame all this on me! I know the things you tell him!”
Then she screamed in frustration. The final word. And she stormed into their bedroom and slammed the door shut.
“Go to bed,” my father said simply.
I nodded and left. He just looked sad and tired. I sighed. Everything had gone to shit.
***
It was a strange couple of weeks in purgatory. I scoured the papers looking for news about Laura, but the columns just got slimmer and shorter and then disappeared. Still, there were horrible things to catch my eye. I followed the Baniszewski case closely. I read about a hideous couple in England who were caught and charged with slaughtering children and burying them in the Yorkshire moors. They even took photographs of their crimes. I read about how this and how that, but still I could never find why. Why any of it had to happen, why these people did what they did. But the newspapers seemed to shrug back at me, content to assert that some people are just born depraved.
Just as every kid was being let outside again, I barely left the house, only to do chores in the backyard. I read a bunch of books, though. They couldn’t bar me from visiting those worlds. My favorite was One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I thought it was beautiful. I read it twice. I really liked McMurphy. He reminded me of Jasper Jones. It made me miss his company.
Of course, I missed Eliza the most. I often daydreamed of waiting for her outside the bookstore. A chance meeting, so I might see her and smell her, ask how she was doing, talk to her about books and art.
My father got a bunch of new novels when we went to the city over Christmas. I sifted through them, took a few back to my room. He didn’t stop me. He didn’t ask me about them afterward either. There was a new Truman Capote book in the pile. I tried to read it, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it. Every time I opened it, I felt as though insects were crawling over my scalp and down my neck.
Mostly, I spent the time writing. Almost obsessively. Every day and every night. It’s the thing that gave me company. Along with reading, it’s what got me out of the house without them being able to stop me at the door.
Though it only seemed to work when I was doing it. A little like squeezing a sponge in a bucket of water. As soon as you released your grip, it filled right back up again.
Sometimes, once I’d sat my pen down, exhausted, I’d close my eyes and be in my softly lit Manhattan ballroom, Eliza’s arm linked to mine, an outrageously large engagement ring adorning her gloved finger. We’d navigate our way across the floor, nodding at random well-wishers and the venerable handwaves of the press, with their importunate requests for exclusive photographs politely declined. We’d pause behind a group of suited men, overhearing their conversation. Eliza would smile bashfully because they’d be talking about my latest novel. A broad-shouldered man with his back to me, lauding my work. I’d blush and attempt to move away, but the bearded man would wheel round with his eyebrows high. And it’d be Ernest Hemingway. We’d be the same height, we’d have the same-colored eyes, and he’d incline his head respectfully.
“Papa,” I’d say, and smile. He’d clap his hands on my shoulders, run his thumb over my cowlick, and tell me how proud he was.
***
My new flip-flops are cutting into my toes, but I don’t care. I’m too happy to have somewhere to wear them. And it feels good to have finally abandoned my pansy sandals. I’ve got my face out the window of our car like a dog, sucking in hot air and liberty. I’ve got my new plaid shirt on. I feel clean and fresh and new. Filled with the thrill of
being outside.
I look to my right. My father drives with an arm out the window, humming. He and I never really discussed the night I was caught out, but his manner toward me has changed. I don’t know. He’s a little harder, maybe; a little distant, a little less forgiving. Something has shifted away. I wonder if he’s still angry at me. But then I wonder if he’s thinking I might have shifted away and he’s letting me go without pulling me back. I wonder, then, if this is what it is to be treated as an adult.
He drops me off. A part of me wishes he’d wink and thumb my cowlick, but he doesn’t. I peel away and give a short wave. The game has already started. Cars cluster round the oval like a necklace of unpolished gems. There must be over a hundred people watching.
I walk down the slow slope to the oval and suddenly stop. I can scarcely believe it. Is it? I squint. It is. It’s Jeffrey. He’s on the field. He’s right on the boundary, but he’s actually in play. He really is.
I move quickly. My knees jolt as I jog. I see the players break for the end of the over, and Jeffrey starts a straight line to the far end of the oval. They’ve got him running the whole length of the field. As he sets off, he sees me and flashes a grin. He waves me to the other side. He runs with his chin up and his back straight, clapping encouragement as he skips through the middle. He’s bouncing up and down when I catch up to him. My heart is high.
“Chuck, you’re not going to believe it!” He points at me with both hands, two dueling pistols.
Then he turns suddenly and walks in, stern and focused, as the ball is bowled. It slides through to the keeper. He turns back, animated once more.
“Here’s one: who’s got two thumbs and is officially playing in this game?”
“What?”
Jeffrey grins and thrusts his thumbs back towards his little chest and says:
“This guy!”
“No!”
“Yes! It’s unbelievable, Chuck! I’m in!”
“In? How?”
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