“No. No bags. Thank you, though.”
“Suit yerself. But take what you like, mate. They’re all yours.”
I look down. My breath is short. There’s a teeming metropolis of insects down there. It’s worse than An Lu’s garden, but I don’t have Jeffrey here to retrieve the ball. My skin tightens. I feel as though I’m already covered in them. Like they’re crawling all over my body, scratching and slithering. I clasp my hands together and grind my palms.
“There’s a lot of bees,” I say.
Jack Lionel lights a cigarette and shake his head.
“Ah, pay em no mind. They’re next to harmless anyway. Look at em. They’re half pissed. All over the shop.”
“Really?”
“Yair, look at em. Near useless. The fruit’s gone rotten and fermented in the heat. So them bees are lickered up to the eyebrows. They won’t bother you, mate. Nuthin to be worried about.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure as eggs is eggs.”
I stare at the ground. He may be right. They do look sluggish. Dissolute and clumsy. Maybe they really are drunk. Either way, I have no choice. I’ve got to get brave.
I realize too that I’ve been standing here too long. This hasn’t gone the way I’d imagined. This scene lacks the arrogant ease, the casual swagger that I’d hoped for. And I worry that they’re lined up back there, ready to accuse me of being a coward anyway, with an armful of shitty-looking rotten peaches. They’ll wonder why I paused for so long after seeing no signs of danger. Or maybe they’ll suspect me of knowing something they didn’t. Maybe they’ll think Lionel wasn’t even home, and that I knew all along.
I glance up and beyond him, into his dim living room, right up on the wall, and I think I know what to do. I see a way to immortalize this. I seek out his eye.
“Listen, Jack. I need a little favor. How’d you like me to come round and cook you Sunday dinner?”
He lights up.
***
It’s destined to become the stuff of legend, and only Jack Lionel and I will ever know the truth. No doubt the tale will grow taller and fatter with age. The events will grow grander and broader and more daring; the story will go its own way, and with it my name. It’ll harden into common myth. But what no spectator that day will ever know, or anyone who will later lend their ear to an account, is that it requires more courage for me to tentatively bend and snatch up that rotten fruit from amid that sea of bees. My hands tremble. I can barely work my fingers. But I get them, all five of them, into the crook of my arm, hot and soft and mushy, and it feels incredible, like something has clicked into place, like how you feel when you can finally ride a bike or you trust yourself to swim in the deepest part of the river. I hold them against my thrumming chest. I get brave.
And I turn to leave, to stride victoriously back to the gate and the waiting crowd. But suddenly Jack Lionel bursts through his screen door, hollering to high heaven and waving that big empty rifle like the madman they all believe him to be. I can hear the consternation from the group on the road. Erupting in a single chorus. And I can hear Jeffrey Lu above them all, shrill and panicked, telling me to look out. I turn. I drop my peaches. And I run at Jack Lionel, meeting him on the edge of his veranda, swift and sure, and snatch his rifle with one heroic swipe. It’s heavier than I imagined. I throw it aside and I push him in the chest and he grins and winks at me as he staggers back and falls, like I’d shot him in the heart on the set of a Western. It’s good theater. And I stand over him, pointing, gesturing furtively as he crawls back, but all I really say is: Thanks, Jack. I’ll see you on Sunday. And he chuckles and pretends to roll in agony and he farewells me with a single nod.
I gather up the fruit, which now has a pelt of dust, and I hurry down the drive. I try to act tough, breathing heavily with my shoulders squared, as though I’d really just been in a scrap and emerged victorious. Jeffrey Lu meets me halfway. He’d run in as soon as he’d seen Lionel, but stopped dead after he’d seen me smite him with that single shove. He can’t stand still.
“Holy shit! Holy shit! Chuck! Holy shit! You killed him!” His eyes are wild. His voice squeaks.
“I didn’t kill him, dickhead,” I announce calmly. “I just pushed him over. He’ll be okay.”
“Fucking hell, Chuck! He just came right at you! With a fucking gun! That was incredible. Holy shit! Holy shit! You should be dead! I don’t believe it! I do not!”
We walk side by side. And I am met at first with silence and awe. But then they close in. There are exclamations of wonder and shock. Someone independently verifies that I have won the bet, but the story is bigger than that now. I’d been attacked by the man they loved to fear, and they’d seen him in the flesh for the first time. Better yet, they’d seen him just as angry and murderous as they’d been led to believe. They’d had the myth confirmed. It was true. And I’d beat him down. Without a moment of hesitation. I slew the dragon. I was the hero.
The huddle presses closer. Younger kids touch the peaches racked in my arm as though they are round bars of bullion. The rest of them are like a press pack, hounding me for information. What does he look like up close? Does he have a long scar down his face? A tattoo of a skull on his arm?
In truth, it isn’t nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be. I finally have a peach, but my victory feels a little hollow. Still, there is real fulfillment in seeing Warwick Trent hang back with his arms folded. He doesn’t say a single word. I’ve beaten him.
And the peaches do feel good. I’m proud to be clutching them, because I know what it took, and it felt as though a weight had shifted as soon as I had them in my hands. I decide to save one pit just for myself, just one single stone to keep for this whole horrid summer. And maybe one for Eliza. Then I’ll give the rest to Jeffrey.
The crowd presses for a little while longer before my moment is interrupted by a kid on the edge who suddenly points back toward town and says, simply:
“Look.”
We all fall silent and lift our eyes. There is trouble.
A pillar of smoke, dense and dark. A volcano is erupting. It is distant, but not too distant. It looks to be perilously close to the town center. And there is a moment where we all quietly take it in, that single column, climbing and writhing straight up. There isn’t a breath of wind. And we pay it due regard. This is a dark spirit with substance. Everyone in Corrigan knows there is something real here, that this is something to truly be afraid of, that this kind of smoke holds fire at its heart.
I squint and try to work out exactly where it is, wondering what could have gone up so quickly. Then I drop the fruit from my arms and I run.
***
I’ve got a stitch. A jagged piece of iron digging into my side. I try not to picture my muscles tearing away from the bone with every jolt of my feet. I’m hurting, but I keep running anyway, with all the panicked energy of foreboding, close enough now to smell the smoke in the air, close enough to hear the peal of sirens. I hope I’m wrong. Oh God. Oh Jesus Christ, I hope I’m wrong. I’m out of breath, I’m spent, but I will myself further. Past the river, the bridge, the station; through town; past the Miners’ Hall, my worry bubbling closer and closer to the surface. My shirt sticks to my chest, and sweat rolls and drips off my jaw. My breathing is raspy and thin. I can’t go much further.
I jolt heavily down the slope of the oval, and in the distance I see people moving toward the fire; judging by its location, my suspicions are all but confirmed and my legs almost buckle then and there. But I have to press on. Across the grass, onto the street. My steps are messy now, my arms flailing like they’ve got no bones. I can hear voices and commotion. I’m on her street now. The peppermint trees cast their umbrella arms. And it’s chaos. It’s madness. I bolt up the path. I see an ambulance and my throat goes thick. A single fire truck is angled across Eliza’s front lawn. Neighbors spray the street with their garden hoses. A chain of folks are passing tin buckets of water to the scene. Less helpful onlookers are being pushe
d back. And I sprint to meet them, writhing my way to the fore. And there, right in front of me, the Wishart house is crackling furiously from the inside. It’s a single box of flames. Ribbons of red and orange lick at broken windows. But they seem to have it contained. It’s stifling and hard to breathe. I can’t believe it. I am yelled at by a bearded man dressed in khaki, but I stand my ground, scanning the crowd. It’s a wall of heat. I have to squint through the smoke to see. But there she is! There! Fucking hell, oh God, there she is, and I almost collapse because she’s all right. I’m dragged back by somebody who clumps past me toward the blaze. He says something stern over his shoulder, but I don’t hear. Eliza stands with her back straight, alongside her mother, who is weeping into a handkerchief. I watch as Mrs. Wishart darts brief glances up at her house, then crumples, turning her face away. Eliza looks on dispassionately, as though it’s someone else’s home.
And there’s the shire president, lying flat on the lawn, attended by ambulance officers. It’s clear he’s been saved from the house. He has a ventilator mask strapped over his face. I watch as they carefully sit him up. He rests his arms on his knees. There’s a bandage covering his right leg. His hair is askew, he has no shirt on. His belly is like a ball. His skin is grimy and sweaty. Someone asks him something and he shakes his head weakly.
There’s a loud explosion, and the crowd gasps. I hear the shattering of glass. Everyone flinches except Eliza. The volunteers bark instructions and they move more urgently. More people have turned up to lend a hand or observe. Some are poised like matadors with wet blankets should spot fires erupt, praying the wind doesn’t pick up.
My eyes water and I cough into my armpit. It’s getting harder to breathe. The sky is red and peppered with flakes of ash. The antipodean snow dome.
I wipe my eyes with my shirt and look back to Eliza Wishart, trying to catch her gaze. But she just stares on ahead. I can’t place her face. A lady offers her water and some kind words, but she ignores them, shrugging her hand off her shoulder.
And for some reason I’m reminded of Eric Cooke, haggard and angry, at the moment they finally asked him the question. I just wanted to hurt somebody, he replied. But that was never the whole story, was it? Only he could have known that, and he held his secrets tight in his fist, in his chest. And there’s always more to know. Always. The mystery just gets covered in history. Or is it the other way around? It gets wrested and wrapped in some other riddle. And I think of Jenny Likens, who also watched her sister die, who said nothing until the end, who got brave too late. Who must have seethed and stung every single day afterward, whose heart must have been crippled worse than her legs, who must have wanted to scratch and burn that word into her own skin like a tattoo. Sorry. And I don’t doubt she would have wanted to see that horrible house consumed in flames, exorcised and razed, maybe with Gertrude Baniszewski still inside.
The flames are all but tamed in an hour or so. The house is gutted, the roof has collapsed. It’s an empty black shell. The smoke thins and the Corrigan dusk is an otherwordly crimson. It feels as though half the town is here. Eliza hasn’t moved. She stands alone. Her father has been ferried away by the ambulance. Her mother is being consoled by a group of ladies who crowd her tightly and issue tissues and concern.
The people behind me start murmuring about how it might have started. Stove tops, gas leaks, faulty wires, open hearths, cigarettes. Each one skimmed over and considered with a nod. No one casts even a cursory glance at the hardfaced girl standing on her own, staring at the remains of her house without shock or sorrow.
And then somebody says it, like I knew they would. And they talk about the post office, like I knew they would. And of course it’s given more credence than it could possibly deserve. When I hear his name, there’s that lump in my throat again and a tug at my raw chest. It makes me want to break down, it really does.
Because I know the truth. I know the exact moment Jasper Jones left Corrigan behind for good. It was a couple of weeks ago. I was on the street, bowling to Jeffrey, walking back to my mark in the dry heat. And I’m not sure how, but I stopped and looked up and knew at that moment that he’d gone. It was confirmed for me later that night, when I found a bottle of whiskey, a pack of smokes, and a fountain pen on my windowsill. But at that moment, I felt him go. I knew. And I surveyed the silent street, the ordered lawns and shut doors and the sun shimmering white off windscreens, where the only sound was the cacophony of insects. No spotter planes. No searches. Nothing stirred. Jasper Jones fell out of the world and nobody noticed. Nobody cared. And I understood. I knew just what he’d meant that night. And I had to shut my eyes fast before Jeffrey could see.
And they’ll notice now, because something has been burned. Now they’ll look for Jasper Jones. But, like Laura Wishart, they’ll never find him. He’s too smart and too fast for them. He’s too clever and canny.
I turn my back and walk away from them. I cross the grass to Eliza, who swivels upon my approach and crimps her lips into a short sad smile as I place my hand on her shoulder. I’ve finally got the right words in me. And I lean in and whisper them in her ear as flakes of ash settle around us.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Team Silvey is blessed with a wonderful, loyal, and largely unrewarded membership. So, as a shabby recompense, here’s an earnest and loving salute to:
My parents, Rocket and Chris, as generous a partnership as you’re ever likely to encounter. This whole enterprise is simply not possible without their readiness to help.
To Dr. Wendy Were, who, for the smartest lady in the world:
a) assured me it would be a fine idea to purchase a 1978 Morris Minor and
b) is yet to discover I’m a complete charlatan.
Thankfully, she continues to exercise her poor judgment by being constantly, judiciously, and wisely supportive.
To Glyn Parry, who has always contorted himself backwardswise to help my scribbling.
To Brooke, who dresses me down and biggens me up the very best of all.
To Jane Palfreyman for her incredible enthusiasm and conviction, and to all the folks at A&U, whose willingness to get behind this book has been sensational.
To Ali Lavau for her very gentle methods of alerting me to when my writing sucked arse.
To Lou and Zoe at Sleepers, thanks for being awesome.
To the booksellers and librarians who support my books, who never seem to get a Guernsey in these things, thank you very much.
To Benytron Goldfield, the patron saint of hardball, whose assurance and belief have been unwavering and fantastic, who can do all the things that I can’t. Much obliged, sir.
To my rock, my beloved Nancy Sikes, and to all who have plugged into her sockets.
To Adam Caporn, the Keiffy to my Migget. Well done.
To Miss Michela Faith Cleary, Minister in charge of Botanical Accuracy, for her steady support and stubborn belief and for the Carnac candles lit for exhausted authors.
To W. H. Arnden, who finally became a man in a Hungarian shower after a hot Turkish bath, whose love of Fact is exceeded only by his affection for nonsense.
To anyone foolish enough to bite when I asked The Batman Question.
And finally, thank heavens for Betsy, my brother, for the winter of Getting It Done, for swiping his credit cards to a thin nub to get Jasper across the line, and for being a constant and steady presence for the whole of this ridiculous ride.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Acknowledgments
e.
Jasper Jones Page 33