Living with the hawk

by Robert Currie

  Out of bed, into my jeans and t-shirt, downstairs to the kitchen.

  I pulled the Edwards can from the freezer where my mother stored it to keep the coffee fresh. Measured out enough for four cups, filled the perc with water to the proper level, plugged it in and got it going. Then back to the freezer for the bagels, three of them. Tried to slice one in half, but it was like sawing wood with a breadknife. I put them in the microwave to thaw. Fifty seconds on high, and they were so hot I had to juggle them getting them back to the cutting board, but I could cut them now, slicing them like bread. It felt good to be doing something. Then a coating of tomato sauce, slices of cheese spread on the sauce, some pieces of Ready Crisp Bacon on top of the cheese. Laid the six halves on a pan. Cranked up the oven, left its door cocked open and ready, set the dishes on the table. As soon as I heard footsteps on the porch, I’d slide the pan into the oven.

  “That was good,” my father said when we had finished eating, but his voice was lifeless. During the meal, they’d mainly talked about Mrs. Elmitt, how worked up she was at church, telling everyone about her husband’s heart attack, getting more worked up with every telling. My father didn’t usually visit at the hospital on Sunday afternoons, but he thought today he’d better go.

  “Nice to come home,” said my mother when she had swallowed her last bite of bagel, “and have the meal ready for the table.” She swept her serviette across her lower lip, wiped away a daub of sauce.

  “It’s a bloody shame,” my father added, “that Blake couldn’t be here to share it with us.”

  “Yes,” said my mother, a catch in her voice, “yes, it is.” Now her serviette was rubbing at her eyes.

  There was no sound in the room except for the scritch, scritch of paper grazing skin.

  “We can’t go on like this, you know,” my father said. He glared across the table at me. “Your brother’s sitting in that bloody jail, all kinds of accusations levelled at him. He’s worried out of his head, and we’re bellied up to the table, going on about how good your pizza-bagels are.” His eyes were red, but they looked as if they had sunk an inch into his head. “You need to get down there and see him. He wants to talk to you.”

  I went into the police station with Wanda McKinnel. I was nervous about seeing my brother, didn’t know what I’d say.

  Mr. Hammond and my father were certain we had the right lawyer to handle my brother’s case. Ms. McKinnel was what my father called her. I don’t know if that meant she wasn’t married or she didn’t want people to know her marital status. She was a reader, Mr. Hammond said, in a book club with his wife. Generous too. Every summer she sponsored a writer at the local authors’ festival.

  I wondered if Ms. McKinnel would take me down to the cells, wondered if they’d be bare cement and bars, shadows and darkness, a single light bulb hanging in a hall between the cells, but as soon as she finished talking to the officer in charge she led me into a medium-sized room and motioned to a chair. She said she’d met with Blake before, “a cursory meeting” was how she put it. There were other chairs and a table in the middle of the room, three filing cabinets against one wall. I looked around for one-way glass like on TV, but all I saw was a pane of frosted glass on the door. The outer wall had three large windows, but they weren’t even barred. A narrow band of wallpaper ran around the room just below the windows, hunting scenes with Irish setters on it. Irish setters, for Pete’s sake. There was a large SGI calendar above the filing cabinets and on the other wall, above a metal radiator, a pale rectangle where a picture must have hung at some time in the past. Had a prisoner grabbed it off the wall and used it as a weapon, smashed someone over the head with it, maybe even cut his wrists with broken glass? No, I was being silly; this was just an ordinary meeting room, probably the very place where the mayor sat down for long and boring discussions with members of the police commission. Still, except for that calendar, there were no pictures anywhere. It had to make me wonder.

  When my brother came into the room, the first things I saw were the handcuffs, his wrists bound in front of him. An officer pushed the door closed behind him. Blake was wearing a sweat shirt and blue jeans, exactly what he’d wear at home, but his jeans were hanging low at the waist. He was walking awkwardly, shambling along, and for an instant I thought he must be wearing leg-irons, but when I looked at his feet, I saw his shoes flopping on his feet, their laces removed. Then I noticed that his belt was gone. I still didn’t catch on for a while, but when I did, I got a queasy feeling.

  Blake circled the table and sat down in a chair across from us, immediately shoved his hands beneath the table, pushing the cuffs out of sight. Never once looked at me.

  “Something awful’s going on,” he said to Ms. McKinnel. “The other guys — I can hear them in their cells — they’re all saying I’m a rat. They won’t even talk to me.” His eyes flicked in my direction, but returned at once to her. “They’re trying to put all the blame on me.” His words were low and rushed. “Not for turning them in. For killing Anna.” He paused, took a deep breath. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “If you’re not involved,” said Ms. McKinnel, “I’d say there’s a good chance everything’s going to work out just fine. It may take a while, that’s all.” She sounded confident, I thought, and also somewhat pompous. “I had a talk with the police chief after your father came to see me. I’m afraid you’re right about one thing. The other boys are trying to lay the blame on you, but you mustn’t worry. The police have seized the Foster car.” She paused, staring at him, as if searching for some kind of reaction. “The chief said he’s got some doubts about their story. Nothing he’s heard so far has him convinced.”

  Blake leaned forward, his lower lip trembling as he spoke. “What are they saying?”

  “The Foster boy claims he had a date with Anna Big — ”

  “That could be true. I saw the two of them together — driving in his father’s car.” Blake was nodding his head. “Toyota,” he added, “a silver Camry.”

  “You may be right,” said Ms. McKinnel. She studied him a moment, gazing steadily into his eyes, looking, I suppose, for some sign of guilt. “Young Foster claims you drove up behind them.”

  “No way!”

  Ms. McKinnel held up her hand to silence him, continued speaking. “They were necking, and suddenly their car was blocked in — you flung the door open, dragged him out, started beating her.”

  Blake was shaking his head all the while she spoke, nervously, I thought, hopelessly, but then his expression changed, becoming merely thoughtful. “The bastards,” he said, “that must be how it was.”

  Ms. McKinnel looked as puzzled as I felt. “You mean they’re telling the truth.”

  “Of course not.” He seemed disgusted. “You think I could beat up Vaughn Foster? He’s all muscles.”

  “He said he was too drunk to stop you. You hauled him out of the car, hit him in the stomach and he started to vomit — that’s all he remembers. He says he must’ve passed out.”

  “The lying bastard!” He glanced down at the table. “Sorry, but this is really getting to me.”

  “None of it’s true?”

  “I wasn’t there.” He sat back in his chair, and turned to me, gazed right at me for the first time since he’d come into the room. “You know I could never handle Foster.”

  I shrugged.

  “Jesus Christ, you want me in jail?” He turned at once to Ms. McKinnel. “Pardon my tongue,” he said, “but my brother — ” he glared at me “ — I don’t know what’s with you anymore.”

  “That’s right. Your father wanted the two of you to talk.” She looked from him to me, and back again. Stood up abruptly. “Perhaps, a few minutes alone together would be useful. I’ll be just down the hall.”

  Neither of us moved until the door had clicked shut behind her. I was watching the closed door when Blake spoke. “You still think I had something to do with it, that I helped kill her. That’s what’s going on, isn’t it?”

&nb
sp; I shrugged again.

  “You shrug like that one more time, I’m gonna rip your head off.” He paused, waited at least twenty seconds, leaned toward me. “I asked you a question.”

  “I . . . don’t know . . . what to think.”

  “You really think I could do something like that?”

  “Maybe . . . I don’t know. I saw you piss on — ”

  “Okay, I lied, yeah, I did that. But I was drunk, I didn’t know her, she was just — ”

  “Amber, she was Amber Saunders. She didn’t deserve that kind of — ”

  “You think I don’t know that?” He’d been leaning toward me, his eyes full of anger, but now he slumped backward, seemed to cringe into his chair. His eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Lord, I’m so ashamed of that. It’s why I lied to you. Seems like weeks now, I haven’t been able to look you in the face. Knowing that you knew. That you might tell Mom and Dad. Hell, I’ve hardly looked anybody in the face.”

  I was furious with him. “I’d never tell them that.” It was true, I realized, and suddenly I knew why. “My God, it would destroy them. I wouldn’t believe you could do such a thing. Except I saw you do it.”

  His words were barely audible. “And I am so sorry.” His eyes were wet with tears, and mine must have been wet too. He was a blur across the table. Still, I could see that he had more to say. His voice was firmer when he spoke again. “You wouldn’t tell Mom and Dad, but you told the police.”

  He wasn’t being fair.

  “Not about Amber. About Anna. She was dead, and someone had to pay. I saw where she fell; I saw the piss in the snow.”

  My brother flinched. But then he reached toward me, both hands flying up from underneath the table. The cuff on one hand clanked against the table top as he grabbed my hand, and I suddenly felt sick inside. “I liked Anna!” he said. “I wouldn’t — I’d never do a thing like that again. No matter how drunk I was.” He held my hand so tight I thought he might break it. “And I wasn’t drunk. The whole night I never had a single beer.” He saw that he hadn’t swayed me yet, he’d have to put it into words. “I’d never piss on Anna. You can’t believe I’m that kind of scum.”

  There was so much intensity in his eyes, so much heat it felt as if the air between us might ignite.

  “Come on,” I said at last. “I never called you scum.” It wasn’t much, but it was all that I could give him then. After what must have been another minute, both of us glaring at the other, my mouth clenched shut, he released my hand. Although it stung like mad, I wasn’t going to rub it.

  “Ever since . . . since that football party, you’ve been looking at me like I was just a piece of shit.” There was an eraser on the table in front of him. He placed one hand upon it and began to rub it back and forth beneath his palm. “A dirty piece of dog shit you’d stepped on by accident. Which is exactly how I felt.”

  “I never thought that way.”

  “Oh yeah? And something else you’ve got to understand. I wasn’t there. You need to get that through your thick head.”

  “I never said you were.”

  “What?”

  “When I phoned Crime Stoppers. I just couldn’t do it. The others, sure — but not you.”

  Blake reached for me again, but I pulled my hand away just in time. “You stupid ass,” he said, “that’s why they’re after me. No bloody wonder. They think I ratted on them.”

  “But you went down to the police station — ”

  “Yeah, because I thought you turned me in. I had to clear my name. And now — thanks to you — I’m done for.”

  I was about to tell him, sorry, no, that’s not how it was meant to be, but I heard the door open, footsteps entering the room.

  “I hope you two ironed a few things out,” Ms. McKinnel said. She took her seat again, set her briefcase on the table, opened it, and pulled out a pad of foolscap. “We’ve got some serious work to do here. I need to be sure I’ve got everything absolutely right about what happened that night. Where you were and when. Everything you saw.” She’d been gazing across the table at my brother, but now she turned to me. “I think it would be best, Blair, if you’d leave us to it.”

  When I left the room, my brother still sat with his head down, the eraser sliding back and forth beneath his fingers, the light from overhead glinting on the handcuffs.

  “You work things out with Blake?” my father asked.

  I started to shrug but caught myself. “We had a talk, yeah.” Didn’t we though? And now I knew I should have given the cops his name too, but oh no, I had to spare him, and now the other guys thought he was the one who turned them in. Oh man, what a screw-up.

  “I don’t know what’s come between you,” he said. “Put the two of you in one room, you can hardly breathe the air it’s so thick with tension.”

  “I guess . . . we haven’t . . . been getting along all that well.” My comment was as limp as it sounded.

  “You don’t know how it tears up your mother — the two of you . . . and now . . . everything else that’s happened.”

  He couldn’t say it. I think he was feeling it even more than my mother. Did he believe that Blake was guilty — no matter what he claimed — was that what was going on?

  “You still think he’s guilty?” The words seemed wrenched from deep within him. “That’s got to be what it is. You really think he had something to do with that girl’s death.” When he finally looked at me, his eyes, which so often of late appeared red and tired, were pale as a mirage. I suddenly wished I could hug him.

  “Yeah, I guess I did.”

  He took three breaths before he spoke. I could hear the inhalations.

  “You did, but not now?”

  “I . . . don’t know.”

  Another three inhalations. It was weird, but his breath came out so softly that I never heard him exhale. It was as if he was only breathing in, sucking all the air from the room, sucking it in until finally he’d swell up and explode.

  “Why,” he asked, “why would you think he was guilty?”

  If I told him what I’d seen that night in Fosters’ yard, it would be like ripping out his heart. I shook my head.

  “Your mother figured right away it was you who turned him in. But you already know that.”

  I knew it, sure, but still I felt a tremor in my stomach. I kept my mouth shut.

  “Come on, Blair. Don’t treat me like a fool. You’re the one who came to me with that cock-and-bull story about advice for your friend at school. Wanting to know the right thing to do.” When he paused, I had to look away. “Why?”

  “He was acting different. Something bad had happened, I knew that, something that really bothered him, and he was always with those other guys. Everybody knew what they were like.” It was crazy, I know, it didn’t make any sense, but I couldn’t tell my parents he’d pissed on Amber even though I’d as good as told them he’d helped kill Anna.

  “Your brother swears he’s done nothing wrong, but you can’t seem to credit that possibility. Because something’s come between you.” He slowly shook his head. “Do not judge,” he said, “so that you may not be judged.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”

  “That’s the Bible, eh?”

  “It is indeed. From the Gospel According to Matthew. You might want to think about it. I suspect it has some application to the present situation with you and your brother.” He smiled at me, or tried to smile, hoping maybe that it would be a help to me in some strange way. He stood up.

  I suppose I could be thankful he’d never mentioned Cain and Abel.

  As he passed me now on his way toward the door, he dropped his hand to my shoulder, let it linger there a few seconds.

  Night time. Pale clouds and a dim moon. The car turns from the road into an open field, its headlights off, follows a trail, stubble and snow everywhere, the stubble like a brush-cut on the head of
a man going bald. Traveling too fast on the rough trail, the car bounces once, swerves, almost slides into the field, but the driver cranks the wheel, tires spinning, snow spraying behind, gets it going straight. Drives it through the narrow opening between caragana hedges, their overgrown branches reaching out as if to block the trail. The car bounces again as it hits a shallow snow-filled ditch, begins to sink, the ditch collapsing, growing, snow sucked into the crevice, its sides caving-in, but the driver guns the car, the back wheels catching something solid, and the car lurches over the edge of the crevice, back onto the trail. Slowing down, it continues another thirty yards, brake lights flashing as it rolls to a stop behind another car, a silver Camry. No door opens. The Camry’s headlights are extinguished too, but its motor runs, the car a silver shadow on the snow. Voices can be heard from inside. Urgent voices. Twice the taillights flash when a wandering foot strikes the brake. Then quiet, the second car hunched down like an animal waiting to attack. Caraganas behind it, on the other three sides brush, a tangle of black trees, broken limbs, grasses soughing in the wind. High in the trees, a branch is moving too, dropping half a foot, quivering as a huge, dark hawk lands, its eyes glowing red, brighter than Mars.

  A door opens on the second car, no sign of an interior light, a leg swung over the frame, one foot descending to the snow, another leg appears, a dark figure rising beside the car. He walks toward the trees. Toward the biggest, thickest tree where a branch sways beneath the heavy bird — it’s not a hawk now, but something else — its neck stretched down and naked now, red coals gleaming in its eyes. The figure doesn’t see the bird. He stops, slowly turns his head in a half-circle, nods, begins to walk again. A framework lighter than the trees around it, planks nailed together, like the skeleton of a building, a ladder beside it which the figure climbs, mounting steadily toward the swaying rope until he stands beneath it — I recognize him then — the noose falling over his head, and I look away just in time.