by M. O. Walsh
The person Jacob most wanted to talk to now, though, he’d heard, was also in a room in the hospital. Jacob stood up from his chair and stretched out his back. His father looked over to him and smiled. He made a little pistol with his finger and blew off the smoke. “What did I say, pardner?” he told him. “That thing still works.”
Jacob did not smile but walked down the hall. When he turned the corner, he saw Sheriff Bates standing against the far wall and thumbing his phone.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he said.
“I heard Father Pete was here,” Jacob said. “He works at my school. He’s Trina’s uncle. I was going to go tell him something.”
Sheriff Bates nodded to a door at the far end of the hall and then let out a big puff of breath. “Boy,” he said. “If you weren’t your daddy’s son. No telling what would have happened to you tonight.”
Jacob turned to him. He’d never heard anything so true.
“I understand,” Jacob said. “I’m sorry. I got pretty lucky, I guess.”
“I’d say it’s the opposite of luck,” he said. “Everything y’all have been through. Your brother. Your mom, who was a woman I knew and still miss, by the way. It’s not that your dad is the mayor that helped you out. It’s that everybody knows he can’t take any more. That he doesn’t deserve any more. I believe it’s given you a sort of currency, if you catch my drift. Don’t waste it.”
“I understand,” Jacob said, and he did. His mission now would be the same as the sheriff’s in many ways. He would do what he could to protect his father from here out.
Sheriff Bates looked back at his phone. “Let me ask you one thing I don’t understand,” he said. “All of these tweets. You’re saying you didn’t send these? And this bag you’re holding here. It’s not the same one? You’re saying this is all just her, pretending to be you? Setting you up?”
Jacob nodded.
“People do it all the time,” he said. “Fake accounts. Alters. Catfishing. Nobody really knows who anyone is. We just sort of go around pretending. I probably should have paid more attention.”
“I’m telling you,” the sheriff said, and looked as if he was scrolling through hundreds of posts at a time, “this makes me feel like I am in over my head. It’s like we’ve got a criminal mastermind on our hands.”
“You don’t,” Jacob said. “What she did makes perfect sense. It wasn’t complicated.”
“Well,” the sheriff said. “It makes me feel like I’m in a movie, and that’s not a feeling I enjoy. It’s a sad feeling.”
Jacob turned to walk down the hall. It was a sad feeling, he thought, to believe yourself in a movie like this one. He passed a closed door to his left where it sounded like someone was singing. It was a man’s voice, high and light, from a song he did not recognize. When he passed the next door on his right, Jacob heard his own name.
He turned to look in the room and saw his History teacher, Mr. Hubbard, sitting on an examining table. A nurse was wrapping his wrist with a bag of ice and Mr. Hubbard was wearing a suit, for some reason. He still had that black eye from before. And whether or not it was the pure surprise of seeing him there that did this to him, Jacob did not know, but all he understood at that moment was that he cared for Mr. Hubbard. He had affection for him. Perhaps it was still the run of adrenaline opening all of his veins and neural pathways, but Jacob did not mind. What he knew instead was that he cared what Mr. Hubbard thought of him and the reality of what Jacob had done, without ever even touching a gun, crashed upon him again. Strings of emotional connection seemed to unfurl from inside him and roll out to attach themselves to every person in the world that Jacob could have hurt by his inaction. What a glorious and invisible map. How had it been so difficult for him to see this before? All of us connected in so many silent ways. Our friends. Our families. The people we are soon to meet. The people we need to call again.
And sweet Mr. Hubbard, here, with his missing mustache.
Jacob felt so ashamed he could barely look at him.
“I heard about what happened,” Mr. Hubbard said.
“I’m so sorry,” Jacob told him.
“No,” Mr. Hubbard said. “I’m sorry. You tried to tell me today after class, didn’t you, that something was going on, and I didn’t listen. I’ve been thinking about that moment ever since I heard. How clearly upset you looked to me, and I didn’t stop what I was doing to ask you.”
“It’s okay,” Jacob said.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “You have to understand, Jacob, that it’s not okay for me. That’s the exact opposite of the type of teacher I’d like to be. Do you understand that? Everything I did in class today, actually,” he said. “I want to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Jacob said. “A lot of those readouts obviously don’t make any sense. I don’t think anybody knows what they are doing. Everyone is just trying to be something else, don’t you think?”
“Are you asking me that,” Mr. Hubbard said, “or telling me? Are you asking me if anyone knows what they are doing? Or is your thesis, here, that nobody knows what they are doing?”
Jacob looked at him. He said nothing.
“Either way,” Mr. Hubbard said. “You get an A. Just don’t ever scare us like that again.”
“I never thought it would go that far,” Jacob said.
“Nobody ever does,” Mr. Hubbard said. “But, look, let me know if I can vouch for you with the police or whoever. You’re a good kid. Not just a good student. I can see it a mile away. It’s like a wise carpenter once told me, Jacob. Some people are no great mystery.”
Jacob cocked his head. “That’s a Jesus quote, I’m guessing?”
“No,” Douglas said. “Principal Pat, oddly enough.”
“Weird,” Jacob said.
“Agreed,” Mr. Hubbard said.
Jacob thanked him and walked down the hall, his eyes burning again as if to let Jacob know they stood ready to cry at any moment henceforth. It would not be a bother to them, not be a burden. They could just go at their discretion. Was this, Jacob suspected, adulthood?
He looked into the next room and, as if to confirm his suspicions, saw a woman through the small glass window of the door, sitting on a table and weeping openly into her hands. Something all over her arms, Jacob thought, like flowered tattoos.
When he reached the far room, Jacob saw Father Pete in bed with a gown on. He had a large bandage wrapped around his head and his eyes were closed. He was not sleeping, though. Instead his face was pulled together tightly at the corners, as if he had a headache. He looked to be repeating something under his breath, rocking gently back and forth, and Jacob had to watch him awhile until he understood that he was praying. Jacob felt for a moment that he had never seen a person do this. Surely not his classmates, even those who pretended to care about all the memorized chants and incantations they went through in Mass each week. Not even his own dad. No, Father Pete was actually praying. He was in conversation with something. It looked to Jacob, very much, like a skill.
Jacob knocked gently on the door until Pete opened his eyes, turned his head toward the door.
“I’m Jacob Richieu,” he said.
“I know who you are,” Father Pete said. “I see you at school every day. I said the Mass for your brother’s funeral.”
“That’s right,” Jacob said. “I don’t know why I introduced myself.”
“Do you know where she is, Jacob?” Father Pete asked him. “Do you know where Trina went?”
Jacob shook his head. “I don’t,” he said. “I think the police are looking for her.”
“I know they are,” Father Pete said. “I’m the one who called in the missing plates. I’m just hoping they find her safe and sound somewhere. I’m trying not to listen to too much of what I hear in the halls, you know, until I hear it from her. I’m trying not to assume any
thing.”
“It’s not going to be good,” Jacob said. “No matter where they find her. Trina is not going to be okay.”
Jacob pulled his brother’s phone from his pocket. It felt to him as cold and distant as any stranger’s belonging and he did what he had come there to do. He walked over to the bed and punched in the code and handed it over to Pete. “I think you should see this,” he said, and set the screen to the video.
Jacob did not bother to sit as he watched Father Pete take in what he had already seen for himself. He could hear only the awful voices of the boys in the woods on that night. Now we’re talking, number nine! His brother’s number. A brother he loved but who had made different choices than he had, and his choices on the video were soon washed up into the chorus of terrible choices that generations of boys had made and continued to make as Jacob heard the phone in the video drop to the ground as the almost congratulatory sound of those boys turned to confusion. Toby’s voice, which he could barely make out, now just one in a sea of voices drowning out what were obvious and urgent pleas from Trina. Her voice, too, soon lost in the sound of gravel underfoot until finally someone yelled out that the cops were there. And Jacob watched Pete strain his eyes at the phone as if to see anything of value as it was picked back up and put in his brother’s pocket. They heard the hoof of Toby’s footsteps out to the car with no words at all, no apologies whatsoever to the person he had left behind. And then the slamming of the car door and the revving of the engine and who could know what made the video stop? Had it run out of memory? Had Toby shut it all down without even knowing? Or did the phone somehow know that, by showing what it had already shown, it would play on forever?
Father Pete set the phone on the table beside him.
“I’m guessing this is your brother’s phone?” he said. “Not yours.”
“Yes, sir,” Jacob said.
Pete laced his fingers across his chest and breathed so deeply into his lungs that it suggested he was discovering an entirely new way of breathing.
Behind Jacob, a nurse walked into the room and began to busy herself as if they weren’t even there. She opened a drawer, checked the notes on a legal pad on the desk.
“Did she ever say anything to you,” Pete asked Jacob, “about her mom?”
“No,” Jacob said. “She never really talked to me about anything. In some ways, I think I was the last person she ever wanted to talk to.”
“I think,” Pete said, “that I might also be pretty low on that list.”
“You think that’s where she is?” Jacob said. “With her mom?”
“If that’s the case,” Pete said, “I might be heading to Natchez to look for a dwarf.”
The nurse walked over to Father Pete and put a small clamp on his finger.
“I know that place,” she said. “Me and my husband went there last year for the Christmas lights.”
“Went where?” Pete said.
“To Natchez,” she said. “There’s a bar there. I think it’s called the Bar Under the Hill. There’s a dwarf who owns it, or a little person, I believe is the right nomenclature, Father. But, anyway, every night at closing time, by way of letting people know, he climbs up on the speakers and sings ‘House of the Rising Sun.’ It’s something to see. I cried like a baby.”
Pete looked over at Jacob as if to confirm that he was not dreaming.
“I don’t understand,” Pete asked the nurse. “Is this a real story you’re telling me?”
“You’re at ninety-nine percent,” the nurse said, and pulled off the pulse ox. “Healthy as a horse with a bump on its head. And, yeah, it’s a real place. I wouldn’t just make something like that up. Some things are too great to make up.”
The nurse wrapped the pulse ox in a tight bundle and put it back in a drawer. “I bet they’ll let you go home tonight,” she said. “Now I have to go tell your friend that they’ve got some news about his wife.”
The nurse walked past Jacob and down the hall and Jacob looked back at Father Pete.
“If you find her,” Jacob said, and walked toward him. He pulled out the misfiled Pikachu card from his pocket and handed it to him. “If you find her, give her this. Tell her I’m not my brother. I’m not ever going to be my brother. I never would have been my brother.”
“I will,” Father Pete said. “But I think I’ll hold off on telling her anything except that I am glad to see her. As for the rest, I’m just going to listen. Does that sound all right with you? Sometimes we just need to listen.”
Jacob walked back to the door. He turned and stood without saying anything.
“Jacob?” Father Pete said.
“Yes, sir,” Jacob said. “I’m listening.”
36
If You Need a Fool Who Loves You . . .
What hurt her most was that Douglas was there. He had to be.
He wouldn’t leave her like that, would he? In a hospital room? With so much to discuss? The idea was too awful to consider.
Surely he was right around the corner, about to walk in any moment.
So why hadn’t he?
The last Cherilyn had seen him was when he rushed out the door to accost Deuce. And wasn’t that a silly sight. Cherilyn poked her head around the corner and saw Douglas sitting on top of Deuce as if he were a Jet Ski, flailing his arms at his head like Deuce’s ears were on fire. She then hurried back to her bed to sit down before she even knew how it ended. She was terrified, for some reason, that Douglas would see her watching this fight. But why?
Weren’t scenes like this akin to her recent fantasies, after all? Hadn’t she bandied about images of young boys vying for her attention, running past her as if to draw her eye? And not only young men in these fantasies but grown men, as well, she knew, grown men in their hundreds and thousands to protect her royal honor. Nations, armies. All fighting for her. And not only grown men, she realized, but the women, too, at the costume shop, whose attention and praise she had craved and received. So many people to surround her. Hadn’t she wanted all of that? Yes, she knew, she had.
So why didn’t she want it now?
Perhaps it was because, instead of being royal, instead of being a person who launched a thousand ships, Cherilyn realized she had simply set into motion the most lopsided battle in history. That Douglas would trounce Deuce Newman in every way that mattered was not the source of her shame, however. This, instead, came from the fact that she had made Douglas feel that his greatness was something he needed to prove in the first place. How had she let him forget? And, with this, she understood that it was perhaps her own silent motivations that had made him feel that way. So, she decided, she would no longer feel any need to dress up for Deuce Newman nor allow him to continue thinking that there might be any chance on this earth that she would ever love anyone but her husband. She would throw away his key. Keeping it was something she had done in her past, and everyone has a past. All she would concern herself with from here on, she determined, would be her present.
So, she shied away from the fight in the hallway not so that she wouldn’t see Douglas, but so that Douglas wouldn’t see that former version of her. She listened to their argument through the open doorway, to the doctors and nurses trying to pull them apart and felt nothing but crystallized guilt. She knew she could explain it enough, the trip out to Parker Field with Deuce, the strange clothes. She knew she hadn’t gone too far in any of her mental journeys to make a permanent dent on Douglas’s heart, but she expected him to be hurt. He had a right to be hurt.
What she did not expect, however, was how long he would stay gone.
The fight was over. Had been for probably thirty minutes. A nurse told her that Douglas was getting some ice for his wrist, but even that shouldn’t have taken so long. She walked to the door and looked down the hall and the nurse said she was sure it would just be another minute or two, but people like her, Cherilyn thou
ght, just didn’t get it.
When a person needs the person they love, time doesn’t work the same.
And so the minutes Cherilyn waited alone in that room took physical form to stretch like tentacles throughout her memory and reconnected her to every other time she had been without him. They reached through her past to cup and open little pictures for her to review: an odd stretch of minutes when Douglas was late from work one day and she worried, a time he had gone off to find ice cream when they were on vacation in Florida and left her there for what seemed like too long and she worried. Hundreds of these little memory photos of Cherilyn watching herself without Douglas, seeing herself like she did in the bikini picture he took just a few years ago. It was her there, yes, but it was not the version of her she most liked. And these tentacles in her memory connected her to all of the times in her life without him, traveling from high school all the way up to these moments in the waiting room as if only to say, These, Cherilyn. You see, these are the miserable times. And she did see it.
So, Cherilyn sat on the bed, put her hands to her face, and let it all out.
When Douglas finally came back to the room, he entered it as if a stranger. He stood at the door almost hesitantly, like he wasn’t sure if he was in the right place. How long had he been pacing around out there? she wondered. How long has he been preparing what he wanted to say to her? When he finally got his body all the way through the frame, he had something of the traveling salesman to him, Cherilyn thought, his suit coat laid over his arm.
Why on earth, she wondered, was he wearing a suit?
And where was his little hat?
She recognized the pink shirt she had bought him and had the strange notion that Douglas had wrapped himself up like a gift she did not deserve. She smiled at him, but he did not smile back.
“Douglas,” she said. “I can explain everything.”
He closed the door behind him and stood at the handle. His hair was neatly swept. His eye still had its bruise. He had a big bag of ice wrapped around his hand.