Chain Letter (16 page)

“It was a joke. I’m sorry; it wasn’t funny.” He wiped at his face with his damp T-shirt.
For a moment, he considered calling Alison. Their romance had been put on hold since
the pints of blood—the police had confirmed that it had been human blood—had soaked
through Kipp’s bed sheets. He wanted to be big and strong in front of her, and he
had nothing to offer that would make him appear that way. And he wanted to be with
Neil. “How’s your leg?”

“Sore.”

“You still don’t have enough money to get it fixed?”

Neil took a sip of his orange juice and coughed. “My mother’s gone to Arkansas to
visit her brother. The strain was wearing her out. I gave her what money I had.”

“How does she feel the strain we’re under?”

“She feels it,” was all Neil would say. Putting his lips to the glass for another
drink, Tony could see every bone in his jaw through his pallid skin. Neil would soon
be a skeleton.

If he lives that long
, Tony thought, shamefully.

“You wanted to get her out of the way in case something happens to you, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing’s going to happen. I’m not leaving your side.”

Neil pressed the cool glass against his cheek and closed his eyes. “I’d rather be
alone. It’s strange, but I don’t feel as afraid when I’m alone, not anymore.” He opened
his eyes. “But you can give me one of your father’s guns.”

Tony nodded. He had already lifted one from his dad’s collection and hidden it under
his bed. But rather than reaching for it, he picked up a Bic lighter instead, striking
the flame up to maximum, as if they really needed more hot air. He was staring at
the flame when he said, “It could be done.”

“No.”

“We have a small pump in the garage. I could take my car from gas station to gas station
and use the pump in between stops
to siphon the fuel into a bunch of old five gallon bottles we have out back. If we
hit the school at, say, three in the morning, drove through first and dropped the
bottles off, then came back on foot and broke a window in a classroom in each wing,
and then poured the gasoline inside, it could work. When everything’s set, I could
take a flare and a box of Fourth of July sparklers and make one mad dash around the
campus. The place would be an inferno before the first fire truck could get there.”

“No.”

“I’ll do it myself then, dammit.”

Neil sighed, wiping his thinning hair out of his sunken eyes. “And what will you do
for me when I’m in Column III?”

The question was as honest as it was fatalistic. Tony leaned his head back and stared
at the ceiling. The worst thing was this waiting and doing nothing . . . no, that
was the second worst. Neil’s refusal to blame him ate at him more than anything the
Caretaker had dreamed up. “I got you into this predicament, I’m going to get you out
of it, at least for this round. I’m burning the blasted place down. It deserves it,
anyway.” Neil said nothing. Frustrated, Tony threw the Bic lighter at the door, half
hoping it would explode. “One word from you that night and I would have turned myself
in. I swear, one word and I wouldn’t have given in to Kipp and the others.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not blaming you, don’t get that idea.” He chuckled without mirth. “How could
I blame you?”

“Tony?” Neil asked suddenly. “Do you ever think about the man?”

“I think about nothing else. If we hadn’t hit him, life would be about ten thousand
times rosier.”

“No, I mean think about who he was: whether he was married and had kids, what kind
of music he liked, what he hoped for in the future?”

“I would like to say I do but . . . I don’t.”

Neil hugged his glass tightly. “Since the accident, even to this day, I read the paper
in the morning and look for an article or picture about the man. In the days following
that night, I was sure there would be something about him, at least one person looking
for him. But there was nothing.”

“We were lucky.”

“No,” Neil said sadly. “It made me feel worse that no one cared for him, that only
I cared.” He put his drink on the floor and tugged at his emerald ring, which could
now have fit on his bony thumb. “It must be lonely to be buried in a place where no
one ever goes.”

“Personally, I would prefer it.” Tony wanted to get off this morbid bent so he changed
the subject to a much cheerier topic—guns. He leaned over and pulled the walnut case
from beneath his bed, throwing back the lid. “This is one of my father’s favorites.”
He held up the heavy black six-shooter. “It’s a Smith & Wesson .44 special revolver.
The safety is here.” He pointed to the catch above the handle. “This is a mean weapon.
Just be sure before you pull the trigger.” He handed the gun to Neil, along with a
box of shells. Neil looked at it once with loathing before tucking it in his belt,
hiding the butt beneath his shirt. “Remember to load it,” Tony added.

“You don’t think it would scare the Caretaker, empty?”

“Not if he knew it was empty.”

Neil swallowed painfully. Reality was hitting home. A tear started out of his right
eye. He wiped it away and another one took its place. At that moment, Tony would have
given his life to know for certain that Neil would be safe. Cowards like himself,
he thought, were always heroic when it was too late to make any difference.

“I guess I should be going,” Neil said.

“Won’t you stay, please?”

“I can’t.” He took hold of the shelf and pulled himself up. It struck Tony then, only
after all this time, that Neil’s leg could not possibly have simple cartilage damage.

“Thank you for everything. I won’t forget you, Tony.”

Tony stood and helped him to the door, where he hugged Neil. “Of course you won’t
forget me. You’ll see me tomorrow, and the day after.”

“But if something should happen . . . ”

“Nothing will happen!”

“If it should,” Neil persisted in his own gentle way, “I want you to do something
for me.”

T
he clouds rode high and swift in the sky, covering and uncovering the sun, casting
the sloping green cemetery in shadow and light. Life was like that, Alison thought,
the world one day a dark and dreary place, the next day bright and full of promise.
But death she couldn’t think about right now. It all seemed so black and hopeless.

Neil was dead.

They stood by the grave, dressed in mourning, atop a low hill that looked through
tall trees to an orchard and a wide watermelon field beyond. It was a pretty place,
she supposed, if you had to be buried. Neil’s mother was present, as were Tony and
a minister, but pitifully few others had come to pay their last respects. Brenda and
Joan had both bowed out, pleading too much emotional distress. Alison did not doubt
the validity
of their excuses. She was beyond wondering and worrying.

The minister read a psalm about the shadow of the valley of death and having no fear,
and Alison felt that for Neil it was a proper reading, for his life, more than anyone’s
she had ever met, had been truly righteous. At the close of the prayers, they each
stepped forward and laid a rose atop the casket. The casket was not an expensive one—Neil’s
mother hadn’t much money—nor was it very big. But it was enough. The Caretaker had
not left much, anyway.

“Thank you for coming,” Mrs. Hurly told her as they hugged at the end of the service.
“My son often talked about you.”

The lady’s quiet strength, her calm acceptance of the tragedy, both strengthened and
confused Alison. She stopped crying. “I thought about him a lot,” she said truthfully.
“I’m going to miss him.”

Tony came next, at the end of the line. The last two days, Alison had not seen him
shed a tear, nor had he at any time failed to say the right words. He did not ask
for sympathy and he continued to stand tall. Yet he had become a robot. His spark
was gone. Perhaps it would be gone for a long time. “If there is anything you need
help with at the house,” he said, embracing the tiny, gray-haired lady whose eyes
were as green and warm as Neil’s had been, “let me know.”

That
had been a minor slip, though an understandable one. There wasn’t a Hurly house anymore.

Mrs. Hurly nodded kindly. “Please walk me to the car. I would like to speak with you
and your girlfriend.”

Alison would have preferred not to have been invited. Though on the inside she had
felt drawn to Neil, she had not really been a close friend. If his mother was going
to bring up sensitive, sentimental memories, Tony alone would be the right one to
share them with. But she could not very well say no to the lady, and she trailed a
pace behind as Tony escorted Mrs. Hurly, arm in arm, to an aging white Nova.

“I don’t know how best to put this,” Neil’s mother said as they reached the narrow
road that wound through the cemetery, the sun temporarily out, warm on their faces,
the overlong grass rippling in green waves in the shifting breeze. “When I received
the call at my brother’s place in Arkansas that our home had burned to the ground
and that Neil had been caught asleep in bed and had perished in the flames, I refused
to accept it. I thought the officer had the wrong address and that it was the family
next door or the one across the street. God forgive me for praying that this was so.”

As Mrs. Hurly paused to find the right words, Alison was forcibly drawn back to two
days ago. The phone call had come in the early morning instead of the middle of the
night, and it had been Brenda, not Tony, who had brought the news of the fire. Brenda
had rattled off the facts with what had seemed mechanical precision but which in reality
had been
emotionless shock. Neil’s home was a smoldering ruin. So far, the firemen going through
the debris had found only one body, the charred and scattered pieces of a skeleton
of an individual approximately five-and-a-half feet tall who had worn an emerald ring
on his left hand. All the evidence was not in, but the fire marshal was inclined to
rule out arson. There were no signs that combustibles such as gasoline or kerosene
had been involved. The blaze appeared to have started in the kitchen, probably triggered
by faulty wiring. And it must have spread quickly to have caught the resting occupant—as
the expert had called Neil—totally unaware. It was the gentleman’s opinion, Brenda
said, that Neil had probably not even awakened.

Listening to the account, Alison had felt a corner of her being cracking, the tight
place where she had hemmed in the panic that had been growing since the Caretaker’s
first letter. Released, the fear had rushed through her like an icy wave, leaving
her shivering but strangely unafraid. She had probably felt that now, with this murder,
things could get no worse.

Remember, you have been told.

Each passing day inevitably decreased Fran’s and Kipp’s chances of being alive. Three
scorched skeletons in the rubble would not have surprised her.

Yet the game rolled forward. Joan had received a letter and her task had been in the
paper this morning.

J.Z. Spread Rumor You Are Gay.

Joan had been prepared to model naked in the mall, slap the principal in the face,
and burn down the whole city. This demand, however, she simply could not meet. She
was sleeping with a police-trained German shepherd, her bedroom windows covered with
shutters that had been nailed shut. Her law-enforcement father didn’t even know his
daughter was in danger.

Alison was not looking forward to her own turn.

“All parents react that way to accidents involving their children,” Tony said. “Don’t
blame yourself.”

Mrs. Hurly patted his supporting arm. “It was still wrong of me, especially given
the circumstances. After I had a chance to be by myself, to put the accident in perspective,
I saw that it was a blessing in disguise.”

God’s will, fate, destiny
 . . . Alison could see it coming. Nevertheless, she nodded in understanding. Metaphysical
rationalizations were a comfort this poor woman deserved, and she was not going to
argue with her personal philosophy at a time like this. A minute later, however, she
realized she had totally misjudged the lady.

“I’m afraid I can’t see it that way,” Tony said.

“Because Neil never told you the truth,” Mrs. Hurly said, glancing in the direction
of the lonely coffin lying beside the pile of brown earth that had seconds ago lost
its green plastic
cover to the wind. A brief shudder shook her. Around the curve of the bluff, a worker
waited impatiently in his tractor. He was probably supposed to be out of sight, but
the message was still clear: They were in a hurry to get the body in the ground. Mrs.
Hurly continued, “He didn’t want your sympathy, he didn’t want you treating him any
differently in the time he had left. Remember once when you were at the house, Tony,
and the two of you were going to see a movie? Neil was broke and I was behind on the
bills that month. You offered to take him, but he wouldn’t even accept a couple of
dollars from you. You remember how proud he was in that way. I think that’s one of
the reasons he kept his illness a secret and made up those stories about having diabetes
and cartilage damage. He couldn’t totally hide what was happening inside his body,
but he thought he could camouflage it with lesser complaints. I went along with his
wishes, but it was hard, harder than I can say with words, especially toward the end
when he was in so much pain he could hardly walk.”

“What are you saying?” Tony whispered.

“Neil had cancer. It started in his leg. Those weeks when he was out of school, that’s
when he was receiving chemotherapy. That’s why he lost so much weight. The doctors
tried, but it just spread everywhere. The last X rays they took showed tumors in his
brain.” She bowed her head. “You see how I could be grateful for this accident. At
least he doesn’t hurt anymore.”

She broke down then and Alison wept with her, filled with shame for all the times
she had been with Neil, watching him deteriorate before her very eyes and not once
stopping to ask him or herself if he was OK.