Crush (31 page)
talk
to us.”
“Unburden your soul, so to speak,” adds Cantrell, his eyes twinkling
His merry little quip unhinges my tongue. “I have not done
anything
to harm myboyfriend!” I shout at him.
“I warned you before…settle down…keep your temper in check…Now…Miss Pendleton tells me that Jamie was upset at you last night,” Howard says. “She says he was very distraught, that there was something wrong between you. She believes you two had an altercation…a fight…”
“It’s hard to explain,” I pant. “It’s…”
“It’s private?” asks Howard.
“It’s difficult…private…so hard to explain…”
“Well, I suggest you explain anyway, because you’re fast moving from a person of interest to the chief suspect!” Cantrell
Aloud pounding snaps myhead toward the tinted window of the interrogation room. I hear Stacy screaming faintly on the other side, “Where is he, you son of a bitch?! What did you do to him?!”
Cantrell saunters out into the hallway. I can’t hear what he’s saying to Stacy. I can’t even see them.
I turn back to Howard and appeal to him. “I swear…I didn’t do anything to him! I love him! He’s out there somewhere! Whyaren’t you looking for him?!”
Cantrell returns, closing the door softlybehind him.
“We
are
looking for him,” Howard says almost kindly. “But we need your help. Talk to us. Tell us what happened. You’ll feel so much better.”
“I didn’t hurt him,” I cry. “I didn’t!”
“When they found the car, they found blood in the backseat, Mr. Mattheis.”
The nausea is potent and instantaneous. I lean over and puke splashes on the floor beside my chair. “No…no…God, please…no…”
“Where is he, Mr. Mattheis?” Howard asks softly. “Help us
At the spot where Jamie’s car’s been discovered, they search for the car keys and can’t find them. They find several strands of long, dark hair clinging to the headrest of the passenger front seat. Theydust Jamie’s steering wheel with black powder and find a lot of fingerprints, none of them matching mine (I volunteered mine immediately). That doesn’t convince them. “You could have wiped them off,” says Cantrell. “
C.S.I.
has made our lives a lot harder, lemme tell you!”
They search
my
car for traces of blood, clothing threads, bits of hair, anything that would be hard evidence---and find only a couple of longish blonde strands of hair. “Jamie’s been in mycar, manytimes,” I tell them, “including when we went home from The End last night.”
Now they’re flummoxed. SurelyI couldn’t have vacuumed that well, or found someone to detail it in the middle of the night.
Still, they believe that if they keep at me, I’ll eventually break, or they’ll catch me in a lie.
At about nine-thirty, they bring Mom in and chat with her in another room. She can’t give them an airtight alibi, but she tells them that although she was in bed when I came home from Jamie’s house, she knows, “My son didn’t hurt Jamie…They’re like best friends…Tammywouldn’t hurt him…”
“How long have they known each other?” asks Officer Cantrell.
“Since high school, I think,” Mom replies. “Jamie’s a nurse. He took care of me when I broke mypelvis. Tammy’s his friend. My son wouldn’t hurt a fly…he’s a good boy. He used to be angry… but, he’s a good boy.”
“What do you mean, angry?”
She tells them about my boyhood, how I never knew my father, how I resented her for the mistakes she made that resulted in me not having a father. She tells them I was angry and rebellious and wayward during my early teen years, but that after high school, I seemed to “mellow out and calm down.”
“Describe his childhood…what kinds of activities was he involved in that you didn’t approve of?”
“He hung around a few boys that were troubled…they drank, smoked dope…played with guns, acted up at school…that sort of thing. I was pretty worried about him, so I had his father talk to him,” Mom says.
“His father? I thought you said he didn’t have a father,” Cantrell says, eyeing her suspiciously.
“Well…of course he has a father…we’re not together…” Mom looks away, embarrassed as always when this chapter of her biographycomes up.
“But he spoke to your son…to straighten him out?”
“Yes, and I think it worked. After they talked, Tammy mellowed out quite a bit!”
“Who’s his father?” asks Howard.
Mom bristles. “Do I have to answer that? That’s reallynone of your concern, and what’s it got to do with anything?”
“Well, perhaps we’d like to speak with him…get
his
take on Mr. Mattheis.”
“I’d rather not discuss Tam’s father,” Mom says flatly. “He doesn’t have a relationship with him anyway.”
“I thought you just said his father straightened him up,” puzzles Cantrell.
“Well…” she hesitates.
Cantrell snorts, “Perhaps we should charge you with obstruction!”
Mom tells them who myDad is. “It was a mistake,” she sighs irritably. “He was just as at fault as I was.”
“Alright, Ma’am,” Howard says. “We’re not concerned with that…we just need to speak to him.” But their looks don’t miss her.
At a little after ten-thirty, Pastor Asshole waltzes in and tells them all about what I did to Cotton. He doesn’t staylong, just long enough to rub mynose yet again into the most humiliating, stupid thing I’ve ever done. Just long enough to fan the fire under the ignorant, widely held estimation that gay men, all gay men, are perverts in one form or another. Having a gay son, an illegitimate gayson to boot, can be quite embarrassing to anyman whose life endeavor is to be holier than anyone else.
It’s almost noon bythe time I’m released to go home, with a cordial, “Don’t go anywhere, Mr. Mattheis.” Both Mom and I are wrecked by the resurfacing of the travesty of her association with the Asshole and myimplied proclivities toward bestiality.
“I’m going to look for Jamie,” I voice my plans. Mistake. Officer Howard adamantlysays, “No, you’re not.”
I want to say, “The fuck I’m not! He’s out there, hurt, maybe dying! I’m not sitting on myass while you waste time investigating
white slowly roll by our house. I’m under surveillance. I’m too exhausted to scream at Mom for blabber-mouthing to the Asshole years prior about the Cotton matter. Instead, we sit together on our couch and cry.
I endeavor to explain mychildhood viciousness to her. And finallyI tell her, about what Uncle Price did.
“Apervert!” she cries. “Myown brother!”
“Jamie’s out there, somewhere, probably hurt! Dead! Fuck
Uncle Price!”
She stares up at me. “Is it true, Tammy?” she asks. “Are you
and Jamie…”
“Gay?!” I thunder at her, leaping to my feet. “Yes! We’re gay, Mother! We’re a couple of flaming faggots! Queers! Queens! Pussies! Fairies! Yeah! We’re a couple of fucking queers! Who
cares?!”
“Tam…I’m just
asking
…”
“You think Jamie’s a bad person because he’s gay?” I
surmise with a shout. “You think
I’m
a bad person?”
“No.” Her lips press together firmly.
“Tell the truth,” I snap. “You’re just like all of them. You think
we’re perverts...”
“I love you, Tammy,” she says. “I want you to be happyin life.” “I’ve
never
been happy…all mylife…until Jamie,” I saytiredly.
“He makes me happy, Mom. I don’t even recognize myself
anymore…and I’m glad of it. I’m proud of it.” I underscore the word
“proud” and dare her to condemn me.
She says softly, “I love Jamie…you know I do. I love that kid.
I’d never want harm to come to him! Don’t you think I have any
heart at all?” She begins to cryagain.
I sit back down with her. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I sulk.
“I had no idea,” she sniffles. “I want you to be happy, and if
Jamie makes you happy…you never
could
talk to me.” She’s
disappointed.
“You’re kind of a bigmouth,” I say as nicely as I can. “And
you’re a Christian.”
“What difference does that make?” she bristles.
“Well, we didn’t really feel free to come to you and say, ‘Hey,
Mom! We love each other and we’re having sex!’”
“Alright, Tammy, alright…” Mom sighs.
Aloud banging on our front door jolts us up. It’s the police
again. They’ve got a warrant for the house now. They look for
blood, in the garbage, on my bedding, in my bathroom. They
remove my shoes and fail to find blood on them. They’re still not
convinced. “You could have burned whatever clothes or shoes you
wore last night,” says Howard, “to get rid of the blood. “I’m wearing the same shoes I always wear,” I bark at him.
“And the clothes I wore yesterday were in the hamper you
searched!”
As they raid my bedroom, they ignore the black rectangle
hanging out of myVCR like a tongue, seeing no cause to collect it.
A man in a dark coat comes out of my room, his arms full of
marble note pads.
He’s unearthed myjournals.
For a few minutes, Officer Cantrell and the man in the dark
coat flip through them.
Mom says angrily, “I’ve told you officers, my son didn’t hurt
that young man. Whyaren’t you out looking for him?!”
“We’ve got lots of people looking for Mr. Pearce right now,
Ma’am,” Howard assures her.
“They have a wonderful relationship,” she says, trying to be
helpful.
“Hmmm…” Cantrell says thoughtfully, not taking his eyes off
the violence scrawled across the lined paper. “How about his
relationship with
you
? What’s that like now?”
“Much better than when he was a boy,” Mom answers.
“Officers, please…I know Tammy didn’t do this. Maybe he was
angryas a child, but he’s changed. He’s not a violent man.” “I disagree,” Cantrell says. “And we’re thinking Mr. Mattheis is
the perpetrator.”
“Why?!” cries Mom.
“Because,” says Officer Howard, “A…He’s the last person to
have seen Mr. Pearce alive. Several witnesses saw Mr. Mattheis
dragging Mr. Pearce out of the End bar last night.”
“Including me!” Cantrell interrupts. “I was there…I saw him
do it too.”
Officer Howard turns to his partner, looks embarrassed. “You
never mentioned that
before
, Steve.”
Cantrell shrugs a little sheepishly. “Yeah…I was there…I
saw…”
“We’ll talk later,” Howard continues, unruffled. “B…Mr.
Mattheis hasn’t been veryforthcoming during our investigation. We
believe he knows where Mr. Pearce is, and isn’t cooperating.” “I do
not
know where Jamie is!” I shriek.
“We have no direct evidence incriminating you at this
moment,” Howard says, nodding at me. “But when we find Mr.
Pearce, we think everything will fit together quite nicely. Alovers’
quarrel, a crime of passion. The evidence we found in Mr.
Pearce’s car indicates that he’s been attacked. We found blood,
tears and saliva.”
He’s so cold.
Jamie is out there, hurt, dying.
Blood, tears, saliva.
He bled, cried, drooled all over the backseat of his car. Someone took him somewhere and hurt him.
He must have been so terrified.
My chest seizes...I wonder if
I’m still too young for a heart attack.
I should have gone with him…I should have insisted… He must have felt so alone.
This bastard is cold as ice.
I can feel my stomach turning itself inside-out again.
“Someone’s done something horrible to him,” I sob wretchedly. “C…these journals are rather revealing into your character,
Mr. Mattheis.”
My saliva thickens. I feel the retches building. My stomach is
tender. “I wrote those a long time ago…I’m not like that
anymore…”
“We’re eager to discuss them with you.”
I’m driven back to the station in a squad car. They don’t
handcuff me, but the looks they give me immobilize me like
Pavulon. Mom follows in her car, wiping her glasses with her
fingers as tears splatter the inner lenses.
It’s about one o’clock.
Afaint odor of puke from when I was here a few hours ago
lingers in the interrogation room. Cantrell has been taken off the
case, replaced byOfficer Lord, Howard says. “We didn’t know he’d
been at The End last evening. He’s likely to be a witness for the
prosecution if the D.A. decides she has a case against you.” “I didn’t hurt Jamie,” I maintain, by now utterly done in by
today’s horrific turn of events. I want to kick everyone aside, bash
all the doors down, and run, run, out into the open, and scream
into the sky.
In the gray room, Officer Howard reads aloud three stories
from my anthology of gore. The anger is candid, the hatred is
authentic. Still, the macabre tales are those of a boywho no longer
lives on this earth.
It doesn’t matter to Officers Howard and Lord, who now gaze
at me with repulsed fascinated disdain.
It doesn’t matter, even after I regurgitate swallowed saliva in
the middle of the third story and beg, through sickened, sobbing hiccups, for Howard to stop reading.
For brief moments, I return to my flesh, regain my mortal lucidity, able to employ the organic matter between my ears. I attempt to raise from the position theyleft me in, tryto fold mylegs under me and lift my body up, but a huge, stabbing sensation along my left side steals my breath and sends me sagging against the orange tree again. I’m in such miseryI can’t even pant for air. The spirit is willing, but the physical strength is bleeding out of me in a warm gush. My strength, my bodily warmth, desert me slowlyand surely.
As when I was alone in that dungeon my birth parents bequeathed to me, time has no meaning. I have no knowledge at all how manyminutes, hours, or even days, might be passing as I sit, my body broken, smaller than I realized, my shoulders slumped forward, my head bowed over my chest, my legs curled beneath me.
God, please let me live. Let me live. If you’re a loving and merciful God, please let me live through this. Let somebody find me and help me. Don’t let me die here alone.
The night is long and cold. My bodily fluids have slowed to a crawl within me. Slothful tears are frozen along the arcs of my cheeks. I no longer see mybreath misting before me. Mywounded head, once throbbing hotly, is slowly, gently pulsing under the matted tangle of myhair and a thin layer of red ice. I watch myself languishing, longing to join my foster dad, but reluctant to leave Tammybehind. Cold condensation accumulates over everyinch of skin uncovered byclothing.