Hard Case Crime: Witness To Myself (3 page)

It was shortly after this that my aunt said, “Alan, let me put some sunblock on you.” She was leaning forward in her chair, holding out the bottle toward him.

“Not right now.”

“The sun’s very strong, you’re going to get burned.”

“I said I will, not just now.” He was obviously annoyed.

“I’m telling you,” she warned gently.

He turned away and looked down the beach. He was obviously embarrassed, a teenager’s embarrassment, that she was still holding out the bottle when he’d said no; I could just see him thinking, God, didn’t she understand no? The ocean was a deep green with high breakers that were bringing in some seaweed; the sand had a black fringe near the water’s edge. People were jumping up and down in the waves, or diving under them, or streaking on rafts to the beach. I noticed him watching a couple of girls in bikinis talking up to the two lifeguards on the stand; noticed it because I was looking there too.

“Alan,” Mrs. Devlin suddenly directed a question at him, “are you driving yet?”

“No,” his mother answered for him, “he’s got a year to go.”

“Oh my, just wait till he’s sixteen.”

“Oh I can’t wait for that scene,” my aunt said, and because she and the others were smiling, Alan apparently felt he had to smile too, though he was obviously embarrassed.

“How are the girls treating you?” Mr. Devlin asked him.

He shrugged and with this his father said, “The goils? I don’t think he’s going out with goils yet.”

It wasn’t the first time Alan had heard him refer to girls in this way when it had something to do with him. He didn’t know why but it was as though his father had a problem not just with the word but with the idea of him with girls. Alan looked away, hoping that would deflect conversation from him, and it did. But soon he was looking back. He looked at Mrs. Devlin, who was turned the other way, talking with his mother. She had on a green one-piece bathing suit, a wide-brimmed straw hat, and sunglasses that had bits of colored shell on the frames. Homely though she was, she was well built, with long shapely legs.

He turned away when she looked back.

He asked me if I wanted to go in the water and I thought about it and then shook my head. He stood up, thinking, as he would recall it, that if his mother said anything like be careful, which wouldn’t have bothered him any other time, he would have broken, red-faced, into a run. But she didn’t. He had always been a good swimmer and the water was just cold enough for him. He dove under a wave and then another, and then swam beyond where they were breaking and continued parallel to the beach. When he came out he shook away the towel my aunt handed him and started to sit down but then remained standing.

Actually he was telling himself to sit down, just sit down, but even though it had become an outright plea now he still remained standing. And then he said, “I’ll be right back, I want to get something from the car.”

My mother said, “You want the bathroom, use the house. There are two.”

“No, I want to get something.”

His father must have turned off the air conditioning, so the heat of the motor home blasted him as he opened the door, but he didn’t put it back on, telling himself he would just change into dry trunks and go out again. He locked the door and changed, but instead of leaving he sat down on the sofa. Behind his closed eyes he sought a face, a body. He thought of the two girls at the lifeguard stand, of some movie actresses, of some centerfolds and of bra and panty ads, and then, almost reluctantly, of Mrs. Devlin.

He tried to fight against it, knowing he would despise himself, already half despising himself. But gradually that homely face took on a kind of smile it didn’t have in real life.

Give it to Mrs. Devlin, she was saying, please honey, give it to Mrs. Devlin.

From what I was to learn, they stopped at a couple of places in Maine, then headed up to the tip of Cape Cod, to Provincetown. They thought they might stay there at least one night but it felt too crowded and they started to head back. But soon my uncle began exploring and pulled into a wide dirt lane that led through thick woods to the top of a high dune overlooking an empty beach and the ocean.

My aunt said, “Are we allowed to stay here?”

“I don’t know,” my uncle said. “I don’t see why not.”

“Did you know when you turned off it would lead to the ocean?”

“I thought it might.”

“Do you have any idea where we are?”

“Well, I saw a sign.”

They were, he said, on the outskirts of South Minton.

Alan got up about eleven the next morning, which was late for him, and was a little surprised that his parents were just getting up too. He stepped outside, into a bright clear day, and walked to the edge of the dune: The beach was empty as far as he could see to either side. After breakfast the three of them half-slid, half-walked down the dune, carrying a blanket and a couple of small sand chairs. They had some paperbacks and a transistor radio that they didn’t turn on. Alan sat on the blanket, a book in hand. He was tan by now, didn’t need sunblock anymore.

He had recently gotten into Salinger, and one of the books he’d brought along was a collection of his short stories. But he found it hard to concentrate and put it down. He looked at the ocean, which was fairly calm that day. As he stared at it his thoughts began drifting and then went back in time and settled on Mrs. Devlin. How, he asked himself for the dozenth time, could he have thought of that with her? And yet remembering what his mind had done to those legs and even that hooked nose and terrible red hair gave him an answer that he could feel all over again. He got up and said he was going in the water.

“Hey, just remember,” his mother said, “there’s no lifeguard around here.”

He nodded, walking away before his father might decide to explain to him again about riptides, how if you got caught in one you shouldn’t try to fight it but swim parallel to the beach until you could swim in. But he didn’t go too far out, just enough past the waves where he could swim easily. When he came back he said he was going for a run. This, they expected: He loved running, had run as far as twenty miles a few times, though he knew he could run much farther. He took off slowly along the surf. The woods stretched on above the dunes to his left; he couldn’t see a house.

After about half a mile he took another swim, this time a quick one, and then, because the sun was so bright and he wasn’t wearing sunglasses, he decided to run back through the woods if possible. He didn’t know if there was any kind of trail back there or if his bare feet could take it. But he liked the idea of testing and toughening his feet.

He climbed up the dune at a spot where there was an opening in the woods. He walked in about fifty feet and found a sandy trail through the trees, but it went in the opposite direction from where they were parked. He started walking along it, then began jogging again, slowly, taking in the silence and feel of the woods, which he’d always associated with Indians ever since he was a kid. In fact he used to daydream as a kid about being an Indian boy, in a loincloth or naked and running free.

He ran a short distance and then stopped at a lane that went to his right to the beach. He was about to turn back when he saw a girl of about twelve standing looking at him and then up at the trees and then back to him. Her skin was light brown, and she had long glistening black hair. She was wearing a two-piece bathing suit, the halter flat.

He said, “Do you want something?”

Without answering she pointed to a tree. He saw a red kite caught on one of the lower limbs.

“I’ll see if I can get it for you.”

He had to go a few yards back on the lane and then went in among the trees. The kite was on a thin limb that grew, twisted, toward the ground but it was a little beyond his reach. He jumped up and after a couple of tries caught the limb in his hand and bent it down. Stretching out his arm he grabbed hold of the kite and shook it free from the branch and it floated down. He noticed now that it was torn. When he started to walk to the lane with it, he saw that she’d come in a few feet and was standing there, looking at him.

“You know,” he said, “it really wasn’t worth the trouble. It’s no good anyway, it’s got,” and he used a word that he only wished he could take back, “a hole in it. Can you see the hole?”

She didn’t answer. She kept looking at him.

“It’s got a hole in it,” he repeated.

He found himself staring back at her. She was such a pretty thing, her large eyes as black as her hair. Her bathing suit hugged her firm slender body.

Suddenly he wanted to say that word again.

“Do you know what a hole is?”

She still didn’t answer.

He told himself to get out of there, to run from there, but instead he kneeled down and put his forefinger on her groin. She gave a quick gasp. But she didn’t move, as if frozen. He started to stand up, heart galloping, still begging himself to run, run, to get away from this girl and these silent trees and back into the sun, but instead he stooped down again and hooked his finger under the swimsuit at her legs, to feel her skin.

“Stop,” she shouted. “Stop it!”

She started to pull back, then began to cry. A cry that was like a fire alarm in his brain.

“Don’t,” he pleaded, jumping up. “Don’t cry, please don’t cry. You can go. I’m sorry, you can go.”

She whirled and started to run, still crying. Terrified, he grabbed her shoulder. “Don’t tell — please don’t tell.”

“Let me go! Let go!”

“Listen to me. Please.”

She started to shake free and he grabbed her again, this time hooking his arm around her throat, and her cry was cut off. He began dragging her deeper among the trees and threw her down. He stared at her, lying motionless face down. He stood there for several moments, but she still didn’t move. A part of him wanted to kneel down to feel for breath, but instead he began to run. He ran deep into the trees, ran stumbling, soon suddenly lost, not knowing in which direction was his home — the motor home was home — then running just to keep running.

He was sure he had killed her.

He kept running in panic, this way, that. At one point the woods opened to another lane and he took it but it led to the beach and he didn’t want to be seen on the beach; it was as though people were already looking for him, would point and yell and come racing after him. He ran back into the woods again but couldn’t find the narrow trail he’d been on, and he made his way around trees, jumping over fallen limbs, heading in first one direction and then the other. And then he saw sunlight ahead between the trees. It was another lane to the beach, and this one was where the motor home was parked.

He ran inside and closed and locked the door. He almost crumpled to the floor but stood there trembling violently, his arms around his chest. He was still trembling as he lowered himself to a crouch, then covered his face with his hands, fingers digging into his skin. Oh God, oh God, what did I do?

The police would come here, they would grab him, they would put him in handcuffs, they would take him away, everything was over! And Mom and Dad — oh God, Mom and Dad!

Why hadn’t he just run from her? Why had he stayed? And why that?

He began to cry. He cried until he couldn’t any more, and then out of sheer weakness he dropped across the sofa, his face in his arms.

He leaped up, hearing a rattling of the door.

The police?

The police!

But he slowly opened the door to his mother. She was looking at him in anger.

“Why didn’t you come back to us? You had us worried!”

“I-I’m sorry.”

“Sorry. Sorry. That was the dumbest thing. You had us scared. And why was this door locked?”

“I don’t know. I just got tired.”

His father came in then. “What’s going on here?”

“He was here sleeping all this time.”

My uncle addressed him. “You should have come back. You had your mother worried.”

“Like you weren’t,” my aunt said to him. And then a look of dismay crossed her face. “Alan, you’re bleeding on the floor. What happened to your feet?”

He sat down and looked at the bottom of his feet. One of them had a small cut. He hadn’t even felt any pain.

“Where were you?” his mother demanded.

“I guess... in the woods.” He didn’t even want to say that; didn’t want to place himself anywhere.

“You guess? You guess? What do you mean you guess?”

“I was in the woods, I was running in the woods.” From the way they were looking at him he was sure they knew he had done something terrible, something beyond belief.

“Alan, don’t raise your voice at me. That was the dumbest thing. Running in the woods. Bob,” she said, turning to my uncle, “bring me a wet washcloth. And the Neosporin or Polysporin, I don’t know which I brought. And a Band-Aid.”

But all my cousin was thinking now was: Let’s get away from here! Drive away! Oh hurry, hurry!

They did leave, an hour and a half later, but his father drove only about a mile down the road, to an intersection where a sign — with an arrow pointing to the right — read: SOUTH MINTON.

“Let’s take a look at the town,” he said.

“No,” Alan cried out, “let’s go on, I’m tired!”

“What’s the matter?” his mother asked.

“I’m just tired.”

“Tired?” his father repeated, with a look over his shoulder at him. “What’re you so tired from?”

“I don’t know.” He was desperate.

“Look, you’re not making sense. Go back to sleep if you want to. I just want to see the place.” And he turned in the arrow’s direction.

Alan almost dropped to the floor, to try to hide from the town. He couldn’t think and was this close to bursting out in tears and saying something about the girl, but instead he remembered the cut on his foot and said, “My foot is bothering me.”

“Oh it’ll be fine,” his mother said, “with the antibiotic and the Band-Aid.”

“It should teach you not to run barefoot where you shouldn’t,” his father said. Then, “Hey, this is a very nice town.”

But Alan didn’t look. He went back to the sofa and lay across it, below the windows, his arms across his eyes and his eyes squeezed tight, terrified that he would hear sirens coming closer behind them. Then even after they drove from the town about a half hour later, it was miles before he dared peek out a window, still half-expecting to see police cars pulling alongside of them.