If Jack's in Love (23 page)

“If He's so merciful,” I said, “why does He let her get headaches in the first place?”

She didn't have a good answer, and three days later she died. I always wondered if it was because of my question.

REEDY TRACKED ME DOWN the next day, just as I was stepping into the woods next to Anya's house to do some solitary meditation. His cruiser turned onto Clark Lane and he tapped the horn.

He rolled down the window.

“This Joyner boy's disappearance is all over the news. You been watching the TV?”

“Yes sir.”

“You aren't going in the woods to smoke cigarettes, are you?”

“No sir,” I said.

He grinned to show he was only funning. “Those woods run up to the Taylors' property, don't they?”

“Yes sir.”

He began to work his jaw. “This thing with the Joyner boy is a tragedy, ain't it? We still haven't heard a word from the kid.”

I didn't say anything, I felt too much anxiety.

“I'm trying to remember,” he went on, “where was it you said you were Wednesday night?”

“I don't think I should answer any questions. Pop told me I should have an attorney present if you start asking questions.”

Reedy seemed surprised. “Hey kid, I'm just making conversation. More information I have better I'll be able to track the boy down.”

“I was home Wednesday night, you can ask Mom and Pop.”

“I don't need to ask them. Your brother was home too, right?”

“He was at the Taylors'.”

“I thought your father said he was home.”

“No, he was at the Taylors' earlier and then he came home at ten.”

“You sure it was ten?”

What if the cop had gathered intelligence that Stan wasn't home at that time? I was afraid I might be walking into a trap, so I said, “Maybe it was later. It might have been ten but I don't remember exactly.”

“That's funny, 'cause your father was dead certain your brother was home by ten. Said he was in the living room watching TV.”

“I don't know, I went to bed early.”

“So why did you just say it was later?”

“I said maybe. I was asleep, I don't really know what time it was.”

I was getting hot from the exhaust of the cruiser. It was idling gently, rocking slightly while Reedy thought over what I said.

“You usually wake up when your brother comes in the room?”

“Most of the time.”

“So you must have woke up that night.”

“I don't remember, I was sound asleep. I mean, I don't know for sure. You probably should ask other people.”

“So maybe he never came in that night. You'd have woke up if he came in, right?”

I looked down into the woods.

“I have to go, there's something I need to do.”

“What, you have an important meeting in the woods?” Reedy winked. “Okay pal, don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

He put the cruiser in drive. Just before he coasted away he said, “Your zipper's down.”

I dashed into the trees tugging the thing up.

The moment I was out of sight I whipped out a pack of Winstons. My hands were shaking so much I could barely scrape the match.

I moved down to the creek with the cigarette smoke puffing behind me like a locomotive. At the stream I jumped and kept going. I heard splashing in the Taylors' pool and the golden retriever barking. Probably someone was throwing the stick; but it wouldn't be Stan, because they had called him in to the Safeway store that morning to help with the inventory.

I sat at the edge of the woods and looked towards the pool.

After a while the gate creaked open: Anya was coming out with a towel around her shoulders. I called her name and she picked her way carefully to me in her bare feet.

“What are you doing?”

“Reedy was just asking me questions up on the road. I ain't that good at lying and I don't see why I have to say Stan was home at ten when I know he was here the whole time. Pop is crazy, he's messing everything up.”

She glanced towards the house.

“Let me get my sandals, we'll take a walk.”

It took her nearly half an hour. When she returned she was dressed in jeans and a peasant smock and sandals. Her hair stuck limply at her cheeks.

“Sorry, I jumped in the shower to wash off the pool.”

We walked along the line of the woods and turned left.

The year before, Clark Lane ended at the turn, but then bulldozers and tarring machines came along and plowed an extension through the woods clean up to Cherokee. I'd always wondered who gave the order to do so, but none of the adults I asked knew. Now, as Anya and I walked up the extension road, we kept seeing ribbons and chalk marks on the trees indicating where the borders of the new yards would be. One lot had already been cleared so a house could be built.

“Wow,” Anya said. “I guess ours was the first.”

We walked along almost to Cherokee.

“So Deputy Dawg's been hounding you,” she said, smiling at herself for putting it that way.

“That's because Pop is making me say Stan came home at ten. Reedy's getting suspicious and I don't see why it should be so important anyway.”

“Your father's weird. I don't think he likes to be proved wrong.”

That impressed me. Up to now Anya hadn't struck me as particularly bright. I wouldn't have thought to put it that way, but now that she said it I saw it was true.

“It makes me feel funny to say Stan came home at ten when I know it's a lie. And Reedy can see right through it. Why don't we go to Pop together, you and me, and get him to talk to Reedy and say he's been thinking it over and now he realizes he had his evenings wrong. I'd prefer saying Stan was at your house if that's where he was.”

“Well, I don't know about that,” Anya sighed.

“Don't know about what?”

Why was she sighing; why was she wistful?

She leapt up at an overhanging branch, tore away a leaf and held it to her nose. “What a drag, you can't even smell it, it doesn't have a scent.”

“What were you getting ready to say?”

She smiled and shook her head, scolding my inquisitiveness. She dropped the leaf and resumed walking.

I fell in beside her, not taking my eyes away. Her changeability confused me, alarmed me. Who was this weird girl?

“This whole thing has been a comedy of errors from the beginning. I'll bet you didn't see
Blow-Up
, I guess you'd be too young to get in. That movie is so far-out! It's about this photographer that accidentally takes a picture of a murder, only he doesn't realize what he's got on film until he's in his darkroom that night developing his pictures. He'd been taking pictures of Vanessa Redgrave while the murder was happening, see, but it was happening in the background and they were in a park and he didn't realize what was going on until later when he's blowing up the pictures and he sees what he's got on film and it blows his mind in like a million pieces. It's like he filmed this murder and he didn't even know it, he was just out buying antiques or something. No, wait, that happens later, after he wrestles with two chicks that don't have their clothes on.... I don't know, I might be telling it wrong. Anyway, the point is, he sees this murder that he has on film.”

I had the feeling she was trying to tell me something pertinent. It was a parable maybe, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

“And then later when he goes back to the murder scene to find the body it's been moved, which means maybe it was never really there, you don't know. And then this troupe of mimes comes along and they're playing tennis with invisible rackets and this invisible ball goes flying through the air and falls to the ground and the camera keeps following it even though it's invisible and you have to imagine that you're seeing it, which is the best part of the whole movie because it's like you can see the ball even though it's not there, I mean, you know it's not there but you can still see it and it's like if you're high it's so groovy because you're thinking, What's going on, man, this is so mind-blowing!”

“I don't understand why you're telling me this.”

“Well, the point the movie is making is that you can't always trust what you think you see. Sometimes the things you see aren't really there, and then other times you don't see what's right before your eyes.”

“Does that mean you saw something or didn't see something ?”

She turned with a confused smile. “I didn't see anything, what are you getting at? I'm just telling you about a movie.” Then she burst into a laugh that echoed up and down the doomed verdure of Clark Lane.

“Oh God, you must think—”

She dashed ahead and slapped at some overhanging leaves and tossed them to the road. When I caught up with her she shrieked and flung herself at me. Then she seized my shoulders; she stared at me severely and pushed me back at arm's length. “I'm gonna tell you something that you can't repeat to a soul. You promise? Not a word.”

“What are you gonna tell me?”

I was too full of dread to hear more.

“I'm not telling unless you promise me first.”

“Maybe I don't want to know.”

“Okay, so maybe you'd be better off not knowing. That's groovy, I can dig that.”

“No, tell me.”

“You haven't promised.”

“Okay, I promise.”

“You can't say it like that. A promise is sacred, you have to mean it.”

I gave it a few seconds and then I said, “Okay, I promise, I mean it.”

Anya peered into the depths of my eyes. “You swear?”

And then she sighed, and we began to walk. “The truth is, Stan wasn't with me the whole night, he went out in my car for a while.”

“For how long?”

“Well like, there was this guy going to sell him a nickel bag and I let him use my car. He went downtown so he could meet the guy.”

“He went downtown to buy grass?”

“Yes.”

“Oh great, and here we've been telling Reedy—”

“Don't forget, you promised.”

“What time was it when he left the house?”

“Around six-thirty, seven.”

“But that's when—”

I sat in the road. I don't know how it happened. I was walking and then I was sitting and the asphalt was burning through my pants.

Anya covered her mouth and giggled. “Why did you sit down?”

I gazed up at her. “How long was he gone?”

“Oh man, the whole thing got all messed up. Once Stan got downtown the cat didn't have the dope because he had lost his wheels somehow, and they had to drive to some apartment complex in Southside and Stan says the cat they met there tried to rip him off, and you know Stan when someone tries to rip him off. I'm not sure what exactly went down, but when he came home he was all cut up and bloodied. It was around four in the morning and he still didn't have any grass, which was a bummer 'cause I'd been waiting all that time to get high. . . .”

I looked up...I saw a buzzard . . . the smell of a dead thing wafted through the trees...these crazy crickets in the woods were crying . . .

Anya stood over me.

“Here.”

She offered her hand. I took it, got up.

“I've never seen anyone do that, you dropped just like a sack of potatoes.”

“So now you're saying Stan wasn't with you when Gaylord disappeared.”

“Oh, he was and he wasn't. Listen, if anything bad happened I would have known. I can sense Stan's presence even when he's not around. I can pick up his mood when I'm like miles and miles away from him. I feel his presence now, as we speak.”

I brushed gravel and sand from my pants and started back the way we came.

“Where are you going?”

“Home. I feel like throwing up.”

“Come on, Jack, he didn't do anything. He was just trying to cop some grass. Don't you love your brother? You should love him, everything is about love.”

“Are you high?”

“Yeah daddy, on flowers and leaves. I'm high on that buzzard up there.”

She caught up and walked me home.

I FOUND MOM in the kitchen, in misery. Her chin was on her palm and she was contemplating the dishwater fingers of the other hand splayed upon the table. She suffered terrible postmigraine depressions and every new attack brought her a fresh understanding of the brutality of existence.

I was in shock, meanwhile, from having learned, without the possibility of error, that my brother had done evil to Gaylord. I had suspected it all along, but now it seemed worse. Stan had returned to the Taylors' all cut up and bloodied. Bloodied! I looked at my mother and tried to tell her with my eyes. I was bound not to say it, so I tried to make her
perceive
my dread and apprehension.

Pop peeked in the kitchen and went away. Mom drummed her fingers once and stopped. I went over to massage her shoulders and she hummed “Mmmm.”

“Where have you been?” she said.

“Out with Anya.”

“Oh, that crazy girl . . .”

Her voice, perhaps her mind, had no reserves, no fight, and she surrendered languidly to the massage. I felt her shoulders grow slack under my kneading touch.

“Do you think Stan is going to marry that girl?”

I hadn't thought any such thing. My brother's marrying was the last thing I would have considered. But women's minds do run in that direction, and now I tried to imagine it: Stan and Anya in a neat house with a wooden fence. For some reason I pictured Grandma's house in Lakeside, my ideal of domestic success.