If Jack's in Love (30 page)

I patted her back.

“What are we going to do,” she said. “We can't keep living a lie like this.”

“Sure we can. Mom, don't tell anyone, please, I'll get killed.”

We came to the house and saw the Ford in the driveway. Pop and Stan hadn't gone to Fairglade after all. But what would be the point in going to Fairglade if I didn't come along to be strangled and left in a ravine?

And then I noticed something. The flag on the mailbox was up!

“You go on in,” I told Mom.

As soon as she was out of sight I grabbed the note and stuck it in my pants.

I went inside. I heard Mom and Pop in their bedroom. I peeped into our room, the room I shared with my brother.

He wasn't there.

I snuck to the kitchen. I took the butcher knife from the drawer. When I got to the bedroom I slid it underneath my pillow. How could I bear my brother's hard eyes and grin? How could I plunge a blade into his heart? Doubt made my legs grow wobbly. I gazed about the room, searching for a way out. The night at the window grew black. I raised the screen and jutted my head out.

I read Myra's letter. It was terse and unromantic, full of business. She said she needed to see me. Would I be in the Pudding woods the next afternoon at one?

I stuck the note between the pillow and the pillowcase. I lay on the bed and listened.

Snead didn't come to visit that night. I wondered if it was over between him and Pop. I wondered if I had destroyed their friendship. Maybe Pop could no longer look him in the eyes. That would be another reason for Pop and Stan to murder me.

Atop the dresser the oscillating fan swiveled on its pivot. The thing had developed a rattle.

I practiced pulling the butcher knife from under my pillow so if I needed it in a hurry I'd know to grab the handle and not the blade.

Around eleven Stan came home. He stayed in the living room with Mom and Pop for a long time. I prayed Mom's “Help” prayer. After a while I tried chanting Gladstein's syllable.

I didn't want to know my brother. I wanted a new Pop.

I engaged in a fantasy of coming home to Mom and Mr. Gladstein instead of Mom and Pop and of Gladstein regaling us with jokes while Mom tolerantly listened. I could hear his booming voice in my mind. And then I remembered. If Gladstein were my pop I'd have to live in Jefferson Ward.

I heard footsteps.

Stan was just outside the door. The handle turned, stopped. “What?” he called.

Mom's voice was speaking from down the hall. I reached under the pillow and touched the handle of the butcher knife. Stan said something back and the doorknob turned and he came in the room.

He took off his shirt. He climbed to the bed above me.

I had my hand on the knife, under the pillow.

Stan was quiet.

Then his voice penetrated the dark.

“You little prick, you told.”

I felt the blood in my legs go cold. I breathed in; held it in. Fear spread like a dark wash over my body.

We lay in perfect silence. The oscillating fan rattled and blew and revolved away. That's all I could hear, the rattle, the electric blowing. An hour, two hours passed. It felt like forever.

I heard Stan stir. I gripped the knife. I held it under the sheet, next to my leg.

He slid down to the far edge of the bed and hopped to the floor. I saw him through the dark. He was putting on his shirt.

The bedroom door opened and he left.

I strained to hear. The front door to the house creaked open.

I crawled to the window. Stan was passing across the yard, heading in the direction of Anya's house.

I tiptoed out to the hall, opened Mom and Pop's bedroom door. Their window fan was blowing and it was hard to hear anything but the roar.

I hoarsely whispered, “Mom!”

Her head lifted.

I backed out and pulled the door closed.

She came to the hallway, clutching her robe.

“What are you doing with that knife?”

“Protecting myself. You told. I asked you not to and you did it anyway.”

“Jack, he's not going to hurt you.”

“I trusted you.”

“We can't just let him lie like that.”

“So what, are you gonna call the cops now?”

“I want Stan to tell the police. I'm giving him the chance.”

“He just left the house,” I said.

“He's not here?”

“I'm afraid of what he might do to me. Can I sleep in your room?”

“Go to bed, I'll sit with you.”

“You have to stay all night. That's what you get for telling. Plus I'll never trust you again.”

“Fine,” she said. “Give me the knife.”

She came into my room and sat in the chair next to the desk.

“When I fall asleep you can't leave, you have to stay.”

“My God,” she said, “my crazy sons.”

After some time passed she said, “Your brother didn't do anything. He was afraid, that's all. He didn't want to be arrested for something he didn't do.” She was quiet a while longer. Then she said, “I should think I know my own son. If I thought for one minute he hurt that boy I wouldn't be able to live with myself.”

I didn't say anything.

She stayed all night. I know because I was awake. At one point she started to leave and I raised my head to challenge her.

“I'm just going to the bathroom,” she said.

The fan rattled and oscillated air across my face.

“For God's sake,” she added.

“You don't believe in God,” I said.

When the morning came Stan was still gone.

ONCE MORE, for the last time, I went to the Pudding woods to await the coming of Myra. Dickie Pudding kept peeking out of his back door. After a while he strolled up to where I was.

“How come you're always hanging around my woods?”

“Don't worry about it.”

“It's my property, I have a right to ask.”

“Suck my dick,” I said.

He left and I killed time by trying to find the ring. But I was too demoralized. Obviously I'd never find it, and now it seemed stupid to have tossed it over my shoulder. I'd done it only for effect, to impress Myra.

I was jumpy from the night before. In my pocket was a pocketknife I'd filched out of the desk drawer, not nearly as effective as a butcher knife but still good to jab someone's eyes with. While I was walking to the woods I'd hugged the shoulder of the road in case I had to make a dash through the yards. Now I was listening for the rumble of Anya's GTO.

Myra already seemed to belong to a remote time in my childhood. The last I saw her she was on TV, weeping next to her mother. Now, as she came around the curve and stepped into the woods, her cheeks were dry, her face was clean and dignified. Rusty charged forth to greet me and Myra smiled a smile that said, “I have experienced great tragedy and my feelings for you are compromised by bitterness and agony, but I am willing to bestow this wary sign of regard.”

Then she flailed her arms and leapt back, believing some invisible thing was attacking her. I'd never known anyone as goofy in the woods as she was.

Finally she came on over.

“Hi Jack. I'll bet you were surprised to get my note.”

“I thought you had told me good-bye forever.”

“This time it might have to be. But I wanted to give you something.”

She held out the ring.

“Myra!”

“I came back and found it. I was walking home that day and it kept driving me crazy that you'd thrown it away. I couldn't believe you would do such a thing.”

“I've been here almost every day looking for it.”

“I know, Kathy told me. She passed by one day and saw you. She said you were practically tearing the woods to pieces.”

“Keep it, I don't want it.”

Myra regarded the jewel fondly in her palm. I was reminded of those ads where they pose a blonde in front of a velvety backdrop and she's looking at her ring in raptures while thinking about some jerk whose beaming face hovers in a circle in the corner.

“No,” she said, “I can't, I just can't.”

“To remember me with.”

“I'm not sure I want to remember you, to be perfectly honest.”

“Come on, don't forget me, I didn't have anything to do with . . .”

I didn't finish, but she knew what I meant.

“You're his brother. Every time I think about you I'm going to remember.”

“I guess,” I said.

She handed me the ring and I dropped it in my pocket without looking at it.

“Anyway,” she said.

She stared down at the Pudding house. “How's Dickie doing?”

“He doesn't talk to me anymore. No one around here does.”

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“It doesn't matter, I never had a lot of friends.”

And then out of the blue she got all teary and her face flushed. “I know, and that makes me so mad! It doesn't make any sense! I always argue with people, I tell them, ‘It doesn't matter that he's a Witcher, he's smart and he's nice and we should be nice to him.'”

“You tell people that?”

She nodded, all choked up. “I still think that. You can't help who your family is.”

“But my family...I mean—” I looked around. “My mom is nice,” I said.

Myra nodded. “She seems nice, it's just the way she looks.”

We were wringing our hands, awkward in farewell.

“Anyway,” she said.

We both swung our heads towards the Pudding house at the same time, as though for an impromptu snapshot...and then her tiny chest heaved, remembering that the occasion was sad.

“My mother is right pretty when she puts on her makeup,” I said.

“Oh, she
is
pretty, she's just different, that's all.”

I patted her arm for being nice. I suppose that's why I made my decision. I was dead anyway, and now I knew Myra had defended me against my enemies. In spite of everything she had believed in me. I had to keep one thing in mind—this was Myra, not just anyone. And I knew from books what a man owes a woman. There is a crazy nobility in attacking one's doom, if it's done for the right reason. Just as it's crazy and noble to believe what's written in books.

“There's something you need to know, Myra, and I'm not gonna ask you to keep it a secret.”

I paused, waiting for her to look at me.

“I found out something about that night. My brother's been telling the cops he was at Anya's house and that's what Anya's been saying too. But we were out walking one day and she told me Stan wasn't with her the night Gaylord disappeared. He drove off in her car around six-thirty, which is about the time Gaylord started hitchhiking on Cherokee. Anya said Stan didn't come back 'til four in the morning. She wasn't with him during that time and she doesn't know where he was or what he was doing.” I didn't mention that he was all cut up and bloodied.

Myra's face was a blank. I don't think what I had said registered. She was preoccupied with other thoughts.

“You should tell your parents,” I instructed her.

“Tell them what?”

“You don't understand, do you? Stan lied about where he was the night Gaylord disappeared. He might have done something. No one knows where he was or what he was doing.”

“You mean he wasn't at that girl's house?”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you.”

“How long have you known this?”

“I don't know. Awhile. I didn't know at first, but one day Anya told me.”

Myra's face when she was about to cry screwed up gradually, so that you could chart the progress of her emotion. It was like watching a bowl fill with water. Her face grew sadder and sadder until finally it was the very image of derangement and grief.

The next thing I knew she had landed a punch on my chest.

“Damn you, Jack Witcher! You knew all the time and you didn't say anything?”

She hit me again. Then she began to thrash blindly through the bushes, bawling and weeping. She didn't know which way to turn. Nettles and branches were scratching her limbs. Uselessly she thrashed her arms.

“Myra!”

I caught up with her and pulled her around.

“I'm sorry! Stan said he'd kill me if I told.”

Rusty remained in the clearing, watching.

“He killed my brother, that fucking asshole!” Myra pounded my shoulders.

“I'm sorry, I should have said something, it was wrong of me. But I was afraid.”

“You're a Witcher, that's what you are.”

Sobs wracked her frail body and she stopped and sucked in air. I thought she was about to choke and I touched her arm to steady her. And then she cried out and hit me again.

She slapped me, three times on the face.

And then I began to cry too.

We faced each other, weeping. Her face was all screwed up and so was mine. We kept looking at each other, blinking and wiping our noses and bawling our eyes out.

Finally she came into my arms and let me hold her. I patted her back until she calmed down, and I said, “You should tell your parents what I told you.”

She nodded.

There were sounds on the road. Someone was passing, but I didn't care, and neither did Myra. Or maybe she didn't notice. Her sobs were so loud I imagine the whole neighborhood could hear them. I'm sure the Puddings had got their fill.

“If they arrest my brother it'll be fine with me,” I said.