In the Dead of Summer (18 page)

“I’m going to trust in nursery rhymes. Names can never hurt me,” I said. “Because I don’t care what anybody calls me. I will
never
let anyone intimidate me out of what I know is right. I will never shut up and stand by, go along with something loathesome. I will never be a ‘good German’!”

I hoped that what I was saying was true. I had had to hear it out loud, but it wasn’t easy getting it out. It had to make its way bumpily up through my vocal cords, over the bangings of my panicking heart. But the more I said, the more words demanded airtime. “These days there’s too much tolerance for hate and no tolerance for anything else,” I heard myself say. “My car radio’s broken, and I don’t mind. I don’t want to hear it. It’s all about hate—all sorts of hate, who wants to make cruel fun of whom. Why doesn't anybody call in to say it’s
wrong
to be so ugly, so undemocratic, so
un-American
? When did it get fashionable to hate and to be right out front about it, to
sell
it, even? The rappers, the INS, the Limbaughs, the skinheads, the woman haters, the anti-Semites, the gay bashers? This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This is too cheap, too easy, too ugly, too ignorant and stupid. I refuse to be any part of it!”

I was close to shouting. Going to flunk deportment, if we still had such niceties. I took a series of deep breaths. Slowly, my blood level simmered down until I could see my class clearly again. Not a one of them spoke, or moved. They were gape-mouthed, incredulous.

I didn’t know if they’d heard or cared about a single word I’d said, or if they’d merely been dazzled by the sight of a teacher going stark-raving mad.

I sighed. “This city started as an experiment in tolerance. Now, we’ve been voted the Most Hostile City in the United States,” I said. “Please don’t think the new title is something we have to keep justifying. That’s all I was trying to say.”

And that was that. Despite my rhetoric, I spent the rest of the interminable morning fighting and defeating—then fighting again—the urge to give up. I wanted to be out of the mix, out of the messes people made. Uninvolved and absent. Unafraid.

But capitulating out of fear meant I was letting the anonymous
them
call the shots, and I’d be damned first. I took more deep breaths.

“Woody?” I said at the end of class. “Could you stay a moment? I have a question about your exam.”

His eyes widened, then he flicked a glance from his buddy across the aisle back at me. Woody did not look well. His skin had a jaundiced undertone and dark shadows under his eyes. Earlier in the summer he’d looked frighteningly angry. Now, he looked just plain frightened. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

His buddies, accepting the idea that he was in academic trouble, didn’t question me when I closed my classroom door to have privacy.

Woody slouched in a front row chair, legs straight out. His T-shirt was black, against which a single large red rose glowed. But what initially appeared to be a pearl of dew on one petal was actually a drop of blood. The image reminded me of the dark side of fairy tales—the pricked finger, the deep sleep.

Woody was trying hard to look bored, tapping his fingers on his black jeans and keeping his eyes focused on the ceiling.

“Tell me what’s going on,” I said. “Be straight
with me.”

He stared as if I’d spoken in tongues. Then he took a deep breath and leaned forward. I felt a flutter of optimism. “I don’t have stuff to say.
You
said you wanted to talk about my paper.”

My optimism collapsed in a dusty heap. “Cut it out. You didn’t hand in an exam and we both know it.” He had gone on automatic pilot, looking outraged by the suggestion of a no-exam scam, but his eyes dulled and he shrugged and closed his mouth as if protest weren’t worth it. “And that’s not the issue now,” I continued. “You were distraught. I’ll let you make it up.”

He still said nothing, but he looked willing to listen, so I kept going. “Yesterday you said you felt responsible for what had happened to April, that she was dead and it was your fault. Why? What happened?”

He shook his head and redirected his eyes to the tips of his clunky shoes.

“Okay, then I’ll suggest something. You and April spent time together every night.”

He settled back in his chair and looked like his formerly smug self. “How could we? She worked, you know.”

“Yes, and I know you got her the job. Is that why she made up a name for the place? Or because it was a sleazy operation?”

His smirk faded and he swallowed before he finally spoke. “Both. And because Buddy was white and her brother didn’t want her to work for whites. And because Buddy didn’t put her on the books and he said she shouldn’t say she worked there. Okay, now?”

“And—look, I can’t resist—did you really date Lacey Star?”

He rolled his eyes. “Not exactly
date
,” he said.

I didn’t ask for further clarification. “But about April—you must have known she didn’t work the hours she told her family. All I can figure is that you saw each other, secretly, from ten to eleven, until her brother picked her up.”

He sighed. “You aren’t making sense.”

“Then help me out. The day I saw the two of you on the bench, she was upset. It didn’t look like a casual encounter. In fact, it looked deadly serious. She disappeared that night.”

“Are you saying
I
—”

“Not necessarily, but I have to believe you had more than a casual relationship, and that you know a whole lot that’s important. What I can’t imagine is why, if you didn’t hurt her yourself, you aren’t telling the police.”

He shrugged. He was a virtuoso with the gesture and used it much too often, as if it summed up his entire existence.

“So are you saying the rumors are true?” I asked. “Did she have a second job at a massage parlor?”

“April? No way in hell she’d—you knew her. She was going to go to college, be something. That’s all she’d talk about, almost. How could you believe that kind of
…
of stuff?”

I waited.

“Okay, listen.” Woody leaned forward in his seat. He looked drawn, much older than his years. He sounded that way, too. World-weary, ancient. “Yes. I have a part-time job at a gas station. I get off at ten, too. I used to meet her and spend an hour with her before she was picked up.”

“Her brother picked her up every night?”

“Him or somebody else he knew. Her family wouldn’t let her ride the bus at that hour. I’d have driven her home, but it would have made too much trouble. But we didn’t do anything wrong, her and me. We had a lot to talk about. She knew things. She was wise in a way that… Anyway, we kept a low profile because there wasn’t any time, really, and because—”

“Your father. I remember.”

He looked surprised. “But the night she disappeared? I didn’t see her. I went where we met, except she wasn’t there. I waited fifteen minutes, then I went to Buddy’s, but it was locked up. I figured maybe she hadn’t worked that night—she was upset after school. Maybe Thomas had come early, that she’d gone home, so that’s what I did, too. Go home. Don’t blame me for not wanting to tell the cops. You really think they’ll buy that story? Even if it is the truth? How about my father? Or Thomas, who was doing everything on earth to keep us from each other?”

“Where did you meet every night? Maybe she went there, got there early—she never went to work that night—and maybe there’s a witness who saw her there and knows what happened.”

“We met at the comer where she
was
seen. By the witness. The one who saw her get into a van.”

“At eleven.”

“Lookit,” he said. “I know you mean well. No offense, but you don’t understand a thing that’s going on and you’d be best off if you didn’t push, you know? It’s not something you can make better. And I’m not talking about April and me. All I can say is no matter what you might hear or think, I never would have hurt her. I never put a hand on her or took her anyplace in that van or in anything else that night—I didn’t even see her—and that’s the truth. We were close, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t spread that around, okay? To my pals, the Vietnamese aren’t… And April didn’t like my being with them, either.”

“But I still don’t…you said you were responsible…”

“For her being killed.” He swallowed hard, then nodded. “I’m going to feel rotten about it until I’m dead, too. But not because I did it.”

“Then what? How?”

“Why aren’t you asking the creep she worked for? Telling the police about him?”

“I did.”

“Good. He was always coming on to her, touching her, making bad jokes. Big mistake, my listening to Lacey and getting April that job. I told her to quit, but she needed the money. She was going to go to college, no matter what.”

His words hung in the air.
No matter what
couldn’t include the
what
of being abducted. That
what
mattered.

“This is making me crazy, Woody. All other issues aside, I have to say it again, I know what I saw on the bench that afternoon, and—”

He stood up, and I realized with a start how large and menacing he could be.
“No!”
he said. “You
don’t
know what you saw, you only think you do.” His skin grew paler and the premature lines on it seemed to deepen before my eyes. “Look, Ms. P., there’s this story my last English teacher told us about a bunch of blind people trying to see an elephant. One touches a leg and says oh, yeah, an elephant is a tree trunk. And one maybe touches the tail and says you’re wrong, it’s a snake. And one touches a side and says it’s a wall, and—”

“I’m familiar with that story.”

“Then you should understand. No offense, but you’re like one of those blind people. You saw a little piece of something and from that you made up a whole thing—only the thing you made up is wrong. Not the real thing at all.”

“Then tell me what I saw.”

“I can’t. I swear it. It’s a matter of life and… I sound like bad TV. But we’re talking about something serious. What you should understand is that those blind guys who thought they saw the elephant could feel real good about their tree trunks and their snakes. But if they didn’t get out of the way, the thing they didn’t see—the elephant—could kill them.” He paused and folded his arms across his chest and waited for some kind of response.

I stood up, too. I resented having him lecture me from above, which provided a sudden moment of insight where I saw myself looming over students day after day. “Meaning what?” I asked Woody quietly. We were still not nearly at eye level, and I had to tilt my head back a bit.

“Meaning you have to stop thinking you know what you’re seeing. You could get trampled. You’re not a bad person, and neither am I. I’m trying to help you. You could get in trouble. Real bad. Please don’t.” And without waiting for my response, without even a flicker of interest in how I would respond, he walked to the door.

“Is that what happened to April?”

He turned back, one hand gripping the doorknob. “What do you mean?”

“Did she see too much? Did she ask the wrong
questions? Does what happened to her have to do with those other things I don’t understand?”

“Please,” he said. “Please. I’m taking care of it myself. Trust me. I’m doing what she wanted, doing my best already. Don’t push me.”

But I had one more push left. I picked up the yellow paper from my desk. I hated to even touch it, to reacknowledge its existence. “Is this the elephant?” I asked quietly.

He blanched. “Jesus, Miss P., don’t—what is that? The thing you were talking about? Why’re you showing it to me? I feel like I’m going crazy! How’d you get that? Where? Why does everything have to do with me?”

He looked enormous—and fragile. A brittle tree about to topple. Either I was seeing him for the first time or something had changed about him, drastically. He seemed a victim, not a thug. “Woody,” I said in a near whisper, “are you in trouble, too? Do you need help?”

He rolled his eyes, raised his brows, almost grinned, then grimaced as if in pain. Expressions spilled one into the other, combining shock, near-laughter, the suggestion of tears, and, I thought, fear—all at once, as if I’d said something so beyond belief—and perhaps also so true—that there was no possible response except incredulity.

“Thanks for asking,” he said in a strained, low voice. And then he was gone.

So much for my
Would he? Ask him.
It hadn’t worked the way I’d hoped, to put it mildly. I sat back down at my desk, semiconvinced that if I waited long enough, some all-encompassing idea would come along, something that clarified the situation. I wanted to feel more certain than I did that Woody truly had nothing to do with April’s disappearance—but he had such an air of desperation clinging to him and was so adamantly close-mouthed that I wondered. Had he done it? If not, did he know who had? Did he know why?

And what was the greater, further danger he repeatedly warned me about? What was the elephant I couldn’t see?

My thoughts circled, swallowing themselves like cerebral serpents. Give it up, I counseled myself. Maybe April had truly gone for a kinky joyride. There’d been a recent news story like that. An entire town searching for a girl thought abducted by a stranger. She came back—at the stranger’s insistence. She refused to press charges, because she’d willingly, enthusiastically, gone.