Mad Season (22 page)

“I think I might know how Willy died,” she said.

* * * *

They were headed for Saratoga they said, north. Vic remembered the time he drove there with his father, it didn’t take more than a couple hours. Why, he could walk from Saratoga! They were running out of beer now, there’d be another stop, already they were looking. He could breathe easier, even cough: the loud music, the laughing, the profanity. All the way up the thruway he’d prayed for a police car to stop them, he’d pop up—and wouldn’t those guys be surprised! But only one came and sailed on past. He didn’t dare show himself, they were too drunk.

“Man, by the time that guy knows his car gone we be in Canada,” one of them said. And the other giggled and said, “Better ditch it there. Find us some fresh French meat, huh?”

Sure enough. It was a Getty station, some small town off the highway, it sold beer. They bowled in, one of them still singing. Vic spotted a phone booth, there was change, he didn’t know how much, spilled on the car floor from the last beer stop. He swept it up, crawled out of the car, raced to the booth. He found a quarter, plunked it in, asked for the Vermont number.

“Fifty cents,” said the operator. He threw in all the change he had. And the phone rang.

Sharon’s voice answered, calm, then escalating when she heard him. “Where are you!” she shrieked. When he said, “I don’t know,” she screamed louder: “Mother’s in a panic, and you don’t know where you are?”

“In a phone booth!” he shouted. “They’re coming out any minute. I left my knapsack inside.”

He’d just realized. He had to get his knapsack, it had his important stuff: his books, some baseball cards he’d traded. His map of Australia—Ronsard would grade him down if he didn’t turn it in.

“Who? Inside what? Coming out of where? Vic?”

“The ones who stole the car.”

“God, Vic, what car? What are you near? What place?”

“New York,” he said. That was all he knew.

He could hear one of them already out, yelling for the other. He’d have to hurry. He leaned into the phone, he had something important to say. “Tell Mother I found the glove by Wilder’s puzzle box,” he said. “It’s Garth’s, I seen it before.”

“What? What glove? Mother’s out by the barn, Vic, there was a fire, I’ll call her. Vic, where are you?”

“A fire?” he said. But the operator interrupted. “Another fifty cents.”

“But I don’t—” He held up his empty palm, and the phone went dead.

He scooted low, back to the car, hung over the seat to reach for his knapsack. It was wedged in the rear, he had to dive for it. He’d get it and then he’d start walking north, then east. Or hitchhike maybe, back to Branbury. No, not hitchhike. They might take him back to his father in New York and he couldn’t have that. He’d never go back there, with that woman.

The barn on fire? Jeezum! He had to get himself home, and soon. He gave a hard yank, and the knapsack came free.

But
he
wasn’t. Something had him by the seat of his pants. He gasped.

“Hey, man, looka this. We got us a little buddy here,” one of the men said, and giggled, like Vic was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, and clapped a hand over Vic’s mouth. “You want a ride? You’ll get one, kid.”

And the car lurched forward, tires screaming.

* * * *

Ruth gave Emily orders to phone the Unsworths if there was another call from Vic. But that stolen car. Who was he with? Had he stolen a car himself? He’d driven the tractor, yes, but he couldn’t drive a car. And where in New York? The police were alerted for a stolen car, somewhere in New York State. It was crazy—why couldn’t he call back, collect? Or hadn’t he thought of that? Didn’t know how? She’d sheltered him, that was the trouble. He didn’t know how to cope with the world!

But the glove—it was important to him. Important to her. He’d want her to do something about the glove, and she was going to. She pulled up to Unsworths’: Carol smiled to see her and then looked alarmed when Ruth said, “There’s a boxing glove. I want you to find it for me.”

“What?” Carol said, “Why a boxing glove?” Her face was on alert, a panther with its young in the bushes.

“I’ll explain. Now take me to Wilder’s room.”

Wilder was lying on his bed, reading a book. He looked so peaceful Ruth couldn’t believe there was a boxing glove in his room that might have struck Willy. He smiled to see her.

“Glove? Sure, Garth has a pair. I mean they’re mine. But I let him use them. Mom, it was your present.”

Carol looked distraught, like she couldn’t remember anything, even her son’s name. The police had been there, she said, found barn money—Kurt hadn’t spent it all. They’d see that Lucien got back the rest.

“I want you to find them. See if there’s a pair,” Ruth said. “Vic said he saw one in your room.”

“You heard from Vic!” Carol squealed, wanting to be glad about something.

Ruth couldn’t talk now, she had this mission, she had to get back home. To the telephone.

It seemed forever that Wilder looked. Finally he bent down to search under the bed. And there it was. A single boxing glove, for the right hand. Not big enough for Wilder now, only a young boy’s hand would fit into it. Was it big enough to hurt Willy? The police had found a left-hand glove on the creek bank. She made him search: in his room, then in Garth’s. Garth was gone and she was relieved: she didn’t want to confront the boy. She didn’t want to look at him now, he was part of that group, the Billy Marsh, Jimmy Southwick gang. They might be at the police station, those two, for all she knew, there’d been petty thefts at the other burned barns, the police had questions. Had fifth-grade boys set the fires?

But he couldn’t find the matching glove.

“I don’t understand.” Carol’s face was scarlet, tears were threatening. “Isn’t it enough you have Kurt? Garth’s only a baby.”

Ruth embraced the quivering woman; Carol was stiff in her arms. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to do this. It may not mean anything.”

Afterward she couldn’t remember leaving the house, getting into her car, stopping by the police station with the glove. She only remembered it matched the other. But somehow she got home.

And was met with two messages. The second, the most important one, Emily said, had come minutes before. Even so, Ruth scolded Emily for not calling her at Carol’s.

“But I did. You’d already left!”

Emily relayed the messages in order. The first was from the insurance inspector. “He said it was definitely faulty wiring that started the fire. One of the milking machines. It wasn’t arson at all.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Ruth, “but go on. Go on. The second message? The one you said is most important?”

A state trooper had tracked down a stolen car. “By chance, actually, Mom, he’d seen it weaving along the Northway. Two guys inside who failed a breath test but swore they didn’t have any boy in the car. But, Mom, the police found a knapsack in the back, olive-green, with kids’ books inside—and a map of Australia.”

“Vic’s!” Ruth screamed, “that was Vic’s! Why didn’t you tell them that!”

“I did!” Emily shouted. “You never listen to me, Mom.” And Ruth still wasn’t listening, she dialed Chief Fallon. “It was Vic’s, Vic’s knapsack,” she shouted over the phone. “But where’s Vic? What did they do with Vic!”

No one could tell her. They were grilling the thieves, that was all they could do, the chief would call back with any news—that was all
he
could do. The troopers were keeping the knapsack for now. The drunks claimed they’d found it in a rest area.

Now Ruth was bawling, for the first time maybe since Vic’s disappearance. The tears poured out, like someone had dumped a pail of boiling water over her head. The only thing for it was to scrub the kitchen floor. “But you only just washed it, Mom, yesterday,” Emily said. “It’s hardly dirty.”

“But not with a toothbrush. I didn’t scrub it with a toothbrush.” It felt good, down on her hands and knees. Like she was scrubbing away the sins, the sorrows of the world.

* * * *

Chief Fallon had Garth there already. Colm had left his father with a cadaver, hobbled down to the police station where Fallon was holding the gloves—they made a pair all right, he said, looking pleased. They were all there: three fifth-grade boys, looking insolent, scared, poking one another, their feet shuffling the floor. Fallon was leaning back in a chair, talking softly, like he was their uncle. He said Southwick and Marsh had denied seeing Willy that night by the creek—until Ruth brought in the boxing glove. After that they broke down. Marsh had just confessed.

“So let’s have it out, kids, the whole story,” said Fallon, sinking back into his chair, his eyes half shut.

Garth punched Marsh in the ribs, said, “Lenny Swaggart was there too, it was his idea to go down there and box.”

“Yeah,” said Jimmy Southwick, “he was there all right. He’s in seventh grade,” he told Fallon, like that excused the others—they were led on by a “big kid.”

“We fooled around till it got dark,” Garth said.

“Was that a crime?” said Southwick.

But they had nothing to do with Willy, Garth said, his voice loud, though his feet were moving, up and down, like on a treadmill, his snub nose twitching. “We just teased him a little, like we always do, I mean, it was fun, that’s all.”

“Fun to tease a boy who can’t fight back? Who doesn’t understand?” Colm said. “Fun to rub manure on a kid and steal his telescope?” He was getting hotheaded now, carried away, and Fallon put a hand on his arm.

“Go on,” the chief said to the boys. He sank lower into his chair, in a minute he’d disappear. “So what happened exactly? What did you do to, you know? Knock him around a little?”

The boys looked at Garth like they’d let him tell the story. Make up the story, Colm thought. But Garth looked innocent.

“Nothing, we did nothing,” he said in his loud young voice, his legs jogging in place, like he’d be out of here in a minute, if he kept moving. “We just went home.”

“Kids,” said Fallon after the boys were released, though he agreed with Colm they were holding something back. “Could’ve hit Willy with the glove, knocked him into the creek. Then run, scared.” But what else could he do but let them go? Book a bunch of fifth graders? “Three scared kids.”

He knew how it was, he said, he had a nephew around that age, “He don’t know his left foot from his right. That’s kids for you.”

“Willy’s dead,” Colm said. “That’s ‘kids for you’?”

* * * *

Colm and Ruth were in her kitchen: he with a whiskey, she with coffee, her fourth cup, she needed it. She was barely holding on. To take her mind off Vic, who could be lying hurt, or dead (her heart turned over) in a woods somewhere, she made him go back over the story of the boys a second time, in case he’d omitted something, she said.

Sighing, fiddling with his glasses that looked permanently crooked since the Michigan ordeal, he repeated the story of the interview, adding, yes, a detail he’d forgotten.

“I knew you’d forget something,” she accused.

“It was that blue pickup parked in the lower lot, it had a dent in the passenger door. Southwick remembered that detail—he’ll make a lawyer like his father. Harold has a blue pickup, remember? I’ve seen it parked at the fire station. Fallon will check out the dent. He’s about to close in on Harold.”

“Anything more?” she said. “Think!”

He shook his head.

“But there is. I know it and you know it.” It was Vic. She felt they were all holding out on her: Colm, Chief Fallon, even Emily and Sharon.

But he just waggled his head again—he was irritating!—and poured himself a Pepsi and a Guckenheimer, his third, she reminded him.

There had been more reporters, more sightings of Vic—that was all he could tell her. He was seen in a Getty station in the town of Saugerties, forty miles south of Albany. In a 7-Eleven east of Rochester, New York; in a shoe store up in Malone. The police were checking everything out. As for Bertha and her driver, they were out on bail till the hearing. Esther Dolley was being interrogated, though she was “too, too smooth,” Colm said. “Claims she knew nothing about anything.”

“She could have set the fires,” Ruth said. “She had the motive, she wanted the farms developed.” And then, her mind leaping from one thing to the next these days, “Did Chief Fallon question those kids? They could have set the fires!”

But Colm just spread his hands. Was he giving a blessing?

Pete had gotten his sister a lawyer, Ruth told him, her mind jumping again. “You won’t guess who.” And when Colm shook his head: “Hampton Southwick, Jimmy’s father. He’ll get her a psychologist, too, Pete says, that’s what she really needs, and for once he’s right.”

Pete was still calling every hour: on the fifth call she’d made him hang up; she needed the line clear for Vic.

Now it was ringing again, the phone.

But it wasn’t Vic.

“Something new about Garth,” she told Colm, and Colm sprang to her elbow, though one could sit in the attic and hear Chief Fallon’s booming voice.

Garth had come back with his brother Wilder, he had more to tell about Willy. The boys had left him on the bank, he was “having a fit”—Garth “remembered” that after he got home (after Wilder jogged his memory, Ruth thought). The kids got scared and took off. Yeah, he could’ve rolled into the creek, Garth admitted. They hadn’t meant to hurt Willy.

“Goddamn kids,” Fallon roared, “they need a hiding. Was Willy bleeding? I ask ‘em. And the kid remembers, ‘Yeah, he was, bleeding, yeah, bruised some, he’d got in a fight.’ Something had ripped his pants, something sharp.”

“The boots,” Colm said, nodding at Ruth. “The fat man’s boots.”

“So they told him to take a swim, the Unsworth kid says, clean off the, uh, blood. They left him then, on the bank. They never thought he’d go and, you know.”

“They just left him there, just left him,” Ruth repeated, “knowing he was hurt, was having a seizure, that anything could happen. And never reported it!”

Colm put an arm around her shoulder.

The kid was crying in the end, said the chief, his voice thundering over the wire, and so was the mother. “She come running down to the station. She was quite—you know. I see I got my hands full. But what can I do? Ten-year-old kids?”