All for One (41 page)

Stop sign... There was a stop sign there. At Crowley and Trask. The traffic on Trask had to stop for the traffic on Crowley.

...had killed her father.

But...
The old fact slipped into her present consciousness without warning. Something she had snuck a peek at. A newspaper story about the accident.
‘...traveling south on Trask Avenue...
’ Just that morsel. That was all she could... No, there was more. ‘
...the pickup, travelling south on...
’

Pickup? South on Trask?
Her father drove a pickup, but the stop sign was on Trask. How could he have been going south on Trask?

‘...on Trask toward...’

“Was it Mr. Bannister?”

Energy surged in Mary, driving the muddled and obviously mistaken recollections out and steering her attention to Dooley. Her body and thoughts felt instantly light, buoyant without joy. “What did you say?”

He puzzled briefly at the sharpness of her response. “I asked if it was anything
with Mr. Bannister
?”

But that wasn’t what he said. Something was putting the words there, right where Dooley’s mouth was saying ‘with the other kids’. He wanted to know if Bryce had had any kind of trouble with the others. With...

...Bannister...

...Joey, or PJ, or Jeff, or...

...Mr. Bannister?

...Michael? That’s what Dooley was asking.

“No,” Mary told him, the word getting out just before the acidy taste rushed up her throat, burning as it came...

Bannister. You remember.

noshedoesnt

...up, burning until she remembered to swallow, to swallow hard and make it go down. Stay down.

I don’t remember any Bannister
, Mary thought, fighting the volley of words, fighting...(
It’s me, isn’t it? It’s all me
)...herself.

Yes, you do.

shhhenoughnowshhhhh

No, I don’t!

There was no Bannister. She knew no Bannister. What was a Bannister, anyway?

That’s why you can’t tell.

SHUT UP! LEAVE HER ALONE!

You’re afraid to tell him who did it.

SHUT UP! NOW! OR I WILL—

You’re afraid to tell because of Mr. Bannister.

Mary’s eyelids pressed together in a blink that felt warped to slow motion, and in the fleeting darkness behind her eyes she saw the hound very close, closer than it had ever been, pure, hot light spewing through its angry eyes and from the frothing gape of its mouth. Little beads of bright white spittle sprayed from the sharp points of its fangs, each glowing fleck hissing as it fell away into the endless black inner world.

And then her eyelids parted, the blink ending, and Dooley was there, still there, looking at her, time creeping as if drawn forward by a team of sloths.

Don’t be afraid.

Mary tried to focus on Dooley as the voices still came. She watched the sluggish motion of his lips, asking if she was sure that nothing had happened between Bryce and his friends.

You can tell him.

She wanted so much just to close her eyes and fall toward him, if only to be caught in his arms.

You know who did it, Mary. Tell him.

To fall. To fall and be caught in open arms.

Tell him before it’s too late.

The plea hung there in a silence that had come with it and seemed near total. Echoing in and of itself in thought. Chipping at her reluctance, her resistance. At her belief (reality?) that she did not know. Making her think, think, think, think that she might know. She might know who did it. And making her think that if she thought some more, thought hard, she would know who had done it. Who had killed Guy. Yes, she could know, because somewhere inside she did know, and she simply had to find that place (
...before it’s too late.
) and open it up and look inside to know. And she thought she would, was right there and ready to look for that place, when the little pictures began flashing off in her head like a slide show. Image after image after image, all the same, cast upon the black screen of her mind in rapid, repetitive succession, red and white, eight sides, one word, on a pole.

Stop.

Stop signs. Stop signs. Hundreds of stop signs. Like the one at Crowley and Trask. Stop signs.

Her thoughts fuzzed, and all she could think of were Stop signs. Nothing else. Not
knowing
. Not
telling
. Just Stop signs.

rrrrrriiiiight

“I didn’t see anything happen,” Mary said, answering that which he had asked an eternal instant before.

Dooley nodded, accepting what she said. “If you had, would you tell me?”

Mary looked at him for a very long moment as honesty crept cautiously up within. “I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry I took up your time,” Dooley said, and Mary turned very quickly away and got into her car. He loitered at its front and watched her. When the engine started and the lights came on she looked out at him, one sweep of the wipers clearing the condensation from the windshield. She held him with those eyes. Those beautiful eyes, at one moment ebullient and the next suffered.

Those eyes
, Dooley sighed mentally as Mary backed out of the parking space and drove away. They were one color, and belonged to one woman, but a thousand things seemed to be going on behind them.

Thirty Five

At five after seven, her husband on his way to work, Caroline Hool began the morning ritual of getting the kids out of bed.

Bryce always came first. He was far more self sufficient than the twins, particularly in the process of dressing. He knew that armholes were for arms, not little heads that went into gigglefits when trying to squeeze through them. Tying shoes was no problem for him—the girls were still at the Velcro stage. Thank God for the inventor of that magic little fastener, Caroline Hool had often thought.

After the twins, she had also taken to thanking whoever had dreamt up the vasectomy.

She knocked on her son’s door, then entered and went to his bed. Usually she found him on his back, covers rumpled, arms askew above his head, one leg dangling toward the pillow that somehow always found its way to the floor.

This morning he was curled up beneath his comforter, head sunk deep into the down pillow, his eyes open and sad.

“Bryce? Honey, what is it?”

“I don’t want to go to school today,” he said.

Caroline Hool touched his forehead and the back of his neck. He did not protest this time. “You don’t feel hot. What’s wrong?”

“My stomach. It hurts.” It was not a lie. But it was not the whole truth either. It was not a ‘sick’ hurt that ailed him, and it came from a place he could not point his mother to.

She peeled back the covers and made him lay flat. Her hand felt beneath his pajama top, probing his midsection.

He hasn’t had his appendix out...

“Does it hurt here?” she asked, pressing down into the softness above his right hip.

“No. It’s way down inside.”

She shook her head and straightened up. He’d come home early from the pageant last night, but that was a headache. Had it migrated, or had something he’d eaten not agreed with him?

Something he’d eaten...

“Did you have any of your Halloween candy last night?” she asked cautiously. He still had some saved. Some, but not much. Really he didn’t get much that night, she recalled fretfully.
Busy with other things.
She pushed that thought away and returned her focus to him.

He shook his head, and so did she again.

“Well, you can’t go feeling like this,” Caroline Hool agreed. Bryce had never tried to get out of going to school. His illnesses were usually more obvious. Runny nose and cough—a cold. Throwing up and diarrhea—the flu. But a stomach ache could be just the beginning of something. Yes, better to have him at home where she could give him juice and watch for the first sign of a temperature.

She pulled the covers back up and brushed her hand over his hair.

He curled into a ball and turned away from his mother.

“You just rest, honey. I’ll check on you in a while.”

Bryce stared at the window after his mom left the room. Condensation trickled down the inside of the pane like tears.

But he couldn’t cry anymore. Letting that out would do no good.

But letting out something else?

His stomach burned hot at the thought. He swallowed the pain, his eyes dry and frightened.

*  *  *

That afternoon, a little past four, Dooley stopped by the Hool household and learned from Bryce’s giddy sisters that their big brother was a big baby playing sick in his bed. Caroline Hool gave him the adult version, which coincided with the girls’ petulant diagnosis in the fact that she could find nothing physical obviously ailing him. Dooley’s gut told him the three women of the Hool household were right on the money.

He excused himself from Caroline Hool’s company and went toward the back of the house. Bryce’s door was closed tight. Dooley gave the door a soft backhanded knock and let himself in.

“Hi there,” he said when he saw Bryce, the comforter pulled up to his chin, eyes on the ceiling. They moved to Dooley as he shut the door and came near to the foot of the bed. “Feeling down, huh?”

A small nod pressed Bryce’s chin in and out of the downy comforter.

“You want to tell me about it?” Dooley asked, and the way Bryce looked at him he knew the lie would not exist between them.

“No,” Bryce said. His stare tracked back to the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

Something had happened with his friends. Dooley knew it for certain now. Bryce’s mom drops him at the auditorium to help set up for selling cookies and milk or whatever it was, and an hour later she’s called back by the principal to pick up her ‘sick’ son. Who was he with during that time?

They came down on him. They knew.

But how did they find out? He’d been careful to park his car in the Hool garage, and they’d only gone out that one time in public, just to get an ice cream and fool around with the video games at the store. Dooley thought he’d been careful enough, but he obviously hadn’t.

So they knew. All right. Let it be that way. Let Bryce see what kind of friends his friends really were. Dooley suspected he’d gotten a taste of that in those ninety minutes the night before. That was good. Upsetting for Bryce, but good all the same. It was that boil lancing analogy again, painful but necessary.

And maybe useful. Maybe just enough to make Bryce no longer one of them. To bring him out.

“I’m sorry that it had to happen, Bryce,” Dooley said. He paced from the bed and stood at the window. “I know they’re your friends.”

Bryce’s teeth picked at the healing welt inside his lip.
Friends
, he thought, ambivalent to the concept. Was he their friend anymore? Were they his? It was awful not knowing for sure, but he thought it would be even worse knowing if the answer turned out to be ‘no’. He’d gotten into this because they were his friends. He’d stuck it out, through the hard parts like now with the man who seemed like he really liked him standing a few feet away. The man who wanted to know who did it, and who wanted Bryce to tell. He hadn’t told yet, promised himself he wouldn’t, would never rat on his friends.

But what if they were no longer his friends?

He snapped out of the thought as the coppery taste hit his tongue. He’d opened the welt again.

Dooley looked out the bedroom window, toward the trees receding into Bigfoot Woods, the forest growing thick and dark as it marched up the slope. “You think you know people, you think they’ll always stick by you, and then one day it changes.” He snapped his fingers close to the window pane. “Like that.”

Yeah
, Bryce thought, only he hadn’t just thought it; he’d actually said ‘Yeah’, just above a whisper, but that was loud enough. When his eyes left the ceiling they found Dooley looking right at him.

Close, Dooley knew. Oh so close. He had to move carefully now. Especially now. “Let’s not talk about that right now. Like you said, it doesn’t matter.”

“Okay,” Bryce concurred. His hands pulled the covers down a bit and he eased back against the stack of pillows, coming into a half sit against them. He watched Dooley go over to the long-low shelf across the room and study the chess board. They’d played several times now, Bryce always winning, and had started a new match two days ago.

“Do you feel like finishing?” Dooley asked.

“Not right now,” Bryce said. It wasn’t a matter of time, or of the dull anguish that was covering him like a slow motion avalanche. It was infinitely simpler than that. He’d looked at the board, too, and he knew it was mate in three. And he didn’t want to tell Dooley that he was going to lose another.

Why?
Bryce asked himself when the oddity of that feeling found a clear spot in his thinking. Why did he care one way or another about telling Dooley? Would it hurt his feelings? It might.
So?

I don’t want to hurt his feelings,
Bryce answered his own challenge, sensing something new, yet familiar in the way he was feeling about Dooley. Something unspoken, but there nonetheless, the way it had been there between he and Michael and Joey and PJ and Jeff and Elena that day, that very instant that they started this whole thing. With them, at that moment, it had been a connection born of their friendship, strong and almost overpowering. A kinship that seemed eternal, unbreakable. Yet so soon after that it had started to come apart, little by little, doubts filling the cracks that had opened in their friendships like water seeping into the fissures of some mighty rock. Water that, when troubling winds rose cold, would freeze to ice and fracture the mighty rock into so many pieces.

That was how it was with them now. They were coming apart. He was just the first piece to give way to the strain.

And the man in his room now? Was it the first buds of a new friendship that Bryce was feeling? The kind of lopsided friendship that a kid could have with an adult, where they were supposed to be the wiser one and keep their younger cohort from harm? Was that what was happening here?