Chain Letter (6 page)

Tony did not know how long he sat there, the flashlight
forgotten in the dirt. The next thing he was aware of was Kipp shaking him, seeming
to call his name from the other end of a long tunnel. He raised his head with effort,
found the others gathered in a half circle at his back.

“Is he dead?” Kipp asked. He was sober. His eyes had never looked so wide. He knelt
by the man and felt for a pulse at the wrist.

“Looks it,” Tony heard himself say.

Kipp touched the blood at the mouth. It was
not
dry. “Looks like he’s been dead awhile.”

The hope that swelled in Tony’s chest was as bright as it was brief. “I don’t think
so,” he said softly.

“You’re saying
we
hit him?” Kipp asked, startled. Tony was thankful for the
we.
Before he could respond, Fran, Brenda, and Joan freaked out.

“I told you to slow down, Tony!” Fran squealed. “I told you when we were leaving the
parking lot. I said, ‘Tony, you’re driving too fast.’ ”

“You imbecile.” Joan swore.
“You
told him to turn off his lights.”

“I never said that! I didn’t mean it!”

“But it was
you
, Joan, who turned off the lights!” Brenda shouted. “You were so mad and drunk that
you . . . ”

“If I was drunk, who gave me the beer?” Joan shot back. “You! You brought the beer.
You kept shoving it down our throats. No wonder Tony didn’t know where he was going.
Which doesn’t leave you out, Ali. You’re the one who told him to come down this damn
road.”

“You’re right,” Alison said. The acceptance of responsibility had a quieting effect
on the group. Alison came and knelt beside him, touching his arm. “What should we
do, Tony?”

“I don’t know. Find out who he is, I suppose.” Tony was hoping Kipp would take the
initiative. He didn’t want to touch the guy. Kipp understood and began to go through
the pockets. He should have closed the eyes first. With each touch of the body, they
rolled slightly.

“He doesn’t have a wallet,” Kipp pronounced a minute later. “How could a guy this
well dressed not be carrying a wallet? Someone must have raked him over, already.
I tell you, we didn’t kill him.”

The sand was working its way under Tony’s collar. The wind was warm and dry, a desert
wind, uninterested in human affairs, hard to breathe. Like giant web-weaving spiders,
dark tumbleweeds scraped the edge of their tiny circle of light. The man stared on,
fascinated with what they couldn’t see.

“It may have fallen out,” Tony said. “Let’s look for it.”

Kipp was the only one who searched for the wallet. He found nothing. He hiked back
to the car to check the fender. That piece of evidence was crucial. Had the man been
standing or lying down when they had hit him?

There was a dent in the fender, Kipp reported when he
returned, but he said it was the same dent that had always been there. Tony could
have sworn that there had not been a scratch on Kipp’s car when the evening had begun.

Fran and Brenda began to cry. Joan started to pace. Neil maintained his motionless
stance outside the glow of the flashlight and Alison continued to kneel by Tony’s
side, her head bowed. Kipp finally closed the guy’s eyes. Not a car came by, not a
person spoke. Tony checked his watch. They were running out of night, running out
of time to . . .

Get rid of the body?

“We’ll put him in the trunk,” he said finally. “The authorities will be able to identify
him.” He waited for an objection and he probably would have been willing to wait till
tomorrow night to get one. Kipp did not disappoint him.

“No way, you’re not putting him in my car.”

“Kipp, we can’t just leave him here.”

“Sure we can!” Joan cried, stopping her pacing and taking up a defiant stance on the
other side of the body. She was no longer a sexy seventeen year old. She was a desperate
woman. “My old man’s a cop. I know those jerks. They’ll question us separately. Fran
and Alison will blab their mouths off. The cops will put the story together. Look,
I admit it, I was the one who turned off the lights. I could be laid with a real heavy
rap. Let’s just get out of here. Let’s just forget it.”

“I agree completely,” Kipp said. “Tony, someone else killed this guy. He was probably
killed miles away and dumped here.
Listen, there’s no parked car in the vicinity, there’s no wallet, there’s no dent . . . ”

“There is a dent!” Tony exploded, and perhaps it was a last grasp at sanity. This
craziness they were talking about, he knew, would follow them from this spot. But
it was so tantalizing, so easy.

“There already was a dent!” Kipp yelled back. “I should know, it’s my car. Don’t you
see,
it’s my car.
Even if I was too drunk to be driving it, I’m as guilty as you are. We all are.”

“I’m not,” Fran whined.

“Shut up, or we’ll run you over next!” Joan snapped.

“I’m for splitting,” Brenda said. “He’s already dead, what can we do for him?”

They thought about that for a minute and at the end of the minute, nothing had changed.

“I was driving,” Tony said, forcing the ugly words out. “This was my fault. I should
have . . . I shouldn’t have drunk . . . I say we . . . We have to . . . ” His throat
was so dry, he couldn’t finish. It was this damn wind, blowing straight up from hell.
Kipp grabbed his arm and began to plead. He was given a sympathetic ear.

“You’re eighteen, legally an adult. I know the law. You’ll get manslaughter. And for
what? Something you might not have done? Brenda’s right, he’s dead, we can’t help
him. We can only ruin our lives. Listen to me, Tony, I know what I’m talking about!”

Tony did not answer. He was waiting for Neil to speak. A word from Neil and he would
turn himself in. But Neil trusted him to do what was right. Neil had always thought
he was one super hero. Neil did not give him the word.

“If we won’t go to the police,” Alison said finally, “then we must at least bury him.
We must show some decency.”

“Would that be OK, Tony?” Kipp asked desperately. “We could say a prayer?”

So sorry, young sir.

Tony nodded, closing his eyes. That’s how it was with prayers. They were always said
when it was too late.

· · ·

They carried the body fifty paces into the field, the skeletons of the sun-baked bushes
grabbing for them like the claws of the cursed. They did not have a shovel. They used
the bar that undid the wheel bolts, a large screwdriver and their bare hands to dig
with. The ground was hard. The grave was shallow.

Fran gave them a brief scare when she suddenly jumped and screamed that the man was
groaning. A quick check, however, showed that that was nonsense, and Joan belted Fran
on the back of the head and dared her to open her mouth again.

They lowered him without ceremony, folding his hands across his heart, leaving what
could have been a wedding ring on his finger. They begged Neil not to do it, but he
insisted
upon draping his crucifix around the man’s neck just before they replaced the soil.
They said one Our Father.

They found the freeway with remarkable ease. The return route was not complicated.
Tony remembered it well. Had he a desire or a need to return to the gravesite, he
would have had no trouble.

T
he rehearsal was going lousy. This early in the morning—before first period—it was
always hard to concentrate. Alison would have preferred working on
You Can’t Take It with You
after school, but their drama teacher, Mr. Hoglan, had the erroneous belief that
they were freshest closest to sunrise and could give him their best effort only when
the birds were singing. Fran’s swiping of the living room props was not helping matters.
Alison had difficulty getting into her Alice role when she was supposed to look out
the window and she had to stare into a featureless wall. But the biggest problem this
morning was Brenda, who was playing Alice’s sister, Essie. Essentially, the play was
about Alice’s introduction of her fiancé’s super-straight parents to her own super-wacky
family. Brenda, though she would never admit it, was effective only
when playing weird characters. Essie’s constant spastic dancing and frequent airhead
one-liners created a role perfectly suited to her talents. Brenda, however, had already
made it clear she disliked portraying “an unattractive geek.” She was going out of
her way this morning to reemphasize the point. She had added loudmouthed brain damage
to Essie’s character. In other words, Brenda was trying to drown out the rest of the
cast. She was getting on Alison’s nerves.

Normally, Alison loved being on stage. Turning into someone else seemed entirely natural
to her. In her brief career she had played a conniving cat, a seductive vampire, a
spoiled daughter, and even a psychotic murderer, and she had had to wonder if she
hadn’t at one time been all those things in past lives—she had felt so at home in
their brains. But she realized a lot of her pleasure from acting came from simple
ego gratification. She loved having people’s attention totally focused on her.

“Let’s go again,” Mr. Hoglan called from the last row of the small auditorium. A short,
pear-shaped middle-aged man with a thin gray beard and a thick jet black toupee, he
was a superb instructor, knowing how to offer advice that did not cramp one’s individual
style. He was being very patient with Brenda this morning.

“From the top?” Alison asked. She was the only one on stage not holding a copy of
the play. She always made it a practice to immediately memorize her lines. This also
annoyed Brenda.

“No, start from: ‘He’s vice-president of Kirby & Company.’ ”

Alison nodded, taking her position. Mr. Hoglan gave a cue and she walked toward the
coffee table—or where the coffee table was supposed to be—saying, “ ‘No, he’s vice-president
of Kirby & Company, Mr. Anthony Kirby, Junior.’ ”

“ ‘The boss’s son?’ ” Brenda asked, with way too much enthusiasm.

“ ‘Well,’ ” their mother said. Penny was played by Sandra Thompson and overweight
Sandy already looked like someone’s mother. She was a fine actress, though.

Alison took a step toward her mother and smiled. “ ‘The boss’s son. Just like the
movies.’ ”

“ ‘That explains the new dress!’ ” Brenda shouted. Alison grimaced, coming out of
character; she couldn’t help herself. Fortunately, at that moment, they were interrupted.
It was not Mr. Hoglan, but a kid—a freshman, probably—in running shorts, standing
at the open back door. He was talking excitedly about something on the gymnasium.

“What is it, young man?” Mr. Hoglan asked, unperturbed as ever.

“You’ve got to see it!” the kid exclaimed, and then he was gone.

Alison did not know why Brenda and she did not immediately put two and two together.
As they hurried into the hallway after the rest of the class, the Caretaker was not
even on their minds.

“You sure are in a bad mood this morning,” Brenda said as they strode from beneath
the wing of the auditorium into the bright morning sun. The day was going to be another
cooker. Built in the fifties of red brick and austere practicality, Grant High did
not have air-conditioning. During the months close to summer, sitting in class was
more a dehydrating experience than an educational one.

“Thank goodness, we can’t say the same about Essie.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Get off it, Brenda, you’d think your character was doing a monologue.”

“Not all of us have as many lines as some people. Some of us have to do the most with
what we’ve got.”

“Some of us shouldn’t try to substitute volume for quality.”

Brenda ran a hand through her blond hair, which looked oily and uncombed. “Don’t hassle
me right now, I’m exhausted. I hardly slept last night.”

The Caretaker came back then, not that he’d been far away. Alison was also tired;
she’d seen every hour on the clock between two and six in the morning. Twice she’d
gone to the window to stare at the empty tract that surrounded her house. The moon
had been full, bathing the neighboring fields—shrub-packed fields not unlike where
they had gotten lost coming home from the concert. It was weird how fate had brought
her to this spot that so resembled that one place in the whole world that filled her
with dread.

They rounded a corner, almost colliding with the group that had gathered, and discovered
that Fran had not gotten much sleep last night, either.

Their mascot, sweet smiling Teddy, now had a rather sinister black and red goat’s
head.

· · ·

Lunch at Grant High was usually a humdrum affair. You either bought a greasy hamburger
at the snack bar and went to a preordained clique or else you took a hop over to a
nearby mall and had a greasy hamburger there and talked to much the same people you
would have talked to had you stayed at school. The mall was nevertheless the preferable
place to hang out. The courtyard in the center of school was cramped and the benches
were the grossest obscenity-etched pieces of wood in all of California. When Alison
grabbed Fran, prior to bawling her out, she planned on getting off campus the instant
she was sure Tony was not staying. If nothing else, the chain letter had given her
a great excuse to talk to him.

“Fran, you could have killed yourself doing the job alone,” she scolded in hushed
tones, glancing around to make sure they were not being overheard, searching for Tony.

“Do you like it?” Fran asked, dark circles under her eyes.

“What do you mean? Of course I don’t like it. It’s disgusting!”

Fran was very sensitive to criticism of her artwork. “I don’t care! As long as
he
likes it!”

“And how do you know it is a
he
? Kipp is of the opinion
one of us girls blabbed about the accident. He thinks
you
were the one.”

“I know what he thinks!”

“Shhh.”