Growing Up Dead in Texas (24 page)

Cue Arthur King at his truck, his stock set against his thigh, the barrel wisping smoke.

“Now then,” he says, and somehow Stacy Monahans gets put in the ground that afternoon, and that’s all it says in the
Lamesa Press-Reporter
: that services were held for the daughter of Larry and Gwen Monahans, and that she would be dearly missed.

They got the last part right, anyway.

As far as everybody was concerned in late January, the only reason Earl Holbrook was sticking to his story, that he was the one who shot Geoff Koenig, not Jonas, it was that if he ever stepped out from under the Sheriff’s wing again, Larry Monahans, brother-in-law or not, would plant him where he stood. Simple as that.

In the
Midland Reporter-Telegram
, the trial coverage doesn’t say anything about the fire, really, or about Stacy Monahans either. All that matters to them is what they call a “hunting accident involving a school bus,” Earl Holbrook’s .22-250 being of course a known varmint rifle, rabbits being  no friend of any farmer.

It was the defense Earl Holbrook’s public defender— Earl refused to bankrupt Sissy even more, just for him, though that in itself’s a statement too, that she should have had land to sell, to buy him a proper defense—kept insisting upon, except, when Earl took the stand against all advice, he was quiet for a long time, getting his words together, the judge not even prompting him, and then he said it, what he’d been saying all along: that, yes, he was aiming at the bus; that, yes, his cotton had burned, with no recompense coming; that, yes, though he was at every game, still, at the time he did pretty much believe that those basketball players were the only ones who could have been responsible; that, no, he didn’t remember pulling the trigger, not really. Just the rifle, bucking in his hands, but even that was slight, as heavy as the gun was, as light as the round was.

And, yes, he had helped the Sheriff’s office search for the slug that day under something like false pretenses, but, no, there was no collusion of any kind with Pete Manson. Pete Manson wasn’t holding that slug over his head, nothing as Falcon Crest as all that. Earl had just made a mistake, plain and simple. And then compounded it with more mistakes, each step no different than the last, until he was at the funeral that day in his best jacket, looking down on his only niece in a box.

Which is where he leaves it, more or less.

But that’s hardly where it ends.

What he doesn’t say is what he was doing that morning before the funeral: putting lock washers on either side of the two large u-bolts holding a backboard to a thick rusted pipe set in the ground some five or six feet. When the backboard, really, had hardly even been that loose.

But the pipe, the backboard.

The Sheriff’s department was so blind.

The year before, playing hide-and-seek with his cousins at his grandparents’, Jonas had, at the last possible moment before “100,” decided his perfect place behind the riding mower wasn’t so perfect after all and took off along the side of the house, rounded the corner just as the “ready or not” rang out behind him. Just as his cousin Audrey was clomping through the bushes, having heard Jonas running.

Out in the peach trees, Jonas could see his little brother trying to stand skinnier than he was behind a trunk, and, in the tall grass of a plow that was just getting shredded around now, another shirt.

And the footsteps are so close to him now, and Audrey, she’s two years younger, sure, but she’s faster than any of them, and there’s nowhere to go. Back here it’s just grass and the dogs’ water bowl where they found the coachwhip last year and, and—

No time.

Desperate, giving up, Jonas looks straight up.

The roof’s too high, of course—he’s in fifth grade, still has to sneak up on top of the air conditioner first, which he’s under strict orders never to do again—but projecting out from the roof like spokes, like the rays of light saints wear in paintings, are these handle-sized arms of wood. Probably stylish in 1960-whatever, and about to be again.

Jonas gathers himself, jumps higher than he ever has before, and hooks onto one of the low-hanging handles of wood with his right hand, manages to swing his left hand onto the next, and then pulls his body up flat under the eave, a reverse push-up, so that when Audrey comes around she just stands there not two feet under him, swiveling her head all around, finally seeing a knee behind a peach tree, taking off that way.

Behind her, in plain sight all along, Jonas unfolds himself down from the roof. He’s a different person now. One who doesn’t have to panic so much, but can take stock of his situation, come up with the only way out.

It’s a completely different world.

Jonas smiles, walks over to base, is waiting there when Audrey comes back, so she has to do it all over again now.

“Where were you?” she says, out of breath.

For once, Jonas’ little brother doesn’t say anything, just smiles.

Jonas shrugs, nods his head for her to count again, and runs ahead a year so that he’s sitting on a three-wheeler now. A little less than a half-mile in front of him, on Cloverdale, is a bus.

It’s stopped, angled down into the ditch.

His mom is running towards it, her robe catching on the barbed wire fence. She turns around, rips it free so hard she goes to her hands in the ditch. But then she’s there on the blacktop, didn’t even look both ways twice, to be sure.

Jonas swallows, tries to see into the bus, and then a few minutes later the trucks and cars and sirens are all crowding around, a haze of dust hanging over them. There’s men in the ditch, men in the road, men in their trucks, and finally Jonas pulls the clutch with his left hand, shifts down into first, is going to go help, at least see.

Except—the rifle. The .22.

There are police there, an ambulance now.

And something about the window midway down the side of the bus, everybody standing there, studying it, looking from there down some line of sight that ends in the open fields. Jonas understands, feels it hollow in his chest.

What he’s spent the morning doing is shooting at birds. With a rifle. Because it’s what his mom’s dad did with the cranes, an impossible thing. But the way his granddad had told it, what it was like to have them coating the sky black with their bodies, and then to aim up into that darkness, and pull the trigger, opening up a single column of light.

Jonas wants that. Wants to stand in that column of light for a moment.

Except the few birds he’s been able to scare up, they’re erratic, won’t hold still for his sights.

How far can a .22 slug travel, though?

He has no idea. Couldn’t even say for sure where he was each time he brought the stock to his shoulder.

They can’t go as a high as a plane, anyway. He’s tried, then closed his eyes, promised himself not to shoot at anything else all day, if those people up there can just get to their airport.

As high as a transformer, he guesses—okay, knows—up on the utility poles like a robot koala, like a dull grey porcupine. But he knows better than to shimmy up that creosote, feel the entry holes with his index finger, has seen the hawks and owls fried from that already.

This couldn’t have been him, though, could it?

And, why him, with every kid with a rifle doing the exact same thing all across the county?

It’s not fair.

He loves this gun.

But still.

Instead of winding up on the hand-grip, throttling a rooster tail of dirt up into the sky like usual, Jonas clicks up into second, burns the clutch a little trying to keep the pipe quiet, and turns around wide and dustless, his chest close to the gas tank, Indian style.

Where he goes is back to the basketball pad. Parks the three-wheeler as close to the tree as he can, so the seat won’t heat up too much in the sun. Hooks the rifle over his shoulder and, making the ritual up as he goes, walks from corner to corner of the concrete pad, inscribing a deep, invisible X there.

On a map, it’s where your treasure will be, yeah. Whenever you come back for it.

Finally Jonas shrugs, turns around to face the basket, hitches the rifle back to the center of his back and takes off running.

Just like with the wood arm reaching out from his grandparents’ house a year ago, Jonas’ fingers hang in the net just enough.

He swings his other hand around, his feet running in the air, finally finding the rusted pole.

After this, all he has to do is hand-over-hand it up the net— he’s already up to the eighth hole on the pegboard in the old gym—grab onto the bird-shit back of the rim where the ball never can hit if it’s aired up enough, and wrap his leg up onto the top of the pole. The top of the pipe.

With one arm hooked at the elbow in the rim, any kid not too worried about falling—worried more about jail—can let go enough with the other to shake a rifle sling down to his hand. Can hold on like that long enough to angle the barrel up into the uncapped top of that pipe, where his dad’s been hiding his beer bottles, wedge it in at a painful, scratching-the-blueing-off angle, but then get it straight, let it drop down into that broken glass where nobody’ll ever think to look. Not unless they’re up there, say. Not unless they’ve stopped by because they promised to put a set of lock washers all around a couple of u-bolts. Not unless they’re somebody who doesn’t have any kids of their own to trade themselves in for.

And, the reason it’s barrel-first is easy: Jonas doesn’t want it filling with rainwater. Because he’s coming back for it, isn’t going to forget it.

That second part’s true anyway.

This is what Larry Monahans will tell you in the drive-in in Lamesa one day over Chihuahuas, the Sky-Vue’s specialty, the humped parking lot in front of the screen baking in the heat, the swings on the old playground up front sighing back and forth, you looking anywhere but at Larry: