If Jack's in Love (24 page)

No, I couldn't see Stan in such a place.

“Anya is weird,” I said.

“She's a hippie. I hope they aren't using drugs.”

I didn't say anything, and she instantly picked up on what I was not saying.

“Are they on drugs?”

“I didn't say they were on drugs.”

“You don't have to. They're using drugs, I know they are.”

“Don't go accusing Stan of using drugs, he'll think I told you.”

“Why would he think that?”

“It's the way he thinks. Mom, they are not using drugs.”

“You promise they aren't?”

“Why is everyone making me promise them something?”

“Who else have you been promising?”

“Well, Anya.”

Mom was quiet. Then she said, “What did she make you promise?”

“I can't tell you what she made me promise. Just drop it.”

Yet I did want to tell her. Why was I doomed to know, by myself, that Stan was unaccounted for when Gaylord disappeared, and that he came back to Anya's hours later, “bloodied”?

Bloodied!

“Since when did you and Anya become so close?”

“We're not close, I only know her through Stan.”

“Did she tell you something about that night?”

“What night?”

“The night Gaylord disappeared.”

Why would she ask unless she was wondering? I arranged a telling expression on my face in case she turned around. My eyes would inform her, but my lips would reveal nothing.... I massaged her shoulders until my hands got tired. Pop came in with an empty glass and filled it with water and gulped it at the sink, staring over the rim.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

He left the room without an answer.

I tried to make my voice casually curious. “Do you believe Stan did something to Gaylord?”

In Mom's memory lurked a whole catalogue of Stanley Witcher violence. It began in kindergarten, during his first school days, when he would return home on the bus each and every day ripped, bruised and bloodied. Eventually it got to the point that she was asked to attend weekly conferences with the teachers, all on account of Stan's bullying. He didn't get any gentler with age, either; maturity brought no tendency to count to ten. In fact, the assaults only grew more violent. He would beat kids over the head with cylindrical objects, kick their nuts, bite their ears, twist their arms. Two years ago Pop had been forced to pay for one kid's stitches. And yet with Mom Stan would be so affectionate, tickling her, hugging her, kissing her, telling her she was sexy. Even with me, even with his brother, he had his generous moments. They were fewer and further between, it's true. A smile from Stan was like a summer's day in Siberia. But they did happen.

Mom said, “I don't want to say that about your brother. I don't even want to think it.”

Still, it must have crossed her mind or she wouldn't have been so curious about Anya. She was looking at me, trying to gauge what I might know. “He was with her, right? They were at her house listening to Beatles records that night.”

“The Doors.”

That was her consolation, as it had been mine up to a half-hour before.

What could I do? I didn't want to lie. Nor did I want to break any promises. So I said nothing. I let my eyes speak.

Mom kept looking. And then I saw her shudder. She hid her face in the length of her piano-playing hands. She sat with her elbows on the table, face buried.

Pop peeked in. His eyebrows arched, he mouthed an inquiry. Was she okay?

What a family.

Mom wiped her index finger under her nose. For a moment I thought she had been crying, but then I realized she was hot, that's all. The big fan in the dining room window kept sucking warm air through the rear screen door. All it did was make us hotter.

“How's Mr. Gladstein?” she said—a topic I found as painful as the possibility of my brother's foul play. I'd been so wrapped up in the Gaylord business I hadn't had time to brood about anything else. Now I remembered telling Pop that the store's burglar alarm didn't work. Why on earth did I tell him that?

Mom was watching, suspecting me of things.

“You know what Pop says, Witchers ain't snitchers.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I was just thinking about it, that's all. They used to say that in Hendersonville.”

“I know all about Hendersonville,” she said curtly.

One of Pop's best friends came from a bootlegging family in North Carolina. This man got so good at outrunning cops on the mountain roads he later became famous as a race-car driver. Years before, Pop had taken Stan and me to see him race in Charlotte. Unfortunately, the celebrated friend had outgrown Pop, what with his riches and his trophies. All he did was shake our hands. He was too busy heading towards where a passel of women was waiting on the side of the track.

Mom cringed whenever the subject of Hendersonville came up. There was plenty in Pop's past I didn't know about, and I wondered if I'd ever get to hear the good stuff, like after I turned twenty-one. What irked me was that Stan knew about things I never heard tell of. Maybe there was something in Pop's younger years everyone knew but me that would explain why Mom couldn't put her doubts to rest.

“You're as much a Kirby as a Witcher,” she said. “You don't have to do everything like the Witchers.”

“Yeah, but I still don't wanna be a snitch.”

“That's not what I meant. And why are you thinking so much about that? What are you hiding?”

“Nothing,” I said.

She glowered in the Kirby style. When Kirbys get mad they drop their faces and stare from underneath their brows. That's what Mom was doing, and I shifted about uncomfortably.

“Myra told me she can't be my girlfriend anymore,” I blurted.

I said it to distract her, and it worked.

“When did you see Myra?”

“I didn't. She sent a message through Kathy Coghill.”

“Oh Lord, why did my kids have to get mixed up with the Joyner kids?”

“You don't believe in the Lord.”

“That doesn't mean I can't pray. Everyone wants divine help. I read this book once, a religious book I found at a yard sale over on Stanley Street. It was written during the Middle Ages and it said that when you pray you shouldn't use a lot of words, you should just say ‘God' or ‘Sin' or ‘Love' or ‘Help.' It said if you find yourself in a crisis you should use as few words as possible. Like when your house is burning and you shout ‘Help' and that's all your neighbors need to hear. God is the same way, according to this book. All you need to say is ‘Help.' Because if you use too many words He might not get the message, what with all the prayers He must be hearing. Everything just becomes a big jumble to Him, I reckon. So that's what I do. I pray ‘Help.'”

“I thought you were an atheist.”

“Maybe. But I don't see how praying can hurt anything. Might as well stay on the safe side.”

“Mr. Gladstein gave me a chant to say,” I said.

“A chant?”

“Yeah, a syllable. It's got the power to help you, but you have to believe. It's all in the mind,” I said, tapping my temple.

“God, my children are crazy. The whole world is going crazy. All these riots and protests and wars, and now we have these mind-blowing drugs and that crazy psychedelic music to go with it. I thought Mr. Gladstein was a nice man.”

“He is a nice man.”

“Did you know he lives in Jefferson Ward?”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me last time I saw him, at the shopping center. That man talks so much I always wonder if he'll let me go, once he gets started. And to think he lives over there with the colored people. What on earth is he thinking of?”

She buried her face in her palms and I went out to the porch so I could sit and think by myself. That's all I'd been wanting, ever since Reedy derailed me in the morning: some solitude, a little time for reflection.

And then I noticed the red flag was standing on the mailbox.

I GRABBED THE NOTE and dashed with it to my room.

I penciled a declaration of intent to be in the Pudding woods, took it to the box and raised the flag. Kathy Coghill was only moments behind, as if she'd been positioned nearby with binoculars. This time I didn't let her get away. I caught up with her at the corner and called out, “Hey, tell her I'll be there.”

Kathy turned, incensed.

“You're not supposed to be following me.” It was broad daylight and anyone could see. “This is just great. If Myra gets in trouble it'll be your fault.”

“I thought she was grounded.”

“Not after what happened. Don't be stupid. And stop following me. We shouldn't be talking out in the open like this. Be there tomorrow. For Myra.”

I returned home, properly rebuked.

A little later, the boy who killed my girlfriend's brother came home.

We sat at the table and ate egg noodles mixed with ground beef and tomato sauce, a fabrication my mother had christened “goulash.” Stan ate silently, pushing the hair from his face. Occasionally he would look up sharply, as though mindful of our conjectures.

I couldn't look at him. He kept giving me evil glances. I didn't want to be in the same room with him. I headed for the bedroom and he followed me in. “Punk,” he said. He put his loud funky music on. I split for the kitchen and hung out until he left for Anya's.

Snead came over and Pop pulled out his harmonica and I went to the yard and studied them for signs of plots and conspiracies; but all they did was sing the blues. Snead was illtempered and short with Pop. He wanted the drink and the music, not the conversation. Around eleven I went to bed, thankful the house had so many fans blowing at full speed. That rendered it impossible to hear their voices underneath my window.

The next afternoon I was in the woods behind Dickie Pudding's house.

The sun was blazing, and shouting drifted up from the Pudding house. Conglomerations of gnats kept molesting my air. The hum of the world was louder than ordinary: high-speed traffic on Matson, appliances sucking and blowing and churning, the gears of Gehenna slogging through the bedrock; wasps and flies and gnats and mosquitoes; air conditioners jutting from windows, dripping on the grass below; airplanes in the clouds, helicopters, UFOs, whirly beasts you couldn't see; twoway radios, shortwave sets operated by men in basements; TV antennas, electrical towers zapping the sky.

That morning Pop had shown me where a county cop was quoted in the paper as saying that the department wasn't treating Gaylord's vanishing as a criminal case. “Nine times out of ten kids that disappear come back home in a week. They need to get away from the pressure, blow off some steam. Usually they're with a member of the opposite sex,” he sensitively observed. My brother wasn't mentioned, to our relief. Accompanying the article was a school photograph of Gaylord in a coat and tie and a 1966 flattop, humbly aware of his husky gentility.

The heat coagulated in my throat.

I spotted Gaylord in a cloud.

I saw sixteen-year-old Pop with his Asheville moll.

I pictured Myra, a child Niobe, weeping over the morning paper.

She appeared at the curve in the road, stopped and peered and stepped cautiously into the brush. Her eyes were all swollen.

Rusty had come along, and he barreled himself right into me.

“Hi Myra, I'm really sorry about everything that's happened.” Rusty was propelling me backwards and it caused the words to fluctuate in my chest, so that they came out like this: “I'm re-e-a-l-l-y so-o-o-r-ry about everythi-i-i-ing that's ha-a-a-pppened.” I snagged his paws. His hot breath blasted me and I pushed him away.

“I know you didn't have anything to do with it,” she told me.

“I've really been worried about you, I want you to know that.”

“I know, everyone's being so nice. Jack, I shouldn't have snuck out of my house that night. If I had known how much pain my parents would be in I wouldn't have done it.”

“Well, how would you know? I feel bad too, now.”

“We're just kids,” she observed.

I suspected someone had been counseling her. It sounded like she was repeating revelations gleaned from some wise adult. But as far as us being kids, so what? I couldn't see what distinguished kids from adults, apart from size.

I'd already run out of things to say. I stood there waiting for her to speak and she looked back at me, repentant and heartbroken. And brainwashed.

“The reason I wanted to see you is so I could give you back your ring and bracelet.”

“I want you to keep them,” I said.

I understood she could no longer be my girlfriend, but still I found the declaration painful. Myra was breaking up with me! We would no longer be going steady! This was it, the fated moment, the thing that must occur when a Joyner gal and a Witcher boy collide.

“I can't have these in the same house where Gaylord lives. You understand that, don't you?”

Why was this girl so pretty? Her eyes were too big, her nose was lopsided, her beatific smile would easily be deemed a symptom of idiocy by anyone less infatuated. I remember how in the old days I had considered her pogo-stick strut ungainly. And then came that fateful morning when she had congratulated me on my grades. At that moment Myra Joyner became my ideal of feminine grace and mercy.