If Jack's in Love (28 page)

“What are you talking about? Come back here.”

But she leapt across the creek and climbed the wooded rise that led to the civilization of the Taylor household.

THAT LEFT ME ALONE with my brother and the laughing insects.

“Bummer,” he said, “I better go calm her down.” But he didn't leave, he just leaned against a tree.

“What's she so upset about?” I said.

I knew exactly why she was upset, because my brother was a psycho, but I had decided to mimic the kind of thinking Stan used in situations calling for sensitivity and insight. I was hoping it might keep me from getting my ass kicked.

“Well, I tell you,” Stan said.

He didn't say anything else.

His sunglasses were like doorways into dark rooms. He turned them towards me and I had no way of knowing what was in there. I kept hearing all these insects, flies, crickets, gnats, bees, wasps. Add to that the roar of jet fighters leaving vapor trails in the sky, the traffic on Matson, the appliances and the air conditioners and the window fans and the power lines.

An old spider rattled across my flip-flop and I shook it off.

“You never told me,” Stan said.

“Told you what?”

“How you think I killed Gaylord.”

“I never said you killed Gaylord.”

“Yeah, but you think too loud.”

The sunglasses tilted away. I couldn't tell where he was looking.

“What do you think, did I use a gun or a knife?”

“I never said you did anything of the sort.”

He grinned; moved closer. “Let me tell you something you oughta know. I saw Gaylord right before he disappeared. That very afternoon. Me and Anya were driving past his house and he saw us coming and he waved us to a stop.”

“Really? Wow, I didn't know that,” I said, gushing to allay the danger.

“I know, I'm telling you. He leaned in the window and said he wanted to make peace. He said he was tired of all the anger. He gave me his hand to shake. And I told him I might think about it. If he was good. That's what I said, I said he had to be good.”

“Really?”

“Go ask Deputy Dawg, he knows. He's already asked me about it. Whole neighborhood was watching though their windows, seems like.”

“So y'all made friends.”

“Hell no. I only told him that so I could take him by surprise the next time. I wanted to make him think he had a chance.”

“Did you see him again?”

“If I did, I'm the last one, right?”

“Then you didn't,” I said.

“I never said I didn't.”

He still had that evil grin going. The darkness of his glasses turned in my direction and he nudged his chin for me to come on over.

“Come here,” he said.

“I don't wanna come there.”

“Okay, I'll come to you.”

He came and sat beside me. He made a big production about it, sighing and groaning while he lowered himself. He picked up a stick and twiddled it between his knees. I shot a look at the path that led out of there, but running was pretty much out of the question.

Stan leaned close to my ear. “I hear you know my secret.”

“I don't know any secrets.”

“Anya told me she told you. Like, you know I wasn't at her house when Gaylord disappeared.”

“That's none of my business. I never asked her anything. I can't help what Anya says, what she says is none of my business.”

“But you're my brother, right? You go steady with what's-his-name's sister. Plus Deputy Dawg has been coming around and asking his questions. I would think that might make it your business.”

“I'm not gonna say anything, don't worry about it.”

Stan tossed the stick. It twirled in the air and made a splat when it hit the sulfurous creek. And then we heard a gurgling sound as if some monster had emerged from the turgid deep to devour it. Stan laughed silently in appreciation of nature's dark comedy. His shoulders moved up and down.

He turned his dark glasses towards me. “You know damn well I'd kill you if you said anything. If it's the last thing on earth I did. I swear to God, I would fucking rub you out.”

“I would never say anything to anyone, you know that. Why are you acting this way?”

I saw two of me in his sunglasses. Which might have been Gaylord's last vision: two Gaylords, choking and dying, one for each lens. On the other hand, who knows, maybe my brother hadn't hurt a single soul. It's just he was crazy enough to enjoy it that other people suspected he did.

“Hey, little brother. We're friends, right?”

“Of course we're friends.”

He pinched the collar of my T-shirt and yanked me close. “We damn well better be friends.”

He let go and we sat and listened to the laughing of nature.

“You know, if I put your head into that creek water you'd be dead in five seconds, damn thing's so full of pollution. It's those damn factories and plants you see out there on the interstate when you drive past. They pump their fucking chemicals in the river and then that shit gets in our creek and we can't enjoy it anymore. Look at that goddamn water, it's like acid.”

I shook my head. “It's bad, it looks bad.”

“Corrode your fucking face off, that's what it would do.”

That wasn't a prospect I wanted to entertain.

“I wonder if Anya's okay,” I said.

“Fucking businessmen, goddamn companies, they don't give a shit about Mother Nature. And you know damn well Mother Nature's gonna get her revenge someday.”

He laughed at the thought of it.

I nodded at his sagacity and spied the path that led out of the clearing. I wanted to go home so bad I could taste it. I wanted Mom to hold me. I didn't care if I was thirteen.

Stan didn't say much else. I suppose he was too wrapped up in Mother Nature and her implacable ways.

I was waiting for him to let me go. I opened my book and stared at a page, and he, next to me, tilted his head to read along.

After a while he hoisted himself, stretching and groaning.

“Wanna smoke a joint with me?”

“Nah, I'm too young.”

He burst out laughing. “Shit no, you're exactly the right age. I wish I had started turning on when I was your age. People should turn on early, man. We wouldn't have so much trouble in the world if everybody got high. Look at that shit in the creek, just because those creeps can't stop making their money. That's all they think about, their booze and their cars and their country clubs. People don't have no fucking conscience.”

“I know. I agree. But I don't want to smoke grass just yet. Maybe next year.”

Stan let out a yawn and said, “Well, I reckon I oughta find Anya. What was she so upset about?”

“I think it's because you told her to shut up.”

“I didn't tell her to shut up. When did I tell her to shut up?”

“I thought that's what I heard, probably I was wrong.”

Stan nodded, looked around.

“Well kid, you take it easy. And remember, if you say anything to Mom and Pop I'll carve your eyes out. Think about that whenever you get the urge.”

“Okay, Stan. Don't worry about me.”

“I ain't worried, believe me.”

He leapt across the yellow creek and strutted up the rise, leaving me to marvel over the graciousness of his personality, his remarkable joie de vivre.

I got out of those woods as fast as my legs would carry me. I ran back to the house and arrived covered in sweat. Mom was coming out of her bedroom, fresh from a nap.

I sat on the carmine sofa. My arms were crossed. I stared straight ahead.

She sat beside me.

All along I'd been thinking Gaylord would never, ever get in a car Stan was driving, even if he was hitchhiking. That had been my last hope. But now I knew Stan had led him to believe that they'd made peace. Which meant Gaylord just might have climbed in.

“Did Stan go to the quarry?” Mom asked.

I didn't say anything. I had already decided never to say another word. Not ever. To anyone.

“Where's your father?”

In fact, the Ford was not in the driveway, but I wasn't going to be the one to tell her. She could go check for herself.

She peeped out the door. She came back.

“Do you want a sandwich?”

I followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table with my arms crossed.

“Cat got your tongue?”

She fixed me a cheese and peanut butter sandwich, my favorite, and sat catty-corner from me.

“Would you massage my neck like you did the other day?”

I stood.

“Finish your sandwich first.”

After I finished eating I dug my fingers in her neck, flexing and unflexing them. Mom rolled her head and told me I was a good boy. I didn't say a word. I stuck to my mute policy.

Later, when Pop came home, he tried to make conversation. I just stared at him with my arms crossed.

“He's not speaking anymore,” Mom explained.

“Not speaking!”

Pop's whole world was falling apart. Mom wasn't speaking to him either, and she didn't even have a mute policy.

“Why is he not speaking?”

“Ask him.”

“How can I if he won't tell me?”

I got in bed and clenched my eyes tight. I was hoping I might fall asleep before Stan got home. Every sound I heard reminded me of his imminent approach. I was listening for noises I didn't want to hear. Whenever a car turned on the road my heart stopped. My ears would follow it as it drove past. If Mom or Pop rattled something in the kitchen I attended to it with the greatest alarm. It was no use: the only thing that might possibly put an end to my dread would be the appearance of what I dreaded.

Finally he came home. I listened to him rustling about in the dark, climbing up to the bed.

Now, maybe, I could fall asleep.

As I was drifting off he called out, “Good night, kid.”

“Good night,” I called back.

That meant infringing against my mute policy, but I was afraid he'd kill me if I didn't answer.

WE WERE INTO AUGUST, and still no Gaylord. Weeks had passed since he'd disappeared. Cicada season was over. But I could hear them anyway. Their song belonged to the hum behind the humming of the world. It was enough to make a person crazy.

I'd go see Mom at the Ben Franklin, say hello to Mr. Harris, visit with Mr. Gladstein, knock on the Pudding door, search with chastised heart for the abandoned ring; perch on the back porch with my arm around Rusty, pounding his ribs. Or I'd go to the woods, the different ones, the woods where Stan and Anya didn't go, and smoke cigarettes and watch the other kids messing at the creek. They didn't like my being there, yet they dared not taunt me. I was the bogeyman of my age group: Stan Witcher's brother. Nobody would speak to me, which wasn't unusual; but lately they had taken to nodding with a sort of dour respect whenever I showed up.

I would sit under a tree, doing my best not to think my thoughts. And yet the thoughts kept coming: memories of my brother, like how when I was nine or ten and the boys at school had started to pick on me he took me to the yard and taught me how to defend myself, showed me how to hit, duck and wrestle, how to kick boys in the balls. One time he made me punch him in the lip until he bled. That's how he coached me past my squeamishness, he bled for me. And he'd bled for me in other ways. God help anyone who taunted or threatened Jack Witcher. It got to the point that I would never tell him if someone crossed me. You better believe, a lot of kids owed their lives to me without knowing it, simply because I had kept my mouth shut.

We Witchers each had a reason to hold Stan in our hearts. Take the way he was with my mother. It was just harmless joshing when he told her how sexy she was, but who else ever told Mom she was sexy? With Pop Stan shared adeptness in the manly arts, like fixing engines, punching guys and seducing gals. On such recondite matters they might hold forth for hours, going well into the dark of night. Occasionally on an evening they would up and take off, leaving me at home, so they could indulge in what Mom called “boys' night out.” What did that mean? She assured me when I was old enough I'd be invited to go along, and I used to sit at home invoking images of dirty movies and tumbling dice and girls wearing pasties. I couldn't wait to come of age, which according to Pop's notion of legality meant I had to be sixteen.

Families live on loyalty more than love, and it wasn't fear alone that made me keep my mouth shut. I could never forget that Stan had bled for me. And yet I was terrified of him. He and Pop had made some kind of pact, or that's how it seemed, and I had a suspicion Pop knew what Anya had told me. I had become the enemy, in Pop's and Stan's eyes. They shared a repertoire of gestures, winks and nudges. Whenever they were in a room together their words, even when addressed to Mom or me, seemed to hold implications they alone could decipher.

One day, when the Witcher men were at home and Mom was at work and Anya was “on the rag” (as Stan put it), Pop and my brother, with remarkable composure considering that the search for Gaylord was still on and Stan was still the only suspect in his disappearance, asked me to go to Fairglade with them. Fairglade was a park in the center of town with a tiny petting zoo and a bamboo forest.

Pop had his sketchbook tucked under his arm. His hair was dampened and slicked back and he looked almost sweet, like a child.

Every time Pop and Stan invited me to go someplace with them I imagined being tied to the pissy mattress in the shack off Baskin Road. I remembered the mad humming around the shack and the living thing inside when Gladstein drove me over that time.