In the Dead of Summer (11 page)

I thought that was pretty stirring, but the class looked at me with the same impassivity they’d shown Officer Deedee, then they suggested that it was time to return to their
Romeo and Juliet
exam. Eventually, after what felt like years, the morning session ended.

I walked toward the back stairs, deciding to bypass the faculty lunchroom and Lowell’s greetings altogether. In fact, to bypass lunch. I thought I’d walk for the hour, despite the day’s clamminess and drizzle. I needed to be alone, and I hoped a moving meditation might produce a useful idea about this abrupt, awful turn of events.

En route, I passed Five’s crowded room. I’d had one devoted student, and she’d been snatched away, literally, but Five’s boys’ club, as I thought of the lunchtime convocation, bubbled along.
News flash:
life wasn’t fair.

I peeked in. They didn’t look organized. Two were talking to each other in a huddle in a corner, three were reading, and Five was talking to another. What was the allure?

I realized how pathetic I looked, the impoverished orphan at Christmas, peering through Five’s window while I clutched the piece of coal that had come in my stocking. I turned and walked on. I heard his door open behind me.

“Mandy,” he called, leaving his classroom and his disciples behind. “Have a minute?”

I stopped and nodded, mutely.

“Did you hear?” he asked. “I had no idea. I spent last evening reading, didn’t turn on the TV, and I walk to school, so once again—my morning class told me. Who do you think could have done it, and why?”

“Maniacs don’t need a
why
.”

“So you think it was just another random city thing?”

“I don’t know what else to think. It’s not as if anybody’s asking for ransom—and what could they ask for, anyway? She’s poor. So I’m afraid—”

“I feel a special tie to her, don’t you? You and I—we were the only teachers here who had her. That makes me feel responsible for her welfare. As if I should have been able to predict—or prevent—or solve this.” But he turned his palms up, empty. He had no more solutions than I did.

I smiled in sympathy. We were two well-meaning, absolutely useless adults. I felt sorry for us, too. I changed the subject, hoping to ease his discomfort and some of mine, as well. “Five,” I said, “what are you doing with those kids at noon? What goes on?”

He smiled disarmingly. “The truth?”

I nodded.

“And you won’t tell your coworkers?”

I nodded again.

“Nothing much goes on. No offense, and I hope they aren’t your best friends, and I don’t want to sound like a complete egotist—but I couldn’t stand the lunchroom scene and nothing I did seemed to stop it. Leaving the premises didn’t help—I was ‘accidentally’ joined.”

The Phyllis and Edie Bake-Off. “There hasn’t been a homemade goodie since you disappeared,” I said.

He nodded. “So I, ah, offered extra credit to those who wanted to be part of a noontime current events discussion.”

“A bribe,” I said with a smile.

He nodded. “Absolutely. But not a complete lie. Sometimes we do actually discuss government, or foreign affairs, but mostly they discuss current sports events, current women, current movies, MTV videos, things like that, and I eat my lunch in peace. Are you going to turn me in?”

“I salute your diplomacy and determination. Besides, having no break from students all day seems a terrible price to pay for your deception. You’re already being punished. Of course, I could blackmail you, tell the bakers what’s really going on….”

He grinned, as did I; but then the subject had run its course and the atmosphere changed as once again April dominated my mind. And at the same instant, it became obvious that Five had made the same transition.

“What was she doing at a massage parlor?” he asked. He didn’t have to say her name. “She didn’t seem the type to make her money that way, even if—”

I waited, but he didn’t seem willing to finish his sentence. “Even if what?” I prompted. “Go on.”

He shrugged. “Even if you never really know a person, not in the superficial way of a classroom. Besides, I was told that most of those places—the massage parlors—are run by Asian mobs.”

“But April wasn’t a mobster.” The word sounded ridiculous. “She wanted—wants to go to college. You know her.”

“That’s why I didn’t want to finish that sentence.”

“Sorry. But I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for where she was seen and why. And I’m sure she didn’t work at a massage parlor.”

“But I hear her parents didn’t know where she worked.”

“Nonsense. I know. It’s in Chinatown at some café.”

“The kids said the name she’d given them—Star’s Café—doesn’t exist.”

“Her brother drove her there every day.”

“Dropped her off at a street corner. Tenth and Race. Near the massage parlor he and his gang members run, the place she was last seen.” He looked thoughtful. “Mystifying, makes me wonder if there might be something we know that could be helpful to the police. Through her writing, or class discussions, or the tutoring you did.”

“You’re assuming a logical reason for all this,” I reminded him. “A plot to be untangled, deciphered.”

“And you aren’t? You think this has no logic? That it’s irrational, unfathomable? I don’t accept that idea. Everything has its own logic.”

“What logical reason could there be to force a struggling wisp of a girl off the street and into a van?” I said. “Everything may have a rationale, but that isn’t the same thing as logic. Or sanity.”

WHEN
I
RETURNED FROM MY LUNCHTIME WALK, HOT
and weary, I cut across the green and leafy square, which was filled with other shade seekers, including half our students.

And Aldis Fellows, who was abruptly striding beside me. I had no idea where she’d been before she appeared. We greeted each other, then walked in awkward silence.

“I’m not comfortable with that, are you?” she said with no preface.

“I’m sorry, I must have missed—what aren’t you comfortable with?”

“Them. I thought you were looking at them, too. When we just passed them.”

I turned as discreetly as I could and saw an assortment of students.

“Interracial dating,” Aldis said. “Or are you one of those pro-diversities?”

She must have been watching a black boy who had his arm around a blonde girl. Both were laughing. “They’re talking,” I said. “Horsing around.”

“I don’t think so. In any case, each step leads to more. And to more trouble.”

“Well, since you asked, I don’t really have any problem with…” But she zoomed on, almost speed-walking her way back to school. I took the opportunity to deliberately lag. The woman didn’t belong on a summer’s day.

Normally, I wouldn’t have approached Woody, given his contemptuous use of the word
gook
the day before, but as I wandered toward school I saw him, looking miserable and sitting by himself on the end bench, smoking. You can hang out with Five, but you can’t smoke in his room. School rules. So Woody was outside in the post-drizzle midday steam, moodily staring into space, his jaw clenched except when he dragged on his cigarette. There was something intensely alone and alien about him, as if he were outlined in black, superimposed on his environment. Maybe he was the kind who needed a crowd around him in order to have any identity at all.

He was on that same bench—the one where he denied he’d been with April. He looked like a sleepwalker, not able to withstand a sudden shock. “Woody,” I said softly.

He blinked, then nodded. “Yo, Miss Pepper,” he said in a dull voice. Then he looked at his cigarette as if watching it consume itself into ash were fascinating and all new.

Only minutes until we had to get back. Uninvited, I sat down beside him. “Okay?” I said when he looked mildly wild-eyed and alarmed. “Your friends going to make a civil case out of a teacher sitting on the same bench as you?”

He controlled the search for peers his eyes had been doing, shrugged and managed a small, off-center grin. “My reputation is shot now.”

“So how are you doing with this?” I was willing to bet I didn’t have to explain myself any further.

“Look, Miss Pepper, like I told you, I…we…there’s no reason I should be having any problem with it. Except we were in the same class and all like that.”

Up close like this, with his face semirelaxed, he wasn’t that menacing or homely. In fact, he looked pale and plain and exposed, as if his scowl and belligerent pose were accessories he’d forgotten to put on today.

“But I was wondering, ah…” He flicked the remains of the cigarette onto the paving and stepped on it. “Do you think the visit this morning from the police lady was it? You think they’ll come back?” he asked in a too-casual voice.

A return visit seemed a distinct possibility. “If they found some more out, or thought we knew something specific.”

“Like what?”

“Suppose she had a serious grudge match going with someone. Things like that.”

“April? If anybody had a grudge, it’d be his gang, now that Vanny got killed.”

“What would that have to do with her?”

“He liked her and was always bothering her, but she didn’t want him and he wouldn’t get it, you know? He was a little off. Bad temper. Followed her. Here, at school, too.”

The window. The figure in the square. April’s fear.

“How do you know all this if you and she didn’t have any kind of
…
anything.”

He looked at his knees. “We go to the same school wintertime, too.”

“Friends?”

He shrugged. “Not enemies.”

“Why are you so nervous about her? The guys you pal around with on your case?”

He shook his head. His hair was a soft brown with gunk on it. It didn’t budge in the little gusts of damp wind. “My old man,” he said. “He’d kill me if he knew I hung out—ever—with a gook. He was over there, you know? He fought them.”

“Not April’s family. They were on the same side. We were fighting for them, at least in theory.”

“Don’t matter to him.” Woody’s jaw reset. “How he feels is they sent him to fight them and now he’s supposed to let them live in our block. Doesn’t make sense. They’re not our kind, he says. And April’s family’s the same,” he added. “Thomas—he’s a little crazy. If he’d thought his sister was with a white guy…”

“He did, didn’t he?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Is that why he picked her up on her late days? To make sure she wasn’t with…anybody?”

He continued to find his knees engrossing, and said nothing.

“Look, Woody, if you know something, if there’s something you could do that might save April, you owe it to yourself and to her to let somebody know. You could call that phone number anonymously, or tell me and I’ll call, if that would work.”

The whole time I spoke, he shook his head, negating me, my suggestions, and who knew what else. “Can’t,” he said.

“But—”

“Can’t!”
He seemed taken aback by his own explosion. “Sorry,” he said more calmly, “but you really don’t know what you’re saying. And it doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s too late. April’s…
dead
,
don’t you understand? You think the person who took her is going to let her come back and send him to jail? It’s because of Vanny, I’m sure.”

“That doesn’t make sense—what did April have to do with the shooting?”

“Nothing, but they don’t know that, do they?”

“But she’s Vietnamese, too.”

“So what? She wouldn’t go with Vanny. Shamed him. And what if…what if she did go with somebody else? Somebody white? She was the problem, they must think. Besides, it could have been her brother, maybe, who shot Vanny, to keep him away from her. It doesn’t matter, anyway, does it? She’s
dead
.
But…” He clasped his hands as if they might fly away and shook his head, mumbling.

“Yes?”

“The worst thing is…”

We were close to a revelation. Unfortunately, we were also close to the school bell. “What’s the worst thing?” I prompted.

He looked full of tears. Not ready to cry, but loaded with moisture and pressure, like a storm cloud that hovered dark and low. “It’s my fault,” he whispered after glancing around. “It’s because of me.”

“Because you were close with her? More than just two people who attended the same school?”

“We—” And suddenly the urgency and the anguish disappeared and he grinned at me as he gathered up his books. “So I smoke,” he said loudly. “So what? I don’t do it inside school, and it’s a free country out here. So I’ll live a year less. Big deal, thanks for the lecture, but I’m not askin’ you to pay my health insurance, Miss Pepper.”

“What on earth are you talk—” Then I got it. “Some day you’ll be sorry, Woody,” I said, also in an overloud voice. “Young people think they’re invincible, but when you’re wheezing with a respirator—”

I am amazed at how easily I can slip into the role of obnoxious, meddling elder. Like those dolls that have two heads. Turn them upside down, invert their long skirt, and you have somebody all new. My change of costume came complete with a script and a sound tape of one meaningless prefabricated admonition after another.

Woody was just as good a quick-change artist. I watched him pull on his Hostileman cloak, face mask, and dialogue. He didn’t even need a phone booth for his quick-change.