Jasper Jones (7 page)

It makes me feel rotten for what I have. For what I’ve always had. I feel stupid and petty for ever having complained about anything. I feel like a spoiled little bastard, about to crawl into my safe nest while Jasper Jones shoulders his burden alone. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair at all. I want to invite Jasper in, give him my bed, and I hate myself because I can’t and I won’t. I feel sick that I’m going to wake up and have my breakfast made. That my mum is still alive and my dad is a kindly teetotaller. It isn’t right. It just isn’t right that I have so many things that he doesn’t. I might blub again, but I reckon I’m too tired even to do that. I’m so overdone and overwhelmed.

I wipe my forehead. I was right; my relief was short.

Jasper Jones gives a weak, quick grin and claps my arm. He pockets his hands. We don’t say a word. We just look and nod and shift our feet. There’s nothing to say.

I shuck off my pansy sandals, move quietly up to the window. I hoist myself up and hold, like I’m on a pommel horse, but I’m stuck. I turn my head and hiss:

“Give us a hand?”

And Jasper strides over and hefts me easily. I’m through. I made it. Back on my bed.

“Thanks,” I whisper through the window.

“Yeah, same to you,” he says. “I’ll see you, Charlie.” He lingers, as though he has more to say, but just offers a brief wave.

And he’s gone.

I slot the glass plates back in. It feels like I’ve broken into my own room. It doesn’t feel like the same place I left. It doesn’t feel like home, but it feels safe. I can feel the heat of the day threatening already, and the light is still blue-hued. I notice how dirty I am, how sweaty and scratched, how urgently my heart bangs at my ribs. Laura Wishart is gone. She really is. She was killed, in a strange clearing only known to Jasper Jones. And I saw her, hanging by a thread. Already dead. I
helped carry her to a water hole and I dropped her down and she sank with a stone. That’s irrefutable. That’s truth. That’s what we know. I’m thirsty. I’m in trouble. I feel sick and I can’t still this tremor. For some reason, I just know that if I’m in Jasper Jones’s corner, it’s going to be okay. That there’s some kind of protection and rightness at work. I lie down. And it’s over, for now.

am covered in sweat when I wake. It must be late. The sun is beaming directly into my eyes. I squint. I feel like I’ve just emerged from an operation. It certainly feels like my innards have been pulled and scraped. I wonder what time it is.

Last night comes to me in strange fragments and shards. It doesn’t take long to sink in. One bilious moment, a weighted white dress. Then I remember it all.

And I sit up, startled. I expect police with whistles and urgent orders. Sirens. Bells. Spotter planes. Bloodhounds. Yellow tape and busy-looking people. I expect a red sky and ominous clouds. I look through the window. It is utterly serene in our backyard, save for a castanet chorus of cicadas. Even so, I suspect I’m being watched. I peer at length through the window, making sure I’m not being surveyed.

I get up and glance at my bed. There’s a dark patch where I slept. I touch it. It’s wet. Sweat. But around that is a thin layer of grime. It looks like the chalk outline of a murder. Like I died during the night. Or I shed my skin like a snake.

I need to piss. Urgently. But my dick is cruelly jutting at my underwear, trying to assert itself. It’s rock-hard and disobedient. I rearrange myself and grab a towel, then slip quickly across to the bathroom, hoping I don’t encounter anyone on the way. Thankfully, the coast is clear. I slam the door and toss the towel. My aim is appalling, but the relief forces a thin smile.

I sit on the edge of our lime-colored bath. Naked and solemn, I run the water, flinching when the first spurts scald my fingers. It pools and burns my feet. I hold them aloft. Goddamn. Has someone lit a fire underneath our water tank? I want to yell at my parents for this. Finally it
eases to a lukewarm stream. It’s the best I can hope for. I splash water on my face, rub my neck. I wash myself thoroughly with granite soap. It feels good to scratch and scrape at my skin. I don’t mind that it hurts me a little.

And I sit. Head bowed and whirring. Dripping. Ashamed of the lack of meat on my body. I’m skin and bones all the way down. It’s the gangly body of a kid. No bumps and curves or lines and scars. Nothing like Jasper Jones.

I linger. It’s cooler in here. And to be honest, I’m nursing a distant urge to cry. I still feel tired. And angry and sad. Kind of the way I get when I’m on the cusp of a cold or something. Sad and weird. My belly is tender. It’s like I’ve been shaken and pounded and stretched. I want to cradle my head in my hands, but I don’t. I won’t. I’ll blub if I do.

My head whirls.

What if it really
was
Jasper Jones? What if he did this? What if he killed Laura Wishart? What if he killed her and I said nothing? Could I go to jail? Could he really have hanged that girl in that quiet clearing? The notion seemed so implausible in his company, but how well do I know him, really? He could have been feeding me bullshit the whole time. It could have been him all along. I dig at my ear with a knuckle.

But then why on earth would he seek me out? It makes no sense. There’s no chance anyone would enact a murder and then go find a witness. That’s just stupid. So he can’t have. Surely.

But aside from that, I trust him. I really do. And not because I have to. I think he’s probably the most honest person in this town. He has no reason to lie. He has no reputation to protect. Last night I never suspected him of pulling the wool. Not once. The way he talks to you, it’s like he’s incapable of being deceitful. He says things with such conviction that you’re sure he believes them to be true. It’s just a feeling you get.

See, most people you meet, they’ll talk to you through fifty layers of gauze and tinting. Sometimes you know they’re lying even before they’ve started speaking. And it seems the older they get, the more
brazen and desperate folks become, and they lie about things that don’t even matter. Like my dad with his comb-over, or my mum with her russet hair dye. Or when my dad insists he enjoys the challenge of teaching Corrigan kids to love literature, or when my mum assures her sisters in the city that she loves it down here, and no, it’s not too hot at all; it’s just lovely, it’s a wonderful community. I don’t know. Maybe they just get so used to it they don’t even notice. Maybe it’s like a creeping curse and the more you do it, the easier it gets. What’s amazing is that they think they’re fooling anybody.

Yes. I think Jasper Jones speaks the whole truth in a town of liars. I can tell. See, it’s these lies that precede him, these foggy community fibs that I’ve been led through: they’re the source of these niggling doubts in my head. I mean, if it were Jeffrey Lu who’d woken me last night to lead me silently to that awful scene, I wouldn’t doubt his story for a moment. I wouldn’t even question him. So why should it be different for Jasper Jones?

I hoist myself out of the bath, restless and heavy. And I don’t feel much cleaner than when I sat down.

***

When I tentatively enter the kitchen, both my parents pause and eye me suspiciously, brows raised. This is how they demand an explanation without asking for it. For a brief, horrible moment, I think they know something. Perhaps my mother has already inspected her trampled gerbera bed and noticed the fingerprints on the dusty glass louvres of my window, instantly surmising with her uncanny facility to accurately persecute without evidence that I must have been out all night with Jasper Jones, that I’ve seen and done something terrible, that I’m in all kinds of trouble.

But then my father smirks and reaches out to clap my back.

“Rip Van Winkle! The corpse has risen! So nice of you to join us.”

I sit and offer a weak smile.

My mother produces a hot cup of Pablo coffee with a fair dollop of sweetened condensed milk. She leans over, hands on her knees.

“I trust you’re enjoying your stay at our hotel, Mr. Bucktin, sir. Might I remind you that our turndown service ends at ten sharp. Will Sir take eggs for his lunch?”

My dad snorts. My mother is the most sarcastic person in the universe. My father calls it “droll wit,” but I think it’s more or less an opportunity to get up my arse without appearing unreasonable. She’s most acerbic when she’s faintly pissed about something, which is every waking hour of the day.

“No thanks,” I say. “What time is it?”

“Almost noon. So you’ve only wasted half the day. It’s nice for some.”

Her back is to me. She’s wearing a thin floral dress that clings to her in the heat. She looks good today, I have to admit. Usually she only looks like this if she’s just come back from the city, where she’s been going more often recently. I want to go hug her, to be held by her, but it would be too awkward and unusual. Still, her hair looks nice today.

“Your hair looks nice today,” I say.

This has her whirling around. She glares as though I’d just spat her coffee over the table and called her a courtesan.

“What did you say?”

“I said your hair looks nice today.”

“Oh,” she says, and frowns, searching for a deeper meaning. She cuts her eyes. “What do you want?”

“What? Nothing. I just said your hair looks nice.”

“But why would you say that?”

“I don’t know. Because your hair looks nice.”

Exasperated, I turn to my father. He is nodding and laughing quietly, with his back to her.

After a brief pause, she says, “Well, thank you,” in much the same way she might say, “Well,
don’t.
”

I shrug.

My dad smiles and folds his paper.

“So, my boy. Couldn’t sleep, or couldn’t get enough?”

I set my glasses and sniff. It’s difficult to play this role.
Charlie Bucktin at breakfast: Scene One
. I don’t feel the same. I’m uneasy in my own skin.

“Yeah, no sleep last night. It’s too hot. I was just reading, I guess.”

“I see. So what’s taken your fancy?”

“
Pudd’nhead Wilson
. It’s really good.”

“Ah.” And my father leans in. “It’s been years since I’ve read that. How are you liking it?”

“Yeah, well, like I say. It’s really good.”

I crimp my lips and raise my brows. I don’t want to play this scene out. This coffee is making me too hot. I’m sweating. I’m stuck to this vinyl seat.

Still, it can’t mollify that uneasy feeling that I’m about to be caught. There are insects crawling on my shoulders. At any moment I expect blue-suited troops to burst and bundle into our house and cuff me from behind. Neighbors will line the street, spitting and hollering as I am led, roughly, to a flashing wagon.

I nod toward my father’s newspaper.

“What’s news? Anything good?”

“Same old, my boy.”

“Oh, okay,” I say, sipping my coffee and looking away.

“You all right, Charlie?” My dad shifts tone. He reaches across and feels my forehead, and runs his thumb over my cowlick. I want to tell him everything. I want him to wrap me in his arms and reassure me.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired, I guess.”

“Well, if you’re not eating, young man,” my mother says, “I suggest you go visit Jeffrey. He’s been over five times already this morning with a bee in his bonnet. I told him to go in and wake you up, but he just trotted back home and said he’d try again later. He’s too polite, that boy.”

Shit. The Test. I completely forgot. Little wonder he didn’t want to come inside. He wasn’t being polite, he just didn’t want to miss a
delivery. Right now, Jeffrey will be huddled beside the radio, intently poised, as though it were spilling state secrets. I’ve never understood it. It’s not like the same thing doesn’t happen over and over. Cricket is the most repetitive enterprise in history. But Jeffrey will listen to the words—
Wide outside off stump, Lawry shoulders arms
—with as much glee and intensity for the eightieth time as the first.

I don’t want the rest of this coffee, but it’s not worth the wrath of my mother to waste it. I quaff it quickly, wincing at the bitter bits at the bottom. It burns my innards, but it’s gone. I rinse its silt at the sink and exit stage left, offering a casual farewell.