The Marbury Lens (26 page)

“Yes. They broke that day Conner and I got into a fight at Blackpool.”

“What does it do?”

“It shows me things in another place. Most people can’t see it, though, I think.”

Because most people are dead there, like you, Nickie.

“Is it a good place?”

“No.”

Nickie took another drink. “I can’t see it, but Conner can, right? Is that why you fought over it?”

I took a deep breath, sighed. “I guess so. He didn’t want me to see it, and I needed to keep him away from it.”

“Why?”

“It’s a terrible place for Conner. That’s all. I guess I was trying to protect him, or protect our friendship. But he didn’t understand.” I shifted. I was uncomfortable, and I was so distracted by her touch at that moment. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

“I don’t think that, Jack. I saw what it did to you last night.”

“And you heard the sounds. You know I’m not just imagining this.”

“I don’t know what to believe,” she said.

“I’m sorry. Neither do I.” I cleared my throat, and nervously, hurrying the words out of my mouth, said, “Will you spend the night with me again tonight?”

“I think Conner would be very jealous if I did.” She blushed, smiling.

“Please?”

She rubbed against my leg. I wished we hadn’t left the hotel so early.

Don’t hurt her, Jack.

Don’t be Mike Heath.

But I wanted her so badly at that moment, and I was so caught up in being disgusted with myself for how weak and unreasonable I felt.

Nickie leaned against me, put her head down on my shoulder so her hair fell against my face and spilled, coolly, inside the neck of my T-shirt.

“Okay. So tell me the rest of it,” she said.

“I’ll tell you whatever you want me to.”

“Tell me the rest of the story. About the boy.”

But I didn’t want to do that.

Seth didn’t want me to.

“There isn’t much to it, Nickie. And it’s not nice.”

“I want to hear it. I want to hear it like the boy who made that horse, and played with it under our bed last night, was telling it to me and nobody else.”

SETH’S STORY [5]

I came to find out from Pa that it was he who’d sent Uncle Teddy over from Davey’s house to fetch me and Hannah so we might come to supper there. And Pa felt sorely terrible for doing that, so blamed himself for everything that happened after. He told me that, in the darkness of the barn, before we left with the preacher’s body.

I only saw my beautiful Hannah one more time after that morning when Pa and I dragged Uncle Teddy out into the ditch and burned him. I believe we both felt sick about what we did, but we also knew we had to do it for Hannah’s sake, and that’s all there was to it. And Pa was mad enough at me, and rightfully so, but we swore to each other we would never mention Hannah and what had happened to her, no matter what.

On our way back home, Pa stopped alongside the river, and I used a bucket of water and a brush with lye to try and get all that preacher’s black blood out of the wagon bed, but it hardly faded at all. At least, not to me it didn’t; and every time I looked down at those splintered and dismal boards, I could see by how the stain had taken shape exactly where Uncle Teddy had stretched out to die.

So I couldn’t help but think that he was following me around, making some kind of telltale mark to illuminate my wickedness and lead anyone with a pure soul to me, so he might kill me and do God’s just work.

“It ain’t coming clean,” I said.

Pa sat by the river, smoking. “I didn’t believe it would, Seth.”

He rolled up another cigarette and handed it to me. “Here,” he said. “I been meaning to ask you one day if you’d care to sit and smoke with me, and I reckon today’s a proper time for it.”

So I sat down next to him and watched the river rush past us while we had our cigarettes.

The house was deathly quiet when we got back, and I felt so terrible for the suffering I had brought into everyone’s lives there. I went into the kitchen first, and kissed Ma; but she didn’t say anything to me, and kept her eyes fixed downward on the dinner she was fixing. I figure it was too much for her to take in all at once, and I couldn’t expect that she would ever forgive me for what I’d done to her daughter.

I left Pa there and went upstairs. He knew I was going to see Hannah.

She sat on her bed, admiring that horse I’d made for her one Christmas before. It seemed like such a long time ago to me.

I left the door standing open. Hannah understood that I swore no more disrespect to Ma and Pa.

“Hello, Hannah.”

She raised her eyes. I could see she’d been crying, so I went over and sat down beside her. I combed her beautiful hair with my hand and she said, “You smell like smoke, Seth.”

She put the toy horse down in her lap.

“Pa and me smoked some cigarettes.”

She smiled. “Pa don’t mind your wickedness any more than I do, I reckon.”

“I want you to know that everything I ever did in my life, I did because of how overcome I am by loving you, Hannah. And now I believe things are going to be the way we always dreamed.”

We embraced and kissed.

“Does it hurt much?” I asked.

“The baby?” she said. “No. He regular don’t hurt.”

“I meant your arms and legs.”

“Oh. That’ll heal.” Then she put her hands around mine and said, “And I want you to know that everything I ever did in this life, I did because I am so taken by loving you, Seth.”

We kissed again, and during that kiss I heard the urgent knocking against the door below of the men who’d come looking to take Pa and me away.

The women cried.

There was nothing we could do; Pa and I weren’t about to fight, and there wasn’t any sense in trying to run, either.

When they took us outside, they put irons on our wrists. I was scared so bad I was shaking, but Pa didn’t show any feelings at all. I turned back only one time and Ma and Hannah were holding one another on the porch.

That was the last time we’d ever see each other.

They were vigilantes from Necker’s Mill: five of them, men we knew by little more than name, because we’d see them at church and Davey worked at the mill alongside them, too. They drove us away from home in a wagon, three of them following on horseback.

The big man, Mr. Russ, drove the wagon, and he was irritable enough.

“Dumb sons of bitches, the both of you are,” he said. “Alvin Hanrion sat there and watched the whole murderous deed from start to finish.”

Hanrion was on horseback, so I saw him nodding like a puppet while Russ spoke.

“What you could possibly been thinking defies my reckoning,” Russ said.

And Pa said, “I suppose it does, Russ.”

“Ain’t no sense in taking you two all the way, thirty mile, into Napa City for what’ll be done.”

“Ain’t none,” Hanrion said. The other riders stared at us with grim, unshaven faces.

“This’ll be good right up here,” Russ said.

Ten miles away from our home was the spot they chose to hang Pa and me.

Russ brought the wagon around under a redwood tree, looking up and back, alternately, to judge the height of the wagon bed to a suitable branch.

He stopped the wagon just there, and set the brake.

Then the men took me down. I couldn’t stand anymore I was so scared. They left Pa in the wagon and Russ said, “Let’s put the boy up after his pa.”

“Ain’t no need for you to harm the boy,” Pa said. “It was my doing.”

“Hanrion saw different, I reckon,” Russ said.

Two of the riders grabbed me and made me stand between them. I was shaking so hard, like I was freezing from cold, only I knew it was summer.

Hanrion tossed a rope over the tree branch. The loose end spilled down into the wagon bed.

Russ said, “Put it in closer to the trunk, so there’s room out that-away for the boy.”

Then Russ tied a simple slipknot on the end and put it around Pa’s neck. He and the other driver made Pa stand. Pa looked at my eyes, but I couldn’t stand it and looked down. He didn’t say anything at all. I watched his legs. He wasn’t shaking or knee-buckled at all. I just watched his feet.

He went up on his tiptoes when Hanrion secured the rope tight to a second tree.

I heard the brakes unlock.

The wagon lurched forward.

I watched Pa’s feet.

He didn’t struggle at all when the wagon went out from under him, but I heard the heavy creak inside Pa’s body just at the moment when he died.

I can’t move on my own.

Three of the men lift me into the wagon.

Pa’s feet hang weightless, dragging along the bed boards.

Everything is so loud. My breathing becomes a screaming gale in my head; I feel as though I’m underwater. It seems the universe has reduced down to nothing that isn’t within five feet of me.

The men hold me up next to Pa.

I still don’t look at him. I’m ashamed because what happened to him was all my doing.

I realize my hands are clasped behind me. I think about a prayer, but no words come to me, outside of my own voice telling me,
Why would God care to listen to me after what I’d done on His world?

When the men let go of my arms I fall down.

They say something, and cuss at me, but I can’t hear over the roaring in my ears.

With angry hands, two of them prop me back up to my feet.

Russ tosses the rope up over the branch, and I feel the soft weight of the end hit me between my shoulders where it comes down. They hold me.

I see Hanrion ahead of me with both his hands at the rope’s end.

The other man stands beside him, looking at me while he pisses on the same sapling they use to anchor me and Pa.

Russ forces the loop down over my ears. It scrapes them, and I can feel the needle end of every single whiskered burr of that hemp jabbing my skin as he tightens the knot.

It makes me dizzy even before Hanrion begins to secure his end.

When he tightens it to the tree, I do like Pa did. I am forced, stretched out as far as I can go, up on the narrowest tips of my feet.

The men get down, the sounds their boots make on the wagon boards is like a thousand simultaneous eruptions of thunder. The brake lets go. Wheels loosen, and the wagon moves forward.

I fix my eyes off in the distance through the trees.

I have never seen colors as spectacular.

I imagine my Hannah, and how she smells, but there is no more air, and I am floating in it, besides.

I feel myself kicking and kicking at the empty air.

My shoes come off.

Kicking.

My britches are even slipping down my waist, I am kicking so hard.

I keep my eyes fixed on the distance.

I have never seen anything so perfect.

I hurt.

It made me sick again.

“Fuck.” It was all I could say, that one word. I pressed my head down, so the heels of my palms squeezed my eyes shut. There were tears in them for the second time that day, and again, I said, “Fuck.”

I felt Nickie’s hand, resting so softly on my leg, her fingers barely squeezing me, like she was scared.

I said, “I’m sorry, Seth.”

And I didn’t pull my hands away from my face until I felt Nickie’s arms slip around me. Then she put her face against my neck and cried.

Everything is so loud: my ears, roaring just like Seth’s must have.

I have to touch the lens, but I can’t move my hands yet.

Nickie whispers, “There must be a reason he chose you, Jack.”

Who? Freddie or Seth?

Or Henry?

I try to get a breath, feel strangled.

“He knew who I was. Whitmore. She gave his baby that name.”

I know I need to go back, and Nickie says, “I love you.”

“Jack!” Conner saw us before we realized he had already gotten down from the train.

He smiled and threw his arms around me. Then he looked at Nickie, hugged her, and gave her a kiss on her cheek.

He looked good, healthy, like I wished I did.

“Damn,” he said. “You look like you lost twenty pounds. And, dude, what’s up with the ripped jeans?”

Conner never changed. I liked that.

We walked back along the platform together toward the Underground, and that’s when Nickie said what I was hoping she wouldn’t.

“I think I’d better be going home now. I likely am going to find myself in a bit of trouble when my parents realize I didn’t come home last night.”

Conner slapped my butt. “Dude.”

“It’s our last night here, Nickie,” I said. My voice sounded dumb and whiney. “Me and Conner are going to go out. Please come with us.”

“Ooh. Threesome,” Conner said.

“Shut up.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll phone you later. If I can’t make it, I promise to go to Heathrow with you both tomorrow and see you off.”

I sighed.

And as soon as I kissed her good-bye at the Tube station, Conner patted me on the shoulder and said, “And in case you’re wondering about me and Rachel, the answer is
Yes, we did, too
.”

I rolled my eyes. “I am so relieved.”

“Not as much as me, dude.”

We went on a run for the last time through Regent’s Park. I tried not to think about the distractions—the lens, Marbury, Nickie, going home—but I couldn’t stay focused. Sweating, we walked back in toward the hotel along Marylebone Road; and Conner just couldn’t seem to wipe the beaming, gloating look from his face.

“You look different,” he said.

“You already said that.” I wiped my hand through my hair. “I’m skinnier.”

“No,” Conner said. “I don’t mean that. Just your face, I think. Dude, see what sex does to you?”

“Whatever.”

“Do you love her?”

“I am totally in love with her, Con.”

“You still pissed at me?”

“Not even close.” I said, “What about you and Rachel?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I am ready to check out of Glenbrook and get back here before it’s even close to the beginning of the term.”

“Me too.”

When Conner was in the shower, I began sweating and shaking again. I sat there on the vinyl-covered desk chair, the bare skin of my legs and back adhering to it, just staring at those ripped jeans that were balled up on my side of the bed.

Don’t do it, Jack.

Just get through one night without pulling that shit on the people you love.

I felt sick, looked at my phone, trying to will it to ring so I could hear Nickie’s voice. Maybe it could anchor me down.

I went to the refrigerator bar and opened two beers. I stuck my arm into the shower and said, “Here. Party time.”

Just trying to do anything to keep myself away from the Marbury lens.

Conner clinked his beer bottle against mine.

“And hurry up and get out. I want to get ready, too,” I said.

I hated times like this; times when I’d just carry my phone around in my sweaty hand, waiting for a call, checking and rechecking the empty screen.

It began buzzing when I was in the shower. It spun a half circle on the marble countertop beside the bathroom sink.

I shut the water off and shook what I could from my arms and legs.

I picked up the phone.

It wasn’t her.

“Henry,” I said.

“I wanted to see if you’d come back,” he said. “You weren’t exactly
here
when you came to my flat on Tuesday, were you?”

“I don’t remember it.”

Jack doesn’t remember anything.

I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around me, tried to keep my voice down so Conner wouldn’t come. I could hear the television. It sounded like an English version of
The Amethyst Hour
.

“Is everything good, then?”

“The boys are okay now.”

“And you?”

“As usual. Fucked,” I said. “I’m going back to the States tomorrow.”

Silence.

“I see.”

“Yeah.”

“Jack? Sometime, will you tell me how it ends?”

“Sometime,” I said. “Bye, Henry.”

I closed my phone.

I wondered if maybe Henry still hurt about Marbury. He said he didn’t, but I didn’t really believe that, either. I imagined him, at that moment, holding his guts and shaking somewhere in his dirty flat, all alone, wishing.

And I didn’t care anymore if Conner couldn’t see Henry that night, or if he couldn’t hear him on the phone. Or if he was ever real in the first place, because I knew when I hung up the phone that I was never going to hear from Henry Hewitt again.

I dried off and pulled on a fresh T-shirt and underwear. It actually felt good, like I hadn’t been clean in days, and I tried to just keep my head focused on going out with Conner for our last night in London. But I still carried the phone in my hand, waiting for her, when I walked back into the bedroom.

Conner was sitting, one foot on the floor, one leg stretched out on top of the bed. His shoes were on. He looked, as Conner usually did, like a guy you’d see in some trendy clothes company print ad, like he was forever on his way out to some club or party or something. He was talking on his phone, and just when I came in I heard him say, “I love you,” and he closed the phone, looked at the screen, then slid it into his pocket.

I cleared my throat. “Pretty serious, Con.”

“Dude.” And I could tell he was going to say something sarcastic: “That was a surprise voice mail message I was leaving for
you
.”

Crazy Jack would probably think it was from Henry.

“Okay. Sure.”

Conner’s smile faded. “Is something wrong?”

“Nah. It’s okay.”

I began digging through my pack, looking for something to wear.

“All my shit’s thrashed,” I said.

“Well, if you didn’t live like a drug addict, it wouldn’t happen.”

Then I remembered Nickie had actually left a bag of laundered clothes that she’d taken from me on Monday. It was still sitting by the door. When I opened it, it was almost like going back in time. And everything I’d worn that day was in there, perfectly folded, and clean. Even my socks. I took them out, sat on the bed, and pulled them onto my feet.

Then I saw that she’d left a small square of paper inside. On it, she’d written
I love you
. I took the note out and stared at it for a while.

Conner leaned over my shoulder and said, “Is that for me?”

“She washed some clothes for me,” I said.

I pulled out the jeans that were in the bag. They looked like she’d pressed them or something, like they were brand-new. They smelled like Nickie’s house.

“That,” Conner said, “is called
folding
. Some people do it to their clothes so they don’t look like fucking newspapers you’d find at the bottom of a trash can. Observe, numbnuts.”

Then he grabbed Ander’s balled-up jeans from the bed and shook them out to give me a lesson.

That’s when the Marbury lens dropped out of the pocket.

I don’t know if Conner said, “Holy shit!” before I said, “Goddamnit!” or if we both blurted out our curses simultaneously. But it was like a floodlight being shot out into every angled corner of the room; so overpowering that I could instantly smell and hear everything in Marbury. I looked down at the lens as it sat there, blasting a hole through the rumpled sheets, opening up on some other forever.

Conner saw it, too, said, “How the fuck did this get here?”

I looked at him. His eyes were stuck on the lens.

“I can see you there, Jack.”

I looked down, saw a black bug the size of my forearm crawling on the bed.

Then, I don’t know.