The Paperboy (22 page)

A
T HOME THAT NIGHT
, I told my father that Yardley Acheman wanted to quit. Anita Chester was still in the house, doing some late cleaning, and we were sitting on the porch.

“Hit a dead end, did you?” he said, having a sip of his wine. He set the glass on the uneven boards of the floor next to his chair. It sat at an angle, the wine closer to the lip on one side than the other.

“No, it isn’t that. Ward’s still working.”

My father thought it over. “Your brother’s a damn good newspaperman,” he said finally, “but he doesn’t know everything yet.” He stretched his arms over his head and yawned. The sound of the vacuum cleaner came through the window to his study. There was no light left in the sky; it must have been ten o’clock. I wondered why he hadn’t just told her to go home. She had children to put to bed.

“Ward knows what he’s doing,” I said. I hadn’t told my father about the visit to the Van Wetters’ home in the wetlands. It was the kind of story he would have liked—at least it was the kind he liked to tell—but there was some residual exhaustion from that day left inside me, and I was not up to taking it on again yet.

In some way, telling a true story puts you back into it.

My father nodded his head. “He knows how to get stories,” he said, “but what he doesn’t appreciate fully is that the stories go into a newspaper, and the newspaper goes out into a community.”

The sound of the vacuum stopped, and he looked quickly in that direction and at the same time reached for his glass. “She’s been late every day this week,” he said, and then, softening, “I hope she isn’t having some sort of trouble at home.”

His hand touched the glass and it rocked a moment, then fell, three or four inches onto the floor, and shattered. He stared at it, and then slowly reached for the bottle, which was half empty on the other side of the chair.

“She have children of her own?” he said. “I can’t remember? …”

“A couple of them,” I said. “Six and nine.”

He picked up the bottle and held it to the light, as if to read the label. “I hope they aren’t sick,” he said.

She came through the screen door a moment later, carrying her purse and her working shoes, wearing white tennis shoes that came up over her ankles. She always walked home. Tonight she was in more of a hurry than usual.

“Good evening, Mr. James,” she said, heading for the steps.

“Good evening,” he said, and then, before she reached the steps, he said, “I wonder would you mind taking an extra minute. I smashed a wineglass over here.…” She stopped in her tracks for a long moment, then turned without a word and went back into the house for a broom.

“I hope she isn’t having trouble with those children,” he said.

W
ARD WAS WAITING ON
the sidewalk alone outside the rooming house in the morning. He got into the car and slammed the door, a departure of sorts, as we were brought up not to slam the Chrysler’s doors. “No Yardley?” I said.

He took his time answering. “He’s an adult,” he said finally, but I knew he didn’t want Yardley out sleeping with local girls. It made him furious. He was still dependent on the town for his story, and did not want to poison the source.

There was something else too. Ward had certain standards of virtue, which he kept to himself, but which were always at work. I didn’t know anything then about how many girls he had slept with himself, but I had never seen him with a girl of his own and assumed he would not sleep with
one casually. He didn’t even like being in the room while anyone talked about sexual matters, particularly Charlotte Bless, who talked about sexual matters constantly.

“As long as it’s with another adult,” I said, preparing him for the inevitable day when I’d arrive for work late and sticky too. He turned to look at me. “Somebody over eighteen,” I said, thinking he’d misunderstood what I’d said, and then realizing, even as I said it, that I’d missed the point. And half a second later, the point came home.

Yardley was with Charlotte.

We drove in silence, mutually outraged, to Moat Street and climbed the stairs to the office.

The van appeared beneath the window just after eleven o’clock. The passenger door opened first and Yardley came out, holding a beer, and then waited for Charlotte, who came around from the other side. I studied her carefully, looking for some sign of self-loathing. He put his hand in the middle of her back when she was close enough to touch, left it there a moment and then, as she moved past him toward the door leading inside, he patted her behind. They were a long time making it up the stairs.

I did not look at either of them when they came in, and Ward stared at the papers on his desk. They came inside the door and stopped.

“Uh-oh,” Yardley said, “I think Mom and Dad have been waiting up.” She laughed at that, a nervous laugh. Yardley drained the beer in his hand, went to the cooler and found a fresh one.

“You sure you won’t have one?” he said to her. “Nothing tastes as good as a beer in the morning, before you’re supposed to have it.”

“I’m fine,” she said, and I didn’t care for the way she said it. She was not just speaking of being fine without a can of Busch beer.

Yardley Acheman walked to his side of the office and sat down. He leaned back, holding the beer on his stomach, and put his feet on the desk. He looked at my brother and burped. Ward did not look up. Charlotte crossed the room to the window, leaned into my line of vision and said, “Good morning.”

I thought I could smell Yardley Acheman on her.

“Good morning,” I said. I tried not to forgive her.

“What I was thinking,” Yardley said to my brother, “I might take one more crack at finding this condominium guy they sold the lawn to after all.” He looked at Charlotte, and I saw it was something they’d decided before they got to the office.

“We could go back down to Daytona, spend a couple of days knocking on doors.”

Ward nodded but didn’t answer. Yardley Acheman said, “It probably won’t work, but we’re not doing any good around here.”

Another looked passed between them, she seemed about to laugh. My brother’s face had flushed, as if he were embarrassed.

“I thought we might as well go today.”

Y
ARDLEY’S FIANCEE CALLED
late in the afternoon, after they were gone. Ward had stepped outside to visit the bathroom on the main floor of the building, and I picked up the phone only after I realized it was going to ring until I did.

I told her Yardley was in Daytona Beach on business. She said he’d just been in Daytona on business. “I guess he didn’t finish,” I said, and gave her the number of the motel he’d written on the notepad on his desk when he’d called for reservations.

She took the number and then repeated it back to me twice, to be sure it was right. “I know he’s a great reporter,” she said, “but sometimes I wish he wasn’t so devoted to his work.”

C
HARLOTTE AND YARDLEY ACHEMAN
stayed in Daytona Beach four days. They took separate rooms at a motel on the beach, but Yardley was never in his room when his fiancée called, not even at night. She would call me in the morning, to be reassured that he was not doing dangerous work.

I wondered at the things he told her.

W
ARD AND I WENT
to the sheriff’s office, which occupied the second floor of the county courthouse. The cells were in the basement, some of them with barred windows which looked out over the town of Lately at grass level.

We had been there before to look at the report of Hillary’s arrest, and knew what to expect. The deputies would not speak to anyone from the
Miami Times
, knowing the paper’s liberal slant, and referred all inquiries to the departmental spokesman, a smiling, white-haired man named Sam Ellison who had once been a deputy himself.

Mr. Ellison was retired from active duty, and worked mornings at the department, Tuesday through Friday, even though the department did not need to be spoken for nearly that often. He did not seem happy to find visitors waiting for him outside his office door.

“The
Times,”
Mr. Ellison said. He had seen us in this same hallway the last time we were at the courthouse, but had not spoken to us because it was four minutes after
twelve. The sheriff’s public information office closed at noon, Tuesday through Friday.

Ward said, “Yessir,” and Mr. Ellison unlocked the door and walked into the office. We followed him in, uninvited. He opened the shades, lighting the room, and the dome of his head shone under his thin hair.

“You’re World War’s boy? …”

“Yessir,” my brother said, still standing.

He went to his desk and sat down. “Gone to work for the competition,” he said, and shook his head. He opened his desk drawer and stared inside.

“How is your daddy?”

“He’s fine,” Ward said.

Mr. Ellison closed the drawer and leaned back in his chair, smiling. “The most contrary man in Moat County,” he said in an admiring way. Ward did not reply to that, and Mr. Ellison sat up, ready to do business.

“What may I do for you gentlemen today?” he said.

And my brother told him we were in town looking into the murder of Thurmond Call and the conviction of Hillary Van Wetter for the crime. He said, “There was some physical evidence that was lost.…”

Mr. Ellison nodded, as if he knew everything Ward was going to say. As if we were all in agreement. “Yes, there was,” he said.

“Significant evidence …”

“Yessir,” Mr. Ellison said. The room went quiet.

“We were wondering,” my brother said, “what sort of explanation …”

Mr. Ellison was shaking his head. “There is no explanation,” he said, “unless you ever been in a situation where your life was endangered. Unless you ever felt an attachment to someone who was murdered. That’s the only explanation, that our officers are human.”

My brother sat still and waited. Mr. Ellison looked at him, then turned for a moment and stared at me. “I don’t believe I caught your name,” he said.

“Jack James,” I said, and he smiled again.

“The swimmer,” he said, and I didn’t know if he was talking about the University of Florida or what happened on the beach up in St. Augustine. He looked at us both, a wax smile fastened to his face.