The Second Son (31 page)

And what about Andrew? Where the hell was Andrew? Was he right now talking to the doctor? Was he on his way? Or was he just now telling my mother and father what happened and bringing them out here to fix everything? The same questions, racing through my mind, over and over until I thought I was either crazy or going crazy. The damn sun was down to the top of the trees when I finally accepted that nobody was coming. In the end I was telling myself that Andrew must have gone into town and Chief Kennedy had seen him and figured out what he’d done just by looking at that big scratch on his face, and arrested him. Right there. Only Andrew wouldn’t tell him where Gail was, so it was up to me to go and get the doctor.

That’s how stupid a thirteen-year-old kid can be. So stupid that I didn’t even take the horse. After all those promises to God, I wasn’t going to take a chance He’d consider it stealing. I had no idea how soon I would be wondering if there was any God up there in the first place. All the way down to the side road I kept turning back, hoping to see Gail stand up and wave at me, laughing at the great joke she had played on us. She didn’t.

And by the time I reached the road I was running as fast as my legs could carry me. All the way home I ran, talking to Gail, promising with all my heart that my bastard brother would pay for what he had done to her. All the way home, running and crying and holding the stitch in my side and promising Gail I would make it right, I would make him pay.

I HAD CRIED MYSELF DRY
by the time I staggered into our house, looking for my parents. They would know what to do. Only they weren’t there. Andrew was, sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and some cookies.

“What the hell . . . what are you doing?” I got out as I tried to catch my breath. “Why didn’t . . . you bring . . . the doctor?”

“Keep your voice down,” he whispered, “Mom’s upstairs. Dad’s out in the workshop. They want to go back to the park after supper.”

I don’t know why I listened to him. I sucked in some more air before I finally whispered back, “What happened to you? You were supposed to bring the doctor.”

“I had to go get Mom and Dad. They were waiting for me.”

“Jesus,” I cursed through my teeth, “what about Gail? She’s still up there. Goddammit!”

“Stop your cursing,” he whispered again. “It’s okay. I phoned the MacDonalds’ house.”

“You what?”

“It’s okay, I disguised my voice. I used a handkerchief so they wouldn’t know it was me.”

“You told Mr. MacDonald what happened?” We were both sitting at the table now, talking in hushed tones. I had one eye on the front door, half expecting Mr. MacDonald to come crashing through.

Andrew didn’t seem worried at all. “Gail’s mother answered. I didn’t tell her my name. I just told her I was up by the dam and saw Gail’s horse, by itself. You know, like it wandered off or something. That way they’ll go looking up there and find her. If she doesn’t wake up they’ll think she fell off her horse and hit her head.”

It took me a moment to take all that in. Now I knew why he was just sitting there eating goddamn cookies. He had it all figured out. Then it dawned on me. “That’s stupid. They’ll never believe that.”

“Why not? It could’ve happened.”

“No it couldn’t. The horse is on the other side of the dam.”

His mouth opened but no sound came out. He just sat there, his eyes moving from side to side like he was searching for an idea inside his head. I was getting angry again. “We have to tell Mom and Dad. They’ll know what to do.”

“No!” he almost shouted and grabbed my arm. Then he started whispering again. “It was an accident. You can’t tell them.” I could see the wheels turning, working on the reasons why I shouldn’t tell them. He stared at me for another moment before he asked, “Where’s your shirt?”

I looked down at my sweaty undershirt. “I left it there, to keep the flies off.”

I swear I caught him swallowing a smile before he said, “You know what will happen, don’t you? Everyone will blame you. You’re the one who brought her out there, trying to make me jealous. You wanted her to swim naked, you said yourself. This never would have happened if you — ”

I yanked my arm away and growled at him, “You bastard. You can’t — ” I heard my mother’s footsteps on the stairs and I shut my mouth, confused now and starting to wonder if he was right, that I was the one in trouble, not him. I guess I panicked, because I decided I better keep quiet until people found out what he had done, on their own. Then nobody could blame me, or accuse me of lying. I slid away from the table and made my way up the back stairs to our bedroom, before my mother could come down and see my missing shirt and guilty face.

It was around six-thirty when I heard the first siren, about the same time my mother called us for supper. Apparently Mrs. MacDonald had called their hired hand from the farm to go over to the dam and check it out. Of course the horse wasn’t wandering loose — it was tied to the tree where I’d left it. The hired hand, it was Peter Vanick, I think, looked around till he found Gail. Then he drove to the nearest farmhouse and called Chief Kennedy. Those were the sirens I heard, first the chief and then the ambulance from Cornwall. In between, the chief sent Peter to find Mr. MacDonald and bring him out there. I guess he didn’t want him driving.

I heard later that Gail’s mother went with them. The chief told Peter just to tell them there’d been an accident, and they’d better get out there. They said she fell apart something awful, Gail’s mother. That bothered me the most, thinking about how nice she always was, then having to find Gail like that. I didn’t know any of this at the time. All I knew about were the sirens, which scared me enough as it was.

I almost told my parents the whole story when they noticed the scratch on Andrew’s face, only he jumped in there with some big lie about scraping himself when they were lifting the empty candy barrel off the truck. That’s why he was so long picking them up, he said. He was taking the decorations off the truck. He was always better at lying than I was at telling the truth, if you know what I mean. We were finished supper and starting on the dishes when the police car pulled into our driveway — we could see it through the window over the sink. Andrew dropped the dishtowel and ran upstairs.

I was standing there with the dishrag still in my hand when my dad let Chief Kennedy in the front door. I remember thinking how dumb Andrew was, running away like that. I mean, where was he going to hide up in his bedroom? I was some shocked when the chief didn’t even say hello to Dad, just glared at me with this real hard look on his face and said, “You’ll have to come with me, Mike. We need to talk to you.”

“Me?” I whispered.

“What’s this about, John Paul?” My dad looked upset. Maybe he thought those sirens had been going to a fire.

The chief frowned. “It’s pretty bad, Ed. We just found the mayor’s daughter. Up by the dam. I’m afraid — ”

“What happened?” my mother interjected, dropping into a chair by the table and staring at the chief like he was a ghost. My dad just stood there with his mouth open.

“Well,” the chief answered, “it’s not good. That’s why we have to talk to your son.”

It seemed to me my mother was looking at the doorway Andrew had just disappeared through when she whispered, “Mike?”

“Yes, he was the last one seen with her.” The chief turned and gave me that hard look again. “You were with her, weren’t you? A lot of people saw you riding through town with her, on that horse of hers.”

“Uh, yeah, we were taking it back to the farm.”

“Only you never reached the farm, did you?”

“Uh, no, but . . .”

He wasn’t listening any more. He was looking at my dad. “I really don’t want to question him here, Ed. I want someone with me, to take his statement. He’ll have to come with me, downtown. Do you want to come with him?”

My father didn’t answer at first. He just looked back and forth between me and the chief a few times before he got some words out, “What happened up there? The girl’s all right, isn’t she?”

The chief looked down at the floor for a few seconds, biting his lip. Finally he gave out a big sigh and said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Gail MacDonald is dead.”

My father gasped and my mother looked right at me and whispered, “My God, Mike, what have you done?”

A lot of people have asked me over the years, why didn’t I just blurt it out? That I didn’t do it? I always wonder if they think they’re the first genius to ask me that question, as though I hadn’t asked myself the same damn question ten thousand different ways. The answer is as simple as those first words out of my mother’s mouth — no questions, no disbelief, no chance to explain what happened. Just, “My God, Mike, what have you done?”

I had no name to put to it, not in that moment of hot panic, no thoughts of what her motivation might be, only shock that the person who was supposed to protect me was my first accuser. I felt a red-hot burst of anger and clamped my jaw shut in bitter defiance. I threw the wet dishrag in the sink and turned to go with Mr. Kennedy. My father tried to put a hand on my shoulder as I went past him but I twisted away. They were blaming me, same as always, and I’d make them pay. I’d show them. Let them find out for themselves what their precious Andrew had done. Then they’d be sorry for treating me so bad. I probably thought it was the same as refusing to talk to the old man after the gun incident, that once again I would enjoy the power it gave me.

The chief put me in the back seat of the cruiser and told my father to sit in the front. He didn’t protest. Neither one of them said anything, all the way up Elm to Dominion and down Main Street to the courthouse, where the jail was. It was still light out and there were lots of people coming and going from the park, laughing and talking and having fun like nothing was wrong. I don’t know if anyone even noticed me in the back of that police car. My anger at my mother and father and Andrew spilled over and I set my mind against all of them.

When we got to the courthouse, the chief told my father he’d have to stay out there in the front office, while he and Miss Cowan took my statement. I don’t know what I thought of that. By that time I was going numb, unable to feel or think very much at all. The old courthouse was just off the mill square, a big old stone building backing on to the Pond. I had only been inside once before, to buy a licence for my bike. It made me think of church, kind of quiet and cool behind those two-foot walls of stone, with lots of grey paint and high ceilings. It was a small room, where they took me, with a square wooden table and some old wooden chairs. From where I was sitting you could see part of the waiting room, through the pane of blurry glass in the door. I could just make out my father, waiting for me out there. He still had on that red shirt he always wore with his clown outfit. I wasn’t scared yet. That would come later.

The chief sat me down at the table and asked me if I wanted a glass of water. I shook my head. Then he started with a speech, looking so huge and threatening on that little chair. “Now, Mike, I want you to tell me exactly what happened this afternoon. Don’t hold anything back out of fear that your parents are going to be mad at you, or anything like that. I want to know exactly what happened. That’s the only way you’re going to come out of this all right, if you’re completely honest, if you tell us everything that happened. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

I didn’t really believe him. He hadn’t come to my house just to ask me if I knew anything. He had come to take me to the jail. And now he had Miss Cowan sitting there, taking notes. She was kind of an old maid, who wore old-fashioned long dresses and too much perfume. And didn’t smile much. I knew she was the town secretary, which meant she worked for Gail’s father. So I didn’t figure she’d be on my side, either. I searched their faces for some sign of how they really felt about me, but they were pretty blank. The fact that they were trying to look all official-like did not make me feel any better. I’d grown up being friendly with both of them, and now they were acting like they didn’t even know me.

“Do you understand, Michel?” the chief repeated when I didn’t answer right away.

I didn’t miss him calling me that, either. I wondered what the hell he thought that would get him. I finally nodded, then craned my neck to see if I could spot Mom and Andrew out in the waiting room. That’s what I had decided would happen, on the way down to the jail. I figured Andrew would come back downstairs after they took me away and Mom would tell him Gail was dead, after all. And he would cry, “Oh, no,” and right away tell her it was really him that did it and they should go right downtown and tell the chief. So I could come home. Big joke. I guess I knew Andrew was a chicken. I just didn’t have the maturity to understand how a chicken would act when something like this happened.

I could tell the chief didn’t appreciate my silence. When I didn’t answer him right away he got that grim look on his face. “Now look, son, the whole damn town saw you ride out there on that horse. So you might as well tell me right now. What happened out there? Tell me now and make it easier on yourself.”

I thought I saw some daylight. “What do you mean, easier?”

The chief leaned forward. “The sooner you tell me what happened, the sooner you can go home. You’d like to go home, wouldn’t you?” I don’t think he was a well-trained interrogator at that point in his career. By the time he finished with me he probably thought he was, but I’m pretty sure he was just winging it that evening.

The same as I was. I nodded at his suggestion about going home, straining again to see if my mother had shown up with Andrew. He asked me, “Who are you looking for, son?”

I cast my eyes down at the table. “Nobody,” I said, afraid he would read my mind if I thought about it too long.

“Look, Mike,” his voice was getting louder, “the sooner you tell me, the easier this is going to be.”

That made me think of my experience with Sister Anthony and the Elvis record. I looked up at him and asked, “You mean if a person did something by accident, and then came in here and told you about it themselves, it would be better?”