The True Detective (11 page)

There are her eyes, her red mouth, her glossy hair like icing on a cake. There are her gold earrings. “I know you didn’t mean that,” he says.

“Let’s go do it then,” she says—and adds, “Just kidding.”

H
E HAS DRIVEN PAST SOMETHING THAT HAS ALERTED HIS
mind and shifted his eyes to his rearview mirror. As if in a
movie, in its odd reflection, there is a young boy walking on the sidewalk through the early evening air. Already there is a new beating in his heart, as he returns his eyes to the street before him and lets his car roll along.

Approaching an intersection, slowing to a near stop, he has no idea where he is going or what he might do. He turns right and rolls slowly along the side street. Where there is space along the curb, he pulls over and stops.

The boy may not come this way, Vernon thinks. He may have already passed back there on the larger street. He doesn’t look back; he decides not to let himself do so, so he turns off the motor. Life is chance, he thinks. Nor does he let himself use either of the car’s mirrors. Reaching under the dash, he pulls the car’s hood latch, sees the hood jump up an inch or two.

Opening the door, he steps into the evening air. He still doesn’t let himself look back down the street.

He lifts and props the hood. He leans into the motor’s warmth, as if to see something, and his thoughts are running over a notion of recurring distribution of lives within bodies, a notion that if a boy does appear, they will have known each other in the past or the boy will have been with him in the past.

Reaching a hand near the motor’s hoses, from which heat is generating, he touches two fingers to a rubber hose coated with oiled dust; he is rubbing his soiled fingers over his thumb and standing upright, and the boy is there—he is there—coming along the middle of the street.

Taking a step from the fender, brushing his hands, Vernon says to him, “You know anything about cars? Can you give me a hand?”

The boy steps over. He looks into the car’s opened mouth. Stealing a glance at his hair, Vernon looks under the hood as well, and he says, “It won’t start. I don’t know what happened.”

“What did it do?” the boy says, gazing into the dark mystery of metal and rubber.

“It just cut out,” Vernon says. “It could be the fuel line,” he adds. “I was thinking, if you got behind the wheel and tried to start it, I could check the fuel pump.” He glances at the boy. He is eleven or twelve years old. “You know how to start a car?” he says.

“I think so,” the boy says.

“Let me show you,” Vernon says, leading him to the driver’s side.

As he says, “Jump in” and the boy does so, Vernon is careful not to touch him. “That’s the key, the ignition,” he says. “The right pedal on the floor is the gas. All you do is turn the key and step on that pedal. When I say so. Step on the pedal lightly. You’ve never driven a car?” he adds, straightening away from him.

An excitement is in him he has not known before, a boundary he has never crossed. He hears the boy say, “Not really,” as if at a distance.

“It’s a good thing to learn how to drive,” Vernon hears himself say, allowing himself now to glance upon the boy’s profile.

“When I say start it, turn the key,” he says.

Stepping around the door, Vernon returns to the fender beside the raised hood. He really hasn’t done anything, he is telling himself; who could say his car had not stopped for some reason? Is anyone watching?

Looking to the windshield, he says, “Give it a try.”

He pretends, as the engine fires and trembles before him, to conclude some handiwork. Okay, he thinks, lowering the hood, letting it drop into place.

“Good!” he says, opening the door where the boy, just able to reach the pedals and glimpse over the steering wheel, sits
smiling. “Slide over, I’ll give you a lift,” he says, slipping into the car, closing the door, sensing success of a kind as the boy obeys.

Vernon looks to his side only, and to the rearview mirror. “Once you start a car,” he says, “it’s easy to learn how to drive.”

“That sure wasn’t hard,” the boy says.

Vernon pulls away from the curb. He is trying to think of what to do next, what to say, and his mind skips over his old fantasies of adoption, of meals and games, of the friendship of a brother, and of schools and bicycles, baths in a tub, watching television . . .

“You know there’s another car,” he says. “I have this other car to worry about, which belongs to my friend. It would be great if you could help me get that car started, too. It’s just a few minutes from here. Maybe ten is all.”

“What’s wrong with it?” the boy says.

“It’s something, I think, to do with the starter. I think the two of us could get it started, though. Just like we did this car. I could pay you five dollars for helping me to get it started.”

The boy says nothing to this, and Vernon makes a move at once. Turning into a driveway, backing around, expecting the boy to say, simply,
no
, he accelerates in the other direction. “It won’t take long,” he says. “Just a short drive.”

“Where is it?” the boy says, and Vernon believes there is no suspicion in his voice.

“It’s back this way,” he says. “It’s right by this pond.”

The boy says nothing.

Vernon drives along. For the first time in the car, at an intersection, making his turn, he glances upon the small person in the adjacent seat. There is his slight frame, his sandy hair, his nose; Vernon realizes in a rush of affection how trusting the boy is. He would reach and touch his shoulder, and smile at him, but he restrains himself. “You have any brother or sisters?” he says.

“Just a brother,” the boy says.

“How old is he; what’s his name?”

“Matt. He’s fifteen.”

“And you, are you fourteen?”

“No,” the boy says.

“How old are you?” Vernon says.

“Twelve.”

“Tell me your name.”

“Eric.”

“I’m Vernon,” Vernon says, feeling an unexpected rush.

He glances again. “This is an easy way to earn five dollars,” he says.

Hands on the steering wheel, watching ahead, he blinks to clear his eyes of the curious emotion stirring there. What is crossing his mind is how much he likes this boy already, how his innocence makes him so likeable. Does he look like someone he has seen before? It seems he does.

On Route 4, driving west, he thinks how he would simply like to drive on into the world with this young boy, this new young friend who trusts him so naturally. “I like your nose,” he says.

“My nose?” the boy says, and laughs.

“That little flattening makes you look strong, you know. Girls will be after you in no time.”

“Got blasted with a baseball bat,” the boy says, although it is clear this reading of his nose is something new.

“Well, I guess you paid a price,” Vernon says. “It looks special, though. You could grow up to be a movie star.”

The boy laughs. “It sure hurt when it happened. I had two black eyes.”

“Really?”

“And—” he begins, but stops.

“And what?”

“I got teased a lot.”

“That must’ve hurt, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Your brother teased you, I bet.”

“Yeah. Other kids, too. It was my brother who blasted me. But it was an accident.”

“It’s too bad people are mean like that,” Vernon says. “The teasing, I mean.”

The boy makes no reply; Vernon has to take in a breath all at once, to conceal his emotional feeling. This is so wonderful, he thinks. Driving like this. This fullness of life in his car at day’s end where always before there had been emptiness. “Do you have many friends?” he says.

“Sure, a few,” the boy says.

“Not many?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

“Some people have just one friend,” Vernon says. “And some people have a lot of friends. I didn’t have many friends when I was your age. Well, that’s not true. I didn’t have
any
friends, really. I met people sometimes that I wanted for friends. I think just having one good friend is what I would have liked. You wouldn’t be lonely then, you know, maybe like having a brother.”

The boy says nothing; skylight is visible now only on the horizon. Cars have headlights on. “Your brother isn’t your friend?” Vernon says. “Or your parents?”

“I only live with my mother,” the boy says. “My father’s gone somewhere.”

“I always dreamed,” Vernon says, “of having a brother. Who was my
friend
.” When the boy says nothing to this, he says, “I guess it doesn’t always work that way though, does it?”

“Hm,” the boy remarks, as if not knowing how else to respond.

“My father,” Vernon says. “I never really had a father either. I mean I never
knew
him. He died in Vietnam. I’m not even certain my mother was married like that, although she says she was.”

As he keeps the car on its line, it occurs to Vernon how childlike he is sounding, and he reminds himself to be careful. “You don’t have a stepfather?” he says.

“No.”

“Maybe that’s better,” Vernon says. “I mean, if your mother’s your friend. Well, my mother hasn’t ever been my friend, but I think she wanted to be. What about girlfriends? You have girlfriends?”

The boy laughs. “No,” he says.

“Sit over here closer where I can hear you,” Vernon says, patting the seat. To his amazement, the boy shifts some, and he experiences a new wave of affection over the boy’s innocence. He blinks as if in the presence of something he has not known before. “You know,” he says cautiously, “I could be your friend.”

The boy seems to hunch his shoulders. He doesn’t say anything.

Vernon looks ahead, continues driving.

“How far is this place?” the boy says.

“Not far.”

“It better be pretty soon or I have to go home,” the boy says. “I didn’t know it was this far.”

“We’ll be there in just a few minutes,” Vernon says.

They continue rolling along under the darkening sky.

Against sudden nervousness, aware the boy is growing frightened, Vernon starts talking again. “I’ve always had this dream,” he says. “I could spend a whole summer with my
friend. Just to have a friend like that. We could be together. We could spend the whole summer at a lake, you know. Do anything we wanted.”

“Well, what does that mean?” the boy says.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” Vernon says. “Just what I said.” And he adds, “Another dream I’ve had, just recently, though—well, it would be to adopt someone, you know, a boy who would be a friend like a little brother, someone who was like myself. Who didn’t have a father to grow up with, you know, or very many friends, either. I’d take real good care of this friend—buy him a bicycle, and toys, things like that. Take him to the movies.”

The boy doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then he says, “That sure isn’t me.”

“Well, I didn’t say it was,” Vernon says. “I just said it was a dream. What’s wrong with that?”

The boy doesn’t answer.

“I didn’t mean to say that it was you, necessarily,” Vernon says.

The boy remains silent; Vernon looks to the road ahead.

“I think I have to go home now,” the boy says.

“I’m going to
take
you home,” Vernon says. “Just as soon as we get this car started. I sure wouldn’t bring you all this way for five dollars for nothing.”

“I don’t want to do that anymore,” the boy says.

“Oh, now,” Vernon says, “why are you being like that? Just because I offered to be friends?”

The boy is silent.

“We’ll be there in just one minute,” Vernon says. “Then I’ll take you back home, just like I said I would.”

Again, in silence, they roll along. But Vernon cannot put aside his growing tension, and he says, “I was only trying to tell
you some things that would help you for the rest of your life. No one ever told me anything like that, when I was your age.”

Nor is there any response to this; the boy holds in place.

“If you were my friend,” Vernon says. “If you were my friend now, you’d know there wasn’t anything to be afraid of. I could help you in all kinds of ways. By showing you things. Telling you things. I was your age, too, you know.”

Still the boy doesn’t say anything, and Vernon doesn’t know if he should feel anger with him or cry out in disappointment and frustration. Turning from the highway at last, headlights showing the way under the cover of trees and branches, they follow a two-lane pavement. The turnoff to the back road to the cottage—a narrow gravel road—isn’t far now, and Vernon slows down. For the first time, he is visited by fear over what he is doing. This is illegal, he thinks. What if someone sees him? At the same time an urge is in him to hold the boy, to touch his face to his hair.

“I want to go home,” the boy says; there is trembling in his slight voice for the first time.

“I’ll take you home,” Vernon says. “In just a few minutes.”

Engaging the car’s turn signal well ahead of time, Vernon hopes that the green light flashing from the dashboard will reassure the boy. Turning onto the gravel road, close then within tree branches, he maintains some speed, thinking the boy might try to jump from the car and get away. As they bounce along at perhaps thirty, he says, “We’ll be there in a minute. It’s right up here.”

There is no response, and glancing, Vernon perceives the boy’s face, the forehead wisp of his hair, in the dashboard’s glow of light.

Through the darkness around them, between trees, occasional orange and yellow lights of other cottages around the
pond pass in and out of view. If someone is at the cottage, Vernon is thinking, if lights are on, he will drive out the other way and take the boy back to Portsmouth and drop him off.

No one will be there. He knows this, even as knowing it makes him nervous. Gone on a drinking outing of some kind, he has never seen his housemates return before the middle of the night. They don’t stay around the cottage on Saturday’s lonely hours. Only he has done that. Here and elsewhere. Everywhere.

He rolls along. “I just want to be with you,” he says, on a rush through him of pins and needles.

The boys gives no response.