Whippoorwill (20 page)

“You can have my car,” he said in a non sequitur.

It was Danny being nervous. I ignored it.

“You okay?” I asked. “In here, I mean?”

“Yep. It's okay here. Not that bad.”

“Will they keep you here, or transfer you someplace else?”

“Not sure yet. My lawyer is working all that out.”

“So you have a lawyer?”

“State appointed.”

“Good.”

“Seriously, Clair, you can have my car. I'm not going to be using it for a long time.”

“I don't want your car, Danny.”

“It's going to sit and not be used. I'll sell it to you for a dollar. If it's still running when I get out, you can sell it back to me for a dollar.”

“Doesn't somebody in your family want it?”

He looked down at the table. He appeared much younger without the sideburns. He had lost weight, too, and the jump suit swam all over him.

“Sorry,” I said.

“My family isn't all that interested in me at the moment. I don't get a lot of visitors.”

“Sorry.”

“Will you think about it anyway?”

I nodded. It was easier to go along with it than argue it out.

“Okay, Danny.”

Then we didn't say anything. Henry, the guard, rubbed his back against the wall. It made a grating sound.

“I don't know why,” Danny said eventually. “I don't know why I did it.”

“You don't have to explain anything.”

“I kind of want to. But I don't have an answer, Clair. It felt like I had a robot inside me and the robot was going to do whatever it wanted and I tried to shut it down, but it kept moving even when I told it to stop. I've got a counselor and that's working okay. I'm talking it out with him. Some guys in the block, they say the devil gets inside people and makes them do bad things, but I don't believe them.”

“What's going to happen to you? Do you know what your sentence might be?”

“Not really. I've heard a whole range of things. It's probably going to be attempted murder. I'm not counting on anything.”

“I'm sorry about it all, Danny.”

“No reason for you to be sorry, Clair. You were nice to me. You were nicer to me than any other person in my life. That's the truth.”

“It didn't seem to help you much.”

He shrugged. His hands jittered a little on his lap.

“He threw some hot water at Wally. Hot water that he was boiling for his instant coffee,” he said. “I told him to stop it. He did it again just to be a jerk.”

“And that started it?”

“That was the first round. A little later he came up to my room and he grabbed me by the ear. I was in bed and half asleep and he kind of lifted me out of bed by the ear. He said to put the dog out. I had Wally fixed up in the kitchen on a blanket, but Dad got it into his head that the dog should be out. Then he let me go. So I went down and I put Wally out, and when I came back, Dad flicked hot water at me. He'd been drinking. He said I was just a dog too, and he had half a mind to tie me out with Wally. Something drunk and stupid like that. He kept flicking spoonfuls of hot water at me, so I tried to go past, to go to bed, and he grabbed me by the ear again and I swung at him.”

“Sorry, Danny.”

Danny looked at Henry. Then he looked back at me.

“I guess I surprised him, because he lurched over to one side and slipped on the water. He knocked over a bunch of things and turned the kitchen table over. He went down hard, drunken hard, and then I lifted the car battery and dropped it on him. They're trying to say I slammed it down on him, but I don't think I did, Clair. I think I just dropped it on him.”

“It doesn't matter, Danny. It wasn't your fault.”

“He didn't even have his hands up to protect himself. He was stunned, I suppose, to find himself on the floor. I dropped it on him and the corner of the battery hit him right above the brow and there was a ton of blood. So much blood.”

I wanted to hold his hand, to do something to give him comfort, but that was against the rules.

“I took off then. I went up to the P&H Truck Stop over in Vermont and I just drank coffee. Then I texted you about going somewhere and that was that. I tried to ignore it. I hoped it would go away.”

“Who found your father?”

“He dialed nine-one-one himself. I don't know how he did it, but he did. He woke up about midmorning and he said his son had tried to kill him. That's why they came after us so hard.”

“It freaked me out, I have to say. The cops, I mean.”

“I know. I'm sorry about that. I just couldn't talk about it. I couldn't do anything. I had such a good day with you and Wally that I pretended nothing had happened back home. Sorry, Clair. I know that wasn't fair.”

“It's okay, Danny.”

“Dad hasn't been in touch. I don't think he will get in touch.”

I nodded.

That was it. Paula came back a few minutes later. It didn't feel as though a half-hour had passed. She still had her clipboard.

“Sorry, guys,” she said. “Time's up.”

Danny stood. I stood too.

“I'm learning to play the guitar,” he said on his way out. “The blues.”

“Of course.”

“Think about the car.”

Then Henry closed the door and I followed Paula back to my father.

“Okay?” Dad asked when I came back to the waiting room.

I shrugged. Then I folded into him and couldn't stop crying for a long time.

About three weeks later a bill of sale came from the Concord prison conveying the car to me for the price of one dollar. Danny attached a note saying he would accept the dollar on credit. He provided the VIN. I realized, reading it, that he must have had the number memorized.

When I showed the note from Danny to my dad, he shook his head. We had just finished dinner. He read it with his pair of glasses down on his nose. The reflection of the paper made his eyes look as though they were covered with Post-it notes.

“We don't want to get involved in all that,” he said, placing the note on the table. “Not until the dust settles and maybe not even then. I'm hearing that Elwood will be coming home pretty soon. We ought to let things go back to normal. As normal as they can be.”

“His dad isn't going to be on his side.”

“You don't know that, Clair. Look, it's not good any way you slice it. It's nice of Danny to think of you and to want to give you his car, but Danny's not in a position to give things away.”

“It's his car.”

“Maybe. Maybe it's registered under his dad's name. I don't want to get involved and you shouldn't either. I know it's hard, but put your attention somewhere else. Danny is going to have to make do on his own now.”

“We could keep his car for him. Just put a tarp over it. Not drive it or anything.”

Dad took off his glasses and put them on top of the note on the table.

“You've got a good heart, Clair. I know that. But this isn't our mess to clean up. It isn't, sweetheart. Elwood might show up and say,
Hey, where's the car?
That's probably likely. Then we're right in the middle of things.
You're
right in the middle of things. It might appear to his dad that you're trying to get something out of this. I know it's hard, but try not to invest too much in Danny. I don't mean to be cruel. You shouldn't be cruel, but you have to understand he's drowning and he's going to reach out and grab at anything to keep afloat.”

“So we let him drown?” I asked, and felt hot tears come into my eyes.

“No, but we make sure we don't jump into the pool beside him. That's the first rule of water safety. You don't make a bad situation worse by risking your own life. You know what I'm saying, Clair. I know you do.”

We didn't talk for a second. Then I asked if I should write Danny back.

“You can if you want, Clair. I'm sure he'd like hearing from you. Just keep things on the level. Take things easy right now, if you see what I mean. You don't want to fall into his drama.”

Talking to my dad usually made me feel good, but I went upstairs feeling squirmy in my stomach. I brought Wally with me and we practiced sitting and paw and down for a while in my room. I gave him biscuits when he performed properly. He was getting good. Sometimes he started the behavior before I even made the hand motion to initiate it. I knew working with him was tied up with Danny, but I still couldn't even say what I thought about Danny. Now and then I thought about kissing him, and the bowling and dancing. I tried not to do that.

Holly called later and I talked to her for a while. She liked discussing the whole Danny situation, but someone—probably her parents, but maybe a counselor—somewhere probably told her to lay off it unless I brought it up, because she talked like a dragon sitting on a treasure trove. She talked about everything but Danny, except you knew the pile of Danny bones under her belly amounted to her real treasure. She needed to bring me closer, to get me talking, and I hated that she pulled me in, but I also wanted to talk about him. So I talked, and I hated myself as I talked, but I talked anyway.

“I still can't believe you dated a guy in prison,” she said when I told her about the car offer.

“He wasn't in prison,” I said, though I knew she would tell it that way around school. “He's in prison now.”

“But you were, like, with a felon. That's just crazy. We both hung around with him.”

“I know.”

“I shouldn't call him a felon. That sounds horrible.”

I looked at myself in the mirror over my dresser. Wally watched me from my bed. He had his mouth open, panting, and occasionally he tried to smell something on the evening air leaking into my bedroom from the window. I stared at my mouth whenever it moved. I thought it moved too much, like it had to give each word an extra pat as it left my tongue.

“It's attempted patricide,” I said, stealing the word from an account in the newspaper. “Officially, I guess. It's kind of a ridiculous word, but it's accurate.”

“People are fascinated with Danny. Everyone pretends he was some big friend of theirs now, but when he was around no one cared.”

“Well, he wasn't around that much.”

“Still. He's like a celeb for trying to kill his dad. I really think people admire him in a weird way.”

“I wonder how Danny goes on from here.”

“Do you think he'll be in prison a long time?”

“Not that long. I don't know. He tried to kill his father but the whole situation was bad. The lawyers will try to explain what went on in that house.”

“Did you ever see his dad be brutal?”

I shook my head. Then I realized Holly couldn't hear that.

“No,” I said.

“Will you be a witness?”

“I guess so.”

“God, that is sooooo weird.”

I was still talking to Holly when I saw Elwood's pickup pull into the Stewarts' yard. It was dark so I couldn't see much, but I stood back from the window and lowered my shades.

Wally heard the pickup door shut and he turned his head to listen. He still panted, a tiny string of drool dripping from his flews. I wiped it away with a tissue, and after I threw the tissue away, I watched Elwood walk up toward his front door. His image was indistinct in that light, but I knew his size and shape. He wore black, or navy, and he looked bent over somehow, as if he couldn't straighten his back after a long drive. He had no light to work with, so he fumbled for a while trying the lock, I guessed. Finally he walked out to the front yard and went to stand under the streetlight, his head down, his hand sorting keys. He looked like a shadow—like a shadow that had come to life and walked around but had nothing inside him. Eventually he must have found the key he needed, because he walked back toward the front door more quickly now, his dark clothes gobbled up by the increasing night. Then little by little the lights came on in the Stewart house, and I saw him passing by windows, slowly, finding his way. The light switched on in the kitchen, the place where Elwood had finally met his match. I didn't wait for the other lights to come on. I shut my shades and went over to Wally and pulled him almost on top of me, letting his weight keep me from floating up in the air.

N
OTHING HAPPENED
for a while. School drifted away and I was glad to be done with it, although I missed seeing Mrs. Cummings. Then one Saturday Holly's brother, Jack, took us to the Battengate Mall. He complained the whole way, saying it was bogus that he had to give us rides places just because he was older and wanted to use the car. He was a tall, thin kid who had lousy skin and lousy posture. He was a geek in a lot of ways, and he participated in robot gladiator contests with about six kids from the high school. His eyes kept meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror, and he always cleared his throat after they did.

He dropped us at Old Navy and told us to meet him in two hours at the same spot. Then he drove off to go to a nearby electronics hobby store. Holly rolled her eyes when he drove away.

“I swear wolves brought him to live with us,” she said, leading me inside. “He's such an idiot.”

“At least he gave us a ride.”

“It was either give us a ride or he couldn't use the Jeep. Don't give him more credit than he deserves. He's such a nerd.”

It felt good to be in the mall. It felt normal and I didn't even mind Holly's incessant chatter. She wanted to buy shorts, something good for the summer, but she complained that her legs were too fat and shorts never looked good on a short person. We shopped Old Navy hard. She found a pair that looked okay, but the price was higher than she liked, and she hemmed and hawed for a while before finally handing them to the checkout girl. She really wanted two tops she found on the discount rack, but she said her mother would kill her if she came back with tops instead of shorts.