Dark Places

“Oh for the love of Pete,” I said. Realizing, as my lips were pressed into the P, that it was my mother’s phrase. For the love of Pete, let’s skeedaddle, where are my ding dang keys?

“So if Ben’s really innocent, why doesn’t he try to get out?” I asked. My voice went high, urgent on this last part, a child’s whinny: but why can’t I have dessert? I realized I was stealthily hoping Ben was innocent, that he’d be returned to me, the Ben I knew, before I was afraid of him. I had allowed myself a dangerous glimpse of him out of prison, striding up to my house, hands in his pockets (another memory that came back, once I let myself start thinking again: Ben with his hands always burrowed deep in his pockets, perpetually abashed). Ben sitting at my dinner table, if I had a dinner table, happy, forgiving, no harm done. If he was innocent.

If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a very Merry Christmas, I heard my aunt Diane boom in my head. Those words had been the bane of my childhood, a constant reminder that nothing turned out right, not just for me but for anyone, and that’s why someone had invented a saying like that. So we’d all know that we’d never have what we needed.

Because—remember, remember, remember, Baby Day—Ben was home that night. When I got out of bed to go to my mom’s room, I saw his closed door with the light under it. Murmuring from inside. He was there.

“Maybe you could go ask him, make that your first stop, go see Ben.”

Ben in prison. I’d spent the last twenty-odd years refusing to imagine the place. Now I pictured my brother in there, behind the wire, behind the concrete, down a gray slate hall, inside a cell. Did he have photos of the family anywhere? Would he even be allowed such a thing? I realized again I knew nothing about Ben’s life. I didn’t even know what a cell looked like aside from what I’d seen in the movies.

“No, not Ben. Not yet.”

“Is it a money thing? We’d pay you for that.”

“It’s a lot-of-things thing,” I grumbled.

“Okaaaaaaaay. You want to look into Runner then? Or … what?”

We sat silent. Neither of us knew what to do with our hands; we couldn’t keep eye contact. As a child, I was constantly being sent on playdates with other kids—the shrinks insisted I interact with cohorts. That’s what my meeting with Lyle was like: those first loose, horrible ten minutes, when the grown-ups have left, and neither kid knows what the other one wants, so you stand there, near the TV they’ve told you to keep off, fiddling with the antenna.

I picked through the complimentary bowl of peanuts in their shells, brittle and airy as beetle husks. I dropped a few in my beer to get the salt. I poked at them. They bobbed. My whole scheme seemed remarkably childish. Was I really going to go talk to people who might have killed my family? Was I really going to try to solve something? In any way but wishful thinking could I believe Ben was innocent? And if he was innocent, didn’t that make me the biggest bastard in history? I had that overwhelming feeling I get when I’m about to give up on a plan, that big rush of air when I realize that my stroke of genius has flaws, and I don’t have the brains or energy to fix them.

It wasn’t an option to go back to bed and forget the whole thing. I had rent coming up, and I’d need money for food soon. I could go on welfare, but that would mean figuring out how to go on welfare, and I’d probably sooner starve than deal with the paperwork.

“I’ll go talk to Ben,” I mumbled. “I should start there. But I’d need $300.”

I said it thinking I wouldn’t really get it, but Lyle reached into an old nylon wallet, held together with duct tape, and counted out $300. He didn’t look unhappy.

“Where you get all this money from, Lyle?”

He beefed up a bit at that, sat up straighter in his chair. “I’m treasurer of the Kill Club; I have a certain amount of discretionary funds. This is the project I choose to use them for.” Lyle’s tiny ears turned red, like angry embryos.

“You’re embezzling.” I suddenly liked him more.

Ben DayJANUARY 2, 1985

10:18 A.M.

It was an hour bike ride from the farm to Kinnakee proper. At least an hour, at a good pace when the cold wasn’t turning your lungs metal-red and blood wasn’t dripping down your cheek. Ben planned his work at the school for the times when it was most empty—like, he’d never go there on a Saturday because the wrestling team had the gym on Saturdays. It was just too lame holding a mop when all these blocky, muscled, loud guys were waddling around, spitting chaw on the floor you just cleaned and then looking at you, half guilty, half daring you to say something.

Today was Wednesday, but it was still Christmas break, so the place should be kind of quiet—well, the weight room was always busy, always making that sound like a thumping steel heart. But it was early. Early was always best. He usually went from eight to noon, mopped and straightened and shined like the fucking monkey he was, and got the hell out before anyone saw him. Sometimes Ben felt like a fairy-tale elf who’d creep in and leave everything spotless without anyone noticing. The kids here didn’t give a shit about keeping things clean: They’d toss a carton toward a trash can, the milk drooling all over the floor, and just shrug. They’d spill sloppy-joe meat on their cafeteria seat and just leave it there, hardening, for someone else to deal with. Ben did it, too, just because that’s what everyone did. He’d actually drop a glob of tuna sandwich on the floor and roll his eyes like it wasn’t worth dealing with, when he was the guy who’d be dealing with it in a few days. It was the stupidest thing, he was actually abusing himself.

So it sucked to deal with this shit at any point, and it was even worse to deal with it when other kids were around, trying to avoid seeing him. Today, though, he’d take his chances, go ahead and put in his shift. Diondra was driving into Salina for the morning to shop. The girl had at least twenty pairs of jeans, all of them looking the same to Ben, and she needed more, some special brand. She wore them baggy, rolled the cuffs tight at her ankle with those bulky socks peeking out. He always made sure he complimented the new jeans, and Diondra would then immediately say, but what about the sooooocks? It was a joke, but not really. Diondra wore only Ralph Lauren socks—they cost, like, $20 a pair, a fact that turned Ben’s stomach. She had an entire dresser filled with socks—argyle and polka-dotted and striped, all with the horseman at the top, midswing. Ben had done the math: must be $400 of socks in that drawer, sitting there like a bin of Florida fruits—worth probably half