toward them, breathless.
“What happened?” Tim asked. “What’s going on?”
Neither one answered.
“What happened?” Tim repeated.
“Something bad,” Go-Go said.
Mickey tried to keep going, but Tim caught her by the arm. “Show us.” She paused, and it seemed she was considering whether she could outrun Tim. She probably could, but she didn’t try. Mickey was crying-and Mickey never cried. Shrugging off Tim’s hand, she turned around and led us back down the hill, to the stream, which was growing in width and speed. Chicken George was there, lying on his back, his precious steel guitar nearby.
“He went nuts on us,” Mickey said. “He found us in the cabin, playing his guitar-”
“You know you’re not supposed to touch it,” Tim said. “And what where you doing over there, on a day like today?”
“He’s been gone so long this time,” Mickey said. “I didn’t think he was coming back. We were going to save the guitar from the weather.”
“The guitar wasn’t there,” Sean pointed out. “He took his guitar when he disappeared, the way he always does. And if you wanted to save it, why did you carry it out without the case, into this rain?”
“We didn’t,” Mickey said. “Chicken George did. He went nuts, when he found us there. It was like he didn’t know us, had never known us. He cursed us, he said terrible things. He called us-he called us robbers, although we only meant to surprise him. That’s when he grabbed the guitar from Go-Go and started to chase us. He went nuts.”
Sean looked at Go-Go.
“He went nuts,” Go-Go said.
“And then he fell, lost his footing. It wasn’t our fault. He thought we were robbing him, but we only meant to help.”
“Mickey pushed him,” Go-Go said in a small voice.
She whirled on him. “Go-Go.”
He backed away, but he didn’t change his story. “You did. You pushed him.”
Sean-of course it would be Sean-knelt next to Chicken George, pressing a finger on his throat. “He’s alive. We have to call someone, figure out a way to get an ambulance crew in here.”
“But he’ll say we were robbing him,” Mickey said. She grabbed Sean, came close to hitting him. “He’ll get us in trouble. Don’t you understand? It doesn’t matter that he’s crazy. People will believe him, take his side.”
“Mickey-” Sean took her wrists, surprisingly gentle, unafraid of her aggression, the fingernails that raked his cheek.
“Look, I didn’t want to tell you this, but-it’s not about the guitar. That’s not what happened. I decided to go check on the place. It’s been empty so long now. I-I had a feeling. So I got off the bus from school and went straight there. It’s not like Gwen cared if I came to her house.”
It was clear she wanted Sean and Gwen to feel guilty, that she wanted them to confront what they had done to her, to us.
“And?”
“Go-Go was already here, and Chicken George. He was touching him.”
“Go-Go was touching Chicken George?”
“Chicken George was touching Go-Go.”
Tim and Sean looked at their brother. He didn’t exactly nod, only shrugged helplessly, as if he didn’t have the vocabulary to speak of what had happened. Then said: “But Mickey pushed him.”
“Go-Go!”
“You did. He tried to grab you and you pushed him. That’s when he fell.”
“He was trying to hit me. Because of you, because of what I knew.” Mickey was yelling at Go-Go as if everything was his fault. He hung his head. “I pushed him to keep him from hitting me.”
“We still can’t leave him here, without telling anyone,” Sean said. “Even if he did that. We have to tell our parents.”
“Can’t we go back and call 911 anonymously?”
“There’s no way to explain to them how to get here. There’s no road-and the street may already be impassable. If we hike back to the Robisons’, though, our dads might be able to carry him out of the woods. And Gwen’s father is a doctor. He can help him.”
“Help him,” Mickey said. “He’s a child molester. He’s been waiting all this time to get Go-Go alone and he finally did.”
There was an accusation there, for all of us. But mainly for Sean and Gwen. Go-Go wouldn’t have been alone in the woods if it weren’t for Sean and Gwen, if we were still a we. That was how Chicken George got to him.
“It’s the right thing to do,” said Sean, who still wanted to be a doctor then, having not yet been defeated by organic chemistry.
“What do we tell our parents?”
“The truth.” Sean paused. “Why is the guitar there?”
“He tried to hit us with it,” Mickey said.
“The truth,” Sean said again.
“That is the truth.”
He looked to Go-Go. After a second, he nodded. “He was trying to hit Mickey with it. He called her terrible names. He wanted to kill her. We didn’t take it.”
We made our way back to Gwen’s house as quickly as possible. To our surprise, all the adults were there-Dr. and Mrs. Robison, the Hallorans, Mickey’s mom and not-quite-stepdad, along with her baby brother.
“It’s an impromptu hurricane party,” Tally Robison said. “Your parents came here to wait for you all to return, and now people are worried it’s going to be like Agnes, with water rushing down the road. In which case, we’ll be stuck.” She seemed jolly about it. There were wineglasses out, the fathers had beers. Tally Robison liked parties and she tried to create them out of the flimsiest of pretexts. Still, we were struck by our parents’ naivete, their assumption that we would all return safely. Didn’t they know, or had they forgotten: things could go wrong, so quickly.
Tim and Sean took their father aside and spoke to him. Certain things were not said, by unspoken agreement among all of us. We did not mention that we had a long-standing relationship with the man who was lying in the creek. We did not say that Mickey had pushed him. The story was only that Mickey had found him touching Go-Go and he had chased them both, then slipped and fallen.
“Touching? What do you mean by touching?”
“Just-
Mr. Halloran then left the house with Dr. Robison and Rick, Mickey’s sort-of-stepdad. The boys wanted to go with them, fearful that the grown-ups could not find their way, but Mr. Halloran was adamant that they stay behind. They were gone for about an hour, but it seemed much longer. It seemed like days had passed before we saw the beams of their high-powered flashlights at the top of the hill. They came in through the basement door, and Tally Robison brought them towels and fresh T-shirts, then mugs of coffee with whiskey in them. She still wanted her party. She and the other women had played charades, and she wanted the men to join in.
“Where’s the-man?” Mickey asked.
“He was gone,” Dr. Robison said.
“Gone? Are you sure you went to the right place?”
“I mean-he didn’t make it. There was nothing we could do. I’ll call the police, but-you see, when he slipped, he fell and hit his head. He lost a lot of blood, and by the time we got there-” He shook his head. “We made our way down to the road, hoping to flag someone down, but there’s no one out there because of the storm. Our part of the road is clear, but there’s flooding farther down and up on Forest Park.”
“The phones are out,” Tally said.
“We’ll call in the morning, then,” Dr. Robison said. “We can’t leave him there.”
“Why not?” Mr. Halloran said, bolting his beer.
In the wake of the hurricane and the damage to the neighborhood, the police did not come for several days. We never knew exactly what Dr. Robison told them. We were not even sure if Chicken George’s body was found, or if it
