“No. I don’t think so.”
But that had scared Silas. What if she had been?
“We drove to a quiet spot,” he said, “and all we did was argue. I told her it wasn’t gone work and she started crying and saying yes it would, we ought to just run away for good. I said where and she said Chicago. I said why didn’t she go by herself, she wanted to go so bad. We went round and round, and finally I drove her back to the road led to her house. Larry was supposed to pick her up. We got there early, though, and she just slammed the car door and run off down that road, in the dark. I sat there thinking a minute, but wasn’t no way I could go after her. Not with Cecil there, drinking.
“When I got home, Momma, she was waiting on me. She could tell from my face where I’d been. Never even said anything. Just went to her room and closed the door. Did something I’d never seen her do, called in sick to work at the diner. I could tell, she’d had enough. Monday she went to see my coach, but everybody else was talking about Larry. How he took Cindy on a date and she never came back. And a month later, I was on my way north, up to Oxford High School, living in the coach’s basement.”
Angie watching him.
“To be honest,” he said, “I was glad to go. It was a whole lot better up there. Better field, school. They give you your cleats and equipment. Pretty soon I had me a girlfriend.” Whose name he couldn’t remember.
Angie said, “And Larry?”
Silas looked to where his hat would’ve been.
He said, “I forgot him. Him and Cindy both.”
“Forgot him?”
“It wasn’t hard. I was busy in Oxford, and Momma, in her letters, she never mentioned it.”
“You let him take the blame. All this time.”
“I thought she’d just run off. Thought she’d turn up sooner or later and it’d be okay.”
“For twenty-five years, you thought that?”
A pleading note in his voice. “Things ain’t so clear when they’re happening, Angie. You’re eighteen and playing ball and everything’s going your way. Then all of a sudden twenty-five years’ve passed and the person you look back and see’s a whole nother person. You don’t even recognize who you used to be. Wasn’t till I come back down here that I saw the mess I’d made.”
“So it was Cecil who killed her?”
“That’s my guess.”
“Where’s he now?”
“Dead. His wife, too.”
He moved his hand to the center of the table. He hoped she’d place hers on top of it, but she didn’t. He looked out the window where he could see their reflections, saw her watching him and focused on her profile, it was easier than looking at her eyes, seeing what she must be thinking.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I think it’d be better if Larry had died.”
“Better for you?”
“For him.”
“Yeah, but for you, too.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“Look at me,” she said.
He did.
“I know this, 32 Jones,” she said. “You didn’t let him die, did you? Cause of you that man’s still alive, and when he wakes up, if he ever does, it’s gone be even worse for him. Just imagine that.”
“I have been.”
“Well then,” she said. “What you gone do?”
HE SLEPT LITTLE, used to his night shift outside Larry’s room, and at six-thirty the next morning he eased out of bed and left Angie in a nightgown in the sheets, the first time she’d worn anything to bed. They hadn’t made love after dinner, neither in the mood, didn’t even try, just lay apart, not much more to say between them, her heart beating in her breast without him to hold it.
Outside, he closed the door and locked it, a bright September morning, sparrows shooting through her balcony with its hanging plants. He stood looking where she’d hung bird feeders, had a table and chairs set up. They’d spent many evenings out here, her serving his beer in glasses without him even asking her to, Al Green on the CD player.
He hung his badge around his neck and went down the stairs. On the road, he noticed the Jeep’s blinkers had stopped working and rolled down his window and hand-signaled onto Highway 5, opting for an early morning patrol of the eastern part of Rutherford’s land, cruising through the lines of loblolly pines, bumping over the washboard roads, letting himself in and out of gates with his big key ring. He was sweating by the time he got back to Chabot, around seven-thirty. He hand-signaled into the parking lot across from the mill and went up the steps and let himself into Town Hall, glad Voncille wasn’t there yet. He made coffee and fussed with some paperwork, checked his e-mail. At five to eight he went out, slipping the orange vest on, crossed the parking lot and directed traffic at the shift change. He saw Voncille arrive and tooted his whistle at her as she got out of her pickup.
He wasn’t hungry so he didn’t make his normal visit to The Hub. He drove to Larry’s house, caught between two log trucks much of the way, and slung a bowlful of feed in the chicken wire and watched the first ladies peck it up. He added water through the fence and looked in the door at the boxes where they roosted in pine straw and wondered how long it took eggs to go bad, how long before the sitting hens began to suspect that nothing good would come from all their work, just rotting shells.
He had no idea how long he’d been standing there when his radio squawked.
“Thanks for the coffee,” Voncille said.
He keyed it. “You’re welcome.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Shannon called again.”
“Yeah. I’ll talk to her.”
“Well, stop by and visit awhile,” she said. “If you got a minute.”
He hung up. Larry’s grass had grown high and weedy and Silas remembered how his fists had vibrated on the lawn mower’s handle, the shower of green grass out the side, Larry watching from his porch. He longed to cut it now, mow his way back to the boy he’d been and do it differently with Larry, go to the police and say, “She was with me.”
Courage, he thought.
No wonder he felt at ease among these damn chickens.
His cell buzzed and he dug it out of his pocket, walking back toward where he’d parked in the same spot each day, over his oil stain.
“Constable?”
“Yes,” he said.
“It’s Jon Davidson, at the hospital?”
“Hey, Jon with no
“Thought you’d want to know,” he said. “Judging from the fact that the sheriff and Roy French just arrived and seemed like they was in a hurry, I’ll volunteer a guess that your Mr. Ott’s woke up.”
eleven
HE’D BEEN DREAMING about him and Silas, perched in high branches. Then it was him and Wallace.
When he opened his eyes the world was too vivid and he shut them again and dreamed of wearing his monster mask, pulling at screaming girls in his barn. Later he saw the high television, first thinking he’d fallen asleep in his
