The smell of it reminded me of my father kissing me good night, his head appearing suddenly above my bed, bending closer and closer but always stopping just before he touched my forehead, as if he were afraid to wake me. Some nights I didn't open my eyes, and there would only be the sweet fragrance of the alcohol on his breath to indicate his presence, along with the creak of the floorboards as he came forward, bowed toward me, and then retreated from the room.
Lou sat in one of the upholstered chairs, on the opposite side of the coffee table. Neither he nor Jacob seemed like they wanted to talk, and I couldn't think of a way to begin on my own. I kept glancing toward my brother, willing him to help me, but he didn't respond. His eyes were puffy from the liquor, so that he seemed like he was about to fall asleep.
It was several minutes before anyone spoke. Then Lou chuckled to himself and asked Jacob if he knew what you called a man with no arms and no legs in a swimming pool.
'Bob,' Jacob said, sending them both into laughter.
They started talking about a man I didn't know, a friend of Lou's who'd lost his arm in an accident on a construction site last summer. He'd been feeding brush into a wood chipper and had gotten dragged into the machine. Lou and Jacob debated whether or not the man should blame himself for the accident -- Lou thought he should, that it could only have happened out of carelessness or stupidity, but Jacob disagreed. The man was working in an auto supply store now. He'd told Lou that his arm had weighed ten and a half pounds. He knew this because that was how much lighter he was after the accident.
I sat there, quietly working at my drink, the tape recorder a tiny weight against my chest. Jacob and Lou seemed to forget about my presence, to talk as if I weren't there, and it gave me a glimpse of their friendship that I'd never had before. There was something about their dialogue -- the sparse gruffness of their statements, the lengthy silences between responses -- that reminded me of the conversations I used to overhear between our father and his friends. It was how I'd always imagined men were supposed to speak with one another, and to hear my brother do so now threw him suddenly into a different light, made him, for perhaps the first time in my life, seem more mature, more worldly, than I was.
When I finished my drink, Jacob refilled it.
They started arguing about one of their fishing spots, Devil's Lake, and how it had gotten its name. Jacob said that it was shaped like a head with two horns, but Lou didn't believe him. The whiskey was beginning to make me feel very warm, and when I noticed this, when I stopped and thought it through, a little spasm of panic shot across my body, like the trilling of an alarm bell. To be drunk in this situation was to fail, I knew; I needed to think clearly, to choose my words and actions with precision.
I set my glass down on the coffee table and, concentrating, tried to find an entry into their conversation, tried to think of a question or a statement, something subtle, a little verbal push to redirect things toward Pederson and the money. I strained and strained, but my mind refused to help me. It kept veering back toward the man who'd lost his arm, kept offering guesses about how heavy my own arms were, weighing them in my lap.
Finally, in desperation, I simply said, 'What if I were to confess?'
It came out loud, almost a shout, surprising all three of us. Jacob and Lou turned to stare at me.
'Confess?' Lou asked. He grinned at me. He was drunk, and I think he must've thought I was, too.
'Could you imagine that?' I said. 'Me confessing?'
'Confessing to what?'
'To taking the money, to killing Pederson.'
He continued to smile at me. 'You're thinking about confessing?'
I shook my head. 'I just want to know if you can imagine me doing it.'
'Sure,' he said. 'Why not?'
'Can you?' I asked Jacob. He was sitting slouched beside me, looking down at his hands.
'I guess,' he managed. It came out fast, like a squeak.
'How?'
Jacob gave me a baleful stare. He didn't want to have to answer.
'You'd turn state's evidence,' Lou said, smiling. 'You'd rat on us so they'd let you off.'
'But what would I say?'
'The truth. That you smothered him with his scarf.'
I felt Jacob stiffen on the couch beside me. Lou's knowing about the scarf could mean only one thing -- that Jacob had told him how I'd killed the old man. Lou might've guessed in the beginning, but once the issue had been raised, my brother hadn't held anything back. I noted this in my head, filed it away. It was something I could deal with later.
'Pretend you're me,' I said to Lou. 'Pretend Jacob's the sheriff and you've just come into his office to confess.'
He gave me a suspicious look. 'Why?'
'I want to hear what you think I'd say.'
'I just told you. You'd say you smothered him with his scarf.'
'But I want to hear you say it like you're me. I want you to act it out.'
'Go ahead, Lou,' Jacob prodded him. He glanced toward me, gave a mean little laugh. 'Pretend you're an accountant.'
Lou grinned at him. He took a swallow of whiskey, then stood up. He mimed knocking on a door. 'Sheriff Jenkins?' he called. He made his voice sound high and shaky, like a nervous child's.
'Yes?' Jacob said, using the deep baritone he associated with authority.
'It's Hank Mitchell. I've got something I want to tell you.'
'Come on in, Hank,' Jacob boomed. 'Have a seat.'
Lou pretended to open the door. He walked in place for a moment, grinning stupidly, then sat down on the edge of his chair. He kept his knees primly together, his hands in his lap. 'It's about Dwight Pederson,' he started, and I reached up to scratch at my chest. There was a soft click as I pushed in the button, and then the tape recorder began to hum.
'Yes?' Jacob said.
'Well, he didn't die in an accident.'
'What do you mean?'
Lou feigned glancing nervously around the room. Then he whispered, 'I killed him.'
There was a pause after that, while Lou waited for my brother to respond. I think Jacob was hoping that I'd stop it there, that all I wanted was that simple statement, but I needed something more. I needed him to say how he'd done it.
'You killed Dwight Pederson?' Jacob asked finally. He pretended to be shocked.
Lou nodded. 'I smothered him with his scarf, then I pushed him off the bridge into Anders Creek. I made it look like an accident.'
Jacob was silent. I could tell just by the way he was sitting that he wasn't going to say anything more, so I reached up and turned off the tape recorder. It seemed like we had more than enough: if a taped confession was going to frighten Lou into submission, then this ought to work as well as any other.
'All right,' I said. 'You can stop.'
Lou shook his head. 'I want to get to the part where you offer to testify against us.' He waved at my brother. 'Keep asking me questions, Jake.'
Jacob didn't respond. He took a long swallow of whiskey, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I removed the tape recorder from my pocket, rewound it to the beginning.
'What's that?' Lou asked.
'A tape recorder,' I said. The machine made a soft thumping noise when it finished rewinding.
'A tape recorder?' my brother asked, as if confused.
I pressed the play button, turned up the volume with my thumb, then set the machine down on the coffee table. There was a second or two's worth of hissing before Jacob's voice jumped out at us: 'Yes?'
'Well, he didn't die in an accident,' Lou's voice said.
'What do you mean?'
'I killed him.'
'You killed Dwight Pederson?'
