the alley. Does that tell you anything?”
“Not really.”
“The guy who put this up, whoever he was, didn’t want anyone looking at his backyard. That’s what all this stuff is for, to keep people from seeing it.”
“You’ve been thinking about this way too much,” Jimbo said.
“He was hiding something. Look at that humongous wall! Don’t you wonder what his secret was?”
Jimbo stepped backward, his eyes round with disbelief. “You’re like the world champion of bullshit. Unfortunately, to you everything you say makes sense. Can we go to the park now?”
In silence, the boys left the northern end of the alley and turned east on Auer Avenue, not an avenue at all but merely another residential street lined with houses and parked cars. Down Auer they proceeded for a single block that offered for their consideration two interracial couples sitting on their respective porches, a sight that so forcefully brought to the boys’ minds what their fathers would have to say about this spectacle that they themselves maintained their silence throughout their turn onto Sherman Boulevard and the one-block trek past the diner, the liquor stores, and the discount outlets to the corner of West Burleigh. Without waiting for the light, they ran across the busy street and continued on into the little park.
A substantial crowd of people milled aimlessly around the dry twenty-foot basin of the fountain. The competing sounds of Phish and Eminem drifted out of two facing boom boxes. Together, Mark and Jimbo noticed the uniformed officer leaning against the patrol car parked off to the side.
As soon as they saw the cop, their way of walking became more self-conscious and mannered. Indicating their indifference to official observation, they dipped their knees, dropped one shoulder, and tilted their heads.
“Yo, little homeboys,” the policeman called.
They pretended to take in his presence for the first time. Smiling, the cop waved them forward. “Come here, you guys. I want you to look at something.”
The boys lounged toward him. It was like a magic trick: one second the officer’s hands were empty, the next they held up an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of a stoner metalhead. “Do you know this guy?”
“Who is he?” Jimbo asked. “He’s in trouble, right?”
“How about you?” the cop asked Mark.
“I don’t know him,” Mark said.
The cop moved the stoner’s photograph closer to their faces. “Have either of you ever seen him here at night? Does he look familiar to you guys?”
They shook their heads. “Who is he?” Jimbo asked again.
The policeman lowered the photograph. “This kid’s name is Shane Auslander. He’s sixteen years old.”
“Where does he go to school?” Jimbo asked.
“Holy Name,” the cop said.
That explained a lot. For Mark and Jimbo, the boys who went to Holy Name fell into three basic categories: squeaky-clean nerds who were secret lushes; bullies and/or jocks who had a tendency to get in car wrecks from which they emerged pretty much unscathed; and, on the bottom rung, potheads struggling with the question of Mary’s virginity. Members of the third category often failed to complete high school.
“What’d he do, break into a drugstore and steal all the OxyContin?” Jimbo asked.
“He didn’t do anything,” the cop said. “Except four days ago, he went missing.”
“Went missing?” Jimbo asked.
“Vanished,” the cop said. “Disappeared.”
“He ran away, believe me,” Jimbo said. “Just look at this guy! His parents drop-kicked him into Catholic school, and he couldn’t stand the place.”
“Shane Auslander,” Mark said, looking at the boy in the photograph. “What do you think happened to him, Officer?”
“Thank you for your time.” The photograph had already disappeared into the manila envelope in the officer’s right hand.
“Do you think he’s still alive?” Mark asked.
“We appreciate your cooperation, sir,” the cop said.
As they moved away, the officer beckoned to a couple of girls who were whispering to each other a little way down the path. Soon the boys were on the edge of the crowd.
“Look, there’s another cop!” Mark said. “They come in, like, dyads.”
The second police officer, who was tall, slender, and blond, was showing Shane Auslander’s photograph to four seniors from Madison High.
“Shit,” Jimbo said. “That’s Raver, Sparkman, Tillinger, and Beaney Jacobs. Don’t let them see us.”
“Someone ought to snatch one of those assholes, them and their stupid hemp necklaces,” Mark said, moving toward the other side of the fountain. “Hey! I bet that’s what happened!”
“What?” Jimbo was keeping one eye on Raver, Sparkman, Tillinger, and Jacobs. Horrible individually, collectively they were a nightmare.
“Someone grabbed that kid right here. Or they met him here and led him away, you know, to their car, or to their house, whatever.”
“It’s not going to be a whole lot of fun around here tonight,” Jimbo said.
“Well,” said Mark, “if you feel like leaving, I can think of somewhere to go.”
8
For the next two days, Mark felt as though he were balancing two opposed forces, the house on Michigan Street and his mother. Both of these forces demanded great quantities of his time and attention, the house overtly, his mother passively. As if in thrall to some insidious disease, Nancy Underhill crept out of the house in the morning, crept back in at night, and did strikingly little in between. She “rested,” which meant disappearing for hours behind the closed bedroom door. According to Philip Underhill, a highly regarded expert on the mental and physical peculiarities of the contemporary American female, especially as represented by his wife, Mark’s mother was undergoing a long-anticipated and long-delayed spiritual backlash from the abuse she suffered daily on behalf of the gas company, not to mention the symptoms common to women experiencing a certain inevitable physical-hormonal milestone. In other words, she got into bed and, with luck, slept through her hot flashes. To Mark, she looked as though she hardly slept at all, nor did he think she was menopausal. From what he had learned in a compulsory sex-education class, women undergoing menopause could be emotionally overwrought. His mother was nothing like that. He would have preferred it if she were. Better a hot-tempered scold than a dispirited wraith.
Mark’s father seemed almost relieved by the change in his wife. Now that she had at last succumbed to the indignities inflicted upon her by the gas company, she needed to rest up before reaching the next stage, that of realizing that she ought to quit her crummy job. He had never liked the idea of her working; he had adjusted to it when they needed her salary to meet the mortgage and car payments, but ever since his move up into the vice principal’s office at Quincy, he had merely tolerated it.
Philip was pleased that Nancy came home from work worn and exhausted; he was pleased by the very things that distressed Mark. Mark thought that his mother was grateful for the distractions provided by indigent or irate consumers, and also for the gossipy company afforded by Florence, Shirley, and Mack. She did not meet her new problem at the office; she carried it around with her, like the consciousness of an illness. The problem frightened her.
And while she either could not or refused to talk about the particularities of that terror, his mother expressed it in another way, by focusing on her son. She acted as though she were worried solely on his behalf; he could not return home at night without facing interrogation. Most of the scant conversation she directed his way had to do with his schedule. Where was he going, who was he going there with, what time would he get home? Because the truth would have sounded so bizarre, Mark found himself inventing tasks and errands that the Nancy of old would have seen through in an eye blink. Checking out the new puppies at the dog-breeding business run by a classmate’s parents, going to the county museum to wander through the exhibits, taking the nature trail alongside the Kinninnick River were things he’d enjoyed doing in grade school. At fifteen, he was no longer friends with the boy
