Tamara appeared in my line of sight, wrapped loosely in Fannie Mae’s coat, leaning heavily on Fannie Mae. Much as I was leaning on Barrett. The tears on her face had dried up, although it looked like they’d started on Fannie Mae’s.
Tamara said, “We don’t call the cops. I was never here. You were never here. You don’t go to jail. Easy.”
My jaw dropped. “But he raped you, Tamara. People have to know that he was with you tonight. There’s no way around that. They’ll come for you and you’ll tell them what happened. It’ll be better if I tell them now.”
“No, Duke,” she said, coming to a stop before me. “No one knows that he was with me. We didn’t leave the game together. Plus, I’m his girlfriend. Why would he rape me? I’m the slut of the Acres, remember?”
“Tamara, you’re not,” I said.
“Shush,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. It is what it is. I’ll go back to the trailer, take a shower, trim my nails, scrub every inch of my body down. They can say what they want, but I’ll never tell them what happened.”
I looked at Barrett and Fannie Mae. “Talk some sense into her. This isn’t right.”
Barrett opened his mouth, but it was Fannie Mae who spoke first. “She’s right, Dukey. This is the only way. You’re the only one of us who has the chance to get out of here. I couldn’t stand the thought of you rotting in jail. He was a monster,” she nodded down at Mason, “and you don’t deserve to go to jail in his place.”
Barrett just nodded when I looked at him. He couldn’t meet my eyes.
“Fine,” I said wearily. “What do we do about him?”
Tamara looked down at Mason’s body. “Screw him,” she said. “Let the animals have him. Let him rot. Someone will find him.” She nodded at the sky. “The rain will come down eventually. That will wash the body clean for us.”
“All right,” I said simply. “Let’s go home.”
Happy birthday to me.
3.
Who knows what magic breathes in the empty spaces, in the dark of night? On a cursed body rapidly cooling on the grounds of a now unconsecrated burial ground? Who knows what secrets lurk in the heart of the world and the places that man cannot see?
How the hell should I know?
All I know is that as midnight arose and the four of us stumbled away to try to heal our wounds and forget the horror behind us another nightmare somehow managed to find purchase in the world. It slunk somehow through the night and we did not sense it as it passed us. It crept into the fading shell of the quarterback on the ground. Maybe it was a demon or a disease or some creeping nothingness from beyond the realms of knowledge. But from somewhere it came and it found purchase there in that shell.
And a dead finger twitched.
Barrett dropped Tamara off first. The rumble of the engine seemed muted somehow, as if even the car understood the tragedy and the need to be silent. She and Fannie Mae both got out of the car, Tamara hugging the coat around her nearly naked body and Fannie Mae’s arm strung tightly across her shoulders. Barrett asked Fannie Mae if she wanted him to wait and she just shook her head silently. I glanced at them in the rearview mirror as Barrett turned around to take me home and I could see them both standing at the bottom of the stoop staring at us. The things I wish I would have said.
We stopped in the parking space in front of my trailer and Barrett turned off the car. The tick of the engine cooling was the only sound to be heard for a minute or two until the twang of some country music warbled through the air at us from a couple trailers away. That seemed to break the hold that the silence had on us.
“Barrett,” I said.
He broke in, “We’re not talking about it, buddy. Not tonight, maybe not ever again.”
“Okay,” I said, wondering to myself if that were true. Would the events of tonight never again pass our lips? Would I be able to push it all aside and never again think of the crack of Mason’s neck against the stone as we piled to the ground?
Barrett pulled the bottle of whiskey from under the seat and took a long swig. He shuddered and closed his eyes, putting his forehead on the steering wheel. His shoulders shook and I thought I detected a sob but I pretended not to hear it. I was still in shock and staring out across the Acres. It was midnight and the place wasn’t booming like you’d expect a trailer park to be. Half the residents were probably in town getting drunk and the other half were apparently hunkered down, probably doing the same thing.
Barrett proffered the bottle in my direction without looking at me. “Want some?”
“No, I’m good,” I said. “Think I’ve had enough to last a lifetime.”
“Yeah,” he said, “tell me about it.” He pulled the bottle back in and took another deep swig.
“You know, maybe you should stay here tonight. Doesn’t look like dad’s home yet, so he probably won’t be back til late and mom’s oblivious to the world. She won’t notice.”
“Duke,” he said slowly, “I’d rather be home.” I could see the thought passing through his mind that he’d like to turn away and never come back again, but we were friends and that meant something to him. “But I think you’re right. I probably shouldn’t drive.”
He turned the key to the car and hit the button to close the top. It latched firmly and we still just sat there. In the dark. I could hear him putting the cap back on the bottle and sliding it into his jacket.
“Tonight was completely f’ed up, cahuna.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.”
He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel a couple times and then took the keys out of the ignition and put them in his pocket. The silence was getting heavy. “Let’s go,” I said. “I need some sleep.”
