I said nothing. I was shaking, weak-kneed. No adult had ever said that to me in my whole life.
“Dennis, I’m sorry. But my brother is dead. He was an unpleasant, possibly even an evil human being, but he is dead and all of these morbid fancies and fantasies “Who was the little tramp?” I managed.
Silence.
“Was it Charlie Chaplin?”
I didn’t think he was going to reply at all. Then, at last, heavily, he said, “Only at second hand. He meant Hitler. There was a passing resemblance between Hitler and Chaplin’s little tramp. Chaplin made a movie called The Great Dictator. You’ve probably never even seen it. It was a common enough name for him during the war years, at any rate. You would be much too young to remember. But it means nothing.”
It was my turn to remain silent.
“It means nothing!” he shouted. “Nothing! It’s vapours and suggestions, nothing more! You must see this!”
“There are seven people dead over here in western Pennsylvania,” I said. “That’s not just vapours. There are the signatures on my casts. They’re not vapours, either. I saved them, Mr LeBay. Let me send them to you. Look at them and tell me if one of them isn’t your brother’s handwriting.”
“It could be a knowing or unknowing forgery.”
“If you believe that, get a handwriting expert. I’ll pay for it.”
You could do that yourself.”
“Mr LeBay,” I said, “I don’t need any more convincing.”
“But what do you want from me? To share your fantasy? I won’t do that. My brother is dead. His car is just a car.” He was lying. I felt it. Even through the telephone I felt it.
“I want you to explain something you said to me that night we talked.”
“What would that be?” He sounded wary.
I licked my lips. “You said he was obsessed and angry, but he wasn’t a monster. At least, you said, you didn’t, think he was. Then it seemed like you changed the subject completely… but the more I think about it, the more I think you didn’t change the subject at all. The next thing you said was that he never put a mark on either of them.”
“Dennis, really. I—”
“Look, if you were going to say something, for Christ’s sake, say it now!” I cried. My voice cracked. I wiped my forehead, and my hand came away slimy with sweat. “This is no easier for me than it is for you, Arnie’s fixated on this girl, her name is Leigh Cabot, only I don’t think it’s Arnie who’s fixated on her at all, I think it’s your brother, your dead brother, now talk to me, please!”
He sighed.
“Talk to you?” he said. “Talk to you? To talk about these old events… no, these old suspicions… that would be almost the same as to shake a sleeping fiend, Dennis. Please, I know nothing.”
I could have told him that the fiend was already awake, but he knew that.
“Tell me what you suspect.”
“I’ll call you back.”
“Mr LeBay… please…”
“I’ll call you back, “he said. “I’ve got to call my sister Marcia in Colorado.”
“If it will help, I’ll call—”
“No, she would never talk to you. We’ve only talked of it to each other once or twice, if that. I hope your conscience is clear on this matter, Dennis. Because you are asking us to rip open old scars and make them bleed again. So I’ll ask you once more: how sure are you?”
“Sure,” I whispered.
“I’ll call you back,” he said, and hung up.
Fifteen minutes went past, then twenty. I went around the room on my crutches, unable to sit still. I looked out the window at the wintry street, a study in blacks and whites. Twice I went to the telephone and didn’t pick it up, afraid he would be trying to get me at the same time, even more afraid that he wouldn’t call back at all. The third time, just as I put my hand on it, it rang. I jerked back as if stung, and then scooped it up.
“Hi?” Ellie’s breathless voice said from downstairs. “Donna?”
“Is Dennis Guilder—” LeBay’s voice began, sounding older and more broken than ever.
“I’ve got it, Ellie,” I said,
“Well, who cares?” Ellie said pertly, and hung up.
“Hello, Mr LeBay,” I said. My heart was thudding hard.
“I spoke to her,” he said heavily. “She tells me only to use my own judgement. But she is frightened. Together, you and I have conspired to frighten an old lady who has never hurt anyone and has nothing whatever to do with this.”
“In a good cause,” I said.
“Is it?”
“If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have called you,” I said. “Are you going to talk to me or not, Mr LeBay?”
“Yes,” he said. “To you, but to no one else. If you should tell someone else, I would deny it. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” he sighed. “In our conversation last summer, Dennis, I told you one lie about what happened and one lie about what I—what Marcy and I—felt about it. We lied to ourselves. If it hadn’t been for you, I think we could have continued to lie to ourselves about that—that incident by the highway—for the rest of our lives.”
“The little girl? LeBay’s daughter?” I was holding the phone tightly, squeezing it.
“Yes,” he said heavily. “Rita.”
“What really happened when she choked?”
“My mother used to call Rollie her changeling,” Le Bay said. “Did I tell you that?”
“No.”
“No, of course not. I told you I thought your friend would be happier if he got rid of the car, but there is only so much a person can say in defence of one’s beliefs, because the irrational… it creeps in.
He paused. I didn’t prompt him. He would tell, or he wouldn’t. It was as simple as that.
“My mother said he was a perfectly good baby until he was six months old. And then… she said that was when Puck came, She said Puck took her good baby for one of his jokes and replaced him with a changeling. She laughed when she said it. But she never said it when Rollie was around to hear, and her eyes never laughed, Dennis. I think… it was her only explanation for what he was, for why he was so untouchable in his rage… so single-minded in his few simple purposes.
“There was a boy—I have forgotten his name—a bigger boy who thrashed Rollie three or four times. A bully. He would start on Rollie’s clothes and ask him if he’d worn his underpants one month or two this time. And Rollie would fight him and curse him and threaten him and the bully would laugh at him and hold him off with his longer arms and punch him until he was tired or until Rollie’s nose was bleeding. And then Rollie would sit there on the corner, smoking a cigarette and crying with blood and snot drying on his face. And if Drew or I came near him, he would beat us to within an inch of our lives.
“That bully’s house burned down one night, Dennis. The bully and the bully’s father and the bully’s little brother were killed. The bully’s sister was horribly burned. It was supposed to have been the stove in the kitchen, and maybe it was. But the fire sirens woke me up, and I was still awake when Rollie came up the ivy trellis and into the room I shared with him. There was soot on his forehead, and he smelled of gasoline. He saw me lying there with my eyes open and he said, “If you tell, Georgie, I’ll kill you.” And ever since that night, Dennis, I’ve tried to tell myself that he meant if I told he had been out, watching the fire. And maybe that was all it was.”
My mouth was dry. There seemed to be a lead ball in my stomach. The hairs along the nape of my neck felt like dry quills. “How old was your brother then?” I asked hoarsely.
“Not quite thirteen,” LeBay said with terrible false calm. “One winter day about a year later, there was a fight during a hockey game, and a fellow named Randy Throgmorton laid open Rollie’s head with his stick. Knocked him senseless. We got him to old Dr Farner—Rollie had come around by then, but he was still groggy—and Farner put a dozen stitches in his scalp. A week later, Randy Throgmorton fell through the ice on Palmer Pond and was drowned. He had been skating in an area clearly marked with THIN ICE signs, apparently.”
