The Guardians

'Checked out early. Benji's dear old dad.'

Shut up, Ben's lips said again.

'Can I ask you something? Nobody actualy believes he drove into a hydro pole doing a hundred by accident, do they? So what do you think his problem was?

Didn't have the stomach to see how useless his only son turned out to be?'

None of us ever mentioned Ben's father's suicide. I was surprised the coach even knew about it. But then it occurred to me: Ben was the one who had told him.

He'd confessed this to the coach in the same way we had confessed our own secrets, and for the same reason. We thought the coach was the only adult we could wholy trust.

Yet the coach wasn't the coach anymore. And it was impossible to know whether what he was saying came from him or the vile other that was halfway to claiming him.

'But I suppose something good came out of your dad hitting the gas instead of the brake,' the coach said to Ben. 'That cute little group hug you and your fairy-boy friends had upstairs.'

Ben's eyes widened. 'I didn't tel you about that.'

'I didn't say you did.'

'Then how do you know?'

The coach grinned in a way that changed his face. Stopped it from being his.

'No more,' I told him.

'But I like this game,' he said, turning to me. 'Now, let's see, what about you? Oh yes. Peeping Trevor.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Our moonlight chicken-choker. Our wanking voyeur.'

'I don't—'

'Hiding behind trees on the hospital grounds to look into lovely Heather's window at night.'

'That's bulshit!'

'It's only what you told me.'

'I never told you that because it isn't true.'

'No? What do you think, Benji? You think Trev here likes to get his rocks off watching ladies changing into their nighties before lights out?'

Ben looked at me.

'He's lying,' I said.

'Am I?' The coach's voice was no longer his, but the boy's. 'Isn't it true that Randy dreams of graduating from class clown to great actor? Has he told you that?

'Like Pacino in The Godfather.' Pathetic, isn't it? Poor Handy Randy.'

'That's enough,' Ben said.

'Or Carl? You want to know his big secret? Oh, it's good. It's a real surprise.'

Ben held out his good hand for the gun. When I gave it to him he walked up to the coach and swung the side of the revolver against his cheek.

'I don't want to hear any more of that,' Ben said. 'I only want to hear what you did.'

Ben clicked on the tape recorder in his pocket. Started reciting the same questions he'd been asking al along.

Tell us the truth.

The coach's eyes roled white. A line of blood making its way to his jaw. Then he was smiling again like the madman he was, or we'd made him into.

Ben stepped away to lean against the wal. Fatigue bloomed pale and puffy over his face, a weakness that puled down at his arms as though lead weights were stitched to his sleeves.

'Why Heather?' I asked.

It was the first time any of us had asked this. And for the first time, the coach was prepared to answer.

'Why Heather? Have you seen my wife?' he exclaimed, and it seemed he was about to folow with the punchline to some wel-worn joke, but instead, a second later, he was fighting tears.

'What about her?'

'Laura saved me.'

'Saved you?'

'Before I came here, I'd done some things. But she stood by me. A beautiful woman. On the inside. Heather? She had it on the outside too.' He threw us a conspiratorial leer. 'I mean, that ass? I thought I was through wanting that. God was kind enough to give me a new start over here in old Grimshaw. Al I