The Guardians

dawn that blinked through the windows to show that it wasn't empty anymore.

The boy was there. Standing over a naked body lying face down on the bed. A young woman. White buttocks glinting. On her skin, the wals, a snaking spray of blood.

The boy raised his head to look directly at me. He looked sad. No, that's not right: his face was composed in a 'sad look,' but an inch past this he was holow. He was nothing.

The boy started toward me. Two more of his long strides and I would choke on his breath. His hands squeezing the air, readying their grip.

The snowplow growled up the slope, and its blue light disappeared behind the neighbour's line of trees. It wiped away the boy, the body on the bed. Left me alone again.

I ran the length of the hal. Threw myself down the stairs, both hands riding the railings, pincushioned with slivers as I went.

Without the flashlight, I had to trust my memory of the darkness to make it down to the celar. I remember descending in flight, a visitor to the underworld who had been discovered and now sought only to colect the living and find his way back to the light.

And there was a light. Held by the coach, who shone it at Ben on his knees before him. In the coach's other hand was the gun.

'How was it?' the coach asked without looking my way.

'Don't hurt him.'

'Never mind this,' he said, dismissively waving the revolver at Ben. 'What did he show you? I bet it was something good.'

'Ben? It's going to be okay.'

'Sure, Benji. You'l go home and Mommy wil tuck you in across the street from where you buried the pretty teacher, and she'l tel you how Daddy would've been proud.'

'How do you know—?'

'Benji told me. Didn't you, Benji?' The coach steadied the revolver. Trained it six inches from the end of Ben's nose.

'What did you tel him, Ben?'

'Benji's not saying.'

'Then you tel me.'

'He pointed to that mound in the corner and said, 'That's where she is' and knelt down like a good little altar boy ready for his wafer. 'Forgive me,' he said! To me!

Can you believe that? Seriously. Can you believe it?'

The coach pressed the end of the gun into Ben's cheek. It pushed his head back. Alowed the flashlight to show the broad circle over the front of Ben's jeans where he'd pissed himself.

'Let him go and I'l stay here with you.'

'Trevor the Brave.'

'I'l tel you what I saw upstairs.'

'Tel me now.'

'Let Ben go first.'

'Fine. I'l stick this up both your asses.'

That's when I said what I must have thought before but never spoken, or thought of speaking.

'You've never realy had a friend, have you, David?'

The coach kept his eyes on me for a long time. Because the flashlight blinded me, I couldn't tel what he was thinking, if anything. But I felt that he wasn't realy considering me at al. He was listening.

The flashlight grew brighter as he approached. He was going to put the gun against my head and blow it off. Then he was going to turn around and do the same thing to Ben. And then he'd walk out of here with the boy whispering ideas in his head, and he'd do as he was told.

But what he actualy did was stop right in front of me. Press the handle of the revolver into my right hand, the flashlight into the left.

'I'm glad he chose you,' the coach whispered.

I folowed him with the light. Watched him walk, hunched, to the post we'd shackled him to. Ben rose to his feet. Blinked at the coach, then back at me, before rushing up the celar stairs. It left me to keep the light on the coach as he slid his back down the post until he met the floor and stretched his arms back, offering his wrists to be tied.

'I'm tired,' he said, his voice the coach's again. 'Jesus H., am I tired.'

There would be repeated questions among us about this later. And because Ben was already upstairs, waiting for me to join him, it was my memory that had to be counted on.

Before I left, I put the gun back in the workbench drawer. I made sure the coach didn't see me do it. Then I tied his hands tight to the post.

I swear it now as I swore it then. That's what I remember.

That's the truth.