boys as they idled not far away, smoking cigarettes and kicking lazily at the gravel earth.
One of them was Lyle Gates, and as I walked past, heading directly for my car, he glanced at me and waved.
“Ben, right?” he asked.
I stopped and turned toward him. “Yeah.”
“Ben Wade,” Gates said with a short, self-congratulatory laugh. “I never forget a name. You and Luke Duchamp were at Cuffy’s a few weeks back.” A cigarette dangled easily from the corner of his mouth. “So, you been gettin’ any?” he asked.
I didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself.
Lyle grinned. “Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ll get married one day, and then you’ll be getting way too much. More than you want. Wearing it out.”
The other boys laughed. One of them blew a smoke ring into the clear late-afternoon air.
“I don’t think I could ever get enough,” Eddie Smathers squealed.
Lyle paid no attention to him. His gaze drifted up toward the school. “Old Man Avery will be looking down here pretty soon,” he said. “He’ll spot me and think, ‘Well, there’s Lyle Gates. What’s that troublemaking asshole up to?’ ”
Eddie laughed. “Hell, that’s better than him thinking you’re a pussy, right?”
Lyle shrugged. His eyes swept up toward the front of the school, the line of buses parked in front of it. “Well, seems like nothing much has changed around good old Choctaw High,” he said, his voice weary, bored, but glancing about nervously nonetheless, as if he were unable to settle on a fixed point.
“Well, we got a new girl,” Eddie chimed in quickly. “From up north.”
Lyle tossed his cigarette out into the lot, then lit another. “From up north, you said?”
Eddie nodded. “That’s right. She’s good-looking, too.”
Lyle grinned. “Shit, Eddie, you know I wouldn’t fuck a Yankee,” he said with a quick boyish wink.
Eddie’s eyes sparkled lustily. “You would
Lyle drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. His shoulders fell slightly, as if a heavy weight had suddenly been lowered upon them. I could see a small purple tattoo on his upper arm, the figure of a woman, and underneath it, the name of the wife who’d already cast him off.
“Got to go,” he said. Then he walked away, a curl of white smoke trailing behind him, and disappeared into his car.
“I didn’t know you hung out with Lyle,” I said to Eddie.
Eddie shrugged. “Shit, I don’t hang out with him. We just shoot a game down at the pool hall once in a while.”
I glanced back toward Lyle. He sat silently in his car, his eyes lingering on the school with a forlorn wistfulness that seemed odd in one so young.
“What’s he doing here, anyway?” I asked.
“Just checking things out, I guess.” Eddie took a final draw on his cigarette, then tossed it to the ground. “You seen Todd?”
“No.”
He lifted himself from the hood of the car, his feet sinking into the gravel with a soft crunch. “I hope he didn’t leave without me,” he said worriedly. He glanced around for a moment, as if trying to formulate a plan. Then he darted quickly out of the lot and up the cement walkway that led to the entrance of the school.
Watching him go, I could not have imagined that much would ever become of him, but Eddie is a successful local mill owner now, and there is talk that he will run for mayor. Each time we meet at the hospital or at a football game or sometimes while shopping at the new mall, he stops to pump my hand vigorously, in politician style, though with him it seems less false. He flashes his customary smile. “Remember when we were kids at Choctaw High?” he always asks. He shakes his head playfully, remembering a time of life that no doubt always returns to him with an air of uncomplicated joy. “Remember all the fun we had?”
“I remember,” I tell him.
The smile broadens until it seems to cover his entire face, and a great cheerfulness sparkles in his eyes. “Boy, those were great days, weren’t they, Ben?” he says.
And as he says it, I see him as he was that night, a boy of seventeen again, his reddish hair glowing with a diabolical sheen, his green eyes trained on the grim severity of my face, his voice coming toward me through the smoldering summer darkness, tense and edgy.
CHAPTER 6
SOMETIMES, IT BEGINS AT THE VERY END, AND I AM WALKING across a broad green lawn. I can see Luke beside me, his face in profile as it moves in tandem with mine, like two horses harnessed together by a dark leather strap. Together, we bear our burden to the appointed spot, then watch as it is eased downward into the red, clay earth that makes up the Choctaw Valley. The casket is a pale gray, and because of that, it seems to dissolve into the earth, vanish, as if it were a mist. Luke stands beside me, his hands folded in front of him. His eyes are not moist, and he does not speak, but I can see the tension in his fingers, the way they grip and release, grip and release.
I glance around at the people who have joined us at the grave site. Sheila Cameron stands like a pillar of black stone, and not far from her, Eddie Smathers is dressed inappropriately in a light blue summer suit.
Miss Troy stands directly in front of me, and when it is over, she steps to the very edge of the grave and tosses a single white rose onto the gray casket below her. Then she makes her way over to Luke and me, takes each of us by the hand and squeezes fiercely. “Kelli loved you boys,” she says.
I stare at her, amazed by the force of life that still surges from her, the enormous reserves of strength and courage I can see in her eyes and feel in the fiery grip of her hand, and in that instant, the full force of what was lost sweeps over me like a boiling wave.
At other times it returns to me on no specific memory. I rise from my bed and walk out into the field behind my house. The fields are plush or barren, alive with seedlings or crackling with already withered corn. In that world everything appears perfectly calibrated, with nothing left to chance. Above, the sky remains changeless, the stars like silver pegs firmly nailed into the darkness, the planets circling in their iron rings, theirs the gift of fixedness, ours the gift of flux, they without will, we without direction.
Once, not long ago, my daughter Amy came out after me.
“You should get some help,” she said.
“For what?”
“The insomnia.”
“It happens only once in a while,” I told her. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“But it makes you tired. Irritable, too, sometimes.”
The face of Mary Diehl swam into my mind, her eyes raw and sleepless, glazed in fear, her voice a breathless whimper:
I looked at Amy. “Be careful,” I told her.
She stared at me quizzically, unable to follow so abrupt a command. “Careful?” she asked. “About what?”
I shook my head, unable to answer her or even guess where I might begin an answer.
“In everything,” I said with a quick shrug.
She continued to watch me closely, worriedly. “Are you okay, Dad?”
“I’m fine,” I assured her. Then I drew her under my arm and we stood together for a long time, the night wind shifting frantically to and fro around us like a hunting dog working desperately to pick up some vanished trail.
After a time, we returned to the house. Amy went back to her bedroom, but I knew I still couldn’t sleep, so I went to my office instead of going upstairs. I sat behind my desk, then swiveled around to face the large bay window that looks out toward the mountain. It was a deep fall night, but I could feel a wave of heat pass over me,
