We finished late that afternoon, both of us walking out of the office together for what would be the last time.
“Well, I guess that’s it for the
Kelli nodded, but said nothing.
“Thanks for all the work you did this year,” I added, though without much spirit.
She smiled quietly. “I guess we’ll try to do even better next year,” she said tentatively, as if asking for confirmation.
I nodded unenthusiastically, then started to walk away.
Kelli took my arm and turned me back toward her. “Ben, did I do something?”
I shook my head, pretending to be surprised by the question.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No,” I said. “Why should I be?”
“Well, the way you’ve been acting lately made me wonder if I’d done something. If I have, I …”
“No, you haven’t done anything,” I told her.
She waited for me to offer some further explanation for the undeniable remoteness that had come over me.
But there was no explanation that I could have given her without exposing myself. So I said only, “There’s just some stuff going on at home.”
Although she did not seem to believe me, I could tell that she felt uncomfortable in pressing the issue further.
“Okay, then,” she said softly. “Well, I better go. We’re all meeting with Miss Carver. The cast, I mean. To discuss the play and make up a rehearsal schedule, that sort of thing.”
“Okay,” I said. “Bye.”
“Bye, Ben,” Kelli said. Then she turned and walked away.
When I recall that moment now, I know with an absolute certainty that there was nothing Kelli could have said or done that would have changed the way I had come to feel about her, the aching resentment that had overwhelmed me. In such a mood, I would have rebuffed any approach she might have made toward me, brushed away every kindly gesture. I was hardening against her, and there was nothing she could have done about it. Her voice grated on my ears, and her beauty was like a slap in my face. I hated the fact that I had to see her every day, and I looked forward to the end of the school year with a fierce anticipation. I wanted to be away from her in every way, wanted her to disappear, though even then, and despite such tumultuous feelings, I still could not sense the poison that was slowly devouring me, eating away at that thin moral lining that prevents us from acting upon the raw and savage things we feel.
And so, when I closed the door to the office that afternoon, I felt a certain odd relief. I truly believed that at least this part of my forced association with Kelli was over, that those late afternoons when we sat so close together in the shadowy little room, when I could smell her hair, and all but feel the heat from her body, that all of that had finally come to an end, and that once closed, I would never have to open that door again.
But I did have to open it again, at least physically, though not with Kelli standing beside me, waiting to go in, but with the looming figure of Sheriff Stone.
It was three days after Kelli had been found sprawled across the upper slope of Breakheart Hill, and the investigation was still in its early, probing stage. Sheriff Stone had already come to Choctaw High several times by then. I had seen him in the school parking lot, walking slowly, staring down and sometimes even bending over slightly, as if looking for something on the ground. I’d seen him talking to Todd and Sheila, and even to Edith Sparks, the two of them huddled together in a shadowy corner near the back of the school. Only the day before, I’d noticed him with Miss Carver, both of them in her otherwise empty classroom, she poised by the window, he leaning against her desk, watching her intently. Miss Carver had looked tense and urgent, as if conveying important things, and I have always believed that it was she who told Sheriff Stone that he should talk to me.
I remember very distinctly the look on his face as he stepped into the small space of the basement office, nearly filling it with his own massiveness, his gray hat nudged up against the single light bulb that dangled from its low ceiling.
“It’s like a cave in here,” he said.
I pointed to Kelli’s desk. “She worked over there,” I told him.
“Where’d you work?”
“At the other desk.”
His eyes swept over to it, locking on the picture of Kelli I’d taken on Breakheart Hill, now taped to the wall above her desk. He peeled the picture carefully from the wall and stared at it closely for a moment.
“Who took this?” he asked.
“I did.”
“When was that?”
“A few weeks ago.”
He peered at it silently, then his eyes drifted up slowly and settled on me. “Same dress,” he said. “Same place.”
I nodded.
“Had you taken her there often?”
“She took me there,” I answered. “But only that one time.”
He stared at me quietly, from the depths of that thoughtful atmosphere that surrounded him, then said, “Mighty pretty girl.”
“Yes.”
“Strange place for her to be, way up yonder on Breakheart Hill.”
I nodded.
“Got any idea why she might have been up there all by herself?”
“No, sir.”
He shook his great head slowly. “Shame what happened to her.” His eyes returned to the photo, lingered there a moment, then darted toward me with terrific speed. “Would you have any idea who might have done this thing, Ben?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Do you think it might have been Lyle Gates?”
It was the first time I’d heard Lyle’s name mentioned in connection with what had happened to Kelli, and I felt the first wind of that dark, steadily growing maelstrom as it reached out from its swirling eye on Breakheart Hill. “Lyle Gates?” I repeated, my mind suddenly calling up the first of what would become a thousand images of unanticipated wrong.
“That’s right,” Sheriff Stone said. “We know that he was in the vicinity of Breakheart Hill at the same time Kelli was there.” He shrugged. “ ‘Course that wouldn’t mean much in itself, but I understand he had some pretty harsh words for her down at Cuffy’s a while back.”
Reluctantly, I nodded.
“And you and Gates had a little tussle over it, I hear,” Sheriff Stone added.
“Yes, we did.”
“Did you ever have any more trouble with Gates?”
“No.”
“Did she?”
“Not that I know of.”
He was silent, staring at me, his ancient, knowing eyes evaluating everything—my voice, my posture, sensing secrets, things withheld, but unsure as to exactly what I might be holding back.
“You got a car, Ben?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ever been down that old mining road at the bottom of Breakheart Hill?”
I shook my head.
“You know the road I mean, don’t you?”
