by Hank Early
Later in the interview, Harden asked if he could make a statement to the community.
“There is nothing more disturbing than seeing a young person take their own life, but I would like to point out there is some light within the darkness. Rufus Gribble, a young man from the Fingers area, should be commended for his commitment to discipline and education of the students here. I just hate that he’s finally getting the recognition on the back of this tragedy. Rufus is going to be a wonderful teacher when he gets his degree.”
Despite not yet finding her remains, a funeral will be held for Harriet Duncan on Friday, May 17, at the Ponder’s Funeral Home.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the article. Did it happened like Rufus said? If so, what did it mean for what I was investigating now? Not much, I decided. I’d already determined Harriet was dead.
Still, there was something about the article that didn’t sit right with me. When I looked up at Claire, she was studying me closely, leaning across the table, her eyes big and brown and filled with light that beheld landscapes I couldn’t quite map.
“He’s your friend, right?” she said.
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Susan told me. Did you ask him about this?”
I shook my head. “Rufus is missing.”
“Missing? You’re kidding, right?”
I shook my head. “I wish I was.”
She touched my hand. “What do you think happened?”
“I think it goes back to this.”
She looked down at the paper and read it again. I watched her, trying to read her thoughts.
She looked up after a time. “It feels off.”
I felt the same thing but decided to play dumb. “How do you mean?”
“Well, the part at the end where Harden praises Gribble. Seems almost like a quid pro quo to me. Rufus says the right thing, and Harden praises him in the paper.”
“So, you don’t think it was suicide?”
Claire shrugged. “I’m not the detective, but something’s off here.”
“Explain what you’re thinking.”
She leaned in, her lips curling into a smile. “Okay, you’re going to think I’m crazy, right, but what if Harriet’s not dead? What if that’s why it feels off? What if that’s why Rufus is gone right now? Maybe he knows where she is. And somebody doesn’t want that info to get out.”
I couldn’t help but see the possibilities in what she was saying. It actually jibed pretty well with what I knew about Joe. Perhaps Joe had known the truth about Harriet too and that was what he’d been wanting to tell me, in hopes that I would be able to help him do something about the school. Either that or because he wanted my help protecting her.
“It’s a good thought,” I said. “Something to look into.” I didn’t want to seem too positive about her idea because it might make her suspicious about the other stuff I already knew.
She shrugged. “What else could it be?”
I just looked at her, trying to figure out exactly who I was dealing with. I’d certainly been down on the idea of working with an armchair detective at first, but I had to admit, she was making some sense. Knowing Rufus like I did, I couldn’t help but see something was way off about the article. And now Rufus was missing.
“What are you thinking?” she said.
“I’m thinking that you may be right, but I don’t know what to do about it.”
She clicked her red nails on the table. The more I was around her, the more attractive she became. She had a kind of knowing sexuality, very different from Daphne’s. Daphne’s hit you like an avalanche, obscuring your thoughts, your judgment, all rational thought. Claire was much more subtle, and I found myself becoming more alert to each small gesture, the curl of her lip, the sweep of hair off her forehead, the way her eyes shined a liquid silk beneath her glasses.
Focus, Earl. I took a deep breath. It worked. I was done with women for the foreseeable future. The emptiness of my last encounter with Daphne still lingered fresh in my mind, as did the disappointment on Mary’s face when I’d told her about what I’d done. Those two feelings alone would be enough to make me keep my dick in my pants for many years to come.
I hoped.
But then Claire smiled at me and reached over to my touch my hand, and I felt myself stir. Goddamn it all to hell. I was nothing if not weak.
“I don’t know what to do about it either,” she said, responding to my earlier question. “I figured that was your thing.” Her fingers snaked up toward my wrist, just her nails grazing the back of my hand, my knuckles, the fine hairs of my lower arm. It was exquisite.
I closed my eyes and made myself see Mary’s face. And I felt better. The sad truth was, I still needed her to save me.
* * *
When I left the coffee shop, I couldn’t help but notice two men standing listlessly down the street in front of the library. The Hill Brothers. One of them saw me but didn’t move or wave or acknowledge me. I lifted a hand to him, but he turned away.
36
I dreamed of a sky filled with nets and moons, and each moon was a pale version of the future, hanging on unseen strings. I was lying in Ghost Creek, looking up, baptized by the future and the past, lost to the present.
Lightning cracked the cloudless sky, and when it did, I saw all the strings, crisscrossed along their competing trajectories, like a dense net, and it lay over top of the world, transparent yet still heavy. Each moon could be me or Rufus or Harriet, but then I looked again and saw there were some moons that had become fully realized and shone bright enough to shred the ropes of the surrounding nets.
And then I woke, throwing my covers off, believing momentarily I was submerged in Ghost Creek. Goose, who was in the bed with me, snuggled his warm nose into my naked underarm and whined. I stroked his head with my hand and wished for a simpler mystery, but there was no such thing.
* * *
The tatters of the dream stayed with me as I made coffee, scrambled eggs, and fed Goose. By the time I made it to Ronnie’s, the sun was almost up and the dream had been replaced by Claire’s knowing eyes. How had she intuited that the article was off? It was something to meet another person with an intuition that matched your own. Sort of like looking into a mirror and seeing someone else who shared your features but wore them differently, with a kind of grace you believed you lacked.
Ronnie was still asleep, so I let myself in and sat down next to him on the couch. He was lying with one leg propped up on the back of the couch and the other on the floor. A thin sheet lay across his body. He was snoring.
I asked myself what I was doing. What was the plan?
The simple answer was that I was going to talk to Edward Walsh about Weston Reynold’s death. The more complicated one was that, somehow, I wanted to see the falls again, the gorge, and the possibility of making the leap across. I wanted to stand where Rufus and Harriet had stood, to see if there was some entry point into the mystery of Rufus’s unfinished story.
Was taking Ronnie even necessary? I wasn’t sure. I had the sudden urge to just get up and leave, to go it alone this time. To live or die, sink or swim, fall or climb on my own merits. No Mary, no Rufus, no Ronnie.
Still, I hesitated. Ronnie had helped bail me out of so many binds in the past. Was there truly some benefit to doing it alone, or was I simply trying to play a game with myself, trying to manipulate my own consciousness into believing I’d found redemption at long last?
I wasn’t sure. What I was sure of was this: I was stepping into enemy territory. The chances were good I wouldn’t come out unscathed. But, most importantly, I didn’t believe I could live with myself if something happened to Ronnie again.
I stood up, and Ronnie stirred. “Earl?”
I walked away, toward the door.
“Hey,” he called. “I had a dream.”
I stopped at the door.
“You were falling.”
I stepped outside. “Go back to sleep.”
“Hey, ar
en’t we supposed to head out to—”
I shut the door and moved swiftly to my truck. I was already across the creek when Ronnie came out, wearing a pair of stained white briefs and nothing else. I was glad I’d let him be. It felt like the right decision.
This was my mystery to unravel.
* * *
But Ronnie didn’t see it like that. Thank God for Ronnie Thrash. He chopped mysteries down by force of will. He exploded them from the inside out with the raw fury of his personality. He didn’t solve them, he banished them in a way I’d never be able to.
I noticed his truck just before turning onto the long mountain road leading up to the school. I pulled over and waited on him to do the same.
“You can’t bring that piece of shit up the mountain,” I said. “They’ll hear you coming.”
“Well, move over then.”
“I need to do this one alone,” I said.
“Ain’t nothing a man needs to do alone ’cept shit and play with his pecker, and hell, the last one is optional.”
See? Fucking banished. Poof.
He climbed in beside me and slapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s roll.”
He’d thrown on an old Incredible Hulk T-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants along with some flip-flops. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He grinned, stuck it in his mouth, and blew the smoke sideways, his mouth a constricted snarl.
“You better go move your truck,” I said. “If you leave it there, everybody and their mother will know what we’re doing.”
“Sure, Earl. Can I just say, it’s good to have you back.”
“Back?”
“Yeah, working again. I was worried about you for a while. Just sitting in the yard, staring into space. I thought you’d given up.”
“I think maybe I did.”
“What changed?”
I shook my head. “I guess I need to find Rufus.”
He blew a line of smoke out the window. “That old bastard can take care of himself and you know it. What really changed?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer him, but just before he got out of my truck to go move his, I saw an image from the dream. It was the sky with all the moons, except this time I focused on just one of them, and it was my moon, not the one I was destined for, but the one that was me, deeply and truly me.
37
Rufus could pinpoint four pivotal moments in his life. Each of them was filled with equal parts dread and exhilaration. As if the only moments in life that could truly be transcendent had to strike a balance between despair and hope. There was the moment he had walked away from the church, when he had flung the snake at the stained glass, cracking it open. That moment had cracked him open too. He’d been a solid, hard-shelled egg before that. But when the shell cracked, light was able to come inside, but other things slipped in too, including other influences. Influences like Harden. Friends like Harriet. A dream like Savanna.
Moment number two came after he’d been working at the Harden School for half a year. It had happened during what Harden called “free physical time.” Harden had a lot of goofy names for things at the school. “Free physical time” was just recess with more violence.
This particular incident happened on a cold, slightly damp day in February, and Rufus was the only adult riding herd on the thirteen boys and Harriet. Lately, Harden and Deloach had insisted she join the boys for free physical time. Rufus was pretty sure the idea was that if Harriet wanted to like girls, she should be forced to play with the boys. Harden and Deloach encouraged fighting, wrestling, showdowns between the boys who held grudges, even group punishment for boys who got out of line. Rufus’s only real job was to make sure no one was seriously hurt (bloodied noses, black eyes, and painful kicks to the groin didn’t qualify) and that the boys were active. Any of them who were caught sitting around were to be sent directly to Harden. Rufus never had to take any to Harden. One thing was clear in the school: no matter how badass one of the boys thought he was (or really was), none of them wanted to cross Harden.
On this particular day, the boys had brought out the football, and instead of picking teams, they began to play something called “Smear the queer.” The game was one Harden would have loved. One boy took the ball and spiked it on the ground. As soon as it hit the ground, it was live. The boys would scramble madly to pick it up, and whoever snagged it first became the “queer.” The ball carrier attempted to stay on his feet as long as possible before eventually being “smeared” by the other boys. There was no scoring, no winning, no point really that Rufus could see other than being an outlet for the boys to take out their aggression. And maybe that wasn’t so bad. These boys certainly had enough aggression pent up, and despite the violent and seemingly pointless nature of the game, he could tell the boys were having fun. Not only that, there seemed to be an odd camaraderie that arose out of the game. After a ball carrier would get absolutely rocked by three or four tacklers at once, it wasn’t unusual to see the tacklers helping the ball carrier up and patting him on the back.
Harriet stood by and watched, as was her custom since she’d been forced to join the boys in free time a few days earlier. So far, the boys had accepted her presence without too much rancor. Occasionally one of them might shoot her a stern glare and mutter something, but for the most part, they quickly became engaged in pummeling each other and forgot she was there. But that all changed when the ball popped loose from Andrew Shanck’s hands and rolled over to her feet.
“Shank,” as the other boys called him, was the first to make it to the ball, but instead of picking it up, he stopped, holding his arms out like guardrails to keep the other boys back. All thirteen boys stopped behind his arms and watched.
“Hey,” he said. “Why doesn’t the dyke play?”
“We’re not going to call her that,” Rufus said. It was a mantra he repeated over and over again, but none of the boys listened. Why should they listen to Rufus when they’d heard both Deloach and Harden call her the same thing?
“If she can eat pussy, she can play football,” another voice said. Rufus wasn’t sure who.
“Enough,” he said sharply. It was the voice he saved for the most urgent situations, the ones when he knew violence was close at hand. Usually, the voice worked. Rufus had a kind of gravity, even then, that was tough to ignore. It was the kind of gravity that pulled you into his orbit and made you compliant with his will. But not this time. This time, the boys had created their own kind of force, a centrifugal counter to his will. It was a wild thing, formed out of the primeval past, the kind of charging of the atmosphere that could only occur when hormones and angst bounced off each other and dispersed into the very air.
The impending violence was so thick, Rufus could smell it.
Shank picked up the football and handed it to Harriet. She held it for a moment, and the chant began from some unknown place, a mouthless voice that soon formed a chorus of real voices.
Smear.
Smear.
Smear.
The.
Queer.
Smear.
The.
Queer.
Smear. Smear. Smear.
The.
Queer. Queer. Queer.
The boys had formed a circle around Harriet, who stood awkwardly holding the football, like it might be filled with poison and if she gripped it too tightly it would spill. The boys continued the chant as they closed ranks on her.
“Hey!” Rufus shouted.
But his voice was drowned out by the chants. The first boy had reached Harriet now, and instead of tackling her, he swung at her, a wild haymaker that landed with a devastating crack. Rufus froze. It was like watching an explosion happen from a safe distance. It was instantaneous, and dreadful. All of the boys began to strike her, to push her, to beat on her. Somehow—and this is something Rufus would think about later—Harriet held onto the ball, squirming free of the initial assault, keeping her feet, breaking out of the circle, scampering and bouncing from body to body like a
pinball. The chant subsided as the circle turned inward, stretching itself like a rubber band in her wake.
Two of the boys spread out wide, flanking her on either side, while Shank—one of the fastest boys—ran her down from behind. Shank caught her first and jumped on her back, dragging her down. The other two boys piled on, one kicking her in the face and the other grabbing a handful of her hair and yanking it up as hard as he could.
Somehow, Harriet still held onto the ball, and Rufus understood it was her way of fighting back. She’d never beat all the boys, never outrun them, but she wasn’t going to drop the ball. Dropping the ball was quitting; dropping the ball was giving up, saying no, I am not a queer. Holding it was saying yes, I am, and you will not smear nor erase me no matter how hard you might try.
Rufus finally reached the fray. He didn’t bother to speak or yell or do anything except grab boys by the shoulders, arms, the neck, and pull them off, slinging them like discarded clothes. His strength amazed him. He dug through to the last boy—Shank—still on top of her.
Rufus grabbed him and ripped him away, tossing him across the grass. Shank landed, scrambled to his feet, glared at him.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m stopping you from killing her,” Rufus said.
“I’ll kill you!” Shank shouted. That was Shank. He was the kid with the loudest mouth, but he also had the biggest muscles, hands like boulders, knuckles for inflicting punishment on faces. He spoke without thinking, but sometimes he acted without thinking too. He kept the other boys on edge. Rufus swore sometimes even Harden treated him with a kind of respectful deference.
“Bring it on,” Rufus heard himself say. And that was how it was too. He didn’t so much as actually consciously say it. His body was reacting, working through this situation without him.
Shank swung at him and Rufus took the full brunt of the punch on his left jaw. It felt like a damn rocket had exploded in his head, but Rufus clenched his jaw hard, regained his balance, and sent a return shot back at Shank’s right eye. The boy fell to the ground.
