Reality Check

by Peter Abrahams

  This was the stunned kind of silence that follows a sudden explosion.

  “My oh my,” said Simon. He rose. “Catullus awaits.”

  “Who’s he?” said Larissa.

  “Merely the poet responsible for nam inista preualet nihil tacere,” Simon said. “Freely translated as ‘It’s pointless to hide your debauchery.’ See what you miss by not taking Latin?”

  “Nothing,” said Larissa. “My debauchery’s right out there.”

  Simon laughed, an awkward, high-pitched laugh accompanied by blushing. “Why don’t you come with me, Cody?” he said. “We’ll ask Townes for an example of Ike’s hilarity.”

  “I’ll have another one of those chocolates before you go,”

  said Larissa.

  Cody and Simon walked across the quad, headed toward a dorm that looked bigger than Baxter, stone instead of brick. That sliver moon still hung in the sky, still spreading unease, at least in Cody’s mind.

  “That’s DeWitt?” he said.

  “My home away from home,” said Simon, and then, after a pause, “In fact, my home.”

  “It’s named after Townes’s family?”

  “So goes the tale. Dates back to 1902, I believe.”

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  “They’ve been rich for a long time.”

  “They certainly were rich,” Simon said. “Rich beyond all reason. As for the present, that’s another story.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No telling tales out of school. Or in school, as the case may be. But a quick Internet search of Pegasus Partners might be revealing.”

  “What’s Pegasus Partners?”

  “Not just another hedge fund.”

  Hedge fund: Cody was vaguely aware of the expression, had no idea what it meant. A question—a strange one for him—

  formed in his mind. “And what about your family—are you rich within reasonable limits?”

  Simon burst out laughing, looked for a moment as though about to pat Cody on the arm. “Afraid not,” he said. “My father has this unreasonable gift.”

  “What gift?”

  “For making money—his only real ability. He says wealth never stops circulating, and all you have to do is tap into the flow, like a maple sugar farmer.”

  “But what does he do?” Cody said.

  “I just told you,” said Simon. He took out a magnetic card, swiped it through a slot by the heavy wooden doors of DeWitt Hall. “Sorry,” he said, “if that sounded rude.”

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  “No problem,” Cody said, and asked another question, a question that had been bothering him in a shapeless sort of way and now suddenly took form. “How did they get started together, Clea and Townes?”

  Simon paused, the door half open. “That’s an odd question,” he said. “You’re the second person to ask me.”

  “Who was the first?”

  “That cop—Morton or Orton or whatever.”

  “And what’s the answer?”

  “What I told him is that I had no idea.”

  “And me?”

  “What I’ll tell you,” said Simon, his voice softening and deepening a little on you, “is that intergender romance is not the specialty of the house.”

  “Oh,” said Cody.

  “Enter,” Simon said.

  Cody hung back, let Simon go in first.

  Townes’s room was on the first floor, at the end of a long corridor. The doors all bore small whiteboards for leaving messages, and sometimes a picture as well, photos of sports stars or musicians. Townes had a photo of himself on a big black horse Cody had seen in one of the stalls; a note on his message board read: dropped by—c u @ barn. Must have been 217

  an old message: Cody recognized Clea’s writing. It knocked him a little off-balance.

  Simon rapped on the door.

  “Who is it?” came Townes’s voice from inside.

  “Me,” said Simon.

  “Unlocked.”

  Simon opened the door. Townes was at his desk; the computer screen displayed some sort of card game. Townes looked up, saw Cody, raised his eyebrows. The screen went blank.

  “Cody here’s taken a job at the barn,” Simon said.

  “The barn?”

  “He’s got a question for you.”

  Townes rose. “What kind of question?”

  Cody said nothing. Simon answered for him; Cody liked having him for a spokesman. “It’s about Ike and his alleged sense of humor. Cody wants an example.”

  “You’re working at the barn?” Townes said. “Why?”

  “Why?” said Simon. “He needed a job is why—it happens in the real world.”

  “The real world, Simon?” Townes came out from behind his desk. Simon licked his lips, surprised Cody by finding nothing to say. “Here’s an example of Ike humor,” said Townes. “He was eating a peanut butter sandwich and one of his teeth came out—you’ve seen his teeth. He dug around in his mouth for 218

  the tooth, licked it clean, and said, ‘Thank God I got a witness. Now I can sue the pants off Skippy.’ ”

  No one laughed. “Maybe he was serious,” Simon said.

  “Of course he was serious,” Townes said. “That’s what makes it funny.” His gaze went to Cody. “Anything else? I’ve got work to do.”

  Anything else? For sure, but hard to put into words—and not now. He had to think. Cody noticed a big poster on the wall, labeled POISONOUS SNAKES OF THE WESTERN DESERT. Did Edenic allusion mean something about the Garden of Eden? He and Simon backed out of the room and closed the door. In a sneaky way that should have made him feel ashamed but didn’t, Cody rubbed his shoulder on the whiteboard, obliterating Clea’s message. 219

  CODY AWOKE IN THE NIGHT, his first night in the cabin near the barn. Through the window he saw the thin crescent moon, now low in the sky, about to disappear behind the treetops. He switched on the bedside light, reread Clea’s poem, “Bending,” for the hundredth time. Was the bubbling snakelike thing Townes, and the face above his own? Or was it the other way around? Or was the explanation something else completely? He had the crazy idea that if he heard Ms. Brennan reciting it in her scratchy old voice, the meaning would be clear. Cody switched off the light and closed his eyes.

  But he couldn’t get back to sleep. For one thing, he couldn’t find a comfortable position for his knee. His knee was getting better all the time—he no longer got the feeling it could come apart again at any moment—but it still swelled up and felt sore in the night. For another, the walls of the cabin were thin, and once or twice he heard Ike groaning in his sleep, somewhere down below. Most of all, he couldn’t help going back to the moment when Bud reared up on the trail. Was it because he sensed Sergeant Orton hiding nearby, or because whatever had happened to Clea had happened close by, and Bud remembered? Cody went back and forth on that, tossing and turning in his tiny room, then recalled the new attitude he was taking to wasted time.

  He rose. Time was passing and Clea was out there somewhere; and even—he tried to face the possibility—even if the worst had happened, then what difference did that make? He still owed her his best. Cody got dressed—his sneakers, left by the woodstove, were nice and warm—grabbed the keys to the barn, and left his room, descending the stairs very quietly, pulling the outer door closed behind him with just the tiniest click of the latch.

  He walked to the barn, sneakers squeaking a bit on the packed-down snow of the path. The sky was dark but not black; the only true blackness to be seen was the mountains, looming all around. Cody went to the small side door that led to the tack room and stuck the key in the lock. What was this? The 221

  door swung right open, meaning Ike hadn’t locked it, hadn’t even closed it properly. Cody reached around on the inside wall, switched on the light; and saw at a glance that he’d been too quick in blaming Ike. He’d locked the door all right—Cody could tell from the bolt, set in the sticking-out position. The problem was that someone had knocked the whole brass lock right off its screws, splintering
the doorjamb at the same time. Cody froze, listened hard. He heard nothing.

  A flashlight hung on a hook just inside the door, a big, hefty one. Cody reached for it, at the same time switching off the overhead light. He let his eyes adjust to the darkness, and the layout of the tack room slowly took shape, dimmed way down. Ahead he saw a big fuzzy rectangle, the entrance to the main part of the barn. He moved to it, his sneakers now silent on the smooth old floorboards; silence to hear, dimness to see, and horse smell, dominating the other senses.

  Cody left the tack room, walked between the two rows of stalls. Weak pinkish light glowed from the exit signs at both ends of the barn, got reflected in the eyes of the horses. They were all on their feet. Cody knew that horses slept on their feet; did they also sleep open eyed? He didn’t think they were asleep, not from the way all those eyes seemed to be watching him. He felt their alertness; something about the feeling made him switch on the flashlight. Cody quickly aimed the beam 222

  into all the dark corners, spotting no one, nor any sign of disorder. He kept moving, toward Bud’s stall. Horses slept standing up, but not Bud. Cody told himself he should have known: Bud had his own ways. Cody looked over the double swinging doors of the stall, panned the beam around, saw Bud lying in the straw. Lying down and eyes open; at least, the eye that Cody could see.

  “Hey, Bud,” he said, very softly. No reaction: that would be Bud, totally zonked out. Cody moved on, shining the beam into all the corners, probing every shadow, satisfying himself that there was no one else in the barn.

  He returned to Bud’s stall, bothered by some impression, faint and fleeting, in his mind. What was it? He shone the light into the stall. Yes, that was it, the awkward way Bud had one of his back legs bent up underneath him. “Hey, Bud.” Bud didn’t stir, also didn’t seem to mind the light in his eye, an eye that in sleep didn’t look as liquid as usual, actually more dusty. “Bud, wake up.” Cody panned the beam around. What was this, in the straw by Bud’s head? A little wet pool? Wet and red? Cody flung open the stall doors. From behind came a voice.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on?”

  Cody whirled around. At that moment, the overhead lights flashed on, and he saw Ike coming toward him, Ike in pajamas, boots, and his ridiculous plaid hat; and also with that whittling 223

  knife in his hand. Cody backed into the stall, his feet bumping into Bud. There was nowhere to go.

  Ike kept coming, bowlegged and fast. “I said what the hell’s goin’ on?”

  “Did you hurt Bud?” Cody said.

  “Somethin’s wrong with the horse?” Ike said, pulling up.

  “I think so.”

  Ike came closer. “What did you do?” he said.

  “Nothing,” Cody said. “Someone kicked in the tack room door—didn’t you see that?” And that meant—Cody suddenly putting facts together in a way he wasn’t used to—that Ike hadn’t hurt Bud. Why would Ike kick in the door? He had a key.

  Ike shook his head, his mouth falling open slightly.

  “And I’ve got a key,” Cody said.

  Ike nodded slowly, and slowly lowered the knife. Cody moved aside. Ike saw Bud, dropped the knife, and fell to his knees. He dipped a finger in the red pool and tasted it. Then, very gently, he raised Bud’s head and turned it a little. Cody knelt beside him. There was no missing the round hole, ragged at the edges, just behind Bud’s ear.

  “Someone shot him?” Cody said.

  Ike didn’t answer. He wrapped his arms around Bud’s neck and held him close. Tears streamed down Ike’s ugly face, 224

  dripped on that diamond-shaped blaze. Cody shifted around and patted Ike on the shoulder. He spotted a shell casing lying in the straw.

  An hour later there were lots of people in the barn: Sergeant Orton and some other cops; a vet; Mrs. McTeague; the headmaster of Dover Academy, whose name Cody didn’t catch, and whom the sergeant addressed as “sir” the only time they spoke. That was when the headmaster asked if Bud might have been killed by a stray bullet, fired by some drunken hunter out in the night, for some reason, and Sergeant Orton said, “No, sir.”

  He held up the shell casing. “Revolver or semiautomatic pistol’s what fired this.” The headmaster spread his hands as if to say So? “Hunters don’t use handguns,” the sergeant said,

  “drunk or not, sir.”

  “I simply don’t want any unnecessary panic,” the headmaster said. “The student body is quite shaken as it is. Rumor spreads so quickly, sergeant. Once the parents get wind of this new—” His cell phone rang, and he moved away to take the call.

  The cops snapped pictures. An animal ambulance drove into the barn and the ambulance workers, plus Cody and Ike, got Bud—so heavy—onto a big stretcher, and lifted him inside. After that, Sergeant Orton took Ike into the tack room and had 225

  a long talk. Soon Cody was alone with the headmaster in the main part of the barn.

  “Sorry,” the headmaster said. “I don’t know your name.”

  Cody told him.

  “How long have you been working for us?”

  “Just started.”

  “Terrible,” said the headmaster. “Terrible. I understand you heard a noise and came to investigate?”

  Cody nodded.

  “Was it the gunshot?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  The headmaster glanced at the empty stall, then at Cody.

  “How old are you, Cody?”

  “Almost seventeen.”

  The headmaster’s eyebrows—wild and bushy, although the rest of him was perfectly groomed—rose. “You look older.”

  He took a deep breath. “Thank you for all your help. We’ll get through this.”

  Cody didn’t say anything. Getting through this wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to find Clea; and also now find whoever had shot Bud. At that moment Sergeant Orton poked his head out of the tack room and called, “Cody?”

  The headmaster held out his hand. Cody didn’t know why this was a handshaking occasion, but he did the expected. 226

  Sergeant Orton was alone in the tack room, no sign of Ike.

  “Take a seat.” Cody sat on a stool. The sergeant leaned against the workbench, big dark smudges under his eyes. He gave Cody a long look. “I learn more and more about your abilities all the time.” Cody kept his mouth shut. “Now it turns out my mole has sharp hearing, sharp enough to hear, what? The break-in or the shot, from all the way over in that cabin, probably a quarter mile from here. Or was that just a little mole story, to protect your cover?”

  Cody nodded.

  “Ever think about a career in law enforcement?”

  “Hell, no,” said Cody.

  Sergeant Orton frowned, possibly insulted. “So what little scheme brought you out here in the middle of the night? And I don’t want to hear you were planning another test of Bud’s memory.”

  Cody gazed back at the sergeant, defiant.

  The sergeant gazed right back, small red blotches appearing on his face. “You’re persistent, if nothing else.”

  Cody didn’t like that. He was tired of getting talked down to. “What does it matter, anyway, what I was doing? What matters is who shot Bud and why.”

  “You telling me how to do my job?”

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  Why shouldn’t I? You’re not getting it done. Cody kept that to himself but couldn’t contain his anger completely, and ended up again looking Sergeant Orton right in the eye, a look he kept up until—surprise—the sergeant dropped his gaze. Cody pressed on. “Somebody didn’t want me and Bud searching for Clea.” And if that was true, then whole idea of the search was a good one, might even have succeeded.

  “Very goddamn persistent,” said the sergeant. He seemed to think for a moment. “But I don’t buy it. This looks more like sending a message.”

  “A message to who?” Cody said.

  “Have to figure that out, won’t I?” the sergeant said, his voice rising in impatience. He rubbed his eyes and went on in a more normal tone. “Meanwhi
le we’ll get cracking on ballistics, see what kind of gun we’re looking for.” He pushed himself away from the workbench with a tired little sound. “Get some sleep.”

  Cody stayed where he was. “What’s the message?”

  “We’ll work on that, too.”

  “But it has to be about Clea, right? This can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions,” the sergeant said.

  Fifteen minutes later, Cody was back in bed, as tired as he’d ever been in his life. But his eyes wouldn’t stay closed. The 228

  big muscles of his back and down his legs still seemed to be feeling Bud’s heavy dead weight on the stretcher. The enormous waste of such a beautiful living thing: Cody couldn’t stop thinking about that. Don’t jump to conclusions, Sergeant Orton had said. Did that mean they had to walk to conclusions, creep to them, inch to them? How did that make sense? Time was running out, if it hadn’t run out already. Sergeant Orton had it backward: Jumping to conclusions was the only way. Cody sat up in bed. The night was quiet again, as though nothing had happened. He rose, again got dressed, again went quietly down the stairs, again closed the door softly behind him; but this time he really didn’t care whether Ike heard him or not. He took the snow shovel leaning by the door and followed the path to the barn, planning to get the flashlight, but suddenly realized he was seeing things quite well; and glanced up to see faint light in the east, like milk seeping into the night sky. Cody turned, walked past the riding ring and onto the loop trail, the shovel over his shoulder.

  The sky was pale blue by the time Cody reached the Upper Mountain Crossover, the air clear and cold. He found the spot where Bud had reared up—one particular hoofprint had frozen perfectly in the snow, every detail sharp. What had spooked Bud: some memory of Clea, or the hidden presence of Sergeant Orton?

  Cody started digging. He dug up the snow where the two trails 229

  met, then the snow under and around the big spruce tree where the sergeant had hidden with his snowmobile. After that he dug around all the nearby trees and up the crossover trail, working quickly, flinging snow, baring the ground, finding nothing.

  “Goddamn it,” he said, or maybe shouted, but the woods muffled the sound, seemed to take the fight out of it. Warm now, except for his hands and feet, Cody leaned on the shovel, sweat dripping off the tip of his nose. Bud had sensed Sergeant Orton hiding behind the tree. Cody knew he had to accept that obvious explanation. He also knew he didn’t want to go back to the barn. A feeble thought came to him: Maybe in this clear early-morning light he’d spot something he—and everyone else—had missed before. He slung the shovel over his shoulder and started up the crossover trail. Cody walked, long past the point when the warmth from shoveling had worn off. He alternated hands to keep them warm, one on the shovel, one in his pocket. Buying himself gloves, and maybe a hat? Why hadn’t he done that? He laughed at himself, laughed out loud. Other than that one gloves-andhat thought, his mind was empty. He came to the warming hut without having spotted anything new, anything that didn’t belong in the winter woods.