The Hush

by John Hart

  “That’s it?”

  “For now.”

  “Well, that’s just fucking fine.”

  “Tomorrow,” Johnny said. “Five o’clock. I’ll come to your apartment.”

  “And your parents?”

  “Right after. We’ll have that dinner. The four of us.” It was a difficult moment because Jack wanted his friend, and Johnny wanted the walk, to feel it build. “Are we square?”

  Jack nodded slowly, and to Johnny it was an ending. He stepped back, and waited as Jack turned across the empty pavement. When he was gone, Johnny walked the bent road and the long, sweet dirt. He climbed a buckled gate, and then another, until home was a line through the forest, a shimmer he could actually see. Maybe that was wishful thinking, or delirium. It didn’t matter. He stepped over the line, and felt the place flood into him. It was a weight, a warmth; and with all that heat inside, Johnny folded into the earth as if he were an orphan child and the Hush his mother, resurrected.

  * * *

  When Jack returned to town, he went to the office. His billable hours were way down, and he was most likely on a blacklist over Johnny’s apparent involvement with Boyd’s death, and the sudden loss of that potential revenue. Some partners were reasonable; others lived on ego, spite, and power. That was the nature of the business, and something Jack understood by the second year of law school. It still mattered to him, though: the diplomas, the nameplate on the door. That was about growing up voiceless and small and crippled. Jack loved his career for the same reason he loved Johnny—because they were the only things of worth to survive that childhood.

  “Susan.” He spoke to an assistant; nodded at an associate beyond an open door. He kept a smile on his face, but it was all an act. A paralegal brushed his shoulder, and he flinched. Cold eyes watched from a corner office. Safe in his own space, Jack closed his door against the firm, trying to understand why it felt so pointless and shallow and false.

  Because it is.

  The smiles. The brief nods. Had Johnny killed William Boyd, it would have gone away, all of it. And people expected it to. That’s what he’d seen on the way in. Surprise and pity and dislike. Jack’s suspicion was confirmed when he turned for the desk and saw the daily paper with a photo of Johnny and of a private jet beneath bold print reading, BILLIONAIRE’S FAMILY ARRIVES AT LOCAL AIRPORT, NOTORIOUS LOCAL STILL IN CUSTODY. Beside the paper was a battered copy of the book about Alyssa’s death and Johnny’s childhood. Jack’s picture was in there somewhere. The sunburned face. The gimp arm.

  People don’t know …

  They thought Johnny was still in jail, thought Jack’s best friend was a killer. The firm would never fire him for that—it would be impolitic—but Jack had been found guilty by association. For a moment, Jack was frozen; then the anger came, a coal of it down low.

  “Who put this in my office?”

  He was in the doorway, and people were staring.

  “Susan? Mark?”

  A dozen people were close enough to hear, but no one met his gaze.

  “Is there a problem?” A senior associate stepped from the adjacent office and looked pointedly at his watch. “Nice of you to join us today.”

  Jack raised the paper. “Did you put this on my desk?”

  “It’s a newspaper, Mr. Cross. I’m sure there’s one on most desks in the building.”

  “He’s no killer,” Jack said. “They let him go this afternoon.”

  “I’m sure we don’t care.”

  He turned away and left Jack in a bubble of quiet rage. Heads were still down, no one looking. Back in his office, Jack tossed the paper, tossed the book. His anger felt foreign and strange. He’d known so much of it during childhood that he’d trained himself to go cold rather than hot, to think before reacting. It’s why the law appealed, because it was cerebral and offered control.

  But Jack had no control.

  Emotion moved him from the door to the window and back, then awareness settled like a cool fog. It wasn’t anger, but fear.

  Jack was frightened of losing his friend.

  Choosing files at random, Jack stepped from the office and stopped at an assistant’s desk. “I’m working at home this afternoon. Call me there if anyone needs me.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young woman nodded, and Jack turned. “Oh, sir. Excuse me. Messages.”

  She held out a sheaf of messages, and Jack took them without a word. From the downstairs lobby, he pushed onto the sidewalk and turned for the apartment. It was hot, traffic moving. Three cars down, he saw two men in an Escalade, but paid no attention. They were watching, but he didn’t care. Maybe it was the bad arm, the fast walk. A right turn took him past condos and the local bank. Two blocks after taking a left, he slipped into a door beside the bakery and pounded narrow stairs to his apartment on the third floor. Behind the heavy door, he put down his things, splashed water on his face, and sat in the gloom beside drawn curtains.

  Am I really losing my friend?

  Johnny liked his secrets—that was true. He’d always been quieter than most. But the secrets had been smaller, too. What he felt. What he wanted. Even as a boy, he’d rarely looked for permission or understanding. To Jack that quality had made Johnny dangerous, and he’d liked being part of it: them against the world. But the secrets now were darker.

  Jack sat at the desk and flipped through the stack of messages he’d brought from the office; saw numbers for other lawyers, the clerk of court, Leslie. A name he didn’t recognize appeared two different times, along with a note from the assistant: In re: Johnny Merrimon. Jack considered for a moment, then threw the messages away. The ten-year anniversary of Alyssa’s discovery was approaching, and anniversaries brought out the crazies, the journalists, the twisted fans. The ten-year mark would be even bigger. A new edition of the book was planned. The documentary would air another dozen times.

  Jack wanted nothing to do with any of it.

  Determined to salvage something of the day, he opened the first file and got to work, summarizing financial statements, loan histories, and debt service. The client was a complicated entity, with multiple subsidiaries and dozens of accounts at nine different institutions. The work took time, but Jack found comfort in the flow of numbers, the rattle of keys. He drew order from the chaos, took notes, charted a path. His preliminary thoughts filled a four-page summary for the client CEO; then he opened the next file.

  When Jack finally stood, hours had passed. Checking his time sheet, he did the math: 5.2 hours. He was hungry.

  Stretching, he pulled a beer from the refrigerator and opened the curtains to see what remained of the day. It was after eight. Dusk. He watched the restaurant across the street and sipped slowly as light faded and the sky turned the kind of purple Jack had always loved: too dark for true day, too warm to be night. A headlight came on, and then another. Jack watched cars move, then saw the Escalade at the curb across the street. For a moment he thought it was the same one he’d seen earlier in the day, but that made little sense. Why park at the firm and then again four blocks away? Jack sipped the beer and wondered if anyone sat inside. He watched for a minute, but that was the thing about purple light. Pretty soon it turned black.

  * * *

  The next day was Saturday, but Jack went to the office anyway: 6:00 A.M., a normal day. He carried a briefcase in his right hand, and the morning paper folded under his bad arm. The morning was gray and cool, his step light.

  At the office, he keyed the door and took the elevator up. Another message slip lay on his desk, and it showed the same number, the same message about Johnny. The caller was a man named Peter Drexel, the callback a New York number. The name still meant nothing, so Jack did an online search and found an editor in New York with the same name. To Jack, editors were right up there with reporters and TV producers, so he ignored the message, closed his door, and worked straight through until two thirty.

  Order, effort, billable hours.

  He took comfort from the work, but caught himself whist
ling on two different occasions. Did that make him spiteful? He wasn’t sure, but when the last file was put away, he kicked his feet onto the desk and read the front-page article a second time.

  MERRIMON RELEASED WITHOUT CHARGE

  It was not a ringing endorsement of Johnny’s character—the reporter cherished nuanced phrases like still-notorious landowner and hermitlike privacy—but the district attorney had offered expansive, if political, apologies. Bottom line: Johnny was a free man and everyone knew it.

  Turning off his lights, Jack studied the empty desks and silent offices. A few people were on the floor, but he didn’t care at all. Still whistling, he entered the adjacent office and placed the newspaper on the senior associate’s desk. He almost left, but went back to square the edges. Then he turned on the lamp.

  After that, the day was his. He called Clyde to confirm that Johnny was coming to town. “He’ll be at my apartment at five o’clock. I’ll have him there by six.”

  “Do you think he’ll actually come?”

  “I’ll make sure of it,” Jack said. “Tell Katherine I’ll bring wine.”

  Jack was outside by then, and a block away from his favorite deli. A late lunch was tempting, but dinner would be soon, and his time with Leslie had made him painfully aware of the extra notch on his belt. He decided on a walk instead. The wine shop was up the hill and six blocks east.

  Jack was home by four, slightly flushed. After showering, he put on a seersucker suit and pink bow tie. Johnny would be casual, but Catherine Merrimon held a special place in Jack’s heart. When he’d lost his own mother to vindictiveness, bile, and a snake handler’s religious zeal, Katherine had put her own loss aside to seamlessly fill the void. She’d held his hand on the difficult nights, convinced him of college, law school, the chance of a future. Pink was her favorite color.

  For the next half hour, Jack fussed over the apartment, the gift bag and the tissue paper he’d used to wrap the wine. Katherine preferred red, but he’d bought white as well. At 4:59 he poured an iced tea. Johnny knocked a minute later. When Jack opened the door, he stepped back, stunned. “Johnny. Jesus. You look … shit.”

  Jack wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Yellowed eyes. Dark circles. The last time he’d seen Johnny, he looked anemic, as if from a long illness. But not now. Right now he glowed.

  “Woodford Reserve. For you.”

  Johnny lifted a bottle and stepped inside. Jack took the bourbon, unfeeling. “What the hell, man?”

  “What?”

  Jack put the bottle down. “You look like you just stepped off a two-month cruise.”

  “A bath, I guess. A day away from jail.” He pointed at the bottle. “You going to open that?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Sure.”

  Jack agreed because he wanted time. In the kitchen, he rattled ice, poured the bourbon. When he returned, Johnny was on his feet. “How about the roof?”

  “It’s kind of hot.”

  “Nah, there’s shade.”

  Johnny led, and Jack followed. In the shade of an adjacent building, they took a spot against the parapet wall. Johnny clinked Jack’s glass, and proposed a toast. “The medical examiner of Raven County.”

  He drank, but Jack didn’t. He was unhappy. “How did you know?”

  Johnny sipped, and offered up the grin. “It’s like I told the sheriff. I heard a shot, found the body.” Jack shook his head, but Johnny spoke over him. “I know it’s hard to track a single shot from three miles—”

  “It’s impossible.”

  Johnny’s eyes glinted over the rim of his glass. “Not if you know the land.”

  “That wasn’t even my question.”

  “What, then?”

  “When I came for you in the swamp, you weren’t worried about being held or charged. You said you’d be out the next day. How did you know the sheriff would be forced to release you?”

  “I looked at the body.…”

  “And what? You just knew?” Jack’s voice climbed more than he wished. “You knew from looking at a corpse that no one could possibly find you capable of the murder?”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I just did. It was too wrong. The bones. The injuries. More hurt was done to that man than I could have ever managed.”

  Jack looked away from his friend. He watched light stretch out, yellow on the roof across the street. “It doesn’t bother you? All that hurt?”

  “It’s the wilderness. People die in the wild.”

  “Yeah, they do. From accident or gunshot or sickness. William Boyd didn’t starve to death, Johnny. It wasn’t an animal attack. He didn’t fall down some goddamn hole.”

  “We don’t really know what happened. Do we?”

  “Have you seen the autopsy report?”

  “Have you?”

  Jack put his glass on the wall and gripped warm concrete with both hands. Beside him, Johnny was relaxed. It was infuriating. “There’s something wrong with that place. I’m telling you, man. I have a bad feeling.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “You love it too much.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Then explain it to me as if I were a child. Tell me how you found the body. Really. Tell me why you need it so much. Tell me how you knew.”

  The moment stretched in a way Jack thought his own soul might never stretch again. The breeze was languid, the evening impossibly soft. When Johnny spoke, his voice was too quiet for the wariness in his eyes. “I think it’s time to go.”

  “It’s early.”

  “Then we go early.” Johnny flicked his wrist and dumped ice into the alley below.

  “Seriously? It’s like that?”

  For a moment the chill between them held; then Johnny hooked an arm around Jack’s neck and pulled him close. “You can be a real pain. You know that?” Jack had nothing to say, and Johnny seemed to understand, nodding once and flashing the old grin. “Have I ever let you down?” he asked.

  “No…”

  “Broken a promise?”

  “We both know you haven’t.”

  “Then come on.” Johnny squeezed him a final time, and laughed. “Lighten up. I know what I’m doing.”

  A day ago, Jack would have reveled in all of it, in the strong arm and laughter, in the hot roof and the memory of all they’d been. He’d have laughed, too, and said: We have time; let’s have another drink. They’d have poured heavy and savored every sip, then gone to dinner free of doubt, young men afoot in the world. It’s what Jack had known and wanted and what, even now, he valued more than anything but the air in his lungs. They’d been best friends as long as he could remember, closer even than brothers. The thought propped him up as they passed through the apartment and down to the street. Johnny was forever, and forever never changed. The boy in him wanted to believe as much, but the man he’d become knew better. The laughter rang false; the evening would be false, too.

  Neither one saw the Escalade across the street.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  On the surface, dinner was a delight. The evening cooled, and they ate in the garden, surrounded by hydrangea, periwinkle, and climbing rose. It was a familiar, private space, and everyone there loved everyone else. Stepfather, mother, friend—the distinctions meant so little. Only Jack was truly quiet, so Johnny watched him when he could. He knew his friend’s face the way he knew his own: the insecure smile, the adoration in his eyes each time he looked at Johnny’s mother. They’d been a family for so long that glances were like language, and silences rarely awkward. Jack’s quietness was different because it focused entirely on Johnny. He studied the trees when Johnny spoke, and excused himself when conversation turned to the Hush. His only true animation occurred when Katherine asked about Johnny’s time in jail.

  “Was it horrible?”

  Johnny squeezed her hand. “A walk in the park.”

  “Bullshit.” Jack coughed the word into his napkin, but everyone heard it. />
  “Excuse me?” Katherine said.

  “No. Excuse me.”

  Jack left the table for the second time, and Johnny shrugged under the weight of another expectant silence. “He’s upset with me. I’m sorry.”

  Katherine looked worriedly after Jack. “You two are fighting?”

  “That’s too strong a word.”

  “Well, you’re here.” She touched his arm, and was beautiful in the light of a garden at sunset. “That’s all that matters to me.”

  “Cheers, then.” Johnny raised his glass, but the mood had turned somber. They spoke of William Boyd, and what Katherine called that poor man in the hospital. “I feel for his family,” she said. “They must be worried to death.”

  Johnny absorbed the seconds that followed: how Clyde’s fingers brushed the back of her neck, the way he leaned close as if warmth alone could salvage the smile she’d lost. It was love—the purest kind—and Johnny understood that power.

  “I should get home.”

  “I’d hoped you’d spend the night.”

  Johnny rose, and kissed her cheek. She had her love. He had his. “Will you tell Jack I said goodbye?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks for the dinner.”

  He nodded at the big man beside his mother, then left through the garden gate and followed a side street to where he’d parked his truck. For a moment he paused to watch a flock of smudge-gray chimney swifts bank and whirl above the treetops and rooflines. It was all so familiar: the stiff wing beats, the chattering call. Any moment now, they’d drop as a flock into one of the old chimneys that rose against the sky, and Johnny wondered which one it might be. Were it a hollow tree in the Hush, he’d know exactly where it stood, but in the city was unaware. So he waited and watched; and when the light was perfect, the flock whirled and dived and, like that, was gone.

  Third chimney to the left.

  The old Victorian.

  After cranking the engine, Johnny rolled down both windows and drove for home. The route was familiar, and the steering wheel spun beneath his hand as if it had a mind of its own. The historic district. The courthouse. The old, bricked street that led across the tracks. Johnny was content at first, but thoughts of Jack and his anger drained that contentment away. There was no joy in the faded city, or in the first bright star.