The Fraternity of the Stone

by David Morrell

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “A psychiatrist, Mr. MacLane. The sooner, the better. Oh, yes, and something else.”

  Drew’s uncle waited.

  “I don’t want that boy near my son. Have him transferred to another school.”

  Drew listened behind the partly open door of his room. His eyes stung bitterly. But he’d made a promise to himself, and he kept it. He didn’t cry.

  16

  On the third day after his transfer, Drew’s aunt heard the phone ring as she carried groceries into the kitchen. She hurried to set down the bags and answer it.

  “Mrs. MacLane?”

  The officious voice distressed her. “Speaking.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you. This is the principal over at Emerson grade school.”

  She tensed.

  “I’m sure this is nothing. You probably, well, just forgot.”

  She gripped the cupboard.

  “But since we didn’t receive any word this morning, I thought I’d better call to find out if your nephew’s sick.”

  She herself felt sick. “No.” She swallowed something sour. “Not that I know of. He seemed perfectly well when he got on the bus this morning. Why? Has he been complaining about a stomachache?”

  “That’s just it, Mrs. MacLane. No one here has seen him to ask him.”

  Inwardly, she groaned.

  “I assumed you’d kept him home from school and simply forgot to let the attendance office know. It happens all the time. But because I’m aware of your nephew’s situation, I thought there wouldn’t be any harm in my asking. Just in case, you understand.”

  “In case?”

  “Well, I don’t think anything’s happened to him, though you never can tell. But he wasn’t here yesterday, either.”

  17

  Standing next to the policeman, Drew stared down at the sidewalk in front of his aunt and uncle’s house.

  The screen door banged open. He peered up as his uncle stormed out. “It’s after supper. Andrew, you had us worried. Where on earth have you been?”

  “The cemetery,” the policeman said.

  “What?”

  “Pleasant View. That’s ten miles north of here.”

  “Yes, officer, I’m familiar with it.”

  “They’ve had some vandalism recently. Teenagers sneaking in, toppling tombstones, that sort of thing. I can’t imagine why anybody would think that’s funny. Anyway, the cemetery director asked us to keep a watch, so I’ve been driving through there on my rounds. Yesterday morning, I saw this youngster staring down at some graves. I didn’t think much about it, mostly because I had a radio call about a burglary in progress, and I had to hot-tail it over to a liquor store. But this morning, I was driving through that cemetery again, and there was this youngster again, and I thought, ‘Now wait a minute,’ and stopped. He sure doesn’t talk much, does he?”

  “That’s a fact,” Drew’s aunt said.

  “Even when I walked up to him, he didn’t pay me any attention. He just kept staring down at the graves. So I went around behind him and saw that the last names on the tombstones were both the same.”

  “MacLane,” Drew’s uncle said.

  “That’s right. A man and a woman.”

  “Robert and Susan.”

  “Right. So I asked him what he was doing, and the first and last thing he said to me was, ‘I’m talking to my mom and dad.’”

  “Dear God.”

  “Then he wiped at his eyes, but the funny thing was, I couldn’t see any tears. I figured he must have someone with him, but when I looked, there wasn’t anyone in sight. And most children, you know, this uniform makes them pay attention. Not him, though. He just kept staring down at those graves. He wouldn’t tell me his name or where he lived. All by himself. Why wasn’t he in school? So what could I do? I took him down to the station.”

  “You did right,” Drew’s uncle said.

  “I even bought him a chocolate bar, but he still wouldn’t talk to me, and his wallet had no I.D., so that’s when I started calling all the MacLanes in the book. You say you’re his guardians?”

  “He was telling the truth,” Drew’s uncle said. “His parents are buried there.”

  “I sure feel sorry for him.”

  “Yeah,” Drew’s uncle said, “it’s a long, sad story. Here, let me pay you for the chocolate bar you bought him.”

  “That’s okay. My treat. Besides, he’s a tough little kid. He never ate it.”

  “Right,” Drew’s uncle said. “A tough little kid.”

  18

  Mrs. Cavendish set down the pointer she’d been aiming at multiplication lists on the blackboard.

  “Andrew, I asked you a question.”

  The children giggled.

  “Andrew?” Mrs. Cavendish stalked between rows of desks until she reached a seat near the back. Drew was slumped across the desktop, his head on his arms, asleep. She towered over him, glaring, her voice loud. “Andrew?”

  He murmured in his sleep.

  She nudged his shoulder. Nudged it again. “Andrew!” she barked.

  He sat up bolt-straight, blinking.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Cavendish.” Drew shook his head to clear it. “I guess I wasn’t listening.”

  “Of course not. How could you? When you were asleep.”

  The children had turned around in their desks to watch the excitement. Now as Mrs. Cavendish shot an angry glance their way, they swiveled to peer ahead, their flushed necks the only sign of the laughter they struggled to contain.

  “This isn’t the first time. Do I bore you so much that I put you to sleep?”

  “No, Mrs. Cavendish.”

  “Then it must be mathematics that makes you sleepy.”

  “No, Mrs. Cavendish.”

  “What is it then?”

  Drew didn’t answer.

  “Well, young man, you can sleep on somebody else’s time. From now on, you sit in the desk right in front of me. Stand up.”

  She marched him to the front and made him switch places with another student.

  “And now, young man, the next time you’re tempted to show me how boring I am by falling asleep, I won’t have to reach far—” she picked up her pointer and whacked it hard against the front of the desk “—to wake you up.”

  Of all the children, only Drew didn’t flinch.

  19

  Four A.M. A chilly October wind nipped Drew’s cheeks as he stood with the policeman in front of the house.

  “I hate to wake you up this late,” the policeman said, “but I figured you must be frantic with worry.”

  Light spilled from the open front door. Drew’s aunt clutched the front of her housecoat. Beside her, silhouetted in the doorway, Drew’s uncle glanced nervously at the darkened houses along the street as if he hoped that the neighbors wouldn’t notice the police car parked in front. “You’d better come in.”

  “I understand.” The policeman guided Drew in and shut the door. “I’m sure you weren’t expecting company. I’ll just stand here in the hall.”

  “But where did you find him?”

  The policeman hesitated. “The cemetery.”

  Drew’s uncle blinked. “We didn’t even know he was gone.”

  Drew’s aunt raised a trembling hand to her hairnet. “I put him to bed right after supper. I checked him before we went to sleep.”

  “It seems he snuck out after. I’ve got his bicycle in the trunk of the car,” the policeman said.

  “He biked ten miles?” Drew’s uncle slumped against the wall. “In the night, in this cold? He must be—”

  “Exhausted,” Drew’s aunt said. She looked at her husband. “Dear Lord, do you suppose?” She shivered and stared at Drew. “Is that what you’ve been doing? Is that why you’re so tired at school?”

  “This time around, I managed to get him to talk to me,” the policeman said. “Not a lot, but enough to get the idea. I gather that
he’s been biking over there at night and … maybe it’s better if he tells you himself. Go on, Drew. Why have you been biking over there? I don’t mean just to visit your parents. You can do that in daylight. Why at night?”

  Drew glanced from the policeman to his aunt and uncle. He peered at the floor.

  “Go on, Drew.” The policeman crouched. “Tell them what you told me.”

  Drew’s aunt and uncle waited sternly.

  “Vandals,” Drew said.

  His aunt and uncle looked shocked. “Vandals?”

  Drew nodded.

  “The cat has his tongue again,” the policeman said, “so let me fill in the blanks. When I brought him home before, he heard me talk about the teenagers who’ve been vandalizing the cemetery.”

  “I remember,” Drew’s uncle said.

  “Well, apparently that got him thinking. For starters, he didn’t know what ‘vandals’ meant, so he says he looked it up in the dictionary. I don’t know what he read, but it sure upset him.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why he’s been sneaking out at night to go to the cemetery,” Drew’s aunt said.

  “It does if you think about it. What he’s been doing is—” Drew fidgeted, self-conscious; they stared at him. “—protecting his parents’ graves.”

  20

  Saturday morning, bright and cold. As a group of neighborhood children played football in the distance, Drew sat alone on a swing at the far end of the lot.

  A shadow loomed across him. From in back.

  Drew turned. At first, with the sun angled toward his eyes, he couldn’t make out the face of the tall man in the overcoat.

  But as his vision got used to the glare of the sun, he suddenly grinned excitedly and rushed to the man.

  “Uncle Ray!”

  In truth, the man was not related to Drew, but from years of habit, that was what Drew had always called him.

  “Uncle Ray!”

  Drew threw his arms around the man’s waist, feeling the soft brown cloth of the overcoat.

  The man laughed, picked Drew up, and swung him around. “It’s good to see you, sport. How’s the world been treating you?”

  Drew was too delighted to pay attention to the question. As the man continued laughing, Drew laughed as well, enjoying the wonderful dizziness of being swung around.

  The man set him down and, smiling, crouched to face him. “Surprised?”

  “Boy, I’ll say!”

  “I happened to be in Boston on business, and I thought, ‘What the heck, as long as I’m here, I might as well visit my old friend Drew.’” Uncle Ray mussed Drew’s hair. “A good thing I did, huh? When I saw you on that swing, you looked pretty glum.”

  Drew shrugged, remembering how he’d felt, returning to his somber mood.

  “Got troubles, sport?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Any you’d like to tell me about?”

  Drew scuffed his running shoes in the dead brown grass. “Just stuff.”

  “Well, it might be I know a few of them already. I stopped at the house. Your aunt told me where you’d gone.” Ray paused. “She also told me what’s been happening. Your problems at school.” He bit his lip. “The other things. And I hear you’ve been getting in fights with your cousin.”

  “He doesn’t like me.”

  “Oh? You’re sure of that?”

  “He’s mad because I live there. He’s always playing practical jokes on me or hiding my homework or blaming me for things I didn’t do.”

  “I can see how that might happen. So you decked him, huh?”

  Drew grinned, holding up his right hand. “Bruised my knuckles.”

  “It could be an even trade. At the house, I saw his black eye.”

  The man was as old as Drew’s father had been. For some reason, “thirty-five” stuck in Drew’s mind. He had neatly trimmed sandy hair, expressive blue eyes, and a narrow, handsome face, his jaw strongly outlined. Drew loved the sweet smell of his aftershave.

  “Yeah, a lot of commotion,” Ray said. “The question is, what are we going to do about it? You feel like taking a walk, sport?”

  21

  Puzzled, his heart thumping, Drew listened out of sight in the hall as the grown-ups talked about him in the living room.

  “As you’re aware, Drew’s father and I were very close,” Ray said. His smooth voice carried down the hall. “I knew him for years. We went to Yale together. We received our State Department training together. We were both stationed in Japan.”

  Drew’s uncle said, “Then you were at the embassy when his parents were killed?”

  “No, by the time the demonstrations started, I’d already been transferred to Hong Kong. When I heard what had happened, well, I couldn’t believe that anybody would do such a horrible thing. I was involved in a diplomatic emergency at the time, and I couldn’t leave Hong Kong even to go to the funeral. In fact, my assignment was serious enough that I wasn’t free to get away till just last week. I’m sure you’ll understand that I can’t be specific about what I was doing. But as soon as I could, I wanted to come here to Boston—to pay my respects, to at least see their graves. It’s hard to put this into words. Of course, he was your brother, Mr. MacLane, so I hope you don’t take this wrong if I say that I felt … well, like a brother to him also. As I said, we were very close.”

  “I understand,” Drew’s uncle said. “The fact is, you probably knew him better than I did. I hadn’t seen him in the past five years, and even before then, we didn’t get together much.”

  “What about the boy?”

  “I don’t believe I saw him more than three or four times. Ever. My brother and I were the only children in our family. Our parents died several years ago. So naturally, when my brother called me to say that he was having a new will made out and would I take custody of Drew if anything happened to Susan and himself…”

  “Yes, naturally you agreed.”

  “There wasn’t anybody else he could ask, you see. But I never dreamed that I’d have to make good on my promise.”

  “What I want to talk to you about is this. I’ve always been fond of Andrew. I guess I feel like an uncle to him. Again, I don’t mean any offense. I’m not trying to be presumptuous. But my wife and I don’t have any children. It seems we’re not able to. At any rate, given the difficulties you’ve been having with him…”

  “Difficulties. That’s putting it mildly.”

  “I wondered if you’d let my wife and me have custody of him.”

  “Have custody! Are you serious?”

  “It could be the answer to several problems. The grief I feel for my friend. My fondness for the boy. My wife and I had already considered going to an adoption agency. Add to that the problems you’ve been having with Drew.”

  Drew’s uncle sounded suspicious. “What makes you think you can do any better with him?”

  “I’m not sure I can. But I’d like to try.”

  “And if it didn’t work out?”

  “I wouldn’t bring him back to your doorstep, if that’s what you mean. I’d abide by our agreement. If you’re hesitant, though, if you think you’d want him back, we could arrange a compromise. Perhaps the boy could spend a month or so with my wife and myself, and after that, we all could talk about it again. This way, you’d have a chance to get your household back the way it used to be.”

  “I don’t know. Where would you take him?”

  “Hong Kong. For half of his life, he lived in the Orient. Hong Kong isn’t Japan, of course. But perhaps he’d feel more at home if he went back to the Far East.”

  Drew’s uncle sighed. “This is hard to … your offer’s certainly tempting. I confess I’ve been at wits’ end. But there might be a problem. Suppose the boy doesn’t want to go?”

  “We can always ask him.”

  Hiding in the hall, his heart swelling, Drew silently shouted, Yes!

  22

  The bitter wind brought tears to his eyes, though he might have been cryi
ng for a different reason as he stared down at his parents’ graves.

  Uncle Ray pulled up the collar on his overcoat and shoved his gloved hands into its pockets. “I miss them too, sport.” His sandy hair was blown by the wind.

  “Maybe I…”

  “Yes? Go on.” Ray put an arm around him.

  “…should have brought the flowers anyhow.”

  “On a raw day like this? They wouldn’t have lasted long. No, it’s better that we let them live a while longer back at the flower shop.”

  Drew understood. There wasn’t any reason why the flowers should die as well. Only the people who’d killed his parents ought to die.

  “So what do you think?” Ray asked. “I know you want to stay, but we’ve been here almost an hour. We have to catch that plane at five o’clock. It’s not forever, you know. Someday, you’ll be back.”

  “Sure. It’s just…”

  “Hard to leave them? You bet. But we’ve got photographs. You can still remember them while you’re away. I mean, a guy can’t very well camp here in the cemetery, can he?”

  “No.” Drew’s eyes stung, misty, this time definitely not from the wind. He had trouble breathing. “I guess not.”

  23

  Reading the dossier’s objective summary, Drew recalled—and reexperienced—the emotions of his youth. As if a child again, he walked with Ray toward the car that would take them to the airport. In his painful memory, he glanced back, his throat tight, toward his parents’ graves.

  He knew that the priest’s intention was to get him to talk about those days, and he did so freely, not caring if he gave the priest his wish. He needed to vent his sadness. “In later years, whenever I was in Boston, I used to go back to that cemetery. I went there before I became a Carthusian. Last week, though, I never had the chance to visit them.’”