Come Sit By Me

by Hoobler, Thomas

  “Right,” I said.

  On the way back, Terry said, “If your purpose was to pretend you had a girlfriend, I guess you succeeded.” For some reason, she seemed pissed off.

  “I just didn’t want to get any more involved with North than necessary.”

  “Really? What was that about Sunday?”

  “We’re going hunting.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but let it pass. “Where did you learn to hunt?”

  “He’s teaching me.”

  “There’s something going on here that you’re not telling me, isn’t there?” she said.

  I didn’t say anything. Terry would make a good reporter, if that’s what she decided to do.

  “And it has something to do with Cale, doesn’t it?” she went on.

  “He and North never hung out together, did they?” I asked.

  She didn’t reply at first, which surprised me. I looked at her and she said slowly, “I saw something once that made me wonder.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “It was nothing, really,” she said, waving her hand. “Did you find some connection between them?”

  I kind of made noises as if I was thinking about forming a sentence, but didn’t answer her question.

  “If you did,” Terry said, “you should be very careful not to let North know.”

  I nodded. I didn’t tell her I had already let him know.

  We stopped at Peacefoods, where the same waitress, Opal, took our order. Terry talked about the latest book we were reading in world lit. I was only partly paying attention, because I was thinking about what she had said. I picked up the check and paid it, and Opal gave a little nod to Terry. The secret girl’s nod that means, “Good, you’ve got him paying for dinner.”

  Terry drove back to her house, where my car was still parked. We got out and walked over to it. I said, “Well, I hope you had a good time.” Then she leaned forward and kissed me. It wasn’t a Colleen suck-everything-out-of-you kiss, but it wasn’t sisterly either. I hadn’t been expecting it, and by the time I recovered, she was on her way up the front steps. “I did,” I heard her say.

  Something more to think about. I could hardly sleep all night, between Terry’s kiss and what North was going to say or do on Sunday. All day Saturday I was tired. I thought about how North might have spent his Friday night after the game.

  Dad noticed my mood and tried to cheer me up. You know how you hate that when your parents do it? If I wanted to be miserable, let me. He turned on a college football game. Wouldn’t you know, his school, Wisconsin, was playing. He follows all that stuff, still knows who’s playing for them every year. I wondered what he’d think if I told him what was really going on in my life.

  He ordered pizza for dinner. I ate too many pieces and that made me even sleepier. I went to bed early, but I dreamed about Caleb. He had taken a rifle out of his locker and was heading for the library. Everybody else was in class, so the hallway was empty. Then I realized that I couldn’t see Caleb. I was looking at the whole thing through his eyes. I was Caleb.

  I woke up with a yell. I sat there in the dark, wondering if anybody had heard me. In the city, in the building where we used to live, there would be noises all night. People running water, using the elevator, even yelling at each other from time to time. And outside, sirens, trucks, cars… Here, there wasn’t any sound at all. Nobody was awake. Except me. For some reason, I thought of the people in the cemetery. The dead ones.

  I couldn’t sleep after that. I kept worrying that I’d turn into Caleb again.

  I got up before anybody else and made some breakfast. Dad came down a little later and said, “Feeling better today?”

  I just nodded.

  “What are you planning?” he asked.

  “I’m going hunting with North again,” I told him.“Well, don’t bring home any turkeys,” he said with a laugh. “We don’t have a cook that can clean them.” I had told him about shooting the turkeys with North before.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “The hunter,” he said, pretending to be impressed.

  It crossed my mind that I should tell him not to be surprised if I didn’t come back. I stood at the door and actually thought about it. But that would only lead to a lot more questions that I didn’t want to answer.

  North was on time. He pulled up in front of the house and dialed my cell to let me know he was there. I told my dad I was leaving and put on a heavy jacket. According to my computer screen, the temperature outside was in the low thirties. My breath made mist in the air.

  When I got into North’s truck, he gave me a big smile and said, “All recovered from Friday night?”

  I tried to remember Friday night, and he added, “That little redhead put out for ya?”

  “Somewhat,” I said. North wouldn’t have called Terry’s kiss “putting out,” but I had liked it. I just didn’t have time to think about what it meant, and where we might be going.

  I wasn’t sure I was going anywhere. I had North to get past first.

  On the way, he described in graphic detail how he had spent Friday night, which involved two girls and a lot of acrobatics and fluids. “You could have had some of that,” he told me.

  I had no argument there.

  North parked the truck at the same place we had hunted before. No other vehicles in sight. He took down one of the two shotguns from the rack and loaded it with some shells that were in a box on the front seat. “Come on,” he said, getting out.

  I could either follow or sit in the truck. I took down the other shotgun, the pump-action one I had used before. I had seen how North loaded it the last time, and I managed to slip a shell from the box into it. I didn’t think I’d really need more than one. I pumped it into the chamber.

  We started walking into the woods. The fallen leaves had all dried by now, and they crunched under our feet. It crossed my mind that if we were hunting for deer, the noise we made would scare them away.

  “So you found it,” North said finally.

  “Found what?” I replied.

  “You know,” he said. “Where was it, anyway?’

  I didn’t answer right away, but then I thought, What’s the point of playing games? “It was in the angel’s book in the cemetery.”

  “Never thought of that,” he admitted. “He had that crypt up his butt so much that I figured he must have put it there.”

  “You were the one who broke into the crypt?” I said.

  “I tried to pry it open with a crowbar, and the cement just broke,” he said. “Otherwise nobody would have known.”

  “But if it was in there, why not just leave it alone?” I asked. “Nobody would have found it.”

  “Couldn’t take that chance,” he said. “I didn’t know what was on it. Where is it now?”

  “In a safe place,” I assured him.

  “No place is safe,” he replied. “It’s got to be destroyed. It’s a detail. The Colonel says the devil is in the details. If you overlook a detail, the mission is compromised.”

  I let this sink in for a while. “And what is the mission?” I finally asked.

  He gave me a glance. “To get into the Point.”

  I reminded myself that even though Caleb had been crazy, he’d been pushed in that direction by North. I hadn’t thought North himself was crazy, but I could be wrong.

  “How did getting Caleb to kill people help to get you into the Point?” I asked.

  “The plan didn’t go exactly as intended,” North said. “I knew he was weak, in mind and spirit, and that I could lead him by taking advantage of the fact that he hated that girl.” He looked at me and added, “He wanted to kill her before I started to show him how to do it.”

  North spoke as if it really wasn’t his fault. But then his voice changed, and so did the expression on his face. He looked sat
isfied. “But then,” he told me, “he got into a fight with someone I hated.”

  “Marcus,” I said.

  North nodded. “The coach was grooming him to be quarterback the next year. That would mean I’d be second string QB or have to play a different position.”

  “You did this because you wanted to be the quarterback for a high school football team?” I felt ridiculous even saying it.

  “The Point takes leadership qualities into account,” he replied. “Quarterback is the leadership position, more than in any other sport.”

  Perfectly reasonable. If you want to be quarterback, just blow away your competition.

  “I hadn’t intended for things to go as far as they did,” he admitted.

  “You didn’t? You bought Caleb guns, showed him how to shoot them. What did you think would happen?”

  “I planned to stop him,” North said.

  I shook my head. “That makes no sense,” I said.

  “Yes, it does when you think about it,” he replied. I looked at his face. He wasn’t kidding.

  “You have to understand that I always kept the option of stopping him,” North said.

  “You started him and then planned to stop him?” I asked.

  North nodded approvingly. I was a slow pupil, he seemed to indicate, but I showed promise.

  “If I stopped him, no matter what stage of the plan he was in, I would be a hero.”

  It was difficult to understand the rules in North’s fantasy world. “You would be a hero for stopping him?” I said.

  “I would have saved the school.”

  “But he would have told everybody who bought the guns for him.”

  North shook his head. “Not if I stopped him by killing him.”

  I let that sink in.

  North raised his shotgun and aimed it at something in the woods. Or at nothing. Maybe he was reliving the memory of shooting Caleb. Who was his friend.

  Or not really. North wasn’t the kind of guy who had friends. Just people he used. “The trouble was,” he said, “he had already gone too far. I couldn’t take credit for stopping him. Somebody might have found a connection between us.”

  “So where did it go wrong? What detail did you miss?” I asked, with a touch of sarcasm.

  “It was out of my control,” he said defensively. “The school bus that I was on had a flat tire. His bus arrived on time, and he went to his locker where he’d already stored the guns. We were supposed to meet there, but when I didn’t show, he decided to go ahead on his own.” He shook his head. “I didn’t think he would have the balls, really.”

  “So when you finally got to school….” I began.

  “The whole thing had gone to shit,” he finished. “People were already running out the front door, but I went in a side way. I knew he was in the library. That was the plan. Mr. Barnes sent kids there on a schedule, and I wanted to wait until the day when both Marcus and Donna would be there at the same time. Then go in and nail them.”

  He thought about it, replaying the plan in his head. “I hadn’t counted on the coach being there,” he admitted.

  “He came to the library when he heard the shots,” I said, remembering the story Junior had told me.

  “That was what the newspapers said,” North replied. “They wanted to make him a hero. Actually, he was there to tutor Marcus and Ronnie. Do their social studies project for them, basically. Because he wanted them to be eligible for the team. Caleb told me the coach hid under the table after the first shots. Caleb had to stalk him to get him.”

  “So…you got there and Caleb was alive.”

  “As he would be. He had the rifles, after all. Nobody else had any. If everybody went armed, like they should, they could have fought back.”

  “And what did you do?” I wanted to hear it all.

  “Well, he had used his rifle, the one he had practiced with, and had run out of ammunition. Fortunately, he had brought my rifle along in case I showed up. Which I had, so now he gave it to me because he didn’t know what I was going to do. Then, when he looked away, I shot him. It was a clean kill. He never knew what happened.”

  I stared. I couldn’t quite believe he would admit it, just like that. “You shot him.”

  “Had to,” he said. “As you pointed out, he was my only connection to what had happened. Everybody assumed he shot himself because I got him with a head shot. I wiped my prints off the rifle and put his on.”

  “What if he had shot you first?”

  “I told you. He had run out of ammunition. His weapon wasn’t loaded,” North said. “That was a detail that I had paid attention to. Just the way yours isn’t loaded now.”

  “It is, though, North. I loaded it in the truck.”

  He smiled. “You’re not a good liar.” Liars like North always think everybody else is lying.

  “What are you going to tell people if you shoot me?” I asked.

  He raised his shotgun. “That you weren’t an experienced hunter and stepped in front of me as I was firing at a deer.”

  I nodded. He could get away with that.

  “Are you going to tell me where you hid the drive with Caleb’s book?” he asked. He had his finger on the trigger.

  “If you shoot me, you’ll never find out,” I said.

  “The first place I look will be your house,” he told me. “And your father and sister won’t be able to defend themselves. You already told me they don’t have any weapons there.”

  I raised my shotgun casually, and took a breath. We were so close that there was no need to aim. I looked into his eyes. They were cold, the coldest eyes I’d ever seen. He didn’t hate me. I was just an obstacle in his path, no more significant than the turkeys we’d killed. No more significant than Caleb. To do what I had to do, I had to look at him the same way.

  “If you tell me, I won’t hurt them,” he said. My Dad and Susan.

  I didn’t believe him.

  But I realized he would kill me. Right now.

  I pulled the trigger and watched his eyes disappear, along with the rest of the top of his head.

  When his body fell, I upchucked into the bloody mess until there was nothing coming up from my stomach but yellow spit.

  It didn’t make me feel anything like I had expected when I shot the turkey.

  chapter twenty-one

  I GOT AWAY WITH IT. I already had the alibi that North had invented, only I used it for myself. After sitting there for awhile, trying not to look at him, I took his gun and fired it in the air. I told people that was the gun I’d used when I shot him. I said we had exchanged guns and I hadn’t realized mine was an automatic, that I didn’t have to pump it to get it ready for firing.

  It was an accident, a terrible, terrible accident. I cried a lot. It wasn’t hard to, really. Even when the Colonel showed up. The way he looked at me, I wanted to cry. From fear. Fortunately, I was never alone with him.

  Many people were actually sympathetic to me. I stayed home from school for a week. I missed North’s funeral, but heard that most of the senior class and the teachers were all there. I wonder if the principal told everybody we had to move forward and look to the future.

  The school counselor told my Dad it might be good for me to stay home the rest of the year. I think they would have rather not have me walking the halls. But I didn’t want to have to repeat senior year. Not in that school. Not in that town.

  When I finally went back, I was assigned to go to the counselor’s office every other day. I thought of Caleb every time she made a note, and had to clench my teeth to keep from laughing. That would have been bad, if I had started laughing.

  When my Dad decided I had recovered enough from the shock, he gave me his standard speech against the widespread use of guns. I didn’t tell him North’s viewpoint. Nor did I ask him what he would have done if North had stage
d a home invasion with shotguns. Susan and I heard parts of the speech each night at dinner time for several weeks. She blamed me, for having to listen to the speech, that is. I never told her I had saved her life.

  At school, the other kids kind of avoided me. It was like I reminded everybody of Caleb. Only I was alive. I’d come around a corner, and a group of people would stop whatever they were talking about and stare at me. To my surprise, North’s jock friends didn’t hold a grudge against me. Once in a while one of them would give me a soft punch on the arm and say something like, “Hang in there, man.” Although they didn’t ask me to sit with them at lunch any more.

  Terry was more direct. “You’ve got to throw yourself into your work,” she told me. “It will take your mind off what happened.” She might have regretted giving me that advice, because my work picked up a lot, and in some classes I started getting better grades than she did. She had her heart set on being the valedictorian at graduation.

  But I didn’t forget about what happened. Caleb started to show up, and not just when I was sleeping. I was in the library one day, waiting for Susan to finish up so we could go home. Ms. Clement had given me a book on grieving. It was meant for kids about ten years old who had lost a parent. Of course, I had lost my mother a couple of years before, but that was different.

  Anyway, to be nice I sat down at a table and began to read the book. For some reason I looked up and saw Caleb. He was at the doorway holding a rifle. I let out a yell and he vanished. Ms. Clement hurried over and asked me what was wrong.

  “I’m sorry, I think I dozed off and had a nightmare,” I said. I was always saying dumb things to her, so she nodded like that was perfectly understandable.

  “Would you like me to drive you and Susan home?” she asked. I looked at her and couldn’t help staring at her boobs. Bump. “No, no,” I said. “I’m all right now.” But she went over and said something to Susan, who apparently reassured her that I could keep the car on the road.

  Sometimes Caleb came to my room at night. I had finished Look Homeward, Angel, just to say I had done it. There was some kinky sex after all, between the hero and a black woman. Not normal sex, but enough. And at the end the hero starts to have conversations with his favorite brother, the one who died. I figured Caleb had read that part too.