Calling Home

by Michael Cadnum

He shrugged. “Well—” he began.

  No, don’t say it, I thought. Don’t give up. We have to stay, I shouted in my mind. We have to wait until it comes.

  He cleared his throat. “We ought to head on back,” he said.

  We didn’t move. We stood there, bent into the breeze that blew the fog through our hair, through our jackets, into our bodies. We leaned into the wind.

  And the fog changed. It began to rise, to lift upward into the sky, so that the rails grew longer, and the gravel darkened. The fog lifted and then it began to vibrate. The individual droplets trembled as they suspended before us, and neither of us spoke.

  The ground shook. My insides trembled.

  It was upon us with a blast of heat and hot sparks. It hammered the air ahead of it with heavy, lung-shaking blows. The hugeness of it thundered and twisted the world for a second. I was waving, despite myself, and an arm hailed us, waving from high above.

  And then it was gone. A short train with a fluttering flag. Then, the empty fog. Coal flakes continued to sprinkle us for a few moments, a fine rain of black sand.

  “It came!” I cried. Everything was silent now, except for the rattle of the freeway, a cheap noise that was a kind of silence. Ted climbed the gravel bed slowly, and bent to touch the rail. He laughed.

  The rail was alive as I touched it, vibrant, and I saw how suddenly a train could kill a person.

  “Look,” said Ted. He held open his hand. The penny was there, gold-bright, smeared out of shape like a pat of butter.

  25

  The day was warm, with a yellow sky. It was Saturday, a day I had, at one time, always enjoyed. I didn’t like weekends anymore. At school there were distractions. On weekends, there was nothing but drinking Cream Sherry or Tawny Port in my bedroom, until I could not remember anymore.

  It was morning. My mother must have enjoyed her date the night before. She sprinkled Wheaties all over the counter, and hummed a tune she seemed to be making up as she went along.

  The phone shrilled. It had a high, squeaking cry, not unlike my mother’s voice when she sang. My mother snatched the phone eagerly, but her voice fell. “It’s for you,” she said.

  She had just bought the bone-white telephone, a cordless model that was always lost under newspapers. It was sticky from her grip, a smudge of blackberry jam that I got on my own hand, and licked clean. I think my mother thought that if she got a new telephone, new men would call her.

  It was Lani. “We have to do something to help them.”

  “Who?”

  “Mead’s parents want to talk to you.”

  “Why do they want to talk to me?” I was hung over, and my brain was slow.

  “I don’t know. But you really should go see them. They look so lonely. I went by to see them again, just to cheer them up, and Mr. Litton said he wanted to see you.”

  “I don’t know what I can do.”

  “Maybe you’ll remind them of Mead. Just seeing someone who knows him. I’ll go with you.”

  “It might depress them to see someone who reminds them of Mead. I mean, I have too much regard for their feelings to just barge in.”

  Lani had no tolerance for lies, half-lies, or any sort of dissembling. “Why don’t you want to go? You sound afraid.”

  “I don’t mind going.”

  “You sound pretty reluctant to me.”

  “Sometimes a person can sound one way, and actually feel quite the opposite. There’s no way you can tell what’s going on in a person’s mind.”

  Their house looked smaller, grayer. There was a rolled-up newspaper on the front porch. There were brown leaves in a corner of the porch, and the chair Mead’s dad used to sit in was gone. I turned to see the view, the palm tree which had dropped its fronds like giant feathers, the apartment building across the street. They were getting ready to paint it, and the cracks had been slathered with spackle like lightning turned to plaster.

  The house was dark and warm. Mead’s dad stood carefully. He shook my hand, and made an effort to have a strong handshake. His face was creased, and his hair uncombed. Mead’s mother seemed happier to see Lani, but then Lani and I were left alone with Mr. Litton. He groped for his cane and held it on his lap. Newspapers were scattered everywhere at his feet.

  “It was kind of you to visit,” he said.

  “Peter and I have been talking about Mead,” said Lani.

  “I’m not surprised. I think about Mead with every breath. In fact, there’s a reason why I wanted to see you, Peter. A very special reason.”

  I found it hard to breathe.

  “There’s been something I’ve wanted to do for days now. It’s very simple: I want to ask you a question. Just one question, and I want you to be honest. Can you do that for me?”

  I cleared my throat. “Sure.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  The abruptness of the question, which I had been anticipating in the back of my mind, made me blink. I started to speak, but he held up his hand.

  “I don’t want an automatic ‘No.’ I think—I don’t know for certain—I think that you’ve been in touch with Mead. This is only a guess. But I think you not only know where Mead is, but that you’re covering for him.”

  I shivered, a quick shudder that looked like a denial.

  “Let me finish. Mead has been calling here for the last few weeks. My wife always answers the phone. I’m a little slow on the draw.” Even now he managed a smile. “I won’t be on anyone’s track team. But she’s been talking to Mead on these calls, and we bought an attachment for a tape recorder I have. It’s a gizmo like a suction cap, like the end of a rubber dart. It has a wire on it, and it attaches to the back of the receiver and records the caller. Sort of a telephone tap, except not secret. At least, not to the person who uses it. We got one of the calls—the last one—on tape.”

  He paused, as though for effect, but then ran his fingers through his hair. I realized that talking wearied him. “I’ve been listening to it. I get up in the middle of the night and listen to it. I’ve written down what the tape says, and I’ve come to a conclusion about the phone calls.”

  Mead’s mother had reentered the room, and she sat in a chair across the room, listening, watching.

  “I’ve come to the conclusion, gradually, that the voice on the telephone is not Mead. It sounds a lot like Mead. So very strange—a voice almost exactly Mead. But not Mead. Not quite.”

  He fumbled in his shirt pocket, and took out a cassette tape. I was paralyzed. Of all the things in the world I did not want, I certainly did not want to hear this recording.

  The tape clicked into the player. Mead’s father stabbed a button.

  The voice was tinny, distorted by the cheap equipment. “Mother, I don’t want you to worry.”

  “I am worried, Mead. I can’t help it.” Her voice was too loud, vibrating the speaker of the recorder and the lamp beside it.

  “Stop it. I’m all right.”

  At last, the call ended. There was a click, then several clicks, and a dial tone. Mead’s father switched off the recorder. He studied the recorder for a moment, then turned to ask his wife if she was all right.

  “Yes,” she said, barely audibly.

  Mead’s father studied his cane. He examined the grain of the wood, and then he looked hard at me. “Do you know what I think?”

  “No,” I said, amazed that I could say anything at all.

  “I think that the voice on the tape is you. I think Mead asked you—I don’t know why—to pretend to be him. I think Mead is gone. I think he may be far away, and that he doesn’t want us to worry.”

  He waited, but I said nothing.

  “We haven’t called Inspector Ng. They could do a voice print. I don’t know much about such things. Who wants to know about detectives, and voice prints? I’m happy I’ve never had to deal with them before now. And, frankly, I’m puzzled. I’ve always liked you, Peter. I thought you were a good influence on Mead. Mead is so fast. You’re slow, and careful. Seriou
s. And, I’ve always thought, caring. I was glad to see you and Mead together. So I want you to think. I don’t want you to answer now. Not this morning. Maybe not today. Maybe you promised Mead you’ll keep his location secret. A promise is a promise. I respect that.”

  “Tell us, Peter,” said Mead’s mother. “Tell us where he is, if you know.” She wept, and my insides writhed.

  “Take your time, Peter,” said Mead’s dad. “Think about us, and our feelings. And think about Mead. Is his plan—your plan—so wise?”

  He smiled, looking very weary and weak, and yet tough, too. Able to endure. “Of course, we might be wrong. We may be mistaken, entirely. It might be Mead’s voice. You might know nothing.”

  I shook his hand, and he climbed to his feet. The cane rustled on the newspapers, then tapped the hardwood floor, a dull thump of rubber on wood.

  “Think about it,” he said. He looked withered in the daylight, and I told him that I would think. “But I don’t know anything,” I said.

  He made his tired smile, my lie discarded like a piece of trash.

  Lani and I walked together without speaking. We reached Dimond Park, and the grass hissed under our feet.

  “It sounded like Mead,” said Lani. “Exactly like him. The recording wasn’t very good, though.” She sighed. “I feel so sorry for them. They must feel awful. We should have taken them some flowers or some candy or something.”

  I was trembling, and icy. My arms glistened with sweat. Something terrible was about to happen to me. I could feel it in the tears that streamed down my face.

  “Peter?” she asked softly. She touched my arm. “Are you all right?”

  We reached the dry creek. We walked without speaking up the dry bed where Mead and I had broken bottles with his slingshot. The dust was a tangle of footprints, bicycle tracks, and motorcycle scars.

  “This is where Mead killed the jay,” I said. I knelt in the place where the jay had fallen, and touched the empty dirt.

  “Peter,” Lani said. “What is it?”

  “Lani, it’s so terrible. You’ll never believe how terrible it is.”

  “Nothing can be that bad, Peter. What is it?”

  She touched my arm, and I could feel her strength, and her trust in me, and in life.

  I was worthless.

  And I was sick.

  An empty place opened in my vision. The black spidered outward, like plastic touched with a match. I was hot, and I dragged in breath and pushed it out again.

  “Peter, it’s all right,” said Lani’s voice from far away.

  I was Mead. I looked at my hands and they were Mead’s hands. I spoke, and it was Mead speaking.

  I was glad to be alive. I felt Mead’s smile on my face, and Mead’s quickness in my arms and legs as I crouched, ready to jump into the air. I could do anything, avoid any mugger, play any game, because I was Mead, and Mead could do anything, like a human being made of light.

  “Lani!” I said.

  Just one word, in Mead’s voice. I did not will it, and I could not have stopped it. “Lani!” Happy to be with Lani, because I had not seen Lani for so long.

  I was back from wherever I had gone. I was not lost anymore.

  I panted, and retched.

  Lani was speaking, but I could not hear her.

  “Lani,” I said in my own voice. But it wasn’t my voice at all. It was a rough, animal voice that tore my throat. “Lani, I killed him. I killed Mead with my own hands, and I know where his body is.”

  “What are you saying?” she asked, hushed, and yet knowing exactly what I had said.

  I turned, and looked up at Lani. “I killed him,” I whispered. “He’s been dead all this time.”

  26

  Mr. Mcknight led me into his study. “What happened?”

  I panted, sweating, leaning on a desk.

  He turned to his daughter. “What’s wrong with Peter?”

  Lani herself was tearstained, and could not speak at once. “Something terrible.”

  “Here,” he said, taking me by the arm. “Sit down.”

  I found myself in a leather chair.

  “Tell him,” said Lani. “Tell him everything.”

  I nodded, but I couldn’t talk. Civilization itself, in the person of a tall black man in a sweater, took its seat across from me and leaned forward.

  “It’s probably best,” he suggested gently, “to begin at the beginning.”

  “It’s very difficult for Peter to talk about this,” said Lani. “It’s a very terrible thing.”

  I gripped the arms of the chair. I forced myself to speak. “I killed Mead.”

  “How do you mean—you killed him?”

  “With my fist.”

  “You killed Mead,” he repeated, as though he had to say the words himself to understand them. “With your fist,” he breathed. He stood and walked to a bookshelf and leaned against it for a moment. Then he turned, and I could sense him working to keep his voice steady. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I killed him. I punched him, and he died.”

  “Were you fighting?”

  To put it into words was impossible. “He dropped the cognac. I hit him.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Eight weeks ago.”

  “He’s been dead for eight weeks?”

  “I know where the body is.”

  “Holy Christ,” he said, not like someone swearing at all, but like someone praying, or at least wanting to pray. He paced slowly, shaking his head. “You know where the body is. You’ve been going to school, and coming over here, and all the while you knew where Mead’s body was.”

  I had known how disgusted he would be. And he was right to be disgusted.

  “He called on the telephone, imitating Mead so Mead’s parents wouldn’t worry,” said Lani.

  “So his parents wouldn’t worry,” he said, in disbelief.

  “Mr. Litton is sick from his injury,” said Lani. “And from his heart. Peter was trying to do the right thing.”

  Mr. McKnight fell into his chair. “The right thing,” he said, “would not have been so difficult.”

  I said nothing, but sat like someone listening to a television in the next room.

  “Talk to me, Peter,” he said.

  I said nothing. I did not merely keep silent. Nothingness radiated from me. I did not feel like a human being, but like a mineral, a spill of quartz, a splinter of granite. But not entirely stone. Inside was a flame, and it seared me.

  “You have a lot of talking to do, Peter,” said Mr. McKnight. “A lot of communicating. I know it’ll be hard. I see how knotted up you are. You must think the world is a very strange and terrible place to keep silent all this time. But unless you talk, there is no hope for you.”

  It was absurd to speak of hope.

  And as I sat there, I was Mead again, for a heartbeat. I felt my face take on Mead’s expression. My muscles quickened, and I was back again from the cold cellar.

  I was alive.

  “Please, Mead,” I whispered.

  Mr. McKnight dragged his chair before mine. “Listen to me. I’m your friend, Peter. I want to listen to you, and I want to help you. Tell me what happened.”

  I opened my mouth, but I could make no sound.

  “It’s time,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Tell me.”

  I told him what had happened. I talked about things I had never imagined I could discuss. I described Mead on the last evening, the broken bottle, the candlelight. Somehow the candlelight seemed important, the sight of Mead looking golden when he was last alive. I described the single punch. The sole, perfect, lethal blow that now made me wish I had been born with no arms.

  “I had to keep it secret. I didn’t want Mead’s dad to die,” I said, weeping. “I didn’t want any more people to die. And I was afraid. I was afraid of what would happen to me. I tried to keep Mead alive by pretending to be him. But today I thought I was turning into Mead—like Mead’s spirit was coming back, and
that scared me even more.”

  I turned to Lani. “I’m sorry,” I said, unable to look at her. “I destroyed everybody’s best friend.”

  “It was an accident,” she said. “You’d been drinking,”

  “I meant to hit him.”

  “But you didn’t mean to kill him,” said Lani. “It was an accident.”

  “No, I didn’t mean to kill him. But I did. Now, all I want to do is die. Mead’s parents will both die because of this.”

  “Peter, try to be calm,” said Mr. McKnight. He looked into my eyes as he spoke. “Listen to me—don’t look away. I understand that you would like to punish yourself for what has happened. But that would be a terrible thing to do, and I don’t want you to do that. I care about you, Peter. I’ve always thought you were a serious, intelligent young man. I want to help you.”

  “There’s nothing to do.”

  “There are many things to do. Many things that will not bring Mead back to life, but which will help Mead’s parents realize the truth. Don’t you think it’s wrong to go on lying to them? Lying about something like this is a very bad thing. Let’s not lie to them anymore. And let’s tell the police that they can stop searching for Mead. Let’s tell everybody everything. It’ll take courage, Peter. I believe in you—you can do it.”

  He believed in me. I didn’t know if he was a fool, but I had to trust him. I needed his faith in me, and Lani’s faith in me.

  “You will need an attorney,” he said. “Legal help. Do you want me to represent you?”

  I looked away.

  “You can’t turn away. You can’t not decide. The time for that is over. You have to take a deep breath, and claim your life. Right now, Peter. Decide.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  “I want you to be my lawyer.”

  “I have to tell your mother.”

  I shook my head, shuddering. “It’ll be horrible for her. And for my dad, too. It’ll be horrible for everyone.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder again. His grip was hard, and it hurt. “It will be hard on everyone, including you. Trust them to be able to endure it. And trust Mead’s parents, too. People are sometimes stronger than you think.”

  “I want it all to be over with.”