“I’ll help you.”
I experienced a strange feeling—a feeling of gratitude. It was a strong feeling, a sense of thankfulness that I had fallen into the hands of a wise man.
I also felt that I did not deserve this understanding.
“I’ll call your mother, with your permission, and then, with her permission, I’ll take you down to see one of the district attorneys. And I want you to see a doctor.”
“I’m not sick.”
“I want to be sure of that.”
“I want to do everything I have to. They can put me in jail forever.”
“Forever,” said Mr. McKnight, “is a long time.”
“It’ll be all right, Peter,” said Lani. “Just have a little faith.”
“Right,” said Mr. McKnight. “A little faith. Lani, get Peter a glass of water.”
I drank the water, and I sat there trembling like a very old, or very sick, person while there were phone calls, and while Mr. McKnight’s voice spoke in the next room, the sound of intelligence and kindness I knew I did not deserve.
And then my mother arrived.
27
My mother sat stiffly in Mr. McKnight’s study. She clutched a Kleenex that disintegrated as she spoke. “Your father will have to take charge, Peter. I can’t help you.”
“I understand,” I said.
“I’ve called him at his job. He’s flying up today. He has to be here.”
“All right.”
Her mouth twitched as she looked at me. “I thought I was pretty capable. Working, finishing up the job of raising my teenage son. I felt a little proud.”
Every syllable she uttered stung, but I couldn’t answer. I had nothing to say that would comfort her.
“This is more than I can deal with. I’m not strong enough.”
“I know.”
“It’s worse for you than it is for me. I’ll bet you’re surprised to hear me say this. But I do have compassion for you, Peter. Maybe I’ve been waiting for you to do something awful—get into some sort of problem with the law because I felt that then you could finally get help.”
She had obviously made up her mind to be strong and not cry, and I appreciated that.
She looked up at me from where she sat. “There’s something wrong with you, Peter.”
“I don’t know.”
“I know. I think you must be sick. Mentally sick. But I don’t say this to blame you. You’ll need a lot of help to turn into a person I can recognize as a human being.”
“I’m still human.”
“Of course you are. And I’m still your mother,” she said. “And you’ll always be my son. I’ll stand behind you as well as I can.”
In the car, I felt Mead in me again, opening like a small, white hand, a dancing figure. I forced myself to be who I was—Peter, leaning against the dashboard of a car, the seat belt pulling me back.
Mead, I begged the smiling, prancing figure. Please.
Please leave me alone.
What had begun as a pretense had become something I could not shake off, like a craving for booze. Mead kept flickering off and on in me, like a cigarette lighter. Mr. McKnight drove carefully, as though as long as he did not go over the speed limit, we would all be fine.
“You’re going to have to be very strong for a while,” he said. “This little drive we’re taking together is your last trip as your old, confused self.” He flipped the turn signal to change lanes. A beer truck was double-parked. “From now on, a whole lot is going to be different.”
“I want it to be different.”
“And, I should add, a whole lot is going to be expected of you. We’re going downtown to see my old friend Mr. Green. He’s in the district attorney’s office. I especially want him to meet you.”
“Then we’ll go see Inspector Ng?” I asked.
Mr. McKnight stopped as a light took its time changing from yellow to red. “Your old friend Ng’s not in the picture anymore. You are now under the general category of what are called homicides.” He said this last word as though it didn’t mean quite what it meant, like it was a term you might run across in sports or cooking.
“But don’t worry, Peter,” he added. “The law will see you for what you are, not for what you, in your own mind, believe yourself to be.”
The district attorney was a younger man than I had expected. He seemed glad to see Mr. McKnight, and leaned on his elbows with friendly interest while Mr. McKnight spoke. They might have been planning a canoe trip.
Mr. McKnight did all the talking, and Mr. Green listened. He barely looked at me. I was a legal fact, now, not a person. Now and then Mr. Green would say, “Right,” not in agreement, necessarily, but simply registering that he had heard and recorded mentally what had been said.
I was turning myself in voluntarily, Mr. McKnight pointed out. I was quite possibly disturbed and should be hospitalized. I wanted to object, but Mr. McKnight had told me to sit quietly unless asked a direct question, and so I sat staring at the desktop. What struck me more than anything was how routine this was to these two men. Death. Confession. It was their line of work.
“The mother will agree. We’ll all want that evaluation,” said Mr. McKnight. “And not just psychological. We’ll want a substance abuse work-up. I think we have an alcohol dependency situation here. So no Juvenile Hall for this one, even overnight. Straight to Merritt Hospital.”
“Right.”
I spoke, shocking myself. “They’ll have to go get him.”
Mr. Green looked at me, as though a stapler had spoken. “Him?”
“Mead.”
“They already have,” said Mr. McKnight. “I called them.”
They have taken Mead. The thought broke me, made me crouch in my seat. Now I knew it was real. Now I knew it was all over. They had Mead. Mead is under a sheet somewhere, or in a plastic body bag.
Mead is gone.
28
Sometimes a red-tailed hawk drifted over Camp Modoc. Its feathers played over the layers in the air, as though it stroked something solid but invisible. Sometimes a hawk would cry, its voice twisting and bright.
I worked in the kitchen, and I enjoyed the dumb muscular labor of it, lifting huge pots slathered with dried gravy. I rinsed dishes with a spray so strong each dish was clean in a flash. The garbage disposal was a huge trough, and the hole there growled, eating whatever we gave it.
The hearing, the psychological tests, the interviews with people in suits or uniforms, were all behind me, and my life was simple. The counselors listened to me, and we listened to each other. There were times when I wept so hard I could not speak, and yet I did not feel the world around me judging me, or watching me.
I felt myself growing stronger. The muddy puddles in me were evaporating. Camp Modoc was a place of great mammoth pine trees and, sometimes late at night, the snuffling sound of a bear. The sun was supposed to be both punishment and cure, hard beauty as medicine.
Sometimes my father visited. He wore lumberjack shirts, as though trying to fit into the surroundings, and he wore the new wedding ring.
“You’re looking good,” he would say.
“I feel good,” I would reply, or something ordinary in just about those words. It was true. I felt stronger.
He almost always commented that I was putting on weight—good weight, muscle. And that I was getting a tan, and that I looked like a different person.
I was the same person, and my looks had not changed that much.
There was a lake at Camp Modoc, a reedy, green pond, really, and a turtle lived in it. My father and I would walk around the lake, and when the turtle appeared, just once, I pointed. “The turtle!” I exclaimed, and my father was excited to have seen it, more excited than was really necessary, because he was glad to see me happy.
One day just after my dad left, I realized that I had not tasted alcohol in months.
Sometimes I was very hungry for something sweet, and a counselor told me that my body was used to raw calor
ies. I looked forward to a Snickers bar at night, when the stars were so bright they nearly made a sound.
My mother’s visits were so potentially disastrous that we acted like friendly strangers. “I brought you some more books,” she would say. Our silent agreement seemed to be to pretend that I was in a kind of army, stationed in a scenic, rugged place where I could work hard and read, but also a place I would be glad to leave.
Even on the drive home after months of thin air and circling hawks, I felt sure of myself. My mother drove carefully, changing lanes rarely, all the way past Sacramento and Vacaville, staying under the speed limit as though I had been through surgery and might feel pain at the slightest crack in the road.
I believed that everything would be fine. And it was fine. I believed everything I had been told. Life was really not that complicated. It was simple, really.
I was wrong.
29
Wishing I were invisible, holding my breath, I went by the house where Mead’s parents lived, and there was a CENTURY 21 sign in the front yard. The lawn was greener than usual, and had been mowed. There were still drying blades of grass on the sidewalk.
The thought of Mr. Litton’s eyes burned something deep inside me. I finally made myself ask Lani, and she told me, softly, that Mr. Litton had been in the hospital, but that he was better now.
One evening I sat in the gym of a Unitarian church and watched Lani, a virtual stranger in a black dress, like someone in a PBS special, put her hands on the black and white keys and still every heart in the room.
Angela spoke to me only once after I came back. She called to say that she was moving. She was going to study broadcasting at UCLA. I think her call was a preemptive strike, a way of keeping me from trying to call her. Maybe her brother suggested it. She did not mention what I had done. She didn’t have to.
I still had therapy sessions, and saw a man named Dr. Sperry, a big man with a wrinkled face like a crumpled paper bag. He would lean on his fist so the wrinkles in his face ran at an angle, and when I made a joke, he had a rumbling laugh.
I told him that I thought I was well, now, and he smiled, although he did not suggest that I stop seeing him.
One night I woke after a dreamless sleep. And I spoke.
I sat up in bed and said, “I’m all right. Don’t worry—I’m all right.”
I gripped the sheets in my fists. I was cold, and could not move, staring at the blank dark.
Mead’s voice.
Mead’s voice was back.
30
Impersonating the dead is easy. It comes as naturally as sleep, and is as nourishing.
I feel him in me some nights, a quick, dancing figure, a flame. By day he is always gone.
This is something I cannot master; the living. They are hard to impersonate: their faith, their ability to get up in the morning and go to bed at night and remain always exactly who they are.
I learn slowly. Sometimes at night, I feel myself gliding over the bottom of a pool, my shadow far below me, changing shape with the curve of the pool. And the shape is not mine, it is Mead’s. He is with me, but I cannot beckon to him or turn myself into him at will, because he is separate, with his own life, his own time and place.
In my secret way, I am learning to swim from one day to another. I am not what I pretend to be, with my smile, but I am not Mead. I am something else, someone not here yet.
I am no one, then. Just a living person. I lie still, listening to the city cough awake outside. I am not afraid. Somewhere out there is a future, hanging like an invisible suit of clothes, warm, poised, and waiting to gather me in, naked and shivering from the dawn.
About the Author
Michael Cadnum is the author of 35 books for adults and young adults. His work—which includes thrillers, suspense novels, historical fiction, and books about myths and legends—has been nominated for the National Book Award (The Book of the Lion), the Edgar Award (Calling Home and Breaking the Fall), and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (In a Dark Wood). A former National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, he is also the author of award-winning poetry. Seize the Storm (2012) is his most recent novel.
Michael Cadnum lives in Albany, California, with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1991 by Michael Cadnum
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1974-3
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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