And then their mother was nice to that fine young undergraduate, and they went off to be nice to other people elsewhere.
“But I can’t stop being nice,” Jude said now. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t. It’s like I think, ‘This time it’ll be different’ because there’s a lot of good in people.”
Jude started walking along the water, close enough for snow to fall into the water. Ben followed, feeling more addled than ever.
They came out of the trees to stand at the edge of the Buchanan River. The thaw had done its work here; Ben saw more of those ominous dark spots of thinning. A thread of river water worked its way down the center, like a black stitch.
Jude sat down along the edge. “I think you should tell Dad about college.” He looked across the river, at all the homes where the mothers didn’t fuck men too young to buy beer, and the fathers didn’t beat their youngest because the youngest reminded them of the mothers, and the eldest didn’t carry it all around like an albatross, unable to stop it all from continuing. “I think you’re wrong, Benny. I think he’d be proud of you. It’d make him happy.”
Ben thought of Marcus, face bloodied, nose broken, one eye punched shut. “Jude—”
Jude looked up at him. The fieriness was gone, replaced by a kind of resignation too old for such a young face. “That’s what kids do—they grow up and go to college. They do something, Benny. They don’t hang around forever. It’s your turn. In a few years, it’ll be mine. And Dad will be happy.”
He turned back to the river. “And you’ll tell me about college, and it’ll be nice, and when I go, it’ll be nice, too. No one will punch me because I asked them if they wanted to play on the jungle-gym. No one will call me a babyfag.”
No one will nearly pull your arm out of the socket because you’re holding their beer, Ben thought, but of course didn’t say.
Jude was looking at him again. “You can’t stay here forever, Benny.”
It felt as if he’d sidestepped into a parallel dimension—You are entering the Twilight Zone—where Ben made adult decisions about his life and Jude was self-aware of the situation he was in.
“I’ll think about it, Jude,” he said finally.
Jude nodded, and turned back to the river.
A breeze came up from the water and Ben shivered. “Hey, let’s head back. I’m still not awake enough for this. Let me get another cup of coffee—or six—and we’ll go do something.”
For a moment, Jude said nothing. Then he said, “Okay,” and turned at the waist to boost himself up.
And his boot slipped against the packed, wet snow, over the edge, followed by his opposite knee.
An almost comical look of surprise swept Jude’s face—not fear, not that quickly—and then he was going, his waist already over the side, his gloved hands scrambling along the wet snow and not catching purchase. He didn’t even have time to scream.
Neither did Ben. His body was a spring uncoiling—leaping across the distance, chest slamming into the cold-cold-cold ground, shoving the air out of his chest, as he snagged one of Jude’s gloves. He immediately felt the yank against his shoulder—fire against the snow—as he took on Jude’s full weight.
And felt the fading solidness within Jude’s glove as Jude’s hand started slipping out.
“BENNY!” Jude screamed, flailing, kicking at the side of the overhang, his other hand whipping around, and Ben wanted to yell at him to hold still, to reach with his other hand, but he couldn’t, his lungs were empty, hollow chambers, convulsing, trying to force air in. He whooped in wet snow and it burned.
His eyes locked on Jude’s. They were empty of anything but terror, deer-in-the-headlights, animal-in-the-trap-hearing-the-hunter- approach fear, but they were also aware; Jude knew exactly what was happening to him. Jude’s eyes saw all, blazing out of a pale face bruised and marked with faded marker, nailing Ben in place. They were the eyes of someone who could count the remainder of his life in minutes and seconds instead of decades and years.
Jude’s hand slipped from the glove. Ben lunged forward, grabbing with his other hand—
—and missed.
Jude didn’t have time to scream before hitting the ice.
Ben yanked himself forward to look over, and already the current, swollen with the previous thaw, had pulled Jude from the edge, dragging him and the broken ice chunks to the center, bobbing up. He watched Jude’s arms fly, hands scrabbling to grab a chunk of ice, any chunk of ice. In a blink, he was in the center of the river. In another, he was fifty yards off.
Ben tried screaming, but there was no air. His brain yammered at the edges of total mental static roar: CALL 911 CALL 911 CALL 911—
Jude was a hundred yards away.
He was no longer flailing.
Ben couldn’t move; his muscles twitched with the residue of adrenaline and nothing more. His brain, addled before, had switched off entirely, overloaded. There was a spark, deep in the back of his mind, slowly growing brighter.
The pressure on Ben’s shoulders pushed him into the ground. The knot in his throat expanded.
Images came to him, riffling snapshots of memory: Jude trying not to cry after some assault—it could’ve been the night of holiday break, the morning after, or any other time.
Another image: Jude’s eyes ringing double-zeroes when Ben shoved him away.
Imagining the bruises still to come, the blood still to flow, whenever he looked at Jude’s punch-me face.
Thinking often, I can’t protect him.
Thinking, He’s not going to make it.
Remembering his father: It only takes an instant to regret a lifetime.
Jude’s body was a speck, bobbing languidly down by the Route 67 bridge. Still Ben’s brain yammered on, CALL 911 CALL 911—even as he knew in his gut it was useless.
Two final images, and the spark in the back of his mind grew, blossomed into horrible burning life:
The Ohio State packet, all filled out, on Ben’s desk, waiting to be mailed.
Jude’s eyes, terrified and aware, looking up at Ben as his hand slipped from the glove.
And the spark spoke: You don’t have to worry about him, now.
The clock in his head stopped ticking.
The knot was gone from Ben’s throat and he sucked in a lungful of freezing air.
The pressure lifted from his shoulders, replaced by the most crushing guilt Ben had ever felt, a guilt like nothing he’d ever experienced, a guilt that couldn’t compare with his feelings of never been able to protect Jude enough, of being there enough.
Because Jude wouldn’t need protecting now.
Jude wasn’t there now.
And Ben Sheever, finally, screamed.
Eventually, one of the residents across the river called the police. Eventually, the police—Marcus, to be specific—found Ben, still screaming, his voice a ragged, ruined croak.
And, eventually, they found Jude.
Reflecting the
Heart’s Desire
On the subconscious level, where the lies we tell ourselves wither and die, an alarm sounded as Janine lifted the lightning-bolt jag of reflective glass.
Staring into its oddly-reflective face, she thought, I’ve never seen something so beautiful. Gone was the exhaustion from the day. Gone was the disillusionment that had begun to creep in as she walked through the destroyed town. Gone even was her awareness that she stood in the annihilated front room of a shop on Main Street.
The jag was maybe eight inches long, five inches at its widest point, and not very thick. Its edges shimmered, reminding her of the greasy rainbows oil puddles got after a rain, the colors bending this way and that with the turn of her hand.
(bends o’the rainbow)
The reflection of her dirty face was ghostly, warped. She could just see the palm of her holding hand behind it.
(an old mirror? a piece of window?)
She turned the jag this way and that, like a buyer checking an antique. The jag brightened and—
/> A bulldozer roared to life outside. She jumped and her hand clenched, the glass edges slicing her palm.
“Dammit!” Two diagonal slashes cut across her love- and life-line. Blood pooled.
She set the jag down on the counter and wiped her hand against her pantleg, wincing at the pain. She felt like she’d been here much longer than she’d intended. She wanted to get back to camp and get out of these clothes.
She stepped outside. A cool early-summer breeze lifted her sweaty hair from her temples. She hadn’t realized it, but the shop had smelled musty, stale, as if it’d been closed up. Hard to do when the show window was busted and the door was MIA.
She looked up Main Street. The road was jagged, pockmarked with holes or piles of rubble. The shops were burnt shells or pancaked rubble.
She glanced behind her, at the glass jag. From here, the edges were a bluish-black and something about that made her shiver.
“Hey, Janine!” Darlene called from up the street. “You get lost?”
Janine turned. “I was trying!” she called and ran to catch up with the others.
Camp was a series of yellow tents and trailers in the former football field of a flattened high school. There, the two hundred or so volunteers, government officials, and humanitarian groups lived for a month before they were switched out for fresher fish.
Janine emerged from the shower trailer, shouldering a canvas book bag, as the sun went down and the Klieg perimeter lights clicked on, creating a night-baseball look. She moved through the idling crowds, nodding occasionally but not inviting conversation.
She went to the rock outcropping just beyond the end zone, the goalpost laying on its side as if it had gone to sleep. From here, she had a vista view of the people. Not many talked loudly or got up a game of anything. Everyone was too damn tired, maybe rethinking joining the reconstruction project in lieu of the Modern Cultures and Urban Renewal courses, maybe wondering why they bothered in the first place. Beyond the Klieg lights, they were surrounded by a ghost town.
Tonight, as the moon touched down on what this small Midwestern town had become, there would be silence, and silence, and silence. Before an F5 tornado touched down six months ago, the town had boasted a viable population of over ten thousand. After the tornado, officials had pulled only five hundred survivors from the wreckage
The other ninety-five hundred? Not a trace. The town was a landlocked Mary Celeste in a sea of cornfields. Whatever mysteries it held continued. There would be no resolutions.
And, yet, here they all were—a hodge-podge mix of volunteers, humanitarian programs, and government agencies—and, suddenly, Janine couldn’t understand why.
She pulled her Sociology text from her backpack, but, in spite of the fact she was carrying eighteen credits come fall, her mind wandered. She thought of the jag of glass. What had it been a part of? What had that shop been—before? The disaster had obliterated all traces of its past.
What about its light? she thought. It twinkled at me.
But that was simple. The sun—
The sun was at my back. Couldn’t’ve. And what about when I turned it, how it’d seemed to brighten—
She shook her head. Soon, she’d believe not only had the shard called to her—from its odd place on the counter, mind—but that it was magical.
Well, friends and neighbors, she thought, repositioning the book on her lap, I hate to disappoint, but Maggie Laughlin’s little girl stopped believing in fantasy about when I lost my first baby tooth. In fact—
Darlene said, “You’re thinking about it, too, aren’t ya?”
Janine jumped and turned. Darlene stood there, her black hair in a perfectly-made French braid, her designer work clothes glowing in the darkness between lights. She could’ve stepped out of a catalogue.
“Thinking about what?” she asked.
Darlene sat down next to her. “The bodies. Or, lack there-of.” She pointed to a knot of older people across the field, conspicuous, even with distance, by how straight their backs were. “That’s why they’re here.”
“FEMA and the CDC,” Janine said. “They think there are still bodies to be found.”
“They’re getting nervous.”
“Why?”
Darlene gestured at the crowd. “Because this thing has been up and running for over three months now, and not a single new body’s been found. Everyone’s been steeling themselves about unearthing one, but nothing’s there and there should be.”
Janine followed Darlene’s gaze and saw Dale, taller than the group of Area Managers, talking, gesturing with his hands in the old familiar ways. He’d been here the longest of the college kids, and the days in the sun had hardened his skin beyond what Janine remembered, lightened his brown hair to a sandy blonde.
“He’s found his niche,” Darlene said, her dark eyes bright, as if with secret amusement.
Janine nodded. “Yeah, probably,” she said, and turned back to her sociology book. The words weren’t even in English.
“You’re holding up, aren’t you?” Darlene asked. “I mean, you told me it was amicable.”
Janine stared at the pages of her text. “It was. You said it—he belongs here. Me, it keeps me out of Dr. Kamen’s courses.”
“He’s good here,” Darlene said, as if Janine had contradicted her.
(why are you so concerned?)
A beat of silence, and then Darlene said, “They’re saying we’ll be done clearing the south side in two weeks,” she said. “We might get the town back on a paying basis, after all.”
For who? Janine thought. The ghosts?
All of a sudden, having her best friend here was the last thing she wanted. “Awesome,” she said.
Darlene shifted off the rock. “I’m headed over to the Canteen. You want anything?”
“No, I’m good—thanks.”
Darlene left. Janine stared at her book.
Canteen was Dale’s word.
This is foolishness, she thought.
She looked up in time to see Darlene pass Dale and the group of Area Directors.
They exchanged friendly waves.
It’s a dream and she knows it’s a dream, but it feels like the dream stands on a foundation of fact, like something half-remembered.
She stands in front of the shop, which has been restored to its former glory. ANTIQUES & ODDITIES is lettered in an arch across the window. Silver dishes, glassware, a steel toy car, and a jar with an embalmed frog rest on the front display.
The soft lighting of the interior makes the glass glow and she’s sure that this is the rest of her glass, her jag.
But the jag reflected, she thinks. It doesn’t matter. The glass is magical.
Footsteps behind her and she turns. Main Street has widened, become an eight-lane freeway. She can see the shops as they’d once been on the other side.
Parading down Main are legions of people, dwindling away to points to her left and right, even though Main is not that long. Their eyes are blank, their faces slack. These are the missing citizens. They emanate a soft pale blue aura, merging together and becoming darker, almost black.
These people slipped through the edge, a woman’s voice says from behind her, the voice of the glass.
In the parade, she sees Darlene and Dale. They’re holding hands. Janine feels a languid sort of anger. Hadn’t she known? Hadn’t she suspected?
They’ll slip through, too, eventually, the woman says. Everyone does.
A hand, long elegant fingers with midnight black nail polish, comes around beside her, holding her jag of glass, offering it.
It’s just a matter of when, the woman says. And when is up to you.
The bulldozers and crews, the picks and shovels, were already hard at work when Janine stepped into the shop, but those sounds were distant, unimportant. What mattered was the crunching sound of her footsteps, the stale scent of old dust.
She looked at the burnt wallpaper, the twisted metal, and sheared wood, seeing it as it once was. On the
left hung the old mirrors and paintings. In the middle was the placard reading CAVEAT EMPTOR.
She couldn’t know that, didn’t know that. The dream, she thought.
“None of it was real.” Her fists clenched and she squeezed her eyes shut. You have too much to do to be acting like some weak-sister in a bad fantasy! What the hell’s the matter with you?
She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. That wasn’t stale, old dust she was breathing—it was waterlogged wood and plaster. She didn’t know what this shop was like before the catastrophe. This had gone goddamn long enough.
She rolled her shoulders, feeling a little better—or at least telling herself she did. “I’m Janine Laughlin and I stopped believing in fantasy when I lost my first baby tooth. I’m a sociology major with a minor in group psychology. What’s really going on here is that I’m tired—more tired than I thought possible—and stressed. That’s it.”
(what about the glass?)
The voice belonged to the woman from the dream, because of course it did.
She crashed her fists against her thighs. “Goddammit!” She spun towards the counter. “This glass is nothing! It’s just glass! That’s—”
Her words clipped off as she picked up the jag and a surge … not power, but something … shot up her arm.
Life! she couldn’t help thinking. It’s alive!
The edges cut into her palm, reopening the old wounds, but the pain was minute, barely there, even as blood began to drip to the dusty floor in fat droplets. She looked into the glass and saw her reflection—the wide eyes, the O of her mouth.
A shimmer cut across the surface, creating that greasy rainbow, and the jag brightened in its core.
“Oh my God,” Janine breathed.
She did not see her hand through the glass. Instead, she saw the shop’s counter as it was before: the painstakingly-polished wood top, the old-fashioned register, the little dish of business cards. The silk wallpaper beyond.
Bones are Made to be Broken Page 20
