Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls

by Mary Downing Hahn

  She told me she talked to a priest and he said a true Catholic never doubts his faith and she seems to think that means she can give it up. Just like that. Everything she's believed since she was little. Communion and confirmation and confession, the Mass, the Virgin Mary, novenas and retreats, the rosary, holy water. When I come home, I'll talk to her about it, even if it makes her mad.

  I'll tell her no one understands why God allows bad things to happen. But you can't let it weaken your faith because that opens the door for Satan to enter your heart. And I'll keep praying for her—and Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, because if there's no God there's no heaven which means when you die, there's nothing, and I will not believe that.

  I guess I just don't understand Nora. I never in a million years dreamed she would turn against God. I remember the retreat we went to and we cried while we sang Mother dear, oh pray for me, whilst far from heaven and thee. The church was filled with incense and we lit candles and prayed for the souls of all the faithful departed and said the Stations of the Cross and went to confession and took holy communion and then we got scared we might get a calling to be nuns and as much as we loved being Catholics we didn't want to spend our lives in convents. So far I don't think that's what God wants for me, but at least you're safe in a convent. You spend your days in peace, praying and worshiping God, you're married to Jesus, you even get a sort of wedding ring. Nothing bad happens in convents. If I get the call, maybe it won't be as bad as Nora and I thought last fall.

  Okay, though, there's this. I'll be safe from Buddy in a convent, but what about boys in general? I really like making out with Paul. I went to confession and the priest told me to avoid the occasion of sin (which means being alone with a boy in a car or someplace) and not to have impure thoughts and to remember if I dressed in a way that gave a boy impure thoughts I was responsible for his sin. Which seems a little unfair, but I think I see the logic of it. Nora and I talked about that once and we decided Marilyn Monroe was responsible for lots of guys' impure thoughts. Ha ha.

  Maybe Nora thinks it's too hard to be a Catholic. Sometimes I think that too, but like I said, I can't imagine giving it up. It's like physics or calculus—you keep struggling till you get it. When Nora finished plane geometry, she was done with math. And now she's done with religion.

  At confession, I told the priest what Nora said and he said I shouldn't be friends with her anymore. He said she'd be a bad influence, I should make new friends at St. Joseph's. He also said not to worry about Bobbi Jo and Cheryl, they're safe in heaven with Jesus and I'll see them again someday. Someday—after I die, that's what he meant.

  Well, I'm starting to get sad again, so it's good I have a date tonight with Andy, this cute guy I met at the swimming pool. We're going to see Invasion of the Body Snatchers—it's supposed to be really scary! I remember Cheryl talking about it—she and Buddy saw it last winter and she told me she almost sat in Buddy's lap, she was so scared. Darn. Why did I have to think of that?

  Aunt Marie is calling me for dinner, so that's it for now, dear old diary.

  Ready to Leave Town Except for One Thing

  Sunday, July 22

  Buddy

  I'LL be shipping out for basic training tomorrow, so I went to the barber this morning and got my head just about shaved. Since my hair's getting cut off anyway, I figured I'd rather take care of it myself.

  I never realized how big my ears are and how skinny my neck is. I look like Dopey, the bald dwarf who wears the brown nightgown in Snow White. The one who can't talk. It figures. My teachers always thought I was dumb. Or lazy. Or had a bad attitude. Shit, who cares what they thought? I'm done with all that.

  I can't wait to get away from this place. Every time I go anywhere, people look at me. I know what they're thinking: There he goes, Buddy Novak, the boy who killed those poor girls and got away with it, I hope he burns in hell. What's wrong with the police—why isn't he in jail where he belongs? Just look at him. I don't feel safe with him on the loose, no telling who he might shoot next.

  I light a cigarette and give them an evil look and they turn and scurry away like cockroaches.

  The thing is, I want to talk to Nora before I leave. I keep thinking about her. Not in a let's- go- park-and- make- out way. She's not my type. Too skinny, too tall, too flat. It's just that she's the only person I know who doesn't think I killed them, the only person I can talk to. Not one of my old friends will come near me. If they see me, they look the other way. They cross the street, they turn their backs, they get in their cars and burn rubber getting away from me. I'm a disease no one wants to catch.

  Even my parents are nervous around me—they hope I didn't do it but they're not absolutely sure. Mainly I guess because nobody's been arrested and charged. The cops have run out of leads, they've never even found the gun. The newspaper prints a paragraph now and then, but it's not a big story anymore. The Suez Canal business is on the front page now, not Cheryl and Bobbi Jo.

  So the night before I leave, I call Nora from a phone booth in front of the Little Tavern. Traffic whizzes back and forth. I can hardly hear when someone answers.

  "Can I speak to Nora?"

  This kid yells, "Hey, Nora, phone—it's a boy!"

  I hear her rush downstairs from the sound of it and I wonder who she's hoping it is. Charlie, probably. She was with him that night in the park, the night I messed things up with Cheryl forever, the night before she...

  Nora says hello like it's a question, and I say, "It's me. Are you doing anything tonight?"

  Dead silence on the other end. "Who?" she finally asks.

  "Buddy Novak," I say. "I was just wondering if maybe you, I mean, yeah, you and me could get together and talk. You know, just talk." Damn it, I sound like a thirteen-year-old kid who's never talked to a girl on the phone.

  "What about?" she asks. Worry comes hissing down the phone line from her to me. I can just see her, standing in some room I've never seen, clutching the phone, scared pissless.

  I say, "Just stuff," but what I want to say is, You know what stuff, goddamn it, there's only one kind of stuff for me and you to talk about.

  "I don't know," she says slowly. "I don't think ... I mean, well—"

  "I'm leaving for Norfolk tomorrow," I cut in, "and, well, hell, I don't have anybody to say goodbye to, this whole town hates me, they can't wait to see my ass go down the road and out of sight. So I thought maybe me and you ... Oh, hell, never mind."

  I'm about to hang up but I hear her say, "No, wait a minute. Maybe for a little while, not long. I mean..." She's stumbling over her words. She doesn't really want to see me, I can tell, but she doesn't want to hurt my feelings either.

  "I'm at the Little Tavern," I tell her. "I'll wait for you inside. If you don't show up in half an hour, I'll find something else to do." Like go down to the reservoir and drown myself or something.

  "Okay," she says, still not sure she really wants to see me. What a bad idea this was. I feel like telling her to forget the whole thing, but she's already hung up.

  I go inside and take a seat at the counter. The grumpy old man who's worked there as long as I can remember is frying up some death balls for a couple of guys. College kids from the look of them. One of them's wearing those ugly plaid shorts, Bermudas or something. They probably go to Towson State.

  While they wait, they talk about some girls they know. The girls are lucky they can't hear this conversation, which is about how all you have to do is buy them a couple of beers and they'll put out. They remind me of that son of a bitch Ralph.

  After they leave, the cook turns to me. Well, I guess he does. He has this eye that doesn't work with the other one, like he's looking in two directions at once. You can never be sure if he's looking at you or somebody else. Wall-eyed, my father calls him. I order a cup of coffee and a cheeseburger.

  "Coming up." He turns to the grill, black with grease, and drops a burger on it. "You're the kid the cops took in for questioning," he says.

  "Yeah." I light a
cigarette.

  "You think they'll ever solve it?"

  "I hope so."

  He sets my coffee down in front of me. "Almost everybody I talk to thinks you done it."

  "Yeah." I look at him, suddenly curious. "How about you?"

  He shakes his head. "If I killed somebody, I sure as hell wouldn't stick around at the scene of the crime. Might as well hang a sign around your neck saying you done it."

  "Yeah, that would be a really stupid thing to do." I swallow a mouthful of coffee and nearly scorch my throat. Tastes like it's been sitting in the urn since morning, strong enough to walk out the door and black as tar. "And I'm not stupid."

  He flips my hamburger and slaps a slice of Kraft cheese on top. It bubbles over and burns on the grill. "Onions?"

  I nod and he scrapes a mess of brown slices off the grill, dumps them on top of the cheese and levers everything into a grilled roll, brown on the edges and yellow in the middle with melted butter. Or maybe grease. Tops it off with a pickle and hands it to me. "Fifteen cents," he says. I drop a nickel and a dime in his hand.

  "So what are you doing now?" he asks.

  "I leave for naval training tomorrow."

  "I'd have left this dump long ago," he says.

  A couple comes in and the girl puts a nickel in the jukebox. Cheryl's all-time favorite song comes on, Elvis singing "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You." For a second, I feel her in my arms, dancing slow and close, I smell the perfume she wore, I hear her voice singing the words in my ear, her breath warm and tickly.

  I get up, leaving half my hamburger and most of my coffee.

  When I'm at the door, the guy asks, "Don't you like my cooking no more?"

  I shrug and step outside into the heat and humidity of the August night. I see Nora walking toward me. I really didn't think she'd come, but there she is, long legs and all, no smile, holding herself too straight like she's still wishing I hadn't called her.

  Another Secret Meeting Nora

  Sunday, July 22

  I TAKE the receiver from Billy, hoping to hear Charlie's voice, but it's Buddy. I swallow, too surprised to say anything. What could he want?

  He sounds nervous, not like his usual self. He wants to talk to me. I almost say no but he's leaving tomorrow and he's got nobody to talk to except me, which is so sad. He's lived in Elmgrove as long as I have, which is all his life, and he hasn't got one friend. Not since the murders. So I say okay, I'll meet him at the Little Tavern. I don't want to go but I feel sorry for him, I really do.

  I tell my parents that Susan Allen, a girl in my class, wants me to meet her at the Sugar Bowl for a sundae.

  "Do you want me to drive you there?" Mom asks.

  I say it's a nice night and I feel like walking.

  "It's dangerous after dark. You don't know who's out there," she says. I say there's nothing to be scared of. She says, "That boy is still in town, Myrtle Atwood saw him yesterday."

  I wonder what she'd say if I tell her that's who I'm really meeting.

  "You're always saying I should go out more," I tell her.

  At last she and Dad decide it's okay, I can go, but I have to be home at nine thirty. A baby's curfew, I think, but I don't dare argue. And anyway, I don't want to stay out with Buddy any later than that.

  It's five blocks to the Little Tavern, and even though I told Mom and Dad there's nothing to be scared of, I find myself almost running from one streetlight to the next. The yards are so dark, the trees cast such big shadows. I pass a few houses where people sit on their porches talking softly, but no one is out walking, not even the Clements totter past with their dog. Television sets flicker behind living room windows. The Ed Sullivan Show is on in almost every house I pass. Cars drive by, some with loud radios. A boy yells at me from an old Studebaker, "Hey, Legs, wanna ride?" I walk faster and I hear him laugh as the car speeds away.

  Main Street is a relief. Stores are open, people come and go, and I feel safe.

  I see Buddy coming out of the Little Tavern. I almost don't recognize him. He's gotten a really short crewcut. To be ready for the navy, I guess. He looks like a kid with a skinny neck and big ears, not like himself anymore.

  "Your hair," I say.

  He runs his hand over his stubby scalp. "Yeah," he says. "Saved the navy the trouble."

  I picture him sitting in the barber's chair. Mr. Bellamy stands over him, his scissors snip, snip, snipping while Buddy's hair falls on the floor. I don't know why this makes me so sad. It just does.

  For a while, we drive around the dark streets like we're on a tour of Elmgrove. Buddy stares straight ahead, smoking one cigarette after another. Neither of us says anything. The radio is silent.

  I ask if I can turn it on. Buddy shakes his head. "I hate the music they play."

  I nod. I understand. Here and there, the headlights pick up somebody walking a dog or a bunch of kids on a corner.

  We pass Eastern, a big block of brick in the moonlight, its windows dark, its parking lot empty. "God, I hate that place," Buddy mutters.

  "It was fun sometimes."

  "Maybe for brains like you and Ellie."

  "Ellie's the brain," I say, "not me. I almost flunked geometry and chemistry and I scraped through Latin with straight Cs."

  He looks at me. "Yeah, but you're going to college. Teachers love that. They think kids like me are losers, going nowhere."

  He hits the steering wheel with his fist. "I bet every one of them thinks I killed Cheryl and Bobbi Jo."

  I shake my head. "I'm sure—"

  He cuts in. "Two people in this town think I'm innocent. You and the cook at the Little Tavern. And you know why he thinks I didn't do it? Because I never went in there and laughed at him like Ralph and his friends. They'd make fun of him, cross their eyes and stuff, act like he was a moron. Jesus H. Christ. Those are the kind of guys teachers love."

  What Buddy says about Ralph is true. Once I saw him making fun of Raymond, the janitor at Eastern. He's kind of retarded, I guess, and he has a harelip, which makes him talk funny. Ralph did a perfect imitation of him, and all the other basketball players laughed, even Don, and so did the cheerleaders. Poor Raymond just stood there, holding his broom. He knew they were laughing at him but he wasn't sure why. It made me so mad, but instead of saying something, I just walked away. The gym teachers saw it all. They didn't do a thing about it.

  "You know what I think?" Buddy asks. "That son of a bitch was using her. Sally Smith dumped him and he was looking for somebody to make out with."

  We're in the country now and it's dark. He speeds up, swerves around a curve. A Deer Crossing sign zooms past. What if we hit a deer?

  "You saw her dancing with him," he goes on, "acting so sexy, wearing that low-necked blouse, you could practically see her tits. She looked like some cheap slut. And that's how he saw her—all he wanted was to get in her pants."

  I've never been around a boy who talks about tits and getting into a girl's pants. I'm so embarrassed I can't even look at him.

  Suddenly he swears words much worse than tits and pushes the gas pedal to the floor. The car speeds up, the tires squeal on a curve. Out of the darkness, telephone poles rush t oward us, lit for a second, pale and straight, then gone again. Trees lurch past, here and gone in a sweep of the headlights.

  He's going to crash, he's going to kill us both. I imagine the Sun's headlines—MURDER SUSPECT DIES IN CAR CRASH ALONG WITH FRIEND OF VICTIMS. Everyone will think he was going to kill me, why else would I be in his car?

  Why can't I say "Slow down"? I'm too scared. I've lost my voice. My face is paralyzed, I can't open my mouth.

  The car swerves around a sharp curve, it crosses the center line, it heads straight at a huge tree, a killer tree. There's no escape. I'm going to die. I clench my teeth, shut my eyes, brace myself. Buddy struggles to control the car. We miss the tree, but we go off the road, skid through mud, slide sideways to a stop.

  He turns off the engine. The sudden silence is like an explosion.

/>   I sit beside him shaking, my heart pounding. So close, we were so close to dying.

  Buddy doesn't look at me. In a quiet voice, almost a whisper, he says, "Cheryl was my girl. I loved her, I wanted to marry her after she graduated. She's all I ever wanted."

  He presses his forehead against the steering wheel and grips it with both hands. I can't see his face, but his shoulders shake.

  Very slowly, almost fearfully, I touch his shoulder. "I'm sorry," I whisper.

  Without lifting his head, he nods.

  We sit there silent again. The car windows are down. All around us, cicadas buzz and shriek. Lightning bugs glimmer in the trees. And the air smells sweet like cut grass. The night is cooler, not so humid.

  I prop my feet on the dashboard. My new moccasins almost shine in the moonlight. I lean back in the seat, my head turned toward the window and the dark woods beyond.

  Nora, Nora—What the Hell

  Sunday, July 22

  Buddy

  I GOTTA say one thing about Nora. I almost wreck the goddamn car, I go to pieces on her, and she just sits there, nice and quiet. She even pats my shoulder and says she's sorry.

  It means a lot to me. After I pull myself together, I tell her so. She gets all shy and hugs her knees to her chest like she's locking herself up tight. Against what? Me maybe. Like maybe she's just realized what a great makeout place this is, the side of a country road way out in the middle of God knows where and maybe I'm going to try something.