In the Dead of Summer

by Gillian Roberts

  Nobody, seemingly, knew what to make of the attempt on Woody’s life. Not even his best friends, Tony Ford and Guy, who remained tight-lipped and withdrawn and whose letters were stiff and formal. “I’m sorry this had to happen to you.” That sort of awkward guy thing. They’d have been more at ease patting each other on the backside or delivering a mock punch to the biceps than saying how wretched this made them feel.

  While they wrote I watched them as if I could X-ray their minds. I’d even discarded the sunglasses, gone public with my crew-cut lashes, the better to observe with.

  When the packet, of letters was complete, I chose Miles to deliver it to the office. I walked outside the classroom with him. “Hold on, I’d like to ask you something,” I said as he bolted for the stairs. We were nearing the end of the morning. If there were a few unattended minutes inside the room, then so be it. I didn’t think the class was in a mood to riot today, anyway.

  “I’m in a hurry,” Miles said.

  “Too bad. You sent me the nurse’s quote, didn’t you?”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Bad answer, Miles. You didn’t ask what I meant. Besides, you’re the class’s only actor, as far as I know, and the only person who probably memorized great chunks of that play—or at least read them so closely that you’d be able to find something relevant. Except maybe for April, and she isn’t sending me notes lately.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You do, and you have to stop playing games because I don’t know what to do with the messages you’re sending, and I’m afraid somebody is going to die as a result. Last night, Woody was saved by”—once again I blocked the image of Mackenzie and Mrs. Taubman—“dumb luck. Pure chance. A few minutes later, I’m convinced, he would have been dead. As far as I know, April already is.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I need to understand, and you already do. And you owe it to me—or to her—to explain yourself.”

  “I don’t. I thought I did, but I don’t anymore. Besides, they’ll kill me.”

  “Who?”

  “The ones who did that to Woody. The gang. The Vietnamese guys. Had to be them as revenge for Vanny.”

  “Against whom?”

  He lowered his voice. “WAPA. I don’t know their names. I just know they are. All over the city. You don’t mess with them if you’re smart. And it doesn’t do any good to know about them because you can’t stop them.”

  “Did April know about them?” He said nothing. “I’m going crazy with this, Miles, and I think it’s time I brought the police in to talk with you. I know that you know a whole lot. The difference is, the police know how to get it out of you.”

  His eyes, which were an interesting gray-green, grew large. “I thought you’d get it. I thought you’d understand.”

  “I think I do. I think April wasn’t abducted. There’s the quote—and the fact that her backpack didn’t have any of the things she should have been carrying. The things that mattered to her. I think they’re with her.”

  “You did get it. So why all this?”

  “Because why should I believe it? How could you know?”

  All his gangly youth, all his vulnerable, still-growing cells seemed to come forward, along with pure, undistilled fear. I felt sadistic, drilling him, but I didn’t know what else to do.

  He shook his head. “Please. I swear, until that happened to Woody, it seemed something that would all work out. Now…”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that if I think you know things, that they, whoever they are, will, too? You may be in danger now.”

  “I know that,” he whispered. He looked around furtively. Doors would open, students—they?—would see him with me any second now. “She’s with relatives,” Miles said. “Out of state. She didn’t get into that van that night. I took her to the train station three hours before her brother, Thomas, pretended to be her, throwing them off the trail.”

  The lookalike. That was possible. “Who needed to be thrown off?” That was why her brother seemed apathetic about her disappearance, why Miles had seemed so indifferent. They knew she was safe. But why had she run that way?

  “Her brother’s gang. She dumped Vanny for a white, shamed him, and then he was killed. You see?”

  I shook my head. “That was gang-related. A drive-by.”

  “That was because of April. So there has to be retaliation. The gang has to hurt Thomas for letting her do that, and Woody, for…being Woody.”

  “For being her boyfriend. Are you saying Woody killed Vanny? Shot him?”

  He shook his head. “He didn’t even know it was going to happen. But all the same, it was done to protect him from Vanny. April told me that. And she disappeared for the same reason—to protect him. And Thomas needed protection, too, because the other guys in his gang were angry about Vanny, about Thomas letting his sister cause that. So April got an idea from you. From Shakespeare. If people thought she was dead—they’d consider the score settled.”

  “Did Woody know that she wasn’t really kidnapped?”

  Miles shook his head and looked miserable. “It seemed safer this way, but we were wrong. Maybe it made him do something dumb.”

  “Against Vo Van’s gang?”

  He shook his head. “No more,” he said. “I can’t say more.”

  “Then what?” I was lost again.

  But Miles had dissolved from the spot. He was at the top of the stairs when the noon bell rang and the first classroom door opened, and he blended into the crowd descending for lunch seconds later.

  Once my class was gone, I went and sat in the square, needing a dose of nature—particularly the citified, cleaned-up, and domesticated variety. I put my sunglasses back on, and felt close to socially acceptable.

  “Hoped I’d find you here.”

  The voice was honey-dipped, familiar, and welcome, accompanied by the aroma of superbly dangerous food. Plus, the body that accompanied the sound and the scent had been newly renovated. “No cast!” I said.

  “Look! Two whole legs—a pair!” Mackenzie leaned on a cane, but he had two feet, two shoes, long pants on both legs. “It’s sickeningly pale,” he said, “but it’s there, every bit of it, and it works, too. I can wiggle my toes and tap my foot and bend my knee. And, I have a most impressive scar to put fear into people on the beach. What more could a man want?”

  “Congratulations. I’d show my delight more obviously if we were anywhere else.”

  “I know.” He sat down next to me on the bench, but didn’t even take my hand. “The kids behave like bunnies, but we remain pristine, thereby confirmin’ their opinion that grown-ups have absolutely no fun. Anyway, wanted to say hello before I return to the world of the workin’ stiff.”

  Had I managed to shove that bit of information out of my brain? I did dimly recall his telling me, ages ago, that as soon as his cast was off, he’d go on light duty. “I hadn’t realized ‘as soon as’ was to be taken literally.”

  “Well, hey, it wasn’t. I’ve had two workin’ legs for three hours now, and I’m still goofin’ off.” He looked at his watch. “Goin’ soon, though.”

  Despite his no-hurry Southern-boy tempo, I could almost see the waves of excitement he was emitting, hear his soul tap dancing “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go!”

  He winked at me.

  I finally really got it. He loved his work. Was crazy about it. Required it.

  And I had to accept that, cope with it and all the messy unpredictability it brought into my life—or back off and make my exit.

  The sensation was not unlike, I suppose, having the bench suddenly collapse over the Grand Canyon. I tumbled through open space with no prospects ahead except a sad splatter.

  Mackenzie squinted at me. I was afraid he was reading my mind, but it was the cut on my cheek he was examining. “Looks like it’s healin’,” he said.

  “I told my class I cut myself shaving. The worst thing is, they believed me.” And we w
ere past my dreadful moment. But it was something that needed serious thought as soon as I had time.

  We shared about four and a half minutes of chitchat and part of the hoagie Mackenzie produced from the greasy paper sack. I was just up to what Miles had and hadn’t said when I heard the high-pitched, “Mandy Pepper!” I wondered if he could sing falsetto as easily as he spoke it.

  “Mandy Pepper!” he repeated. He always sounded shocked that I existed, that I was to be found.

  “Lowell.” I, in turn, responded as if a low-pitched voice would cure him of his vocal affectations. It never did. “I’d like you to meet Calvin K. Mackenzie.”

  “Not,” C.K. said softly.

  “My bodyguard. He’s with the police. Mackenzie, Lowell Diggs. He’s teaching math at Philly Prep this summer.”

  “Glad to meet you!” Lowell grabbed Mackenzie’s hand and shook it with excessive vigor. “I was relieved to learn that Mandy has a bodyguard. We have to take care of our little girl, don’t we?” He smiled on me benignly. “Although a guard who is, listen, forgive me—but, ah, I can’t help noticing that’s a cane, which I assume is not decorative, and isn’t that a little…”

  Mackenzie stood up and leaned on the cane. “Speakin’ of Miss Peppah heah, mind if I clear somethin’ up? Last night, Miss Peppah and I, we were walkin’ to the school…”

  His accent was a Gone With the Wind high mutation. Surely the sight of Lowell, even the meaningless possessiveness of Lowell, wasn’t stressing Mackenzie out, although tension was the usual accent trigger. I decided he wanted to prey on Yankee delusions. He wanted to sound Southern and, let’s face it, stupid. To us fast-talkers.

  “…an’ I do believe we saw you across the street from us? Comin’ out the front of the school?”

  “Oh, no!” Lowell shook his head so vigorously and overlong I was afraid his sharp nose was going to loosen and fall off. “She said that, too, but you’re both wrong. It was somebody else.”

  “You sure now? It was Miss Peppah heah who recognized you and called out, you know.”

  Lowell’s eyes flitted down to mine. “Mandy,” he said in a softly accusatory tone. “I told you I wasn’t there. Why would you?” Then he looked back at Mackenzie. “Is this official?” he asked. “What part of the police are you with? I mean when you’re not off duty?”

  “Homicide,” Mackenzie said gravely. “Need Ah remin’ you that there was an attempted murder in this school at about the time you were seen?”

  “Why are you her bodyguard?” Lowell demanded. “Why do you need a homicide cop bodyguard, Mandy? What’s going on?”

  “I do believe our subject was not Miss Peppah, but you, Mr. Diggs.”

  From my vantage point on the bench, I could see color rise up Lowell’s neck and onto what there was of an underjaw, as if some force were pumping red dye up through his gullet.

  “Could we talk privately?” he asked Mackenzie. His voice squeaked on the last word. “Nothing personal, Mandy. Just…man-to-man things.”

  I nodded, unable to imagine what men-only act could have brought Lowell to the school last night. Or did he think teaching Woody a lesson was manly? I watched them shamble off, Mackenzie limping, leaning on his cane, Lowell more hunched and pitiable than ever, a condemned man off to the death chamber.

  “Would it be demeaning to offer you a penny for your thoughts?”

  I looked up at Five’s craggy face. “No problem. I’m used to that kind of pay scale.” I smiled back.

  “May I join you?” He gestured at the bench.

  I don’t know what the absolutely correct etiquette would be. Saying that I was already semijoined and I was saving this seat for my semijoinee? That didn’t sound sane or right, although I was sure Mackenzie would think it was. But Mackenzie was toodling around with Lowell, and I had no idea to what purpose or for how long, plus this whole issue was nonsense. What was it about Five that produced such exaggerated and ridiculous dilemmas in me? I gestured back and he sat down.

  “You all right?” he asked. “I mean, of course, none of us are all right after…but are you going to be all right?”

  “Good to be outside. Just being in that building where it… It gave me…”

  “I agree. I’m not even keeping my room open today. Nobody had much to say, and all of us had the same impulse to get out. However, I note that you didn’t say out in the fresh air.”

  “Well, it’s fresh exhaust fumes. You must miss those wide-open spaces.”

  “Where I lived, Idaho wasn’t that wide—lots of mountains. Spectacular, but not big flat spaces.”

  We both regarded the landscape in front of us. The only wildlife consisted of a few plants, some packed dirt, students, an enormous squirrel stalked by a cat wearing a warning bell, and an obviously amateur juggler who kept dropping the third orange.

  “I called the hospital,” Five said. “He’s stable, whatever that means. Wish I could see him, but it’s still only immediate family.”

  I nodded agreement. I eyed the remaining hoagie wistfully, but I wasn’t going to be caught with cheese strings or shredded lettuce hanging out of my teeth.

  “Too many of these kids are starved for family. We get so close that I start believing I am their blood relative, and it’s a shock being reminded I’m not. Now Woody…” He shook his head and sighed. “That father of his…immediate family, sure, but not much of a parent. Drinks, ignores his son. The mother’s dead. O.D.’d six years back. There are so many like him, needy, lonely children,”

  “Maybe by tonight he’ll be able to have visitors. I’ll call after school.”

  “If so, want to go together?”

  “A deal,” I said. We even shook. And as we did, I looked up to see my semijoined man and his prisoner returning.

  Mackenzie looked peeved.

  Tough.

  “Well,” Five said, with a glance at his watch. “I have to get going. Mandy, you’ll let me know?”

  I nodded.

  “Good seeing you again, Crispin,” he said to Mackenzie before he left.

  “Crispin?” Lowell squeaked. “The guy doesn’t even know your…” He stood awkwardly, eyes flicking over the two of us, then across the square, face oozing perspiration. “Well,” he said in an overly enthusiastic voice, “if we’ve taken care of our business, Calvin, officer—Mister—if you don’t need me, I have work to do before the afternoon session.”

  Apparently, Mackenzie was not going to slap him into leg irons, so Lowell, with one last frantic glance, waved goodbye.

  “What did Mr. Slick want?” my semi-significant one asked.

  “Funny, I never thought of Lowell as particularly—”

  “Oh, Mandy.” He sounded tired.

  “Not a damned thing. He’d spoken to the hospital and he gave me an update. I’m sorry I let him borrow your piece of the bench. I’m sorry he makes you insecure. Bet you can’t stand it that he can’t be a suspect for last night’s events because you and I are his alibi.”

  Mackenzie emitted a Southernized version of hmmmph!

  “Hey, there,” I said. “How about forgiving me for not treating your bench with proper reverence and tell me what’s up with Lowell? Did he admit being here?”

  Mackenzie nodded.

  “Well? Why?”

  “He forgot his Walkman.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “He came to retrieve his Walkman, then couldn’t hear you call him because he was wearing it. Kind of dancing to it, too, as I recall.”

  “He came here at night for it? Why? He doesn’t look like a jogger, and why would he deny he was here if that was it?”

  Mackenzie sighed. “I can’t tell you. He desperately doesn’t want you to know this, prob’ly because you might call off the engagement—he practically told me you two are betrothed.”

  “Then surely I deserve to know.”

  “Surely, you do. To set your mind at ease, understand, I will divulge his dark secret for your ears only.”

  “I promise
.”

  “Lowell’s afraid of the dark, and night noises. Can’t sleep. Truth is, the man is afraid of ever’thin’ ’cept you, so he puts on the security system, slips a sleep mask over his eyes, then plugs himself in with his special music, and only then can he doze off.”

  “For real?”

  “TV doesn’t do it for him, nor do tapes of white noise, nor does a radio. Needs those earplugs to be safe. Connected is his word. And as of this summer, the tape has to be Barry Manilow.”

  “Not singing…”

  He nodded. “Right. ‘Mandy.’”

  I felt personally ashamed to be, even if in name only, part of the ritual.

  “Truly. An’ even though he has a spare Walkman and an old pair of headphones, the Barry Manilow tape was erroneously taken to school yesterday along with papers he’d marked, an’ in the confusion of the fire drill, he forgot to check for it before he went home. He was so agitated that he put on the headphones as soon as he retrieved the tape and therefore heard absolutely nothing—’cept Barry, of course—after that point.

  “So now you know,” Mackenzie said. “Jus’ promise that if and when you break your engagement to the man, you make sure he doesn’t think it’s ’cause of anythin’ I said. Be kind, you hear?”

  Twenty-One

  IT’S EITHER MIRACULOUS OR HORRIFYING TO REALIZE how quickly human beings regain their equilibrium. The worst happens, and if people don’t throw in the towel and become catatonic, they carry on. Reorganize, regroup, and start again.

  Which is why, I have to assume, my afternoon session was so much calmer and more normal than the morning had been. Of course, they were less directly affected, which always makes coping easier. Woody had been in the morning class, and most of these students probably didn’t know him. Still, a major disaster had occurred in their school, to one of their own. But by afternoon the catastrophe in the gym was old news, a part of local history. There were no dramatic late-breaking developments. Woody was going to live. No further complications or horrors. Life and time and clichés march on. Even English class marches on.

  We got through our four hours with as little awkwardness as possible, even during the necessary, but never-popular punctuation segment. I wrote the advice the oracle at Delphi had given an ancient Greek who was wondering whether he should fight in a battle: