Codfish, the adults called him for his prowess at sea; and at school, their son was proud to answer to Little Cod. Young Gus was easily the most popular and athletic boy at Veterans Memorial Elementary, which didn’t much impress Hallie. But when the boys chose teams for a game in the playground, he often picked the weakest players first. The kindness that radiated from his eyes when he called their names had won her over.
“Whatever it is, you might as well tell me,” she said to Aunt Del. “I’m going to find out when I go to school anyway. Nick says it’s always better to hear bad things from an adult.”
Del fidgeted in her chair. “Yes, and he should be the one—”
“Never mind. I’ll just ask Felicia. Her mom listens to the police radio half the night. Luanne knows who’s going to jail before the cops even leave the station.”
“You know, Nick insists you’re going to be a doctor,” Aunt Del said when Hallie started for the door. “But I see you as a lawyer, or maybe a detective who specializes in getting people to talk.”
Hallie returned to her spot on the bed. Miguel, the white kitten Nick had recently accepted from a patient in lieu of payment, leaped onto her lap. They both regarded Aunt Del expectantly.
“Your father got the call around three-thirty or four. Apparently, their neighbor, Deb Perry, had heard some screaming. When she got up, she noticed the door was wide open and the Captain’s truck was gone.”
Hallie remembered the face of the clock when she’d awakened, and the hour it had displayed. “Three oh-seven a.m.,” she said out loud.
Fortunately, Aunt Del didn’t seem to hear her. “Codfish would have gone ballistic if she’d called the cops, so Deb put on her housecoat and went over to check on Maria herself.”
Hallie gazed out the window at the calm bay as she struggled to keep her expression neutral, but inside she again felt the rising pressure she’d experienced in her chest the night before.
“Deb stood on the stoop and called Maria’s name, but there was no answer. Finally, she took a couple of steps into the kitchen and yelled louder. That’s when she got spooked.” Aunt Del paused and picked invisible lint from her dress.
“You can’t stop now. What did she see?” Hallie spoke so vehemently that Miguel startled and leaped from her lap.
“Nothing. She ran back home, locked her door, and called nine-one-one. It was Officer Perreira who found the body.”
“The body?”
“Oh, Hallie, I knew we should have waited for your father.”
“But where was Gus?” Hallie persisted. “Was he sleeping?”
“Nick will—”
“Please, Aunt Del. He’s in my class. I need to know.”
“Gus’s room was empty. At first, they thought his father had taken him or he’d run off. But a couple of hours ago, Nick went back to the house, and found him. The poor kid was folded up like a beach chair in the back of his mother’s closet.”
“You mean—” Hallie whispered.
“Oh, no, he’s alive, thank God—but he was in such a state of shock that he was rigid. Catatonic.”
Though Hallie didn’t know what the word catatonic meant, silent tears, like the ones that had ambushed her on the roof the night before, streaked down her cheeks as she thought of Gus alone in the closet.
“Is there school?” she finally asked, unsure what the protocol was for an event like this. Someone’s mom, who had stood at the bus stop just the day before, her black hair pulled up in a scrunchie, had become a body. Would the town shut down?
“There is, but your father wants you to stay home. The streets are already buzzing with rumors.”
Hallie spent most of the day watching Wolf paint, stealing sips from his cold coffee, and sucking on the toffees he kept on his worktable. The attic was probably one of the last places in town news of the murder hadn’t penetrated. Focusing on the vibrant canvas, Hallie could almost pretend it had never happened.
However when Nick finally came home in the late afternoon, there was no avoiding it. The darkness he’d tried to shield her from was there on his face. Nestled in his lap, Hallie had many questions, but it was clear her father was in no mood to talk.
She settled for one: What had he said to Gus when he pulled him from the closet?
It took a minute for Nick to recall his instinctive response. “ ‘Oh, sweetheart’—that’s what I said. Then he removed his glasses and wiped tears from his eyes. “Oh, my poor sweetheart.”
Chapter 3
Do you think he means it?” Hallie asked one night over a mix of boxed macaroni and cheese, chopped tomatoes, and chorizo that Nick called “the Costa special.”
Nick glanced up at his daughter. “What exactly are we talking about here?”
“The Captain,” she said impatiently. Two months had passed since the murder, but it remained the dominant topic of conversation in town. “He said he never wants to see Gus again.”
Wolf looked in the doctor’s direction, as if he needed to hear the answer, too.
Nick continued to focus on his pasta.
“Where did you hear that?” he finally said.
“Neil Gallagher told me. When the Captain spoke in court, that’s what he said. He didn’t want his son coming to that prison. Not ever.”
Even Wolf had heard the story when he stopped into Birdy’s for some art supplies. “Then he told the judge that he’d already given himself the stiffest penalty possible; he expected no mercy from the court,” he added.
“But he can’t just quit being Gus’s dad!” Hallie blurted out, banging the heel of her fork on the table. “Even if he killed Maria. Even if he’s in jail forever. He’s still Gus’s dad. Well, isn’t he?”
Wolf laughed bitterly, shattering the silence that followed. “Maybe some men aren’t meant for fatherhood. Did you ever think of that? The way I see it, he did the kid a favor.”
When Nick glowered at him, the painter rose from the table and scraped the remains of his dinner into the sink. The aging garbage disposal grumbled into action. “That meal was an abomination. Why do you people feel the need to add your greasy sausage to everything?” Wolf said. He didn’t so much walk toward the stairs as lunge at them.
“You’re welcome, Wolf. Please—feel free to join us people again,” Nick yelled after him. Then he pushed back his chair. “Come here, Pie.”
“Wolf’s right about fathers, isn’t he? Some of them just quit,” Hallie said, frowning as she remembered how Felicia and her brother Hugo had wept when their dad loaded up his truck and moved out.
“You didn’t need Wolf to tell you that,” Nick answered quietly.
“But this was different. Gus was always with his father on the wharf, almost like you and me.”
Nick nodded. “Little Cod. Far back as I can remember.”
Hallie slid onto his lap and leaned against his chest. “Do you think he’ll change his mind?”
“Codfish has always been pretty stubborn.”
“It’s because Gus has gone crazy, isn’t it?” Hallie said, thinking of the rumors she’d heard on the bus. “Even his own dad doesn’t want to see him anymore.”
“Crazy? Is that what the kids are saying?” Nick sat up straight, his eyes flashing.
Like everyone else in town, Hallie knew better than to repeat the stories she’d heard to Nick. But almost no one had seen Gus since his mother died, and the longer he stayed away from school, the more outlandish the tales became. Recently, people had begun whispering about a new hypnotic power in his eyes. They’d given him a new nickname, too: Voodoo. Hallie first heard it from Felicia.
“My mom’s friend, Cilla, says that if you look him in the eyes he’ll put a feitiço on you,” Felicia had warned. “You’ll go to bed fine as ever, but when you wake up the next morning, you’ll be as crazy as he is.”
“I don’t believe in feitiço,” Hallie said. “Besides, what would you know about it? Your family came over on the Mayflower. And so did Cilla Jackson’s.”
�
�So what? I’m still part Portuguese,” Felicia answered.
“What part is that?” Hallie challenged.
“The part that lives in Provincetown.”
Hallie might have laughed if she weren’t so disturbed by the subject of Gus’s voodoo. Since the murder, Gus had been staying on the edge of town with his aunt and uncle, Fatima and Manny Barretto. She wondered what would happen if she ran into him in the A&P with one of them. Would she dare to stare directly at him? She decided she would—just to prove Felicia and the others wrong.
But now, ashamed that she’d disappointed her father by listening to superstitious talk, Hallie felt her skin grow hot. “But he doesn’t talk or go to school and he won’t come out to play—even though Neil goes to his house every single day.”
“Give the boy time, Pie. He’ll do all those things again—when he’s ready,” he said. “Now let’s clean up our abominable supper and check on your homework.”
By spring, when the boy still hadn’t spoken a single word, Nick and Gus’s stalwart friend, Neil Gallagher, were the only ones who believed he ever would. Hallie thought so, too, but her faith was based on the conviction that her father was never wrong.
At least once a week, she overheard someone ask Nick why he didn’t do something.
“What do you think I am—a shaman?” he’d say when Deb Perry confronted him near the cash register at Lucy’s Market.
“You mean you’re not?” Steamer Cabral asked from behind the counter. “Hell, I wouldn’t have waited three weeks for an appointment if I knew you were just a regular doctor.”
Everyone laughed but Deb. “Little Cod and Maria were so close, Doc. I’m afraid he might never come back from this.”
Nick sighed as he pulled a few crumpled bills out of his wallet to pay for his purchases. “Fatima’s taking him to Children’s, Deb. To one of the best child psychiatrists in the country. Sure, I’d like to stick my head in and check on him, but the family wants to be left alone right now. I’ve gotta respect that—and so do you.”
But several weeks later, when he heard the Barrettos were considering a “placement” for Gus, Nick changed his mind.
Hallie was rereading a biography of Amelia Earhart in the study when she heard her father on the phone. She put down her book and crept to the kitchen door.
“You’ve gone with the fancy experts in Boston, Fatima,” Nick said. “Might as well give the local doctor a shot. I’ll be there Saturday around one.”
He hung up before she had time to object.
A small crowd had gathered outside the Barrettos’ cottage even before Hallie rode her bike to Loop Street. It was located out past the two main streets, not far from Felicia’s house. She immediately spotted Neil, hiding behind the leggy rhododendrons and neglected forsythia bushes in front of the house. Hallie tossed her bike at the edge of the lawn and hunkered down beside him, urging him to move further back. “And put your hat on,” she added, handing him the baseball cap that was sitting in the dirt. “You can see that hair from Route 6.”
“Who are you to come in my friend’s yard and tell me what to do?” Neil said. Then, obviously used to playing the role of sidekick, he reached for his cap and scrunched it on his head. “Satisfied?”
Hallie tucked a recalcitrant red curl under Neil’s cap and nodded. “Much better.”
She turned her attention to the crowd. From her vantage point, she could see Gus’s uncle, Alvaro, and his muscled sixteen-year-old son, Varo, Jr., who lived across the highway, leaning against their truck, sipping beer, and feigning boredom. The dark half-moons beneath young Alvaro’s eyes told a different story. Since the murder, people had been saying that a curse hung over the family. Three years earlier, the Barrettos’ only son, Junior, a high school football star, had drowned after a night of drinking. And now this.
The rest of the crowd was composed mostly of elderly relatives, who were already clacking their rosary beads, and a few of Fatima’s friends. It was exactly the atmosphere Nick had hoped to avoid.
“Jesus Christ,” he bellowed, hopping out of his truck. “What the hell is this? And you can put those damn beads away. The sea isn’t going to part no matter how many Hail Marys you say—not in Provincetown, and not this afternoon.” When he got no response, he shook his head and released a string of Portuguese curses as he made his way through the silenced group.
He turned around and faced them at the door. “Listen, if you want to waste a perfectly good Saturday afternoon standing out here like a pack of fools, I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do to stop you.”
The onlookers, momentarily cowed by Nick’s anger, lowered their heads, discreetly tucking prayer beads into pockets, and beers out of sight, but didn’t budge.
“Okay, then,” Nick said. “If you’re going to stay, at least have the decency to keep quiet.”
A hush fell over the group. Almost unconsciously, Neil Gallagher squeezed Hallie’s hand between his. She’d never held hands with a boy before. Neil’s grip was so ferocious that she felt as if her bones might break, but she didn’t let go. “Do you think we should pray?” he asked.
“Me and Nick are atheists. We don’t pray,” Hallie said, repeating the word her father often used. Then, in spite of her disavowal, she closed her eyes and imagined being on the roof with the darkness all around her, recalling the rush of emotion that had invaded her on the night Gus Silva lost his mother. Silently, she whispered to the invisible stars: Pleeease!
Nick was known for taking his time with his patients, so no one was surprised when an hour passed and he still hadn’t emerged. However, when Manny pressed an ear against the door and pronounced the parlor mysteriously quiet, the determined gathering was baffled. What was he doing in there? One of Alvaro’s friends speculated that he was ashamed to admit he’d been stumped by a silent nine-year-old and had escaped out the back door.
“Keep your opinions to yourself,” Manny told him sharply.
The first long hour passed into two and then three. Fatima’s Aunt Elesandra announced she was going home for a nap, while the other women, who’d completed the fifteen mysteries of the rosary twice, complained about their arthritic fingers. At the edge of the property, Alvaro asked if the good doctor was giving Gus a brain transplant in there. Hallie and Neil played a tense game of marbles in the bushes. “You’re good,” Neil complained when Hallie swiped his last one. “Uncle Buddy taught me,” she said, enjoying the feel of the marbles rattling in her pocket. Then she returned them. “I’ve got a whole jar at home.”
By the time they reached the four-hour mark, Alvaro’s six-pack was empty. He looked stripped and forlorn on the hood of his car. Fatima’s friends had left, claiming they needed to get supper ready for their families, but they were soon replaced by Aunt Elesandra, who returned with some curious neighbors. By then everyone was starving, so Manny went into town to pick up pizzas. The scent of the food drew the crowd around Manny’s car—among them Neil and Hallie, who were so hungry that they decided a slice was worth whatever punishment they got for defying Nick’s orders.
“I should’ve known you’d show up!” Fatima said when she spotted the boy she shooed away from her door on a daily basis.
But Manny was focused on Hallie. “Nick’s been in there for half the day, and we haven’t heard a sound out of either of them. What the hell is he doing?”
Hallie felt the eyes of the crowd on her; and in the background she thought she heard someone whisper the word she hated most: genius. Since she knew no more about what was going on than anyone else, she looked toward the house, and put her finger to her lips, reminding them of Nick’s request for quiet. The reminder couldn’t have come at a better time, because a minute later the long, almost otherworldly, silence was broken by a voice.
“It’s Voodoo! He’s talking!” Fatima’s friend Sherry cried out as the old women crossed themselves in unison. Alvaro leaped from the hood of the car and pumped a fist in the air. But the loudest whoop of all came from Neil Gallagher
. Hallie looked to the window, wondering if Gus could hear him, and if he had any idea how many hours they had spent outside the door, refusing to give up.
A few moments later, Nick came out smiling. He lifted his arms like the Pope and announced that the boy was going to be all right. Fine.
“What did you do?” Fatima looked up at him, weeping openly.
“Did I ever tell you I was Veteran Memorial’s all-time champion of the staring contest?” Nick said. “Well, let’s just say I successfully defended my title.”
“You and Gustavo had a staring contest?” Fatima glanced at her watch. “For five hours?”
“Something like that. I looked into Gus’s sorrows, and he looked into mine, till eventually he broke.”
“What did he say?” Fatima asked, clearly expecting something profound.
“He said what anyone says at the end of a staring contest: I give.”
Chapter 4
A week later, Hallie appeared at the Barrettos’ door. She hesitated for a full minute before she dared to knock. When Gus’s aunt opened it halfway, Hallie took a step backward and picked up the gifts she’d brought. In one hand she carried a thick book, holding it against her chest like a Bible salesman; in the other, a swollen plastic bag secured with a wire tie. Two minnows swam inside it. Fatima Barretto let out a long exhalation. She looked past the girl suspiciously. “So where’s your little boyfriend—hiding in the bushes again?”
“Neil’s not here—and he isn’t my boyfriend,” Hallie said, though she wasn’t quite sure she was right on either count. Neil still spent most of his free time skulking around the house on Loop Street, waiting for the Gus he once knew to come out and play. And since he had started sitting with Hallie on the bus almost every day, she’d heard the word boyfriend whispered more than once.
At first, Neil just wanted to talk about Gus, but one afternoon right before they reached her stop, he asked if she’d ever kissed a boy. When she squinched up her nose and replied, “Of course not,” Neil smiled. “Me neither. Never kissed a girl, I mean. But when I do, it’s gonna be you.” Hallie hadn’t contradicted him. She wondered if that made him her boyfriend.
The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel Page 2
