If Jack's in Love

by Stephen Wetta

  Stan burst out laughing.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, put it together. What’s a man his age want with a kid like you?”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “Why do you need a friend that old?”

  I left the kitchen, taking my sandwich. Pop and Stan followed me to the bedroom.

  “You know what Snead told me? He told me Mr. Gladstein has a house in Jefferson Ward.”

  “So?”

  “Well, it’s unusual, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  The peanut butter cleaved like paste to my palate. I wasn’t sure I could swallow it.

  “Gladstein’s told you he lives in Jefferson Ward?”

  “I was there when he told Snead.”

  “Huh,” Pop said.

  Stan swung the desk chair backwards. Pop was standing in the doorway. I kept working my jaws over the peanut butter. It wouldn’t go down and I was afraid I might have to spit it out.

  “So you feel sure about Gladstein, then.”

  “Sure about what?”

  “That he don’t have an ulterior motive.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know, man that age with a kid like you.”

  “He believes segregation is wrong, that’s why he lives in Jefferson Ward.”

  Pop puffed out his lips and nodded, pantomiming rational discourse. “Hell, I ain’t got any problems with black people, Snead knows that.”

  My brother’s face, unbeknownst to him, had grown all pop-eyed and obsessed, as though he was envisioning something ghastly or wicked. I wondered if it meant he was remembering what it was like when he killed Gaylord.

  Pop saw what he was doing and said, “What’s the matter sport, you look like you seen a ghost.”

  Stan grinned nervously and snapped out of it.

  I managed to swallow the peanut butter but it made me nearly retch, and Stan seemed to think the expression on my face had something to do with him. His eyes grew narrow, challenging me, and then he slapped his thighs and sprang out of the chair. He looked around at the floor as though he had misplaced something.

  Pop moved along the hall.

  Stan quickly left behind him.

  I heard the screen door slam.

  I got in bed.

  My brother must have left for Anya’s, because I was asleep by the time he got home.

  IN THE MORNING I placed my letter in the mailbox (there’d been no Coghill pickup the day previous and I had retrieved it lest it fall in the wrong hands), then after a while I went and took it out. It was stupid to imagine Myra would be thinking about my letters when her brother was missing. Probably she had renounced me by now, anyway. I was a Witcher. How could she separate that from anything else?

  I hung around the house, too timid to venture outside. On the radio and TV, reports were appearing about Gaylord’s vanishing. I kept expecting them to say, “The prime suspects, according to the police, are the Witchers.”

  Finally, in the afternoon, I left. I wanted to find out what was happening. Officer Reedy hadn’t returned. We’d heard nothing more about Gaylord, except that he was gone.

  All was mournful silence. It was a Saturday and the adults weren’t at work. They were in the yards, trimming the bushes, snipping at the borders of the walkways. They shot me glances and silently returned to their business.

  I didn’t go near the Joyner house. Instead I took the shortcut. Several kids on top of the drainage pipe turned their heads, although no one said a word. It was like walking through a suburb of the dead.

  When I passed the Coghill house I saw Kathy cutting across the yard.

  “Have you heard from Myra?” I called.

  She shushed me with her lips.

  “I’ll be in the woods behind Dickie Pudding’s place!” I kept my voice low but loud enough to hear. She turned her back and went in her house.

  When I got to the woods I saw Mr. Pudding’s car in the drive, the doors flung open, the mats drying in the sun. A country station was playing on the radio. Dickie came around the side of the house and I waved and he went inside without waving back. I couldn’t tell if he’d seen me or not.

  I waited a half-hour, sweating in the heat. Then Kathy came.

  She didn’t pass on the street. There was a pathway farther down and she turned in the woods.

  This was probably the closest we’d ever been to each other. I knew her mainly from when I passed the Coghill porch. She was ten or eleven, and Myra’s devoted slave. What distinguished her from her sisters was her smile, or actually, that she smiled at all.

  I was surprised she had bothered to come. The Coghill blood must run mighty thin in her veins, that’s what I was thinking. At any rate, she had put on a stern expression for the occasion. She didn’t say a word, she just stood with her arms hanging down.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She looked at me for a long time.

  “Well, I guess you’ve heard about Gaylord.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve been worried about Myra.”

  “She won’t stop crying. We’ve been with her all morning.”

  “I wrote her a note, but I don’t know if I should send it.”

  “All she’s thinking about right now is Gaylord.”

  “Has she said anything about me?”

  Kathy cut her eyes away.

  “They think my brother did something to Gaylord, right?”

  “Why wouldn’t they? Myra told me something in secret and she said I could tell you if I saw you. She said she has feelings for you but she can’t be your girlfriend.”

  “She said that?”

  Kathy nodded.

  “Tell her I understand,” I said.

  “All she does is cry. She won’t stop crying.”

  I looked away. Down by the house Mr. Pudding and Dickie were watching. The moment I turned my head they began tending to the floor mats, putting them back in the car.

  “Did your brother do anything to Gaylord?”

  “I don’t know, I hope not. What are the police saying?”

  “They’re searching everywhere. They’ve got men looking in the river. They’re searching all the woods. The last time anyone saw him he was on Cherokee Road hitchhiking to Dogwood Downs.”

  “Why was he hitchhiking? How come he didn’t take his Mustang?”

  “Mr. Joyner says it has an expired inspection sticker.”

  “What does Myra think about all this?”

  “She just cries and hopes he comes back. I was with her this morning. She has a picture of him on the table and she just sits there and looks at it and cries.”

  “I wish there was something I could do.”

  “No one can do anything, all we can do is hope he turns up. Unless you know something that might help the police.”

  “I don’t know any more than anyone else.”

  “Is that true? You really don’t know anything?” Kathy looked boldly into my eyes. “Not even for Myra?”

  “Why would I know anything? I didn’t do anything to Gaylord. It was my brother always fighting him, not me.”

  Kathy sighed. “If only you could see how upset Myra is.”

  “Will you tell her I’m sorry? Will you give her this note?”

  Kathy took it. “I’ll ask if she wants to read it, but she probably won’t.”

  “Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I hope Gaylord is okay.”

  “Why don’t you just ask your brother?”

  “Ask him what?”

  “Ask him what he did. Then you can tell the police and maybe they can find Gaylord and bring him home.” She kept eyeing me, hoping to provoke a moment of truth.

  “That’s jumping to conclusions. No one knows if anything bad has even happened.” I made an effort to return her look. “Gaylord might have run off with some girl. Stan says he was at the Taylors’ house that night, and so does Anya. And she was with him the whole night, so he couldn’t have done anything.”

  “That
’s what he says.”

  “It doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  “If he did something he wouldn’t admit it anyway.”

  “Well, why would he say he did something if he didn’t?”

  “All right, I’m not talking to you.”

  She turned and walked away. I hadn’t said what she wanted to hear. But why shouldn’t I defend my brother? And what made her so sure I was hiding something incriminating?

  “Tell Myra I like her!” I called.

  What was the use? Kathy was speeding away with the same lightning efficiency she used in her mail delivery.

  When I got home Reedy’s cruiser was parked out front. Stan was leaning an arm against the top, speaking with the officer through the window. While I was crossing the yard I slowed down to watch.

  Mom appeared at the door.

  “Come in the house, that doesn’t concern you.”

  She looked old, haggard and limp. Her hair was stringy, her face was gaunt.

  I went inside thinking for some reason about how my mother didn’t believe in God, how she had raised me to believe whatever I felt in my heart to be true. That was her catechism, the heart. She once told me she didn’t understand how a loving God could have created a place so full of suffering as this world. She could never get past that, she said. Later I made the mistake of repeating these words to my teacher. This was in front of the entire class, during an impromptu discussion on freedom of religion. I was proud my mother had so much originality. Her not believing in God gave me a sense of the dignity of thought. But the class wasn’t so admiring. Everyone grew quiet, and my teacher cleared her throat. She said something I couldn’t make out.

  Within days it got around that the Witchers were atheists.

  28

  ANYA WAS on the frayed carmine sofa, wearing one of her minidresses. Her legs were brown and bare and she didn’t have any shoes on.

  “Hey handsome,” she said.

  I jerked my thumb towards the yard. “How come Reedy’s here?”

  “Oh, the pigs won’t leave him alone ’cause he’s got long hair.”

  “Is that what it is?”

  “Of course. The minute something bad happens they’re gonna go after the first hippie freak they can find.”

  To me Stan’s long hair didn’t make any difference. I remembered when he had a crew cut and he was the same then as he was now.

  “He had to go and tell Gaylord he was gonna kill him,” I said, “right in front of Reedy.”

  “Oh, that was just talk. That’s Stan, it’s the way he talks.”

  “It was stupid to say that in front of a cop.”

  “Your brother wouldn’t hurt anyone, you know that.”

  “You haven’t seen him when he fights,” I said.

  Mom backed away from looking out the door. “I’ve told him a thousand times he was gonna get in trouble someday. That boy runs around the neighborhood threatening everybody in sight and then when they suspect him of doing wrong he acts like some injustice has occurred. I told him a thousand times this would happen.”

  “But he didn’t do anything,” Anya said, “he was with me that night.”

  “Was he really?”

  “Yes!”

  Anya gazed at me, wide-eyed.

  Mom was disgusted by the entire business. “So how come you’re telling the police he left your house at ten?”

  “That’s what Mr. Witcher told me to say.”

  Mom tightened her lips and left the room.

  “You told Reedy he came straight home?” I said.

  “Yeah, I was talking with him a minute ago. He sent me inside, he said he wanted to talk to Stan alone.”

  I went over and parked myself next to her.

  “Anya, I heard him come in around six that morning.”

  “I know, that’s when I dropped him off.”

  We sat for a while, side by side.

  I snuck a peek at her legs.

  “How about little Mary, how’s she doing?”

  “Myra,” I corrected. “Don’t talk about her in front of Mom. Myra thinks Stan did something to Gaylord. She told Kathy Coghill she can’t be my girlfriend anymore.”

  “Wow Jack, I’m really sorry. How come everyone is so prejudiced against your brother?”

  “He’s caused a lot of trouble in this neighborhood. You don’t know him the way other people do.”

  “Oh come on, he wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

  Reedy’s engine started outside and Stan came in the house. He winked and put his finger to his lips.

  No sooner was he in the door than Mom and Pop appeared.

  Pop’s eyebrows were lifted; he nodded towards the door. “So what’d he say?”

  “Says he admires how ‘streetwise’ I am. Says he wants me to help him come up with ideas about how we might find Gaylord.”

  Pop burst out laughing, and after a dumbstruck silence Stan joined in. They both started guffawing at the top of their lungs.

  “Deputy Dawg! How dumb does he think you are?”

  Mom listened unhappily and walked out. Anya watched this male play uncertainly.

  I headed for the door.

  “Where you off to, sport?” Pop called.

  I didn’t answer. I left the house and went stalking through El Dorado Hills. People in their yards stopped what they were doing when I passed. No one taunted me. No one hollered. They even seemed to regard me with a sort of grisly respect. Maybe they interpreted Gaylord’s disappearance as payback for years of abuse. Maybe they were now realizing they had pushed the Witchers over the edge and we were behaving the way the downtrodden always behave. Maybe they had come to fear and respect us the way they feared Castro’s Cuba.

  I crossed the alleyway behind the shopping center and headed up the terraced slopes towards Gladstein’s. But then I saw Snead’s truck and realized it was a Saturday. I debated whether to go ahead or turn back, and finally I turned back. The truck had reminded me of Pop’s plot to rob the store and I wasn’t sure I could deal with Snead’s being in the same room with Gladstein.

  I passed the shops the way I had come, getting more and more depressed. My brother a murderer, my pop a jewel thief. What did that make me?

  It was when I was crossing the alleyway that the trouble happened. Through the shrubs bordering Myra Street I saw sandals and tennis shoes and moving fabric, blue, white and green; and when I reached the steps Johnny Pendleton and two other boys appeared at the break in the fence. The boys were Chip Blevin and Barry Campbell, who lived across Cherokee Road where the houses were bigger. I didn’t really know them, I just knew they were on the wrestling team with Pendleton.

  All three of them blocked my way.

  “Look who it is,” Pendleton said.

  I stopped. Chip and Barry stood like sentries on either side of him. They were keeping their eyes on him, not me. Barry was popping his knuckles.

  “Where’s your brother?” Pendleton said.

  “At home.”

  “That’s not very lucky for you, is it?”

  They grinned. Chip rubbed a hand over his lips, as if to smooth a moustache. He darted a look behind to make sure no one was coming.

  “Let me go by,” I said.

  “What are you gonna do if we don’t?”

  I looked over my shoulder and wondered if I could make it back to where the stragglers were still browsing before the shop windows. But the boys must have read my mind. Their feet raced down the steps and circled around behind me, and now Pendleton was blocking the pathway that led to the shops. “Sorry, are we in your way?”

  Chip and Barry were flanking him. Chip had his eyes cut to the side, watching Pendleton. He seemed uneasy about what they were doing.

  I turned and hurried up the steps and heard the drumming of their shoes as they rushed after me. “What did your brother do with Gaylord, asshole?”

  I reached Myra Street, hoping I could get away without actually running.

  Pendleton came up beside me.r />
  “I asked you something.”

  “You tell me.”

  “I’m not playing games, Witcher, what did your brother do with Gaylord?”

  “Same thing he’ll do to you if you don’t leave me alone.”

  Pendleton stopped in his tracks.

  “What did you say?”

  I kept moving.

  “Did you hear? Are you guys witnesses? He just admitted it!”

  I was nervous already about what I’d said. My motive had been to scare off Pendleton, but I realized if this got out it wouldn’t do my brother’s brief one bit of good. And what if it got back to Myra as well?

  I turned around. The boys were babbling excitedly in the middle of the street, too preoccupied to notice I was heading back. When they saw me they broke off. They almost seemed scared.

  “I take back what I said.”

  Pendleton scornfully drew up his pectorals.

  “You can’t take it back, we heard you.”

  “I don’t know what happened to Gaylord that night. My brother was with his girlfriend, he didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

  “You mean that hippie slut?”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  “If she’s not a slut what would she be doing with a Witcher?”

  Chip kept pushing at his nose, as though he wore glasses.

  “My brother didn’t do a thing that can be proved. Until you know what happened you shouldn’t be making accusations.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, you can suck my dick. You and your brother and that hippie slut, you all can suck my dick.”

  I headed on down the street, uneasy about putting my back to them. I heard whispering, and then I heard Pendleton holler, “Where the fuck is Gaylord, you prick?”

  A rock sailed past my ear.

  I swung and looked. The boys were in the middle of the road. Pendleton’s arms were at his side. His shoulders were sagging.

  He brought his hands to his face and Chip threw a consoling arm across his shoulders.

  I came to the corner, turned left and then right, which put me behind Dickie Pudding’s house.

  When I had walked a ways I snuck a quick look back.

  The road behind me was empty. But what a cheerless acquittal it was.

  29

  POP HOOKED MY SHIRT TAIL as I was trying to slip past.

  “Come on, let’s take a ride.”

  “Where to?”