She stayed all night. I know because I was awake. At one point she started to leave and I raised my head to challenge her.
“I’m just going to the bathroom,” she said.
The fan rattled and oscillated air across my face.
“For God’s sake,” she added.
“You don’t believe in God,” I said.
When the morning came Stan was still gone.
40
ONCE MORE, for the last time, I went to the Pudding woods to await the coming of Myra. Dickie Pudding kept peeking out of his back door. After a while he strolled up to where I was.
“How come you’re always hanging around my woods?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s my property, I have a right to ask.”
“Suck my dick,” I said.
He left and I killed time by trying to find the ring. But I was too demoralized. Obviously I’d never find it, and now it seemed stupid to have tossed it over my shoulder. I’d done it only for effect, to impress Myra.
I was jumpy from the night before. In my pocket was a pocketknife I’d filched out of the desk drawer, not nearly as effective as a butcher knife but still good to jab someone’s eyes with. While I was walking to the woods I’d hugged the shoulder of the road in case I had to make a dash through the yards. Now I was listening for the rumble of Anya’s GTO.
Myra already seemed to belong to a remote time in my childhood. The last I saw her she was on TV, weeping next to her mother. Now, as she came around the curve and stepped into the woods, her cheeks were dry, her face was clean and dignified. Rusty charged forth to greet me and Myra smiled a smile that said, “I have experienced great tragedy and my feelings for you are compromised by bitterness and agony, but I am willing to bestow this wary sign of regard.”
Then she flailed her arms and leapt back, believing some invisible thing was attacking her. I’d never known anyone as goofy in the woods as she was.
Finally she came on over.
“Hi Jack. I’ll bet you were surprised to get my note.”
“I thought you had told me good-bye forever.”
“This time it might have to be. But I wanted to give you something.”
She held out the ring.
“Myra!”
“I came back and found it. I was walking home that day and it kept driving me crazy that you’d thrown it away. I couldn’t believe you would do such a thing.”
“I’ve been here almost every day looking for it.”
“I know, Kathy told me. She passed by one day and saw you. She said you were practically tearing the woods to pieces.”
“Keep it, I don’t want it.”
Myra regarded the jewel fondly in her palm. I was reminded of those ads where they pose a blonde in front of a velvety backdrop and she’s looking at her ring in raptures while thinking about some jerk whose beaming face hovers in a circle in the corner.
“No,” she said, “I can’t, I just can’t.”
“To remember me with.”
“I’m not sure I want to remember you, to be perfectly honest.”
“Come on, don’t forget me, I didn’t have anything to do with …”
I didn’t finish, but she knew what I meant.
“You’re his brother. Every time I think about you I’m going to remember.”
“I guess,” I said.
She handed me the ring and I dropped it in my pocket without looking at it.
“Anyway,” she said.
She stared down at the Pudding house. “How’s Dickie doing?”
“He doesn’t talk to me anymore. No one around here does.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter, I never had a lot of friends.”
And then out of the blue she got all teary and her face flushed. “I know, and that makes me so mad! It doesn’t make any sense! I always argue with people, I tell them, ‘It doesn’t matter that he’s a Witcher, he’s smart and he’s nice and we should be nice to him.’”
“You tell people that?”
She nodded, all choked up. “I still think that. You can’t help who your family is.”
“But my family…I mean—” I looked around. “My mom is nice,” I said.
Myra nodded. “She seems nice, it’s just the way she looks.”
We were wringing our hands, awkward in farewell.
“Anyway,” she said.
We both swung our heads towards the Pudding house at the same time, as though for an impromptu snapshot…and then her tiny chest heaved, remembering that the occasion was sad.
“My mother is right pretty when she puts on her makeup,” I said.
“Oh, she is pretty, she’s just different, that’s all.”
I patted her arm for being nice. I suppose that’s why I made my decision. I was dead anyway, and now I knew Myra had defended me against my enemies. In spite of everything she had believed in me. I had to keep one thing in mind—this was Myra, not just anyone. And I knew from books what a man owes a woman. There is a crazy nobility in attacking one’s doom, if it’s done for the right reason. Just as it’s crazy and noble to believe what’s written in books.
“There’s something you need to know, Myra, and I’m not gonna ask you to keep it a secret.”
I paused, waiting for her to look at me.
“I found out something about that night. My brother’s been telling the cops he was at Anya’s house and that’s what Anya’s been saying too. But we were out walking one day and she told me Stan wasn’t with her the night Gaylord disappeared. He drove off in her car around six-thirty, which is about the time Gaylord started hitchhiking on Cherokee. Anya said Stan didn’t come back ’til four in the morning. She wasn’t with him during that time and she doesn’t know where he was or what he was doing.” I didn’t mention that he was all cut up and bloodied.
Myra’s face was a blank. I don’t think what I had said registered. She was preoccupied with other thoughts.
“You should tell your parents,” I instructed her.
“Tell them what?”
“You don’t understand, do you? Stan lied about where he was the night Gaylord disappeared. He might have done something. No one knows where he was or what he was doing.”
“You mean he wasn’t at that girl’s house?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“How long have you known this?”
“I don’t know. Awhile. I didn’t know at first, but one day Anya told me.”
Myra’s face when she was about to cry screwed up gradually, so that you could chart the progress of her emotion. It was like watching a bowl fill with water. Her face grew sadder and sadder until finally it was the very image of derangement and grief.
The next thing I knew she had landed a punch on my chest.
“Damn you, Jack Witcher! You knew all the time and you didn’t say anything?”
She hit me again. Then she began to thrash blindly through the bushes, bawling and weeping. She didn’t know which way to turn. Nettles and branches were scratching her limbs. Uselessly she thrashed her arms.
“Myra!”
I caught up with her and pulled her around.
“I’m sorry! Stan said he’d kill me if I told.”
Rusty remained in the clearing, watching.
“He killed my brother, that fucking asshole!” Myra pounded my shoulders.
“I’m sorry, I should have said something, it was wrong of me. But I was afraid.”
“You’re a Witcher, that’s what you are.”
Sobs wracked her frail body and she stopped and sucked in air. I thought she was about to choke and I touched her arm to steady her. And then she cried out and hit me again.
She slapped me, three times on the face.
And then I began to cry too.
We faced each other, weeping. Her face was all screwed up and so was mine. We kept looking at each other, blinking and wiping our noses and bawling our eyes out.
Finally she came into my arms and let me hold her. I patted her back until she calmed down, and I said, “You should tell your parents what I told you.”
She nodded.
There were sounds on the road. Someone was passing, but I didn’t care, and neither did Myra. Or maybe she didn’t notice. Her sobs were so loud I imagine the whole neighborhood could hear them. I’m sure the Puddings had got their fill.
“If they arrest my brother it’ll be fine with me,” I said.
“I hate your brother.”
Her tears were making me wet.
She drew away and said, “I’m going to tell my parents what you just said.”
“I want you to.”
“What will happen to you?”
“To me? Why would anything happen? School will start and I’ll go and people will make fun of me. I’m used to that. But you know what, Myra? I have a feeling things are gonna get better when I’m older.”
“Not me, I’ll never be happy again,” she said.
Even then, even with my limited thirteen-year-old perspective, that struck me as a dismal thought for a girl to have. But it was true. I believed her. And I, Jack Witcher, I conceived at that moment a rage against my brother that has never quite left me, not even now. I wanted to hit him, punch him, kick his balls, claw his eyes, bite his ears, maybe cut him with the butcher knife.
I said, “You do what you have to do, Myra.”
“I’m sorry, Jack. I wish we could be friends.”
She pulled up the tail of her shirt and wiped her eyes, and I wiped mine on my arm. Our tears were more or less finished.
We gazed at each other for a long time, the way people can when they have cried together. Then she came close and kissed my cheek.
“Mom knows I’m here. I have to tell her everywhere I go now. She made Kathy follow me.”
Through the trees, where the curve began, someone, Kathy I suppose, was hanging around beside the road.
“I can’t stay any longer. I’m sorry, I have to go now.”
“Okay. I understand.”
“Come on Rusty,” she said.
But Rusty stayed.
I went home to fight my brother. Maybe to kill him.
41
THAT WAS THE DAY I found out Stan was on the lam, after I got home and came to the conclusion that we’d been robbed. Then I saw that everything I owned was accounted for. Only Stan’s stuff was missing: his clothes, his stereo player, his James Brown records. The essential things.
I called Mom at the Ben Franklin and she told me to go to the Taylors’ to check if he was there. I cut through the woods, jumped the creek and surveyed the Taylor yard. There weren’t any cars in the driveway and the house looked shut.
When I got back I phoned Mom and she said she would try to leave work early. Then I sat on the carmine sofa and waited. And then I got spooked. What if Stan hadn’t gone on the lam? What if he came home? I pulled the butcher knife out of the kitchen drawer and returned to the sofa.
I peeked through the window. Rusty, lying in the yard, inquisitively raised his head.
Mom came home at the usual time. By then Pop was home, and I took both of them to our bedroom.
“I don’t know, maybe we did get robbed,” Pop said. “Why would a kid take his stereo with him if he was leaving?”
“It’s portable,” I said, “you can pack it up and carry it.”
“But why would he just leave without saying anything?”
“Look Pop, all my stuff is here. What robber would come straight to this room and take only his stuff? And then not go to your room?”
“True.” Pop shook his head, thinking. “But would he be running through the streets with his clothes and his stereo player? He can’t be carrying all that stuff, can he?”
“I’ll bet Anya helped. Probably they loaded his stuff in the GTO.”
“We should go to the Taylors’, maybe they’re home by now.”
We got in the Ford and drove over.
Basil’s Dodge was not in the driveway, but there was Tillie’s Cadillac, still warm and ticking under the hood. We parked on the street and Tillie came to the door, newly coiffed and wearing a fine pearl necklace. She eyed our Ford with distaste and quickly appraised Mom’s dress, but her demeanor was pleasant enough. She had just this second got home, she told us, she’d been to her hair and nail appointments downtown and stopped by Basil’s office on the fifteenth floor of the NVB building and together they had gone to the tearoom at the Tabbot & Reeves department store for a slice of banana cream pie.
Pop was hanging back, awed by the majesty of the Taylor spread.
Mom got right to business. “We think Stan might have run away. His clothes and his stereo player are gone. I’d like to speak with Anya, maybe she knows where he is.”
“Well, her car’s not here, can’t you see? She must have gone out.”
“But Stan couldn’t have carried that stuff by himself and we’re thinking someone with a car must have helped. And Anya does have a car… .”
Tillie, nervously enlightened, kneaded her fingers and blinked her eyes.
“Why don’t y’all come in?”
We walked through the cavernous front room and tacked up the steps to the second floor. The floors were hardwood, an oddity in that era of wall-to-wall carpeting, and we sounded like a small marching army.
Tillie brought us to Anya’s room and, turning her back, swung the door open like the lady who reveals the prizes on a game show. We sheepishly hung in the hall while she stepped in before us.
She crossed directly to the walk-in closet. “My God, half her clothes are gone! Look, her green and yellow paisley minidress! And that blue blouse we bought at Tabbot & Reeves. And her jeans, her smocks!”
She turned to the bed. “Oh!”
She put her fingers to her mouth.
“What’s the matter?” Mom said.
“Her Teddy is missing!”
We figured that must be bad. We shook our heads.
“She doesn’t go anywhere without her Teddy.”
“They must have split together,” Pop observed.
“You mean run away from home?”
“Well that’s what it looks like to me.”
“But why would she run away from home?”
We waited. We knew what was coming.
“It’s that damn boy of yours, I told her to stay away from him.”
“He’s not a damn boy,” Mom said.
“What’s Officer Reedy’s number? I’m calling the police right this minute!”
“Won’t do much good,” Pop said, “she’s old enough to go where she wants.”
“After what happened to the Joyner boy? I’m calling the police.”
“Don’t go jumping to conclusions, that’s all.”
“Her Teddy is gone, what other conclusion can there be?”
She left us alone. We were quiet a few moments and then Pop said, “I wonder how much a head start they got. They could be all the way to North Carolina if they been on the road two hours.”
“You sound like that’s what you want,” Mom said.
Pop shrugged. “Well…when you gotta go you gotta go.” He gave me a wink.
“You know what makes me mad?” Mom said. “He promised me he would go to the police. He said he was going to tell them where he was when Gaylord vanished. He swore to me he would do that.”
“Must have changed his mind.”
Mom made a sound under her breath, and we heard Tillie on the phone, downstairs, spelling out Anya’s name. “A-N-Y-A … No, it’s not a Russian name, what difference could that possibly make?”
“I wonder why she didn’t use this one,” Pop said, indicating the untouched Princess on the nightstand.
“That’s Anya’s private line,” I explained, “it’s different from the one downstairs.”
“Well heck, you can call the cops on this just as good as any other.”
The mysteries of rich people were beyon
d our comprehension. Just take Anya’s bed: that thing was big as a swimming pool. Its backboard looked like it was made out of the same material they used to produce the banquettes at Neuman’s Ice Cream Parlor. And in the corner of the room stood a console stereo player made out of maple wood, with its lid open. Pop and I strolled over to examine it.
“No wonder they took Stan’s stereo,” I said, “they could never have got this in a car.”
The downstairs phone jangled as it hung up, and Tillie called: “Excuse me! People! Would you like to come down?”
We descended to the enormous front room with the ski lodge ceiling.
Mom wandered over to look at the piano. Tillie asked if we wanted a Tab and we said no. This was business, not pleasure.
Mom asked Tillie if she knew how to play the piano.
“No, that daughter of mine is supposed to be the pianist in the family. First we bought her the thing, and then we spent a small fortune paying for lessons. But all she wants to do is to listen to the Beatles and the Doors. And now there’s this colored boy Jimi Hendrix, that’s all she talks about anymore.”
Mom was nodding, relating to what she was hearing. “Does he play this psychedelic music they’re listening to?”
“Yes, those screaming guitars. And those lyrics about drugs.”
Mom and Tillie pursed their lips.
After a while we heard the rumble of a police cruiser as it pulled up in front of the house.
“I wonder if that’s Deputy Dawg,” Pop said.
“Who’s Deputy Dawg?” Tillie said. “Why are you making these tasteless jokes?”
We elected to greet Reedy in the yard. It always took him forever to get out of his car and Tillie was impatient to speak.
“My daughter appears to have run off with their son,” she hollered, dashing over the lawn.
Reedy called through the window, “Ma’am?”
We trailed Tillie to the cruiser.
“My daughter has run away, and so has their son. They went in her car. It’s a candy-apple-red GTO. I can give you the license number, I have it written down in the house.”
“Yes ma’am. How old is your daughter?”
“Eighteen.”
Reedy looked at Pop and Mom.
“Your son went with her?”
“He’s eighteen,” Pop said, “it’s legal.”
Reedy cocked his head. “There isn’t a whole lot I can do if she’s of age.”
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