by A J Grayson
Again, silence. Fourteen seconds. Then:
‘I don’t remember a boy. No matter what you say, no matter how many times you say it, there wasn’t a boy. There just wasn’t.’
A sigh is caught in the recording, gentle, coming from Pauline’s lips. Audibly it could be taken as sign of either disappointment or frustration, or possibly both. She remembers, though, that it was an altogether different emotion that sagged out of her lungs. Distress, as concealed as she could keep it.
But Joseph isn’t finished. ‘Though I’ve been thinking about my wife, and maybe … well, maybe you’re right.’
‘Right?’ A new tinge of hope.
He hesitates. ‘Right that, well,’ he sounds embarrassed by his admission, ‘maybe I wasn’t married. I’m not saying I’m sure about that, but I’ve been trying to think about our life. You know, the wedding, the honeymoon, that kind of stuff.’
‘And you don’t have memories of these things?’ Pauline asks.
‘It’s not like that. I have memories of them, just like I have memories of our picnics and our nights out.’
‘It’s a lot to piece together.’ The sounds of Pauline shuffling the papers on the table into order – a little gesture aimed to encourage the man opposite her that things are coming together. ‘Let’s start with just one of those events. What can you tell me about your wedding?’
‘I remember the church, a little white one. I remember her dress. I remember a trip to Florida for a honeymoon. Jet boating on the swamps. That’s what I’d always wanted.’
‘Joseph, that sounds beautiful. Perfect.’ She pauses. ‘Almost too perfect.’ Another pause. ‘Does that thought ever occur to you? Like what you’re remembering is something out of a storybook. Just like when you told me about falling in love with her.’
Joseph protests, but his voice isn’t as vehement as on other occasions. ‘You’ve said that before. When you thought I was lying.’
‘Not lying,’ Pauline corrects. ‘It’s just that memories that sound like they’re from storybooks, well … sometimes they are from storybooks, Joseph.’
‘Again, your damned mind games,’ he protests. But once again, the words lack teeth. There is curiosity in his voice. ‘What’s that even supposed to mean?’
‘Sometimes, Joseph, what works its way into our memory are pictures we get from other places. Not things we’ve actually seen, but things we’ve imagined. Or heard about. Stories we’ve been told, or sometimes told ourselves.’
‘That sounds unlikely.’ Joseph’s words are soft.
‘These kinds of memories,’ Pauline continues, ‘they can be very powerful. But usually there’s something not quite right about them. Something that isn’t like our other memories. They look a little different, or they—’
‘They look a little fuzzy?’ Joseph asks over the top of her. An intake of breath can be heard from her lips.
‘Why do you ask that, Joseph?’ Pauline’s voice is clearly interested, though she is attempting to remain dispassionate.
‘It’s just that all these memories, well, they’re, I don’t know. Blurry.’
‘Blurry?’
‘They don’t start out that way. They start crisp, like photographs. But then when I try to look close at the photographs, they go out of focus. I don’t know.’ He hesitates. ‘Maybe it’s just the drugs they’ve got me on.’
‘I don’t think it’s the drugs, Joseph. I think you’re actually making some real progress.’
‘Whatever,’ he answers. His voice has become dismissive. ‘Anyway, I’m just saying that maybe you’re right. Maybe I wasn’t married. I can’t trust these things. I’m pretty sure I was, but I won’t call you a liar any more for saying I wasn’t.’
‘So what do you think happened, then? If you’re not here for killing your wife, what do you think brought you to this place?’
‘I know I killed her. That much isn’t fuzzy at all. I remember the killing. Okay, maybe she wasn’t my wife. Maybe a girlfriend. Maybe a whore. Who knows. But I killed her. We both know I did.’
‘We know that—’
‘And there was no fucking boy!’ he interrupts, returning to the subject that clearly bothers him the most. ‘There was my wife – the woman. And maybe an old man. But no boy.’
‘You remember an old man?’ Pauline questions. The intensity is back in her voice. As the cassette whirls, her pencil is scraping across her yellow notepad. This is precisely the moment in the interview that the hearing will focus on. The panel will be interested in every word, so she transcribes as she listens again to her own conversation.
‘I said maybe. Damn, I wish you’d actually listen when I talk to you. Maybe.’
‘Who is this man, Joseph?’
Another silence. Twelve seconds.
‘Joseph?’
‘Maybe there wasn’t a man. I can’t remember. I told you, some things are blurry. I’ve been in here too long. Maybe I’m just thinking of one of the guards.’
‘No, Joseph, I don’t think you are.’
‘You don’t know anything!’ His voice is all at once enraged again. ‘And I’m done talking.’
‘Joseph, please, we’re making progress—’
‘GUARD!’ The word is shouted. A fist slams down. Two seconds later, the sound of a door opening and footsteps drawing near. Chains rattle as a decisive click brings the recording to a close.
28
Thursday
There is simply nowhere that the boy could have gone. From this vantage point, the solitude of the hilltop is patent. No trees – not for a good 200 yards off to the left. Behind, just the dirt field I’ve traversed to get here. And in front of me the hill slopes downward again, and …
I spot it in the dimming light. It’s not that it’s that far away, it’s just small, and my eyes aren’t used to these surroundings.
It’s another farmhouse, like a few others I’ve seen today. A sloping roof over a single storey, a porch on the front that’s had a covering added after the fact. There’s a swing-set off to the side. Even at this distance I can see it’s rusted. Two equally rusted cars are sprouting grass from long-gone windows, side by side in a little automotive graveyard a short distance from the house itself. The paint on the home looks like it was once green, or perhaps yellow. It’s hard to tell now: it’s chipped and faded into an almost unidentifiable shade. The roof sags in the middle. The porch buckles at its edges.
It’s the kind of rundown country house that fits the stereotypes that make it feel familiar, even if you’ve never seen it before. I have that sentiment now, though it’s not the house that I’m interested in. I’m interested in the boy; in finding out where he could have gone. Obviously, he was headed to this house: it’s where his gaze was directed once he’d turned, here, at the top of the hill. But I can’t see him anywhere. Can’t see any sign of him or of anyone else.
But I can hear. Down there at the bottom of the hill, in the unspectacular abode, there are voices. They emerge from within the walls, indistinguishable but obviously animated. Inhabitants.
I’m suddenly conscious that I’m perfectly visible from where I’m standing, and if there are people in that house (and from the jumbled voices, I can tell there are a few of them) then it would only take one of them glancing out from behind those dirty windows to see me here, spying on them.
I do the only thing that seems sensible in the moment. I drop to my belly in the grass of the hilltop. Just like I’ve seen in a hundred films: I drop to take my cover. But the grass is too tall and from this vantage point I can’t see anything else. I rise up slowly, onto my knees, then into a crouch. This isn’t working, either. I’m either exposed or blind, and neither is what I need. I need to find a better spot. I want to get closer to the house. I want to hear the voices.
Off to my left, not too far away, the hillside meets the treeline of a wood. I’m guessing that’s going to be the place that gives me the best access. A bit more cover, and the treeline descends the slope towards the
house which means I’ll be able to get closer. I start to sidestep my way in its direction, keeping low, beneath the level of the wild grass and flowers. The voices still rise up from below, still indeterminate. I can smell the thistles.
It takes me a good five or six minutes to reach the trees – it’s not easy to move in that hunched-over position. But I eventually arrive. Thinking that the transition from grass to tree is probably the most exposed part of my journey, I glance down at the house to make sure no one is standing in the window, gazing out, and when I’m convinced I have a moment unobserved, I jump up and into the wood.
The pine scent of the trees is intense. It’s all shadows and darkness now – the sun has gone down and the dusky light of the hillside doesn’t make its way through the treetops. That’s okay. At this moment I feel better in the shadows. But it’s harder to hear the voices here, and I know I need to work my way down the hillside and find just the right perch at the edge of the wood. I desperately need to find out just who’s inside, and what they’re saying.
I walk all the more slowly now, given the darkness and the unclear ground. The last thing I need is to twist an ankle or – God forbid – break something out here. Explaining that would be a hard one, especially if I had to hobble to the door of this house and ask for help. I can’t let my eagerness get the best of me. So I move slowly, breathing deeply to calm my nerves, and work my way down the hillside. The house is now probably only a hundred yards away, out of the woods and below.
I don’t think I’m going to get a better spot than this. Any further down and the treeline starts to bend away from the property, defining a nice, lawned area that surrounds it. I’m at the closest point where the pines will cover me, and it’s close enough that the voices are now louder. I make my way to the very edge of the wood, back down on my knees. There’s a bed of leaves and needles beneath me, musty and earthen. Beyond, I have a direct line of sight. All the better. I can see the dirty windows with dull light behind them.
And I can make out the voices clearly.
29
Thursday
The voices aren’t the kind I want to hear, or that anybody would want to hear. I’ve flattened myself onto my belly, lying on the rug of pine needles and brush, and I’ve propped myself up on my elbows. The forest is quiet, the hillside quieter. The voices from the house echo up to my position as if amplified by the curvature of this plot of earth.
‘You little bastard, you think I wouldn’t find out?’ An angry voice. Male. Adult. The words are slurred, like there’s drink behind them.
‘Don’t yell at him like that!’ a woman shouts back. Her voice is wet. She’s crying. ‘He didn’t mean anything by it!’
‘He never fucking does!’ A crash. Something slams into a wall. In the darkness I can make out the wooden panelling behind the porch shake from the impact.
‘He never means anything!’ the man shouts again. ‘None of you do!’
‘Stop throwing things!’ the woman sobs back. ‘You broke it. That’s our only table. What do you expect to eat off of tonight?’
‘Don’t you go making me out the bastard in this!’ The man’s ranting borders on incoherent. I’ve never heard speech like this. ‘We’ve got more serious problems to worry about than a goddamned table!’
Something in my stomach is churning as these words drift up to me at my perch in the forest. I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, what I was expecting to find here, but the dialogue has a degree of hate behind it that physically repulses me. I’ve never known words to attack like a bodily presence – like a fist or an illness. I feel as if I might vomit.
The man’s voice returns. ‘Tell me what I’m supposed to do with this little fucker.’ A moment’s pause, and I can imagine him turning towards the boy, who must be in there with them. My little boy from the park, the boy with the stick, in this strange hell. ‘Eh, little fucker? What am I supposed to do with you?’
‘Don’t talk to him like that! He’s just a child!’ the woman weeps. I can tell from her voice that she’s exhausted, but her fear keeps her going.
‘Just a child who goes around telling lies about his pops to his friends,’ the man answers. ‘Lies his teachers hear.’
‘He doesn’t mean to, he just—’
‘Do you realize I got a phone call at work today? From his school principal? Asking if everything was okay at home?’ The man’s voice is back at a full, hateful yell. He is on a tirade. ‘At my fucking work! Said she had “concerns” and wanted to know if everything was okay at home!’
‘They’re just checking up on—’
‘Said he’d told another boy he’d been beaten!’ Fire is in the man’s words now. ‘I was being accused over the phone, at work, by some school bitch!’
The woman is whimpering. ‘What did you tell her?’ My stomach is turning over. I can taste vomit at the back of my throat.
‘I told her I didn’t know what in God’s name she was talking about,’ the man answers, ‘but that she could stay the hell out of our family’s business. I’m a free man in a free country. How I raise my son is my own affair.’
There is a pause in his slurred speech and my body tenses. Strange, but I have a powerful feeling that this silence is even worse than the angry words. I can sense something bad is coming.
So can the woman, and it is her voice I hear next.
‘No, no – don’t do that. Don’t touch him!’
I hear another slam, see another shaking of the walls. The woman whimpers. I can almost see her, thrust aside on the interior, pushed out of the way.
‘I’ll show you what it’s like to get beat, you little shit!’ the man roars.
‘No!’ The objection is the woman’s, but it’s cut off by the sounds of fists meeting flesh. Of a smaller body being tossed onto the floor. ‘Stop it!’ she shouts again. Her voice is panicked. Then it, too, is cut short by a fist that audibly knocks the wind from her cries.
I can take no more of this. There is bile and acid in my throat, my skin is covered in a cold, slimy sweat; but my sense of rage is stronger than my repulsion. The little boy in the park, with his overalls and his stick that I held in my own hands: this is his life. This is what he has brought me here to see. To hear. To bear witness.
And now I’ve seen and I’ve heard, and I won’t stand for it. I won’t let him suffer like this. I must act. Must take matters into my own hands. I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of such spontaneous action, but these are not normal circumstances.
I push myself off my elbows and rise onto my knees. The adrenalin coursing through me now is so potent it might as well have replaced my blood. My thoughts are a stretched elastic band, pulled to the point of snapping, ready to launch all of me into a flurry of action. I tighten my thighs, prepare to thrust myself to my feet and storm the hill. Storm the hill to save the boy.
But a hand comes down on my shoulder, firm and solid. I almost cry out, completely shocked at the surprise of human contact here in this secret spot in the forest, but a second hand swiftly covers my mouth and with a grip like steel cuts off my breath and prevents any sound.
30
Thursday
I feel like my heart might explode in my chest, and I writhe to see who’s assaulting me in this way. In my terror I don’t know who I’m expecting. I’m not expecting anyone. I have no idea what is happening. Then the terrifying thought explodes into my mind: I’ve been caught. Oh God, I’ve been caught and …
The hands that have grabbed me in the darkness slowly, steadily, turn my head. In under a second I’m facing my captor. It’s a man holding me: he’s younger than I am. Just barely a man. Amidst my fear I place him as a teenager. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. Buzz-cut. He hasn’t shaved today and has a shadow of a country goatee. And he has a fearsome, solid look in his eyes, which are a deep jade-green. His look is older than his face.
He gazes straight at me. His own chest is rising and falling quickly: the moment has him tense as well. Then, keeping one han
d over my mouth he takes the other from my shoulder and raises a finger to his own lips. Shh, he mimes. Then he whispers. ‘Be quiet. Don’t let them hear you inside.’
I can barely move. I’ve never felt such fear. Every muscle in me is clenched to the point of snapping the bones beneath it. Yet I also have the strangest sense this young man isn’t here to do me harm. There is no real logic to this, no reason my terror should give way. I am, after all, being held down with a hand over my mouth.
The young man keeps his eyes locked on mine for a few seconds, allowing me to regain my lost breath and composure. This calms me further. He gives me a look that says, I’m going to remove my hand. I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t yell. And then he does. And I don’t.
We’re face to face on our knees in the forest. The noises of violence are still wafting up to us from below. The scent of must is still in the air. I have no idea how long he’s been there, behind me, watching.
‘I know what you want to do,’ he finally whispers. His glance turns towards the house. He looks angry. ‘I can see it in your face. I know because I want to do it too.’
‘I want to stop them,’ I spurt out. Whether it’s fear or the situation below, I respond to his prompt rather than protest my assault. This man isn’t a threat, it’s just something I sense within me. And I can’t forget the boy.
‘Whatever’s going on in there. I want to put an end to it.’
He turns back to me. ‘You’re going to have to get in line.’
31
Thursday
It takes me a moment to absorb the young man’s meaning. I’m still on an adrenalin high of proportions that tower over anything I’ve experienced before. And I continue to be nauseated by the noises from the house as well as shocked at the presence of this other person in the woods with me.
I can’t find words to speak, so he takes the initiative. He talks in a whisper, but there is a force behind his words and the kind of overconfidence common to adolescence caught at the border of adulthood.
