Grist Mill Road

by Christopher J. Yates

  The blades of sunlight have slipped all the way across the barn now, falling over an old sign that reads, U-PICK APPLES HERE.

  A few minutes later, Matthew starts fighting the ropes.

  There’s no point, says Patrick. You never were any good at that game anyway.

  But Matthew carries on fighting, knees bending and straightening, his arms struggling behind him.

  Patrick heads over to the barn door, picks up the shotgun and moves back around to where Matthew can see him. Stop! he says. But Matthew keeps moving a few more seconds until Patrick cocks the hammer on the gun.

  Good, says Patrick. Now listen, I’ll make you a deal, Matthew. If you do what I say, go where I say, walk where I tell you to walk, if you do everything I say, then when we get where we’re going, I’ll take away the tape and you can tell me anything you want. Agreed?

  Matthew doesn’t move, just stares fiercely up at him, as if he imagines he might disarm a man with the strength of his gaze, snap rope with the power of thought.

  Patrick waves the shotgun up and down. Move your head like this, he says, or else move it like this, he adds, waving the gun side to side. It has to be one or the other, Matthew, he says.

  Matthew glares at him a moment longer and then nods.

  Good, says Patrick. First I’m going to cut the rope at your legs. Your arms stay tied at all times. Then you’re going to climb into the trunk of my car. Agreed?

  Matthew nods.

  Very good, says Patrick, picking up the knife. And don’t worry, it won’t be long now, he says. I’m really looking forward to hearing everything you have to say.

  MATTHEW

  I doubled back along Sunset Ridge to avoid you, not wanting you implicated in my daddy’s death at all, thinking it better you weren’t even aware of it, and then headed back toward town, taking the trail that ran down the North Mountain Gully, a route in and out of the Swangums that almost no one ever took, reaching the edge of Roseborn unseen by another human soul.

  I knew the Jensens owned the last house on Grist Mill Road. There was a rail trail that ran alongside their land, so all I had to do was squeeze by a few bushes and there it was, Hannah’s home.

  Hours earlier, as my daddy had left the house waving his pistol, he’d threatened Hannah in the vilest terms imaginable against breathing a word to anyone. I just wanted her to know she was safe.

  For a few moments, I stood there, looking across the grounds at the house. It was late in the evening, that moment of twilight when the trees lose all sense of depth, becoming nothing more than cutouts against a fading sky. The lights from within Hannah’s house were burning amber, and I felt a sense of looking in on something pure, something I could never have, a happy family living in the perfect home.

  Later on it would feel to me as if I’d taken a snapshot of that scene, that precise second of my life, and I pictured it often while I was in prison, imagining myself growing up in those golden rooms, how differently everything might have turned out.

  While I was breathing it all in, I noticed some movement behind one of the windows, Hannah pacing around a room, gripping herself by the shoulders. I headed across the lawn, picked up some gravel from the driveway, and threw it so that it clattered the glass.

  Hannah came to the window, saw me, and clapped her hand to her mouth.

  When she came out through the back door, she looked like she’d been shaking for the last several hours, Hannah’s skin moonlight pale, her face marked by tears. She ran over to me gesturing to keep quiet before taking hold of my hand and leading me away past a pond, and then on toward a large outcrop of rock. Up ahead I could just about make out the opening of a cave. Hannah kept on pulling me silently until we were both inside and reached down to switch on a lantern, some of the cave lighting up, but the space so vast the lantern wasn’t strong enough to illuminate its farthest reaches. Then Hannah turned to me, wrapping her arms around herself and said, in the most fearful voice I’ve ever heard, Is he dead?

  I nodded at her, not realizing right away that she was talking about you, of course, Pete.

  Oh God, said Hannah, her words little more than squeals, he’s going to kill me, now he’s going to kill me, she said, and then started to shake feverishly, tears coming out of her eyes.

  Still with the same cold sense of calm I had up in the mountains, I grabbed hold of her by the shoulders. Hannah, stop, I said. No one’s going to kill you.

  I don’t think she heard what I said, she wasn’t even looking at me. I’m a witness, she said, her voice stuttering out through her tears. So he has to kill me, she said, he’s going to kill me. Hannah started rubbing the spot on her head where my daddy had pushed the barrel of his gun.

  Finally I caught on. Wait, Hannah, I said, he’s not going to kill you, I promise. He’s dead. It’s my daddy who’s dead.

  Hannah started to blink. What? she said, her face tilting up at me, an edge of disbelief in her voice.

  I promise you, Hannah, he’s dead. You’re safe. We’re all safe. My daddy’s dead.

  Looking down at her, I could see Hannah trying to work it all out, everything changing inside her head, a different world. Was it him? she said. The old…?

  No, I said. No, Hannah, I killed him. It was me.

  Hannah’s eyes froze on my face, and then, a moment later, she threw her arms around me, pressing one of her cheeks to my chest. Oh God, she said, I’m sorry, Matthew, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

  I lifted my hands to hold her, and in that moment, it felt to me that the two of us would be forever bound by this secret. For minutes our bodies were locked together as Hannah’s tears soaked into my T-shirt, and I stroked her head, the two of us bound in each other’s arms, bound by the knowledge we now shared.

  * * *

  WE SAT IN THAT CAVE for an hour, its cool breath lapping over us as I told Hannah everything that had happened since my daddy climbed out of his car for the very last time.

  When I reached the part about picking up the rock and bringing it down on my daddy’s skull, Hannah placed a hand on my knee to comfort me. You had to, Matthew, she said, you didn’t have any choice.

  It felt so good to be understood, Hannah’s hand on my knee like a candle in the dark.

  Someone will probably find him tomorrow, I said. There’s a trail right under the spot where I … And I guess there’ll be police. And a funeral. So I don’t know when I’ll get to see you again. Will you be all right, Hannah?

  She nodded and leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. Thank you, Matthew, she said.

  I should probably get home, I said.

  When I stood up, Hannah got to her feet as well, giving me a look as if she understood me, as if she knew everything I was and wanted to tell me that everything inside me was OK—no labels, no judgments, only compassion.

  Standing there in that dimly lit cave, I think I trusted her look, I really did believe Hannah was capable of understanding me. Which is not to say that she deliberately tricked me, I don’t think that’s what happened at all, but perhaps the person Hannah was deceiving at that moment, at that moment and for the next several weeks, was herself.

  * * *

  TWO HIKERS CAME ACROSS THE body the next morning.

  My mom had barely noticed my daddy’s absence from their bed—often he would sleep in the car after one of his special Friday nights—and after a perfectly normal breakfast, Tricky and I pounded our way up Grist Mill Road on our bikes as if it were any other Saturday morning, but before we could reach the parking lot, a police officer, his car blocking the road, turned us away without telling us why. The officer didn’t even pay me any special heed, so I guess he hadn’t realized whose son I was—because even if they couldn’t identify the body right away, my daddy’s car would’ve been the only one left in the parking lot overnight.

  The police didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that my daddy’s death was unsuspicious. There seemed to be a simple explanation—the day my daddy died he’d lost his job, gotte
n steaming drunk, and had been shooting his mouth off in O’Sullivan’s and his gun in the mountains. Probably the only issue the police stopped to consider was whether my daddy had drunkenly slipped or drunkenly thrown himself from the polished bedrock of Sunset Ridge. Perhaps the detectives who suspected him of killing Randy McCloud thought he’d suffered an overwhelming attack of guilt, that’s the sort of thing you might have thought if you didn’t know him.

  Anyway, whatever the police suspected, when they came to find my mom at our house Saturday night, the word they used was accident. I heard them clearly through the thin walls of my bedroom, Mom having sent me and little Billy packing when she saw uniforms approaching our front door, and after the officers told her what the result of that accident was, I heard a little shock come out of my mom, but not ever so much in the way of tears.

  In the days that followed, I wouldn’t say we were buried beneath an avalanche of bereavement cards. Those we did receive were all covered in sick-looking flowers, and it seemed to me that the messages written inside had about as much feeling behind them as scientific formulae, the same phrases repeated over and over.

  There was only one card I cared about. It arrived with my name on the envelope and no return address. My mom handed it over numbly, not even watching to see me open it, so I took it to my room. The card inside was plain and white, and in your elegant hand were written the words—

  If it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you

  A year later, it occurred to me to search for those words in the Bible. It didn’t take me long to find them, the first place I turned was the book of Matthew, and there they were.

  For years I’ve been wondering the same thing over and over. If Hannah had known the truth—that I loved you, but nothing had happened, and that you loved me, but nothing had happened—would it have made any difference? Would Hannah have accepted me for who I was, or would things still have gone the same way, several weeks later, up in the mountains?

  * * *

  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE night, several hours after my daddy’s funeral, something hit me like a blunt object, thudding into my thoughts while I was asleep, a nightmare in which I had a cold feeling of certainty that my daddy was alive, only I couldn’t see him, that my daddy was speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear him, that his belt buckle was ready, he was everywhere, waiting for me, and I would never escape.

  For the first few minutes of wakefulness, the feeling of being trapped by something I would never shake was all-consuming, and yet that single nightmare would turn out to be the closest I ever came to feeling any sense of guilt for what happened on that Friday, July 1982. If I’ve ever dreamed about my daddy since that night, I certainly don’t remember. I knew then, almost as strongly as I know now, that what I did that day was right. My daddy had already murdered Randy McCloud. How many other people might he have killed if I hadn’t pushed him off Sunset Ridge? However, waking up that morning after the funeral, my bedcovers soaked through with sweat, I did begin to feel an urgent need to talk to someone. The previous week had seemed to move at an agonizing pace, having to keep everything locked inside while soaking up little Billy’s tears and listening to my mother’s complaints about the unfairness of life.

  How I wish it were you that I’d gone to that morning, Pete, your cabin I’d chosen as a place of refuge—I should have realized I could spill out a thousand words to a hundred other human beings, and not one of them would understand me nearly as well as you, who understood even my blinks—but instead I left my bike in a patch of bushes by a rail trail and, reaching the house, picked up a handful of gravel. When Hannah came to her window, I was already walking toward the cave. It was eleven in the morning, tiny purple flowers in the grass winking at me, the air wet through with threats of thunderstorms.

  When Hannah got there, I was already sitting on the ground with my back pressed to the cave wall. Hannah sat down as well and nestled up to me. I guess I was still feeling the aftershocks of my nightmare, because the first words I said to her were, I killed him, Hannah. My daddy, I murdered him.

  Hannah rested her head on my shoulder. That’s not what I think, she said. I think you saved me, she said. And you saved that man as well.

  He’s called Pete, Hannah.

  OK, she said, but I don’t want to talk about him. I only want to talk about you from now on, she said.

  That’s how we began.

  I’ve never much seen the appeal of talking about myself. Even as a child, the idea of confession at church seemed like an essentially selfish act—selfish on both sides of the box—but back in that cave, never switching on the lantern in the daytime, something about the half-light that surrounded us made it easy to talk, as if darkness had the power to drag words out of me. Or maybe it was nothing to do with that cave, maybe it was Hannah who was in possession of that power. Just a few days ago, Pete, I found out that she became a journalist. Hannah Jensen is a crime reporter for the New York Mail. How many words has she dragged out of how many people?

  We would meet in that cave every two or three days, and when we did, I would tell Hannah stories about growing up in Queens, our thin cramped apartment, the airplanes roaring over our heads as they slipped down to LaGuardia, and how I thought if you stood on top of the tallest rooftop and jumped as high as you could, you might be able to reach up and touch one of those jet planes right under its belly. I told her about moving upstate and seeing Roseborn for the first time—on the drive up, I fell asleep in the back of the car and, not having been told where we were moving, simply assumed my daddy had taken us all the way back to Texas.

  I told her about rattlesnakes, skylakes, and ice caves, I told her about Tricky and our games, Tarzan, Houdini, and Deer Patrol. I don’t know how we filled all those hours, our lives so barely lived at that age, and the more I told Hannah about myself, the more my feelings for her deepened.

  I remember thinking that Hannah was feeling the same way toward me—and who knows, perhaps she was—but although we might have been together in that cave, I realize now that we were actually hundreds of miles apart, not only at different stages of life, but also different people altogether.

  Anyway, it felt immensely easy talking with Hannah. Somehow she managed to convey a sense that she was interested in everything I had to say, as if my words were sustenance, and she a hungry soul in need of saving.

  As July drained away and summer neared its peak, that dark cave became somewhere to retreat not only from recent events, but also from the fierce temperatures outside. Sitting with our backs to its cool stone flanks, I remember that one day I was telling Hannah all about the good air in the mountains, how you could make rainbows dance over the wet rocks and that you could swim in the lake and dry off in the sunlight. That’s the moment when the feeling came to me that I wanted to share the mountains with Hannah. Hey, why don’t we go up there tomorrow? I said. It’ll be great, I can show you around.

  Perhaps Hannah sensed that I had more than one motive for wanting to be with her in the Swangums—for a while I’d been thinking about kissing her again, only somehow it would have felt wrong in that cave, a place that was meant only for talking.

  OK, she replied, hesitantly, but you should invite Patrick as well.

  Why? I said.

  Because he’s your best friend, said Hannah.

  Maybe you’re my best friend now.

  He’ll be upset if he finds out you went back to your secret place without him.

  So what?

  Hannah looked down, not saying anything, so I relented, figuring it wouldn’t be so hard to find some time alone with her up in the mountains.

  A few hours later I telephoned Tricky, and pretty soon everything was arranged.

  ROSEBORN, NEW YORK, 2008

  It is late afternoon when they leave, Lizzy and Katie running after the car, still arrrrring and waving as it pulls out the drive, McCluskey arrrrring as well, having spent the last five hours in the role of Cap
tain Blackbeard.

  But you don’t have a beard and your hair is all white.

  Arrrrr, but fat beardless old guy is just my disguise. For I be a pirate with a price on his head, girls.

  Hannah had been sitting at the kitchen table all the while, talking to Jen, drinking wine as the swashbuckling games spun around her.

  Now she waves a final goodbye and winds up the window. Thanks for playing along, Mike, says Hannah.

  No problemo, Aitch. But Christ, do those girls love a treasure hunt or what?

  I thought you were going to keel over at the end of the fourth hour.

  Nah, that’s nothing compared to having three boys. Plus, you know, with boys you gotta beat them at everything as well.

  What?

  Sure. You ever need to know the darker arts of winning Uno every time, I’m your man.

  You cheated your own children at cards?

  Fuckin A, Aitch. How else do you think those boys got their cojones of steel?

  Their what? Tommy teaches pre-K.

  Right, but he rules those four-year-olds with an iron fist.

  Hannah tries to hide her laughter from McCluskey, turning to look out the window, the Swangums a white band on the horizon like a cloud bank that has sunk from the sky, the ridge seeming such an unlikely setting for nightmares right now, and then they drive past the park entrance with its twin millstones, on toward Main Street, and she turns back to McCluskey.

  So, now that you no longer have to play Captain Blackbeard, tell me what happened with Matthew, she says.

  McCluskey rubs his nose back and forth, and performs a long shrug. The guy offered me pancakes, he says, not dropping his shoulders until he’s done speaking.

  Pancakes? says Hannah. Anything else?

  Sure, says McCluskey. You know, it’s complicated, Aitch.

  Mike, come on, you’re stalling. Just say it.

  McCluskey starts to act like he’s interested in reading all the store signs they’re passing, finally speaking at the end of another long shrug. So there was this old guy in the house, he says, and the guy was just a friend of his, right? Only it turns out this friend has Alzheimer’s, and Matthew’s paying a nurse to look after him full-time.