On the Loose

by Andrew Coburn

  Bobby's eyes hinted that he had something to say about that but never would. He simply gazed at his father and said, "I'm a killer."

  Harry heard the ring of a school bell from a distant part of the building. He heard the traffic of feet in corridors. He remembered a teacher at Pearson Grammar School, Miss Mulvey, who wore frilly blouses over wire-cup bras, which made her breasts fascinating to eighth-grade boys. He said, "Yes, I know."

  "Don't you want to ask me anything?"

  "Would you tell me?"

  Bobby swaggered. "No."

  Reaching the point again where he felt he might fall apart, Harry stepped back. His concern for himself began to outweigh his obligation to Bobby.

  "I don't want you to come here again," Bobby said.

  "Why not?" He felt frustration and anger. "For Christ's sake, why not?"

  "This is my home," Bobby said. "Not yours."

  Bobby was all smiles. Sitting with Dibble on a bleacher bench in the gym, he said, "You were right. Duck is OK."

  "Told you he would be. You don't listen."

  They were watching a basketball game, two teams from Dormitory C. The best players were of color, their bodies serpents, their movements nature's gift to the game, in which the two white players looked out of step, stripped of purpose. One of them threw up an air ball.

  "He says he prayed. Is there a God, Dibs?"

  "Sure, I see him in dreams. He's a black guy like me, but he doesn't see me. I think he's trying to pass."

  "Jesus wasn't black."

  "Who says?"

  A whistle blew. Ernest had fouled somebody. He wasn't the best player, but he was the most aggressive. His shaved head, hooded eyes, and tattooed arm made him menacing. Dibble rolled his eyes.

  "He shouldn't be playing. He lost his privileges."

  Bobby munched on a candy bar. "What did he do?"

  "Don't eat when you talk to me. I don't want you spitting my way. He broke a new kid's jaw for playing his radio too loud."

  Bobby crunched up the candy wrapper and lowered his voice. "He bothered Duck again."

  "How so?"

  "You know."

  Ernest threw for three points and missed, but the ball bounced off the rim and was in his hands again. He zigzagged, faked, leaped, and stuffed the ball in. His mates high-fived him, but the ref called him for an offensive foul. Dibble frowned.

  "Why didn't he tell me?"

  "He's ashamed."

  Dibble shrugged. "I can't be everywhere at once."

  In their room Dibble read a newspaper. He was a current event, up on everything. Then he looked through books he'd told Bobby to bring him from the library. Three were by Dickens. He had read them before, several times.

  Bobby said, "How come you like him so much?"

  "He writes about the good and bad, nothing in between. The bad always pretend they're good, but you know they'll be brought to their knees in the end. That's what keeps you reading. You want to see the bastards grovel." Dibble stretched out on his cot and doubled a pillow to prop his head. "Tell me, Sawhill, did you really pop two people?"

  Bobby nodded. "I really did."

  "Both women, right?"

  For the first time since arriving at Sherwood, Bobby felt an invasion of his innermost privacy, a threat to his balance. "Why can't things be done without a reason?"

  "There's always a reason." Dibble smiled. "But that doesn't mean you have to know it."

  Bobby had an image of Mrs. Bullard, the lady with the roses, but he had no attachment to the memory and let it drift away. The image of the other woman, young, pretty, lingered a second or two longer. "Who did you kill, Dibs?"

  "Doesn't matter."

  "But you killed someone."

  "I didn't pull the trigger," Dibble said. "Somebody else did, but I was there. When I kill, it'll be somebody important."

  "Then you don't know how it feels."

  "How does it feel, Sawhill?"

  "Like you're someplace else."

  The two of them still awake, Bobby spoke through the dark. "Would you kill Ernest?"

  Dibble drew a sharp breath. "You didn't listen."

  "If he touched me, I'd kill him."

  "You don't have perspective, Sawhill. Doing Ernest would put your future in the joint, and you wouldn't have one there, take my word for it."

  Bobby pulled the covers under his chin. Often he had no ability to express his feelings, to spring words from his heart.

  He said simply, "You're good to me, Dibs."

  "I got honor. Rest of the guys here don't. And you, Sawhill, you got hang-ups. Grissom says the biggest is about your mother. Is that right?"

  "I don't talk about her."

  "What's the problem? She's dead, right?"

  "She's inside me."

  "My mother burned to death. She was soot on a fireman's face. I tell it as it is, Sawhill. You oughta try doing that."

  "She was sick inside. Cancer."

  "There you go."

  Bobby didn't want to go on talking about her and lay quiet. He heard rain rattling on the window and wondered what month it was. He had forgotten. "What else did Mr. Grissom say about me?"

  "Said you're emotionally immature. I could've told him that."

  "He told me I was one of his best boys. He said I'm going to have a treat and you'll tell me about it when it's time. When's it going to be time?"

  "When I think you can handle it. Grissom wants to keep us all straight, so every once in a while we get a treat. Big time."

  "What's the treat, Dibs? Can't you tell me?"

  "You saying you can't guess? Jesus, Sawhill. It's a woman."

  Bobby went silent. He pulled the covers over his face. He was confused, hurt. After several moments he spoke through the blanket. "What about what you and I do?"

  "That's kid stuff," Dibble said. "Go to sleep."

  A towel wrapped around his loins, Ernest lay on a bench in the shower room. Dozing, he looked like a molting cobra with skin covering its eyes. The eyes opened. "Whatcha looking at, Duck?"

  Duck kept his distance. "You're not supposed to be here. It's not your shower room."

  "You gonna put me out? Come let me see you do it."

  "You wouldn't talk this way, Dibs was here."

  "But he ain't here. Just you and me. Heard you were sick, Duck. Even heard you weren't gonna make it."

  "God made me better."

  "Nice fella, God. He must like you. I like you too." Ernest raised his head and motioned with it. "Come do what I want."

  Duck was trembling and tried not to show it. He tried to hold back tears. "What d'you want me for? You gonna have a woman pretty soon."

  "Can't wait."

  The tears came. "I don't wanna be hurt again."

  "What's a little pain between friends?" Ernest stripped off the towel and pitched his voice high, like a girl's. "Come please me."

  Duck began backing off slowly, then swiftly.

  Ernest leaped up in a pretense of pursuit. "I'll get you later, Duck. Count on it."

  Some of the boys from Dormitory B, ages sixteen through eighteen, were already in the visitor's room. The women arrived presently, six of them, chatting and laughing. Two were white, one was Hispanic, and the other three were African American. Dibble appeared. He was in charge and moved among them. He knew them all, and they knew him and liked him. One of the white women ran -a hand up his arm.

  "You gonna be one of mine, Dibs?"

  "Not this time," he said with a false smile of regret. "But you know I love you."

  "Sure," she said mockingly. Her name was Virginia, her blond hair fool's gold. She was twentysix years old, her anus abused, her vagina a gully, her insides awaiting a hysterectomy. "I know who you want. You want Sharon."

  He glanced over his shoulder and glimpsed Bobby poised in the doorway, hesitant to enter. "That's the kid rooming with me. Wet behind the ears."

  "I'll take him," Virginia said quickly and then slowly frowned over Dibble's lack of expression. "Wh
at's the matter? Ain't I good enough?"

  "It's his first time, Ginny. You understand."

  "Yeah, you're a real prick, Dibble."

  Sharon was the other white woman, her breasts raised and pinched together under a tight top cut low. She had a moody voice and showgirl legs. "I'll take five, Dibs, counting you, and no more."

  Dibble gave a backward glance. "The kid standing at the door, his name is Bobby. He's fourteen. I want you to take him first."

  "Ahead of you?" She smiled. "Since when did you wait in line?"

  "He's a first-timer, what can I tell you?"

  "Four kids already had their hands up. What do you want me to do?"

  "Drop one of 'em."

  She motioned the boys forward and, her finger jabbing from face to face, said, "eeny, meeny, miney, moe. Out goes Y-0-U." The boy she counted out, on purpose, had holes in his pallid face from old acne scars and red welts from new disturbances. "Don't worry, kiddo. Virginia will take you."

  Dibble sauntered to the doorway and leaned toward Bobby. "I got you the best. Her name's Sharon, the one looking at us. Take her to the room."

  There was no color in Bobby's face. "I don't know if I want to."

  "You got no choice," Dibble said. "Those are the rules."

  In the room Bobby stood rigid. Sharon shed her shoulder bag and, with a toe to her heel, removed a pump, then the other one. "You scared, Bobby? Nothing to be scared of."

  "I've never done it with a woman."

  "Same way you do it with a girl. Ever do it with a girl?"

  "No."

  "Just little-boy stuff, huh? Not to worry." She traced long fingers over her hips. "I'm wearing pastel-blue panties, would you like to see them?"

  He didn't dare say, didn't know for sure, and kept his stance rigid when she lifted her short skirt. Her underpants were little more than a label, which his eyes gulped up. She undid her skirt and let it fall.

  "Never seen a woman naked?"

  "Pictures," he murmured.

  She had little more to take off. Unclothed, her body was an event. Her breasts quaked, her belly rippled, her hips expanded. Whipping her hair back, she said, "Well?"

  He couldn't speak, not until she stepped toward the wrong cot. "That's Dibs's bed."

  "I know. Let's use it."

  He started to panic. "Did he say we could?"

  "Dibs and I are old buddies."

  She lay flat on Dibble's cot and smiled up at him. He saw her pubic patch as an abandoned robin's nest. When she parted her legs, he saw it as a monkey's mouth.

  "Not still scared, are you?"

  "No," he said in a dry voice.

  "Your clothes, Bobby. It's better without them."

  Slowly he began tugging, yanking, at one point tripping over himself. Naked, his face smarting, he shivered in the overheated room. Her smile grew.

  "You sure you're only fourteen?"

  "I'm almost fifteen."

  "We'll cuddle first. Would you like that?"

  He moved in the instant and was in her arms. Eyes closed, he breathed her in. His nose nudged her skin, and his fingers crept to warm places. Everything was solid and real and yet soft and dreamlike, as if two worlds, both lost, had locked together. She freed an arm.

  "What do you want mama to do?"

  He didn't know. Anything she did would be fine. His mouth found a nipple.

  "So that's what you want." When she reached below, he spurted.

  The history quiz, true-or-false variety, was easy. Bobby finished fast and sat back in his student chair, the paper on the desktop arm where Duck could see it. Grades on their papers were always identical except when Duck copied wrong.

  Duck whispered, "Thanks, Bobby."

  Moments later the teacher collected the papers and told the class to open their books to chapter twelve and read the first five pages to themselves.

  His face in his book, Duck whispered, "It was good, huh, Bobby?"

  Bobby barely nodded. Some things were too private to talk about. He had backed off even with Dibble.

  Duck leaned sideways. "I had Virginia. She's always nice to me. Who'd you have?"

  The name was too precious to come off his tongue, too sweet to release. "I had the best."

  "Then you had Sharon. You lucky dog."

  He had a vivid and sustaining memory of her arms around him as if she were shelter, though she was still not entirely real in his mind.

  "Dibs must've got her for you."

  "He let me go first," Bobby said and, lapsing into silence, closed his eyes.

  Duck turned an unread page of his book and then leaned sideways again. "Whatcha thinking about, Bobby?"

  "Her. I love her."

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was a winter when too much snow fell. The town went dumb with it. The cold made the snow seem like stone. It was as if the dead were being buried twice, Reverend Stottle said to his visitor. The visitor was Trish Becker, who had come to his house in a ski cap and full-length mink. She had removed the cap but not the mink. They were seated in a room with drafts. The room, which had a mood of its own, brought out the worst in the furniture, dulled colors, hid highlights, and resented the two windows. The windows overlooked the rear of the church.

  "I can't stand shrinks," Trish said, "so I've come to you."

  The reverend could not have been more pleased. He had little contact with residents of the Heights, who, if they went to church at all, went to churches in Andover, usually Christ Episcopal. "What's the problem?"

  "It's Harry. It's his son. It's everything." She pushed her hair back. "For the first time in my life I have a fear of dying."

  "Are you ill?"

  "Physically, no. Mentally, I'm a fucking wreck. Excuse the language."

  Secretly he was pleased she used it. It made him feel more worldly without disturbing his spirituality. Indeed he felt his spirituality increase. "Dying," he said, "has a bad name, undeservedly. I believe that when the end comes we'll dissolve into music we can't hear while we're flesh."

  "I don't see it that way. I see a hole in the ground, I see the dark." She stuffed her hands in the pockets of her mink. "Besides, you're missing the point."

  He didn't want to miss anything. He wanted to help, to heal. His congregation he had endowed with a tribal quality. He was the medicine man. "What is the point?"

  "Nobody can get away from what the kid did to that woman, possibly to two women, if the chief of police is right. His father is tearing himself up inside. Harry's an alcoholic, you know."

  "I feel a grave responsibility," Reverend Stottle said. "I married you and Harry."

  "Don't fret about it. I knew exactly what I was getting into, but now I don't know if I can deal with it. I feel like a coward."

  Each looked up at the solid sound of footsteps. The reverend's wife entered with a silver service of coffee and slivers of cake. Trish accepted coffee but passed on the cake.

  "You remember Mrs. Sawhill," Reverend Stottle said, accepting both coffee and cake, his sweet tooth showing.

  "I've kept my own name," Trish said. "It's Becker."

  "We don't see you in church," Mrs. Stottle said. "Of course we don't see much of Harry either."

  "I'm a Lutheran. Lapsed. I can't speak for Harry."

  Mrs. Stottle placed the tray nearby. Purposely plain, she wore a thick cardigan and no makeup. "That's a lovely fur you're wearing. Why don't I turn the heat up, Austin. Then Mrs.-Miz Becker-can take her coat off."

  The heat raised, his wife gone, Reverend Stottle helped himself to another slice of cake. He was built bony and had only a bit of a pot. Trish kept her mink on but opened it wide. Filigreed stretch pants showed off the expanse of her thighs.

  "I don't want to desert Harry," she said. "I don't want to leave him with nothing. I don't know what to do."

  Viewing her thighs, Reverend Stottle experienced a sinful excitement he told himself he didn't want. A romantic, he imagined rapture in an idyllic setting, perhaps on a secluded bank at Paget's
Pond. Fearing his thoughts were diminishing him, he said, "I sense a strength in you, perhaps a strength you don't know you have."

  "Nice words, I hope they're true."

  "Marriages are sacred, connections are everything. The world cannot exist with ampersands."

  "More nice words. How do I make them fit?" She put aside her coffee cup, his wife's finest china, and crossed her legs as if, he fancied, for him to worship. She said, "I don't want the marriage to go under, me with it. I have to think of myself."

  Nervously he contemplated a third slice of cake, the thinnest of the two remaining. No willpower, he gave in.

  "Don't make yourself sick, Reverend."

  Crumbs on his mouth, he spoke quickly. "I think you and Harry should get away for a while. Give yourself a chance at peace of mind."

  "It's hard to get him to go anywhere."

  "And I recommend Alcoholics Anonymous, strongly."

  "He promises to go but doesn't."

  Her voice was crusting over, which alarmed him. She was escaping, eluding him. He dragged his cushioned chair closer and openly admired her features. Her knee burned his hand. "I must work closely with both of you," he said.

  "What?"

  He gave her a deep look. His hair was wispy, hers blond and thick. His chin was dented, hers smooth and perfect. "We must all get in tune," he said in a hushed voice. "Before there was a world there was music waiting to be played, language waiting to be spoken."

  "Are you coming on to me, Reverend?"

  "Call me Austin." He imagined her elegant even on the toilet. "Yes. I mean, no."

  She pulled herself erect. "I'll take your word for it. Whatever it's worth."

  "Is she gone?" Sarah Stottle asked.

  "Yes," the reverend said, standing behind his chair, which was back in its proper place. He moved to the thermostat and lowered it.

  "What did she want?"

  "She's afraid of dying."

  "We're all afraid of that. Is she sick?"

  "Her soul is suffering."

  "Really," Sarah said skeptically. "I wonder how many minks were skinned for that coat of hers. She sure looked warm and comfy in it."