by Newman,James
“I didn’t say anything to you about it, because I didn’t want you to be mad at me. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe you—what you saw out there and all—but I had to see the place for myself. I had to see if they left anything behind, you know? Like, evidence or something. Plus, I wanted to make sure you didn’t leave anything behind.”
“I did,” I said.
“Yeah. You sure did! Do you realize how lucky you are?”
“Not lucky,” I wept softly into the receiver. “I have you.”
“It’s okay, Kyle,” Dan said. “Burner’s safe. The sheriff doesn’t know a thing.”
“God, Dan…I can’t believe it…”
“Who loves you, bro?”
“You do,” I cried. “You do.”
“And don’t you ever forget it.”
“…all this time…I thought he knew…”
“Shh. It’s okay. What are big brothers for, right?”
“Where is he? Where’s Burner?”
“In the storage shed,” Dan said. So nonchalantly. I could almost see him throwing a thumb over his shoulder, giving me a little wink. “I could barely fit him in there, with that piece of shit lawnmower Mom bought last summer. But he’s waitin’ for ya.”
“Wow,” I said. “Oh, Dan…”
“You know what this means, Kyle,” he said softly. “You have no excuses now. You’ve got to…”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got to.”
“You’ll do it, then?”
“Yes. I’ll do it, Dan. I promise.”
I still could not believe it. It all seemed like a dream. So surreal…
“Well, sport,” Dan said after another minute or so, shattering my reverie of indescribable relief, “I guess I’d better get off here. Lemme shout at Mom for a sec, would ya? And I’ll talk to you again soon.”
“You’d better,” I said.
I turned toward the living room.
“Mom?”
Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Her hoarse snore filled the living room.
“Mom!” I said, louder.
Still, she did not budge.
“I think she’s out,” I said into the phone. “Probably for the night.”
“Has she been drinking?” Dan asked.
“What do you think?”
“Don’t worry about it, then. I’ll catch her later, I guess.”
“Okay. I love you, Dan. Thanks again.”
“Love you too. Bye now.”
I waited until I heard the click of a severed connection on his end before I hung up the phone.
I walked back into our living room then, and despite the fact that Mom was once again passed out—probably dreaming of her new lover, a man who had betrayed us all and shit on my father’s memory—I found myself smiling from ear to ear for the first time in several days. I couldn’t believe it. Burner was safe after all! If what my brother said was true, Sheriff Baker had no clue whatsoever that I had witnessed the dark deeds he and his son committed out there in the Snake River Woods.
That cinched it. Dan was right.
I had the upper hand in Baker’s evil game.
And it was time to take care of business.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The game had changed. My whole world had changed, now that I knew my bicycle had been returned safely back home where it belonged.
I checked, just to be sure, as soon as I got off the phone. Not because I did not trust my big brother, of course, but because I couldn’t wait to see Burner.
It seemed to take me forever to walk out to the storage shed. The wet, knee-high grass lapped at the backs of my legs, and I wondered how long it would be until Mom made me mow it since Dan had shirked his duty.
And then I could think of nothing else but Burner as I opened the shed’s heavy wooden door. Its rusty hinges squeaked like the gateway to an ancient tomb.
There Burner sat, just as Dan has promised. His shiny blue body stood out against the dusty darkness of the storage shed, amidst Dad’s old tools, the toys my brother and I had outgrown years ago, and the battered old lawnmower Dan always hated trying to crank worse than he hated using it.
He was safe. My bicycle had been waiting out there for me all along. Locked up. Hidden.
He had never been in the hands of a murderer.
I was safe.
Burner seemed to wink at me when the beam of my flashlight struck him. As if to say, Where have you been, old friend? I was starting to feel a bit lonely in here…
I fell to my knees beside him, almost numb with relief.
“Burner,” I said. “You’re home…”
I sat like that, on my knees next to him in a pitch-black room that smelled so much like grass and gasoline, for so long I lost track of time. It felt like hours.
Finally, I wheeled Burner out of there, back onto the front porch where he belonged. It was in that spot, in the far left corner behind the weathered old porch swing no one used any more since Dad died, where my bicycle had always waited for me in happier times.
I had never been so happy. I could not wait to ride him again. I thought about taking off right then, speeding down Midnight’s dark streets atop my best friend in the world like we used to do when I was supposed to be in bed.
But I didn’t.
Because I had things to do.
Now that I no longer had to worry about Sheriff Burt Baker scouring Midnight for the owner of that sleek blue Schwinn Scrambler with the razor fender and the BMX-style handlebars—if he did not already know, if he had not been using his foul relationship with my mother to toy with me like a cat toys with a mouse before it tears the smaller creature limb from limb—I knew Dan was right. My big brother always was right, and he had proved it once again.
While doing the right thing would not be easy, I had no more excuses. No more could I sit and allow an innocent man take the blame for what I knew that son-of-a-bitch had done.
****
Shortly after Mom rose from her coma on the couch and retired to her bed (without saying a word to me, but of course I couldn’t have cared less), I sneaked into the kitchen.
Using only the dim moonlight coming in through the window over the kitchen sink, I slid open the drawer beside the refrigerator where we kept our phone book. I dusted the book off with one hand, and several small black rat turds fell onto the floor from atop its cover.
I quickly rifled through the book, found what I was looking for right away.
There was only one Mike Linder in Midnight. A Mike W. Linder, Jr. at 2777 Whitman Way.
I took a deep breath.
And picked up the phone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Hello?”
The voice was young. Female. One of Deputy Linder’s daughters, I assumed. She sounded very sleepy, as if I the telephone had awakened her.
I swallowed, suddenly feeling very self-conscious.
“Er…um…c-could I speak to Mike, please?”
“It’s almost eleven-thirty. May I ask who’s calling?”
I froze. I hadn’t expected that.
I deepened my voice, changed it as best I could.
“Umm,” I said. “Could you tell him…umm…Bob is calling, please?”
I rolled my eyes, felt stupid. But maybe it would work. Just maybe.
“Okay,” said Mike’s daughter. She sounded disinterested, but not rude. “Hold on a second.”
Clunk. She set down the phone, went to get her father.
I waited, felt my heart slamming in my chest like a big bass drum. I feared I might start hyperventilating by the time Mike came to the telephone.
About a minute later, someone picked up the phone. Mike’s daughter again. She sighed, as if she had better things to do than play answering service for her father.
“Bob who?” she said.
Crap!
“Uhhh…” I didn’t know how to answer that. “B-Bob…Bob S-Smith.”
I said the first thing I could think of, and as soon a
s it fell from my lips I cringed, aware of how horribly contrived it sounded. How made-up-on-the-spot.
This wasn’t going to work.
“Hold on,” she said.
I held on.
After what felt like forever, Mike Linder came to the phone. I heard him mumble to her as he approached the receiver, “Only Bob Smith I know died two years ago, honey,” but then he was as polite as always when his deep, friendly voice said to me, “Mike Linder speaking. What can I do you for?”
“H-hey,” I said.
“Hello. Who is this?”
“Hey,” I said again. I cleared my throat. “L-listen.”
“Pardon?”
More firmly: “Listen.”
“Who is this—”
“Don’t believe what the liar says,” I told him. I spoke just above a whisper, in the deepest voice I could muster at twelve years old. “Calvin Mooney never laid a finger on that girl.”
“Huh? What—”
“Sheriff Baker is a murderer. He snapped Cassie Rourke’s neck, after Henry beat her. I saw it.”
Silence. I could not even hear Linder breathing. The phone line cracked and popped between us, a sound like distant flames lapping hungrily at the respect and admiration Sheriff Baker had won the past few years from the citizens of Polk County.
I waited. Let it sink in for a few second. I clinched my free hand into a tight white fist as I listened to the midnight rain begin to fall harder, batting against the kitchen window like hail.
“Do you understand?” I said finally, when nothing was forthcoming from Mike Linder.
For a second or two, I thought he might have hung up on me.
When he did speak again, his voice was tense. As if he did not want to believe what I told him, yet something in what I said rang of horrible truth.
“That’s one hefty accusation, you know. Burt Baker’s a good man.”
“It’s true,” I said. “And no, he’s not.”
“Who is this anyway?” he asked.
“A friend.”
Thunder rumbled above my house. I wondered if lightning could travel through phones, electrocuting anyone fool enough to talk on one in the middle of a storm.
I heard him swallow. “Assuming this isn’t some kinda sick joke…how the hell would you know this? You have proof?”
“I saw it myself,” I replied. “Saturday night, after the Apple Gala.”
“Christ.”
“It happened in the Snake River Woods. Out at the old shack. Do you know the place, Mike?”
“I’m familiar it,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “Look into this. Please. Cassie Rourke wasn’t raped. Henry Baker couldn’t rape her if he tried, I don’t think. But he did beat her. And Sheriff Baker killed her.”
“This is all too much too fast,” Mike said. “Who are you?”
I ignored his question. “Check into it, Mike,” I said. “Please. Don’t let Burt Baker get away with this. He’s a murderer. Not Calvin Mooney.”
“But how—”
“Calvin Mooney never hurt a fly,” I said.
And I hung up.
My breath gushed out of me like something solid. I leaned over the kitchen sink, felt weak but at the same time oh-so-proud of what I had done.
I couldn’t believe it.
I had done it.
I stood there over the sink, staring out at the storm, for at least half an hour. I couldn’t remember the last time I found solace in such sounds, the way the rain and the thunder seemed to envelop me in a warm pocket of comfort that I wanted to huddle inside forever.
What happens now? I wondered.
I waited. Smiling. Knowing it could only be good.
AUGUST 16
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Doing the right thing had changed my outlook on life entirely. I felt like a new man!
Gone was the melancholy stupor that had been crushing me since the night of August 5. I could rest easy, knowing that justice would soon be served. Morning couldn’t arrive fast enough. I assumed it was only a matter of hours before Mom called me into the living room and we both listened as a WHLP anchorman explained how Calvin Mooney was a free man and Sheriff Burt Baker had been arrested for murder.
I wondered if I would be called upon to testify. Strangely enough, I felt nothing more than a twinge of anxiety at the thought of having to do that. Perhaps I would be a hero, when all was said and done! Just like my brother had been when he won his scholarship to FSU, when he took the Stokely High Yellowjackets to the State Championship and his picture was on the front page of the Midnight Sun not once but twice in one week. I nearly felt invincible as I basked in the warm afterglow of knowing I had finally done the right thing with a simple phone call to Mike Linder. While my fear did not dissipate entirely, of course, it seemed to linger in the back of my mind more like a distant memory of something slightly unpleasant than any wicked black dilemma that had ruled my life for the past eleven days.
Deputy Linder would protect me. I was sure of that. He was going to make everything right again.
My soul seemed renewed with an almost intoxicating vigor. I wondered if Mom experienced a similar heady rush every time she twisted the lid off a brand new bottle of liquor.
I couldn’t wait to tell Dan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Elvis is dead,” Mom informed me that afternoon.
I hadn’t intended to speak with her. I was on my way to the kitchen for a snack of cheese and crackers when her voice came to me from the living room.
I peeked in there to see her sitting on the couch. Her hair was unkempt, tangled. She looked very pale. A new bottle of Wild Turkey whiskey sat between her legs. It sloshed like the belly of a sated pet as she brought it to her lips.
I thought I was seeing things at first, that it was merely the reflection of the rain streaking down the big bay window across the room, but when Mom returned the bottle to the space between her legs I realized she was crying. Tears streamed down her face, and as she spoke to me a huge snot bubble swelled and popped in her left nostril.
“Mom?” I said.
“Elvis is dead,” she said again. “I can’t believe it.”
I stared at her, confused. A book lay open on her knee, face-down. A worn-out old copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. She must have been reading it before she saw the news…
I followed her moist, red-eyed gaze to the television, where a grainy still photograph of the hefty King of Rock n’ Roll, clad in glittering gold sunglasses and a white suit sparkling with a hundred rhinestones, faded away to a small yellow caption on a stark black background: ELVIS AARON PRESLEY, JAN. 8,1935-AUG. 16, 1977.
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
I did not mean to sound as if I didn’t care, of course. But then, I didn’t.
I cringed when Mom blew her nose on the baggy pink T-shirt she was wearing (MOTHERS MAKE THE WORLD GO ‘ROUND, read the logo over her breasts) and then I moved off down the hallway, frowning.
“What a sad, sad day,” I heard Mom say behind me.
****
I don’t know why I entered Dan’s bedroom instead of my own that evening. Perhaps I was merely trapped in a daze, wondering what the hell was happening to my mother.
Sometimes I wondered if she wasn’t losing her mind, bit by bit.
Mom had never liked Elvis. In fact, on more than one occasion, I had heard her claim he was a “pig,” and that his music “turned her frigging stomach.” Yet she wept for him that evening worse than I had seen her mourn anyone since the day we buried my father.
I shook my head, decided I would never figure her out, so why even try.
Once again, Dan’s room felt like a warm sanctuary for me. It always seemed to set my mind at ease, going in there, and in some strange way I imagined my big brother was right there with me any time I ventured into his private domain.
I rifled through his albums for a few minutes, but couldn’t find anything I was in the mood to listen to. I shrugged,
sighed, fell onto Dan’s bed and just lay there like that, staring at the ceiling with a wistful smile upon my face. I allowed the roar of the rain outside to fill the room, my head, my entire world.
Things were going to get better, I knew. And fast. I wondered if Deputy Linder had already confronted his superior. If he had let Calvin Mooney go with a pat on the back and a soft-spoken apology seconds before he slapped cold steel handcuffs on the real killers. On Burt and Henry Baker. I imagined him reading Sheriff Baker his rights, and that made me smile.
Knowing that everything was going to be okay plus the constant hum of the rain against the house soon worked like a powerful sedative upon me. I could not remember the last time I felt so relaxed, so calm…
I rolled over, breathed deeply of my brother’s scent on his bedspread.
Before long, the sound of the midnight rain faded, and I fell fast asleep.
****
“SHERIFF BURT BAKER ARRESTED FOR MURDER!” read the headline of the Midnight Sun in my dream. Its font denoted a celebratory tone, the text spelled out in pink and yellow and orange and red cartoon-letters surrounded by firework-like blasts of the same colors. Swirls and sparkles and bright gay stars, like a party invitation.
Also in my dream: Burt Baker. On his knees in the town common. Surrounded by every last citizen of Midnight.
They were stoning him.
The sheriff thrashed about, begging for mercy, but even the town’s youngest toddlers—children barely old enough to walk—were getting in on the action as the clouds above my hometown rolled away and the sun beat down upon us like the proud smile of a great, fiery god.
Baker screamed as he was pummeled about the groin by a series of sharp rocks thrown by Deputy Mike Linder’s twin daughters. They giggled sweetly as they worked.
At some point he turned to look at me where I stood within the crowd.
“Does this make it all better?” he asked me, through an ugly mask of blood and dirt and snot and tears. “Do you think this brings her back?”
“No,” I said to the killer. “It doesn’t.”
I hefted a rock of my own.
“But, man, it feels so good.”
****
