Part 3 (1/2)

”Oh, Bobby,” he says. ”What are you doing up, young man?”

”Nothing,” I tell him. ”Dad?”

”Yes, son.”

”Maybe you better come back to bed. Okay?”

”Maybe I had,” he says. ”I just came out here for a drink of water, but I seem to have gotten turned around in the darkness. Yes, maybe I better had.”

I take his hand and lead him down the hall to his room. The grandfather clock chimes the quarter hour.

”Sorry,” our father says.

I get him into bed. ”There,” I say. ”Okay?”

”Perfect. Could not be better.”

”Okay. Good night.”

”Good night. Bobby?”

”Uh-huh?”

”Why don't you stay a minute?” he says. ”We could have ourselves a talk, you and me. How would that be?”

”Okay,” I say. I sit on the edge of his mattress. His bedside clock ticks off the minutes.

I can hear the low rasp of his breathing. Around our house, the Ohio night chirps and buzzes. The small gray finger of Carlton's stone pokes up among the others, within sight of the angel's blank white eyes. Above us, airplanes and satellites sparkle. People are flying even now toward New York or California, to take up lives of risk and invention.

I stay until our father has worked his way into a muttering sleep.

Carlton's girlfriend moved to Denver with her family a month before. I never learned what it was she'd whispered to him. Though she'd kept her head admirably during the accident, she lost her head afterward. She cried so hard at the funeral that she had to be taken away by her mother-an older, redder-haired version of her. She started seeing a psychiatrist three times a week. Everyone, including my parents, talked about how hard it was for her, to have held a dying boy in her arms at that age. I'm grateful to her for holding my brother while he died, but I never once heard her mention the fact that though she had been through something terrible, at least she was still alive and going places. At least she had protected herself by trying to warn him. I can appreciate the intricacies of her pain. But as long as she was in Cleveland, I could never look her straight in the face. I couldn't talk about the wounds she suffered. I can't even write her name.

JONATHAN.

O UR UR seventh-grade cla.s.s had been moved that September from scattered elementary schools to a single centralized junior high, a colossal blond brick building with its name suspended over its main entrance in three-foot aluminum letters spare and stern as my own deepest misgivings about the life conducted within. I had heard the rumors: four hours of homework a night, certain cla.s.ses held entirely in French, razor fights in the bathrooms. It was childhood's end. seventh-grade cla.s.s had been moved that September from scattered elementary schools to a single centralized junior high, a colossal blond brick building with its name suspended over its main entrance in three-foot aluminum letters spare and stern as my own deepest misgivings about the life conducted within. I had heard the rumors: four hours of homework a night, certain cla.s.ses held entirely in French, razor fights in the bathrooms. It was childhood's end.

The first day at lunch, a boy with dark hair hanging almost to his shoulders stood behind my friend Adam and me in the cafeteria line. The boy was ragged and wild-looking: an emanation from the dangerous heart of the school itself.

”Hey,” he said.

I could not be certain whether he was speaking to me, to Adam, or to someone else in the vicinity. His eyes, which were pink and watery, appeared to focus on something mildly surprising that hovered near our feet.

I nodded. It seemed a decent balance between my fear of looking sn.o.bbish and my dread of seeming overeager. I had made certain resolutions regarding a new life. Adam, a businesslike barrel-shaped boy I had known since second grade, dabbed at an invisible spot on his starched plaid s.h.i.+rt. He was the son of a taxidermist, and possessed a precocious mistrust of the unfamiliar.

We slowly advanced in the line, holding yellow plastic trays.

”Some joint, huh?” the boy said. ”I mean, like, how long you guys in for?”

This was definitely addressed to us, though his gaze had not yet meandered up to address our eyes. Now I was justified in looking at him. He had a broad handsome face with a thin nose slightly cleft at the tip, and a jaw heavy enough to suggest Indian blood. There were aureoles of blond stubble at his lips and chin.

”Life,” I said.

He nodded contemplatively, as if I had said something ambiguous and thought-provoking.

A moment pa.s.sed. Adam would have gotten through the conversation by feigning well-mannered deafness. I struggled to be cool. The silence caught and held-one of those amicable, protracted silences that open up in casual conversations with strangers and allow all members to return, unharmed, to the familiarity of their own lives. Adam visibly turned his attention toward the front of the line, as if something delightful and unprecedented was taking place there.

But then, forgetting my resolution, I fell into a habit from my old life, one of the personal deficiencies I had vowed to leave behind.

I started talking.

”I mean, this is it, don't you think?” I said. ”Up till now everything's been sort of easy, I mean we were kids kids . I don't know what school you came from, but at Fillmore we had recess, I mean we had . I don't know what school you came from, but at Fillmore we had recess, I mean we had snack snack periods, and now, well, there are guys here who could fit my head in the palm of their hand. I haven't been to the bathroom yet, I hear there are eighth-graders waiting in there for seventh-graders to come in and if one does they pick him up by his feet and stick his head in the toilet. Did you hear that?” periods, and now, well, there are guys here who could fit my head in the palm of their hand. I haven't been to the bathroom yet, I hear there are eighth-graders waiting in there for seventh-graders to come in and if one does they pick him up by his feet and stick his head in the toilet. Did you hear that?”

Adam impatiently plucked a speck of lint from his collar. My ears heated up.

”Naw, man,” the stranger said after a moment. ”I didn't hear anything like that. I smoked a joint in the head before third period, and I didn't have any problems.”

His voice carried no mocking undertone. By then we had reached the steam table, where a red-faced woman parceled out macaroni ca.s.serole with an ice-cream scoop.

”Well, maybe it's not true,” I said. ”But you know, this is a rough place. A kid was murdered here last year.”

Adam looked at me impatiently, as if I were a new stain that had somehow appeared on his s.h.i.+rtfront. I had abandoned my second resolution. I was not only babbling, I was starting to tell lies.

”Oh yeah?” the boy said. He appeared to find the a.s.sertion interesting but unexceptional. He wore a washed-out blue work s.h.i.+rt and a brown leather jacket that dribbled dirty fringe from its sleeves.

”Yeah,” I said. ”A new kid, a seventh-grader. It was in all the papers. He was, well, sort of fat. And a little r.e.t.a.r.ded. He carried a briefcase, and he kept his gla.s.ses on with one of those black elastic bands. Anyway, he showed up here and a whole gang of eighth-graders started teasing him. At first it was just, you know, regular teasing, and they would probably have gotten tired of it and left him alone if he'd been smart enough to keep his mouth shut. But he had a bad temper, this kid. And the more they teased him, the madder he got.”

We worked our way down the line, acc.u.mulating small bowls filled with corn kernels, waxed cartons of milk, and squares of pale yellow cake with yellow icing. We sat together without having formally decided to, simply because the story of the murdered boy wasn't finished yet. I stretched it out over most of the lunch period. I omitted no detail of the gang's escalating tortures-the stolen gla.s.ses, the cherry bomb dropped in the locker, the dead cat slipped into the victim's briefcase-or of the hapless boy's mounting, impotent rage. Adam alternated between listening to me and staring at the people sitting at other tables, with the unabashed directness of one who believes his own unimportance renders him invisible. We had finished our macaroni and corn and had started on our cake before the victim took his revenge, in the form of a wire stretched all but invisibly, at neck's height, across the trail where the older boys rode their dirt bikes. We were through with our dessert by the time he botched the job-he had not secured the wire tightly enough to the tree trunks-and were on our way to our next cla.s.ses before the police found him floating in the reservoir, his new gla.s.ses still held in place by their elastic band.

We walked together, we three, to Adam's and my math cla.s.s. He and I had planned to share as many cla.s.ses as possible. I finished the story at the door.

”Hey, man,” the stranger said. He shook his head, and said nothing more.

”My name is Jonathan Glover,” I said.

”I'm, um, Bobby Morrow.”

After a moment, Adam said, ”Adam Bialo?” as if uncertain whether such a name would be believed. It was the first time he had spoken.

”Well, see you later,” I said.

”Yeah. Yeah, man, I'll see you later.”

It was not until he walked away that I saw the faded blue eye st.i.tched to the back of his jacket.

”Weird,” Adam said.

”Uh-huh.”