He’d spent quite a white working on the Cape, making good money, and at last he’d had enough to drive out west. At any rate. that had been his intention, but the thought of the desert had made him thirsty, and he’d pulled off the highway at the exit past the hundred-mile marker, where there is always a wreath tied to the fence in memory of Jeannie and Lindsay, those ill-fated high school girls who’d been such good friends of Jorie and Charlotte’s. He skirted town on the twisting back roads, driving aimlessly until he saw the neon sign for the Safehouse. It was a sleety, bleak night, and the new truck he’d bought when the job on the Cape was through skidded on the bumps of King George’s Road, but he kept driving fast. He needed a drink and he needed it badly; it was as if the Nevada sun was already striking his windshield, and maybe that was why he was so parched.
He figured one last stop in this godforsaken Commonwealth wouldn’t kill him. He hated Massachusetts, the dark frozen months, the cross, melancholy citizens. He’d grown up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where the well water was a thousand times sweeter, the land was green and gentle, and everything that fell from the sky wasn’t intended to destroy man and beast alike. He rolled down his window and let the sleet come in sideways, and he told Massachusetts to go to hell; he’d be gone by morning, headed toward sunshine and hope. Still, he had his overpowering thirst, so he parked in the lot of the Safehouse and went on in before he even knew the name of the town in which he’d arrived. He strolled up to the bar and ordered a beer, and while he waited for the bartender to slide the foamy glass toward him, he turned to the right, and that’s when he saw her, her golden hair shining, pure sunlight in the blue shadows of the roadhouse.
He knew that if he didn’t walk away right then, just forget about the beer and his terrible thirst, he might not walk away at all. He had a decision to make in an instant, or else he could easily find himself trapped in some no-name Massachusetts town where November was one of the foulest months on the planet, with ribbons of ice and lead-blue nights and a gloom that spread out from Front Street to the highway, where the handful of pink roses Ethan had spied had been tied to the fence in memorium of the high school girls who had died.
Memories were not what Ethan was after that night, nor was it love he was looking for. He still recalls thinking he needed to head for the door. He told himself that while he was unzipping his jacket, while he placed his money down, while he grabbed his beer and walked straight to her.
I should be on my way to New Hampshire, he said to her. The lies came easy to him; it was the truth that was giving him so much trouble. And I probably would be, but instead I’m standing here looking at you.
Oh, really? What would make you do that if you’ve got someplace better to be?
When she’d laughed, he’d stood there at her mercy, unable and unwilling to turn away Her hair was honey-colored and long, and her eyes were a clear, startling blue that could stop a man in his tracks. Ethan could tell she was feeling the same thing he was from the way she was staring back at him and from the color that rose in her cheeks. She wasn’t shy or cool, and she didn’t play games. The friend who was with her, Charlotte Kite, tugged at her sleeve and tried to get her to join some old high school pals and play a round of darts, but Jorie paid her no mind.
Go on without me, she’d told Charlotte, and Ethan knew there and then that she was the one. All his life he’d been closed up, like a locked door, like a cellar, and here it was at last, in the place where he’d least expected to find it, the key to everything he’d ever wanted, shining and golden. True love had appeared in front of him, in a roadhouse resembling scores he’d already passed by. He understood immediately that he would never leave this town again; no matter what its name might be, this was his address from this day on.
You don’t think you’ll regret standing here with me? He smiled at her then. Not the calculated grin he knew drove women crazy, but the real one, the one that showed his soul. You don’t think you’ll kick yourself later for not stuying wíth your friends?
He peered through the knot of customers, strangers he couldn’t care less about. A mass of faces, that’s what they were to him, people he never wished to know. They were throwing darts and whooping it up, and although they were nearly the same age he was, they seemed ridiculously young to him. He might have looked good, a handsome well-built man in his twenties, but he was a hundred years old on this night, with shoes worn down from traveling, and only the last bits of cinder left for a soul. He gazed at this beautiful, innocent girl before him and he was well aware of how much he wanted her. All the same, he gave her one last chance to walk away Your friends look like they’re havingfun. You should probably go join them, he told her, though it pained him to speak this sentiment aloud.
Jorie hadn’t bothered to look behind her to see those young men and women she’d grown up with. She met his gaze instead. They’re not havingfun. She had moved closer to him, and he’d had to lean close in order to hear what she had to say over the noise of the place. They just look like they are.
For thirteen years he has lived in Massachusetts, the place he despises more than any other. He has tolerated a steel-blue sea that is so cold in July it can freeze a man’s blood. He has put up with snowstorms and ice in December, with Augusts so muggy the humidity forces dogs to take shelter beneath the drooping, dusty hollyhocks, where they pant in the heat. In Maryland, hollyhocks lasted long into autumn, skies were blue until Christmas, and when snow fell it was soft and tender, coating both hedges and fields. Throughout the years, he has risen every morning and gone to work no matter the weather or the circumstance; he has mended fences and cleared the old oaks from the woods behind the high school so that the ball field could be added. He has brought turkeys down to the senior center on Thanksgiving and has walked through fire for his neighbors without a thought to his own safety, so that among the other volunteers at the firehouse he is known for his own brand of wild bravery. He has cried at the birth of his boy, he’s given thanks to God, he’s walked the leather off his shoes at night when he goes out to ramble through the neighborhood after Jorie is asleep and at peace with the world. He has wished on stars and on his child’s life, but nothing takes the past away, he knows that now. The past stays with a man, sticking to his heels like glue, invisible and heartbreaking and unavoidable, threaded to the future, just as surely as day is sewn to night.
Later, when darkness has fallen and his neighbors are out on their porches, gazing at the starry sky, thankful for the lives they lead, he will be in a cell that measures twelve by fourteen feet. He will be sitting on the edge of the hard bed with the harsh taste of regret rising in his throat. He can feel his loneliness already, so it is doubly painful when he takes his wife in his arms. He is a passionate man, but never before has he given her everything in one kiss, completely and utterly, his heart, his life, his soul. As for Jorie, she loves him in a way she never imagined possible. She would be here in his place, if such a bargain were possible. If allowed, she would never view the doves in her garden or spoon ice cream into a bowl on a summer day; she would never see her son’s face again if that’s what it took to keep her husband safe.
Dave Meyers opens the door to politely remind them that Ethan’s time is up. Ethan begs for five more minutes, and because Dave is a decent man, he gives in to this last request. It’s all the time Ethan has to spit out the words that have been caught in his throat like a bone, and perhaps that’s just as well. Every year it has been harder to keep the words down; they have twisted into a fish-hook that has served to keep him silent and bleeding at the very same time.
Jorie looks at her husband, afraid for what is to come when he goes down before her, on bended knee. All at once she knows that they are only at the beginning of their sorrow. Her beautiful hair is knotted, and her face has no color. She vows that nothing he can tell her will make a difference; nothing will change the way she feels inside. He needn’t explain anything, he needn’t speak, but Ethan has to get these words out or he?
??ll bleed to death. He tells her the truth, and the way he sees it, the truth is a simple thing: he is not the same man anymore. Yes, that’s his name on the warrant from Maryland, the one he was born and raised with, but if he were to drive by his younger self, hitchhiking on the road beside fields of red clover. he’d pass that boy right by. He wouldn’t recognize that selfish individual who thought he was entitled to anything he wanted, who whistled as he walked through fields of lettuce and soybeans and corn on the night he killed a girl, stopping only to change his clothes and to gather a handful of strawberries, which were so ripe and so delicious every bite only served to remind him of how good it was to be alive.
Two
Blackbird
ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY father’s death. I went out to the garage with three black candles, a lighter I had stolen from Rosarie, and a photograph of my father taken when he was so handsome and young no one would guess fate would be so cruel to him. Last year at this time the weather had been bad, muggy and overcast, but tonight you could see every star, you could spy Venus looking back down at you, like a ruby in the sky. It was such a beautiful night I found myself hoping for things no one should ever ask for. Ever since last summer, I’d had only one wish, and it burned within me until it was the only thing I felt or knew or wanted.
My father was the vice-principal of the Ella Monroe School, which is why there’s a bronze plaque with his name on it outside the building, and why my mother won’t go there anymore, not even last spring, when she was called in by the acting vice-principal. Mr. Percy. I’d had some trouble with several girls in my class who had offered their opinions about the way my father died and then weren’t pleased with my reaction. I could be pretty vicious when I had to be, more than most people might expect. But my mother refused to come in for a conference, and in the end, Mr. Percy had no recourse but to meet her at Kite’s Bakery, where they drank coffee and never got around to discussing my poor social development and the way I’d thrown certain individuals’ notebooks into the toilet.
Mr. Percy could have no more given my mother another dose of bad news than he could have slapped her in the face. After that meeting, he never called again. He understood that my mother was willing to do just about anything to bypass the school and that plaque with my father’s name on it. She would circle around to Hamilton and drive back on the service road that runs parallel to the highway, just to avoid the vicinity. She still had not ordered the memorial for my father’s grave, and we all knew why: she couldn’t bring herself to see his name written in stone. Some people believe that if you don’t open your eyes to sorrow and you don’t talk about it, you can pretend it never happened. You can go on about your business and not even notice that a year has gone by, time enough for there to be nothing left except heartbreak and bones.
When I went into the garage on the anniversary of my father’s passing, I didn’t bother to turn on the light. I wasn’t afraid, not of anything in the world beyond ours at any rate. Last summer, my father showed me every constellation in the summer sky including the rising scorpion, which stung everything in its path, man and beast alike. He showed me that courage wasn’t simple. The final weeks of his life were spent lying down, in bed or on the couch or in his hospital room. He was fading, disappearing into the white sheets and the piles of pillows. He was evaporating right before our eyes. After a while, he seemed like half of himself, but that half still loved me.
I was trying to learn how to play the recorder back then, and I spent hours practicing beside his bed. His eyes shone whenever he watched me, even though I was terrible and gave up the recorder soon afterward. I couldn’t even look at a recorder anymore, and my grandmother sent a note to the music teacher to excuse me from participating in class. I sat in the cafeteria while everyone else was practicing, covering my ears and thinking about my father, but I couldn’t go backward in time past his illness. I was having trouble remembering the person he used to be before he was sick. or even conjure up what he looked like when we used to go skating together and he would lift me up into the falling snow until we were covered with crystals and our breath turned to ice whenever we laughed out loud.
Tonight, it was hot, starry and blistering and clear as could be. Most people in town would surely turn on their air conditioners in order to get a decent night’s sleep, except for Rosarie, who believed recycled air is bad for the complexion, and Ethan Ford. because the last town referendum voted down air-conditioning the jail. Usually, the week of July Fourth in Monroe is great fun, with fireworks set off in the high school field following a cookout and a parade along Front Street, the best part of which is when the fire trucks turn their hoses on the crowd and spray everyone with water. But this year, everything was different. The firemen decided not to be in the parade, out of respect for Ethan Ford, and Collie and I didn’t bother to go. which was probably a big mistake. Instead, I convinced him to visit his father. Looking back, I realize I should have known better. Collie didn’t want to go and I could tell from his expression that he was scared when I brought up the subject. I should have let it be, but I had the idea that if Collie saw his father, his spirits would lift and he’d be back to his old self As it was. Collie was hardly talking. He had a funny look in his eye, like he didn’t believe in anything. You’d say something simple to him, such as. I’m starving or Let’s go swimming, and he’d look blank, as if he wasn’t speaking the same language anymore. Once, I saw him throw a rock at one of the reporters posted in Cindy Gleason’s driveway, and although I could easily picture myself taking such a course of action, it was the sort of thing Collie Ford would never do, at least not before this summer.
The truth was, I had my own selfish reasons for wanting Collie to see his father. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake in reporting Ethan Ford the way I had. Innocent men are punished each and every day, and I didn’t want to be the cause of someone spending the rest of his life in jail for no reason other than my own stupidity.
Come on, I said to Collie. I’m sure he’ll explain everything to you. Somebody probably called in to report him, and at this point they regret it like crazy.
But for someone so good-natured, Collie wasn’t that easy to convince. I don’t know. My mother said she’d take me to see him when things settled down. If they ever do.
He told me how his mother locked herself in her room at night so he wouldn’t hear her crying, but he heard her anyway and that lately he couldn’t get to sleep until the sun began to rise. When I heard how bad things were, I felt like the worst liar on earth. I felt like I was the criminal. What I’d done didn’t seem any different from pulling the switch on the train tracks, and now no one would ever know what path the Fords’ lives might have taken if I hadn’t seen him on TV and made that call. I waited for Collie to say something more, maybe to curse whoever turned his father in, but he didn’t say anything, and after a while, the moment when I might have admitted my part in his father’s arrest passed. In an instant, the opportunity to confess was gone, down the well, falling fast into unreachable waters. I thought about the way it was when you swam across Lantern Lake and tried to call to someone on the other shore, how your voice drifted up and disappeared into the treetops. how you might as well have no voice at all.
If nothing else, you’ll feel better seeing him. Wouldn’t your mother be glad if she knew he’d explained enerything to you? The real killer is probably wandering around Maryland right now knocking on people’s front doors. We could probably help, you know. We could put out fliers or something. We could do something to get him out.
I guess I was convincing, because after a while Collie said, Let’s go, and we took our bikes and went along the service road. All those orange lilies were blooming, thousands of them perched along the highway like a flock of tangerine-colored birds. It was hot and the heat whipped across our faces, and Collie let me lead the way, like he always does. We rode hard and fast, suddenly in a hurry to be somewhere. On the other side of the chain-link fence there was the highw
ay that led to New Hampshire and Maine, and the cars speeding by threw bits of black gravel into the steamy air. I thought about all those people headed somewhere and how there were some of us who never got to where they wanted to be. I wished my father and I had driven to Maine last year and had sat on the edge of a lake to watch the stars. I wished we’d had one more day together.That’s all.
When we got to where the county offices were, near the end of King George’s Road, we left our bikes locked to a tree, since we figured if there were any criminals in Monroe. they’d probably be somewhere in this vicinity. This is where people went if they had a speeding ticket or if they’d been caught with marijuana, like Brendan Derry was last year, but it was also the place you came to if you needed a marriage license or a permit to expand the deck in your backyard. The buildings looked the same out here, the jail and the courthouse and town hall. We stood staring at the white concrete blocks, framed by hawthorns and maples and shady linden trees. You could hear the parade if you listened carefully. All those kids in my music class were playing their recorders like crazy, and the sound made me want to put my hands over my ears. Collie’s face had a funny look to it. He shaded his eyes and watched some crows cross the horizon. He was sunburned, and his hair was so blond it was almost white.