And it is there that the story might have ended, with an inexperienced boy weeping in a melodramatic moment of romantic grief, but with the promise that he would soon rise from his bed, wipe away his tears, move steadily toward adulthood, find a life that suited him and from there go on to love a woman he could not have then imagined, raise children he could not have then imagined, achieve the quiet dignity of a good and gracious life and finally, perhaps, even recall from time to time the afternoon he’d cried so bitterly, and smile with the comforting wisdom of all that he had learned since then.
And so it might have ended.
But it did not.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER 17
NOT LONG AGO NOREEN AND AMY AND I WENT TO SEE one of Luke’s sons perform in his senior play. We sat together near the front of the sleek new theater that had recently been added to the high school. A vast array of fancy theater lighting hung above us, and from our seats we faced a beautiful red curtain.
“It’s not like the old auditorium we used at Choctaw High, is it?” Noreen said lightly.
“No, it’s not.”
Noreen and Amy sat beside me, Noreen needing glasses now on such occasions, and just to the right I could see Betty Ann shifting restlessly in seats that had become too narrow for her middle-age spread. Only Luke appeared more or less unchanged from our youth, still tall and lean, his face grown more handsome and full of character. His hair was thinner, of course, and almost completely gray, but his eyes were still piercingly blue, his skin still tanned and youthful.
The play was a modern contrivance, fractured and remote, and all of us were weary by the time it ended. It was a hazy spring night, and after the play we all took a drive up the mountain road, passing the deserted ruin of Choctaw High, its crumbling brick façade shrouded in a ghostly mist. I could see the old parking lot, now weedy and untended, the wide, cracked stairs that led to the front door, the silent, unlighted gymnasium, and beyond it, the auditorium that had doubled as our school theater in those days, and from whose row of wooden seats I’d watched Kelli Troy try out for Juliet.
“That’s what we had to use as a theater,” Luke told my daughter, pointing to the auditorium. “It didn’t have any of the professional lighting and sound equipment you have now.” He laughed at the primitiveness of it. “And those rickety old plywood seats, remember that, Ben?”
I glanced over toward the old auditorium. It was dark except for the single naked light bulb that still hung above its side door, shining mistily as we swept by, illuminating nothing more than a small patch of ground. And I thought, There is where it happened, not on Breakheart Hill at all.
THE FINAL ISSUE OF THE WILDCAT WENT TO THE PRINTER only a few days after Kelli auditioned for Juliet. She’d gotten the part, of course. That had not surprised me. But it had surprised me that Todd had gone out for Romeo, and gotten the part almost as easily as Kelli had gotten Juliet. Eddie Smathers, still trailing after Todd, had also tried out for the play, and had been given the role of Friar Laurence. Sheila Cameron had landed the role of Lady Capulet, and Noreen the role of Nurse. Mary Diehl had been offered Lady Montague, but had turned it down, deciding to be the production’s costume designer instead.
“You should try out for the play, Ben,” Kelli told me the afternoon we completed the Wildcat’s last issue.
I shook my head, continuing to proofread the final article before sending it to the printer.
“Paris,” Kelli said. “You could play Paris. Miss Carver’s still looking for someone to play him.”
“I don’t think so,” I said glumly.
Kelli returned to her own work, her head bent over the little desk against the back wall. She said nothing else, no doubt confused by the mute and sullen atmosphere that had gathered around me by then.
We finished late that afternoon, both of us walking out of the office together for what would be the last time.
“Well, I guess that’s it for the Wildcat,” I said with a quick shrug as I locked the door.
Kelli nodded, but said nothing.
“Thanks for all the work you did this year,” I added, though without much spirit.
She smiled quietly. “I guess we’ll try to do even better next year,” she said tentatively, as if asking for confirmation.
I nodded unenthusiastically, then started to walk away.
Kelli took my arm and turned me back toward her. “Ben, did I do something?”
I shook my head, pretending to be surprised by the question.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No,” I said. “Why should I be?”
“Well, the way you’ve been acting lately made me wonder if I’d done something. If I have, I …”
“No, you haven’t done anything,” I told her.
She waited for me to offer some further explanation for the undeniable remoteness that had come over me.
But there was no explanation that I could have given her without exposing myself. So I said only, “There’s just some stuff going on at home.”
Although she did not seem to believe me, I could tell that she felt uncomfortable in pressing the issue further.
“Okay, then,” she said softly. “Well, I better go. We’re all meeting with Miss Carver. The cast, I mean. To discuss the play and make up a rehearsal schedule, that sort of thing.”
“Okay,” I said. “Bye.”
“Bye, Ben,” Kelli said. Then she turned and walked away.
When I recall that moment now, I know with an absolute certainty that there was nothing Kelli could have said or done that would have changed the way I had come to feel about her, the aching resentment that had overwhelmed me. In such a mood, I would have rebuffed any approach she might have made toward me, brushed away every kindly gesture. I was hardening against her, and there was nothing she could have done about it. Her voice grated on my ears, and her beauty was like a slap in my face. I hated the fact that I had to see her every day, and I looked forward to the end of the school year with a fierce anticipation. I wanted to be away from her in every way, wanted her to disappear, though even then, and despite such tumultuous feelings, I still could not sense the poison that was slowly devouring me, eating away at that thin moral lining that prevents us from acting upon the raw and savage things we feel.
And so, when I closed the door to the office that afternoon, I felt a certain odd relief. I truly believed that at least this part of my forced association with Kelli was over, that those late afternoons when we sat so close together in the shadowy little room, when I could smell her hair, and all but feel the heat from her body, that all of that had finally come to an end, and that once closed, I would never have to open that door again.
But I did have to open it again, at least physically, though not with Kelli standing beside me, waiting to go in, but with the looming figure of Sheriff Stone.
It was three days after Kelli had been found sprawled across the upper slope of Breakheart Hill, and the investigation was still in its early, probing stage. Sheriff Stone had already come to Choctaw High several times by then. I had seen him in the school parking lot, walking slowly, staring down and sometimes even bending over slightly, as if looking for something on the ground. I’d seen him talking to Todd and Sheila, and even to Edith Sparks, the two of them huddled together in a shadowy corner near the back of the school. Only the day before, I’d noticed him with Miss Carver, both of them in her otherwise empty classroom, she poised by the window, he leaning against her desk, watching her intently. Miss Carver had looked tense and urgent, as if conveying important things, and I have always believed that it was she who told Sheriff Stone that he should talk to me.