Of course, when we got to the police station, the bike was mine. I knew it was before I even looked at it. The storage area smelled like cardboard, and the strange smell concrete takes on when it’s shielded from the sun.
He walked me back to the office, asking “Soda?” as we passed a machine. I watched him as he put the change in, and tried not to smile as he grunted bending to take the cans from the tray. He handed one to me, and took the other. We walked back to the office, and sat down.
“How long you in town for?” he asked.
“I don’t know, really,” I said, “a few more days, maybe less.”
“Well, small piece of advice, son—and the man says you can judge how good advice is by how much ya’ shell out for it, and this here’s free—but maybe while you’re here, ya’ might think about leaving the McPhersons alone.” He didn’t look at me while he spoke. He wiped the lid of the can off with the tail of his tie carefully, as if he were honestly worried about it being dirty.
“I didn’t—,” I began.
“Now,” he said, and went completely still, “son, don’t go that route. It ain’t polite, and, worse, if you start someone to not trustin’ ya’, ya don’t never get that trust back. You know damn well I’ve had that hospital watched ever since I noticed those newsfolk in town. So, save us both the trouble, and just listen to what I’m sayin’.” He looked down the hallway from where we were sitting. “This has been hard on Pete. He ain’t but half the man he used to be, and Gwen? Well, like I said, she ain’t never come back. Some say she’s the lucky one,” he smiled a bit at the corners of his mouth. A chill ran through me, and I stopped moving. “So,” he said, and something in him came back to life, “I need to ask you a few questions about the McPherson boy if ya’ got a minute.” I could tell that was rhetorical, though. He meant I was going to answer. I felt my shoulders tense. “You said you was how old, again, when the boy disappeared?”
“Umm—,” I started, and closed my eyes, willing the stammer to stop, “twelve.”
“Twelve,” he said, and shook his head slowly, just as he had before, “so the boy was ‘bout five, six years younger’n you?”
I nodded, “Yeah, give or—umm—take.” He nodded once.
“You ever have a scuff up with the boy?” he asked.
“No,” I said, “we never fought.”
“If I remember correctly, you and the McPherson boy was friendly.” I could tell the statement contained more than one question.
“I taught him how to swim.”
“Uh huh,” he said, looking at the floor again, “now, I don’t mean to cast dispersion on no man, but I gotta’ ask this question, considerin’ the day and age we live in,” he finished, paused, inhaled, then exhaled as his eyes slowly rolled toward my face, “was you and the McPherson boy more than friends?”
“No,” I said, surprised. “I’m not—,” I started to say ‘gay’, but we had been boys at the time. For some reason, it seemed strange to call two little boys together ‘gay’. ‘Gay’ was Kevin O’Mally.
The sheriff raised his hand as if to stop me, “You don’t have to say anything else. Understand that I gotta’ ask that. I mean, hell, coulda’ been a lover’s spat or whatever the hell those boys call it.” I wanted to ask him if he thought that two boys that much different in age could be—and even in my head there was a pause—like that with each other. Then, I realized that I didn’t even know how I felt about it, so I didn’t ask.
“It—umm—it wasn’t,” I said. He nodded, and sat up straighter. He looked toward the door.
“Did that boy never say nothin’ about, I dunno’, maybe Pete hittin’ him or somethin’?” he asked.
I thought for a second, the said “No.” Pete had never laid a hand on Randy, and Randy had never been the kind of kid that adults have to hit. He had always been a quiet, shy, thinking little guy. I remember that most of all; adults loved Randy. It was me that most adults didn’t like. I mumbled and, as Mr. Roger put it, ‘lurked’. “Always standing around, watching everyone from the corner,” he’d said, “it ain’t right, boy. It don’t seem right.”
The sheriff nodded that slow nod of his, once more. “Had you ever met Gwen McPherson during the time you knew her boy?” he asked, his eyes hitting mine directly. Something in them made me want to scoot as far from him as I could.
“Only once,” I said.
“Some say she started to crack up before that boy went missing,” he said. Again, I could tell there were lots of questions in that statement. His eyes stayed glued to mine. I felt like squirming.
“She came to pick him up after one of the first swimming lessons. That was just before they got him that bus pass, I guess,” I said. He’d always talked about how much he liked riding the little bus that the town had. He said that the vibration made his chest feel funny, and he liked seeing people he didn’t know. Neither of his parents had ever come to pick him up from the Y after that. I’d offered to walk him home a few times, but he said he liked the bus. Like most kids, I guess, I didn’t understand that to have a kid that young ride a bus by himself is not only odd, but a little dangerous. Thinking back on it, it seemed shocking.
In that small space, I realized that I had forgotten a lot of things. Not forgotten, maybe, so much as stopped thinking about them. Randy, so much a part of my life in his absence, was missing. Not just from the town, but a lot of things about him were missing from my memory. In that small, quiet spot in the sheriff’s questions, I realized there were huge, dark fields littered with things I didn’t remember about Randy. I could see outlines and shapes of things, silhouetted by the light which was, just now, starting to creep over them. I started to shake a bit, and I felt that same weak-kneed feeling of my first roller coaster ride.
“Did you ever walk him home after his swimmin’ lessons?” the sheriff asked. “No.” I wanted to tell him about how I’d offered, and about how much I was worried for the boy’s safety in hindsight, but nothing more would come out. If it was possible to be on the verge of remembering something, I was about to, and I could already tell that, whatever it was, it was going to terrify me.
“As I recollect,” he said, looking down at the floor again, “you was a wanderin’ soul back then. Always saw you out and about on that bike of your’n. People told me you was out way past curfew, too,” he said, then looked back up at me, “did you see anyone strange, maybe not so wholesome lookin’, wanderin’ around town the day or anytime the week that boy went missin’?”
I wanted to jump on this new line of thought. I wanted to think about, and remember some drifter, looking vaguely like Charles Manson, that I could say ‘Oh, Yeah!’ about. I wanted there to be a manhunt and an arrest and a trial; I wanted there to be justice. Instead, I was stuck on the verge of remembering something. I felt it building in my head like the cresting of a wave that, just before it starts to curl, you know is too big, too dangerous to ride.