“I remember, Helen.”
“You know what I saw this morning, Jimmy?”
“What?”
“That place where they sent you that time.”
Jimmy felt his stomach get all twisted up, the surface of his skin get sticky with sweat.
“I don’t want to go back there, Helen.”
“I know you don’t, Jimmy. That’s why I’m trying to help you. So they won’t ever send you back there again.”
“I won’t tell nobody.”
“You promise?”
But of course he’d already tried to call Amy.
“I promise.”
“I just wouldn’t want to see them put you back there, Jimmy. Because I’m your friend.”
“Don’t worry.”
She paused. “Do you want a nice surprise, Jimmy?”
“I love surprises.”
“I know you do. Well, you wait until two o’clock this afternoon.”
“Two o’clock?”
“That’s right. Are you going to be there?”
“Two o’clock?”
“That’s right, Jimmy. Two o’clock.”
“What’s gonna happen?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you now, would it, Jimmy?”
“I guess not.”
“You be there at two o’clock.”
“OK.”
“And remember about not telling anybody our secret.”
“I’ll remember.”
When he went back to the window to see if the wren was around, he found the bird gone. He’d been going to tell the wren about the surprise.
Two o’clock.
Helen really was a good friend of his.
Good friends gave you surprises.
Amy was always giving him surprises,
Amy was an even better friend than Helen: Amy would never ever think of putting Jimmy back in that place again, the way Helen would.
This time, when he felt sad again, sad being something that Jimmy was very familiar with, it was because the wren was gone.
He loved talking to the birds and having them talk back to him.
They really did have conversations, even if people did think it was funny when he told them about these words he exchanged with the birds who perched on his windowsills.
Jimmy went over to the window and looked out.
He saw robins and jays and at least two fiery red cardinals. But no wren.
Maybe the wren was off somewhere getting a surprise of his own.
Stood to reason — if folks like Jimmy got surprises, why shouldn’t birds get surprises, too?
Jimmy went outside, then, to sit on the stump of a fallen tree.
Every few minutes he’d pull his railroad watch out of his pocket and take a look at it.
Two o’clock was two hours away.
And two hours, when you were waiting for something real good, two hours could be a real long time.
Then the wren came back and sat on the grass next to Jimmy and pecked at the grass.
Jimmy told the wren all about the surprise at two o’clock.
The wren was very happy for Jimmy. Birds were always happy when human beings got nice things.
3
Somebody had once told Steve Arnette that he looked a little like Robert Mitchum, and Arnette had never forgotten the compliment.
Now he never missed a Mitchum movie. He was always trying to pick up a mannerism or two from the movie star. The hardest one to pick up was the sleepy-eyed look that Mitchum was so famous for. For Mitchum, it was natural to look this way. Arnette had to do some squinting to get the sleepy-eyed look down. And sometimes he looked sort of weird, squinting like that all the time.
Arnette’s father had been the town drunk. He’d also been feared. But he’d also been jailed a great deal. A lot of people secretly felt that Steve Arnette was paying back the people who’d treated his father so badly. The only reason Steve had ever survived in this town was because of his cousins, David and Helen Cummings. They’d gotten him the police job. They’d sweet-talked Hadley into keeping him on whenever Steve got a little gung ho arresting somebody. He was the perennial second stringer. All his life he’d played second string to Richie McGuire. Richie was the football hero, the most popular student, and the winner of Susan Kelly’s heart. Steve was good but never good enough. The woman he’d married... a little hausfrau... she repelled him so much he felt guilty about it. She was good-hearted, she’d faithfully borne him two children, she was always telling him how much she loved him... God, if only he had the money to leave this town... and could somehow persuade Susan to go along with him. Steve Arnette didn’t understand that his father had been a dangerous bully. Steve Arnette saw his father as the victim.
Arnette had a fresh-pressed khaki uniform on. He was also wearing his mirror sunglasses.
As if Arnette weren’t ominous enough... he was doubly scary when you couldn’t see his eyes.
He hadn’t been summoned to the crime scene... in fact he would’ve been a whole hell of a lot more valuable watching for speeders... but Arnette had driven out here so he could strut around for the gawkers, especially the younger women, a lot of whom found him curiously appealing.
A couple of the state boys had arrived and were going over the area where the body had been found. They used a variety of tools and spoke in a language Steve Arnette had never heard before.
Arnette stood downslope, just to the left of the state boys, and said, “You guys need any help, just let me know.”
He said this loud enough for Eileen Conroy to hear. Eileen had just about the sweetest pair of tits in town, and Arnette had had designs on her for years. She might outwardly look like the happily married mother of three. But Arnette knew all about women and their secret desires. That’s why he had to laugh about all this abusive spouse bullshit. He slapped his own wife around good and hard sometimes and he bet that she secretly thanked him for it. Maybe she didn’t ever come right out and say she was grateful for the black eyes and bruised ribs, but he knew what she was thinking. Women needed a little help knowing their limitations, knowing what they should and shouldn’t be doing. And Arnette, being the sweetheart he was, was only too happy to show them the true path to happiness and fulfillment.
The state boys looked at each other and smiled briefly. In every little town they went to there was an Arnette, snappy fresh uniform, mirror shades, bully swagger. Every single town.
“Thanks for the offer,” one of the state boys said. “But we’re doing just fine.”
“I’ll be around if you need me,” Arnette said, still playing to Eileen Conroy and her fabulous tits.
Benny Drew, an old fart who farmed not far from here, stepped away from the gawkers and walked over to Arnette. Why couldn’t Eileen Conroy come and talk to him? He didn’t need any old farts.
“You think he did it?” Drew said.
“Who you talkin’ about, Pops?”
“The McGuire kid.”
“Oh.”
“You think he did it?”
Arnette smiled and looked at the scarecrowlike figure of the farmer. He always wore the same ratty old cardigan when he came to town and his dentures always clicked when he talked. They were clicking now.
“Hell, yes, he did it.”
“That why Sam Bowers’s keepin’ in the cabin down there?”
Arnette was about to speak but one of the state boys said, “Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about the case, Officer Arnette.”
The way he talked, the state boy, he sounded like some fag high-school teacher. In eleventh grade, Arnette had had a fag civics teacher. Arnette was the only one who knew that the guy was a fag. The rest of the students were too dumb to pick up on the obvious. Anyway, that was how the fag civics teacher had talked, just like the state guy. Very precise. Even a little lispy. Like Vincent Price, a little.