“If you’re gonna slug me go ahead and slug me, Gordon,” he said.
Gordon felt the skin under his left eye twitch. “What makes you think I’m gonna slug you?”
“Those two fists at the ends of your arms.”
Gordon held the boy’s eyes. Then he brought his hands together and ran one through the grip of the other as if they were cold. As if that was the only way to straighten them out.
He said, “I’d say you got some nerve showing up here but I know you haven’t got any nerve. So now I’m thinking maybe you’re just plain crazy.”
“I might be.”
“You might be shot for trespassing.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, after last night.”
“Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“I thought you might.”
“I got no idea what that means.”
“It means this,” the boy said, and he turned and stepped back to the truck, moving around it to the far rear fender. And looking back at Gordon he tapped his fingers on the metal.
Gordon didn’t move. Then he came around and, taking his eyes off the boy for the first time, leaned down to see. And stood again.
“You think I did that?”
“It crossed my mind.”
“You think I’m the only one in this town who’d take a shot at you?”
The boy didn’t answer.
“Where did that even happen?” Gordon said.
“In the park.”
Gordon stared at him. “Henry Sibley?”
“Yes, sir.”
A black insect swam across Gordon’s vision. “You were driving through that park at night?”
The boy was about to answer, but just then there was a sound from the house and they both turned to see an upstairs window raised and a face framed briefly in the dark square, a girl’s face, pale and half-covered in dark strings of hair, before the curtains fell and the face was gone again.
When he turned back to him the boy was still watching the window. The knuckle of his throat rose and fell. Finally he turned back to Gordon and stared at him. As if Gordon might bother to explain what he’d just seen.
Gordon said, “I won’t even try to tell you all the ways you are crazy if you think I shot your truck but I will say this. If I was gonna go to all the trouble to lay down on you with a rifle I damn sure wouldn’t put my bullet in the side of your truck.”
The boy had no response.
“And one more thing,” Gordon said. “If I was gonna shoot you, why wouldn’t I of done it ten years ago? Why would I do it now?”
“Maybe you’d figure nobody’d suspect you, all these years later.”
“Just like nobody’d still suspect you, all these years later.”
The boy stood looking at him. Then he looked down at his boots.
“I’m just a dumbfounded son of a bitch,” Gordon said. “Whatever gave you the idea to come back here anyhow?”
“My old dog died.” The boy looked up.
“I know it. I helped your mother bury him.”
“I know you did.”
Gordon did not believe the boy would go so far as to thank him for that and he was right.
“That was for your mother and your brother, period.”
“I know it, Gordon.”
“And God damn it, whatever happened to respect?”
“Respect?”
“Respect. Like calling a man by his proper name.”
The boy seemed to think on that. Then he said, “I guess that stopped when you stopped having any respect for me.”
“Respect for you. Are you standing there shitting me?”
“No, sir. You never even tried to ask me directly about any of it. You never gave me a chance.”
Gordon stared at him. Jesus God what was happening here. Just go inside, his mind told him. Begged him. Just turn and go on inside before you kill this boy.
“Is that what this is?” he said. “You come out here to tell me all about it?”
“No, sir. I came out here to see if you’d let me say one thing. If you’d give me the chance to do that.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted to try. I didn’t want to—” He hesitated. “I didn’t want to go away again without trying.”
Gordon stared into the boy’s eyes. Somewhere in there was the young boy he’d known, before he grew up and turned into this other thing.
“You didn’t do it, I suppose,” said Gordon. “That’s what you wanted to say.”
The boy held his eyes. “Sometimes—” he began, and swallowed. “There were times when I thought maybe I had, Mr. Burke. That I’d hit her with my truck but just didn’t know it. That I’d blacked out or something.”
Gordon’s heart was banging. He watched the boy.
“I’d been drinking, Mr. Burke. I’d had a few beers—”
“I already know that. That’s in the record.”
“Yes, sir. And it was dark, and windy, and trees everywhere… and I thought it was possible. It could have happened that way. It could have. But even if it did—even if I hit her, by accident, how did she end up in the river?”
“Because you put her there. You panicked and you put her there. And she was still breathing.”
The boy shook his head. “No, Mr. Burke. That’s what the sheriff said. That was his version.”
“The sheriff had you in the park—right time, right place. And afterwards you drove off to that cabin.” Gordon’s heart pounding with rage like it had all happened yesterday. He looked at the truck again. It was not the same truck but it might as well have been. “Sheriff had you,” he said. “Dead to rights. And he let you go.”
The boy was staring at him, nodding slowly. “I know how it looked, Mr. Burke. I’d been at the bar, I’d been in the park. The deputy had pulled me over. I drove up to my uncle’s cabin. I know how it looked. But—”
“Hold on,” Gordon said, and the boy stopped. “Pulled you over?”
“Sir?”
“You said the deputy pulled you over.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pulled you over when?”
“As I was coming out of the park.”
“That night?”
“Yes, sir.”
Gordon shook his head, his mind already reversing, searching itself. “Pulled you over for what?”
“For being in the park after dark.”
And his mind went all the way back then, ten years in time… Sutter showing up at his house the first time, and then the other times. The officers going through her room, her dresser drawers. The questions: What time did she go out? Did she call? How was she getting around without her license, without a car? Who was she seeing? He had not been in his right mind but he would remember this—he would know if they’d told him the boy had been pulled over coming out of the park. It would be in the record. There would be no question he’d been there.
“That makes no sense,” he now said. “Why wouldn’t I know about that? Why wouldn’t everybody?”
The boy was silent. Shut down. Staring blankly at him. Then he said, “They never told you I got pulled over?”
“No, they didn’t. And I know that report backwards and forwards and there is no mention of any deputy pulling you over. Says you admitted to being in the park.”
The boy staring at him, taking this in.
“Why wouldn’t that be in the report?” Gordon said.
“I don’t know, Mr. Burke.”
“You don’t know? Is this some kind of game?”
“No, sir. I’m trying to understand it too.”
“You better by God hurry up.”
The boy shook his head. He said, “If you didn’t know about it, Mr. Burke, it means nobody knew about it. They’d have told you everything they knew. It means the sheriff…” He didn’t finish.