Ajar (3 page)

“Hi, I’m Angela Hart.” She extended her hand
to my mother sitting on the couch. “I’m with the State Police.”

Without standing up, my mother took her hand
limply.

“I’d like to spend a little time asking
Agustin some questions, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Woodard. It’s just
a formality.” She smiled at me. On a day when no one smiled, this
smile, for some reason, did not seem out of place.

Mom looked at me with that same, wide-eyed
helpless look she had had all day. Uncle Elliot grunted. My aunt
looked away. I stood to go with her.

“No,” Mom said suddenly, reaching out to
touch me although she was too far away, “no, you can’t take him.
I’ve already lost one son today.”

I thought this was odd. Daniel was not dead.
But for the first time that day I wondered where he was. At the
police station? In jail?

“I’m not going to take him anywhere. I just
thought we’d have a little chat. We can stay here, in the house. I
don’t need to take him anywhere.”

Mom looked up at me with her rheumy eyes.
Angela Hart put her hand on my shoulder, smiled at my mother.

“I think we can have a bit of privacy on the
back porch.”

I followed her because I didn’t know what
else to do. We stepped outside. She put her hands on her hips, arms
akimbo. She let her head drop back and inhaled deeply. .

“Boy, it feels good to get some fresh air,
doesn’t it?”

I numbly agreed with her but she was right.
It felt good to get out of the living room. The house was
oppressive. The waiting was oppressive. I could hear the buzz of
the reporters and police around front but, for now, the back yard
was peaceful.

“I hear you’re a bit of a baseball player,”
she smiled at me again.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She laughed a little, “Call me Angie, ok?
This isn’t anything formal.” She motioned to one of our porch
chairs. I obediently sat. I was a good boy back then. She leaned
against the porch railing.

“You were down playing baseball this
morning?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you do anything else this morning?”

“Uncle Elliot took me for my permit
test.”

“Did you pass?” She smiled. The question
caught me off guard.

“Yes,” I answered after a slight
hesitation.

“Congratulations.”

I blushed. I felt confused.

“Did you see your brother this morning? Talk
to him?”

“No...” I started to say ma’am, caught
myself but could not bring myself to call an adult woman by her
first name. “No. I think he was asleep when Uncle Elliot came. He’s
usually asleep until the afternoon.”

She nodded.

“Did your brother talk to you at all about
Naomi Tillson? Did he ever mention her?”

“No.” I looked up at her. “Actually, he
doesn’t really talk much about anything anymore.”

“Why is that?”

I thought a moment; why is that?

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “After
he came home from college he was acting a little weird, that’s
all.” Then I thought to add quickly, “But not like he was going to
kill anybody or anything.”

“Weird how?” she asked. I knew I shouldn’t
have said anything.

I shrugged but she just kept looking at me,
waiting for an answer.

“Just weird,” I tried, hoping she would let
it go at that.

“Can you give me an example?” She had
crossed her arms on her chest.

I sighed deeply. I gave in.

“He just doesn’t talk to us anymore. He
stays in his room all the time.”

She nodded.

“Are you afraid of him?”

“Danny?” I snorted in disbelief. “No. Why
should I be afraid of Danny?”

Then I thought about Naomi Tillson. He
killed her. I didn’t even know how.

“How many guns did your brother have?”

“I didn’t even know he had any.”

So, that’s how he did it. He shot her. I
wondered where. I wondered how. Angela Hart was nodding again.

“What about you?”

“Me what?”

“Guns. Do you have any guns?”

“No,” I sounded indignant.

She looked at me a long time as if I was
keeping a secret and she was going to get it out of me.

“My brother is a good guy,” I said finally.
“He’s just had some problems lately. I don’t think he meant to hurt
anyone. It was probably just an accident.”

I didn’t know when I made that stupid
statement that the gun was just six inches from Naomi’s face when
he pulled the trigger. I didn’t know that her entire face exploded,
some of it getting on my brother’s face, in his hair, the blood
staining his white T-shirt a bright red.

When we went inside my mother was
standing.

“We can’t stay here tonight,” she said
abruptly.

I didn’t argue with her. I wanted to get the
hell out of there. We packed a few things and the police took us to
Uncle Elliot and Aunt May’s house. They took a drive around the
neighborhood a few times to make sure we weren’t being
followed.

Mom got the guest room upstairs and Aunt May
had set up a cot in her sewing room for me. They weren’t exactly
used to entertaining overnight guests. I left most of my stuff in
the suitcase because there really wasn’t any place for me to
unpack. Uncle Elliot just sat in stony silence in front of the TV.
Aunt May fluttered around and kept asking us if we needed
anything.

We watched the evening news. I don’t know
whose idea it was or why we did it but we did. I think it was part
of Uncle Elliot’s nighttime routine. Aunt May called a doctor to
come to the house because after the news my mother collapsed on the
floor and started to vomit. Something in the news story had made it
all suddenly seem so real for her. She couldn’t stop getting sick
and had trouble staying upright. The doctor gave her a pill and she
fell asleep. I said I was fine. I went to my room and lay on the
thin cot staring at the ceiling all night.

Chapter
Five

We went home around noon the next day and the
house was trashed. And I mean trashed. Every drawer, every cabinet
was open and all our things lay in piles on the counter, on tables,
on all the chairs and on the floor. The press was still outside and
Uncle Elliot told them ‘to get the hell out of there’. That was on
the evening news, Uncle Elliot yelling at the reporters. Mom and I
started cleaning up because we didn’t know what else to do.

After Uncle Elliot was finished with the
reporters, he came in and said to my mother, “You really shouldn’t
stay here, Helen. At least not for now. Let things calm down a
bit.”

My mother was a tall, bony woman. She had
short, straight hair that wasn’t exactly stylish. Even before my
brother had killed Naomi Tillson and Phil Moretti, her eyes had
always had that surprised look. She looked at my uncle with those
eyes.

“I have nowhere else to go,” Mom said. It
was a fact. My mother’s family were all dead.

“Well, I don’t think it’s good you stay
here. It’s not good for you.” He looked over at me. “Or for
Gus.”

She turned to me as if she hadn’t seen me in
a long time and mouthed, “Gus.”

I stood looking at her.

“Well,” she said turning back to my uncle,
“we could stay with you.”

“No,” he said it so quickly and so certainly
it shocked me. “I mean,” he tried to sound more reasonable, “I
don’t think it would be good for you to stay in town.”

The room grew silent.

“I’m really not in the position...” Mom
started.

“Just for a few days. Until things calm
down.”

My mother nodded.

I knew there were things going on without my
knowledge. At the same time I didn’t want to know. I felt I already
knew too much.

“Can’t we see Dan?” I asked. I wanted to
talk to him, ask him what happened, and get his side of the
story.

My mother turned again to look at me with
those wide eyes.

Uncle Elliot said, “Absolutely not. Not
now.”

Mom just wandered off to another room. I was
left standing in the middle of the floor with the mess all around
me.

“When can we see him?” I was not going to
let this drop.

“Not for a while, Bud.” My uncle called both
me and Daniel “Bud” as if he didn’t know our real names.

“Why can’t we see him?”

“It’s not safe, Bud, plus I don’t think the
police will let you see him until things have calmed down, you
know?”

Mom was putting things away. It’s odd but
having something to do with your hands is a good thing when the
entire world has gone mad. It gives you focus, something tangible
to think and do. I helped her finish putting things away as best we
could. Then we each packed a suitcase. We weren’t talking. No one
was talking. I wondered where we would be going.

The phone rang. My mother just stared at it.
My uncle was outside on the back porch having a smoke. I picked it
up.

“Hello?”

“Get out of town, you murdering
motherfucker.” The voice was low, growling, not quite human.

“I’m sorry; you must have the wrong number.”
What else could I say?

“I know what number this is, you sick
motherfucker. I’ll kill you and your whole family, you
motherfucker.”

I hung up. My mother did not ask who
called.

My uncle drove us to a cheap motel in Albany
which was about an hour away from our home. It was one step up from
a welfare motel. I guessed no one would be looking for us here. He
gave my mother $100 and a bottle of whiskey to “help her
sleep”.

“Take care of your mother, Bud,” he said to
me, with an air of finality. I stood and watched my uncle drive
away. He did not look back.

I was wary of his intentions. My uncle had
always seemed like a good guy, but at the time, there was something
off about him. There was something about my uncle you just couldn’t
put your finger on. He never really spoke too much to Dan or me. He
often told my mother what to do and she listened to him without
questioning him. He had stepped in when my father died and it
always seemed more from a sense of responsibility than actual
relationship. He and my aunt, May, had no children of their own. I
didn’t understand about those things. All my mother would say was,
“They couldn’t.”

Uncle Elliot was always there when something
like a father was needed: Boy Scouts, fishing trips, driving
lessons and the like, but never with much enthusiasm. I always got
the feeling that he somehow blamed my mother for my father’s death,
though I couldn’t point to anything specific that would make me
feel that way. When I asked Uncle Elliot about my father, all he
would say was, “Your father was a good guy. Don’t let anyone tell
you differently.”

Now, I wasn’t sure what to think. Had he
left us here because he cared for us, because he wanted to get us
out of the way of the media? Was he concerned about our safety? Or
was there another reason?

The stay at the motel was a disaster. OK, so
it wasn’t quite a disaster. To be a disaster something has to
happen. Nothing happened at the motel. We left that all behind.
What made the motel a disaster was that nothing happened.
Absolutely nothing.

My mother sat in the motel, chain smoking,
staring at the wall. When she wasn’t staring at the wall, she was
watching TV or huddled at the pay phone in front of the lobby. I
wouldn’t find out until we got home that during one of those calls
my mother’s employer told her that her services would no longer be
needed. The days at the motel were just one big boring routine. I
would go each day to the corner store and get food and the
newspaper. I would read the newspaper on a bench on the way back to
the motel and then throw it away. I didn’t want my mother reading
it. It was bad enough that she watched the news each night. The
papers had dubbed my brother the “Sawyer Shooter”. My brother was
putting Sawyer on the map but not the way it wanted to be put on
the map, I was sure of that. Headlines read things like, “Witnesses
Say Sawyer Shooter Silent During Attack” and “Police Find
Ammunition and Guns in Sawyer Shooter’s Home.” An editorial title
read, “Sawyer Shooter: Crazy or Evil?” I read the letters to the
editors. They called for New York to bring back the death penalty.
Later in the week, when Naomi Tillson was buried, the headline
read, “Sawyer Sweetheart Laid to Rest.” The paper showed her
father, on crutches, weeping at the graveside. Her mother veiled,
Roddy staring straight ahead, granite-faced. For Mr. Moretti’s
funeral, the entire football team came out and wore their jerseys.
The picture showed them, I recognized most of them, huddled with
drawn faces. Janet Turback was recovering at home. Craig Freehold,
while they were able to save his hand, would most likely never be
able to use that hand for anything ever again. He, too, was
recovering at home, though he was pictured at Mr. Moretti’s funeral
with a cast and sling. The end of the newspaper article said,
“Calls to the Woodard home go unanswered.”

It had always been my brother, not my
mother, who would tell me, “Gus, you gotta let them go,” when I
brought home fireflies or pollywogs. If I found a spider or a wasp
in the house, Danny got a paper cup and took them outside and freed
them. When I was scared at night, and I think I was scared a lot
after my father died, I’d go to Dan’s room. He would give me a
flashlight and I would look at his comic books under the blanket.
We didn’t talk much, Dan and me, but Dan had been there for me,
quietly, making me feel safe. I tried to reconcile my brother, the
Danny I knew, with the newspaper’s Sawyer Shooter. I couldn’t. They
had to be two different people.

I tried to call Stacey to tell her we
wouldn’t be going to the movies on Friday.

“May I please speak to Stacey,” I said
politely when her father picked up the phone.

“Who is this?” he barked.

“It’s Gus.” There was a long silence and I
added, “Gus Woodard.”