Ajar (8 page)

Chapter
Thirteen

Then one day, I arrived at the library and
Lindy was standing at the circulation desk rather than sitting at
our usual table. She was holding a slip of paper and Mrs. O’Reilly
was nowhere to be seen.

“She’s not coming today,” Lindy said in her
soft voice. “She called the library and said she was sick.”

Lindy held the note out to me. “Tutoring
canceled. Mrs. O’Reilly is sick. She will see you tomorrow.”

I looked down at it for a few moments. Lindy
stood in front of me, her school books clutched to her chest.

“Well, bye,” she said, walking past me.

I let her walk a few steps, looking down at
the note before I turned and said, “Hey, wait.”

Lindy turned back towards me. Her eyes
always looked as if she were daydreaming or seeing something that
only she could see, far off and distant.

“Why don’t we hang out together?” I
asked.

There was a long awkward pause.

“I mean...” I started to stumble over my
words, “I don’t really want to go home, you know? I don’t have
anything else to do.” She still hadn’t responded. “We
could...uh...go down to the lighthouse or something. That would be
cool, right?”

The Sawyer Lighthouse was located at the end
of the Esopus Creek where it flows into the Hudson River. It was
large and made of brick, built in the late 1800s to guide boats
into the channel. There was a narrow mile pathway that led to the
lighthouse, shrouded on either side with large rushes, cattails,
marshes and trees. I used to walk there with my brother all the
time. It had been a long while since I had ridden my bike down
there and walked on the trail.

Lindy was looking at me. Actually, I wasn’t
sure if she was looking at me or through me. She seemed to be there
but not there at the same time.

“Uh...thanks,” she finally spoke. “I’d like
to but—” her voice stopped for a second then she continued,
“I...just don’t think I could walk that far.”

I exhaled, relieved. “That’s OK. I got my
bike. You can ride on the handlebars.”

She smiled. This time her hand was not
covering her mouth. Even with her dusky teeth, her smile was warm
and genuine.

We left our books at the circulation desk.
The librarian was very nice to us. She had seen us from our visits
there with Mrs. O’Reilly but I’m not sure if she knew our names or
that my brother was the town’s only serial killer. But, at this
moment, I didn’t really care.

We went outside and I got my bike. Lindy,
facing away from me, straddled my front tire, grabbed the
handlebars and tried to hop up. She missed. I reached over and put
my hands on her waist to help. There she was mostly sweatshirt
cloth. My fingers almost touched as I tried to grab her waist. I
was afraid to grab too hard, afraid that I might somehow break her.
But, because she was so light, I was able to lift her easily and
set her on the handlebars. She balanced precariously for a moment
and then steadied herself.

“Hold on,” I told her. I pushed off, Lindy
tottering in front of me.

“Ride slow!” she admonished.

She hooked her feet back onto the bike frame
and held tightly to the handlebars. I let her lean into me a bit to
steady her. I rode as slowly as I could but the road to the
lighthouse was mostly downhill. The wind blew her hair into my
face. It was soft, like a baby’s, and delicate against my cheek.
The smell of her was clean and fresh, no perfume. She smelled like
the wind itself. Once down the hill, the path to the lighthouse was
sandy and uneven. I had to push hard on the pedals. About a hundred
feet before the lighthouse, I had to stop riding because the path
was impassable for my bike. We dismounted and I lay my bike by the
side of the path. She was smiling as we walked down the path. Her
gait was a little stiff but so was mine. She reached out and put
her hand on my upper arm to steady herself. She walked as if she
had just gotten off a boat. We walked out of the shroud of cattails
and rushes and out to the lighthouse proper. The Hudson River shone
bold that day, beautiful and calm. We mounted the steps to the deck
around the lighthouse, a breeze picked up our hair. I felt free and
light.

We leaned on the railing, the brick
lighthouse looming behind us.

“It’s pretty here,” she said softly. The
wind almost stole her voice.

“Haven’t you been here before?” I asked.

“Oh, not since I was a kid,” she
shrugged.

“I used to come here with my brother all the
time,” I reminisced. “We used to go fishing or just hang out, throw
rocks in the water and that sort of stuff.”

We both stood there awhile, each lost in our
own private reverie, the wind caressing our faces.

“C’mon,” I said.

We left the decking and I found a sandy
place for us to sit on the shore of the river. The tide was moving
out and the ground in front of our feet was damp. She picked up
some water chestnut pods.

“What are these?” she held one up to me.

“Water chestnut seeds,” I said, “I don’t
think they’re native. I think they came from Europe or Asia or
something like that.”

“Hmmm...” she felt the shiny black surface,
probed the spikes with her finger. “Sharp.” She put a few in her
baggy pockets.

I was amazed at how she seemed able to fold
into herself. Sitting there, on the shore, she rested her head on
her knees, hugging her legs close to her. She looked like a folded
beach chair.

“So, why aren’t you in school?” she asked
me.

I huffed out air between my teeth and rolled
my eyes, “They don’t want me there.”

I really wanted to leave it at that.

“Why?”

She turned her head. It was still resting on
her knees. Her face had the whitest skin I’d ever seen, the rims of
her eyes so pink. She looked like a white rabbit.

I glanced down over the silver water. It was
so beautiful here. It was so far removed from my horrible, horrible
life.

“I got the shit beat out of me. They broke
my nose and ribs, knocked out my teeth,” I said and lifted my
T-shirt to show her the remains of the taping, “Mr. Hardy told my
uncle he didn’t think the school could promise my safety.” I
snorted again.

“Why’d you get beat up?”

I looked away. I didn’t want to answer this
question. I wanted Lindy to stay in that fantasy world of mine that
was light and free. I wanted her to be in the place where I wasn’t
the brother of the Sawyer Shooter. But what could I do? The truth
comes out sooner or later.

“You remember in July, the shooting in
town?”

“Uh huh.”

“That was my brother.”

She did not respond. Her face remained
turned to me, the white rabbit, unresponsive. I thought perhaps she
didn’t hear me so I said, “My brother shot Naomi Tillson and Mr.
Moretti. He killed them. He’s the Sawyer Shooter.”

Her head made the slightest motion. She
wasn’t shocked or amazed or anything.

“You didn’t have anything to do with it, did
you?” There was a trace of concern in her voice.

“Hell, no!”

“Hmmm,” was all she said. “I don’t know why
they would do that to you then.”

“I don’t know,” I sighed.

After a moment, “Why did your brother do
it?”

I sagged. “I don’t know.” I paused. I wanted
to make sense of it for both her and me but I couldn’t. I thought
some more and then said, “I don’t know. He’s crazy. Something
happened to him. He used to be a really nice guy. He was quiet,
smart, the whole nine yards. Then he changed.” I turned to look at
her. She was listening. I went on, “He got sent home from college
and he was all crazy and everything. He’d talk to himself, sleep
all day. He didn’t even take a shower. We had no idea that he was
planning to kill those people. He just went and did it one day.
Bam! No warning, nothing.”

Lindy was nodding her head, listening. The
more I talked to her, the lighter I felt. I was like a lake being
drained, a pitcher being emptied.

“After my brother killed them, everyone
started to hate us. Like we did it, too. They burned down our
house, with us in it. My mom and I just got out in time.”

“Oh my!’ she gasped in surprised.

“Yeah, it was horrible. We had to live in a
hotel, a cheesy one, too, not a nice one. My mom is drunk all the
time now. We had to move in with my aunt and uncle. They don’t
really want us there. Then when I went to school, I’m not even
there 10 minutes and I get the shit beat out of me by Brad Henshaw
and his minions.”

She moved a little closer to me, reached
out, put her bony hand on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry. That sucks,” she said.

“Yeah,” was all I could say. If I said
anymore I was afraid I would cry.

We let the silence sit between us. Then I
added quietly, “I’m not like my brother. I’m not crazy. I’m not
going to kill you or anything.”

She giggled in response. I smiled. I felt
better now that I had told Lindy, not worse, as I had expected.

“So, why aren’t you in school?” I asked.
“You got cancer or something?”

I saw her body sag. She looked away and
seemed to even curl more into herself. She rested her chin on her
knees and gazed down the river. We were quiet a long time, and I
wondered if I had said something wrong. I probably shouldn’t have
mentioned the cancer. I didn’t think she was going to say
anything.

“No,” she finally said, “I don’t have
cancer. But I wish I did.”

I furrowed my brow, trying to make sense of
what she was saying and said to her, “But cancer isn’t a good
thing.”

“I know. But at least it’s a disease. It’s
something you can name.”

I nodded. I didn’t really know what she was
talking about. I let her be quiet again. Then she spoke, not to me,
but out to the river, “I just can’t eat. No one knows why. I try to
eat, but I throw it up. I mean, I think about food all the time. I
fantasize about dishes I’d like to make or order in a restaurant.
But then when I sit down at a table I can’t eat at all. Sometimes,
I have to eat everything. I will eat a whole cake or all the
leftovers after dinner. But then I have to throw up all night
long.”

She shrugged, turned her head and shrugged
again.

“The school nurse says I can’t come back to
school until I’m better. Since no one knows what’s wrong with me, I
don’t know how I am going to get better.”

“Wow, that really sucks,” I said softly. She
shrugged again.

After a while I looked at my watch. I had to
get her back to the library for her mother to pick her up.

Nothing had changed. When I got home, my
mother was still in her nightgown and robe. Aunt May was watching
her soap operas. Uncle Elliot was at work. Dan was still in a
psychiatric center. Our house on Mill Street was still ash. Naomi
Tillson and Phil Moretti were still dead. But somehow, that
morning, everything had changed.

Chapter
Fourteen

Once Mrs. O’Reilly saw that we would do our
work by ourselves and not rat her out, she started showing up less
and less. We spent those crisp autumn mornings riding around
Sawyer, me pedaling like mad, Lindy laughing on my handlebars, her
hair trailing behind her like wings.

Some days we would ride down to the Esopus
Creek and walk along its shore. Lindy couldn’t walk too far, she
tired easily, so we would find a rock or a fallen tree, sit on it
and talk. Or sometimes we wouldn’t talk at all; we’d just be quiet
together. There was a nature preserve on the other side of town and
we’d ride down, sit under the trees and listen for birds. Lindy
knew the names of all the birds and could talk back to them by
making shapes with her mouth and hands. We’d go over to Sailors and
Soldiers Memorial Park and walk among the flower gardens; most of
the flowers were gone now, but one garden was blooming with freshly
planted mums. When we were feeling particularly crazy, we’d go to
the golf course and look for lost golf balls. We got chased off
once by a maintenance man in a golf cart. If it was rainy, we
stayed at the library and read books. Once, during our antics, I
worried out loud about getting caught, what the school might do if
they found us running around Sawyer rather than sitting in the
library with Mrs. O’Reilly.

“They wouldn’t care,” Lindy told me.

“They wouldn’t?” I found this hard to
believe.

“No. I was in the hospital for a whole
marking period last year. I didn’t get any work done and I still
got all Bs.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. It’s like some unwritten
code. You can’t fail the sick kid.” She stopped, looked at me
remembering I wasn’t sick. “The last place they want
us
is
back in school. They are going to make sure that doesn’t
happen.”

She was right. When our report cards came
out in early November, I had a B in all my subjects.

The place Lindy liked going to the most was
the Heavenly Rest Cemetery, located way out of town up on a hill.
It had graves way back to the 1700s when Sawyer was first founded.
Back then, the hills were loaded with all sort of trees and several
rich men built sawmills here, hence the name, Sawyer. Later,
factories were opened on the Esopus Creek. Iron mills and paper
mills flourished. We found the names of all the early settlers.

I showed Lindy the graves of my grandparents
and my dad.

“Do you miss your dad?” she asked as we
looked down at his tombstone. It was a simple stone, small,
rectangular: “Clayton Woodard, 1925-1961, May flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest.”

“No, not really,” I shrugged. “I don’t
really remember him. I was two when he died.”

We were quiet.

“I wish my father were dead,” Lindy
whispered. “Why?” I asked.

“I hate my dad. I wish he were dead and your
dad were alive.” Her voice started out as a whisper but got louder
as she spoke.