Blackwater (10 page)

“We cut up here,” she said. “Follow me, and look out for gopher holes.”

I pushed up the bank after her. It was wild here and overgrown, lonely because it was far from town. The river had wound out of sight.

“Do you want me to carry your pack?” I asked.

“Nope. I’m used to it. And it’s not that heavy.”

She looked back over her shoulder. “Bats like to roost in caves, attics, ledges in rocks where they can squeeze in and be safe, or try to be safe.” Her words came in spurts as she made her way up the bank. She was wearing a dress and sandals
and already there were scratches on her legs. She held a bramble back for me, then looked at her watch. “Perfect timing. They’ll be coming out any minute. Ooooops. Here they are.”

I saw them then, flying from some kind of opening in the side of the hill. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, maybe thousands. I couldn’t tell. They were a black moving stream crossing the sunset red of the sky. They took my breath away, and my mind too, away from the death thoughts of the past few days. I’d thought of bats as ugly, maybe even dangerous. Together like this they were beautiful. The sound of them was the sound of wind rushing through trees.

“They’re going off on a night’s hunting,” Hannah said. “Nobody knows how far they’ll go. They’ll come back here to sleep.”

I was still watching the wide black band that was breaking up now, into dots, small as black confetti tossed into the sky. A few single bats swooped down, close to us, silent as silk.

“Each one eats about six hundred bugs in an hour.” Hannah smiled at me. “Don’t tell anyone where they roost. Remember? I told you what happened in Florida.” She sat back on her heels.
“I promised myself I’d never show anyone a roost again. But I knew you were all right. Because of the way you were with the Colonel’s dog.”

Her backpack lay among the brambles and wild grasses. I watched her open it and take out binoculars. “Here, want a look at them?”

They were big binoculars, powerful. When I focused on the sky, the black streaks of bats came in and out of my vision. I tried to find one and follow it as it wheeled and circled, and got a second’s look at its furry face, the flat black nose, the upright ears. Its wings were sails, brushing the wind. Then it was gone. I gave back the binoculars, and Hannah set them on the ground beside her.

“That time in Florida,” she asked, “the time the bats were killed?” I nodded.

“Those boys, they never told anyone I was the person who’d shown them the cave. I was scared all the time that they would. And I was so grateful when they didn’t, because, well, my dad trusts me and I felt so terrible. I love bats. They never hurt anyone. And here were all those dead …” She gulped. “And it was really my fault.”

“You didn’t know those guys would do what they did,” I mumbled. Why was it so hard for me to even speak? There was some sort of undercurrent here, dangerous, like the Blackwater.

Hannah’s hair swept forward to hide her face. “I thought I could keep it all hidden forever. I couldn’t. Every time I looked at my dad…I convinced myself, you know, I couldn’t change anything. The bats were dead.”

A rabbit popped up from somewhere, saw us and disappeared fast into the long grass.

“And in the end I did tell him.” She glanced at me and it was the same direct, searching look she’d given me before and it scared me. It was a look that said more than I wanted to know. “Telling was the hardest thing I ever did. But those months before were worse. I hated me. I was just a little kid and I hated myself. I knew I’d never get over it.”

I sat, still as a stone. “And your dad?” This was it. This was the reason she’d brought me here. The cut on my head had started to throb.

“My dad said: ‘You didn’t mean it to happen. I love you. You can tell me anything and I’ll try to forgive. Even if I can’t understand.’”

We knelt, facing each other now, the river an endless murmur behind us. Without looking at her backpack Hannah fumbled out a ring binder. “I have to record when the bats left the cave,” she said softly. “They were early tonight.”

I watched her write in the book. No need to check for a matching torn edge. I knew.

I stood up. Could she hear my heart beating? “Do you come here every morning?”

She nodded. “I like to watch the little brown bats fly safely home.”

I picked up the binoculars. So powerful. My fingers had no feeling in them as I focused, looking back the way we’d come. I could see Dinkins Pond, the Toadstool, the flowers. I could see the two white candles.

Hannah had been here that morning. She’d seen me.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” I said. She didn’t even ask what I meant, just nodded again.

“But bats are not like people,” I whispered. “You can’t compare.”

“You can compare hiding the truth,” Hannah said.

I sniffed. My nose was watering and my eyes,
too. “Why didn’t
you
just tell Raoul?”

“I was going to. I argued with myself about it all the time. But I didn’t think that would work. It had to come from you. The way my telling had to come from me. I waited to see what you would do. I felt sure you’d own up. But then all that hero stuff started. And you stepped further and further back. And the thing was, you
were
a hero. I saw you swim out to that island. I just wished you’d be more of a hero and be honest.”

“But why didn’t you just come to me, then?” I tried to keep the shake out of my voice. “Why the note? And the towels?”

Hannah turned her face up to the sky. “I never wanted to speak of the bat cave, ever, ever, again. I just wanted to keep me out of it this time. And then, last summer, I thought maybe we’d started to like each other a bit. I was looking forward to seeing you again. To hanging out with you.”

But did she
still
like me? How could she? Every bit of me was trembling. “I liked you, too, last summer,” I said. “I kind of forgot. But I’ve been remembering.” I found a tissue wedged in my sweatshirt pocket and blew my nose. “I like you
a lot.” I looked up at the sky. It seemed to tilt and turn above me. “And I’m going to tell,” I said.

Hannah’s hand brushed mine. “I’m glad. If you didn’t, I think I would have to go to Raoul. I couldn’t keep it anymore. It was poisoning me, too, just knowing.” She smiled up at me, but her eyes were pooled with tears.

I watched her gather her things and go ahead of me down the slope.

Partway to the path she stopped. “I’ll help you, after,” she said. “We can talk, anytime you want.”

I nodded.

“Time will pass,” she said. “I promise.” And then she leaned toward me and kissed my cheek.

M
y mom and dad said they loved me.

They said they knew I never ever wanted things to turn out the way they did. My dad bowed his head as if it was too heavy to hold up. He didn’t quote the Bible or pray because he knew, the way he always knows these things, that this wasn’t the time. There’d be time after.

I will never forget the look on my mom’s face; the horror, the disbelief. “Oh, Brodie!” she said. “Son!” I don’t remember her ever calling me “son” like that.

There’ll be all those years later to think about my mother’s face and everything else. I can lay out the awful pictures in my mind, like cards on a table. The empty river when I looked from the
island; the Toadstool, covered with dying flowers; Stacy O’Neill standing by the casket in my father’s church, her voice quavering. “She was my lovely friend,” she’d said.

There will be all my life to remember.

“I only covered up for Brodie because he’s my cousin,” Alex told Mom.

“It’s good I’ll be here,” he’d whispered to me, later. “You’ll need someone at school and all.”

I’d shrugged as if I hadn’t thought of school, but I had. His trying to help me through would only make things worse.

“Stay out of it,” I said. “It’s my problem, not yours.”

“You think it’s only your problem? You think it isn’t bad for me, too? Man!”

“Why don’t you just go home then,” I muttered.

“I can’t. I wish I could. I wish I even had a home.”

“I wish you had too. And that you’d never come. If you hadn’t been such a big shot, such a…a Vulture! Telling me what to do …” I heard myself trying to put all the blame on him, and I wanted to bawl. What a jerk I was! I blinked hard.

“Forget that,” I said. “There were plenty of times when I could have told the truth.”

“In the end you did.” Alex gave me a sleazy smile, and I could tell he was trying to make things right between us, to act like we were friends. We’d never be friends. I knew that even before the Blackwater. I knew that all along.

He came with us when we went to tell Raoul. Raoul who had been my coach and who had always been like a second dad. Maybe I only imagined the coldness in his voice. Maybe.

“You made things worse by not speaking up, Brodie,” he said. “We couldn’t have saved those two poor kids. But you might have saved yourself.”

A while back I wouldn’t have understood what he meant. Now I did.

“There will have to be an inquiry,” he said. “It’s hard to tell how it will go. Accidental death, most likely.”

Alex butted in. “It was accidental all right. I saw it happen. I can tell them, and I’ll tell how hard Brodie tried to save them.”

Raoul gave him an odd look. “That’s right. You were there and you kept your mouth shut,
too. So there are two of you. Well, the press is going to have a field day with this. You’re not going to be their golden boy anymore, Brodie. The river took Otis and Pauline, but you let it take Otis’ reputation, too. And you let them call you a hero.” He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it.

I shuffled and touched the paper clip dispenser on his desk. The team bought him that at the end of the season. Oh, Raoul.

His voice gentled as he touched Dad’s shoulder. “It’s going to be especially hard for you, my friend.”

“I know,” I said quickly. “That’s kind of why …” I let the useless words trail away. They were only partly true anyway. I’d been afraid that I’d be blamed, and I would be. But maybe not for their deaths. “Accidental,” Raoul had called them. Please let it be that.

Mom took Dad’s hand. “We’ll make it through,” she said. “Brodie will, too. We’ll have help.”

I knew she meant from God. But even with His help, it was going to be awful.

I lay there in bed that night, my mind a
jumble of terrifying thoughts. Where was Otis now? Was he lying in a coffin in McCormick’s Funeral Home? I’m sorry, Otis. Do you know how bad I feel? Can you hear?

In the other bed Alex ground his teeth and whimpered. Was it true that he was having scary thoughts too? Was he not as tough as he made himself out to be?

I thought about me. What was I going to face? What was I going to do? If only I could start all over again. I’d do it so different. I made myself remember Hannah. She’d kissed my cheek. She still liked me. I thought I’d be able to talk to her. But would I have told if she hadn’t made me? Or would I have stayed a liar and a coward for ever and ever? I’d never know. I stuffed the corner of the sheet in my mouth to choke my sobs.

Mom and Dad’s voices spoke downstairs. I heard the heartbreak in Dad’s guitar.

Later still they came into my room. Mom leaned over me and her hair swung forward against my face. I kept my eyes closed.

After they left, I lay watching the shadows on my wall, listening to Alex gnashing his teeth and groaning in the other bed. Listening to the dull
rumble of the river. I could bear it no more.

I got up and went to their room.

They weren’t in bed. They lay, both of them, on top of the covers, Mom in her blue bathrobe and socks, Dad still in his clothes.

I stood at the bottom of their bed, cold and shaking.

Mom sat up. “Brodie?”

“Can I come in with you?” I whispered.

“Of course.” Dad patted the quilt, and I climbed into the space between them.

I used to crawl into their bed when I was little and needed to be kept safe from monsters. There were still monsters.

We didn’t talk. Mom held my hand.

After a while she pulled the comforter over me.

My eyes hurt from staring at the ceiling, from holding too many tears.

I counted the dull, faraway strokes of the dining room clock.

One.

Two.

Three.

Mom’s hand grew limp as she drifted into
sleep. Dad began to breathe heavily, and I knew he slept, too.

Tomorrow would be Otis’ funeral. I would see his mom and the Generos. Would they know by then? I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t.

I rolled on my side so my mouth was close to Dad’s ear.

“Dad?” I whispered.

He woke up instantly. He always does when I call to him like that. It’s as though, even when he’s sleeping, a part of him is still looking out for me.

“Yes, Brodie?” he said.

“Dad? Will you uphold me tomorrow?”

Uphold? Where had that word come from? From his voice, speaking it in church. I don’t know how he heard me say it now. I could hardly hear myself.

“I’ll uphold you tomorrow and every day,” he whispered, and I put my head closer to his on the pillow and felt that I could sleep.

NASTY, STINKY SNEAKERS
THE IN-BETWEEN DAYS
COFFIN ON A CASE
SHARING SUSAN
OUR SIXTH-GRADE SUGAR BABIES
IS ANYBODY THERE?

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Blackwater
Copyright © 1999 by Edward D. Bunting and Anne E. Bunting, Trustees of the Edward D. Bunting and Anne E. Bunting Family Trust

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