Blackwater (4 page)

Dad laid me on the bed, and Mrs. Doc Watson came behind him and pulled the covers up, and then took the blankets and the quilt off Alex’s bed and piled those on me, too.

“Let’s have another look at that head,” she said. And before I knew what was happening, I
felt a pin prick close to the cut.

“Oh, I’m good!” Mrs. Doc said. “You didn’t feel that shot at all now, did you?”

“N-no,” I whispered. Suddenly my head felt as if it didn’t belong to me.

“Now, three or four little stitches,” Mrs. Doc said cheerily. “Nothing to it.”

Mrs. Doc talks all the time. There used to be a Mr. Doc Watson, but he died. We still call her Mrs. Doc, though. She kept on talking now, probably to make me feel better. She said she never made house calls, and if she did, in an emergency, she charged an arm and a leg and that way she could have another emergency and make another house call. She said she had a good thing going and she couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t a millionaire by now. She gave me a shot. “You never know about the Blackwater or what’s in it,” she said. “Dead animals and things.”

She stopped, and I knew she realized what she’d said. She shook her head. “Big mouth, small brain, never learn.”

And then Mom was there with a cup of hot chocolate and Mrs. Doc gave me a little red pill
and told me it was an M & M, but hers only came in one color.

I swallowed it down.

“Your dad will have to make it big in Nashville when he gets this bill,” Mrs. Doc said, and winked at me.

Everybody kids about Dad. Even though he’s a great preacher, they tell him they know he would love to be a country and western star instead, like the old good ones, Hank Williams or Willie Nelson. He plays his guitar sometimes and sings too in church, but mostly for the children’s time.

I drank my hot chocolate while Mom sat on the bed beside me and stroked the slope of my legs under the covers.

My Star Trek clock on the table between the beds said 9:10, ten minutes after nine. I’d set the alarm for six this morning so Alex and I could get up early. It’s shaped like the starship
Enterprise,
and when the alarm goes off, a voice says “Beam me up, Scotty” and the numbers light up on the ceiling. Alex thought it was corny. A Star Trek clock. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he’d said. My
grandma bought it for me last Christmas.

My grandma and grandpa are so great. What were they going to think when they knew the truth about this? I couldn’t stand it. The clock flashed to 9:11. If only I hadn’t set it. If only we’d slept through it.

“Give me a call, Jenny, if you have any worries,” Mrs. Doc Watson said. “And don’t get up. I can see myself out.”

When she’d gone, Mom said, “Alex wanted to come up and jabber with you, but I thought it’d be better for you to be quiet.”

I didn’t want Alex, that was certain. But I needed desperately to find out what exactly had happened on the Toadstool, exactly what I’d done. I was remembering it all again. Otis and I pulling on Pauline, her painted toenails, her high voice filled with anger and pain. Me letting go. I needed to find out, but not now.

Mom got up and closed my curtains. The morning sun dappled her hair and the shoulders of her robe with sailboat shadows. The smell of the sweet peas she’d brought up almost made me gag.

“Mom,” I said. “I have to tell you …” My mouth felt numb and sleep was pulling at me, taking me down the way the river had tried to take me down. The red M & M, I thought. M & M.

Mom took the empty cup and made soothing sounds. “Would you like me to stay with you for a while? I could lie down on Alex’s bed.”

“Promise to let me know if you hear about Pauline or Otis,” I whispered, and she said, “Promise.”

Two doors down from us I heard Bobby Steig starting his old Camaro. It sputtered and died.

And that was all I remembered until someone shook my shoulder, someone spoke close to my ear.

I came up out of the dark of sleep and saw the blur of Alex’s face close to mine.

“They found the girl,” he whispered. “What girl?”

“Pauline.” He kept looking over his shoulder at the door. “I’m supposed to be going to the bathroom. I’m not supposed to wake you up, especially to tell you something like this. But I thought you should be prepared.”

I couldn’t grasp what he was saying. Pauline? Pauline—the river—what?

He shook my shoulder. “They found her,” he said. “She’s dead.”

I
lay in bed, hearing the gurgle of the john as Alex flushed, hearing the creak of the stairs as he went back down.

They found the girl. I stuck my knuckles in my mouth.

The starship
Enterprise
flashed the numbers 12:00. They were blurred, and I blinked and squinted at them again. I’d been asleep for a long time. The pill, the red M & M.

She’s dead.

The perfume of sweet peas filled the air.

I squashed my face against the pillow, and the stitches poked into my skin.

Had they found Otis yet? No, Alex would have told me.

I got out of bed. It felt as if someone had
pounded me all over with a baseball bat. I held on to the edge of the dresser and made it to the door. From downstairs came the murmur of voices.

Standing on the landing, looking through the stair railing, was like looking down on a stage. The flowered couch, the coffee table with its scatter of books, Dad’s guitar leaning against the wall in the corner. The TV was on with no sound.

Mom sat on the edge of the couch, twisting a tissue in her hands. Dad was looking out the window. Sun polished the bald spot on top of his head. Alex sprawled in the big chair facing the soundless TV. A man, a stranger, sat on the footstool of Dad’s leather chair. He wore a goofy-looking red bow tie, and he was flipping through the pages of a notebook.

“So? Was Brodie friendly with these other two kids?” he asked. I didn’t know who he was asking. Mom or Dad or Alex. “I mean, were he and Otis buddies?”

“I don’t think so.” Dad’s voice scratched.

My heart began thumping. Was this guy a cop? Sometimes they don’t wear uniforms. I knew that.

“Umm.” He leafed through the notebook
some more. “And Alex? You didn’t know either of them, right?”

“Right,” Alex said. “I’m new around here.”

I held tight to the railing. He was a cop, getting all this information. The inside of my head and my ears seemed to be filled with a rushing emptiness.

“Well.” Bow Tie put the notebook in the pocket of his white shirt. “I don’t want to be a nuisance, but I would like to talk with him as quickly as I can. Do you mind if I wait?”

Dad frowned. “Better not. It might be a long wait.”

Bow Tie stood up. “I suppose. Well, you’ve got my card? I’d appreciate a call. We want to get to the story before those big-city newsmen fasten their teeth into it. They’ll like this, you know. Small-town tragedy, small-town hero, father the pastor of the community church. You taught him good, Reverend.”

Well, at least he wasn’t a cop. I let out my breath. Maybe he heard it, because suddenly he looked up. His glasses, small and round like John Lennon’s, shone blankly up at me. “Why, there he is! The young man himself!”

Dad smiled and Mom rose from the couch. “Brodie!” She was the first up the stairs, Dad behind her.

“Pauline’s dead,” I said.

“Oh, Brodie! I didn’t want you to know just yet. How long have you been standing there?”

“Alex told me.” Had Alex said he wasn’t supposed to tell me? I couldn’t remember. I glanced at him, but he didn’t look at me.

“Don’t you want to go back to bed?” Mom asked. “You don’t seem …”

“He might be just as comfortable here on the couch.” The newspaperman pounded the two squashed couch pillows. “Here, Brodie.”

I licked my lips. “Have they found Otis?”

“Not yet,” Dad murmured. I held on to him, coming slowly down the last steps.

“There’s still hope,” Mom said.

There was no hope. Hope would be a miracle.

The newspaperman moved toward me. “Norville Best,” he said. “Best in the West. The
Gainsville Gazette.”

Behind him Alex rolled his eyes and put his fingers in his mouth in the barf sign.

“I used to deliver the
Gazette,”
I whispered,
hoping somehow that might make Best like me straight off.

“Good, good.” He’d pulled out the notebook again.

Mom led me to the couch. “John’s mom came over a while ago. She left all those
Sports Illustrated
s for you.”

Dad pointed to the dining room table. “Chocolate chip cookies. Mrs. Gutierrez brought them.”

Alex plopped down next to me. “Want me to get you a cookie?”

I shook my head, which was a mistake, everything swimming around the room, chairs, table, people. I blinked.

Norville Best, the Best in the West, was sitting on the footstool, again, leafing through the notebook.

“So let me get it straight what happened,” he said. “You and your cousin saw …” He paused, making it a question.

I made myself look at him. Maybe he only looked goofy. Probably he was smart and nosy and suspicious.

“I’ve already told you what we saw,” Alex said quickly.

“And you heard the splash over the noise of the river?” Best smiled at Mom and Dad. “What it is to be young and have ears that good.”

“And we heard the screams,” Alex said.

Mom stroked my arm, her hand warm on my pajama sleeve.

I had to tell the truth. But not now. Not with Best there. Not with Alex saying all this stuff. Now that my first terror had calmed, now that I’d wakened from the M & M, I could imagine it too clearly. Otis and me pulling on Pauline. I’d let go. He’d staggered back, pulling her with him. The far edge of the Toadstool. The shrieks. The splash. Not dancing. Not dancing…The couch began to sway where I sat, floating, rising. I heard myself sob.

“You know what,” Dad said. “Mr. Best, you want your story, but Brodie is not up to this yet. We need to get him back to bed.”

“I understand.” Best held up a hand. “Just a second. Let me write something down here before I forget it.”

We watched in silence as he made squiggles in the notebook. What had he written, anyway?

Mom’s arm pressed warm against mine.

Best closed the notebook and slid it back into his pocket. “You take it easy, Brodie,” he said. “There’ll be other reporters tomorrow, I’m sure. Right now they’re down by the river, talking to the patrols and hoping for more pictures.”

He meant they were hoping for pictures of Otis being dragged out of the water. Had they already taken pictures of Pauline, her long wet hair pasted against her dead face, her long, thin, dead legs?

“It’s a sad thing all right,” Best said. “I understand the girl’s mother had to be taken to McClung General. She just keeled over when they found the body.”

Oh no! Mrs. Genero, too!

Dad had the front door open.

“Well,” Best said. “You have my card. I’d appreciate that call if the boys remember anything else. I’d like to come back tomorrow, bring a photographer—”

“Let’s wait and see how tomorrow is.” Dad gave the open door an impatient twitch.

“Bye.” Best waved a small wave and was gone.

“What a bozo!” Alex said. “All those dumb questions. I thought he’d never go.”

I didn’t think he was a bozo. He scared me.

“Does your head hurt a lot, Brodie?” Mom leaned forward to look at the stitches. “I’m going to get you some Tylenol.”

“And I’m going to get you a blanket,” Dad said, and loped upstairs.

“Remember, Brodie!” Alex whispered. “Keep your mouth shut. We’re in too deep now. Hear me?”

His face was fuzzy, but I heard him. There was excitement in his voice. Maybe this danger was what he liked. Maybe he felt he was back with the Vultures. “In deep,” he’d said. In deep like Pauline and Otis. My chest ached.

“But why are you saying all this stuff?” I whispered. “You’re making it worse.”

“I’m doing it for you. Protecting you. You want me to say you made them drown? Look, I could be getting myself in big-time trouble, too. But we’re cousins. We’re pals. I’m …”

Dad was coming down the stairs with our red and blue Mexican blanket over his arm as the doorbell rang.

He tossed the blanket to Alex. “I won’t let
anybody in,” he told me. “You just rest. I’ll find out who it is.”

Mom gave me a glass of water and the pill.

I took them both. Water spilled on my front as I swallowed.

Dad came back into the living room. “There was nobody there. These were on the porch.”

He was carrying two rolled-up towels, streaked with dirt, one yellow to match the flowers on Pauline’s bikini, one a faded, raggedy black. The last time I’d seen these, I’d been stuffing them into the hole on the riverbank.

Alex shot me a quick disbelieving glance.

“Who do they belong to?” Mom asked.

“Somebody must have thought they were ours,” Dad said. “Maybe they thought Brodie and Alex left them there this morning.”

Mom touched the yellow bundle. “But Alex brought theirs home. Do you think those two poor children left them on the beach when they went swimming?”

“But wouldn’t the police have seen them this morning?” Dad asked. “You didn’t notice them, Brodie? Or Alex?”

Alex spoke quickly. “They could have been there. Everything happened so fast.”

“We’d better call Raoul,” Dad said. “He’ll know what this is about.”

My hands were sweaty and I rubbed them on my pajamas. Who had found the things I’d hidden? Who?

R
aoul came.

He asked how I was doing. He said he was sorry he hadn’t been able to come sooner when Mom called. He was down at the river with the other officers and volunteers. They were searching the banks of the Blackwater in case Otis had managed to catch hold of something, maybe even crawl out. “We’ve had no luck,” he said. “So far.”

Nobody even spoke. Then Dad asked quietly, “How are Pauline’s parents? And Otis McCandless’ mother?”

Raoul shook his head. “Pauline’s dad is holding up. He needs to. You heard Mrs. Genero had a heart attack?”

My fault, the heart attack. My fault everything.