Blackwater (5 page)

“I’ll go see her this evening,” Dad said.

“They might not let you. But her husband could probably use a few words of support. They go to St. Mark’s, don’t they?”

Dad nodded.

I remember Pauline, sitting in her pew, all prim and proper on Sunday mornings. The glow from the stained-glass window made colors around her, like a kid’s painting that had gone over the lines. I was still lying on the couch, and I clenched my fists under the blanket till my arms ached.

“What about Otis’ mother?” Mom asked.

Raoul shrugged. “She’s waiting and praying. Her daughter’s with her—Wendy—the one that’s married and lives in West Lin. I don’t know if this tragedy will bring the father back. Lord only knows where he is.”

Raoul sighed, and I thought how many times I’d seen him there, in our living room with his wife and his daughter, Maria. We’d all have dinner, and Raoul and Dad would play guitar afterward, Raoul picking at Dad’s old strummer that
he’d had in high school. Sometimes we’d all sing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain,” or “Shenandoah.” I liked him a lot. Now he frightened me.

“So let’s see the towels,” he said.

Dad led the way to the dining room table where he’d set the two bundles. I got up and followed. Mom pulled out one of the dining room chairs. “You sit, Brodie. He’s still shaky,” she told Raoul.

“I bet.” Raoul unwound the black towel. Inside were two black rubber flip-flops and sunglasses with a Band-Aid wrapped around one of the broken stems.

I clutched the edge of the table.

“Did you ever see Otis wearing these, Brodie?” Raoul asked gently.

I shook my head, but just a little in case it would roll off my neck. I didn’t want to watch as he undid the yellow towel. A lipstick tumbled out and spun across the table. Alex caught it just as it was about to drop on the rug. There were sunglasses with pink frames, a comb, and a small round mirror that had a unicorn painted on the back. There was one pink flip-flop with a rubber
flower where the thongs joined.

Raoul held it while he shook out the towel. “Where’s the other one?”

“It must have fallen out,” Dad said. “When whoever found the stuff was carrying it.”

“And you have no idea who that was? Or why they brought the towels here?” Raoul was looking at me.

“I expect someone thought they belonged to the boys,” Dad told him. “And they left them outside so they wouldn’t intrude today.”

Raoul nodded. “That’s probably it. I wonder how we missed them?”

Mom reached down and lifted the small pink flip-flop. Tears trickled down her face. “Poor little girl,” she whispered. “I saw her often, flip-flopping along to the river. She’d have these on, and her swimsuit, with her towel wrapped like a sarong around her waist….” She looked up at us and cradled the flip-flop against her chest. “She had such pretty hair,” Mom said dreamily. “And it would bounce on her shoulders, sort of flip-flopping too. Her poor, poor mother.”

“Sh, love.” Dad put his arms around her.

There was an ache inside of me and I was
snuffling too. I wiped my nose on my pajama sleeve.

“You didn’t see these towels on the beach?” Raoul asked Alex.

Alex shook his head. “Best in the West, the newspaperman who came, asked us about what we saw. We didn’t see much.”

Raoul frowned. “Doesn’t take those newspaper guys long. There’s a swarm of them down at the river, like gulls waiting for fish guts.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Alex said. “Maybe they hid the towels somewhere…Otis and Pauline…in case somebody ripped them off. Like maybe they stuffed them in a hole. And that’s why the cops…I mean the officers…didn’t find them right off. And then somebody did, and thought they were ours.” Alex looked unblinkingly at Raoul.

“Could be,” Raoul said. “And that’s why they’re so dirty. It would have to be someone who’s out there awful early, and why so secretive?”

We watched as he put the two bundles back together. “I don’t think I’ll take these to the families just yet. They have enough on their minds.”

“Will the search go on all night?” Dad asked. “I’d like to help.”

“I don’t think it will. They’ll call it off as soon as they reach the falls. If he isn’t found in the next couple of hours …” Raoul paused. “We’ll keep the helicopters up. And the boats won’t come in. But if he went over the falls …” Raoul’s lips were pressed into a tight line.

Otis would be over the falls already. Smashed to pieces on the rocks below. There was a whirlpool, too. I’d seen a drowned dog caught in that once, round and round and round and round. I was cold and sick and started to shake.

“Brodie! I’m sorry, son,” Raoul said. “You don’t need to be thinking about this now.” He sighed. “It’s a horrible thing all right. I’ll be back in the morning to take those statements after you’ve had a good night’s sleep.”

“Is it necessary, Raoul?” Dad asked. “To make them go over it all again? I don’t think they have anything to add.”

“It’s routine, David. I’ll make it short. But we need closure, for the sake of the families.” Raoul picked up the two bundles. “Do you have a bag I could put these in, Jenny? I don’t want
to just carry them, visible like this.”

“I’ll get one,” Mom said.

“We’re hoping someone who saw something will come forward,” Raoul told Dad. “Plenty of people use that river path in the mornings, walking their dogs, jogging, fishing. If they don’t come to us first, we’ll look for them. Sometimes people just don’t want to get involved.”

I ran my hands along the edge of the table. Somebody saw something, I thought. Somebody could have seen everything and is telling me he did. And Raoul will find out.

Mom brought in two paper grocery bags and held them so Raoul could slide the towels in.

“Rumors are buzzing, thick as flies in summer,” he said. “And those don’t make it any easier for Mrs. McCandless, or for the Generos either. When we get it all straight, we can put a stop to those.”

“What sort of rumors?” Mom asked.

“Oh, well, Otis McCandless wasn’t exactly loved around here. You know that, Brodie?”

When he spoke my name, my heart plunged. Was he going to say one of the rumors was about me? That I’d made them fall off the Toadstool,
fall back screaming into the river?

“Brodie, take care of yourself,” Raoul said. “You did a brave thing and the whole town knows it.”

I didn’t look up. Raoul shifted the two bags under one arm and rubbed the back of my neck. “You always were spunky, even when you were little. Remember when you slid home and broke your wrist? Was that in second grade?”

“Third,” Dad said, and smiled at me.

“Yeah, third. Winning run. Last game against the Pirates. Man, you were proud of him that day.”

“I’ve always been proud of him,” Dad said.

Raoul grinned. “I know. Well, Jenny, David, I’ll be by in the morning. I’ll call first to make sure it’s OK. And Alex, you look out for Brodie too.”

“I’m looking out for him all the way,” Alex said.

Dad walked Raoul to the door, and Mom said I should go straight back to bed, that I didn’t look so good.

“Alex, could you carry up those
Sports Illustrated
s for him? Oh, and Brodie. That nice
girl. The one who works with her father on the bats…She brought over a book for you.”

“About bats?” Alex raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t think so. It’s called
Beyond the Western Sea.
She says if you start it, you won’t be able to think about anything else.”

I doubted that.

“I’ll bring up some soup later. Chicken noodle. Maybe Alex would like to eat with you in your room?”

“Cool,” Alex said.

I lay in bed with the pile of
Sports Illustrated
s on one side of me, shaking under the covers, pretending to read
Beyond the Western Sea
, reading the first line over and over. “Just before dawn, the moment when time itself seems to stand still. Just before dawn, the moment when time itself seems to stand still.” I couldn’t make sense of it. Time itself was standing still. I willed Alex to go, to leave me alone. He’d flung himself down on the other bed and lay staring at the ceiling. One leg was bent, the other over it. His dangling foot jiggled and jiggled. It was making me crazy. But at least he wasn’t talking.

“Your parents are real nice to you,” he said at last. “I guess that McCandless guy had a dad just like mine. A real magician. An expert at the disappearing trick.”

I turned a page, wrinkling my forehead as if I was really into the reading. The wrinkling was another mistake. My stitches pulled and stretched.

“Do you think it was that newspaper dude—Best in the West?” Alex asked.

“What?”

“Do you think he’s the one who left the towels? He’d just gone. He might have had them in his car. He could have run back, put them on the step and took off.” Alex lay back, considering. His foot jiggled. “Naw, not Best,” he said. “He couldn’t have seen us at the river.”

He sat up and leaned across the space between the two beds. “You know who it could have been? Somebody else who definitely was there, someone besides us. Someone who knew how it went.”

I lay absolutely still. “Who?”

“Otis McCandless. They haven’t found him. I bet he’s not dead at all. I bet he’s coming back.”

M
y clock said 10:10
P.M.

I bet he’s not dead at all. I bet he’s coming back.

Alex’s words tumbled over and over inside my head. He was already asleep, grinding his teeth and mumbling and gulping air like a dying fish. The phone rang and rang, again.

I lay there, knowing the most awful thing of all…that I hoped Otis was dead. Because if he wasn’t, if he had come back, if he was the one who’d left the towels as a warning, as a threat…I pushed my face into the pillow, liking the punishment of the stitches pulling. I didn’t hope he was dead, I didn’t. But if he could only have lost his memory, be blank about what happened. No
use wishing Pauline wasn’t dead. Because she was. Nothing could change that.

Downstairs Dad was playing “Red River Valley” on his guitar. So sad and lonely, like a train going off in the night across a dark, empty prairie. No dark, empty prairies around here, but I could imagine them. “I’ve always been proud of him,” he’d told Raoul. He’d always been proud of me.

I got out of bed and stood in the shadows at the top of the stairs.

Dad was sitting on the footstool where the newspaperman had sat. He wore his gray cardigan sweater with the moth holes in it. Dad loves that sweater. The Tiffany lampshade threw colors around him the way the stained-glass window used to throw colors around Pauline. My mom was stretched out on the couch, her arm across her eyes.

The phone rang.

Dad set down the guitar and went to pick it up. He listened, then said, “OK, we’ll turn it on.”

“It’s your dad,” he told Mom. “He says it’s all on TV.”

Grandpa said something else and Dad said,
“I went to see her this evening. But only Wendy, her daughter, was there, with her baby. Mrs. McCandless is still out searching the river.” There was a four-heartbeat pause. “Yes. I talked to Pauline’s dad at the hospital. The one good piece of news is that Mrs. Genero’s doing better. The heart attack was mild.” Dad shook his head even though Grandpa couldn’t see. “Nothing,” he said. “Jenny called the police station a half hour ago. They still haven’t found Otis.”

I drew deeper into the shadows.

“We’ll tell him,” Dad said. “Thanks, Jim.”

He hung up the phone. “I suppose we’d better watch this,” he told Mom and switched on the TV.

I could see the picture. I could hear the voice. The anchorwoman was saying something about an earthquake in Mexico. And then she said, “Closer to home…we have a report of a tragic accident in Sonoma County. It seems the Blackwater River has taken another life, maybe two.” And there on the screen was the pond, the Toadstool, the endless torrent of the river.

No! No! I cringed back into my room. Even in bed with the cover up to my chin, I couldn’t stop shivering.

It was only a few minutes later when Mom came upstairs. She didn’t switch on our light, so there was only the glow from the landing. I faked being asleep. She smoothed my hair away from the stitches on my forehead, and I wanted to grab her hand, to cry and whisper everything that was true. But I couldn’t. She straightened Alex’s blanket before she tiptoed out.

When I did sleep, there were horrible dreams, filled with the river. I was choking under its water. I’d half sleep and see Otis McCandless standing in front of me. “Sure I’m alive,” he said. “That was all a joke. Pauline’s alive too.” I’d half wake, and my heart would be bursting with happiness and relief, and then he would smile and his teeth were mustard yellow and river weeds were stuck between them, hanging down like walrus tusks.

I woke up for real at five
A.M.
The sun wasn’t up, but daylight came through the drift of blue curtains. Alex was asleep. I felt my head. It didn’t hurt as much.

I got up, found my jeans and sweatshirt and jacket, and put my sneakers on my bare feet. Silently I went down the stairs.

It was cold outside, the way it always is here in the mornings, with the damp rising up out of the river. There was no sound except for the low growl of the Blackwater at the bottom of the hill. Bobby Steig’s car was parked at the curb, and his big black cat lay on the roof, eyeing me with green marble eyes.

Why was I going to the river? I had to, that was why. Once I’d read that the murderer always returns to the scene of the crime. But that wasn’t it. I walked to where Alex and I had walked yesterday morning.

A stick lay on the path. I picked it up and poked at the shrubs as I walked. Pauline’s other flip-flop must be somewhere. If only I could find it. If only I could find it, what? I didn’t know. But I kept probing and pushing aside clumps of weeds and tangled bushes. Every small crackle of movement around me made my heart jitter. What if Otis McCandless jumped out in front of me, dripping wet, smiling that yellow mustard smile?

Dead Man’s Island. There it was, the gray water surging and sucking around it. I walked quickly over the tire tracks left by Clem Butcher’s jeep.