Come Sit By Me (4 page)

I FINISHED
THE ARTICLE
over the weekend, just as Terry had demanded. I put a little bit about Cale in it too, even though I hadn't learned much about him. I knew I couldn't write that he'd asked one of the dead girls for sex. It wasn't necessary, because everybody seemed to know that anyway.

Didn't matter. Terry took everything about Cale out of the article. When I saw it and asked why, she said, “Ms. King doesn't want anything about him in the paper. It's a memorial issue, anyway, and it wouldn't be respectful to the others.”

“If it's a memorial issue…” I started to say.

Terry raised her hand and stopped me. “I know, I know,” she said. “But it's not a memorial to him. He was the killer.”

“But nobody knows why he did it.”

“Not our job to find out.”

“We're the editors of the school newspaper,” I said. I was aware, of course, that she was the editor-in-chief and I was only the lowly managing editor.

“Old news, Paul. You heard what Dr. Haynes said. We're moving on.”

“He said we're going to respond to new challenges.”

She gave me an exasperated look. “And a kid who died nearly a year ago isn't a new challenge.”

I let her win the argument. I went back to my locker to get some books, and rubbed my hand on the underside of the top shelf. Dents. Pockmarks. Whatever they were, I was sure that Cale had made them. Was it frustration he was feeling when he did that? Must have been.

School got underway, and I fell into the routine. World lit from Ms. Hayward to start off the day. If you just kept up with the assigned reading, you were O.K. The classes always started with a lecture from her on the current topic; then she would ask Terry for comments. Nobody else mattered to Ms. Hayward, and Terry assured me I would get a B if I did the work. I decided to try for an A, but wasn't quite sure how to go about it.

Mr. Barnes still taught social studies, and it was clear why he had sent some of his students to the library to work on projects. A full classroom was too much for him to handle. People chatted and texted each other while Mr. Barnes was explaining fascinating topics like the effects of the Glass-Steagall Act. He assigned people to projects, which just meant they gathered in groups to listen to music on their cell phones. The only way Mr. Barnes could have gotten anything done was to get rid of the most disruptive kids. However, this year Dr. Haynes had obviously told him to keep everybody in the same room. No trips to the library.

The math teacher, a guy with thinning white hair named Mr. Gregorio, looked like he had learned math from Archimedes. He wrote numbers on the chalkboard very, very slowly, but they were the neatest-looking numbers I ever saw anybody write. I was in advanced math, which was pre-calculus, and the only problem I had trouble with was stopping myself from telling him to hurry up.

And so it went. About one in every four students in the school was hoping to go to college. The rest would either join the military or risk being stuck in Hamilton their whole lives. Terry and I, and North and Junior, were among those who intended to go on.

The first couple of weeks, I had to ride on the school bus with my sister and the other young kids until my dad finally agreed to buy me a car. It wasn't much—a six-year-old Toyota. I had wanted a pickup truck, since about half the seniors drove one, but Dad said we hadn't come to Hamilton to become farmers. And I had to agree to take Susan to school and bring her home. I pointed out that I needed to stay after to work on the newspaper so I would have an extracurricular activity on my record. Susan piped up that she could do her homework in the library while I worked on the paper.

As it happened, that turned out well, because Susan made friends with Ms. Clement, the librarian. Susan's really a great suck-up, and teachers always love her. Anyway, she volunteered to help out and started by shelving books and so on. She did that after school until I had finished with the newspaper.

One day, driving to school, I brought up the subject I had in mind. “Do you know if the library keeps records of books that students have taken out?”

“Sure,” she said. “If they're still out.”

“How about if they were returned?”

“I guess. For this year, anyway.”

“And how about…in other years?”

“What do you mean, other years? This is our first year.”

“Well, if I wanted to know, say, what kinds of books Cale Peters had checked out. Would it be possible?”

She shrugged. “Everything's on a computer. I don't know if anybody bothers to erase the data from previous years.”

“Could you, maybe, find out?”

Well, Susan isn't dumb. She caught on. “Why do you want to know that?” she asked.

I tried the official answer: “I'm writing an article for the school newspaper.”

“You already wrote a memorial article.”

“Cale wasn't in it.”

“Of course. Nobody wants to remember him. And they're not going to print anything you write about him, either.”

I decided to give the truth a try. You never know. “Well, actually, I didn't tell you this, and it's a secret, but I have his old locker and that made me curious.”

“Everybody knows that,” she said.

“They do?”

“Sure. Kids walk down that corridor just so they can see the locker. Corridor A, Row 3, number 105, right? They thought it was cool when I told them my brother had the locker. Of course, I told them it was just luck and you were really a doofus.”

“Well, then I have a right to know what books he was reading.” I lowered my voice to sound serious. “Maybe something he read set him off. It could happen again.” I was glad Ms. Clement couldn't hear me.

“Then why don't you ask Ms. Clem—? Oh, I get it,” Susan said. “She won't let you see the records.”

I thought of denying it, but what was the use? “They're public records,” I said. “I have a right to see them.”

“Yeah? You think kids have rights?”

Well, she had me there. “Look, you could just do it and nobody would care. It's not like she stands over the computer all the time.”

“I would be betraying a trust,” Susan said, piously. The little hypocrite.

So that meant the only thing that she would respond to was bribery. I thought about it for a minute. “I'll let you drive my car.”

“You will?” Then, to cover the fact that she had shown eagerness, she asked, “How far?”

“We'd have to find someplace where the police won't pull you over,” I said. I was already having second thoughts. I knew who would be in the most trouble if Susan ran into anything. Or anybody.

“How about the cemetery?” she said.

“What cemetery?”

“There's an old cemetery south of the town where kids park at night to have sex.”

I was shocked. “How would you know that?”

“What's the matter? That girl who rides you around in her Miata doesn't put out?”

“She's the editor of the school newspaper,” I said, as if that explained anything.

Evidently it did. “She probably gets off on romance novels instead of the real thing. I could introduce you to a couple of girls…”

“No!” I said, although I wondered if I shouldn't take her up on the offer. No, if they were girls from her class, I'd probably get arrested for child molesting. “Look, get me Cale's library records and I'll take you to the cemetery. During the daytime. To drive.”

“Let me drive the car first.”

“No. That's a lot more risky for me than what you have to do.”

“Not if Ms. Clement catches me.”

“I have confidence in your skill at sneakery.”

“Is that a word?” she said suspiciously.

“It is now.”

My confidence in Susan was justified. So was my distrust. The next day, when she got in the car, she showed me the printout of Cale's records, but wouldn't hand it over until I let her get behind the wheel of the Toyota. So I drove us out to the cemetery. It had a lot of old-fashioned gravestones and monuments and even crypts, which were like stone sheds where the coffins, also stone, had been interred above ground. I had once read that in the 19th century there was a big fear of being buried alive, which made people who could afford it build crypts where they could open the coffins and get out if they suddenly woke up.

Anyway, I switched seats with Susan and she gave me the folded printout. I didn't look at it at first because I wanted to make sure she wasn't going to go wild with the car. I had left the engine running, and watched as she shifted into drive. “The big pedal is the brake,” I said.

“I know, dummy,” she replied. She pressed down on the accelerator pedal too hard, and the car lurched forward. I reached for the wheel, but she pushed me away and steadied the car. I took a deep breath and eyed the brake pedal. I could probably reach it with my leg if I had to.

But Susan got the hang of it soon enough, and we made a circuit of the road that led through the cemetery. Some parts were shaded by trees, and I could well understand why kids came here to park at night. Susan sped up as she came back to where we had started, so she could make the circuit a second time. I remembered that I still had the printout and opened it.

Cale had taken out one book:
Look Homeward, Angel
, by Thomas Wolfe. He had never returned it. The librarian had sent him several overdue notices, and the total fine would have been $26.50. If Cale had survived. If the librarian had survived.

Well, that was interesting in a way, but Cale sure didn't start shooting up the library because of an overdue book. He'd probably lost it, and paying for the book would have cost him less than $26.50.

What was the book about? I pulled out my Blackberry and looked it up. (I know: why am I using a Blackberry? Because my dad got one cheap.) The book was old, written back in 1929 by Thomas Wolfe, some guy who wrote three more books and then died. This was his first. It was a novel that was supposed to be based on his own life. A pretty long book, evidently. Maybe Cale didn't return it because he had trouble finishing it. The title was taken from a poem by John Milton, according to Wikipedia. The lines were:

“
Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth:

And, O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth
.”

Well, that was extremely helpful. Not.

Nobody had suggested to me that Cale was this closet intellectual who liked to read dense books.

Then I read that the angel of the title was really a statue in the local cemetery in the town where the novel took place. I looked up and said, “Stop!”

Susan hit the brakes. “What's the matter?” she asked. I had nearly dropped my Blackberry, but I pointed out the window. “There's an angel,” I said.

“Yeah, dummdumm, it's an angel. On somebody's grave,” she replied. “Why'd you yell at me?”

I started to get out, but then remembered where I was. I reached back, turned off the engine, and took the keys. Naturally, Susan protested, but I told her she could drive around some more after I looked at the angel.

It wasn't a tombstone. It was a monument, the tallest thing in the cemetery. Maybe twenty feet high. The angel was holding a book in one hand and pointing with the other. The expression on her face was so angry that you just had to look to see what she was pointing at. As far as I could tell, it was one of the crypts on the other side of the road that ran through the cemetery grounds.

On the pedestal that held the angel, it said, “SALLY DENNIS, 1905-1927. A fallen angel may rise again.” I walked around it, looking on all four sides. Nothing else. I tried to see the title of the book she was holding, but I would have had to climb up to do it.

I went back to the car, where Susan was waiting impatiently. “I didn't know you were so interested in tombstones,” she said.

Handing her the keys, I said, “Cale must have been interested in that one.”

I ASKED
MY DAD
if he had a copy of
Look Homeward, Angel
. He said, “Did some teacher assign that for class?”

“No, I just heard it was fun to read,” I said.

“Who told you that?” Usually Dad wasn't that interested in what I was reading.

“Nobody,” I replied. “Just saw it online.”

“When I was your age, people often read it when they were young,” he told me. “But it's not very useful, if you want to learn how to write well.”

“I thought the author was famous.”

“He was, although not so much any more. I just mean that he's one of those writers whose books people read because they're different, one of a kind. But it doesn't pay to write like them. Henry James is another, although he doesn't write anything like Wolfe. Neither of them could get published today. Anyway, I haven't got a copy. Maybe your school library has it if you're really desperate to read it.”

The next day, I looked on the shelf in the library where the book should have been. I thought there might be a second copy. No luck, and worse, Ms. Clement saw me. “Can I help you find something, Paul?” she asked. I took a deep breath and was rewarded with a scent of her perfume. It overcame my good judgment, and unwisely, I told her the name of the book I was looking for.

“I think we should have that,” she said. “Let's take a look.” She went to her desk and typed the title onto her computer. After reading what came up, she looked at me with a little concern on her face. “How did you—” she began, and then shook her head. “I'm afraid that book is considered lost,” she told me.

“Any chance you'll get another copy?” I asked.

She typed a few more things onto the computer and read what it said. “Only one person has checked it out in the past five years, so I guess I couldn't justify the expense.” She looked at the computer again. “I see that the previous librarian sent several messages to the last person to have it, trying to get him to return it.”

I nodded.

“You know, Paul,” she said. “I happen to have read that book.”

“Did you like it?”

“The author clearly loved language. He was said to have been drunk with words. I share that passion. But it may be a little difficult for you.” After all, I was only at the Dr. Seuss level.

Naturally, I didn't think any book was too difficult for me. “Do you think it would be dangerous to read?” I asked.

“Certainly not,” she said.

“It's not about guns and killing people?”

“If anything, it's an affirmation of life.”

I couldn't ask her
So why was Cale reading it?
as long as we were pretending I didn't know who had checked it out. Instead I thanked her and went off to class. But that night I found a copy for sale online for three bucks, counting shipping. So I ordered it.

I was just curious, that's all.

The following day, Terry and I were working in the newspaper office after school and I asked her, “Do you know anything about the cemetery south of town?”

“I'm not going parking there with you, if that's what you mean.”

Funny that right away she would assume that. “No, I mean about the people who are buried there.”

“They stopped burying people there around 1950,” she said. “Except for…I think one of the girls Cale killed is there, because her family had a crypt. You know, I never suspected that your obsession with Cale would lead you to examine cemeteries.”

“It's not an obsession.”

“
He's
not buried there, if that's what you're thinking. They took his body out of town so nobody would try to dig it up.”

“Did you ever go there? To the cemetery?”

“I've driven by there,” she said coolly.

“Well, there's a big angel there,”

“And?”

“I just wondered who put it there.”

Terry shrugged. “Somebody who wanted to honor the person buried underneath, I suppose. Don't you think?”

I was annoyed, and wanted to explain to her that I wasn't just a weirdo. “It has something to do with a book I'm reading.”

“What book?”

“
Look Homeward, Angel
. It's by Thomas Wolfe.”

“I know who it's by. We read it in my sophomore year in Ms. Hayward's American literature class for extra credit. She made it optional because of the sex scene. I was probably the only one who finished it. But you don't need to read it for world lit. We're supposed to be reading
The Epic of Gilgamesh
.” As if I didn't know.

“Well, I like to read in my spare time too,” I lied. “Anyway, it has an angel in it.” And a sex scene.

“But it's not the angel in
our
cemetery. Thomas Wolfe was writing about North Carolina.”

“O.K., forget I asked.”

We worked in silence for a little while. Then she said, “You know who would know?”

“Know what?” I said, just to annoy her.

“About that angel of yours.” Now it was my angel. “Mr. Gregorio could tell you about it.”

“He's the
math
teacher,” I pointed out.

“But he's also a member of the local historical society,” she replied. “He probably could tell you about anybody who's buried in that cemetery.”

I found out that asking Mr. Gregorio about local history was like getting Super Glue on your fingers. You couldn't get rid of it easily. I caught him in his office after school, and he went on for half an hour about Sally—about twenty-nine minutes more than I wanted.

“Poor, poor Sally,” he said when I asked about her. He rubbed his hands through his white hair. “She lived at a time when there was a wide gap between rich and poor. The wealthy families in town owned the mills that were the region's chief economic activity. The river, you see, powered the water wheels that were harnessed to looms that spun cotton into cloth. There were the owners…” He raised his hand high. “…and there were the workers.” He lowered his hand below his knees. Rich and poor. I got it.

“Sally,” he went on, “was one of the young women—they used boys too—who tended the looms. It was thought that their fingers, being small and nimble, could more easily guide the thread onto the collecting spindles. Although some lost their fingers in the effort.”

He stopped to think, and I asked, “What about the angel?” It had occurred to me that if Sally was poor, how could her family afford what was probably an expensive monument?

“Oh, that comes later in the story,” he said. It was clear that he wasn't going to tell me the ending before I heard all the rest first.

“Where were we?” he asked.

“Sally worked on a loom,” I suggested.

“Yes.” He looked around, the way he did in class when he was about to put a formula on the chalkboard. I was glad there wasn't one here in his office. “And she was like all the other loom workers. Poor. Often, they were the main breadwinners for their families, because adults were thought to be unable to work the looms.”

“Because of their fingers,” I said, to show I had gotten the point.

“But,” he said, raising one of
his
fingers, which was thick and had smoking stains on it, “She was different in one way. Unfortunately for her.”

I waited to hear what it was.

“She was pretty.”

I was going to ask why that was unfortunate, but he showed me his palm. “More than pretty. Beautiful in a way that struck everyone who ever saw her. Angelic.”

“So that was why—” I started to stay, but got the palm again. It was probably better, I decided, to let him talk, because the only way I could stop him was by wrestling him to the floor and gagging him. And then I'd never hear the story.

“And she attracted the attention of the youngest son of the family that owned the mill. The Crapper family.”

“Crapper?” I said, barely stifling a laugh.

“A fine old English name,” he said, “despite the vulgar connotation it has acquired.” I tried to look as if the vulgar connotation had never occurred to me.

“Martin Crapper was his name,” said Mr. Gregorio. “Though he was only in his twenties, he had squandered his wealth and social position—and education, I might add, for he was a graduate of Princeton—to lead a life of dissipation.”

I had a pretty good idea what “dissipation” meant, but Mr. Gregorio set it out in detail. “He frequented the fleshpots of Philadelphia and New York, drinking, gambling, whoring…” Mr. Gregorio shook his head. “They say that the older generation builds the fortune and the next generation spends it. So it was with Martin Crapper.”

Mr. Gregorio opened a desk drawer and looked inside. He didn't seem to find what he was looking for, and sighed. “Not allowed to smoke in the building any more,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Where were we?”

“Martin in the fleshpots,” I said, enjoying using a word I had never heard before.

“Yes, and then one day he cast his eyes on Sally as she was leaving the mill with the other young workers. She was virtuous, they say, and at first resisted him. But he let her think that his intentions were honorable and that he would marry her. The Crapper family, of course, would never have allowed that.”

Mr. Gregorio gave me a stern look and shook his finger. “She succumbed,” he said. I felt a little guilty. There had been a few girls I had hoped would succumb to me. However, I wasn't rich.

He went on: “And in the course of time, she became pregnant. Well. Martin turned his back on her. He may have offered to pay for a surgical procedure to terminate the pregnancy, but Sally refused. She had convinced herself that once he saw his child, his heart would soften.”

He opened another drawer, apparently still in search of a cigarette. “It did not, of course. To make the story more pathetic, Martin had acquired a social disease in the course of his dissipations, and passed it on to Sally. The baby she gave birth to was blind, and because she could not afford to raise it, it was turned over to the local orphanage.”

He paused, for a long enough time that I thought he had finished. But I wasn't. “What about the angel?” I asked.

“Oh. The story is that Sally died soon after giving away her child. She was buried in the place where she is now. Martin survived her, but not for long. The effects of his social disease affected his brain and he was sent to a sanitarium, where he died within a year. He is entombed in the family crypt.”

“But the…?” I kind of leaned forward to urge him to finish the story. I thought we were never going to get to it.

He nodded, as if he knew what I wanted. “The angel was installed one summer day over Sally's resting place. According to some, the face bears a close resemblance to Sally herself. And then, of course, the touching inscription: ‘A fallen angel may rise again.' Referencing, of course, the Christian belief in the resurrection of the virtuous.”

“I don't understand. Who paid for it?”

“No one is quite sure. A charming mystery. Not the local church, I would guess, since by their standards Sally had fallen from grace.”

“The Crappers?” I nearly laughed again, as I heard myself say the word.

“Doubtful. For the angel points, in an accusatory manner, toward the Crapper family crypt. Chastising Martin, as it were.”

“So who?”

“That's one of the puzzles that makes history such an enjoyable pastime. The cemetery records were damaged in a flood, so we may never know.”

I couldn't stop myself from asking, “How come you're a math teacher? I mean, since you know all this about history.”

He smiled. “When I was younger, I thought that mathematics offered certainty and precision. Those things were more appealing to me then.” He shrugged.

I hesitated. “Did you ever have Cale Peters in one of your classes?”

He gave me a surprised look. “Yes, I did. It's a shame that he seems to be the one person who went to Hamilton High whose name everybody knows.”

“You don't think he had any connection to Sally Dennis?”

“What an unusual question. But in fact, he asked me about that statue too. You and he were the only students to show that kind of curiosity about local history.”

I wasn't sure I liked being linked with Cale. “Was he a good student?”

“Not really. No one would have thought him college material. His spelling was terrible. In light of what happened later, one thinks back to try and recall if there was any sign of a disordered mind.”

“Was there?”

“He seemed to be quite disturbed when his grandmother died. Of course, anyone is saddened by the loss of a loved one, but Cale's grief lasted quite a while. I had to be lenient about the many assignments he failed to turn in.”

“Do you think that his grandmother's death had anything to do with…what he did?”

He shrugged. “It may have, but of course students have loved ones die all the time, and don't react the way Cale did. There has been considerable speculation, as you might imagine, about his motives. If I were you, I'd avoid pursuing the subject. It's something that we have to put behind us.”

That was the same advice everybody seemed to have for me. I should have taken it.