Cradle Lake (8 page)

By the time Alan reached the end of the path, Hank and the rest of the men were already crossing the clearing toward the lake. The men carried the injured boy—Cory?—like island natives carrying a virgin sacrifice up the side of a volcano.

What the hell do they think they're doing?

He opened his mouth to shout Hank's name, but the wind was knocked out of him as Don rushed by.

Don offered a somewhat conciliatory glance from over one shoulder as he ran to catch up with the others, but something told Alan the bump wasn't completely accidental.

Righting himself against the nearest tree, Alan shook his head and paused while his vision cleared. His throat was on fire and his hands wouldn't stop shaking.

Hank—he was sure it was Hank now—splashed into the lake. Icy steam rose off his body, his muscles seeming to convulse at the touch of the water. He waded backward until he sank down to his chest, his empty arms outstretched toward the other men. Another one of the neighbors—Gary Jones, a car dealer Alan had met at Hank's barbecue—clutched one of Hank's wrists. Crazily, Alan thought they might begin chanting while forming a human circle until he realized Gary was just trying to steady Hank and help keep his balance.

The injured boy appeared like a casket carried by pallbearers. The men fed him through the crowd, his small,
frail body quite visibly unconscious, until Hank was able to grab the boy's narrow, rounded shoulders. The poor kid's head hung too far back on his neck. Hank gripped the kid under both arms and dragged him backward into the lake. Gary followed, plodding down into the water.

For one insane moment, Alan thought they were going to drown the boy, hide him beneath the black waters of the lake. Bury him in the silt like a town secret. Perhaps they were covering up for the careless driver—
What happened to her, anyway?
—and were disposing of the body, getting rid of the evidence …

What the hell… ?

The boy's body floated briefly on the surface of the water. A third man climbed into the lake. Hank smoothed the boy's hair back on his forehead. The boy's skin looked sickly white and bloodless, the underbelly of a boa constrictor. When a fourth man tried to get into the water, Hank and Gary held up their hands and shook their heads. Don took the man by the elbow, as if to make sure he abided by the command to stop. The man looked around, wide-eyed and confused. Again, Don firmly yanked the man's elbow. Then Hank and Gary pressed down on the boy's chest, submerging him.

Alan uttered a strangled moan, which succeeded only in causing Don to turn and shoot a cold glance in his direction. Alan hurried over to the edge of the lake, finally managing an articulate “Hey!”

Don was quick for a man of his girth, whirling around to catch Alan by both shoulders just as he reached the huddle of men.

“Get the fuck
off
me,” he groaned, knocking Don's hands free.

“Calm down.” Don's voice sounded impeccably calm. “Just take a few deep breaths and relax.”

“The
fuck
do you—?”

The boy's face broke the surface of the water. A gout of water burst from his lips as he coughed.

Alan stared in disbelief at the boy, who was now rapidly blinking, his mouth working soundlessly as he floated on his back in the water.

There was a collective sigh from the populace.

Hank gathered the boy against his chest, still smoothing back the child's wet hair. He hugged the boy to his chest, and Alan could see that both he and the child were shivering, their teeth rattling like—

(maracas)

—slot machines despite the summery temperature. Fleetingly, Alan recalled how cold the water had been when he'd touched its surface that night.

“Here, here, here,” beckoned one of the men as he leaned over the edge of the lake. He took hold of one of the boy's hands, pulling him from Hank's grasp. Hank placed his hands on the boy's buttocks and hoisted him out of the water. The boy went limply but he was very much conscious.

Off to the side, both Gary and the third fellow climbed out of the lake. Their skin looked an ungodly grayish blue, and they were hugging themselves. Gary peeled off his shirt as one of the other men handed him his.

The boy's eyes were wide, roving around the circle of men. Disoriented, he groped blindly at Hank's sopping pant leg as Hank pulled himself from the lake. In a sour and gravelly voice, the boy muttered, “Lost my … glove …”

Hank laughed nervously and embraced the kid's head in a one-armed hug.

It was then that Alan noticed all the men staring at him. Their glares seemed to linger for an eternity, almost accusatory in their gravitas, as if he'd been the one behind the wheel of the red Audi. Even Hank glanced in his direction with a look of disapproval.

“Towels!” someone yelled, breaking the spell. “Anyone bring any towels? These guys are freezing their asses off!”

Don shot Alan an angry look. Don had told him to get the towels, of course. However, this hardly registered with him. He was rendered too dense and stupid to think or speak. Because of what he'd just seen … what he'd just
seen …

They wrapped Cory up in extra shirts, and someone draped a Windbreaker over his shaking shoulders. The boy followed them back through the woods along the path, his hands clenched together and pressed to his breastbone as if in prayer. His lips were colorless and they shivered feverishly, even in the heat of midday. The blood on his clothes had faded to a pinkish smear from the water, and his skin, to which the color was quickly returning, glistened with water diamonds. Despite his disorientation, the boy seemed to be wholly unfazed.

Alan followed them. Hank came up beside him and lightly squeezed his elbow.

“You okay?” Hank's voice was solemn. Hank's gait was tedious and slow, his limp more pronounced than before, and the rest of the men were far ahead of them on the dirt path. With some detachment, Alan recalled how Hank had run to the injured boy's side without much difficulty,
despite his limp. As if his own pain and the injury suddenly didn't matter.

“You're asking me?” Alan surrendered a humorless chuckle. “That kid …”

“Is fine,” Hank finished. He wore someone else's polo shirt, which was too small for his elongated, sinewy frame, and carried his own sopping wet shirt balled up in one fist. Like the boy, Hank was shivering. “There's an explanation for what happened here.”

“But that
kid
…” He couldn't shake the image of the boy from his mind: sprawled out on the pavement, legs at crooked angles, blood soaking through his shirt and down his pants, the one blaringly white sock sticking straight up. When they lifted him, there'd been the smear of blood, dark as motor oil, on the pavement, and the back of the kid's shirt had been wet with it.

The way his head had turned funny when they lifted him …

“What the hell just happened?” he managed.

“He was stunned, that's all,” Hank said.

“Stunned? But what about the blood?” He couldn't stop seeing the limp way they'd lifted him off the pavement, the way the kid's shirt
peeled
off* the pavement, sticky with blood. “I think
I'm
the one who's stunned.”

Hank looped an arm around Alan's neck. It was an oddly fatherly gesture. Alan thought of his dead father and how he could probably count the number of times the man had hugged him on one hand.

“You've got some imagination,” Hank marveled, grinning from ear to ear.

What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Alan wanted to say.
Are you trying to convince me that I didn't see what I just saw? That what happened didn't actually happen? That it's all in my head?
He wanted to say all of that, but his mind was still reeling.

Back in the street, the driver of the red Audi was crying and hugging herself while surrounded by a group of women from the neighborhood. The door was still ajar, its front grille still grinning at the arch of black blood on the pavement several yards in front of it. As Alan approached the vehicle, he glared at the sizeable dent in the fender. Absently, he wondered if it had been there before the accident.

The group of men disbanded, each of them milling slowly away in the directions of their respective homes.

The injured boy, his fists still clenched to his chest, shuffled into the arms of a sobbing, red-faced woman who must have been his mother. She squeezed him within her embrace, which did not seem to hurt the boy, then held him at arm's length to scrutinize every inch of his soaking wet body. She mumbled something as she touched one of the noticeable pink spots on the boy's shirt. Then she broke out into fresh tears. Pulling the boy against her chest, she proceeded to squeeze him all over again.

One of the men from the lake walked up to her and, putting his hand on her shoulder, bent and said something into her ear. Still sobbing, she didn't look as if she was listening to him.

Two women—one of them Jane Probst, Don's wife—hurried down a sloping brown lawn. Jane had a stack of dark-colored towels beneath one arm. The other woman
carried two industrial scrub brushes. As Alan watched, they dropped to their knees on either side of the bloodstain in the street and, to his utter astonishment, began to scrub away the blood.

Is this for real? Am I dreaming? Wake the fuck up!

Hank squeezed Alan's forearm, creeping up behind him like a shadow. Another woman—one of the belly touchers from the barbecue—now stood a few paces behind Hank, watching them both with the terrified eyes of a defenseless animal. When Alan's gaze met hers, she quickly looked away.

“What?” Alan pulled his arm free of Hank's grasp.

“The keys.”

“What fucking keys?”

Again: that goofy, brotherly grin. “The keys in your hand,” he said.

Alan looked down and realized he was still holding the woman's car keys. In fact, he'd squeezed them so hard they left key-shaped impressions in the pink flesh of his palm. He handed them to Hank who carried them over to the women standing in a semicircle around the hysterical driver.

Hank leaned in close to the driver, turning her around so Alan could no longer see her face (and whether this was deliberate or not, he couldn't tell). He heard Hank's voice coming out in smooth, soothing murmurs, though he could not make out what he was saying. Yet Hank seemed to calm the woman, whose hysterics subsided to a series of hitching breaths and shuddering exhalations.

Eventually, he returned her keys and even walked her to her car. But before she got in she said something to him, the look on her face almost pleading. In return, Hank nodded
and pointed to the boy she'd struck with her car. The boy's mother was leading him by the hand up the street. A few of the other kids trailed closely behind, shuffling their feet and kicking at stones. Now that the best of the action had subsided, they looked terminally bored.

“See?” Hank said, the timbre of his voice astonishingly cheerful. “He's fine.”

The woman watched the boy retreat with his mother for several seconds more. Finally, she nodded and swiped at her eyes with the heels of her hands. Hank rubbed one of her shoulders as she crawled back into the Audi. The engine started up with no trouble. There was a slight rattling sound beneath the hood as the woman turned the wheel and rolled in an excessively slow half circle. She executed a tedious three-point turn, even though she had ample room to drive forward without hopping a curb, then seemed to idle in the middle of the street, no doubt catching her bearings, for an uncounted period of time. Then the Audi eased up the street toward the intersection. She sat at the stop sign with her blinker on for what seemed like an hour before turning right and vanishing.

On the ground, Jane and the other woman had done their best with the bloodstain and were now covering it up with the towels. A man in khaki shorts and a striped golf shirt was dragging a garden hose from the back of his house to the street.

“This is unbelievable.” Alan's voice was no louder than a hoarse whisper.

“This must look like a circus to you,” Hank said, running his fingers through his wet hair. He could tell Hank
was trying his best to sound affable. “You must think we're all a bunch of nutcases.”

“You're certainly getting closer to the bull's-eye,” he deadpanned. “Who was the woman? The driver?”

“Motorist from out of town. She got lost on one of the back roads.”

“What was her name?”

“Doesn't matter.”

“Shouldn't she stick around and wait for the cops?”

Looking bored, Hank rolled his shoulders. “What cops?”

“I mean, won't someone have to file a police report or something?”

“Who would file it?”

“That kid's mother, for one.”

Hank chuckled. “Look, you need to relax. You're all shaken up, man.”

“No shit.”

“Listen, some of us are gonna head into town and have a few beers, try to cool down a bit. Why don't you come along? I'll do my best to fill you in on what just happened. Looks like you could use a beer, too, to say the least.”

Fill me in? What the hell does that mean?

Despite a strong desire to have this whole situation explained away, Alan felt instantly uncomfortable at the thought of going anywhere with Hank and the rest of the neighborhood men. For whatever reason, they'd just covered up a crime, and he still couldn't wrap his mind around what he'd witnessed at the lake. He was trying to think of a way to back out of the invitation when Lydia's station wagon pulled into the driveway and Heather climbed out of the passenger seat.

“Gals are home,” said Hank.

“I think maybe I'll take a rain check,” Alan said, his words ironically underscored by a grumble of thunder. “I told Heather I'd help her with dinner tonight.”