The Slow Moon (20 page)

Forty-one

B
OBBY KNEW THAT
Sophie had come back home, but he did not expect her to call his house. When he answered the phone, even though he recognized the voice, he could not believe it was Sophie. She told him to come over to her house, that she wanted to speak to him about something. Her voice did not sound angry or tentative. Bobby tried to answer her in the same way, but his hands shook and he felt sure his voice sounded trembly. He said he would come over right away. He didn’t want to have to spend hours wondering what Sophie wanted to say to him.

When he came in the back door, Sophie stood in the kitchen and told him without hesitation, even before Bobby had closed the screen door, that she remembered who had raped her that night. She remembered, and she planned to tell the police.

“But before I do that,” she said, “you and Tom and Casey have to turn yourselves in. I want you to admit what you’ve done. It will be easier this way—just a confession.”

“Why’s that easier?” Bobby asked. He did not deny anything.

“Easier on me. I don’t want a trial, or to have to testify or be questioned. I’ve thought about this.” She paused. “So you’ve got to say what you did, Bobby.”

Bobby took a deep breath.

“Anyway, it’ll be better for you if you turn yourself in.” She didn’t want him to refuse. She didn’t think she could go through another trial.

“God, Sophie. I don’t know what made us do it. We’d been drinking. We were all fucked-up.”

“So you’ll turn yourself in?”

He hesitated. “Yeah.” He sounded relieved.

“I’m going to the sheriff tomorrow,” she told him. “So you better do it before then—if you’re going to.”

“What about Tom and Casey?”

“You tell them, if you want. I’m not talking to them.”

“I’ll go tomorrow,” Bobby said. “We’ll all go in.”

“I’ll wait till noon,” she told him. “But no later than that.”

On that night in April the boys had seen Crow and Sophie leave the party. “C’mon,” Bobby had pulled Tom and Casey toward the door and outside. “Where’re we going?” said Casey, already drunk. They followed the couple into the woods, quietly watching, inching closer for a better view. And when Crow took off, leaving Sophie exposed, a dark excitement broke loose, urging them forward.

Bobby saw Sophie try to push her arms through the sleeves of a shirt. When she heard them running through the woods toward her, she tried to cover herself; but Casey jerked the shirt away and wrapped her head like a ball. No one said a word.

Sophie struggled and cried out, “Wait! Don’t! Please!” She kept saying, “Let me go!” But the scream was muffled inside the cotton of the shirt. Casey and Tom held her down.

“Don’t. Don’t hurt me.”

Casey had stuffed Sophie’s mouth with the shirtsleeve and held her arms down while Bobby got on top of her. Her skin white, white. As Bobby entered her he felt strange, otherworldly—as if he were having a fantasy that showed him doing this. The fantasy lingered even after he got up.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Casey whispered. He motioned to Tom, but when he moved to stand up, Sophie grew strong and struggled out of Casey’s hold. Casey hit her, wrapping the shirt tighter around her head. “Go on,” he mouthed to Tom.

“Don’t smother her,” Bobby whispered.

Tom moved on top of Sophie, her body so slight beneath him. She whimpered, mumbling unrecognizable words. Bobby saw Tom pretend to do what he had done, even pretending to like it. Sophie grew limp.

As Casey climbed onto her, Bobby and Tom held her down. When he was through, he pitched the shirt so that it landed on Sophie’s legs. She looked asleep, though her arms and legs resided at odd angles.

The whole thing took less than twenty minutes.

Then the boys ran into the woods, toward the river. The act had sobered them. The entire episode, even as they ran away, seemed like something from a life that was not their own.

“They’ll match footprints to our shoes, you know,” Tom said.

So each boy removed his shoes and threw them into the river. One by one tennis shoes flew in various directions, to sink quickly or float hopelessly away.

“We got to go home,” said Bobby. They ran to the church parking lot, where Tom’s car was parked. “We can’t say anything about this. Not even to each other. Nothing.” He knew more about the law than the other boys.

“Yeah,” said Casey. “Oh, man.”

“Why’d you have to hit her?” Bobby asked.

Tom pulled the car up to Bobby’s house. His mother’s bedroom light was off.
She must be asleep,
Bobby thought.

“Just get out. Go on, get out.”

“Listen, we messed up,” said Bobby.

“Get out, man.” The consequences loomed large in Tom’s head. He gunned the engine. “I’ve gotta get Casey home. Just go on.”

Dog barked once as Bobby walked into the house. His mother had not locked the door. She used to always be awake when he came in, but lately she had been asleep. The next day she would ask what time he got in. Bobby usually lied. He seemed to be changing from the inside out.

A few years ago he would not have thought himself capable of doing what he had done tonight. He wondered if he even cared if he got caught. If he got caught, maybe his father would come to South Pittsburg. Everybody could see that he had a dad. He imagined having a father who would take care of difficult matters for him.

Bobby stood, without his shoes, looking down at his bed. He thought:
Have I murdered someone and not remembered it?
He thought that his face might have become invisible, his eyes black holes. He had heard an owl then—during the time with Sophie—and he heard one now outside his room. He felt a slight flutter of his hair in the night breeze coming through the window. He could not move. He could not climb into bed, he could not step backward, could not even move his head to look up, or turn off the lamp his mother had left on on the nightstand.

A car passed and he turned quickly to look, then turned off the lamp and pulled off his clothes. He put them under a pile of laundry next to the door and got into bed. Another car went by, throwing light onto the walls and ceiling, and the light felt heavy, like a horse running fast into his room; the threat of being crushed came to his mind. Then the light unhinged sideways down the room, and it was gone. It was gone.

When Bobby awoke, his first thought was how he would confess to the sheriff. He spoke the words aloud in bed, and his voice had a new thickness. He barely recognized it as his own. He felt a rhythm in sitting up in bed, going into the bathroom, washing his face. His actions felt ritualistic and final. He kept being amazed at his face in the mirror—how it looked the same. He still could not imagine consequences, couldn’t let the idea of guilt enter his head. He stood in the shower a long time and tried to picture his mother’s face when he told her.

At breakfast he ate little and his mother mentioned something in the news. She asked him a question, but Bobby didn’t answer, his tongue too thick. The truth had begun to knit itself into a form of shadows in the corner, visible now.

“I spoke to Sophie Chabot yesterday,” he said, not offering more. His expression suddenly like someone older, older even than his mother.

Aurelia got the look of someone who had just seen a terrible car crash, close up. “Oh,” she said.

As he left the house a wind blew dust from the driveway, a swirling dust that had in it the vagaries of a different weather, colder. But it would be months before cold weather came.

Forty-two

A
NTONY TRIED TO
sneak upstairs. His watch gleamed 12:30, and he knew exactly which steps creaked and which didn’t. But Louise Burden could hear an ant come in the door. She heard everything. He hadn’t thought he’d made any sounds when her voice came from the bedroom. “That you, Antony?” Louise’s voice didn’t have a scintilla of sleep in it.

“It’s me.” Antony began to walk up the stairs at a normal pace.

“Awfully late tonight,” she said. “Hard to believe you been practicing with the band all this time.” She was getting up, putting on her robe and slippers. She would check to see if he’d been drinking.

Antony knew better than to lie to this old woman. “We jammed until about eleven, then we went to get burgers at the diner.”

“You been drinking?”

“No, ma’am. Just Pepsi.”

She was satisfied now. She could see him on the stairs from her room. “Y’all about ready for the band competition?”

“We better be.”

“Go on to bed now.”

When he closed the door to his room, he breathed relief. He had gone to practice, that was true; but no one had shown up. He had gone to the diner—that was also true. What he didn’t tell was that he had seen Bobby and Casey outside the diner, arguing. He had overheard Bobby say that he was going to turn himself in to the police the next day.

“You can’t do that,” said Casey. “You’re gonna screw all of us.”

“You’ve got to come with me. I’ve already talked to Tom. It’s over, Case.”

They saw Antony, and Antony held up both hands.

“Antony,” said Casey. “You can’t say anything about this.”

“I don’t want to even hear it,” Antony said, his hands still in the air.

“Okay, go.”

So Antony went home. He hoped no one had seen him talking to Bobby or Casey—even the smallest thing might indict him. The next day he would claim to be sick. He awoke the next morning with complaints of nausea, flulike symptoms, begging not to go to work at the diner.

If Louise believed him, he would be safe. “You don’t seem to have any fever,” Louise told him, her large, fat hand on his head. “I don’t want you missing work for nothing.”

“I’m not,” Antony protested. “I felt nauseated all night.”

“Maybe it’s food poisoning. That hamburger you had last night.”

“I’m achy all over.”

Louise watched her grandson try hard to bring on flulike symptoms, and she began to trust his fear of going out today. Something was going on. “Well,” she said. “It
sounds
like the flu. You’ll probably have a fever by noon.” She kept looking at him, his eyes closed. His face was not even flushed, but his expression kept a hard plea. “I’ll call the diner and tell them.” She left the room, keeping the door open.

She told George, “He’s got something, a fever, he’s nauseated. The flu, I think. I’m letting him stay home.”

“Didn’t he stay out late last night?” George asked.

“Yeah, but that’s not it. He’s really sick.”

Antony stayed in bed all day, alone in the house. Louise called him every few hours to ask how he was. He told her each time that he’d been sleeping.

Bobby called just before noon. “Okay, man. Listen, we’re going in.”

“I don’t know anything about it.” Antony hung up. He went to the refrigerator, finding a hodgepodge of soft celery stalks, two apples, milk, and some moldy cheese. He looked expectantly into the microwave window to see if Louise had left a bowl of soup for him. She had. He heated it and ate without turning on the lights. He liked the dark coolness of the house during the daytime.

The afternoon had begun to accelerate, bringing a heavy, gold haze over the houses and woods. The clock on the stove showed the time in digital red numbers: 3:45. When Antony turned on the TV, he heard the jagged news: three boys had turned themselves in for the assault and rape of Sophie Chabot.

But something else too—a teenager from South Pittsburg, Tennessee, had been reported missing. More news at six.

Forty-three

A
ROUND TEN O’CLOCK
in the morning Bobby came to the house looking for Crow. Everything about him—his gait, his face, his shoulders—everything seemed urgent. Helen called to him from the garden.

“Bobby, where’ve you been?” She didn’t mean it as a judgment, but as a statement about missing him. “I haven’t seen you in weeks! Crow’s upstairs.”

For years Bobby had walked in without knocking, like family; this time he paused at the front steps before going in. He climbed the stairs slowly. Crow’s bedroom door was open. Bobby saw that he was gluing a wing back onto one of the planes they had put together when they were ten. Crow kept them on a shelf above his bed.

“What’s up?” Bobby said, trying to lose some of the urgency he felt.

“I knocked off a couple of planes throwing around my basketball.” Crow studied the place where glue had to be applied. Bobby didn’t come further into the room, and he didn’t sit down.

“What’s the matter?” Crow asked.

Bobby turned away. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve got to tell you something.”

“So tell me.” The glue didn’t hold and the wing fell off again. “Damn.”

Bobby sat on the bed. “You won’t believe this.” His voice shook.

Crow shifted in his chair and looked at his friend. “What if I do?” he said.

“I did something pretty bad.”

“What?” Crow set the plane on the bed. “With that gun? Shit! I thought your mother took it away.”

“Not with the gun. I don’t have that anymore.” He turned his face away from Crow.

“So what is it?” Crow was beginning to realize what Bobby might say.

“Bad.”

“What’d you do, Bobby?” He lifted the broken plane with both hands and laid it carefully on the shelf. “Hell, you gonna make me guess?” He kept his back to Bobby.

“I did it. The thing they accused
you
of doing.”

Crow did not move, his hands in midair. “Say it, Bobby.”

Bobby shouted now. “Sophie! Me and Casey and Tom! We were drunk out of our minds, Crow. We’d been drinking.” Everything came out—excuses, confession, everything. “She was there in the woods. You weren’t anywhere around.”

Crow’s voice was a whisper. “What are you saying?” Though he knew, somewhere inside he had known. He walked toward Bobby, close. A mountain was building itself inside him.

“Listen,” said Bobby. “I know how this sounds. We weren’t thinking. Like, it just happened.” He threw his arms up. “We went to the river after. We threw our shoes in the river.”

Crow stood. How strange to dislike so intensely the same person who, only moments before, had been a friend. The air in the room felt heavy.

“Listen…”

“Get out.” Crow lunged, hitting Bobby’s chest, pushing him hard.

Bobby fell. “Listen, Crow.”

“Get out!” said Crow. “You bastard!”

“I wanted to tell you. I wanted to—” Bobby got back up.

“What do you expect me to do?”

“Say something. Just say something.”

“You
ass
hole. You did that to Sophie? Who
are
you? And you let me get blamed without saying
any
thing?” Crow swept his arm across the shelf of airplanes, and they all crashed down. “You didn’t say
anything
? Shit, man. I don’t even know who you are.”

“I’m turning myself in today,” Bobby said. “We all are.”

“Get out. Fuck you. Get OUT.” Crow opened the door and pushed Bobby out.

“I’m going to the police,” Bobby said. “I’m doing the right thing now.”

Crow heard Bobby lean against the door and whisper, “Did you hear me?”

Crow didn’t answer. He was leaning against the door too. He heard Bobby stumble downstairs toward the front door and leave. He felt a shaggy hate toward his friend.

In the moment when he left Crow’s room, Bobby looked like a man hanging on a branch over a cliff, one hand out for someone to take hold of. The truth had circled and finally landed, forming a tight band around them.