“Whatever,” Robert muttered. “Still think Beef should knock Bailee-Ann around for being such a slut.”
I recalled how Bailee-Ann had described herself using that word, and I felt a pang, because now I got it. She’d acted mad at Beef for not making nice with her, but really, she’d been mad at herself for cheating on him.
“Robert, I know you don’t believe that,” I said. “Bailee-Ann isn’t a . . . what you said she is.”
“Is too, the way she wears those halter tops and lets her boobs hang out. And she’s stepping out on Beef! With Tommy!”
I didn’t understand how Bailee-Ann could cheat on Beef, either. Still, Robert was being disrespectful. He was supposed to look up to his big sister, not call her names and talk about here boobs.
Christian wasn’t much as far as brothers went, but he didn’t do that.
“Have you told Beef about Tommy and your sister?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said. He looked troubled. “But that’s how I know Bailee-Ann was lying that night you came over. She said she was in for the night by one forty-five, but she weren’t.”
It took a moment for the implication of what he said to sink in. Then came the adrenaline. If Bailee-Ann wasn’t in for the night by one forty-five, then neither was Tommy.
“Hey, Cat,” Robert said as if he’d just had a new thought. “You think Tommy’s the one who beat up Patrick?”
My heart hammered. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. He sure told lots of fag jokes. Wanna hear one?”
“No thanks.”
“How does a fag change a lightbulb?”
“I said no,” I snapped.
Robert peered at me with concern. “I didn’t understand it anyway,” he said. “I hardly ever do.”
“Did Tommy tell jokes like that around Patrick?”
“Sure.” Robert pulled his eyebrows together. “So maybe he did beat up Patrick, huh?”
I felt sick, hearing it out loud. But I didn’t deny it.
“Only if he did, Bailee-Ann wouldn’t have been part of it,” Robert said firmly. “She ain’t that messed up, and anyway, she can’t fight for shit.” His face broke into a smile. “She hits like a damn girl. Ha. That’s funny.”
“What if Tommy did it and Bailee-Ann just watched?” I asked. I curled my toes within my flip-flops. “Would she stop him, or would she just . . . ?”
Robert licked his ice cream, considering. “Nah,” he said at last. “She don’t like seeing things get hurt. She helps baby birds and stuff, like if they fall out of their nest. She found one outside our house once, and she kept it alive in a shoebox for a week. Then it got better and tried to fly through the window, so it got dead all over again.”
Sadness made him scowl. “Stupid baby bird.”
“Okay, let’s just think for a second,” I said, talking to myself more than to Robert. “If Tommy did do it, he wouldn’t have done it when Bailee-Ann was around.” I pushed my fingers against my temples. “But she left y’all’s house with Tommy, which means they were together, which means she was with him the whole time.”
I slumped against the back of the booth. “Which means Tommy didn’t beat up Patrick, not if you’re right and Bailee-Ann wouldn’t have let him. There’s no way.”
Robert looked at me like I had a bug crawling out of my ear. “I don’t know why people say you’re so smart. You sure seem dumb to me.”
“Excuse me?”
“You think my daddy lets Bailee-Ann have sleepovers with boys?” He laughed. “What would they do, put that mud stuff all over their faces and paint each other’s nails?”
“Robert, you’re making no sense. Talk normal.”
“Tommy got Bailee-Ann, and Tommy brought Bailee-Ann back,” Robert said, real slow like he was explaining it to a potato. “She was in her bed the next morning, so she didn’t spend the whole night with him. So where’d Tommy go after he dropped her off?” He gestured with his cone. “See?”
My fingers got fidgety on the table. The adrenaline was coming back. “How long were they together? What time did Tommy bring Bailee-Ann home?”
“Dunno. She must have stepped over me.”
“Huh?”
“I slept under her window. She was s’posed to wake me up, but the sun did instead.”
“You slept on her floor?”
“And when I woke up, Bailee-Ann was in her bed. And I got a crick in my neck, and it still hurts.”
“So don’t sleep on the floor.”
“I had to, so I’d know she was back home and not with Tommy no more. But hey, least she’s not a dyke.”
He wanted a reaction, but all I could think about was Tommy.
“That’s the word for a girl faggot, if you didn’t know,” he informed me.
I think we’re done here, I was fixing to say, but Robert got in before me.
“If she ever did try to be one, I’d stop her, because no tears for queers, like Beef said. He told me not to go down that faggot path, not ever, ’cause one way or another, faggots get what they deserve.” He hesitated. “Even the nice ones, like Patrick.”
Robert stopped puffing his chest out. Be nice to fags. Don’t hit ’em. Don’t call ’em that. But say they do get beat up, and they land in the hospital with burns all around their mouths and deep down in the pink of their lungs. Well if that happens, don’t waste your time crying for them, because they had it coming.
“I don’t think Patrick deserved to get hurt,” I said.
Robert searched my face. “Yeah?”
“I don’t think Beef thinks that, either. In fact, I’m sure of it.” Robert looked uncertain.
“Maybe he just feels like he has to act tough, or the other guys’ll give him a hard time,” I suggested.
“Whatever,” Robert said, drawing an invisible line on the table with one finger.
I remembered what Robert had said earlier, about Beef dogging him of late. “Plus he’s busy with work, and plus he’s just got a lot on his mind. He’s not ditching you, Robert.”
“Did I say he was?” Robert said. “No.”
“Well, good.” I paused. “The two of you got any plans coming up?”
“Like you said, he’s busy,” Robert said defensively. “Real busy. Super busy.”
“Too busy to make time for you?”
He flushed a violent red.
Nice, Cat, I told myself. To make amends, I said, “He’s too busy for me, too. Just for the record.” Not that I was yapping at his heels, but I saw no need to mention that. “When y’all do hang out, what do y’all do?”
He shrugged. “We go to Suicide Rock sometimes. He likes it there.”
I frowned. Robert plus rocks and water wasn’t a good combination. Add in Robert’s inborn need to show-off, and maybe it was for the best that Beef had stopped giving him attention.
“You do know to only jump from the jumping rock, right?” I said just in case. “You can’t jump from the one that’s one higher up.”
“Not yet, but I’m gonna. If Beef can do it, so can I.”
“No, Robert. Absolutely not.” There was no way Robert could launch himself far enough to clear the rock below. There was no way Beef would let him try, either. Still, I shivered as if someone had walked over my grave.
“I want you to give me your word that you won’t,” I said. “Will you do that for me?”
“Yes, Mama. Thank you, Mama.” He rolled his eyes. “I think I can take care of myself just fine, Mama.”
I let it go, knowing that ordering Robert not to do something was probably the best way to make sure he did. “What else do you and Beef do besides going to the swimming hole?” I asked.
“Sometimes me and him go to Asheville,” Robert said. “That’s another thing we do, just the two of us. But he ain’t come for me in forever.” He looked at me squint-eyed. “You think maybe I done something? I knocked over his motorcycle that one time, but it weren’t my fault. He parked it bad is all, and anyway he never said I couldn?
??t touch it. He never did say that. Anyway, he wasn’t there, so how does he know if I did or not?”
“Whoa,” I said. “Slow down. When was this, and where was Beef?”
“We were in Asheville so Beef could run an errand. That’s my job, to watch his Suzuki.”
“While he does what?”
“One time we rode up to some rich folks’ house, one of those mountain houses where the people only come up on the weekends.” His enthusiasm returned. “It was awesome.”
“Oh yeah?”
“They had these cement animals in their yard. Bunny rabbits, frogs, all kind of stuff. Even this big fat pig. That pig was funny.” He smiled. “They were hidden in the grass and by the porch and stuff. I don’t know why, but they were.”
“Probably just for decoration,” I said, not liking the idea of Robert and Beef trespassing on some rich folks’ yard. “Or to hide a key. Sometimes people hide keys under those things.”
His eyes brightened. “Ha! So that’s how Beef got in!”
“Beef broke into their house?” I said. This was not the Beef I knew. Why would he break into someone’s house? Unless . . . did it have to do with a drug run, maybe? Or that guy who hurt Beef’s leg? The wrestler? He was from Asheville.
“We stole one of them animals,” Robert went on. “A lamb, like in the Bible. Beef let me keep it. He had to go run some errand, and so he left me there with my lamb.”
I opened my mouth to protest. He didn’t give me the chance.
“Relax, the house people weren’t there. Anyway, Beef said they’d never know the lamb was gone, and it was my payment for being such a good friend.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Friend” was a funny word for an eleven-year-old playing lookout for a high school dropout.
“He said I could do whatever I wanted with it, so wanna know what I did? I smashed it on the driveway, that’s what. Bye-bye, lambie-pie.”
“You did not,” I said.
“Did so.”
I looked at him. Within half a minute, his eyes went jittering away. I reached across the table and took his sticky hands, surprising us both. “I don’t believe you.”
He tried to pull away.
“I think you put it back,” I went on. I watched his face. “Maybe you told Beef you broke it, but you gave that lamb back, didn’t you?”
“Nuh-uh, I smashed it to bits,” he insisted. “I threw it over a wall at the end of their yard. I threw it over that wall, and it smashed on the rocks below. Then I took another rock and banged it to dust.”
“I thought you smashed it on the driveway.”
He tried harder to get his hands back. “You shut up. And if you tell Beef, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”
I released his hands. He fell against the back of the booth.
“I’m not going to tell Beef about the lamb,” I said. I slid out of my seat. “I am gonna tell him about Tommy lying, though.”
Robert went pale. “You better not!”
“I won’t tell him the Bailee-Ann part, and I won’t tell him it was you who told me. I just think Beef should know that Tommy lied about where he was the night Patrick was hurt.”
I adjusted my shirt with a tug and flipped my hair over my shoulders. “And Robert? I’m real proud of you for being straight with me, and for not smashing those people’s property. You’re a good kid.”
Color spread from his neck to his face to his sticking-out ears. “Ain’t a kid.”
“Tough. I’m proud of you anyway.”
Robert got up and said stiffly, “I am going to the john to drain my willy, and you better just . . . you better just . . .”
I waited.
“Don’t leave without me. Promise?” He stalked toward the bathroom, and I closed my eyes and pressed the heel of my palm to my forehead.
Good Lord.
ON THE BUS BACK TO BLACK CREEK, ROBERT LAY down on the seats across the aisle from me. I guess all that sugar did him in.
“Will you scratch my back?” he asked.
I sighed and scooched over so I could reach him. With my fingernails, I drew circles on top of his shirt.
“Under?” he said.
Oh, whatever, I thought, moving my hand and slipping it under the fabric. His skin was soft, which shouldn’t have surprised me, but did. He was so skinny I could feel his ribs.
“So did you tell me everything you wanted to, or do you have any other secret knowledge you think I should know?” I asked, half-joking.
“Well, there’s Ridings and that whole mess,” he murmured into the seat.
My hand stilled. At Wally’s trailer, Ridings was the “customer” I’d heard leaving a message.
He twitched his shoulder to make me start scratching again. I complied and said blandly, “What about Ridings? What whole mess?”
Several seconds passed.
“Robert?” I said, slowing the pace of my circles.
“’Cause of that cow,” he said.
What cow? I thought. But I held my tongue.
“But Beef’s daddy fixed it so Tommy wouldn’t get in trouble, even though Tommy’s a douche.”
“Tommy? What did Tommy do?”
“When he was out shooting with the others,” he said, like surely I knew this story already. “You know how they get wasted and go and shoot at road signs?”
Boys and their guns. I snorted.
“Well . . . Tommy shot Ridings’s cow.”
I froze mid-scratch. “What?!”
“The one with a bell around her neck. That one.”
Well, of course, that one, ’cause Ridings only has the one. And Tommy shot it?
“Did it die?”
“Maybe,” Robert hedged. “But you can’t tell no one. And Tommy did pay to have it butchered. Butchering a cow costs a lot of money.”
Ah, crud. Ridings loved that dumb cow like a pet. Not just that, he needed her. A man can get by on milk and cheese and a decent vegetable garden, even a dead-broke junkie like Ridings. Why on earth would Tommy shoot Ridings’s cow?
“I mean it, Cat. You can’t tell,” Robert said. He turned his head to look at me. “No one knows ’cept me and you, okay? Well, and Tommy and Beef and Roy, since Roy told Tommy how to fix it.”
“How to fix it?” I said. You couldn’t “fix” a dead cow. How did you fix a dead cow?
“Anyway, it was an accident, and anyway, it might have been lightning. So stop looking at me funny!”
If I was looking at him funny, it wasn’t on purpose. I was just trying to figure things out. Could a dead cow have anything to do with Patrick? Was there any possible way the two things were connected?
“Did Patrick know?”
Robert chose not to reply, which I interpreted as a “yes.” In a town like Black Creek, dead cows were hard to bury, even just the bones and scrap meat of them. The fact that I didn’t know showed how out of the loop I was.
We were quiet. Robert laid his head back down and straightened his stick-thin legs in his ridiculous shorts, and I resumed the back scratch. On the edge of consciousness, he mumbled, “You’re nice, Cat.”
Then he fell asleep. His eyelashes were dark and long, a detail I noticed only because he was finally still.
I saw Robert safely home, and since I was there anyway, I went inside to see if Bailee-Ann was around. If she was, I planned on questioning her some more about the night Patrick was attacked.
I agreed with Robert that Bailee-Ann wouldn’t have played a role in anything violent, but maybe she saw something when she snuck out with Tommy. Or heard something. She obviously lied to me for some reason.
Bailee-Ann wasn’t there. No one was. Robert’s face fell, and I could see he didn’t want to be left alone. When I was his age, I had Patrick, and Mama Sweetie, too. When I was his age, I didn’t know what loneliness was.
So I stayed for a bit. We played slapjack. I let him win. He talked nonstop—mostly more hero worship regarding Beef—and I listened with half an ear.
After a while, h
e said, “I’m bored. You’re too easy to beat. I think I’ll go to Huskers and see Beef. Wanna come?”
“No, thanks.” I wasn’t in the mood for Huskers. Who knew who all might be there?
“Will it make you feel bad if I go anyway?”
“No,” I said, smiling ruefully.
He shoved his chair back from the rickety kitchen table, and I did the same.
“Tell Beef hi for me,” I said. “But, Robert . . . be careful what you say to people about all of this. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
Robert gave me the finger, so what the hell, I gave him the finger. For an instant, he was shocked, and then his face lit up and he laughed, the little rat.
I laughed back. I hated to say it, but he was growing on me.
IT WAS FOUR O’CLOCK BY THE TIME I GOT HOME. Dinner wouldn’t be for a few hours, so I stopped by our garden and picked the best-looking tomatoes, which I lay gently in the basket I’d rigged to the back of my bike. There were green beans ripe for picking, so I put those in, too. I’d take them to Ridings and see if I could figure out how—or if—he fit into all of this.
As I started down our bumpy driveway, I heard our screen door slam.
“Cat!” Christian called. “You just got here. Where the heck are you going?”
Another voice chimed in. “Is she leaving? Tell her to come back. Tell her we need to talk to her.”
My blood ran cold, and my fool head turned like a puppet’s on a string, even though I knew that voice as well as I knew my own nightmares.
Tommy Lawson, in my house. Tommy Lawson looking for me. Tell her to come back. Tell her we need to talk to her.
“Hey, Cat, hold up,” Tommy called, the devil himself standing beside my brother. He was strong and broad-shouldered and handsome as a movie star, most people would say. “I want to talk to you.”
Yeah, only I had no desire to talk to him. I rode hard and fast toward Ridings’s place, and while the burn in my muscles didn’t banish Tommy from my thoughts, it helped. It made it so I could force Tommy back and think about matters closer to the surface.
Once upon a time, Ridings had a house, just like once upon a time he had a pretty wife and an even prettier baby girl. He worked at the paper mill and brought in enough to live on. They were happy. Then a tornado came and sucked the happiness right out of him, and so much for fairy tales really being true.