Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls

  My knees turn to water and I begin to shake. The priest has totally misunderstood me. He thinks I'm pregnant. I have a wild desire to start laughing, but if I let one giggle out, I'll never stop and they'll take me to Spring Grove for sure. It's not really funny anyway.

  "N-no, Father," I stammer, "it's not that."

  "Then what is it?" He still sounds cross.

  "I need you to tell me why God lets bad things happen."

  He is silent for a moment. "You're not expecting a child?"

  "No, Father." I'm crying now, not laughing. "My friends are dead—they were murdered—and I want to know why God let them die."

  "You are very young. Only a child would ask for an explanation of God's will." He pauses. Maybe he's waiting for me to say something. When I don't, he goes on.

  "Like everyone, you must accept all that happens in this world, good and evil, as God's plan. You must have faith. You must not question. God's reasons are his own."

  He pauses again. When I say nothing, he adds, "Pray for the souls of your friends. You do not know what future pain they were spared by dying young."

  I cannot speak. He has said the same thing everyone says. He knows no more about God than my mother does.

  "Do not let your friends' deaths weaken your faith in God," he goes on in his pious way. "A Catholic never doubts his faith. Ignore the wiles of Satan. It is he who puts doubt in our minds." He sighs and I hear his robes rustle as he shifts his position.

  He clears his throat. "Now, for your penance, make a good Act of Contrition, say three Hail Marys, and accept what you are too young to understand."

  Stunned by his dismissal, I automatically say, "O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven, and the pains of Hell; but most of all because I love Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life."

  I race through the words. They mean nothing to me. When I say "Amen," the priest absolves my sins in Latin and the window between us slides shut. I linger a moment in the dark, and then I leave. If a Catholic never doubts his faith, I must not be a Catholic. Has the priest just absolved me of Catholicism?

  Without saying my three Hail Marys, I run from the dark, silent church into the hot sunlight. Cars rush by, horns blow, a flock of pigeons takes to the sky with a clatter of wings. A group of teenagers dash across the street against the light, laughing, daring a car to hit them. At Hutzler's, I stop at the fountain shop and order a chocolate milk shake. I drink it slowly. It's so cold it makes my chest ache. Or maybe it's my heart that aches.

  On the ride back to Elmgrove, I wonder if I should tell my mother I've lost my faith and will no longer attend Mass. I imagine her weeping and prophesying my sinful future. My father probably won't care—why should he? He's not Catholic. In fact, he doesn't even like Catholics (why he married Mom is one of life's mysteries), so he might be on my side.

  But the thought of Mom's face, her anger, stops me. I'll have to keep going to church. I don't have the nerve to stop. While the priest talks about sin and damnation and the building fund, I'll sit between Mom and Billy and think my own thoughts.

  A Talk with Nora

  Thursday, July 12

  Buddy

  AFTER the funerals, I spend a few weeks on my uncle's farm in Virginia. While I'm there, I decide to join the navy. I need to get the hell out of Elmgrove and away from all the goddamn people who think I did something I didn't do.

  I come home in July. Not much of a welcome, I can tell you—I think my folks were hoping I'd stay on the farm. While I was gone, they'd gotten dirty looks and crank phone calls like it was their fault I did what I didn't do. They're thinking of selling the house and moving to Florida.

  The next day, I head for the navy recruiting office. Since the cops never charged me with anything, I don't worry about them saying I can't join. In fact, they're glad to have me. There's some stuff going on in Egypt about the Suez Canal and I figure the navy's thinking they might have to send some ships over there and that's fine with me. Join the navy, see the world.

  I'm walking down Main Street, hoping I don't see anyone, when the drugstore door opens and Nora Cunningham almost bumps right into me. We stop and stare at each other. I think of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers again. She's going to open her mouth and make that noise and everybody will start chasing me.

  "Sorry." I'm not sure why I'm apologizing. I didn't actually bump into her or anything. Maybe it's because of what she thinks I did. Maybe I'm saying I'm sorry I exist.

  She stares at me and then she asks me if I have my car.

  I can't figure out why she wants to know, but I look her in the eye like I'm Sam Spade or something and say, "What's it to you whether I do or don't?"

  She looks kind of scared, which makes her freckles stand out like brown blotches on her white face. "I want to talk to you," she says in a teeny tiny voice.

  "What about?" I'm getting my pose right, kind of slouching while I light a cigarette. Tough guy. Humphrey Bogart himself.

  "Please," she whispers. Her eyes are looking this way and that, everywhere except at me. She must be scared someone's going to see her talking to me. Maybe she'll be tarred and feathered and run out of town.

  I shrug and head around the corner to the parking lot behind the A&P. She follows me, not real close, not so we look like we're walking together. Just going in the same direction.

  When I open the door, she gets in and slides down in the seat so her head's below the window.

  "You don't want anybody to see you with me?"

  She shakes her head. She's scared of me, which makes me mad. For a second, I think about telling her to get out of my car and leave me alone. Why should I want to talk to her? I know what she thinks.

  But I'm curious, so I get in, slam my door, and burn rubber out of the parking lot. Two old bags pushing grocery carts recognize me. They look like they've just seen one of those guys on the FBI ten most wanted list. The kind I used to study in the post office, hoping to spot one on the street and get a reward.

  When we're out of town, I tell her she can sit up, but she stays where she is. "You got any special destination?" I ask her.

  "No."

  "How about Highland Park?"

  "Okay."

  So that's where we go. It's a county park along the river, crowded on Saturdays and Sundays but deserted during the week.

  I turn off the engine and light another cigarette. Just to be polite I offer her one, and to my surprise she takes it. She makes a sort of pathetic attempt to look like she's smoked all her life, but she doesn't inhale and she purses her lips like she's kissing her cigarette instead of smoking it. I feel like laughing.

  "Aren't you scared to be with me?" I ask her.

  She looks straight ahead. "Kind of."

  She's not bad-looking, I think. Nice long legs. No chest, though.

  "Kind of," I echo in a prissy l ittle-girl voice like hers. "You think I'm a murderer but you're only kind of scared of me?"

  She glances at me and coughs on cigarette smoke. "I don't think you did it," she says slowly.

  I stare at her, scarcely believing what she's just said. "You must be the only person in the whole town that thinks I didn't do it."

  She nods, her face serious. "You wouldn't have been on that bridge if you'd done it," she says. "You would've been hiding in the woods or something."

  "You don't think I was waiting to kill you and Ellie?"

  She pushes her bangs out of her eyes. "If you wanted to kill us, you'd have hidden in the woods and shot us. Besides, you didn't have a gun."

  "How about Ellie? What's she think?'

  Nora looks embarrassed. "She thinks what everybody thinks."

  "Let me tell you something." I look her in the eye. I'm on the level now, there's stuff I need to say and she's the first person who's given me a chance. "I loved Cheryl. I wa
s mad at her, sure. She broke up with me. She liked that dumbass basketball player because he's got a nicer car than me, he's got more money than me, and he's a big goddamn wheel. But I never would have hurt her. Never."

  "But you used to hit her," she whispers, her face screwed up like she's scared again. "You gave her a black eye."

  "I what?"

  "That black eye she had last spring." Her voice has dropped so low I can hardly hear what she's saying. "She told Ellie you gave it to her, she said you hit her all the time."

  "Cheryl said I hit her?" This hurts me more than I care to admit. Nora nods. She's hugging her knees tight against her chest like she's protecting herself.

  "Listen." I lean toward her and she shrinks away like I'm going to hit her. "Listen," I repeat. "I never hit Cheryl. Not once. That black eye—I can't believe she told Ellie I did that. I brought her home late one night, way past curfew. Her dad was waiting up for her. He opened the door while I was kissing her good night, grabbed her arm, pulled her away from me, yelling and cursing—maybe he was drunk, I don't know. Anyway, he hit her so hard he knocked her down. I saw him do it. He came after me next, but I got the hell out of there before he laid a hand on me."

  She sucks in her breath. To her it must be worse to know Cheryl's father, not me, gave her that black eye.

  "I should of stood up to the bastard," I say. "I should never of let him treat Cheryl like that."

  I turn my head and light another cigarette.

  For a while we don't say anything. It starts raining and we sit there listening to it tap on the roof.

  Why did Cheryl say I hit her? The question runs round in my head, chasing itself. There's no answer. I can't ask anybody, only Cheryl. Only Cheryl.

  "When did she tell Ellie I hit her?" I ask Nora.

  She's looking out the window, but she turns and faces me, frowning like she's thinking about my question. "It was around the time you broke up."

  "She broke up," I correct her, "not me."

  "Yeah, well." She drifts off, turns to the window again like she's watching TV or something. "Maybe she wanted a reason, you know ... to break up."

  She might be right. Cheryl always liked people to be on her side. She probably wanted Ellie and everybody else to hate me. She sure as hell got what she wanted, didn't she?

  After a while, Nora says, "I saw you at the cemetery." Her voice is still low, but soft. She's not scared of me anymore.

  "Yeah, I know you did. I thought you'd tell everybody."

  She props her feet up on the dashboard just the way Cheryl used to. She's wearing white moccasins like Cheryl's. I see she's sweating by the dark circles under her arms. It's hot, but I figure that's not the only reason she's sweating.

  "What are you going to do now?" she asks.

  "I just signed up for three years in the navy. They'll probably put me on a battleship somewhere near the Suez Canal."

  "There might be another war, my dad says."

  I nod. "Yeah, that's what I hear. I don't even know what it's all about."

  "Dad says it's Nasser's fault. He took over the Suez Canal from England, nationalized it or something. Now the English want to fight."

  I shrug and light another cigarette. "I don't give a shit one way or the other what happens in Egypt. All I want is Cheryl."

  Nora doesn't say anything right away, and neither do I. Just saying Cheryl's name makes me feel sad and crazy and mad all at the same time. I still can't believe I'll never see her again. Never kiss her, never touch her. This empty place opens up inside me. It's huge. And it hurts like all my insides have been ripped out.

  After a while, Nora says, "Do you think they'll ever catch the killer?"

  "I'd kill the bastard myself if I knew who did it." And I would, I know I would. With my bare hands if I had to.

  "They questioned so many people," she says. "They even thought they had him a couple of times. Like that kid who confessed but it turned out he was lying. He just wanted some attention, my mother says. And the crazy man from Spring Grove who also said he assassinated Lincoln. And that guy who killed some girls in Tennessee."

  "Don't forget about me," I say. "You got any idea what it's like to spend a couple of days in the lockup with police questioning you, asking the same thing over and over again? Hitting you? Kicking you? Calling you a lying little shit?"

  It's raining harder now, like somebody's pouring buckets of water on the windshield. I'm clenching my fists, breathing hard, but she doesn't notice. She's staring out the window again. All I see is the back of her head and her long neck.

  "I got a feeling they'll never prove who did it," I say. "Never."

  Without looking at me, she asks me a question. Her voice is so low that I have to say, "What?"

  She turns toward me. Her face is pale, worried, her forehead wrinkled. "Do you believe in God?"

  "What the hell kind of question is that?"

  She shrinks back into herself.

  "Do you?" I ask. "Believe in God?"

  She shakes her head. "I used to."

  You'd think she was talking about Santa Claus. I study her profile, trying to figure her out. I never heard of a girl saying she didn't believe in God. Cheryl was always praying, Please God let me pass this test, Please God let the Cougars win this game, Please God let me make cheerleaders, Please God let Marlon Brando win the Oscar. Little-girl prayers. Most of them didn't get answered. Except for Brando. He won the Oscar, but I don't think God had anything to do with it.

  I think of Cheryl walking to school that morning, I think of her seeing the guy with the gun, I think of her praying, Please God don't let him shoot me, please God don't let me die.

  I start the car. I got no time to talk about God and what I believe. Or don't believe. Hell, I'm not even sure.

  "Where do you live?" I ask her. She's gone all quiet, sitting up against the door, her knees drawn up to her chest, her head down. All I can see is the top of her head.

  "You can let me out on the corner of Grant and Twenty-Third Street, behind the Little Tavern."

  "You really don't want to be seen with me," I say.

  She shakes her head, her face still hidden.

  When I pull into the parking lot, it's still raining. "You sure you don't want me to drive you all the way home? You're going to get soaked."

  "I won't melt."

  "Yeah, and you're so skinny you can run between the raindrops."

  I finally get a little smile. "Thanks for talking to me," she says.

  I shrug. "It's nice to know one person in this town doesn't think I'm a murderer."

  She opens the door. "Good luck in the navy," she says. Then she's gone, her long skinny self dashing around a corner and out of sight.

  A Meeting at the Gas Station

  Thursday, July 12

  Buddy

  I REACH for my cigarettes and realize I've smoked them all, so I stop at the Esso station to get another pack. Just as I drop my quarter into the vending machine, I hear somebody say, "Look who's here."

  I pocket the cigarettes and turn around. It's Ralph and Don and a couple of football players. They're dressed all collegiate in those stupid khaki pants with the crap strap on the back and button-down shirts and those expensive loafers you get at Hutzler's. Crewcuts so short you can see their scalps. They make me sick.

  "How does it feel to get away with murder?" Ralph asks.

  "I wouldn't know," I say.

  The next thing I know, a football player hits me hard, his fist in my mouth. Caught by surprise, I fall back against the vending machine. The little knobs jab me in the back. Before I can get in a punch, they all start hitting me, shouting about Cheryl and Bobbi Jo, cussing me out. I try to defend myself, but they're all bigger than me. The next thing I know I'm down on the ground and they're kicking me. Like I'm nothing, like I'm a dog, less than a dog, something that crawled out of the sewer.

  "Leave him alone. It don't matter what he did or didn't do—you got no right to fight on my property. You want m
e to call the cops?"

  It's Joe, the guy who owns the Esso station. He's a big man, fat belly but lots of muscle. The boys back off. Ralph says, "We don't want any trouble, sir." Breathing a little hard, but perfect manners.

  "You know who he is?" Ed, the star quarterback cuts in. "You know what he did?"

  "He oughta be on death row," Don puts in. "Why do you care what happens to him?"

  "Get the hell out of here," Joe says.

  They mumble and mutter. I hear Ralph say, "Come on, let's go." From the ground, I watch their shoes step away from me. Swell guys. Honor Society, some of them.

  "You okay?"

  I look up at Joe. Rain pounds my face. "I'm okay." I get to my feet. I hurt all over, especially my ribs. My nose is bleeding and I can feel my right eye starting to swell. "Thanks."

  "Go on," he says. "Get outta here." He spits on the ground and walks away.

  I get in my car and light a cigarette, but my mouth is bleeding so I put it out and sit there a while with the engine idling. My mind drifts back to Cheryl and the lie she told Ellie. It really hurts to think she said I hit her. Never, never would I. Not me. Damn it, I loved that girl.

  I wonder if she wrote about that black eye in her diary. I wonder if she said it was her father who did it, not me. I wish I could read the whole thing and see if she ever loved me the way I loved her or if she was just faking it all along.

  I see Joe looking at me from the office window like he's thinking he might call the cops if I don't leave soon. I ease on out of the Esso station. No place to go but home—where they can't wait for me to leave.

  Cheryl's Diary

  Friday, April 6

  Buddy just won't take no for an answer, what does he think would happen if I get pregnant, rubbers don't always work. He says I'm a tease, he says I just don't know how painful it is for guys, haven't I ever heard of blue balls which is what they call it when a guy's hard for a long time and the girl won't let him do it.

  I'd like to do it with him, I'd like to know what it's like but my cousin Ruth let her boyfriend get her pregnant when she was my age and she had to drop out of school, that's the law you know, no pregnant girls in school. So they got married real quick and she had the baby and now they're living in this ugly little apartment and she never has fun anymore, they can't even afford a movie and they fight all the time. I don't want to end up like that.