Turtle Moon

  “Now it’s my turn,” Randy says. “I get to ask about your past.”

  There are bands of panic expanding around Lucy’s neck and shoulders. She had considered going home with Randy last night, she’d wanted to.

  “Were you sleeping with Evan in high school?”

  Each time Randy was in a drama club production, the first three rows in the auditorium would be filled with girls, and every one had made certain to apply extra mascara and lipstick. Andrea wouldn’t go into the lunchroom until she knew what table he was sitting at and could position herself near him. Lucy wonders if he was a liar, even back then.

  “During senior year,” she says.

  She will admit to anything, but she won’t tell him about the rocking horse, she won’t say a word about Bethany.

  “I thought so!” Randy says. “I could always tell. Now there’s only one more thing I need to know.” He has moved much closer to Lucy. “Are you sleeping with me?”

  “Never on a first date,” Lucy says.

  Randy studies her carefully. “Then why are you here, Lucy?”

  She has Evan’s car keys in her hand, and without thinking she moves them between her fingers, as though they were a weapon.

  “If I came here today, tomorrow wouldn’t be our first date,” Lucy says.

  “Ah.” Randy smiles.

  It’s the smile he has used so well a million times before.

  “Let’s forget about the restaurant,” he says. “Why don’t you just come back here tomorrow.”

  It is so hard to breathe in this house, Lucy can’t imagine how Bethany managed it. Randy moves toward Lucy; his hair smells like coconut shampoo. He kisses her once, a brief, practiced kiss that has always left women asking for more.

  “Seven-thirty,” he whispers, and Lucy nods before she goes out the door. She walks down the driveway and along the street, but when she reaches Evan’s Celica, she doesn’t stop. It’s not morning anymore, yet the street is quiet, except for the droning of hedge clippers in the backyards as landscapers tend to the shrubbery. She knows from experience, where there’s one lie there are bound to be more. She keeps walking until the Mustang comes into view. It’s there at the corner, parked beside a stop sign, still covered with red dust. All along the hood the seeds of strangler figs are embedded in the paint; nothing will ever get rid of them. Lucy grabs the door handle and gets inside. The car smells like french fries, and she has to swing her legs over the empty Coke cans that litter the floor. She doesn’t turn to look at him until she’s locked her door, and when she does Julian Cash takes off his sunglasses.

  “Let me guess,” he says. “You think you found yourself a murderer.”

  EIGHT

  THE MEANEST BOY IN Verity knows the difference between right and wrong, though not everyone would agree with the choices he makes. Since the night when he discovered he couldn’t run away he’s been breaking a rule, not out of spite but because he knows in his heart it would be wrong not to break it. That’s what happens when someone comes to depend on you. You begin to consider feelings other than your own. You know what it must be like to be caged as the darkness falls and the owls call from the trees. That is why every evening, after Arrow has eaten his dinner and been given a bowl of fresh, cool water, the boy unlocks the chain-link gate and carefully swings it open. The first time he did this, the dog looked at him, puzzled. He wouldn’t move until the boy crouched down and softly clapped his hands. Arrow tilted his head, then slowly walked out of the kennel. He looked out at the woods, where the scent of cypress and pine was thick and the darkness settled quickly, covering the air plants that grew wild, and then he stopped and sat down beside the boy.

  The boy clapped a hand against his thigh and began to walk through Julian’s yard, toward the woods. Still the dog sat where he was, watching. The boy nodded and clapped his hands again, and after a moment the dog took off. He passed right by the boy, and kept going. At first the boy could hear him running through the undergrowth, and he followed, but then there was nothing, not a sound. The boy sat down on a tree stump, realizing that he might have gotten himself lost. He could hear things moving in the woods, bats in the treetops, the soft, padding steps of opossums and cotton rats. He sat there in the dark, wondering how he could ever explain himself to Julian if the dog didn’t come back, but when he looked up, the dog was suddenly beside him. He’d been running, hard, and his body was trembling. In his mouth was a large stick, an old root or a fallen mangrove limb. He carefully laid the stick at the boy’s feet before backing away. The boy took the stick, lifted it over his head and threw it, as far and as high as he could.

  Since then, they have played this game every night, walking farther and farther into the woods each time. Tonight, the boy made certain to coat himself with bug spray before leaving Miss Giles’s house, and he’s brought along a flashlight, even though his night vision is rapidly improving. He jogs all the way to Julian’s, and when he gets there the dog is waiting at the gate. Arrow yelps happily when he sees the boy; his tail starts to wave, slowly at first, then faster and faster. As soon as he’s let out, the dog races for the woods, but he waits every now and then for the boy to catch up. There’s some moonlight tonight, and the boy feels that he never in his life has seen a creature more beautiful than Arrow; he’s grateful that the dog has the decency to wait while he lumbers through the underbrush. When they are deep within the woods, in a place where no one has gone since Bobby and Julian Cash were children, the boy finds a good stick and lets it fly. Squirrels and yellow bats scatter in the trees. Dark swirls of mosquitoes rise to the highest branches. He throws the stick again and again, until his arm aches. When he stops and sits down on a log, the dog trots over and lays his huge head in the boy’s lap.

  Since losing his voice, the boy has realized that he never did have all that much to say. The panic he felt at first when he opened his mouth and nothing came out is gone. He’s said enough nasty words to last a lifetime; the absence of sound makes him feel a kind of peace. He thinks of all the people in his life who thought they knew him. They didn’t know him, they just listened to what he said. No one has ever known him the way this dog does. He knows when the boy’s about to rise to his feet before he does; he knows exactly how fast the boy can travel through the woods back to Julian’s house, and that the boy will return the following evening to set him free once again.

  Running away is no longer a possibility. That’s just the way it is. Some people understand this when they first look into their newborn baby’s eyes, or when they fall in love; the boy knows it from the way the dog waits for him in the woods. They walk side by side toward the kennel, until the boy realizes that the dog has stopped at the edge of the yard. The ruff of fur around his neck seems thicker, his ears are straight up, as though he is listening to something only he can hear. His legs shudder slightly as he considers whether or not he should run. The boy walks back toward Arrow, looking past him. There is nothing out there, just some old owls and the merlins nesting in the trees. The sound of a branch breaking perhaps, or the low crooning sound of the wind.

  The boy reaches down and pets the dog’s head, and Arrow startles; he has a wild look in his eyes. The boy keeps stroking his head, comforting him, until whatever disturbance the dog has sensed fades. Now the dog can follow the boy to the kennel; dust rises whenever he sets his feet down. Dogs can gauge disaster long before it strikes; they can smell a person’s truest nature. Arrow steps back inside the kennel with the full knowledge that the boy who closes the gate behind him doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. But something out there does. Something in the woods, disguised as the wind, has been watching them, and that is why when the boy double-locks the gate and heads off toward the road, the dog puts his head back and howls, and by then the moon has disappeared into a band of dark blue clouds, so that you couldn’t see a man’s shadow in the woods even if you tried.

  Julian Cash spends the night in the car again, but he doesn’t fall asleep until dawn. In the middl
e of the night he thought briefly of climbing up the trellis, then through the guest room window, but he didn’t do it. Instead, he folded himself up in the driver’s seat and rested his head against the window. When he wakes it’s nearly eleven and all his muscles feel twisted. Evan’s car is gone, so Julian walks Loretta, then grabs his suitcase and uses his MasterCard to enter the house. He can hear Lucy in the kitchen, but after thinking about her all night, he’s not ready to see her. He lets Loretta off her leash, then goes upstairs, to the guest bathroom, where he takes a shower in the largest bathtub he’s ever seen. There are dials and jets and all sorts of Jacuzzi things he stays away from, and he also stays away from the shampoo, which smells like coconut and lemon grass, and washes his hair with Dial soap instead. It gives him some pleasure to discover that even in a bathtub like this you can run out of hot water too soon. When he’s through he puts on his old jeans and a clean shirt, which is a relief, since he hasn’t changed his clothes since leaving Florida. There’s still some red dust on his jeans, and when it falls onto the white-tiled floor Julian has to get on his hands and knees and clean it up with a washcloth, although all that seems to do is spread the sand around.

  He shaves quickly, without looking in the mirror. He’s done this so often he never nicks himself; he figures he can shave better than most blind men. He’s got to be crazy to be here. He doesn’t even like New York tap water: it’s too soft, and it has a metallic taste that you never get with well water. He’s left Loretta downstairs, because the truth is he doesn’t want Lucy to be alone. That’s the reason he hasn’t checked into a motel, not that he could afford one around here. He has the feeling that someone is about to snap real soon.

  Julian tosses his dirty clothes into his suitcase, hangs his towel up to dry, then brings his suitcase downstairs. He’s already taken a look in all the bedrooms; he did it even though he felt like a peeping tom. He’s got to lock himself back up, and he has to do it soon. They’re not going to talk about it, that much is clear. They’re not going to let it happen again. If that means staying on opposite sides of a room, fine. If it means they’re not supposed to look at each other, Julian figures he can do that, too. He’s run out of cigarettes and he needs some. But before he heads out in search of a 7-Eleven, he goes into the kitchen and finds Lucy has already poured him a cup of coffee. He cannot remember anyone ever doing that before, not just setting the coffee out, but assuming he’d want it, figuring that he’d even be there to drink it. He guesses he can have coffee without making too much of a fool of himself.

  “This is him,” Lucy says. She’s got an old yearbook open in front of her, and she slides the book across the table to Julian.

  In the parking lot of the country club, all Julian had been able to see was Randy’s back, but in that he saw everything. It comes as no surprise that the boy in this black-and-white photograph taken more than twenty years ago got whatever he wanted, even back then, and that he knew it. Randy Scott Lee. There is a list of awards below his picture: the boy most likely to just about everything.

  “What does this mean?” Julian asks. “‘Biff’?”

  “Death of a Salesman,” Lucy says. “He was in the drama club.”

  “Well, he may have killed a salesman,” Julian says, leafing through the yearbook, “but he didn’t kill his wife.”

  “He sat there and told me his wife and child were in Holland, when I had seen the receipt for a rocking horse she ordered.”

  Julian shrugs. He’s found what he’s looking for in the yearbook, on page 52. A photograph of Lucy.

  “You can tell he didn’t do it, just by looking at him?” Lucy says. “In a twenty-year-old photograph?”

  At seventeen, Lucy had a more distant look, as if she hadn’t even been in the room when the school photographer took her picture.

  “He doesn’t have the nerve,” Julian says, closing the yearbook. He takes a sip of coffee; it’s not steaming hot, but it’s good, richer than what he usually drinks. “He thinks too much of himself.”

  “You think a lot of yourself,” Lucy counters.

  Julian laughs. “That just goes to show how easily fooled you are.”

  “You think you’re smarter than other people,” Lucy says stubbornly.

  “Suspicious doesn’t mean smart,” Julian insists. “It just means you’re harder to bullshit. A guy like this, he doesn’t have to kill his wife. If he wants to get rid of her, all he has to do is divorce her. He’s got the money, he’s got the lawyers, he’s ready to go on to the next one.”

  “I don’t care what you say. He’s the reason she’s dead,” Lucy insists.

  She can’t even sit at the table with him, because if she does she’s going to think about things she promised herself she’d forget. She gets up and goes to the refrigerator and takes several ice cubes, which she drops into her coffee mug. Lucy’s face is flushed, and she’s got this strange, hot feeling she gets whenever she sees him. It’s insanity to think they could have anything together. They both know that. Even here, so far from Verity, where the heat doesn’t confound you and make you do things you’ll later regret.

  “I’m going to find out whatever it is he knows,” Lucy says.

  “All right,” Julian says. He won’t be able to talk her out of it; he wouldn’t even try.

  Julian leaves her in the kitchen, and takes Loretta out to the backyard. He watches from the patio as the dog chases a tennis ball Julian found in the front hall closet. He’s got a funny feeling that he doesn’t want to step on the grass, it’s too well tended. Better to stay on the stone patio, beneath the latticework arbor. Whether or not it’s right, he hates Randy Lee, hates his ability to have whatever he’s wanted. Loretta comes and lays the tennis ball at Julian’s feet, then she backs up and waits eagerly. Julian throws it too hard, so that it topples a wooden birdhouse out of a magnolia tree. As he crosses the lawn, Julian remembers that Bobby Cash could climb a tree in seconds flat. He’d wrap his arms around the trunk and hoist himself up into the branches and disappear before you could count to three. He could imitate an owl so well that the owls would answer his call from miles around, one after another. Before the age of ten, Julian couldn’t climb a tree worth a damn. He’d have to stand down at the bottom and wave his arms around, reaching upward, so Bobby could grab hold of his wrists and swing him aloft, toward the sky.

  The birdhouse is cracked in two. Julian crouches down on the lawn, holding both pieces in his hands. The boy made this, he can tell, with plenty of help from his father. It’s highly unlikely that any birds ever set up house; the roof wasn’t matched evenly and rainwater has seeped inside. There are no signs of inhabitants, past or present, no feathers, no bits of straw or string. Julian isn’t surprised that the one thing he’s touched here has fallen apart. It’s clear he was never meant to have what other men receive so easily.

  He can think about Bobby all he wants or erase his memories completely, he can black out in the parking lot of the Burger King, or drive a thousand miles, and it’s still not going to change what happened. He can’t alter those last few seconds, the strangler figs split open on the road, the darkness, the sound of the tires, the knife through his heart. He can’t stop Bobby from reaching for the steering wheel, turning it in one smooth motion, the way he used to swing Julian up into the branches.

  Julian whistles for Loretta and goes back inside, holding the broken birdhouse. He carefully puts the birdhouse down on an oak table in the front hallway, and he’s there staring at the pieces when Evan walks through the front door carrying two white bags of take-out food for lunch. Loretta stands close to Julian and makes a low growling sound in the back of her throat. Evan stays where he is in the doorway; he looks at Loretta and at Julian, then at the number on his front door.

  “Is this my house?” Evan says.

  “This is your house,” Julian says.

  “I know this isn’t my dog,” Evan says.

  Julian grins and tells Loretta it’s okay, and she trots over and sniffs Evan, wh
o stands perfectly still as the dog checks him out, then retreats.

  “I broke the birdhouse,” Julian says, nodding to the hall table. He goes to Evan and takes one of the bags of take-out food. “I’m a friend of the family,” he explains.

  “That’s good,” Evan says. He quickly looks away from the scar across Julian’s forehead. “That’s a relief.”

  They go into the kitchen, where Evan sets the food down on a butcher-block counter.

  “Plates?” Julian says.

  “Top cabinet,” Evan tells him.

  Evan goes to the refrigerator and gets two beers.

  “Have you known Lucy long?” he asks.

  “Since the first of the month.” Julian accepts the beer Evan offers him and sits down.

  “A close family friend,” Evan says dryly. He gets some forks from the silverware drawer. “You’re not going to rob me or something like that?”

  “I’m delivering Lucy’s car,” Julian says, which is not exactly a lie.

  “You know Keith?” Evan asks.

  “Well enough,” Julian says.

  “He’d be happier here.”

  “Maybe.” Julian’s not getting involved in this.

  “If you’re really a friend, you could talk to Lucy about it,” Evan says. “Convince her to let him move back.”

  Julian drinks his beer and eyes the food in the containers as Evan opens each one. He’s never had Chinese food before, and it doesn’t much look like something he’d enjoy. You can’t tell what any of the ingredients are, for one thing, and Julian doesn’t like to be surprised.

  “That’s her decision,” Julian says. “Isn’t it?”

  He puts his feet up on a kitchen chair and watches Evan set the table. Even when Julian’s not moving he seems dangerous, much more so than the dog, who lies in the kitchen doorway.