After the First Death

  I am sorry, Ben. I apologize. For the preaching.

  Or maybe this is an apology for something else.

  Trying to say now what I could not say to your face earlier.

  Actually, I found it difficult to look you in the face, in the eyes, this morning. Not afraid of what I would see. But afraid of what you would see.

  I see Knights and Dayze on the table there.

  My old yearbook.

  All those names and faces. Where are they now?

  And where are you, Ben?

  And when you return, Ben, what do I tell you?

  What do I say?

  Should I attempt to explain everything?

  And where do I begin?

  At the beginning. Where else?

  And the beginning was last August, when the bus was on the bridge and the children held hostage and one child already dead …

  We knew within hours, of course, with whom we were dealing: terrorists well practiced in their craft. Merciless. Fanatic. A nationwide investigation, swiftly organized and placed in action, told us what we needed to know and indicated what our course should be. We had learned by the experience of other nations about terroristic tactics and, to some extent, by our own experience. We also knew the line we had to follow: Don’t give in. Bargain for the sake of stalling, buying time. But refuse to accede to the demands.

  Meanwhile, there was activity the general public did not know about. One branch of our armed services had been training in counter-terrorist operations, prepared to move into situations when and if they occurred. A unit of this branch was dispatched to Hallowell and deployed itself in the woods surrounding the bus and the van. They brought the latest equipment, particularly a sophisticated version of the stun grenade. This grenade would be the key to the operation, particularly since children were involved.

  We deduced that there were probably no more than four terrorists involved in the hijacking. A man named Artkin who was well known for terrorist activities and had been under surveillance for some time, suspected of participation in bombings in Brooklyn, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Two others identified as likely participants were a man called Antibbe, who also used many other aliases, familiar to authorities in the Middle East and Europe as a mercenary, and a black named Stroll, known primarily as a technician, expert with explosives, machinery, etc. There was one other, whose identity was not known to us at that time. A person with no record. This person, as far as observations could be made, remained in the bus, obviously in charge of the children and the girl. The fact that he was an unknown entity and thus unpredictable in his actions—particularly where children were involved—gave us additional concern. Artkin, we knew, was capable of the most violent acts. His casual bombings had resulted in more than thirty deaths, six of them children.

  Our major break came when we captured a man known as Sedeete, the acknowledged leader of certain terrorist groups in the United States and Canada. He could tell us nothing; he was critically wounded in the events surrounding his arrest. His capture left Artkin in command of the situation. This had both an advantage and disadvantage for us. The advantage: if we could convince him that Sedeete was captured and the operation aborted, he could bargain for his own freedom and release the children. The disadvantage: as a fanatic he could kill the children and die on the bridge as a sign to the world, and especially the United States, that his cause was worth dying for and that others were willing to kill and die for the cause.

  Meanwhile, we were aware of a ploy that had become known to many in our occupation as the Messenger Gambit. We did not believe that the terrorist factions knew we were aware of this tactic. Thus we were in a position to use it to our advantage.

  And that, Ben, brought us to you.

  And brought you to the bridge.

  And me here to this room where I pace the floor, waiting, wondering where you are, when you will return. And the most terrible thought of all: Will you return?

  I just checked my watch. After one.

  You’ve been gone a long time.

  I left the room for a few minutes to see Dean Albertson. To inquire about you. To see if you had gotten in touch with him or his office. To inquire whether anyone had seen you about the grounds. I did not wish to raise an alarm and thus embarass you. He said he would make “discreet inquiries.”

  So I’m waiting.

  The snow is falling again but softly. There’s barely any wind and the flakes tumble to the earth like feathers.

  There was always a good deal of snow here at Castleton. Fine ski country. I used to love to walk in the snow. On lonesome afternoons, I would set off by myself, head out toward Brimmler’s Bridge because one needed a destination.

  How much time I spent at Brimmler’s Bridge.

  I wonder: Do you go there, too?

  If you don’t come back soon—say, in another thirty minutes or so—perhaps I should search the grounds instead of merely waiting here. Perhaps you have been upset by my appearance here after all this time and fled the room, Castle, and are lost out in the woods, in the snow.

  Thirty minutes.

  The wind has risen now and the temperature has dropped. I have come in from outside and my hands are still raw and cold. The room is also cold. The heating system never worked that well here at Castleton.

  I have talked to Dean Albertson again, but he dismisses my fears. He tells me not worry. The boys are in a holiday mood this weekend, he says. Some of them have gone off to Pompey. Others are out in the woods, some are ice fishing on Drake Pond. But I feel he doesn’t realize the truth of the situation, how much we both went through last August on the bridge and afterward, and how my appearance here has possibly upset you. He suggested I take another tranquilizer. How does he know I take tranquilizers? Did he spot me swallowing one earlier? I had no time to question him because I was more concerned with you than with myself.

  So I set off to search for you, to see if you were somewhere in the vicinity. I was surprised at how well I remembered the place. The years have not dimmed my memory of the grounds, the tortured paths through the woods or the gravel untarred roads leading to Pompey to the south or Barreston to the north. The snow obscured the footpaths, but I persisted. I resisted calling out your name. I was afraid that you’d hear me when you were with the other fellows and wouldn’t want them to think your father had to go searching for you in the woods as if you were ten years old.

  A group of fellows were ice fishing at Drake Pond, huddled around a spot in the center of the pond, the flames from a small fire spitting at the falling snow. They passed a bottle around and each took a swig from it. I crouched among bushes watching them, feeling like a spy. I remembered passing a bottle around like that years ago on this same pond. So there I was, spying on my own boyhood. I squinted but could not see you among them. The funny thing is that I could not see their faces; they were too far away for that. But I sensed that you were not with them. I would know you anywhere, Ben, without seeing your face. Would know the way you held yourself, the way you slanted your head when you listened closely or concentrated on something. I always thought that I knew you better than anyone else in the world, Ben. Better than I know your mother, in fact, although I have been more intimate with her, of course. But I have known you from the moment of your birth. I witnessed your growth, watched your progress, saw your transitions from baby to child to Little League ballplayer to adolescent. The school at Delta was monitored by the test and measurement procedures I instituted. Thus, I saw your growth both as a son and a student. I knew so much more about you, Ben, than you ever suspected. And loved you all the more. Knew your weaknesses and loved you for trying to overcome them because I knew that you could not exceed your limitations. Although you tried. Take your Little League baseball games, for instance. All the measurements showed us your potentialities, your susceptibility in stress situations, your vulnerabilities, to the point where it became possible for me to know how well you might or might not do in a game, in a given situation. Y
et, I never subjected you to behavior intervention or modification, Ben. I did not want to subject you to the experience of those involved in Inner Delta. You were not an enlistee there or an enrollee, like the other men and women. You were my son; after all, you were not being trained to be sent into the field.

  I regret, of course, my knowledge of you. I never found any satisfaction in the knowledge—how could I? Because I usually knew beforehand your reaction to situations, whether you were doomed to failure or not.

  How I wish I had never known.

  I have digressed.

  I have allowed my thoughts to take me—and you—to places where we should have not gone, to all those tests and measurements. The important thing right now is finding you and confronting you face to face. And that brings me back to the search for you. I had a sense as I was walking along of also searching for myself, knowing that as my son you are heir to my own vulnerabilities. So I thought: Where could he be? Where could he have gone? And I remembered Brimmler’s Bridge, the same bridge to which I went as a student, to sit and ponder life and its mysteries.

  I set out for the bridge, fighting my way through the snow and the wind, the paths obscured, and no one in the area. The wind howled and the snow whirled viciously, blindingly. I was without gloves or scarf and plunged my hands into my coat pockets, but this made walking difficult. Finally, I had to expose my hands to the freezing air so that I could balance myself as I walked, reaching out for trees and bushes to help me on my way. I finally reached the bridge. It was deserted. The snow was so thick that I could not see the river below. I searched for your footprints but there were none. The new fallen snow would have obscured them, of course. There had been no guarantee that you had gone to the bridge. I was merely following my instincts. Putting myself in your place again. I looked hard and long into the snow. I told myself there was nothing else to see. There was no reason to see anything. Or could I see myself down there? Perhaps I should be the one to take that leap and never have to worry about you again and what I did by sending you to that bridge last summer. A voice inside me said: Why not? Why not jump? I listened, the wind howling around me, as if an actual voice were speaking, whispering to me, echoing in my blood, my bones.

  I turned away, shivering in the cold, and came back here, certain that I would find you waiting for me.

  But you were not here. Are not here.

  It’s as if you were never here.

  There is no trace of you at all.

  If you’d been out in the cold and the wet, certainly you would have tracked in snow or left puddles in your wake. There would have been the smell of wet clothing in the air. Or your wet jacket hanging from the hook in the corner.

  But there is nothing.

  And I’m afraid to look in the closet. Suppose I opened the door to the closet and found nothing in there, no clothes, no trace of you at all?

  I found something else, though, in this room.

  The pages, near the typewriter.

  They weren’t a school assignment or theme paper, after all.

  Maybe I knew all the time what they were. Is it because I know you so well that I also know the words you would write?

  And what you wrote tells me that you’ve been here and now you’re gone.

  They also tell me what I’ve done to you.

  Oh, Ben.

  Come back. Please come back. So that I can ask you to forgive me.

  part

  8

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You have been looking out the window for a long time. Do you see something out there, Kate?”

  She hated it when he called her Kate. “No, there’s nothing out there. I’m just bored. Tired of this bus, tired of everything.”

  Which was true, of course, but not all of the truth. She was tired and exhausted and disgusted, but she was also determined. Determined to do something, to make use of the key, her only hope now. She knew she could not depend on Miro any longer or her foolish hopes of winning him over. You don’t win monsters over. Even a sixteen-year-old monster. So she had to rely on herself.

  Kate decided to take her chances with the bus. Her new-found hope—nothing man to lose—was the only thing to cling to now. Peering through the slit in the rear window, Kate studied the bridge to see how far she had to drive the bus to get them out of here. There were obstacles, of course. She would have to drive in reverse. And she’d have to drive blindly. The tape would prevent any vision through the windows. She’d have to start the bus and put it immediately into reverse, holding the wheel steady as they bounced over the railroad ties. If she lost control, they could plunge to the river below. Her eyes surveyed the parapet. Solid, cast iron probably, sturdy. If she went off course, the parapet looked strong enough to prevent the bus from crashing off the bridge.

  She sighed, blowing a damp strand of hair from her cheek. How far would she have to drive the bus? She tried to measure the distance. She was lousy at this sort of thing. Artkin had said the bridge was the length of a football field—one of your fields, he had said—and the bus was halfway across. It would be like one of Ron Stanley’s touchdown runs. Not so far as that. If Ron Stanley could do it with a football, certainly she could do it with a bus. The thought, ridiculous as it was, cheered her.

  She left the rear window to check the front of the bus, the driver’s seat, the instrument panel. The aisle had become strewn with the children’s small debris: pieces of chocolate-stained Kleenex, discarded lunch bags and wax paper, gum wrappers, paper napkins. You’re a lousy housekeeper, Kate, she told herself. As she scooped up the debris, she felt lighthearted for the first time in—how long? Ages, it seemed. Her decision to drive the bus out of here one way or another had lifted her spirits, restored her balance, even if it didn’t work out. Miro approached her, holding out the plastic pail for her to drop the rubbish into. She did so without looking at him. She wanted nothing more to do with him.

  Squinting through the narrow opening in the windshield, she saw the rear-view mirror on the top of the left front fender. It was at least one foot high and probably a half-foot wide, providing a good view of the tracks behind the bus. But she wouldn’t be able to see the mirror when she sat behind the wheel. The damn tape would block the view. There was a simple solution: she’d merely rip the tape from the window after starting the motor.

  She sat behind the wheel now, resting her hands on it. This would be the biggest worry—the bus itself, starting the motor. Would the engine start quickly enough? The bus wasn’t exactly new; she had no idea of its age. The transmission was sluggish and stubborn, the gears difficult to shift. Yet all she’d have to do was shift to reverse and leave it there. Another thing in her favor: all buses used to transport children were inspected by the state and were supposed to be in good running condition.

  She felt Miro’s eyes on her but ignored him. He didn’t know about the key. He probably figured she was just bored, restless. Let him look as she rehearsed what she must do. Place the key in the lock. Push the clutch pedal down to the floor. Shift from neutral to reverse. Rip the tape from the window. And Miro: he was a factor in her plans. She would have to wait until he took one of his periodic trips outside, when he stood just outside the door of the bus to get a breath of air.

  She inspected the tape on the windshield, saw one or two places where the tape had loosened near the window’s edges. She could easily pull the tape away and give herself a clear view through the windshield. She would also have a view of the van, which faced the bus. And whoever was in the van—Artkin or the other two—would be able to see what she was doing if they looked through their own slitted tape. But she’d have to take that chance.

  One question remained. Could she take that chance? Could she actually try to drive to the bus out of here? Could she ever be that brave? She could rehearse in her mind all the things she had to do to get the bus moving. But she wished there were a way she could rehearse her bravery.

  He watc
hed the girl.

  As he had never watched anyone before.

  From all over the bus, from many angles.

  Was “watch” the proper word? In the past, at Artkin’s command, he had watched doorways for someone to appear, watched cars, watched airport entrances.

  But this watching was different.

  It was watching but also looking.

  It was using his eyes as a blind man would use his hands.

  Like now:

  Kneeling down to give the appearance of adjusting the buckle on his boot, he squinted up at her, seeing the right side of her face only as she bent over one of the children. An errant shaft of light outlined her profile. He would love to trace that delicate profile with his finger, down her forehead, over the nose that had a slight rising in it, and across the lips to the delicate chin. He pictured her, foolish thought, opening her mouth and nibbling at his finger. The thought startled him. Where do such thoughts come from? His finger in her mouth, her lips nibbling? He straightened the buckle, stood up, and moved away.

  Later, he watched without seeming to watch as she arched her back wearily, lifted her head and raised her face to the ceiling of the bus. She massaged her shoulders, then her back. She looked as if she were taking a shower, the water invisible as it splashed her body. She looked like a bow, poised for the arrow to be shot. She thrust her arms behind her, as if they were wings and she could fly out of here. The movement caused her breasts to press forward, straining against her jersey. He had always been embarrassed by the sexual displays of American girls. They were without shame in their boldness. But Kate was not being bold now. She did not know he was watching. His eyes were half closed as he sprawled in the seat, pretending indifference. Kate was only seeking to relax, to ease her tired body, as if she were alone in her room. He could not take his eyes away from her breasts. They were not large but they stood out prominently. He wondered what it would be like to hold one of her breasts in the palm of his hand as if it were a small puppy to be petted and caressed.