Mautz is smart enough to wait.
“Because the two don’t belong together.”
“In my mind,” Mautz says, “maybe they belong more together than we’ve allowed them to be in the past couple of decades.”
Mr. Ellerby shakes his head vigorously. “In your mind, that’s fine. But you work for a school district that I support financially, and you have a responsibility to the law. Sir, I’m a preacher and I don’t believe the church should get into the state’s business. They have different functions. I have an educated guess about you and Mr. Brittain getting your heads together to decide this suicide thing was the result of some kind of religious persecution. But we aren’t talking about religion here, Mr. Mautz, we’re talking about rigid thinking. The kind of thinking that doesn’t allow anyone else’s ideas, and which also doesn’t allow a person any room for error. What’s wrong with Mark Brittain is that he can’t allow himself to make mistakes. That makes humiliation his worst and constant enemy. Somebody needs to back off that kid.”
Mr. Ellerby must have hit a soft spot, because Mautz comes out firing. “With all due respect,” he says through tightly constricted vocal chords, “I don’t think a man who advocates for women on the pulpit, or equal rights for homosexuals, or sexual information to children too young to handle it, should be in this office telling me what’s best for one of my students….”
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Mr. Ellerby says, smiling. “Now, for your own good, hear this: The one of your students I’m interested in is my son. I’m pretty sure, after what he’s heard today, he won’t be bothering Mark Brittain anymore. But you’ve crossed a line, my friend”—and he points to Steve and me—“in front of witnesses. I’m guessing this all came to a head today because Mr. Patterson is out of town. When Mr. Patterson is in town, we’re going to have this conversation again. Until then, I’ll be watching to see that neither my son nor his friend is harassed.” With that, he stands.
Steve and I get up with him, but Mautz says, “I need to see you about a different matter, Eric.”
Mr. Ellerby squeezes my shoulder, and he and Steve walk out together. Wow. There are some all-right adults around. Unfortunately, the one I’m stuck in this office with isn’t among them.
I stand silently while Mautz puts himself together. He’s been wounded, and there’s no sense in me collecting the fallout for Mr. Ellerby’s direct hit.
Mautz straightens his desk, as if it needs it, then walks to the door of a small inner waiting room behind his desk. He opens it and says, “Mr. Byrnes, you can come in now.”
Shit.
“Have a seat,” Mautz says, and Mr. Byrnes settles only a few feet from me. He glares.
“Eric, Mr. Byrnes is here because his daughter has left home. He could have made a scene coming here to remove her, but he chose not to because he thinks you know where she’s staying, and this could all take place more privately.”
I say, “I don’t know where she’s staying.”
“Mr. Byrnes doesn’t believe that’s true.”
Now what I’d like to do is streak out and grab Mr. Ellerby to come back and tell Mautz that not only is it unconstitutional to mix church and state, it’s also unconstitutional to mix the devil and state. But I am frozen to my spot. I’ve said this before—not more than a million times: Mr. Byrnes is a scary, scary man. “Well,” I say, “it is true. I don’t know where she is.”
“Young Calhoune,” Mr. Byrnes says, his voice barely audible, “you’ve known my daughter since grade school, been friends with her close to six years. Except for that Thornton kid, you’re the only friend she’s ever had. Now I don’t know what keeps you around, ugly as she is, but I do know she was talking to you in the hospital when she wasn’t talking to anybody else. It doesn’t follow that you don’t know where she is, so I’d appreciate it if you’d cut the nonsense and get on with it. She’s confused, and I want to help her. It isn’t easy going through life looking the way she does.” He turns to Mautz. “I would think, you being the man in charge, that you could help me out.”
“I have to agree with Mr. Byrnes on this one, Eric,” Mautz says. “It really doesn’t make sense that you don’t know where Sarah is.”
Surprise of surprises. Mautz agrees with the adult. “Well then, it doesn’t make sense,” I say. “But I don’t.” It occurs to me that Lemry hasn’t even told any teachers Sarah Byrnes is at her place. If she had, Mautz would know it.
“Mr. Calhoune,” Mautz says evenly, “how is it you’ve been at the center of all the trouble around here in the past few weeks? I have a man here worried about his daughter. A handicapped daughter at that. You know where she is. Are you ever going to grow up and take responsibility for yourself, or are you going to spend the rest of your life at the center of everybody’s trouble?”
Something about watching Mautz in the face of Mr. Ellerby’s barrage, along with my sheer terror of Mr. Byrnes, lets me take him on. I raise my palms. “Okay,” I say. “You got me. I know where she’s staying.”
“And where is that?” Mautz asks.
“I’m not telling you. Mr. Mautz, this man has threatened me to my face and over the telephone. You don’t have any idea what he’s capable of doing. But I do, and he knows I do.” I turn to face Mr. Byrnes. “I do, Mr. Byrnes. And if something happens to me, everyone will know. I don’t know how you fooled Mr. Mautz, but I’ll bet it wasn’t hard. I’m not fooled, though. And what you better do is leave me alone and leave Sarah Byrnes alone and hope we keep our mouths shut. She’s not coming back to your place. Ever.”
Mr. Byrnes barely has a reaction, but I feel an actual physical blast of cold from his stare, and I know instantly I’ve made a big mistake. Mr. Byrnes is not a man to threaten. But I’m in so far there’s no way out but all the way through. I turn to Mautz. “So either I’m suspended for not cooperating or I’m going back to class, but I’m through in here.”
Mautz stands. “Maybe you’d better take the rest of the day off, Eric. Go home and think about it.”
“If that’s an offer, I decline,” I say. “If it’s an order, I’d like it in writing, please. My mom will need to know your side of the story. I’m liable to just tell her you’re crazy.”
I can tell Mautz is pissed, but he’s dealt with my mother before when she thought her little dumpling was wronged, and I think the threat of her coming in on the heels of Mr. Ellerby might be too much for him. “Get back to your class,” he says, and I’m headed for the door, sweating so bad I could be doing breaststroke.
CHAPTER 16
It’s well after ten at night, and Ellerby and I are replenishing the juices we lost in practice with a half rack of Gatorade. Lemry may be gone, but her memory lives on through precise and voluminous workout notes, and Mr. Billings was up to the task of carrying them out to the letter.
“Guess we ought to lay off Brittain, huh?” I say.
“Yeah. Until my dad said it, I didn’t think about what it’s like to be Mark. You know, all the pressure to be godlike and stuff.”
“Speaking of which,” I say, twisting the cap off another Gatorade, “that was pretty heavy shit today between your dad and Mautz.”
Ellerby smiles and takes the bottle, nearly draining it. “My old man’s a heavy dude. He doesn’t believe butt time on Planet Earth necessarily makes you wise. Guys like Mautz always hate my dad.”
“No shit.”
“Mautz really brought old man Byrnes down on you after we left?”
“Really did. Man, if I hadn’t crapped my drawers with glee a few seconds earlier, watching your dad dismantle him, I’d have sure crapped them with astonishment when old Freddy Krueger stepped into the room.”
Ellerby shakes his head. “Guess we better not be goin’ over to Lemry’s anymore, not without covering our tracks. All Byrnes would have to do is follow us around for a while.”
“Yeah. It’s a long shot, but it would sure be nice if Lemry and Sarah Byrnes found her mom. Then everything would come in
to the open.”
Ellerby switches on the ignition. “I wonder why he didn’t just snatch her someplace close to school. That’s what I’d have done.”
“Maybe he thought he could make it look legitimate. Hell, Mautz is still convinced it was just a little family trouble.”
We talk awhile longer, polishing off two more Gatorades before I tell Ellerby to take me back to his place to get my mom’s car because I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open and my arms are rags from all the butterfly Lemry left for us to do. All through workout, I pictured her and Sarah Byrnes driving down the highway, laughing their asses off at the workout she left for us. I even entertained the idea that Lemry let Sarah Byrnes make it up.
I’m on cruise control, gliding across town on Washington Street, timing the lights perfectly. I’ve driven this so many times, I could do it in my sleep, which is a pretty good description of what I am doing. My head is actually bobbing, and I pop the radio on and punch a button tuned to K-101 Oldies, cranking it to near full blast. The biggest hits from the fifties and sixties. I have no trouble finding the button; they’re all tuned to 101.
“Turn that down.”
A shout blasts out of me at the voice coming low out of the back seat.
“You should use your rearview mirror.”
I whirl around, face to face with Virgil Byrnes, then whip my eyes back to the road. Suddenly I am in adrenaline overdrive. “Get out of my car! That’s against the law. I can get you arrested!”
“The door wasn’t locked,” he says. “I didn’t know it was your car.”
“What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
“I told you, I’m not telling….”
The sharp cold point of a knife indents my cheek like a pencil on a fresh tablet, and Virgil Byrnes’s voice goes stone cold. “I told you not to mess with me, boy.”
“Okay,” I say back. “I believe you.”
“Then you better come clean. You played a few too many cards today in your principal’s office.” Again I wish I hadn’t said I knew what he did to Sarah Byrnes.
I don’t answer.
“Pull into the park. Take the first left, and we’ll find a place to talk.”
I brake and we glide easily into the entrance of Manito Park.
“Past the lights,” he says, and I drive slowly past the duck pond, toward the upper, undeveloped area. My terror is truly unimaginable, but somehow I hold myself together, and slowly the mercury vapor lights fade in my rearview mirror, and then it’s just me and Mr. Byrnes and the dark. All heroic thoughts of what I might do if I ever got alone with him have vanished like warm breath on a cold night, and all I want to do is live.
“You better not do anything to me,” I warn meekly. “People will know. Sarah Byrnes will know. So will Le…so will other people.”
“So will who?”
“Nobody.”
The knife sinks deeper into my cheek, and warm blood trickles toward my chin. The son of a bitch is cutting me.
“Ellerby,” I say. “My friend Ellerby. He’ll know.”
“You got a regular band of merry men,” he says. “Where’s my daughter?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
The burn in my cheek spreads and blood flows freely. Jesus! He’s cutting my face! “I don’t have time for this,” he says. “Before this night’s over I’m going to have my daughter and be gone. Now you’ll either be hurt real bad—maybe dead—or not, but I’ll have her one way or the other. Nobody’s got a right to take a man’s family. No one. I don’t care about your friend Ellerby or your principal or your momma or nobody. I care about getting my baby and disappearing. Now tell me where she is, boy, or you’ll be tasting this knife on your tongue.”
Oh, Jesus. He’s going to shove it through my cheek! I stomp the gas pedal to the floor and the blade slices back toward my neck as Byrnes falls hard against the back seat. I’m screaming, “Go ahead! Go ahead! Kill me! You’re coming, too, goddamn it, you’re coming, too!”
We’re pushing fifty when we reach the exit to the park, and I’m sure we take the corner out onto the deserted street on two wheels. If no one tries to stop me, I’ll hit a tree. The speedometer pushes seventy.
“Stop this car, you little shit,” he says, “or I’ll drive this knife into the back of your neck.”
“Go ahead!” I scream again. “Go ahead! You’re a dead man with me, asshole!” It’s as if I can keep my nerve through my screams. “Go ahead! Go ahead! Kill me! Kill me!”
I see him coming over the seat on the passenger’s side, and I know he’ll get control of the car, so I slam on the brakes, throwing him against the windshield, then bash the door open with my shoulder and sprint back into darkness to hide, and go for the cops when he’s gone. He stuck me with a knife! That’s good for jail time.
I dive off the road into the underbrush on the edge of a large stand of lodgepoles, watching Byrnes flip a U-turn back in my direction. If he goes past, I’ll run out the way he came and work my way through the neighborhoods downtown to the police station. I touch the stinging flap of skin on my cheek with a strange sense of satisfaction. When the cops see that, there’ll be no doubt.
Byrnes stops less than twenty feet from me, headlights illuminating the trees. I hold my breath and hug the ground like a flat rock, shuddering as the melting snow soaks through my flimsy jacket.
Mr. Byrnes slips out of the car, peering into the shadows around me. The headlights aim high and to the right of me, and I have no way of knowing whether I’m visible. He moves carefully in my direction, and I truly believe my heartbeat will drive a dent into the cold ground beneath me. He’s ten feet away now, and though he gives no indication of spotting me, I can’t contain the panic, and I push myself up, venting a guttural animal yowl, and hightail it for the trees and the park exit beyond.
A dusky strobe from his headlights passes through the trees while the car turns toward the road through the park. Then it’s black again, and I slow to dodge the black silhouettes of the trees, which seem to spring from nowhere. Near the park exit, I crouch, peering back into the darkness, then east, where I catch broken glimpses of the headlights as the car circles the perimeter, moving toward the exit. I sprint, hoping I can beat him and disappear into the neighborhood, but he rounds the last turn as I break onto the street, and though I cross safely, I’m dead sure he saw me.
The headlights cast my eerie blurred shadow in front of me as I push my exhausted frame down the middle of the street before cutting to the sidewalk. I glance desperately around for an alley, any place I can cut into the neighborhood to get off the street; see nothing, and run straight down the sidewalk with one eye on the driver’s-side door, knowing if he jumps out, I’ll leave him in the dust. If he doesn’t drive up on the sidewalk to pick me off, I’ll be safe until I get downtown.
As I think it, it’s real. The car cuts sharply toward me, jumping the curb, and I dive over a three-foot chain-link fence, roll twice, pick myself up, and race to the next yard, screaming with the renewed energy only an adrenaline blast can create. I cut behind the house to find an alley and double back, hoping to give myself time while he figures what I’ll do next.
But old man Byrnes didn’t become the chilling menace he is being duped by the likes of me. Twice I reach the entrance of the alley—once on each end—only to see my mother’s car idling quietly within twenty-five feet. Each time I dart back to hide among the garbage cans and clotheslines, wondering if he’s some sort of spook, if maybe he can read my mind. I know that can’t be true, but when I steal across several lawns to an adjacent alley two blocks away and creep into the intersection only to find the car waiting, I’m rattled.
I consider pounding on someone’s door, but a lot could go wrong—there wouldn’t be much time if no one answered—and I still hope I can get downtown before he catches me. To actually get his hands on me, he’ll have to get out of the car, and that evens things up.
Moving down off the south
hill now, into middle and poorer sections of town, I realize my chances of rousting someone out are gone. Loud yelling and nighttime violence are more common here, and people lock their doors when they hear it. But if I can get through the Edison district, I’ll be only a few blocks from the police station.
I haven’t spotted him for three blocks now, so I may have lost him in the maze of backyard swing sets and garages and old cars that dot the alleyways. I won’t go back out onto the street until the downtown lights are in sight. Then I’ll run for it.
Behind me, a cat bounces off a loose garbage-can lid, and a muffled shriek escapes my throat. I crouch to catch my breath. I don’t know the area well, but I have some sense of it from having visited Dale Thornton.
Dale Thornton! That’s it! Byrnes is keeping up with me because he knows I’m going for the cops. That’s got to be it. But Dale Thornton lives near the middle of the Edison district, the opposite direction from the station. If I can get to his house, I’ll be safe. Dale’s not in love with me, but he’s got to hate old man Byrnes. Dale’s the only person beside me and Lemry who knows what he did.
I start moving in that direction when steel fingers grip my shoulder. “Messed up big, boy. What’d you think, I was going to stay in the car while you raced up and down the alleys? Not too hard to figure why you kids don’t score higher on your SATs.” His grip is so tight my arm numbs. I pull away, but he tightens it until I’m on my knees. “Told you I was done messin’ with you,” he says in a raspy whisper, and suddenly the cold edge of his blade rests on my throat. “Now you’ve had a taste of your own blood, and I’d be more than happy to give you a wide smile.”
I close my eyes.
“Don’t think for a second I won’t do it, boy. Now just tell me where my daughter is and let this be over.”
“How do I know you won’t hurt me after I tell?”
He laughs. “You only know I will hurt you if you don’t.” The pressure of the blade creases my throat. “The next words out of your mouth better be the whereabouts of my girl.”