Delray saying Your mother never liked you working with me, so young. She said, Aaron can try different things. Not be a slave to fixing engines.
Fuck her.
Delray looked at him, as if he hadn’t heard.
Fuck her. Mom. Fuck what she wants for me, she left us didn’t she?
Snake-quick came Delray’s backhand slap, striking his sulky-faced son on the side of his head and nearly knocking him over.
You don’t talk of your mother like that, you little pisspot. You show respect or I will break your ass.
IF THERE’D BEEN DOUBTS before, now there were none. Ever after the son’s allegiance to the father was unquestioned.
OUT OF NOWHERE it must have seemed. By accident it must have seemed. The tall hulking Indian-looking boy known as Krull—the boy whose mother had been murdered—appeared at the edge of a dirt path descending to the river just as Ben Diehl was climbing the path to the footbridge above the river.
You could see the look of fright in Ben Diehl’s face: should he run? Or—was it better not to run?
Since the attack in the locker room that had been unpremeditated and seemingly spontaneous it might have been that Ben Diehl was hoping that there would not be another for guiltily he had acquiesced to Krull’s anger and hadn’t reported him to the boys’ gym instructor or to school authorities nor even to his own mother explaining with convincing self-irony how he’d tripped over the bench in the locker room and fell against a locker.
No other boy confirmed this. No other boy seemed to be involved.
Now it was weeks later, in a damp-wintry season. Ben Diehl was wearing a brown corduroy jacket with a hood he’d drawn over his head, Krull was wearing a jacket that looked as if it were made of silver vinyl, with no hood. Ben Diehl was carrying a backpack that looked to be crammed with books. Walking, he tended to look down. A kind of gravity drew his gaze down. Krull’s gaze was a predator’s gaze uplifted, alert. He’d had no conscious plan to follow—to “stalk”—Ben Diehl that day except somehow it had happened.
I don’t like it but I guess things happen that way.
Was that Zoe’s voice? Zoe singing one of her bluegrass songs?
Almost, Krull could hear. It was a famous song—maybe by Johnny Cash—but Krull heard it in Zoe’s voice, intimate in his ear.
No plan for any second attack. Except it wouldn’t be in the presence of potential witnesses this time.
Thinking This is it! This makes up for the other.
Meaning his sudden happiness. Like a lightning-stroke. About twenty feet behind his frightened classmate Krull broke into a run, his legs were suffused with strength, hard-muscled and there was a sinewy joy in all his limbs and fleetingly he saw the warning PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE CLOSED FOR REPAIR DO NOT USE but Ben Diehl couldn’t turn back, Krull was driving him forward and onto the bridge and within seconds he’d overtaken Ben Diehl and grabbed his arm and shook him as you’d shake a rag doll—“You running from me? Turn your back on me, I’ll break your ass.”
Ben tried to push away. There was a frantic strength in his arms, his teeth were bared in a grimace of terror and fury and Krull was surprised, like a frenzied little rat the Diehl boy was, fighting him. Krull shook him harder, slammed him against the bridge railing so he heard the other’s breath knocked from him. His own breath was coming in short steaming pants. Below, the Black River rushed darkly swollen from a recent rain. Krull thought I can kill him here, no one would know. The body would be lost for weeks.
What he said to Ben Diehl was: “Your father—where is he?”
Ben Diehl stammered he didn’t know.
“You know! He murdered my mother.”
Ben Diehl stammered no.
“He did! And he got away with it! And he’s living somewhere else now, he was never punished!”
Clumsily the boys struggled, for Ben Diehl was trying to loosen Krull’s grip on his shoulder and neck. Krull had caught him in something like a wrestling hold. There was a wish to hurt here but there was an awkward intimacy as well. Krull said, as if pleading, “Why’d he do it! Why’d he kill her!” and Ben protested, “He didn’t. He did not.” Somehow then out of a jacket pocket Ben Diehl drew a knife, a jackknife, managed to get the four-inch blade open and to stab wildly at Krull before Krull comprehended what was happening, the blade glanced against Krull’s jacket sleeve and recklessly Krull grabbed at it, closed his fingers around the blade cutting his fingers in that instant though scarcely aware that he was cutting himself, pain came so sharp yet fleeting, in the exigency of the struggle so fleeting that Krull could not register it. Ben Diehl was sobbing trying to wrest the knife free so that he could stab Krull with it, a frenzy overcame him. Krull cursed him struggling for the knife, both Krull’s hands were bleeding now but he managed to strike Ben Diehl with his fist, a tight bare-knuckle punch, felt like he’d cracked the bone beneath Ben Diehl’s right eye socket. The knife was loosened from Ben Diehl’s fingers and fell, and Ben Diehl fell to his knees stunned from Krull’s punch, a rain of punches directed at his face, head, shoulders. Ben Diehl’s face was a sickly white now smeared with blood, Krull’s face felt hot, flushed. He was saying, “Could kill you, God damn you! Could push you over, you’d drown. Nobody to see.” The jackknife glistening with blood Krull had to suppose was his blood had been kicked a few feet away, Krull snatched it up and threw it over the railing into the river. So he could not use the knife. In his murderous mood he understood that this was a wise thing to have done. Pushing Ben Diehl into the river was different, there would be no stab wounds. There would be nothing to incriminate another person. He was kicking at Ben Diehl who had curled up on the plank bridge as a worm might curl to protect itself. Kicking at Ben Diehl’s legs, thigh, buttocks not in the ribs, he’d break the kid’s ribs if he did, and taking care not to kick him in the face, he’d already bloodied the poor kid’s face. Short of breath half-sobbing, “Could kill you—see? Tell your son of a bitch father! Tell him “Aaron Kruller could’ve killed you, and he didn’t.” You tell him.”
He’d left Ben Diehl there, on the bridge. Turned his back and walked away and at the dirt path he began to run and he did not look back. His face was damp as if he’d been crying. His hands were bleeding, he’d been wiping them on his clothing. The sight of his own blood was strange to Krull, he was beginning to feel pain now, a sharp throbbing pain in his hands and he thought This is a good thing. Something is decided. And that night drunk and stoned at the depot he hooked up with a girl named Mira, there was Mira high and giggling and straddling Krull at the groin and Mira was kissing his mouth and moaning and Krull wiped his hands where the clumsy bandages had come loose, his greasy-bleeding hands on the girl’s tangled hair.
40
AND THE GIRL. Ben Diehl’s younger sister.
Krull had to think it was a coincidence. At first.
Essentially she was too young to register on Krull’s sexual radar. A slight-bodied blond girl with somber eyes and a way of shrinking back when Krull happened to glance at her—in the 7-Eleven store near the high school for instance.
And too quickly the girl turned away, retreating into the back of the store. Krull stared after her thinking Jesus! She isn’t following me is she? He was bemused, appalled. He was fifteen years old, this girl looked to be several years younger.
Recalling then that he’d seen her somewhere else. And would see her, as if by chance, on subsequent days—on the street as he bicycled past, in the alley that ran behind Post Street which was a biking shortcut for Krull, behind the high school where students left their bikes and Krull left his, a stripped-down old Schwinn with a hard-rubber seat and handle bars adjusted low, the chassis stippled with rust like acne. Belatedly Krull would wonder why a girl not at Sparta High would be in such a place, gazing at him. At a little distance.
Realizing then It must be her. Diehl’s daughter. What’s she want with me!
Krull felt a touch of alarm, fear. A touch of panic.
What he hadn’t done to th
e brother. What he’d stopped himself from doing. And now the sister—following him.
There was danger here. Krull knew the danger. Better to ignore the girl. Not make eye contact with her. As she watched him with those wistful inscrutable eyes as he turned away, began pedaling his stripped-down old Schwinn without a backward glance.
Since the footbridge, Krull stayed away from Ben Diehl.
As if there were an understanding between them. A kind of truce. For it was enough for Krull to know, and for Ben Diehl to know, that he’d spared Ben Diehl his life. Might’ve shoved him off the bridge to drown in the river, might’ve stabbed him to death with his own knife. (Pulling a knife on Krull, of all people! You had to hand it to Ben Diehl, he’d had guts.) Krull’s restraint had been an act of mercy that had not needed to happen. And it was enough, Krull had cut his fingers and the palms of his hands on Ben Diehl’s knife and the cuts were God-damned slow to heal.
41
All things that hapen to any one, they are things to hapen to the socciety. But not at the one time. If there is a dead Person that does not mean you cant speak to them and sometimes they will speak to you. Except in a dream the dead Person does not speak usually. The dead Person might look at you in a sertain way to say I am here. You would want to beleive theres a god to believe theres Justiss. But that does not mean there is either one of these.
MRS. HARE his remedial English teacher encouraged him. Returning Aaron Kruller’s painstakingly handwritten compositions with comments in purple ink like lacework. No matter the assignment Aaron could not seem to write more than two or three paragraphs terse as a stream of muttered words and there was often a riddle-like nature to these words, its meaning not immediately evident to Mrs. Hare. Even in the remedial class half the students handed in typed work of varying degrees of neatness and clarity but Aaron wrote in a large childlike hand like one who wielded a pen with difficulty; his notebook pages were creased from the strain of his effort, bearing faint smudges of grease.
Grades in remedial English at Sparta High were not numerical as in other classes but only just P or F: “pass” or “fail.” (In remedial English, most grades were P.) If Aaron didn’t receive P for one of his assignments he was likely to receive an ambiguous??? with a note from Mrs. Hare to come see her during his study period.
Purple ink was Marsha Hare’s signature—unlike red ink, which the other teachers used. For Mrs. Hare believed that purple ink was “not cruel” like red ink. Red was the color of stop signs, danger signs, exits and fires—red ink, on a student’s paper, suggested blood eking from miniature wounds. By contrast, purple was a “kind” color—a “soothing” color. Mrs. Hare had been a longtime substitute teacher in the Sparta public school system hastily hired in the fall of Aaron Kruller’s junior year to replace a teacher who’d had to resign for reasons of health. Mrs. Hare was known for wishing not to offend or hurt or discourage her students for these were adolescents afflicted as with severe acne by “reading disabilities”—“limited aptitude”—“personality problems” and a number of these adolescents, like Aaron Kruller, exuded an air of sullen unease verging upon threat.
“‘Aaron Kruller’! Hel-lo.”
Brightly greeting the boy when she saw him in the school corridor, or slinking into her classroom just as the final bell rang. He was taller than Marsha Hare by several inches and an oily odor wafted from his close-cropped Indian-black hair, his eyes were heavy-lidded, evasive and narrowed and yet—Aaron seemed to Mrs. Hare the most promising of the thirty-seven students entrusted to her.
Given his family background, the most dangerous.
Mrs. Hare was in her late forties, an attractive woman in whom small whirlwinds of maternal warmth seemed continually to be stirring, leaving her breathless, eager and yearning. Her eyes were thinly-lashed, a watery hazel that glistened with emotion; her face was a girl’s face faded and smudged, like a watercolor. Almost alone among the Sparta High faculty Mrs. Hare made an effort to dress “stylishly”—she wore designer blouses with lavish bows, tailored pants suits in hues of cranberry, fuchsia, flamey-orange-red. Her dun-colored hair was elaborately arranged, held in place by tortoiseshell combs; her makeup was putty-colored, and her lipstick red-orange. As Mrs. Hare spoke to her students her voice ascended in arias of enthusiasm and encouragement—her speech was riddled with such words as promise, keep trying! yes you can! Never say never. It was said that Mrs. Hare had had female surgery of a sinister sort: a breast mutilated, a uterus removed. It was said that Mrs. Hare had an elderly husband in a wheelchair—unless the elderly husband was Mrs. Hare’s father or, more sinister still, Mrs. Hare’s terribly afflicted son. Boys joked about “Mrs. Hair-y” behind her back—if Mrs. Hare wore short sleeves, you could glimpse wiry patches of hair in her armpits; the more sensitive girls shuddered and exchanged pained glances. Once, cruel boys placed what appeared to be a used sanitary napkin in the wastebasket beside Mrs. Hare’s desk, only part-covering it with crumpled paper; but before class began, red-faced Aaron Kruller carried the basket out, to dump into an incinerator. Mrs. Hare never caught on what the joke could be, that aroused such hilarity and embarrassment in the classroom, and so the joke came to nothing.
Mrs. Hare reminded Krull uncomfortably of the DeLucca woman. The moist eyes fixed upon his face, the girl-body grown fleshy, middle-aged. Some indefinable air of hunger, female yearning. “Aaron? If ever you want to speak about anything with me—just let me know. Anytime.”
And: “If ever there is anything to share, Aaron.”
Not meeting the woman’s eager gaze Aaron muttered what sounded like Yes ma’am.
Between the two—the middle-aged remedial English teacher, the near-sixteen-year-old boy—there was a curious, clumsy connection. As between relatives—an aunt, a sulky nephew.
One afternoon, Aaron reluctantly came in for an appointment with Mrs. Hare, at her request. The teacher was sitting at her desk with one of Krull’s compositions before her, covered in a filigree of purple ink.
Krull sat in a vinyl chair that felt flimsy beneath his weight as Mrs. Hare clasped her long narrow hands against her chest. She drew a deep breath and began, like one running to dive from a high board before she has lost her courage: “Aaron. I’ve debated telling you this. There was a crime in my family, also. My mother’s family in Troy. A terrible thing that happened—a girl who was my cousin—my older cousin—abducted, stabbed to death—her body thrown into the canal—missing for weeks before she was discovered. This terrible murder—of a beautiful nineteen-year-old girl engaged to be married—was never ‘solved’—through the years, it has been decades now, this crime cast its shadow upon our lives. I was a girl of twelve then—I am a middle-aged woman now. So I understand, Aaron.” Mrs. Hare’s voice quavered with daring, and with hope. “I hope I understand.”
These words were like a jolt of electricity, Krull hadn’t been prepared. He’d needed to steel himself and he had not.
“…if you should, you know, wish to speak of it. Or write of it. More directly, Aaron. I sense that you are always writing about this certain subject—I won’t say what it is—but you are never confronting this subject. It has swallowed you up, nearly. You must break free.”
Squeezed into one of the classroom chairs—cheap vinyl, aluminum legs—Krull held himself stiff, unyielding. He appeared confused, his mouth worked silently. Nervously Mrs. Hare continued:
“Well! My point is, Aaron, you have a choice nonetheless. I mean—beyond the classroom. Beyond this school. You can be a citizen, or you can be a ‘rogue.’ Like—a ‘rogue’ elephant. You can live outside society for the reason that you have been wounded and are angry—clearly, very angry—I know how the other students fear you, and that you’ve been involved in fights and ‘disruptions’—I am grateful that you’ve done good work for me—very good work—promising work—but let me say, so long as you’re young this is a way you can live, and for a while into your thirties, perhaps. But then—it’s over. If you’ve made yourself into a c
itizen, the crime will heal over and you can have a life—a useful, adult life. But if you are a rogue and an outcast, in thrall to your hurt, you will not have a life.” Mrs. Hare paused. Her voice was tremulous, uncertain. As if she’d climbed to a dangerous height and was now peering down at Aaron from this height. “You will not live long—that’s what I fear for you.”
The pretext for their conference that afternoon was an assignment Krull had handed in the previous day, on the theme “The Individual in Society.” Krull had managed to write only a single paragraph of two sentences. Twenty-one words choked and clotted on which he’d toiled at the auto repair shop, seated at Delray’s desk. He’d had to break the composition off when a sudden call came in—he and another mechanic were wanted out at the Interstate, there’d been a car wreck and a tow truck was needed. Afterward reading what he’d written All things that hapen to any one, they are things to hapen to…he felt a wave of shame, fury. God damn he knew what he wanted to say yet could not say it, the words were stopped up inside him.
Peering now at the paper Mrs. Hare had handed back. Seeing he’d spelled society wrong. He’d spelled happen wrong. Wanting to crumple the fucking paper in his hand.
“Aaron? You are listening, aren’t you?”
How close Mrs. Hare had come to You are listening, dear, aren’t you?
Krull muttered something vague. Krull felt blood rushing into his face. Krull shifted in his seat preparatory to leaving.
“You seem so—sad, Aaron. Your expression is—”
Krull stood, clutching the paper. God-damned paper he’d crumple in his fist as soon as he left the classroom.
“Well. In any case I hope—I hope you will revise the composition. I mean, I hope that you will develop it. You always seem to have so much more to say, that you haven’t quite said. The minimum word count was five hundred words, Aaron. No need to count, but—”