He got to his feet as Kelli and I moved up the aisle.
“You did great, Kelli,” he said.
“I think everybody did,” Kelli said.
Todd shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. I mean, Mary sort of made Juliet sound like she was from Gone with the Wind, don’t you think?”
Kelli laughed. “Well, maybe a southern Juliet would be interesting.”
Todd shook his head slowly. “No, it’s you, Kelli,” he said with that sense of absolute certainty that only one who had lived such a life as he had lived could truly possess. “You’re the one who should play Juliet.”
I could tell that something in the quiet respect that Kelli could hear in Todd’s voice had moved her, but I could not have anticipated that it would move her to the offer she almost immediately made. “Well, if I play Juliet, why don’t you play Romeo?”
From the look on Todd’s face it was clear that he had never considered such a possibility. He shook his head. “No, I’m no actor,” he said shyly.
“But you’re perfect for it, Todd,” Kelli told him. She watched him for a moment, then added, “You’re the only boy at Choctaw High who is.”
Todd waved his hand dismissively. “No, I’m no actor,” he repeated. He might have said more, but Mary came sweeping up the aisle and took his arm. “We’re going to Cuffy’s,” she said to Kelli and me. “Ya’ll want to come with us?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ve got to go home,” I said.
Todd looked at Kelli. “What about you?”
Kelli hesitated a moment, then glanced over at me. “You can’t go for just a few minutes?”
“No,” I told her, then added an excuse that was a lie. “I have to help my father with something.”
She turned back to Todd. “Would you be able to give me a ride home after we left Cuffy’s?”
“Sure.”
Kelli looked toward me again. “I’ll just get a ride with Todd today,” she said.
I nodded quickly, betraying nothing. “Okay.”
We all walked out of the auditorium together, Todd and Mary in the lead, with Kelli and me walking together behind them.
“What do you have to help your father with?” Kelli asked lightly.
“Something in the store,” I answered.
At the parking lot, we separated, with Kelli walking off toward Todd’s car at the far end of the lot.
“Bye, Ben” was all she said.
For a few seconds, I stood and watched her move away from me, walking cheerfully toward Todd’s waiting car. When she reached it, Todd swept around her, opened the door and let Mary and Kelli slide into the front seat. Then he walked around the front of the car and pulled himself in behind the wheel.
Within a moment, they were gone, and I was left alone in the gray Chevrolet. It had never seemed more dull and dusty, nor more empty.
On the way home, I passed Cuffy’s. Todd’s car was parked out front, and inside I could see Todd and Mary sitting together in a front booth. Kelli sat opposite them, and next to her, Eddie Smathers. Someone must have said something funny just as I passed, because I could see Eddie’s head tossed back in a wide laugh. Although I could not see it, I knew that Kelli must be laughing, too.
When I got home, I found the house empty, my father not yet home from the grocery. I sat in the living room for a time, staring at the dull green eye of the television. Then I walked to my room and eased myself onto the bed, lying on my back, facing the blank ceiling. I could feel a slight tremor in my legs. It moved upward, growing stronger as it moved until I could feel my stomach quake, my chest tighten, my throat finally close in the iron grip of all that I still so desperately wanted to hold back. Then suddenly it released me, and to my immense surprise, I began to cry.
Even now I cannot name all the things I cried for that afternoon. I do know that it was not only for the loss of Kelli, but for all that she had come to represent for me, the promise she’d held out for so long, and then so quickly withdrawn. I cried for a life that seemed beyond me, a love I would never know, a vision of happiness, of growing up and growing old in the steady embrace of something fierce and true. I cried out of pity for myself, for my terrible inadequacy, for the fact that I was locked in a sensual wasteland from which I could see no escape. I cried because I was small and physically inept, because I wore glasses, because the bolder experiences of manhood seemed always to slip beyond my grasp. I cried because I was pathetic and ridiculous.
And it is there that the story might have ended, with an inexperienced boy weeping in a melodramatic moment of romantic grief, but with the promise that he would soon rise from his bed, wipe away his tears, move steadily toward adulthood, find a life that suited him and from there go on to love a woman he could not have then imagined, raise children he could not have then imagined, achieve the quiet dignity of a good and gracious life and finally, perhaps, even recall from time to time the afternoon he’d cried so bitterly, and smile with the comforting wisdom of all that he had learned since then.
And so it might have ended.
But it did not.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER 17
NOT LONG AGO NOREEN AND AMY AND I WENT TO SEE one of Luke’s sons perform in his senior play. We sat together near the front of the sleek new theater that had recently been added to the high school. A vast array of fancy theater lighting hung above us, and from our seats we faced a beautiful red curtain.
“It’s not like the old auditorium we used at Choctaw High, is it?” Noreen said lightly.
“No, it’s not.”
Noreen and Amy sat beside me, Noreen needing glasses now on such occasions, and just to the right I could see Betty Ann shifting restlessly in seats that had become too narrow for her middle-age spread. Only Luke appeared more or less unchanged from our youth, still tall and lean, his face grown more handsome and full of character. His hair was thinner, of course, and almost completely gray, but his eyes were still piercingly blue, his skin still tanned and youthful.
The play was a modern contrivance, fractured and remote, and all of us were weary by the time it ended. It was a hazy spring night, and after the play we all took a drive up the mountain road, passing the deserted ruin of Choctaw High, its crumbling brick façade shrouded in a ghostly mist. I could see the old parking lot, now weedy and untended, the wide, cracked stairs that led to the front door, the silent, unlighted gymnasium, and beyond it, the auditorium that had doubled as our school theater in those days, and from whose row of wooden seats I’d watched Kelli Troy try out for Juliet.
“That’s what we had to use as a theater,” Luke told my daughter, pointing to the auditorium. “It didn’t have any of the professional lighting and sound equipment you have now.” He laughed at the primitiveness of it. “And those rickety old plywood seats, remember that, Ben?”
I glanced over toward the old auditorium. It was dark except for the single naked light bulb that still hung above its side door, shining mistily as we swept by, illuminating nothing more than a small patch of ground. And I thought, There is where it happened, not on Breakheart Hill at all.
THE FINAL ISSUE OF THE WILDCAT WENT TO THE PRINTER only a few days after Kelli auditioned for Juliet. She’d gotten the part, of course. That had not surprised me. But it had surprised me that Todd had gone out for Romeo, and gotten the part almost as easily as Kelli had gotten Juliet. Eddie Smathers, still trailing after Todd, had also tried out for the play, and had been given the role of Friar Laurence. Sheila Cameron had landed the role of Lady Capulet, and Noreen the role of Nurse. Mary Diehl had been offered Lady Montague, but had turned it down, deciding to be the production’s costume designer instead.
“You should try out for the play, Ben,” Kelli told me the afternoon we completed the Wildcat’s last issue.
I shook my head, continuing to proofread the final article before sending it to the printer.
“Paris,” Kelli said. “You could play Paris. Miss Carver’s still looking for someone to play him.”
“I don’t think so,” I said glumly.
Kelli returned to her own work, her head bent over the little desk against the back wall. She said nothing else, no doubt confused by the mute and sullen atmosphere that had gathered around me by then.
We finished late that afternoon, both of us walking out of the office together for what would be the last time.
“Well, I guess that’s it for the Wildcat,” I said with a quick shrug as I locked the door.
Kelli nodded, but said nothing.
“Thanks for all the work you did this year,” I added, though without much spirit.
She smiled quietly. “I guess we’ll try to do even better next year,” she said tentatively, as if asking for confirmation.
I nodded unenthusiastically, then started to walk away.
Kelli took my arm and turned me back toward her. “Ben, did I do something?”
I shook my head, pretending to be surprised by the question.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No,” I said. “Why should I be?”
“Well, the way you’ve been acting lately made me wonder if I’d done something. If I have, I …”
“No, you haven’t done anything,” I told her.
She waited for me to offer some further explanation for the undeniable remoteness that had come over me.
But there was no explanation that I could have given her without exposing myself. So I said only, “There’s just some stuff going on at home.”
Although she did not seem to believe me, I could tell that she felt uncomfortable in pressing the issue further.
“Okay, then,” she said softly. “Well, I better go. We’re all meeting with Miss Carver. The cast, I mean. To discuss the play and make up a rehearsal schedule, that sort of thing.”
“Okay,” I said. “Bye.”
“Bye, Ben,” Kelli said. Then she turned and walked away.
When I recall that moment now, I know with an absolute certainty that there was nothing Kelli could have said or done that would have changed the way I had come to feel about her, the aching resentment that had overwhelmed me. In such a mood, I would have rebuffed any approach she might have made toward me, brushed away every kindly gesture. I was hardening against her, and there was nothing she could have done about it. Her voice grated on my ears, and her beauty was like a slap in my face. I hated the fact that I had to see her every day, and I looked forward to the end of the school year with a fierce anticipation. I wanted to be away from her in every way, wanted her to disappear, though even then, and despite such tumultuous feelings, I still could not sense the poison that was slowly devouring me, eating away at that thin moral lining that prevents us from acting upon the raw and savage things we feel.
And so, when I closed the door to the office that afternoon, I felt a certain odd relief. I truly believed that at least this part of my forced association with Kelli was over, that those late afternoons when we sat so close together in the shadowy little room, when I could smell her hair, and all but feel the heat from her body, that all of that had finally come to an end, and that once closed, I would never have to open that door again.
But I did have to open it again, at least physically, though not with Kelli standing beside me, waiting to go in, but with the looming figure of Sheriff Stone.
It was three days after Kelli had been found sprawled across the upper slope of Breakheart Hill, and the investigation was still in its early, probing stage. Sheriff Stone had already come to Choctaw High several times by then. I had seen him in the school parking lot, walking slowly, staring down and sometimes even bending over slightly, as if looking for something on the ground. I’d seen him talking to Todd and Sheila, and even to Edith Sparks, the two of them huddled together in a shadowy corner near the back of the school. Only the day before, I’d noticed him with Miss Carver, both of them in her otherwise empty classroom, she poised by the window, he leaning against her desk, watching her intently. Miss Carver had looked tense and urgent, as if conveying important things, and I have always believed that it was she who told Sheriff Stone that he should talk to me.
I remember very distinctly the look on his face as he stepped into the small space of the basement office, nearly filling it with his own massiveness, his gray hat nudged up against the single light bulb that dangled from its low ceiling.
“It’s like a cave in here,” he said.
I pointed to Kelli’s desk. “She worked over there,” I told him.
“Where’d you work?”
“At the other desk.”
His eyes swept over to it, locking on the picture of Kelli I’d taken on Breakheart Hill, now taped to the wall above her desk. He peeled the picture carefully from the wall and stared at it closely for a moment.
“Who took this?” he asked.
“I did.”
“When was that?”
“A few weeks ago.”
He peered at it silently, then his eyes drifted up slowly and settled on me. “Same dress,” he said. “Same place.”
I nodded.
“Had you taken her there often?”
“She took me there,” I answered. “But only that one time.”
He stared at me quietly, from the depths of that thoughtful atmosphere that surrounded him, then said, “Mighty pretty girl.”
“Yes.”
“Strange place for her to be, way up yonder on Breakheart Hill.”
I nodded.
“Got any idea why she might have been up there all by herself?”
“No, sir.”
He shook his great head slowly. “Shame what happened to her.” His eyes returned to the photo, lingered there a moment, then darted toward me with terrific speed. “Would you have any idea who might have done this thing, Ben?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Do you think it might have been Lyle Gates?”
It was the first time I’d heard Lyle’s name mentioned in connection with what had happened to Kelli, and I felt the first wind of that dark, steadily growing maelstrom as it reached out from its swirling eye on Breakheart Hill. “Lyle Gates?” I repeated, my mind suddenly calling up the first of what would become a thousand images of unanticipated wrong.
“That’s right,” Sheriff Stone said. “We know that he was in the vicinity of Breakheart Hill at the same time Kelli was there.” He shrugged. “ ‘Course that wouldn’t mean much in itself, but I understand he had some pretty harsh words for her down at Cuffy’s a while back.”
Reluctantly, I nodded.
“And you and Gates had a little tussle over it, I hear,” Sheriff Stone added.
“Yes, we did.”
“Did you ever have any more trouble with Gates?”
“No.”
“Did she?”
“Not that I know of.”
He was silent, staring at me, his ancient, knowing eyes evaluating everything—my voice, my posture, sensing secrets, things withheld, but unsure as to exactly what I might be holding back.
“You got a car, Ben?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ever been down that old mining road at the bottom of Breakheart Hill?”
I shook my head.
“You know the road I mean, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I found some car tracks down there,” Sheriff Stone said. “And the thing is, Gates was on foot. His car had been repossessed a few days before it happened. So, what I’m getting at, it couldn’t have been his car that made those tracks.”
I said nothing.
Sheriff Stone drew his hat from his head and rolled it slowly in his blunt hands. “So what I’m wondering is, can you think of anybody else that might have wanted to hurt Kelli?”
“No, sir.”
“Besides Gates, I mean,” he added.
“No, sir, I can’t think of anybody else,” I told him firmly.
“Well, don’t say no too fast, son. Dwell on it a minute. Just anybody around town who might ha
ve had bad feelings for her.”
“I can’t think of anybody.”
“How about around the school?” Stone asked. “Any of the boys been bothering her?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“How about her boyfriend, what’s his name?”
I felt my heart squeeze together as I pronounced his name. “Todd Jeffries.”
“That’s right. She been having any trouble with him?”
I saw Kelli press her face softly against Todd’s chest, saw his arms enfold her gently. “No, sir,” I said. “They weren’t having any trouble.”
“So as far as you know, nobody else was having a problem with her?” Sheriff Stone asked. “Nobody but Lyle Gates?”
I didn’t answer. In my mind I saw Kelli turn to me as she had in the corridor outside the office, heard her voice again. Ben, did I do something? Are you mad at me?
Sheriff Stone noted my silence, then repeated his question, this time more emphatically. “Just Lyle Gates? He the only fellow that might have had something against Kelli?”
“Yeah, just Lyle Gates,” I said.
He watched me a moment, then said something startling. “What about a girl?”
“A girl?”
“A girl that might have had some reason to hurt Kelli. Girls get bad feelings for each other, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“And since there was no rape, or anything like that,” Sheriff Stone added, “we have to look at that possibility.”
I said nothing.
“To tell you the truth, Ben, we don’t quite know what happened up there. The details, I mean. We found a rock, you know, with some blood on it, but it was way down there near the old mining road, pretty far from where we found Kelli herself. And besides, it was way too big for somebody to pick up and hit her with.” He sighed softly. “So we think maybe she fell on it, then tried to run away, back up the hill, something like that.” He eyed me carefully, trying to gauge the effect of his words. “She was blind by then, you know.”