Stained

  I help Linda load the dishwasher. “That poor family,” she says.

  I try to piece the information together, but it’s a puzzle that won’t fit. “So they think Gabe got so drunk …”

  “That he’s laying comatose—or, worse, dead—in the woods behind the church,” she says.

  “Isn’t this a pretty big search party to discover Gabe dead behind the church?”

  Linda hands me a spatula with which to clean the griddle. “He may not have passed out immediately. He may have gotten lost back there. He may have gone down toward the river or up into the mountains. If we’re lucky, he’s simply lost in the hills.”

  I imagine Gabe up in the mountains. They aren’t big, but you could go in circles for days, and in some places it’s twenty miles to the nearest town. It’s June; he could survive if he’s lost.

  “Was Father Warren the one who saw Gabe coming out of the church?” If so, I can’t believe that he would wait this long before telling someone.

  “No,” Linda says. “The police got a call from one of Father’s neighbors.”

  The Grill is busy all day. People want to be nearby. Lots of people want to help, but they don’t know what to do. Women deliver meals for the O’Neils, and children draw them pictures. Older men come to talk about the time they got lost hunting in those hills and how frightening an experience it was. Theresa comes and asks Joe if she can waitress too. He looks at her as if she’s daft. Joe has never liked Theresa. He calls her a braless women’s-libber. Her parents, bleeding-heart liberals. But today is a different day. He tosses her an apron.

  From time to time, I check the clock. No Benny.

  Around six, men and women who have been out searching come straggling back. Family members meet them with warmer jackets. Joe, Linda, Theresa, and I serve steaming cups of coffee. No one wants to call it a day.

  A few wives have brought candles and pictures of Gabe cut from the newspaper or in photographs with their own children. They start to build a little shrine for him on the counter. They place small signs among the pictures that say things like, HANG ON, SWEETIE.

  “Hey, everybody, pipe down!” Joe says as the story comes over the little TV set hung in one corner. A reporter is shown interviewing members of the search party as they emerge from the woods. They say gallant things, but their faces betray their words. They interview Mike, and he faces the camera to talk to Gabe directly. He urges him to call home if he can, and if he can’t, not to lose hope. “I promise you, well find you, son.”

  That night I drift in and out of a restless sleep. At one point I am jolted from a nightmarish dream by the sound of something hitting my window. Rain? If so, it stops abruptly. I get up and look out. The night is starry, not a cloud. Looking down, I see a tall figure with a lit cigarette next to the willow tree. Who is it? Does he see me? Oh, my God. Gabe!

  I sneak down the stairs and out the back door. I stand in the side yard, in the dark, and call his name. No one is there.

  TWENTY

  Kids in my fifth-grade class have stopped taking the bus home in the afternoon. Instead, they walk home so they can stop off at St. Mary’s cemetery. Each morning as I hang up my jacket and put my lunch in the coat closet, I hear whispers and giggles about the day before. I long to be a part of this expedition.

  One day I tell my mother that I will be walking home that afternoon. She looks at me suspiciously but says that she supposes it will be okay, as long as I’m careful. I leave the classroom and walk out with the walkers. Buddies are no longer required; now we are just one swarming, buzzing crowd.

  “Would you like to walk home together?” I ask Anna.

  She blushes and says awkwardly, “I can’t, Jocelyn. Sorry. I’ve promised others,” and runs to catch up.

  I walk slowly past the cemetery, but the kids are already out of sight. Are they behind the church? Did they go into the church? I think about trying to find them, but I don’t dare.

  That Saturday, I wander over to Gabe’s. The bulk-head doors are open. Gabe is playing records in the basement. I cautiously invite myself down. He keeps playing a song called the “Ballad of the Green Berets.” It’s a sad song, a song about men jumping from airplanes and dying, the kind of song that carves a deep pit in your stomach, and we listen to the record over and over until we’ve memorized the words.

  When the needle slides to the scratchy center of the record once again, I ask the question that I’ve been rehearsing in my mind. “What do you do at the cemetery?”

  Gabe looks embarrassed. “Fool around,” he says.

  “Fool around doing what?” I ask.

  “Watch.” Gabe turns so his back is facing me. He crosses his arms and hugs himself, but from behind it looks as if someone is hugging him. Then he moves his head in a romantic way so it looks as if he’s making out with someone. I crack up.

  “What else do you do?” I ask.

  “Come here, I’ll show you.”

  I get off a stool and go and sit on a musty old couch. Gabe tells me to put my hand over my mouth. Then he puts his hand over his mouth, and we pretend to kiss. Not a quick kiss like my mother used to give me when she said good night, but a long, rolling-around kiss like they do in the movies.

  Gabe’s laughing and I’m laughing and we’re still pretend kissing.

  “Now take your hand away,” says Gabe.

  I stare down at my hand as if it might show some evidence of our game.

  That’s when Gabe places his lips on mine. We roll around again, but this time our hands are gone. Our lips are really touching.

  After a minute or so Gabe gets up and walks out into the sunlight. I follow him.

  Matthew is in the backyard forcing a push mower around the yard.

  “What were you two doing down there?” he asks.

  “Practicing,” says Gabe.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Theresa’s about to take me home from the Grill when Benny pulls up in his father’s sedan. “Can you go for a drive?” he asks.

  “Theresa was coming over,” I say, trying to be both strong for me and loyal to my best friend. “She was going to spend the night.”

  “That’s all right, Jocelyn,” she says. “I probably should see if they need me at the co-op.”

  I thank Theresa with my eyes and get in the car. Benny is in jeans and an old T-shirt and still carrying the grime of the day.

  “Where do you want to go?” I ask.

  “Let’s get an ice cream at Willie’s.”

  I’ve been making milk shakes at the Grill all day, and ice cream interests me as much as a spoonful of grease right now. But I’m relieved to be with Benny.

  We walk into the bright and busy ice-cream parlor and are directed to a corner table. “I should call Mom,” I say. I head for the pay phone. I don’t have a dime, so I call collect.

  Mom takes the call and says that she hopes I’ll come home soon. Everybody wants his or her family close. I watched mothers kiss the tops of kids’ heads all day today.

  Benny tells me that he helped with the search. He hiked with some of the ballplayers at the base of Mason’s Mountain. “It’s hard,” he says. “You keep your eyes down, hoping that you’ll find something. At the same time you hope you won’t find anything—anything that might show that he’s hurt or maybe even dead. I mean, everyone’s talking about Gabe being lost. But nobody’s mentioning that he might have been murdered.”

  “God, Benny. Why would anyone want to murder Gabe? You’ve spent too much time in the big city.”

  “What do you mean?” he says, mocking himself. “You’re a big fan of daytime TV You know anything can happen in a small town like Weaver Falls.”

  Benny orders vanilla ice cream. I order root beer. “Did you find your Saint Christopher?” I ask, trying to bring the subject closer to us.

  He shakes his head no. “But I saw Father Warren today. I asked him where I could find another one. Like the one my mother had bought me.”

  “What did he say?”

&n
bsp; “He said that he would take me to a jewelry store in Keene.”

  “Why is he going to take you?” I ask. Benny can borrow the car. He could take me.

  I hate to admit it. I get jealous of Father Warren sometimes. Actually I don’t get jealous of him. I get jealous of the guys who hang out with him. It seems like one more club that I can’t belong to. I wish I had a priestly friend who would take me to buy a medal for spiritual protection.

  “You know how Father Warren is,” Benny says.

  “Did you tell him how you lost the medal?” I kid. I want Benny to remember yesterday.

  He nods his head. “Yep,” he says.

  Is he joking? I wait to see that light in his eyes that tells me he’s teasing. But it doesn’t come. “You did?” I say. He couldn’t have. Please tell me, Benny, that you didn’t tell Father Warren about yesterday.

  Benny can see that I’ve got a real problem with this, so he suggests that I finish my drink and we head back to the car. He asks for the bill, pays the waitress, leaves a tip. It all happens in slow motion.

  I am so mad, so hurt, by the time I get to the car, I can’t speak. I feel betrayed. I know if Benny can tell Father Warren about us, he can give us up. You don’t share this kind of information with a priest so he’ll praise you for good behavior. We sit there in the parking lot.

  Benny sighs loudly. “Jocelyn, it’s not like I have a choice.”

  “What do you mean you don’t have a choice?”

  “Father Warren comes to my house. He talks to my mother, he gives her the sacraments. Then he wants to talk to me.”

  “Why?”

  “He wants to know how I’m doing. He asks if I’m helping out. It’s hard to talk in front of my mother, so he asks me to walk him to the car. Sometimes we sit in the driveway, sometimes we drive around, but he always ends up asking me questions.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Questions about everything. He wants to know how I’m getting on in Weaver Falls. He wants to know who my friends are.”

  “And you’ve told him about me?” I ask.

  “Yes,” says Benny. He says it like he’s ashamed.

  “And what does Father Warren say about me?”

  “He reminds me of things.”

  “What things?”

  “He thinks I should stay away from you, Jocelyn.”

  “He said that? He said that you should stay away from me?” Suddenly, I’m outside of my body. It’s like I’m up in the air somewhere looking down on Benny and me.

  “Yes. He thinks I should get a job this summer. He thinks I should play baseball next year.”

  “Do you even like baseball?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” he says. “Not that I’m great at it or anything.”

  For a moment I wonder if Benny didn’t go out for the high school team last semester so he could spend more time with me. “But other guys do those things and still go out with girls. Right?”

  Benny just nods. There is something he’s not telling me.

  “What exactly does Father Warren say about me, Benny?”

  He doesn’t answer me.

  I tell him to take me home.

  He does.

  I get out of the car and shut the door, softly.

  He drives off.

  I walk around to the back of the house. Mom is sitting on the steps of the back deck watching the sunset. She has her arm around Margo, who looks like she’s been given something to make her sleep. Only she can’t.

  I want to walk over there and share some new and important information that I’ve picked up. I could tell her that I thought I saw Gabe outside my window, but what would that do except frustrate her? Or give her false hopes? And who’s to say that I didn’t imagine the whole thing?

  I half wave to them and walk down to the river. The sun sets on the front side of our house, but it’s reflected in the water. I sit on a large boulder, on the grassy edge of the water, and hold my knees close to me. I hear mosquitoes in my ear. They buzz, Benny, Benny, Benny.

  Gabe has disappeared. For a moment I wish I could too.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Our bus arrives at school only to be turned around again. A water pipe broke. We’ll have to make the day up in June, but who cares? Right now it’s the end of September, and we’re having an Indian summer.

  Gabe and I wander into the backyard. He wants to talk about Anna. He tells me how he admitted that he liked her and she admitted that she liked him, so now they’re going together. But he doesn’t know what he should do. He hasn’t kissed her yet, and her parents won’t let her go to the movies or anything. Anna isn’t allowed to date until she’s sixteen.

  “What do you do?” I ask.

  “I sit next to her in youth group,” he tells me.

  “Oh, whoop!” I tease, and he chases me. I head down the hill for speed, but the river blocks me. He lunges and takes hold of my wrist, but he doesn’t know what to do with me.

  “Let’s go down to Kiddy Brook,” he says.

  We walk down the road a stretch and head into the woods. Gabe’s brothers showed us long ago where the water flows off the hills on its way to the river. We follow a narrow ribbon of water until it leads to a larger ribbon broken up by little islands. We are Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. I tell Gabe that I’m going to build a raft.

  Gabe looks at me like I’m nuts. He’s not buying my transformation, but he confronts me with practical details. “Even if you could find the logs, what are you going to tie them together with?” he asks.

  “Vines.”

  “This isn’t a jungle. Where are you going to find vines?”

  “I’m sure there are some kind of vines. Maybe I’ll use thin branches.” I find a fallen ash tree, a log just the size for my raft, and I begin pulling on it. The tree doesn’t budge. High winds may have pushed this tree over, but it’s keeping its grasp on the earth.

  Gabe laughs at me. “Come on, strong girl,” he says.

  “I am strong,” I say without really thinking about whether I am or not. I’m enjoying the attention.

  “Yeah?” Gabe walks over to me. “Let me feel your muscle.”

  “Let me feel yours first,” I say.

  Gabe unbuttons the cuff of his white oxford shirt and folds his arm. I look at his tight fist and the way he can make his veins stick out. His muscle bulges.

  “Feel it,” he says. I don’t know how to feel a muscle, so I poke it with a finger. I am amazed at how solid it is. He laughs.

  “Now let’s see your muscle!”

  I try to tighten my arm the way Gabe did. Barely a bump emerges from my scrawny eleven-year-old arm. Gabe howls.

  “Let me feel it,” he says, placing his thumb beneath my arm and his fingers above. He squeezes and I lurch away. It tickles.

  “Ooh, you are a strong girl.”

  “I am!” I head over to a birch log and position my weight to pick it up. I pull with all my might. The log has rotted through, and I go stumbling backward.

  Gabe and I are both laughing now.

  “And if you get this raft together, where are you going to float to? The brook is blocked by rocks just down a ways.”

  “It is?”

  “Yeah, I’ll show you.” We follow the brook through a culvert under the road and around a bend. There we come to a place where rocks have either piled up or been placed to form a little pool about three feet deep.

  “Wow,” I say. The sun is high; the water looks so inviting. “I wish we could swim.”

  “Why can’t we?”

  I look down. I am still in my Girl Scout uniform, complete with green kneesocks, sash, beret, and badges. My mother complained about the price of the uniform and the necessary accessories. She would kill me if I swam in it.

  “Let’s go undie-dipping,” says Gabe.

  I look at him to see if he’s kidding.

  “Why not?”

  I don’t know what to say. I’ve just come to the conclusion recently that it’s probab
ly not okay to change in front of Gabe anymore.

  “Our underwear is the same as our bathing suits.”

  True. “You first,” I say.

  “Okay.” Gabe strips down to his Skivvies, as he calls them, and begins to walk into the water. I notice red marks on his back and think about how they got there.

  “Augh!” Gabe lifts his ribs and groans. The sun may be hot, but the nights are cold, and the water is too.

  I take my uniform off and toss it onto a bush. I keep on my undershirt and underpants. Gabe’s right. It does look as if I’ve got a bathing suit on. I carefully wade into the water.

  At first we stay to the shallow edges or walk on rocks. We turn stones over to see salamanders. Our feet become scarlet and numb, then our legs. Before you know it, we’re sliding in and out of the water on our bellies, winding and rolling like otters. We take turns holding our breath underwater. We spurt water between the spaces in our teeth. We splash and grab each other’s ankles.

  Eventually, we crawl up onto a grassy island and flop onto our backs. The edge of Gabe’s hand touches mine. We look up at the downy sky and dry in the sun. School was canceled, the day is warm, and Gabe and I have had a secret adventure. I don’t remember being happier.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Summer has been put on hold. For a week now, crowds of people concerned about Gabe meet at the Grill. I can’t remember what day it is. Joe and Linda haven’t even mentioned me taking a regular day off like I’m supposed to. Theresa stops by the Grill early. I think she plans on helping out again, but she’s on her way to the Mason Playhouse. She got a part in a summer theater production, in Godspell. She’s psyched, but she’s trying not to look happy around the crowd of rescue workers.

  Benny comes in too. He joins a table of jocks in their now usual corner. Normally, they would be working at summer jobs, but instead, they act as if they’re assigned to a detective case. A case with very few clues. Benny gives me a half smile and holds my eyes long. It’s his way of being intimate and non-committal at the same time.

  Linda’s back working the grill. Joe tries to help her and fill in for Gabe. I have to take the order at Benny’s table.