A Sudden Silence

Harcourt, Inc.
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Copyright © 1988 by Eve Bunting

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First Harcourt paperback edition 2007

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover editon as follows:
Bunting, Eve, 1928–
A sudden silence.
Summary: Jesse Harmon searches for the hit-and-run driver
who killed his brother Bry.
[1. Drunk driving—Fiction. 2. Death—Fiction.
3. Brothers—Fiction. 4. California—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.B91527Sts 1988
[Fic] 87–26969
ISBN 978-0-15-282058-9
ISBN 978-0-15-205868-5 pb

Text set in AGaramond
Designed by Cathy Riggs

Printed in the United States of America

C E G H F D B

For Glenn, who also surfs

I
T WAS
S
ATURDAY
the 20th of June at 11:30
P.M.
when my brother, Bry, was killed. I'll never forget that date, not if I live to be an old, old man. Coast Highway, shadowed between its tall pole lights, the car suddenly behind Bry and me as we walked single file in the thick grass at the highway's edge. The glare of its white beams; the roar as it passed me where I'd dived sideways, belly down; the thud as it hit him. I'll never forget it.

We were on our way home from a party at Wilson Eichler's house and I'd just met Wilsons sister, Chloe, the girl Bry liked. I was walking along there behind my brother, thinking about Chloe, about the way she'd looked in that white minidress with her smooth brown arms and long brown legs. I was wishing Bry hadn't already told me he liked her. I was wishing the Eichlers had moved into the Sapphire Cove house before, last year when I was here in high school instead of this year when I was up at UCLA. I'd never laid eyes on Chloe until tonight, and tonight was too late. Maybe she wasn't exactly Bry's girl, but she was the girl Bry liked. That was enough right there to stop my giving her a second thought. So why was I?
Cut it out, Jesse. Just cut it out.

Those were the things I was thinking.

Bry was in front of me. Levi's and a denim jacket, brown loafers that were almost identical to mine. Bry thinks I know about things like clothes because I'm older. I was smiling to myself at how long and skinny he was, and how loose he walked, when the too-bright car lights lit up the sky ahead of us. I spun around, saw their blank gleam heading right at us, and I yelled to Bry to jump. I was still yelling as I dived deep into the knee-high grass. Still yelling as the car hit him.

It tossed him into the air, and in slow motion he smashed down on the hood, the car swerving toward the center line, careening back, Bry sliding off into the middle of the highway. The car stopped. I thought the door opened on the drivers side. There was some kind of pause while I lay there in the sudden silence, not believing, knowing I was dreaming, dreaming some awful nightmare dream. Then the car leaped forward again.

More traffic was coming. I could hear it on the highway, and I thought it would hit Bry, too—go over him like some dead, furry animal squashed on the road. I jumped up and ran screaming to stand in front of where Bry lay so still and quiet, waving my arms, pointing down and waving. There was a shriek of brakes as the car stopped.

"Holy cow!" a man's voice said. "What the...?" His head poked out of the driver's window but I was kneeling beside Bry now, with his head in my lap, knowing without anybody telling me that he was dead.

Other cars came. A bunch of teenagers piled out of one and a woman in a camper pulled over on the beach side of the road and gave me a blanket to put over Bry. I put it across his front, which was covered with a wet darkness, but I didn't put it over his face. I stroked his hair. Bry has the worst hair. It sticks up in back and I tried to make it lie down. The man from the camper said he was going to a call box, but the lady would stay with me. I think he must have put out flares, or somebody did, because I saw their orange sizzle and smelled their smoky smell. Bry's head was heavier against me than a head should be, and cars were edging around us now, making the traffic back up, with gawkers leaning out of the windows. A guy was even standing up through his sunroof.

I told Bry not to worry about them. One of his legs was bent funny, and it was important to straighten it. But I couldn't reach. His shoe was gone.

Sirens were coming now, high and shrill above the
slap-slap
of the waves on the beach on the other side of the highway.

"We live just down the road," I told the woman, or I thought I did. "We live in one of the Del Mar trailers, up on the second row. My brother and I were walking on the other side, facing the traffic, and we'd crossed over, because we were almost home. We shouldn't have crossed over." I was babbling, jerking the words out.

"Sh!" the woman said. "It wasn't your fault. You were right up on the grass, off the road. That driver must have been drunk as a skunk."

"Just down there," I said again. "That's where we live."

Later the police asked me all kinds of questions, mostly about the car. What had I seen? Had it slowed? Stopped? Could I remember anything about the way it looked?

We were in Laguna Hills Hospital by then, Mom and Dad and I. We were in a little room that was like an office with carpet on the floor. Bry was somewhere in the hospital, too, probably laid out on one of those steel tables in a cold, blank room with a label around his toe. That's the way it is on TV.

My dad sat at one end of the couch and my mom at the other. There was enough room between them for me, but I stood back against the wall.

"It was just a car," I told the officer. "It was black, maybe, or some dark color. After it ... after it hit him it went on for a bit and then stopped and then went on. No, I couldn't see the driver. No, I didn't see if there was a passenger. It happened too fast. I don't know."

I didn't know anything except that Bry was dead.

There was a policeman and a policewoman. Neither of them wore uniforms. The woman had on a navy skirt and a pink knit shirt with crossed tennis rackets on the left pocket. Her face was covered with old acne scars, and she'd told us her name was Officer Valle. The guy was Officer McMeeken. He wore a blue T-shirt and cords.

"So what you're saying, Jesse ... the car came round that curve on the highway too fast and too close and you and your brother were clear in, on the grass next to the wire." He was reading back what he'd written already in a black notebook. "And you jumped, and you shouted to him to jump, but he didn't hear you. Why
was
that, Jesse? How far ahead would you say Bry was?"

My father broke in. "Bryan is deaf. Was ... was deaf. He couldn't have heard Jesse shout."

"Oh." The policeman studied his notebook too carefully. "I'm sorry."

"And I shouted before I jumped myself," I said. Not that it mattered. But they should get it right.

I took the wet, wadded mess of tissues from my pocket and tried to peel one off, tried not to let my mind slide to where it had been a hundred times already tonight. Could I have grabbed Bry in time? Could I have pulled him with me? How far ahead
had
he been? "Now, students, let's consider question number 32: If a car is approaching from the rear at seventy miles an hour and there is a distance of..." I got a piece of Kleenex pulled away and blew my nose. There hadn't been time. I'd never have made it. I heard again the awful thud, saw the car stop, saw ... saw what? Something else that made my heart leap. What? I stared into space.

"I know this is painful for you, Jesse," Officer Valle said, and I wanted to tell her to be quiet, to let me think. But whatever had been there had slid away again, beyond my memory. "We really need to go over this again as quickly and as often as possible, while it's still fresh in your mind. You were at a party in the Eichler house at 2235 Sapphire Cove?"

"Yes." The house where Chloe lived.

"When the party was over, you and Bry decided to walk home."

They were all looking at me.

"Yeah. Jim Lugar gave us a ride to the Eichlers'. He's in school with Bry. The Eichler house isn't that far, but Jim was driving so he picked us up anyway and he was going to bring us back." I glanced at her and quickly away.

"Now let me get the geography straight here. Sapphire Cove is a community on the bluff, south of your trailer park and on the other side of the highway?"

"Right. And Clambake Point is at the end of Sapphire Cove Road."

"So after the party, you and Bry walked down that road onto the highway and proceeded north on that side, facing the traffic until..."

"Until we ran across. The highway was clear and we could see our own gates." Actually, Bry had raced across ahead of me and I'd followed him, but I didn't say that.

She had a notebook, too, that she read from. "Isn't there a pedestrian tunnel under the highway that leads right into your park?"

"Yes. But it's longer to go that way You have to double back." I swallowed. "I wish we had."

"OK, Jesse. I know this is bad." There was sympathy in Officer Valle's voice. For the first time I noticed how kind and warm her dark eyes were. "The Eichler parents weren't home?"

"No. They were coming home later. I think they'd gone to some do of their own in Newport. This was a last-minute kind of party."

"Tell me about it."

"Well, there was a fair amount of beer and ... and other stuff."

I remembered Wilson Eichler making a castle of champagne glasses on the kitchen counter, pouring some kind of booze into the top one, letting it spill over to fill the glasses underneath. Sharon Fields had lapped up the overflow. I remembered Pat Shepherd with sheets from Mrs. Eichler's linen closet tied round him, a pillow case on his head, yelling, "Who ya gonna call? Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!" Jim Lugar had been completely spaced, flat out on a couch, high as an asteroid. I remembered Chloe looking down at him, wrinkling her nose. "Stoned out of his head," she'd said. I remembered Bry, leaning forward a little, staring at Chloe's lips the way he does. Bry lip-reads so well you can hardly tell he's deaf. I remembered thinking,
I wish I could stare at her lips like that.

"We'll have to get them all out of here before my parents come home," she'd said.

I'd lifted Lugar's limp hand and let it drop. "One thing for sure, he's not giving us any ride."

"Is he a friend of yours?"

"Not particularly."

"Then you've got better taste than my brother. I am so mad at him and his so-called party that I can't even see straight."

Bry had touched her arm and smiled and I could tell he'd missed some of what she'd said.

"Chloe's a great surfer, did I tell you, Jess? She's super-grade number one. My brother here's good, too."

"Oh, yeah?" Chloe's blue, shadow-lashed eyes met mine with a flicker of interest. "You surf in the cove?"

"Some," I said. "Mostly I go over to Trestles." Already I was thinking that if
she
surfed the cove, maybe I should, too.

"Are you going to White Sands on the Fourth?" she asked. Fourth of July is always the big White Sands All-Pro Surfing Championship Finals.

"For sure," I said. "I wouldn't miss it. How about you?"

She'd nodded.

I was amazed at how good I felt knowing I'd see her again at least once, on the Fourth. "Bry and I go every year," I'd said.

But he wouldn't be going this year.

Officer Valle was still talking. "So I'm to presume this Jim Lugar had too much to drink and you and Bry made the decision to walk home."

"Yes." I jerked my head back and forth like a chicken, watching her, watching Mom and Dad, watching the other cop, who stood looking out of the window. "Who would have thought..." I said. "I mean, we thought we'd be safer, walking."

"It was the right decision, Jesse," Dad said.

"I could have called you," I began. "I should have."

Officer Valle interrupted. "You probably didn't want to disturb your parents that late, right, Jesse?"

"Right. I guess we figured they'd be in bed."

They had been in bed. The police had wakened them when they'd brought me home. At first Dad had looked more puzzled than frightened, and he'd said, "Jesse? What's wrong?" And then he'd looked behind, where I stood sniffling and shivering, and he'd said, "Where's Bry? Has something happened to him?"

I got a sudden cramp in my stomach, remembering. Was there a bathroom around here somewhere?

"Do you think the driver who hit my son was drunk?" Mom asked Officer Valle.

"It looks as if that might be a possibility, ma'am. He certainly lost control of his vehicle. We can tell that by the skid marks."

"You can't remember anything about the license plates, Jesse?" Officer McMeeken asked. "Were they white with blue letters? Blue, maybe, with yellow letters?"

I shook my head. "It went by so fast. I guess when it stopped I was close enough to read them. But I was looking at Bry." I bent over, holding the cramp in.

"That boy who took you—Lugar? You don't think he could have wakened and come after you?"

"He has a red Mustang," I said. "It wasn't a red Mustang. And he wasn't about to waken."

"Well, somebody else who was there. Somebody who knew you were walking and..."

"I don't think so. The car was too..." I struggled for the word I wanted. "Too expensive. Not real big like a limousine, but luxurious, or fancy or ... None of the kids I know drives a car like that."