Chasing the Bear (6 page)

“She got her story straight?” my father said.

“Yeah,” Cash said. “Tell it just like it happened until the bridge. They hid on the bridge, he went on past them downriver. Don’t know where he is.”

“Work for you?” Patrick said to me.

I nodded.

I said, “I did kill him, though, didn’t I?”

Patrick and Cash both looked at my father.

“You made it easier for him to kill himself,” my father said. “But you didn’t make him kidnap Jeannie, or beat her, and you didn’t make him chase you down the river with a bowie knife. And you didn’t require him to do it drunk, understand?”

“So why not just tell the whole truth?”

“It saves some trouble if we don’t,” my father said. “I told you once that there was right and wrong and there was also the law. Law can’t always be about right and wrong. Sometimes the law gotta do what the law is required to do. I know and you know and Patrick knows and Cash knows and Jeannie knows that what you done was not only right, it was . . .”

He mulled his word choice for a minute.

“It was goddamned heroic,” he said. “But the law can’t just know things. It has to decide them in a legal way. They got to investigate. They got to talk about it in the DA’s office. Maybe they have to talk about it in court. Things drag on. They finally decide that what you done was self-defense, and they leave you be. And we’re right where we are now. Except in the meantime we all been annoyed at some length.”

“Why does it have to be that way?” I said.

“ ’Cause not everybody agrees on what’s right,” Cash said.

“Luke Haden probably thought he was right,” Patrick said. “If he cared.”

“So a . . . country, a state, whatever, gotta have laws to protect us from the people who don’t know what’s right or don’t care,” my father said.

We all ate in silence for a while.

“Course that’s what I think,” my father said. “But you got a right to think different. If you think you need to tell the law everything that happened, and I can’t talk you out of it, then I’ll go down to the station with you and go the whole way with you, whatever way it goes.”

I looked at my uncles.

“A course,” Cash said.

“Naturally,” Patrick said.

“But you all think it would be a mistake,” I said.

“Never a mistake,” Patrick said, “to do what you think is the right thing to do.”

My father nodded.

Cash said, “Amen.”

“So how can you be sure what you think is right, is right?” I said.

“I don’t know,” my father said.

“So what do I do?” I said.

My father grinned.

“Best you can,” he said.

“I think I got to tell the truth,” I said.

My father nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll go down tomorrow, talk to Cecil. All of us.”

In
the morning my father drove me down to the police station and waited for me outside in the car while I went in to see Cecil Travers.

The policeman at the desk told me to sit down and Sergeant Travers would come out for me.

I sat on the hard oak bench near the station house door and in maybe five minutes Cecil Travers came out.

“Come on into my office,” he said. “Tell me what I can do for you.”

Cecil listened very carefully to everything I said. And nodded and listened and nodded and listened. When I got through, he leaned back in his chair and looked at me.

“You’re a smart kid,” he said.

And I shrugged.

“Brave too,” he said.

“I was scared all the time,” I said.

“Had reason to be,” Cecil said. Then he cleared his throat. “I don’t see enough evidence here to charge you with a crime.”

“Even though I moved the sign?”

“That is correct,” Cecil said.

“He might not have died if he’d been able to see the sign,” I said.

“But you might have,” Cecil said. “And what about the girl?”

I nodded.

“You’re a kid,” Cecil said. “You did the best any kid could do, with what you had, and you won. Take it and go home and be proud of it. Hell, nobody’s even reported Luke missing.”

“Poor guy,” I said.

“Poor guy would have cut you up if he’d caught you,” Cecil said.

I nodded.

“Nobody even knows he’s gone,” I said.

Cecil stood and came around his desk.

“And nobody cares,” Cecil said. “Your old man outside?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Cecil said.

We went through the station house and down the wide granite steps to where my father was parked in a no-parking zone, waiting for me to come out.

“Not enough of a case here for me to press charges,” Cecil said.

“Good,” my father said.

I got in the front seat beside him.

“Sam,” Cecil said.

“Yeah?”

“You boys done a darn good job with this kid,” he said.

“I think he’s done most of the good work,” my father said. “Me and Cash and Patrick mostly just stayed out of his way.”

“Well,” Cecil said. “You got reason to be proud of him.”

“We are,” my father said.

I was trying to stay dignified. Cecil put his hand through the open window and shook my hand. Then he turned and walked back into the station. We pulled away from the curb.

“How you feeling?” my father said.

“Pretty good,” I said.

“Why
do you suppose you did that?” Susan asked.

“Should I lie back on this bench, Dr. Silverman?”

“Professional reflex, I suppose,” Susan said. “On the other hand, my interest in you is not entirely professional.”

“I’ve noticed that,” I said.

“I love you and I want to know about you,” she said.

“Anything in particular?” I said.

“Everything,” she said. “And now that I have you rolling, it’s hard not to keep pushing.”

“I read someplace that wanting to know everything about a person is wanting to possess them.”

“I believe that is probably true,” Susan said.

“You want to possess me?” I said.

“Entirely,” Susan said.

“Isn’t that dangerous for my ego?” I said.

Susan smiled.

“If I may say so, your ego is entirely impregnable.”

“Only child of a loving family,” I said.

“Buttressed by accomplishment,” Susan said.

“My father and my uncles were pretty impregnable too,” I said.

“And to grow up,” Susan said, “sooner or later, you had to separate from them.”

“You think that’s what I was doing?”

“When you went to the police?” Susan said. “Yes.”

As one of the swan boats made its leisurely turn in front of us, a little boy was leaning out, trying to trail his hand in the water. His mother took hold of the back of his shirt and hauled him back in.

“Why then?” I said.

Susan waited. I thought about it.

“Because I had just done an adult thing,” I said, answering my own question. “And I needed to what? Confirm it?”

“What happened when you had that trouble, with the men from the barroom?” Susan said.

“My father and my uncles came down and . . . fixed it,” I said.

“And the bear?”

I nodded.

“My father came along and fixed it,” I said.

“And the business on the river?”

“I fixed it,” I said.

Susan nodded.

“And I had to fix it all the way,” I said. “I couldn’t let them fix the cover-up, so to speak.”

“Correct,” Susan said.

“It would have been a step back into childhood,” I said.

“Yes,” Susan said.

We were quiet. The light on Boylston Street turned green behind us and the traffic moved forward.

“You know a lot of stuff,” I said.

“I do,” Susan said. “Tell me how Jeannie was.”

It
was late afternoon and starting to get dark. We were playing basketball, half-court, three on three, outdoors behind the junior high. There was a bench alongside the court and Jeannie Haden sat by herself on it watching us play.

When we got through, I walked over to her.

“You win?” she said.

“Jeannie,” I said. “You been watching us play since school got out. Don’t you keep track of the score?”

“I was just watching you,” she said.

“Oh.”

“Want to walk me home?” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

“Want to stop on the way and buy me a Coke?” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

We walked along Main Street to Martin’s Variety, which sold bread and milk and canned foods and had a lunch counter down one side of the store. Most of their earnings probably came from the lunch counter, because the kids had pretty well taken over the store as a hangout, which meant that generally nobody else came in.

Jeannie and I said hello to some other kids as we walked down the counter and found two seats at the end where it curved.

A guy named Croy said to me, “Hey, Spenser the river rat.”

“Just as smart,” I said. “But not as good looking.”

Croy gave it a big haw and elbowed one of his friends. He was a year older than I was, a big kid, fat mostly, but big enough to bully the younger kids.

We sat. Jeannie ordered a Coke. I had coffee.

“You don’t like Coke anymore?” Jeannie said.

“Like coffee better,” I said.

She nodded.

“Lotta kids know about us on the river,” she said.

“They got the story straight?” I said.

“Mostly,” Jeannie said. “Nobody seems to know about you moving the sign.”

“Good,” I said.

Croy yelled down the counter at me.

“How about Jeannie the Queenie,” he said. “Have any fun with her in the woods?”

“You shut your mouth, Croy,” Jeannie said.

“Bet you did,” Croy said. “She hot, Spenser?”

I looked at him silently, the way I’d seen my father do when people annoyed him.

“No sense shouting back and forth,” my father used to say. “If it’s not worth fighting about, then it’s not worth a lot of mouth. If it is worth fighting over, then you may as well get straight to it.”

So far it wasn’t worth fighting about.

But it was close.

“Look at that, Barry,” Croy said to his friend. “Spenser the river hero is giving me a cold stare. Hot damn, is that scary or what?”

Barry was not a threat. He was a tough guy by association, hanging around with Croy probably made him feel important. He nodded.

“Scary,” he said.

“I’m betting it’s ’cause he don’t know what to say, ’cause they did it and he don’t want to admit it.”

“I’m betting that too,” Barry said.

“He do it to you, Jeannie Queenie?”

I stood up.

“I’ll be back,” I said.

Jeannie’s face had an odd flush to it. I walked down to where Croy was sitting and jerked my head at the door.

“What?” Croy said. “You want to go outside?”

I nodded and kept walking toward the door.

“You little twerp,” Croy said. “You want to fight me?”

“Yep,” I said, and went out the front door and walked down the three steps and turned and waited. In a minute Croy pushed the door open. His face looked a little tight. He was mostly mouth and probably deep down he knew it.

“You sure you want to do this, kid?” Croy said.

“Yep.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Croy said.

I put my hands up, like I did every weekday evening with my father and my uncles and had done every weekday evening with my father and my uncles since I was six.

“Good,” I said. “But I want to hurt you.”

He didn’t like the boxing stance. But he was too far into this to back out. People had crowded out of Martin’s to watch. He was stuck. He came down the step and walked at me.

I stuck a left jab onto his nose to stop him. It did stop him and it made his nose bleed. He shook his head and swung at me with his right hand. I blocked the punch and hit him with a straight right on his nose again. This time I broke it.

He yowled and took a step back and covered his face with his hands. Then he took his hands away a little and saw the blood and stared at it. Then he stared for a moment at me. Then he turned and pushed through the people watching and went away, walking very fast.

“Wow,” Barry said. “You can really fight.”

I dropped my hands and nodded to him.

“Keep it in mind,” I said.

And went back into Martin’s.

I
walked Jeannie home later that night. When we got to her house, we stopped and she turned and faced me.

“You’re always taking care of me,” she said.

“Not always,” I said.

“I’m serious,” she said. “You took care of me on the river. You defended me from Croy.”

She seemed kind of intense. I didn’t know what to say. I was a little uncomfortable.

“You like me,” she said. “Don’t you?”

“Sure,” I said. “I known you since first grade.”

She stood close to me, looking at me. I realized I was supposed to do something.

“I mean, you really like me,” she said.

“I do,” I said.

She sort of lunged forward and put her arms around me and raised her face. I realized I was supposed to kiss her. So far in life, I’d had more fights than kisses. She pressed herself hard against me. A feeling of, like, overheating flashed through me. I felt a little short of breath.

“Show me how much you like me,” she whispered. “Kiss me.”

I stared down at her face. Her eyes were closed. I realized I didn’t quite know what I should do. Some of the women my father and my uncles brought home had kissed me on the cheek. I knew I shouldn’t kiss her on the cheek. Okay, I thought, and took in a breath and bent down a little and kissed her on the mouth. She kissed back hard with her lips tight together. It hurt a little where the inside of my lip was pressed against my teeth.