Authors: Robin Yocum
“Agreed,” Pepper said, starting past me to the path that would lead us back to the playground.
I snatched his shirt and said, “No. We can't walk back down that way. If anyone sees us coming down the path they might put two and two together after someone finds him. Let's cut over Hogback Hill and take the path down Riddles Run to the glass works. It will look like we were scouting those fields. We'll come into town from the south, and no one will ever know we were up here.”
We looked at Adrian and he nodded his approval. In spite of the situation, I welcomed the nod. It was the first time in my life that I could recall making a decision of significance around Adrian. Usually, we simply deferred to him.
Deak looked back at Petey. “Deak, there's nothing we can do for him,” I said. He nodded. As we headed across the clearing, I stopped and used the stick to point back to the brush. “Better pick up that maul, Adrian.” He went back, kicked around the weeds, and found it a couple feet from the body. As he emerged into the clearing, he rolled it in his hand and appeared to be examining it for bloodstains.
Pepper led us south along the backside of Hogback Hill, the largest of the foothills that rimmed the southwest corner of Crystalton. It would bring us out of the woods near the old Longstreet Mine No. 8 and along the Little Seneca Creek, a quarter of a mile from where it emptied into the Ohio River near the foundation of the old Brilliant Glass Works. The glass works was more than four decades
gone, but its stone foundation remained and we would occasionally dig around the grounds for slag, the large pieces of glass that were formed when leftover molten glass was dumped at the end of a run. The slag was considered trash when glass factories lined the Ohio River in Crystalton, but in 1971 they were treasures of our lost past and people would pay five dollars for clear, brick-sized pieces, which were commonly used as doorstops. Along the east side of the old foundation, sloping several hundred yards toward the river, was another farm field that we sometimes searched for arrowheads. After a big storm the relics could be found in abundance along the lower ridge of the field and in the mouth of the Little Seneca, where we scooped out silt and rock in kitchen colanders, searching for arrowheads like prospectors panning for gold.
We did not run across Hogback Hill, but walked in silence and at a brisk pace. I recalled that I had been thinking about lunch when we walked out of the Postalakis's feed-corn field. I was no longer hungry, the pangs canceled by the clenching of my throat and intestines. As we walked I remembered that I had promised my mother I would cut the grass that afternoon. I thought it odd that in the midst of such chaos I would remember something as seemingly insignificant as mowing the lawn.
As we followed the path around Hogback Hill, I felt oddly euphoric, light in the chest, as though I had just walked away from a plane crash. I had witnessed a horrific event, a young man had died, but there was a modicum of relief in knowing that I had not thrown the stone that ended Petey's life. As bad as things were, I knew that I would never have to shoulder that blame. Was I helping to hide the killer? Absolutely. But I could never be held accountable for the murder. The ground was ablaze and strewn with crushed wings and engines and body parts, but I was walking out of the fuselage virtually unscathed.
O
n the hillside farmed by Del Cafferty south of town, an outcropping of sandstone protruded from the soil a hundred feet from the edge of the field, which tumbled toward the river and within a few feet of the New York Central Railroad tracks. During our arrowhead sojourns to the field, we would often pack a lunch and sit on the pitted outcropping as we ate, our feet dangling two feet from the loam below, watching freight trains, barges loaded with coal, clouds, and the muddy river roll by.
To the northwest was Crystalton, though all that could be seen from our low vantage point was a handful of houses built high against the encompassing hills, the spire of the Presbyterian Church, and the white water tower that proudly proclaimed in purple block letters:
Crystalton, Ohio
Home of the Royals
When we emerged from the dense foliage of Hogback Hill into Riddles Run, we walked directly to the outcropping. No one said that is where we should go to talk. Instinctively, we just knew. By the time we arrived at the outcropping the sun had arced past noon, burned off the fog, and begun heating the sandstone, which was warm on the backs of my legs and felt good in spite of the temperature already hitting the low eighties. I had been unable to shake the goose
bumps and chills since walking away from Petey's body. I pressed my hands between the rock and my thighs to warm my cold fingers.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, each of us pondering our personal situations and waiting for Adrian to take the lead. During youth, leadership is most often determined as it is in wolf packs or lion pridesâby size and strength. Thus, Adrian had always been our leader, first by size, but later by intelligence and natural ability. He was simply one of those people you turned to for leadership. On that day, however, he was silent, nervous, and made no movement to tell us how we would address the dilemma. When he looked over to me, his eyes moist and rimmed in red, I realized that Adrian could not accept a leadership role in this situation because he was now dependent upon us for his survival.
I finally slipped off the rock and said, “Okay, what's the plan? I've got to get the grass cut before my mom gets home from work.” It sounded ridiculous under the circumstances, but it was no less a fact.
“I've been thinking,” Adrian said, his tone hardly more than a whisper. “If they never found the body, how would anyone know he had been killed?” He looked around at us. “I mean, Petey rode that damn bicycle all over the place, anything could have happened to him. He could have fallen in the river or into an abandoned mine, or run away. Who knows? If they never find a body, it'll just be a missing person, right? Who's going to look for him? Not his parents, and not the Crystalton cops, that's for sure.”
“Someone is going to find him eventually,” I said.
“Not if we get rid of the body.”
A wave of ice ran from my brain stem to my heels.
Adrian continued, “Maybe tonight we camp out, and go back up and drag his body over and throw it in the fly ash pond. They'd never think to look in there.”
There were two fly ash ponds built into the hills above Crystalton. They were decades-old craters in the earth left by strip mining companies. As a way of reducing air pollution, the electric generating plant in town pumped a slurry of fly ash captured from the smokestacks to the ponds. They were quicksand-type pits of
acid-heavy ash and water. We had found deer tracks leading into the ponds, but never coming out.
“After a couple of months the acid will completely dissolve the body,” Adrian said. “It'll eat away everything but the teeth, and they would never find those. The pits are bottomless.”
Despite his distressed state of mind, it wouldn't have surprised me if Adrian was conspiring behind the wild eyes, trying to elevate our involvement in the crisis to make us all more culpable. I wanted to help Adrian, but such a move would increase my participation in Petey's death from that of mere witness to co-conspirator, and I was going to have to balk. “You're just thinking out loud, right, Adrian?” I asked.
“It's Petey, goddammit. No one would look for him.”
“I can't do that,” Deak said. “No way. I'm not throwing him in that pit never to be found and never given a proper funeral.”
“A proper funeral?” Adrian asked, flashing Deak a hateful look.
“Look, what if we go back on the hill and come running down behind the playground and say we found Petey up there and he was already dead?” Deak offered. “Then someone could go up and get him and he wouldn't have to lie up there in the weeds in the heat with all the bugs.”
“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Adrian groaned.
Pepper hopped off the ledge and said, “Look, first of all, the heat and bugs aren't bothering Petey, and why in hell do we need a plan?” He looked around at all of us. “Seriously? Why? This is very simple. Listen to me. Tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe a week from now, someone is going to walk up to you and ask, âHey, did you hear about Petey Sanchez?' When that happens, you say, âNo. What?' They'll say, âHe's dead.' You say, âNo shit, really? How?' That's it. That's all we have to say. Game over.”
“Once they find the body the cops will start an investigation. What if they ask us questions?” Deak asked.
“So what if they do? It's the same routine,” Pepper said, his voice climbing as his patience with Deak ran short. “If the cops ask you if you've seen Petey in the last week, you say no, not that you recall. If they ask if you have any idea who might have killed him, you say not a clue. If they ask if we were up on Chestnut Ridge, we say no. It was
foggy as hell this morning. No one saw us walk up there. We were a mile from the Postalakis house. They didn't see us.” He pointed at Deak, then me. “Did either of you guys tell anyone we were going up on Chestnut Ridge?”
“No,” Deak said. I shook my head.
“Well, there you have it,” Pepper said. “We met at the elementary school and walked down here. We spent the morning hunting for arrowheads. Period. Let's not make this more complicated than it needs to be. We keep our mouths shut, and when someone asks about Petey Sanchez, we don't know a damn thing.”
He was right. If no one could put us on Chestnut Ridge and we kept our mouths shut, there was nothing to fear.
“If we get caught, we'll all go to juvenile hall,” Adrian said.
I nodded. I wasn't sure that was true, but I was willing to let it hang there for Deak's benefit. It was a little cruel, but necessary. Deak Coultas was a great friend and a very caring kid. He had a kind word for everyone. In the heat of a basketball game, he would be the first one to extend a hand and help a fallen opponent back to his feet. He was the apotheosis of a parent's perfect child. The fact that he had been witness to a murder and part of the cover-up was going to be particularly rough on him.
“I just think we should tell someone,” Deak said. “It bothers me that he's dead and his family doesn't even know.”
I said, “Deak, let me ask you this: What good is telling someone going to do besides clearing your conscience? If Adrian gets nailed, we do, too. Adrian threw the rock, but we share in the blame because we didn't stop him. We let the retarded kid die. And let's remember this: We didn't start it. Petey was the one who started it. He headbutted Adrian and clubbed him with a tree limb. Adrian was trying to protect us.”
We all looked at Deak, the obvious weak link in the chain. “I got it,” he said.
“Are we in agreement?” Pepper asked.
Deak and I both nodded. Deak, I knew, believed he was failing in the eyes of God and had just committed his soul to eternal damnation. Pepper couldn't be bothered. He was probably wondering how much Fats Pennington was going to give them for the arrowheads and
the maul. He was concerned for his brother, but the fact that Petey Sanchez was lying dead in the weeds would not cost Pepper Nash a minute's sleep. He would give it no more thought than if Adrian had punched Petey in the nose. Petey Sanchez? Fuck him. He got what he deserved. That psycho hit Adrian twice with a tree branch and Adrian punched his ticket, gave him a one-way trip to the big retard school in the sky. Sayonara, crazy boy. I'm glad the goofy sonofabitch is gone. And that would be that. How much for that maul, Fats?
As it became apparent that our business at the rock was complete, Adrian turned and began walking toward the river. Pepper instinctively knew what his brother was going to do and said, “Wait, Adrian, don't throw that away. It's worth a lot of money.”
Adrian stopped and looked at Pepper for a long moment, as though contemplating the risk versus the financial gain, then he took a few more steps and hurled the maul far into the Ohio. When it hit, the water plumed up on both sides and for an instant looked like a glass vase before fading into ripples that were soon consumed by the current.
“Dammit,” Pepper said.
We walked across the furrowed field, stepping over young corn sprouts, heading for the wooden foot bridge that spanned the Little Seneca below Third Street. When we were halfway across, Adrian turned and asked, “Are you keeping that for a souvenir?”
In my hand was Petey's oak branch. I had taken it to remove any clues from the crime scene, but had been mindlessly using it as a walking stick. I inspected it for a moment, then dropped it over the side of the bridge and into the rushing waters of Little Seneca Creek, which was still running fast from the previous day's rain. We all watched it float downstream until it went through the concrete culvert under the New York Central tracks and made its way to join the maul in the Ohio.
T
he front door of Fats Pennington's antique shop could be reached only by traversing a weed- and gravel-covered lot that was cluttered with rusting farm implements, a couple of old-fashioned gasoline pumps, a weathered church pew on which Fats sunned his considerable girth on slow days, several wagon wheels with missing spokes, and a battered wicker gondola from a hot air balloon that Fats swore had been used by troops under the command of Ulysses S. Grant to spy on the Confederates during the Tennessee campaign of 1863. “Only a hundred and twenty dollars to own a piece of history,” he once told me.
As we crossed Third Street at the south end of town, Deak extended his hand and gave Pepper his spear point and a smaller white arrowhead. “Add these to your collection to sell Fats,” Deak said.
Pepper frowned. “You want the money, don't you?”
“Nah, you keep it.”
Pepper shrugged and headed into the antique shop. We stayed outside in the lot amid the rusting farm implements and General Grant's gondola. “That spear point is a prize,” I said.