Freewill (9 page)

“Where are you going?” Gran asks, walking back in. She would never interrupt you dressing so she must have calculated your dressing time. “Maybe you should just stay home today.”

“Thanks, Gran. Thanks anyway.”

“Hello,” Pops barks into the phone. “Yes.”

“Will. Will, it's the guy from the school. Jacks.”

“Tell him I'll talk to him when I get there.”

Pops tells him. Hangs up. It is ringing again practically before the receiver is down.

“What? How did you get this number? How did you get his name?”

“Who is it, Pops?” You want to know. Do you want to know, though?”

“Don't concern yourself, Will,” Gran says.

“Who have you been talking to?” Pops demands of whoever it is.

“Who is it, Pops?”

“It's a newsguy. You don't want to talk to a newsguy, do you, Will?”

You don't want to talk to a newsguy, Will.

What are you hesitating for?

“Give me the newsguy, Pops.” You head to the phone.

“No,” Gran is saying. “No, no, Will, what good could come of this? Don't . . .”

Pops is simply shaking his head at you. “Your funeral,” he says.

He did not mean that. He did not mean that. Pops is accident-prone, but not cruel. Supremely, supremely careless man, but not cruel.

You and Pops stare at each other. The look on his face may in fact say he is sorry. Don't wait for his lips to say it, though.

“No,” you say to the newsguy. “I am not a sculptor. Yes, I made the carving. Yes, I put it there. I don't . . . didn't, know them at all. I did it, though. I am responsible.”

He wants to meet you at the beach. You have school. This has nothing to do with you. Mr. Jacks is expecting you. You can't do yourself any good going to the beach. Your grandparents want you to stay right where you are, with them, where they can watch you and take you bowling and shopping and buy you an Italian ice and keep a good close eye on you and not let this one get away. A favor to them, if you can't bring yourself to see it any other constructive way. Can you take care of yourself for the good of somebody else?

Good question that, Will. What do you suppose is the answer? Can one person take care of himself for the good of another if he can't manage to do it for himself?

“Ya, I'll be there,” you say to the newsguy and hang up.

When you turn to face your Gran, who could not be closer if she had accidentally gotten under your shirt when you pulled it on, she looks already lost. Dead, defeated, gone.

“I really wanted you to stay,” she says, trembly.

You pat her on the shoulder. What kind of move is that? It's not your move. It's not any real person's move.

“I'll see you later,” you say, and slip away. Pops is already nowhere to be found.

•  •  •

What are going to say? It is best to know what you are going to say to someone. Especially one of these. Don't kid yourself. This is no friend. Of all the things you can do for yourself at this point, not kidding yourself it about the wisest and most helpful.

You have made it this far, Will. There is no reason you can't make it all the way. What do you want to say to this man? And why?

It's not too late, you know. Go on and ask, why?

As the newsguy approaches, you are taking it all in. The Scene. Used to be The Beach. Now it is covered with cops with coffee and gadgets, pretty men and women fighting mightily with their hair before allowing the cameras to roll on odes to young life washed away. A few bouquets of flowers have already made their way here—somebody else in town is getting good at this—but they are blowing away just as quickly. This scene is not about to lie still like the others. The beach doesn't want this. The beach is going to throw it all back, scatter it every which way.

“You are Will.” He holds out his hand.

“I am.” You hold out yours. “You're the newsguy.”

“I have a name,” he says.

“Is that important?” you ask, and somehow manage not to be impolite.

“Not at all,” newsguy answers.

You walk. Newsguy wants to hang around the spectacle, but you have had enough of it for the moment, so you begin to walk the beach. The remaining two miles of silver sand are even more deserted than usual, because of the excitement at the one spot. So in a way, you get what you want.

Don't forget to get what you want. Don't forget to know what you want. What does newsguy want, Will? He is not your friend. He is not your friend. He is not your friend.

He catches up to you. Brings a small recorder close to your mouth.

“I don't think I could talk to that,” you say.

This does not seem to be a shock to him. He produces pen and notebook.

“I did that,” you say, before the man can even begin to pick you apart. “I am responsible.”

“How, Will?” he asks while walking and scribbling notes at the same time. How can they do that, writing one thing and saying something entirely different? Don't they need to concentrate on one thing or the other? What kind of mind can do that?

“How was it you were responsible? Were you here? Were you with the two of them? How many others were here? What went on?”

He is in an awful hurry, is he not?

“Who told you about me?” you ask calmly.

“Is that important?” he asks.

You are in charge, Will. You are the show. You can make him tell you. You can do whatever you want. You are utterly, thoroughly, gloriously, in charge.

For this one, slight, sick small moment. Then it will be gone. You will not be in charge when it is gone.

“Not at all,” you say.

“Great. So tell me how you were involved.”

“I don't know.”

“Excuse me?”

“I just planted it. And the next morning they were dead.”

“Come on, kid, the rumors are already flying around about this cult shit and you might as well tell your story straight, to me, before it gets all morphed into something worse. Let me do you a favor.”

A favor.

He is not your friend. He is not your friend. He is not your friend. Listen.

“What are you talking about? Cult? What are you talking about? You are making no sense to me.” You are panicking now. He can see this. See what it does to him, Will? What do you see in there? Charity? Is that what you see? Is this the man who will do you a favor? Is it out of the goodness of his heart that he is with you now? Does he want to help you? Who does? Does anybody? Does anybody, help anybody?

“Don't play simple with me now. Kids keep dying, right, and your Nazi goth penis weird whatever shit sculpture keeps showing up at the scene, like, really soon thereafter. Until this time when, it appears, it showed up
before
. What's going on?”

Is this what you expected, Will? Is this what you came for? What in hell
did
you come for?

He is not who you wanted to talk to. You wanted to talk. But not to him.

He is not your friend. Who is your friend?

“Do yourself a favor, kid. Talk to me. Let me give it a spin before the cops give you one.”

You have not noticed your acceleration until you see newsguy trying to keep up. Now he is thinking the current thought, writing the previous thought, and running at the same time. In the sand.

“What does the sculpture mean? Where does the design come from? Are those snakes carved into it?”

You run.

“What are you saying? Are you claiming to be some kind of mystic monster? You know who is going to die, and when, and you go there to mark the occasion?”

“Don't
say
that!” you holler. “Don't be saying that!”

You run.

“Is there a connection between this and your father's murder of your stepmother and his own suicide?”

You stop. You about-face.

He stops, but then comes on again. He is walking toward you, as if to make his point of having caught you.

“Listen,” he says with the low-tide waves hissing in the distance. “I understand, see. I know, right, that you can only do what you must. I know that you don't really have a choice in what you're doing.” It is the intimacy in his tone, isn't it, Will?

That's the thing, isn't it? Does anything in this long bloodless fucking show feel less trustworthy, than intimacy?

“What is it, Will? Is it a voice? Do you hear voices?”

You need no voice to tell you what you want at this moment.

You throw everything—sadness and rage and the past and abject unspeakable loneliness—behind the hand as you throw it.

The force of it knocks newsguy down backward with you lurching forward on top of him.

“So, you a killer too? Family business?” newsguy says with his hand over his mouth.

This is the first person you have ever hit, but you know right off that the feeling in your hand is a broken bone. It screeches with pain up your arm as you push up off the beach.

You are walking away when the newsguy says, “Do you suppose nobody ever tried to punch me off a story before?
Didn't even hurt, anyway. Good luck, freak. You'll need it.”

If luck existed, one would have to say you were in need of it. As it does not, it will do you no good to think about it. You have done nothing wrong. This is what you need to think about.

You have done nothing wrong. There is no reason to feel as if you had. That feeling is in there, isn't it, Will?

As it has been for a long time.

It shouldn't be. Getting it out is all that matters now. All that matters. Are you listening? This is what you should be listening to. The only voice you should be listening to. Listen to this voice, Will. The one that owes you the truth. The one that will not go away until it is achieved.

•  •  •

They must be so relieved. What must they have been thinking you were going to do?

At any rate, the grandparents are so happy to have you back, so soon after probably thinking they had lost you forever, that they do the best possible thing. They leave you alone. Pretend you do not even exist. When you walk through the door. When you bumble around the kitchen. When you prowl your way up the stairs, into the room, out of the clothes and into the bed. Naked, but for the bedcovers over your torso and a bag of frozen mixed summer vegetables—peas and tiny cubed carrots and strips of bright
red peppers—resting on your throbbing hand, which rests on your humming chest.

And they leave you alone through an unbroken day and night of what may be sleep, may be semi-sleep, but is neither rest nor consciousness.

What do you think? It's out. It's out and out there and in the public domain. It is spoken aloud and acknowledged. What do you think?

How does it feel? Is the job done? Did you kill it, him, us? Is it gone, Will? Is it better? Is it worse? Is it finished, or is it just beginning?

Who did you hit? What did you hit? Did it hurt? Who did it hurt?

It hurts. Doesn't it hurt, Will?

“It hurts. Jesus Christ it hurts.”

Good. Good, that you are listening. You don't want to be alone. Must not let yourself get all alone.

“I am all alone.”

Of course you're not. Like it or not.

You get up, and the frozen vegetables slide to the floor. You had forgotten. How does the hand feel? It throbs, doesn't it, even through the numbness? It won't just pass. You can't will it away or ignore it away. In there it stays, broken, blood seeping into the places it's not supposed to go, your body fighting, fighting itself.

How does it feel, Will?

“It hurts.”

You pick up the bag, slap it back onto the back of your hand, and you pace the room.

Of course it hurts. How does it
feel
?

“I didn't do anything to anybody. Did I?”

You didn't.

“Did I?”

You didn't.

“
Did
I?”

How does it feel?

“I didn't do anything. I never did anything. Un
fair
. That's how it feels.”

Don't fuck yourself waiting for fair. Understand? Listening? You will fuck yourself waiting for fair.

They are out there, at the door. She is, anyway. Pops is probably out gardening in the dark. She is afraid to speak. She is afraid to go away. Afraid to engage, afraid to leave you alone.

You walk to the door, padding not–quite-silently across the carpet in your bare feet, then pressing your entire naked self against the door. She is right there, on the other side of the panel. You can hear her breathing. Can she hear you? Will she speak? Will she risk?

Then there is no breathing. She is gone again, and you remain, feeling, feeling for the impression of Gran's warmth
in the door. You think you can make it out, the Gran-shaped etching of heat in the door. You lean, pressing harder into it, harder as it seeps away, harder.

You are not alone, still.

“I am.”

Round and round it goes, pacing the room, sitting on the bed, lying on the bed, marching again.

You catch a half-length vision of yourself in the dresser mirror. Look at you.

Skinny. Naked. Creased.

Killer. Mystic monster. Cult icon.

Panic.

Don't. Will. Don't.

Panic. You retreat, from the mirror, from the image with the fifty ribs ready to launch like arrows straight out of the torso. You back up until you fall on the bed, then scramble, still backward, until you are sitting on the pillow, back flat against the headboard.

You didn't think you could get away with it, is what you are thinking. It always was just a matter of time, and changing schools, cities, and caretakers was never going to alter the way things would go one little bit.

You have been waiting since the day.

You always knew. Now everyone will. You're getting famous.

You wait, sitting up in bed. Nothing to do but wait.

•  •  •