Light of Day (31 page)

“Give me back my glove.” The boy tried to flip Danny. Danny pressed down harder. “Put my glove back,” the boy demanded.

“Right,” Brian snapped at him. He tossed the glove behind his back to Rick.

That's when Rick saw the name written under the wristband. “
Lamar?
What kind of name is
Lamar
?” He threw the glove toward Danny's backpack. “Kiss your glove good-bye,
Lamar
.”

“Get
off
me,” Lamar said.

“You shouldn't be mean to animals,” Danny told him. “Don't you know that? Say you're sorry and you'll never do it again.”

Lamar didn't answer.

“You shouldn't be mean to animals. Say you're sorry.”

“You look stupid in your underwear,” Lamar answered. He twisted and turned but he was not nearly strong enough to move Danny off of him.

Brian came over and started kicking tufts of dirt down Lamar's neck. “You
like
it,” Brian said, in the same tone Lamar had used for the kitten.

“Get
off
me.”

Brian trickled dirt down Lamar's forehead and chin.

“Stop,” Lamar yelled. “Underwear baby.”

“What'd you say?”

“You're an underwear baby.”

Rick shouted, “Underwear baby?
Fuck
you,” although the boys knew they looked foolish with their wet underwear drooping down their backsides and it embarrassed them and their embarrassment fed their rage.

Brian put his foot on Lamar's chest and pressed down.

“Stop,”
Lamar cried.

“Harder,” Rick called out. “Harder.”

Danny stood up, but Brain kept his foot pressed against Lamar's chest. Lamar struggled to push him off. “Under
wear
babies.”

“What a jerk,” C.J. said.

“Underwear
babies,
” Lamar cried again. Brian pressed down harder.

Rick shouted, “Scare the shit out of him.”

Brian pressed down harder still, kept his foot there for a few more seconds and then let Lamar up. When Lamar got to his feet, he spit in Danny's face.

Danny punched Lamar in the chest. Lamar spit again, at Brian this time.

“Fuck that.” Brian grabbed Lamar and pinned his arms back. “Let's show him what happens when you spit in the face of an ‘underwear baby.'”

“Yeah. Teach the jerk a lesson,” Rick said.

“Underwear babies. Stupid-looking underwear babies.” Lamar spat at Brian again.

Rick called out, “Let's kick the shit out of him.”

“No,” Brian said. “Take him to the rope.”

“Yeah,” Rick yelled. “The rope.”

“The rope…the rope…take him to the rope…” Brian and Rick chanted.

“No,” Danny told them. “Don't.”

But Brian had already lifted Lamar off the ground and got ahold of his wrists and Rick had grabbed Lamar's ankles. They carried him to the embankment.

Lamar kicked and flailed. But the boys were much too strong. Lamar only managed to hurt himself.

“The rope…the rope…” Brian and Rick chanted again.

“The rope…the rope…” C.J. joined in.

Danny called out, “Let him alone. We've scared him enough.”

“But we're
under
wear babies,” Brian said.

“And he's a little jerk,” Danny answered. “But let him go, anyway.”

“
Hell
no.” C.J. took hold of Lamar's ankles while Brian picked up the end of the clothesline. He started tying a loop and did his best to make it look like a hangman's noose. Lamar squirmed and twisted, cursed at them and called them “underwear babies.”

C.J. and Rick carried Lamar over to the tree. Brian placed the noose over Lamar's head.

“Don't,”
Danny yelled at them.
“Don't.”

Lamar stopped cursing, stopped calling them “underwear babies.” He looked scared.

“What's the matter,” Rick said. “
Cat
got your tongue?”

Lamar cried, “When I tell my dad, he'll find out where you live and kill you. He's a million times stronger than you.”

Danny shouted at Brian, “Come on, you've scared him enough. Let him go.”

“Hang him,” C.J. screamed.

Lamar flung himself back and forth, shaking his head, knocking off his glasses. Brian held on to him.

“Let him go,” Danny insisted. “You've made your point.” Danny started coming over. “Come on. Take it off him.”

“Whose side are you on?” Rick snapped at him.

Brian said, “He needs to learn a lesson.”

Rick whispered, “Come on, Danny. He's only going to fall in and get wet. What's the big deal?”

“Then at least take off his sneakers,” Danny said. “So they don't fill up with water.”

“What?”

“Take off his sneakers so he can get back. We don't even know if he can swim.”

“Fuck him,” Brian growled.

“Strip the little jerk,” Rick demanded.

“Just his sneakers,” Danny said. “Just take off his sneakers so he can swim back.” He pulled off Lamar's sneakers. Lamar screamed that he wanted to keep them on. He kicked and thrashed, his foot hitting Danny in the cheek and knocking him back.

“Fucking asshole,” Rick shouted. C.J. and Brian grabbed Lamar's shoulders and pulled him slowly back and then pushed Lamar over the edge, like a baby in a swing.

Lamar swayed above Otter Creek, just as the boys had less than an hour before. His small body looked even smaller as it glided in the air, arcing high above the water. He wasn't making “Tarzan” calls, or animal noises. He was screaming and crying for help, tugging on the rope,
kicking his feet straight out as though he were trying to climb a ladder.

The boys waited for the rope to slip and for Lamar to splash into the pool. But the rope didn't slip. Lamar didn't fall in.

He wasn't screaming now. His hands weren't moving. His feet snapped stiffly at the knees and stopped kicking. His body twitched once, spastically, then sagged forward, swinging silently toward the embankment, then back over the water, back and forth, like a pendulum.

Danny was already shinnying up the tree and crawling out to the limb. He was frantic to pull Lamar in and untie the clothesline, but Brian's knot was holding firm, or maybe it was the way Danny's hands were shaking. He couldn't get Lamar untied.

Rick and Brian and C.J. could only stare dumbly, first at Danny and then at the odd way Lamar's neck was turned, at the blank and glassy look in his eyes.

Danny screamed at Brian to grab Lamar by the shoulders and shake him, “or
something,
” and he shouted Lamar's name over and over again. But Lamar just hung there limp and still, his eyes empty and unblinking. There was a stream of saliva dripping down his chin. His tongue stuck out from the corner of his mouth. His feet dangled above the ground like a doll.

“He's faking it,” Brian said.

“No, he's not,” Danny shouted, and climbed down from the tree.

“He
is,
” Brian insisted, and pinched Lamar's legs, slapped the bottoms of his feet. But Lamar didn't flinch.

“No, he's
not,
” Danny told him. “He's dead.”

As one, the boys took a step back, then another, and hurried around the bend.

“It wasn't my fault,” Brian declared. “I tied it just like before. It was an accident.”

C.J. moaned, “What are we going to do?” and started walking in circles.

“It was an accident,” Brian screamed. “It wasn't my fault.”

Danny whispered, “Oh God. Oh fucking God.” He crouched down and started rubbing his hands together, as though he had a chill.

Rick, his face bloodless, shouted, “What the fuck?” and started
banging his head against the trunk of a tree.

C.J. muttered, “I fucked up…I fucked up…Oh God, I fucked up…” over and over, walking in circles.

Brian continued his refrain, “It wasn't my fault…It wasn't my fault…It was an accident. It wasn't my fault…”

Rick started swinging his arms back and forth. “What the fuck's going on?” he yelled at the sky.

“We killed him,” Danny said softly, and kept on rubbing his hands together.

“It was an accident,” Brian screamed. “Accidents happen.”

“He's
dead,
” C.J. cried out.

“We killed him,” Danny repeated.

“It was an
accident,
” Brian shouted back.

“I fucked up…I fucked up…Oh God, I fucked up…” C.J. wailed.

Danny was the first to go back and look. He stared at Lamar's limp body and the way his head hung and the dull look in his eyes.

“Get dressed,” Brian shouted. He ran over to Danny and pulled him away. “We're getting out of here.”

“What about
him
?”

“Just leave him. We're getting the fuck out of here.”

“We can't do that. He's a human—” But Danny backed further away.

“Brian's right,” Rick yelled. Sweat dripped off his face. “Let's get the fuck out of here.”

Danny didn't move. He could only stare at Lamar, at the eyes.

“Danny's right,” C.J. moaned.

“We're getting dressed and getting out of here,” Brian told them. “Come on, before someone catches us.” He grabbed Danny by the arm and pulled him away.

The boys dressed quickly, but they were compelled to take one more look at the body.

“Let's
go,
” Brian called out.

Danny told them to wait. He ran over to the bushes and started crawling around through the undergrowth, pushing through the gar
bage and stones.

“Get out of there,” Brian called, but Danny wasn't listening. “Get out of there,” Brian called again. But Danny worked his way deeper into the undergrowth until Brian went after him and pulled him out and they all walked, then ran, to the road leading away from Otter Creek. Danny was clutching the orange kitten to his chest.

T
hey went to Danny's house, the only house they knew would be empty.

Rick said be sure to lock the door.

“I can't lock the door. What if my dad comes home early?”

“I thought he's working till school's out?”

“I'm not locking the door.”

“Why did we have to cut school?” C.J. groaned. His lips were trembling.

They went up to Danny's room. C.J. and Rick sat on the bed. Brian pulled a chair away from the desk, sat down and leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

Danny put the kitten on the bed between the two boys and sat in the corner on the floor. “Did you see his face?”

“Try not to think about it,” Brian told him.

“I mean, like the way his eyes were all—” C.J. was crying. Rick stared at Brian.

Danny pressed the side of his head against the wall. “He was lighter than us.”

“What?” Brian said back to him.

“What?” Rick echoed.

“That's why the rope didn't slide off. You tied the knot like you would for us, but he didn't weigh enough.”

“I fucked up,” C.J. moaned to himself.

“
I
fucked up,” Danny told him. “I couldn't get him down in time.”

“
No
body fucked up,” Brian shouted. “It was an accident.”

Danny stared at him. “We have to tell someone. We have to do something.”

“It was an
ac
cident,” Brian repeated.

Rick said, “We were only trying to scare him.”

“We're all going to go to jail,” C.J. cried.

Brian began, “We're not going to—”

But Rick broke in, “You think we left fingerprints?”

“And
foot
prints,” C.J. sobbed. “Involuntary manslaughter…Twenty-five years, at least.” He couldn't stop crying.

Danny said, “Our folks won't let that happen to us. They'll know what to do.”

“My dad'll know what to do,” C.J. told him. “He'll
kill
me.”

Rick shook his head. “My mom'll probably…”

“I don't fucking believe it,” Danny said softly.

“We made a mistake,” Brian said. “We did something wrong, but that doesn't mean—Oh shit. Can everyone just calm down for a minute.” He looked at C.J. “Especially
you
.”

“Yeah, C.J.,” Rick said. “We all feel bad enough without you crying like—”

“We should all be crying,” Danny said.

Rick started to speak, stopped and said, “I know, but come on, Danny. We can't…”

“We have to tell the police,” Danny said. “And explain everything.”

“And they'll send us to jail,” C.J. wailed.

“What else can we do?” Danny answered. “We have to tell
some
one. We have to do
some
thing.”

“You keep saying that,” Brian snapped at him, “but all you want to do is make things worse.”

“Things already
are
worse,” C.J. pointed out.

“Shut up,” Rick yelled at him.

“You shut up,” C.J. yelled back.

“Everyone shut up,” Danny said.

Brian said firmly, “Look. So far no one knows we were there, right?”

“But what about our fingerprints?” C.J. asked. “Like Rick said. And our—”

“No,” Rick answered, “Brian's right. Who'll know they're
ours
?”

“So we won't do anything,” Brian said. “We'll wait and see what happens.”

“When he doesn't come home tonight, his parents are going to call the police,” Danny said. “That's what's going to happen.”

“Okay,” Brian said. He walked over to Danny and glared down at him. “And if the police figure out it was us who was there—”

“And tell our folks we cut school?” C.J. cried.

“Are you an idiot?” Danny snapped at him. “We just killed a kid. And you're worried about cutting
school
.”

“It was an accident,”
Brian repeated, and a moment later: “We can always say we were out there and found him like that but were too scared to talk about it or tell anyone.” He was still looking only at Danny. “They'll believe us. It's not like we're
criminals
or anything.”

“That's right,” Rick agreed. “We're good kids. They'll believe us. Why would we want to kill anyone?”

“Exactly,” Brian said. He walked back to the desk. “It's going to be all right. Come on, C.J., stop crying. We won't tell anyone and no one will know we were there. It's going to be all right. Two more weeks and school's over. When we come back, summer vacation, it'll be like it never happened.”

“I don't know,” C.J. cried. “I don't know if I can do it.”

Brian told him, “If we don't, we'll all end up in deep shit. You've got to be strong. We all do.”

“I can't do it,” C.J. said.

“Yes you
can,
” Brian said. “We all can. We
have
to. We've always watched out for each other and we have to watch out for each other now.”

Rick said, “We have to listen to Brian.”

“But we
did
it,” Danny said, “didn't we.”

“It was an
ac
cident,” Brian insisted. “We made a mistake. Shit, Danny, we can't let this ruin our entire
lives
. We've got to go to college
and—”

“And do all the things we were talking about,” Rick jumped in.

“Our parents
expect
us to,” Brian said. “That's our
fu
ture. My folks—all of our folks are depending on us to live up to our potential and achieve—I mean, shit, this isn't our potential.”

Rick said, “We can't let it ruin our lives.”

“Or theirs,” Brian added.

“Why not?” Danny answered. “It ruined that kid's life, and his parents' lives.
He
has no future.”

“Because—” Rick began, but he ran out of arguments.

Danny said, “We have to do
some
thing. If we wait too long—”

“We aren't going to do anything or say anything,” Brian told him. “We're just going to wait and see what happens.”

Danny looked at the other boys but he didn't speak.

“It's our secret,” Brian said. “We're in this together.”

Rick said, “Brian's right.”

“One of us falls apart and we're totally fucked,” Brian told them. “Right, C.J.?”

“It's our secret,” C.J. said. He stopped crying.

Danny shook his head and took a deep breath, and still he didn't speak.

“Okay,” Brian said to him. “Tell the police or your dad or—or someone.” The others looked at him. “No, for real. Admit that you killed that kid, then what? You've gotten the rest of us in trouble just because
you
want to tell.”

“You want him to say he did it by
himself
?” Rick asked.

“That's not what he's talking about,” Danny told him.

Brian said, “We have to all be in this together. Like always. We have to hang tough together.” He stuck out his hand palm down. “We don't talk about it at school unless no one else is around. Not on the bus, not on the phone. No e-mail,” he told Rick. “Your mom's always walking in on you.”

“Sure.” Rick put his hand on top of Brian's.

Brian turned to C.J. “We've always protected each other and we'll protect each other now.”

C.J. put his hand in.

“It's our secret,” Brian said. “We swear here and now not to tell a soul about what happened today.” He looked at Danny.

Danny picked himself up and walked over to the boys. He put his hand on top of theirs.

 

It started raining late that same night, a hard, drenching rain that slowed to a steady drizzle by the following morning, Saturday, when C.J. came over to see Danny.

C.J. said he hadn't been able to sleep. “I was afraid to turn off the light. And if my dad hadn't started up with me, I would have left it on all night.”

Danny didn't say anything about how he slept. He didn't say anything about the night before, not then and not later, when he and C.J. went over to Brian's house and huddled in the room above the garage. Brian and Rick looked like they'd had trouble sleeping, too.

Brian said, “I heard on the news they're looking for him.” His eyes were red and he yawned while he talked. “I couldn't—”

“I heard it too,” C.J. said.

“Do they know where he is?” Rick asked.

Brian snapped at him, “They're still looking for him, how can they know where he is?”

“Fuck you,” Rick answered. “Okay?”

“There's still time to tell them,” Danny said.

“No
way
,” Brian told him.

“It's kind of creepy, isn't it?” C.J. said. “Being the only ones who know?”

“It's not creepy. It's cruel,” Danny said. “Whether we tell anyone or not.”

“Shit. It's not like we meant to do it,” Brian said. “It wasn't part of a plan or anything. Why did he have to come out there, anyway?”

C.J. asked Danny, “What did you do with that little kitten?”

“Nothing. I've got to take it to the vet.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Brian said. “What if someone recognizes it, you know, as being his?”

“I can't just let it—God, this really sucks.”

Brian said, “Yeah.”

Rick said, “Yeah.”

Brian said, “But what else can we do?”

“You know,” Danny said.

“We
can't,
” Brian told him.

“Come on, Danny,” Rick said. “You know we can't.” C.J. started crying. He said, “This is awful. How did we ever…”

Then Brian remembered the glove and asked what Danny did with it.

“What glove?” Danny asked back.

“The
kid's
baseball glove? In your backpack.”

“There's a glove in my backpack?”

“Rick put it in there.”

“When?”

“Holy shit,” Brian said, “where is it now?”

“It must still be in my backpack.”

“Was your dad still home when you left?”

“Yes.”

“What if he—”

“He never goes through my stuff.”

“There's always a first time,” C.J. said.

“We've got to get it,” Rick said.

Danny told them, “He'll see us if we go there now. He'll be going to his office soon.”

“How soon?” Brian wanted to know.

“Why didn't you tell me you put it there?”

“I thought you saw me.”

“Like I have eyes in the back of my head.”

“We fucked up big-time,” C.J. moaned. He said he was afraid, that it was already too late. “Your dad probably found it by now.” He told them they were all a bunch of screwups. “We fucked up big-time.”

Rick said, “Stop saying things like that.”

Brian told them, “Calm the fuck down. Everybody.”

No one said anything after that. Every once in a while one of them would get up and look out the window or say, “It's not like we meant
to…” Or, “Why did he have to…”

Brian said, “If we just stick together, we'll get through this. We've gotten through bad stuff before.”

All of them looked sad and miserable. C.J. was unable to keep from crying.

Sometime after twelve, Danny pulled on his slicker, went outside, jumped on his bike and rode away in the downpour.

“Hey, Danny,” Brian called from the window, “where're you going? Danny?” But Danny kept on riding.

Brian put on his jacket and ran downstairs. Rick and C.J. followed. They rode out to Danny's house and saw him sitting on the back porch with Mutt.

“Is your dad around?” Brian asked.

Danny shook his head.

“What about the glove?” Rick asked.

“I hid it.”

 

The rain stopped early in the afternoon and it turned out to be a cool and bright day. Any other time, the boys would have headed over to Archer Field to shoot some hoops or biked out to the mall to meet up with their friends, or gone to Otter Creek. But today they sat together on Danny's back porch, in sickening silence, unable to tolerate the company of anyone else, not quite able to tolerate each other's. Brian's pep talks were making Danny angry. Rick snarled and told him Brian knew what he was talking about.

It was the same the following day, when they met in the room above Brian's garage. It was as though they felt obliged to stay together and did not trust themselves to be alone.

In school on Monday morning, Danny was more quiet than usual. C.J. did nothing but sulk. He could not make eye contact with anyone. Brian managed to talk to some of the other kids, standing by his locker, forcing a smile, or maybe it just looked that way to C.J., laughing uncomfortably at their jokes. Rick, close by Brian's side, was carried along by the force of Brian's personality. When they saw Danny, Brian and Rick stepped away from the circle and they all walked to their home
room. C.J. was waiting for them. He pulled Danny aside and whispered, “I'm going out of my mind with this thing. Do you feel if you don't tell someone you'll burst?”

Danny said, “All I know is, what we did was wrong and we should do
some
thing about it.”

“But what?”

“I don't know. It's too late.”

“You mean we're going to get caught, don't you?”

“No,” Danny said impatiently. “I mean it's too late to do anything to change it.”

“Are you scared?”

“I don't think so. I just feel all dark inside.”

“I'm scared Brian's getting pissed at me.”

“Don't worry about Brian. Worry about yourself. Worry about how you're going to live with this.”