“No,” I said.
“Well, it better not be.”
I heard my father’s footsteps heading down the hallway toward the stairs. Then it hit me—my father would let Billy into the house or force me to go down to talk to him and that would it, Billy would give me the worst beating he’d ever given anybody.
I left my room and met my father when he was halfway down the stairs.
“No!” I yelled. “Don’t open it!”
“Why not?” my father said.
“Because you can’t.”
“Will you stop with this nonsense? This is the second straight day you interrupted me while I was in the middle of working. The reason I can’t finish my book is because of you—you and your constant complaining.”
My father tried to continue downstairs, but I grabbed his legs from behind. Billy still had his finger pressed down on the doorbell.
“Jonathan, stop it!”
“No,” I said.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“You can’t open the door.”
“Why can’t I?”
“Because you just can’t.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
“Because it’s Billy Owens.”
“Who’s Billy Owens?”
“The kid I told you about yesterday. The one who wants to beat me up.”
“So it
is
a friend of yours.”
“He’s not my friend, he’s—”
“For Chrissake, Jonathan, didn’t I tell you how to handle this?”
“I tried to do what you said to do,” I said. “I mean, I did what you said. I took him by surprise in the schoolyard. But he got suspended and now he’s after me and he’s gonna beat me up.”
“Goddamn it, Jonathan,” my father said. “Does everything have to be a production with you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, starting to cry. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I just did what you told me to do.”
“All right,” my father said. “I’ll talk to this Jimmy Owens and make sure he doesn’t bother you again. Just stop crying.”
From the landing, I watched my father open the front door. I couldn’t see my father and Billy, but I could hear their voices.
“I wanna talk to Jonathan,” Billy said.
“Jonathan doesn’t want to talk to you,” my father said.
“Well, I wanna talk to him anyway,” Billy said.
“I’m telling you he doesn’t want to talk to you,” my father said, “so why don’t you just go home and leave him alone?”
“I’m not goin’ nowhere till I talk to Jonathan,” Billy said.
“Look,” my father said, “why can’t you…”
The front door closed and I could barely hear their voices anymore. I went downstairs and parted the shade on one of the windows in the foyer that faced the front porch. I saw my father and Billy continuing their conversation. Billy was saying, “I wanna talk to Jonathan. I just wanna talk to him…” and my father was saying, “I’m asking you nicely. Just go home and leave him alone…” Then Billy tried to charge past my father to get to the front door, but my father grabbed his shirt from behind before he could get by.
“Let go of me,” Billy said. “Let the hell go of me.”
Billy pushed my father hard, but my father was big and strong and he didn’t budge.
“I wanna talk to Jonathan,” Billy said. “I just wanna talk to Jonathan.”
The rest of the scene seemed to happen in slow motion. Billy tried to charge my father again, but this time, instead of just keeping Billy back with his body, my father pushed him. Billy stumbled backward and fell against the rickety wooden railing of the porch. The railing broke off and Billy fell toward the driveway. I still remember the way Billy’s outstretched arms seemed to be flapping, like he was trying to fly away, and the look of shock and terror in Billy’s wide-open eyes until his whole body fell out of view.
My father stood still for a few seconds, dazed, staring at the broken railing. Then he looked toward me, realizing for the first time that I’d been watching the whole time. I don’t remember exactly what was going through my mind, but I know I didn’t budge—I just stood there perfectly still. My father went toward the railing and looked over. Then, cursing to himself, he went down the stoop, and around to the driveway to where Billy had fallen. I couldn’t see what was happening, but a few seconds later my father returned to the porch, looking terrified.
My father came into the house. He grabbed me by the shoulders and bent over, looking into my eyes.
“Listen to me, just listen to me,” he said, talking very fast. “We have to make up a story—a good story, do you understand what I’m saying? We don’t have much time so listen to me, damn it. You did this, okay, not me. I’m an adult and if anyone finds out that I…they just can’t find that out—they just can’t, okay? So when they ask, when the police ask, when
anyone
asks, you say you did it. Say it was a fight—you were fighting. You and that kid Johnny Owens or whatever the hell his name was. You were fighting today at school so they’ll believe that. Say he came over, this kid came over, and you were fighting. Then you pushed him and he fell down. That’s all you have to do, okay? Say you pushed him and he fell down. They’ll ask you questions, but that’s all you say, that’s the whole story—you were fighting, you pushed him, and he fell down. Do you understand that? Can you remember that?”
“You mean,” I said, stuttering. “You mean…he’s
dead
?”
“Yes, he’d dead, you idiot. He’s fucking dead. And you killed him, not me.
You
killed him. I didn’t do it, you did. Can you remember that? Can you fucking remember that? No one was watching except you—you were the only one who saw. No one else saw so if you just stick to the story…if you just stick to the story—” He started shaking me. “Listen to me, Jonathan. Listen to me, damn it. This is the only way it can work—do you understand that? This is the only way. You’re a kid and it’s okay if two kids fight, but I’m an adult so no one can know what happened. It has to be our secret, okay? Besides, it was all your fault anyway. I mean, I don’t even know this kid. You killed him, Jonathan.
You
killed him. Just get that into your head and everything’ll be okay. It’s very simple—you were fighting and then you pushed him and he fell down. It’s all very simple. But you’ll need a bruise to make it look good. Otherwise they won’t believe you—they won’t believe you were fighting if you’re not bruised.”
My father stood back, then punched me as hard as he could in the nose. Before I had a chance to scream he punched me again, even harder, and I thought I heard a bone breaking. My nose was gushing blood and then I was crying hysterically.
“That’s good,” my father said, “cry. That’s perfect. Cry. Keep crying.”
* * *
I was on my knees, wailing into my bloody hands, while my father called 911. He told the operator that there’d been an accident, that his son had been fighting with another boy and that the other boy had fallen and seemed to be dead. Then my father gave the operator our address and hung up.
“Come on,” my father said. “We have to go outside.”
“I…I can’t,” I said.
“God damn it,” my father said. He went into the kitchen and came back with a dish towel.
“Here, put this over your nose,” he said to me. “Just do it.”
I held the towel over my nose, but it was still bleeding and the pain wasn’t stopping.
“We have to go outside now,” my father said. “If we’re in here when the police and ambulance come it’ll look suspicious. Come on, let’s get a move on.”
When we went outside to the driveway, two neighbors were already standing near the body. My father explained to them what had happened, how I had been fighting with the boy and accidentally pushed him off the porch. The way I was crying the story probably seemed very realistic.
I looked at Billy Owens’ dead body. He was lying on his back with his eyes wide open, a small pool of blood around his head.
The ambulance arrived about the same time as a police car. A larger group of neighbors was forming in the driveway. Everyone ignored me except Mrs. Dembeck, who lived across the street. She used to be very nice to me, sometimes inviting me into her house for cookies and hot chocolate on cold, snowy days. But now she was glaring at me, like I was a killer.
While the policemen were examining Billy’s body, one of the EMS workers examined my nose. The bleeding had stopped, but he said my nose was probably broken. He gave me an icepack to hold against it and said that I needed to go to the emergency room for X-rays.
Meanwhile, one of the policemen was talking to my father. The policeman was nodding, writing in a pad, while my father gave his version of what had happened. After a few minutes, the policeman came over to me.
“Hi, Jonathan,” the policeman said. “My name is Officer Pinelli. “I know this is very difficult for you right now and we’ll make sure you get taken care of. But can you tell me what happened here before?”
My father stood close by, listening, as I told the officer how Billy had come to my house, how he punched me, and then how I pushed him and he fell through the railing. The officer asked me a lot of questions about Billy—How did I know him? Why did he come over the house today? What was our fight about? I had never been a very good liar and I kept fumbling and stuttering as I spoke, but the officer seemed to believe me anyway.
Billy’s body was covered in a white sheet and taken away in the ambulance. Another police car came and then Detective Harrison arrived on the scene. The detective asked me the same questions that the officer had asked me and I gave the same answers.
Officer Pinelli offered to drive my father and me to the hospital to take care of my nose. My father offered to take me himself, but the detective said that it would probably be a good idea if the officer drove us because my father and I would need to answer some more questions at the precinct later on and that the officer could drive us there from the hospital.
In the back of he police car, my father and I didn’t speak. The ice pack had numbed most of the pain in my nose and I just sat there, staring blankly out the window.
My nose was only fractured and the emergency-room doctor said I’d be fine in a few weeks. He also that the blackness around my eyes would eventually fade. After a nurse bandaged my nose, a police officer took my father and me to the police precinct where the detective who’d been at the house was waiting for us. The detective asked my father and me all sorts of questions about what had happened, then he asked my father to leave the room. On the way out, my father glared at me and I was afraid he’d hit me again later if I didn’t say the right things to the detective.
“I know this has been a very long, difficult day for you,” the detective said, “but if you could just tell me what happened one more time I’d appreciate it.”
I was sitting across from him, looking down at my lap.
“We had a fight,” I said.
“In the schoolyard, right?”
I nodded.
“Who started this fight?” he asked.
“Me,” I said.
“Why did you start the fight?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
I was remembering how my father had told me to take Billy by surprise.
“Because I just wanted to,” I said. “At school, he makes fun of me all the time, and he said he was gonna beat me up. So I wanted to fight him before he could beat me up.”
“And you were both called into the principal’s office?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And only Billy was suspended, not you?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Then what happened at your house?”
“The doorbell rang and Billy was there.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He called me names and he said he was gonna beat me up.”
“And then what happened?”
“He punched me in the nose.”
“How many times?”
“Two times.”
“And what happened after that?”
“I pushed him by accident and he fell off the porch.”
“Are you sure it was an accident, Jonathan?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“But are you sure? Sometimes people say things were accidents when they weren’t because they’re afraid they’re gonna get in trouble. Isn’t that what you did, Jonathan?”
“No,” I said.
“Are you sure you weren’t just so angry at Billy that you pushed him off the porch to get rid of him?”
“No,” I said, crying. “That’s not true. It’s not.”
“You can tell me the truth,” he said. “You’re not gonna get punished if you tell me the truth.”
“That
is
the truth,” I said.
A man came into the room. He had a handlebar mustache and he was wearing an old denim jacket.
“Is that him?” he said. “Is that the kid?”