LITMIR.BIZ

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I’d love to,’ he said. ‘We aren’t here to talk about birds, are we?’

      Cold flooded up my bones. He picked a length of wheat and twirled it in his fingers like those baton girls at school.

      ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked.

      ‘Not really.’

      ‘That’s all right. We can talk about something else for now. But eventually, we’ll tackle the big stuff.’

      The Mora stuff. The Jenny stuff. Black worms squirmed in my gut. It felt strange to be out there with just him, despite wanting to, despite agreeing to it. I felt exposed, like walking bare-ass through nettles and poison oak. The rest of Larson was in school. Rudy, Gloria and Jenny were in study hall without me, talking about the Civil War and President Lincoln and some amendment. We had a test on Friday and I didn’t know my dates and I was here instead of there.

      I squeezed my eyes shut, balled up my fists at my sides, kept walking, hoping Jacobs wouldn’t notice. Jenny needed me. She always forgot how to spell Gettysburg. Why did I have to miss school, miss her? I suddenly hated myself for agreeing to these stupid sessions. Nobody else was out of class, just me. Just the freak John Royal. And when this hour was up I’d have to go back there, to the Roost, to the lake, to that depression in the dirt where the body lay and I lay.

      ‘John?’ Pastor Jacobs put his hand on my shoulder. It felt wrong, too heavy, too hard, like an iron bar pressing into my skin. Then he knelt down on his bad knee, stared right into my eyes, just like in the sheriff’s station. Did he see a soul? Was that what pastors did?

      ‘This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here. I need to be at school.’

      My breath caught, heart galloped. I needed to get away.

      ‘Calm down, count to ten with me. Come on, nice and slow, one-one-thousand,’ he nodded at me and I took a deep breath, repeated the number. ‘Good. Two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand …’

      All the way to ten-one-thousand. The redness cleared. My fists relaxed. Breathing came easier. Gloria knew how to spell Gettysburg. She would tell Jenny. She would make sure she remembered. I was in a field, the sweet smell of the wheat, on a well-trodden path turned to dust by hundreds of running feet. A picture of Jenny running through the dark corn flashed behind my eyes, then finding her pale and staring down by Big Lake.

      ‘Do you get upset like that often?’ Jacobs said.

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘Just when …’ when I’m scared of my sister for wanting to sleep next to a dead body, ‘when I need to help Jenny and I can’t. We have a test.’

      ‘Next time you feel panicked, before you do anything else, count to ten, just like I showed you. Will you do that for me?’

      ‘Yes, sir. I will.’

      The calm edged back, slowly, as if afraid to show its face all at once. I couldn’t help Jenny now, out here, while she was back there. Something ached inside me at the realisation. Sometimes I wouldn’t be there. Sometimes she would be alone. Like she was alone at Big Lake before I found her. What had she done before I got there? I shivered in the heat.

      ‘You can call me Frank, you know,’ he said. ‘I’ve never felt much like a “sir”.’

      I nodded and tested the word. ‘Frank.’ It felt strange on my tongue. I’d never heard anyone else, young or old, call him that. I smiled. ‘Yes, Frank.’

      We carried on toward Barks but he didn’t say anything else. Maybe my panic had scared him, made him think I wasn’t worth helping, and now he wanted to use the hour up as quick as he could so he could be rid of me. John’s fine, Mrs Royal, I don’t need to see him ever again.

      As we walked, I prayed not. I wanted to feel what I’d felt in the station, like I had a guardian, something like a father who wouldn’t fly away. Frank – the name sounded odd, even in my head – wanted to talk about Mora but he was dancing about the subject. I’ll talk about it, I decided, if that’s what it takes. I’ll talk, but only to you. I stared up at him, waiting for the questions, studying every bit of him.

      He wasn’t an old guy, not really, though everyone is old when you’re thirteen. Much older than Momma, but she’d forced us out too young she said. His hair was still rich brown, he didn’t have all that many lines around his face, not like old man Briggs – Hayton! – or Mrs Lyle from the post office. Momma said Pastor Jacobs had a jaw that could lever open a paint can. That’s how you can tell a man is from good stock, John Royal, Momma said, I should have had you by that pastor so you’d have a jaw that could take a hit. I had a weak chin, Momma said, it’d crack like a peanut shell under a good right hook.

      We reached the southern edge of the reservoir. The beach was bigger than it should have been for this early in July. The summer was too hot, too long, drying us all up to husks and draining the reservoir too quickly. A few kids playing hooky splashed about, laid out on towels, a blue cool box full of Cokes between them. I swallowed down dust and ached for one of those Cokes. Hiss and pop of the cap and wonder in a mouthful, fizzing down my throat.

      ‘Think they’ll share?’ Frank nudged me, sweat shining on his forehead. He didn’t take out his handkerchief, didn’t wipe it away, not even with his sleeve.

      He squinted against the sun to make out the truant faces. Then he shouted, ‘Mark Easton, is that you? And Tracy Meadows? You kids have a free period or should I be calling parents?’

      The four of them, all juniors a few years up from me, spun around. The two on the beach scrambled up, dusted off the sand, Mark and Tracy. The two in the water ducked down so just their heads showed. One of those in the water was Darney Wills. He wrecked his father’s truck in the post office when he was fifteen but he was on the football team and his father was mayor of Larson, so nobody much cared. Accident. Just kids larking about. No one got killed, after all.

      I stepped behind the pastor as we walked down onto the beach. Wanted to hide from them. The two on the beach whispered, laughed, pointed.

      ‘Hey there, pastor,’ Mark Easton, the boy on the beach, called out. Even Mark Easton didn’t call him Frank. A tiny bud of pride blossomed in my chest.

      Frank got close, me trailing behind. I wanted to speak up, say let’s get the hell out of here, but we were too close now. Contact made. Questions asked.

      The girl, Tracy, looked right at me, not even a glance at the pastor. I was a sideshow. Rumours grew up fast and strong in Larson, then went rampaging through town in hobnail boots, leaving marks, making holes, twisting and expanding every time a new idiot jumped on its back. The girl nudged Mark. I wanted to bury myself in the sand, let me get eaten by those hawks, let me be ripped up and devoured. All better than those looks and whispers.

      Mark joined Tracy in staring, smiling, a look out to that beast Darney Wills and whatever poor girl he’d dragged into the water.

      ‘You should all be in class,’ Frank said, ‘and you sure don’t look sick.’

      ‘Aw come on,’ Mark, said, ‘we’ve only got a week of school left, finals are done.’

      ‘I tell you what, you give me one of those Cokes and I’ll forget I saw you.’

      ‘Deal,’ Mark said, reached down into the cool box. So slow, his eyes always on me. Stop it, stop looking at me. I wanted to be home. I wanted the farm, the isolation of the fields, the silence of the corn.

      Pastor Jacobs accepted the bottle, twisted the cap and handed it straight to me. I took it but didn’t drink it, not in front of them. In the water, Darney stood, started wading to shore. The girl still cowered beneath the surface.

      ‘Coach Ray got you back in practice for the summer?’ Jacobs asked Mark.

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘You boys best keep that defence tight next season. God loves football but he loves a state champ more.’

      Darney whooped on his way from

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