LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

was all things to all people. The Light of Larson they called him. Football star. Baseball star. Star grades. Star smile. Star fucking attitude. My teeth ground together the longer I was near him. Larson treated Mark like a god, as if touching him or getting his attention would somehow bless their narrow lives. He was like a son to me, they’d crow, and everyone would listen slack-jawed and gawking.

      Mark Easton, the boy with a hundred fathers. John Royal, the boy with none.

      Until now. I looked at the pastor.

      They kept talking, Mark and Pastor Jacobs. Mark showed off his throwing arm and his form. The pastor lapped it up and I felt my insides shrivel.

      ‘You boys work hard this summer,’ Frank said.

      ‘Yes, sir,’ Mark said. ‘We’ll sure do our best to get to playoffs next season. Maybe you can have a word with the man upstairs for us.’

      Jacobs nodded, winked, told the four of them that he didn’t want to catch them there again during school hours. I strode ahead, every step away was one less clenched muscle, one less tight heartbeat. I looked back once. The four of them were on the beach, talking, looking, smaller and smaller until we turned and entered the fields again.

      My mood lightened the further away we got. The day’s heat cooled and clouds grew over the sky. A few spots of rain hit my forehead, puffed up dust on the path. My teeth clenched. Rain. Nothing worse for corn than too much rain. I checked the sky. No black storm clouds bleeding their load, no taint of ozone in the air. Just a shower.

      And with that, the rain stopped, beat back by the sun. Frank wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and I with my sleeve.

      I gave the Coke back to Frank, untouched, and, after frowning at it, he couldn’t resist long. He gulped down a quarter of the bottle and handed it back to me. I took a sip. Wonder. Fizz. Cold on my tongue. Soon the bottle was empty and Jacobs let me keep it to return to the store for the nickel. I held onto that bottle like it was a gold bar.

      ‘You got nervous around those kids,’ Frank said halfway through another field.

      I didn’t say anything.

      ‘People like to talk in this town, don’t they?’ he said.

      ‘There’s nothing else to do.’

      He let out a small laugh. ‘You’re not wrong there. But hey, those guys are gone now. Just you and me. The talk will die down eventually. I’ve heard some of it myself. Like the kind of questions Samuels was asking you.’ He paused, raised an eyebrow to see if I knew what he meant and the gossip echoed in my head, I heard John Royal killed that girl.

      I flinched and tried to smile.

      ‘Don’t you worry,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows you didn’t do anything.’

      I’d have to prove it. Rumours were as good as a signed confession in this town. I clutched the bottle. A mix of feelings inside me, like when you throw too many colours together and get muddy brown. I was full of different measures of relief and embarrassment and sadness and guilt for thinking bad of myself and Jenny for what we did and something close to admiration for this pastor, even a dash of enjoyment at being here and talking to someone who talked back to me like a grown-up and painful anger that anyone thought I could have killed Mora. All those colours churned up in my stomach and made me feel sick.

      ‘You know,’ he said after another long silence. ‘I saw a dead body once, when I was about your age. My father.’

      He waited for my reaction but I didn’t know what it should be. I barely remembered my real pa. I wished I’d seen him dead, at least then I’d know for sure where he was.

      ‘He died of liver cancer when I was twelve,’ the pastor kept going. ‘Back in Virginia, where I’m from.’

      I turned to him then. I knew where Virginia was. Miss Eaves quizzed us on all the states. I didn’t do all that well, though Jenny and Gloria aced it. Jenny would have been fifty for fifty but she mixed up the Dakotas. The pastor didn’t have the voice of Virginia. Virginia was tobacco and moonshine and you could hear both in their words. Frank spoke carefully, each syllable said as it was written down, didn’t cut off any ends or soften his Ts. I wondered if he was lying but as soon as I thought it, guilt shot through me. Frank was a man of God and the Bible and people like that don’t need to lie. I wasn’t sure, at thirteen, if I truly believed in Heaven or Hell but I believed in Pastor Jacobs. Believed his goodness and accepted his help, his attention. Bathed in it, soaked it in.

      ‘John, are you listening?’

      I nodded and he resumed. The body looked like his father but it wasn’t truly him. His soul was with God. Death is just a journey. He looked so peaceful at the end. My head filled up with pictures of Mora, forever sleeping by Big Lake. I saw the way Jenny had looked and smiled and calmed, the electricity in her bones dulling for a time, like the lights in a thunderstorm, dimming and flickering out, then flaring wild when Samuels woke us. Seeing the body brought my sister peace, like seeing his father had given the pastor peace. Hadn’t it?

      ‘Why were you in the valley?’ Frank asked and I only then realised we were almost back at the church.

      ‘It’s where our Fort is.’

      ‘Why were you there so late?’

      I shrugged. I couldn’t say it, not out loud, not to a grown-up, not yet.

      ‘Do you sleep there often?’

      ‘Sometimes.’

      ‘When things are bad at home?’

      ‘No,’ I said quickly. To a question like that, a moment of hesitation meant yes. I wouldn’t let him think badly about my family. Things weren’t roses and cream but that didn’t mean he could take guesses and think the worst.

      Jenny thought the worst, thought Momma would hurt her one day.

      I shuddered, and shook my head.

      ‘Momma sometimes gets a temper. It’s just the drink, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s always forgotten about the next day.’

      I was telling myself, and Jenny, as much as I was telling the pastor.

      Jacobs nodded, picked another length of wheat from the field. ‘Does she hurt you?’

      ‘She just shouts sometimes is all. She gets mad at Jenny if her dress is too short or if she gives back-talk or sass, but Momma just tells her off.’

      She’d never really hurt her, I knew it like I knew my name. I’d agreed with Momma a few times in the past. Jenny’s dresses and shorts were sometimes too high on her legs, especially after we’d been swimming. She had Momma’s lip that was for sure and didn’t have to be drunk to use it. Besides, Momma was being kind, tending wounds and kissing foreheads and driving us to school. Any hurt or darkness was gone for now.

      I put aside thoughts of Momma, changed the subject back to Mora, which suddenly felt more comfortable. Besides, Gloria would kill me if I didn’t find out all I could.

      ‘Do they know the girl’s name yet?’

      Jacobs narrowed his eyes at me before answering. ‘No. The sheriffs are doing all they can to find out who she is.’

      ‘I don’t think she was from Larson. We’d know her face.’

      Pastor Jacobs tilted his head to the side like he was considering what I’d just said. ‘You’re right. Cross your fingers and toes, John, we’ll catch whoever did it.’

      ‘Do they have any ideas? Could it have been someone from here?’

      ‘I’m not all that sure. But they’re working on it. We have to let the sheriffs do their job and keep out of their way.’

      I scuffed my shoes in the dirt, didn’t move when he started walking again.

      ‘What’s the hold-up?’ he asked.

      I

Скачать книгу