We had a student assembly at the end of school that day, and Mr. Avery spoke about what had happened to Kelli, how terrible it was, what a “promising future” she’d had, and even about how dangerous it was for young girls to be in the woods alone.
When it was over I walked out of the auditorium with the other students, but before I made it down the stairs I heard Miss Carver calling me.
She was standing at the side door of the school, watching me stonily, as if she’d determined to go through with something she’d been considering for several days.
“I’d like to talk to you for a minute or two, Ben,” she said.
I stepped over to her. “Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“In my classroom,” Miss Carver told me. Then she turned briskly and led me up the stairs.
It was late in the afternoon by then, and the heavy shadows of the empty desks and chairs spread like dark stains across the old wooden floor.
I walked to the front window and stared out. Far below me, I could see Todd Jeffries slumped against his car. He was shaking slightly, jerking his head left and right. Mary Diehl was at his side, as she had been continually for the last few days, valiantly trying to calm him down.
I heard the classroom door close softly behind me, then turned to see Miss Carver standing in front of it, as if determined to prevent me from suddenly bolting from the room. She was dressed in somber colors, her hair pulled back and pinned in a tight bun, and for the first time she looked like the lonely matron she was destined to become.
She said, “I guess you know that that man, Lyle Gates, has been arrested.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I understand from Sheriff Stone that he has denied everything.” I nodded.
“He says he heard someone moaning in the woods, went to see about it and found Kelli.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Miss Carver stared at me grimly, and I could tell that she was stalling, unsure not so much as to what she wanted to say, but how best to say it. “I think Sheriff Stone has a few doubts,” she said. “About whether Mr. Gates is really the one who did it, I mean.”
I remained silent, and for a moment Miss Carver let me dwell in that silence. “He can’t find much of a motive, except that incident at Cuffy’s. But that was over, wasn’t it, Ben?”
“I thought it was,” I told her.
“But what could have made it flare up again?” Miss Carver asked emphatically. “What could have made him go after Kelli again after all that time?”
I felt my fingers tighten, as if around the gray rope Kelli had handed to me that last time. “I don’t know,” I said.
Miss Carver seemed hardly to have heard my answer. “Sheriff Stone thinks Kelli was going to meet someone else that day. Someone who drove a car up that mining road at the bottom of Breakheart Hill.”
I remained silent.
“Someone she knew,” Miss Carver added pointedly, “someone who had more of a reason to hurt her than Lyle Gates did.” Her eyes darted toward the window, as if to prevent me from seeing the grim suspicion she could not keep out of them. “If you knew anything about what happened to Kelli, you’d tell the sheriff, wouldn’t you, Ben?”
In my mind, I saw Kelli turn toward me, her back to the dark green curtain, her eyes peering out over my shoulder, focused on someone else, with myself invisible to her. Then, in an instant, she was gone, and it was Eddie Smathers staring at me, his face floating bodilessly, like a pale leaf in a pool of black water, his eyes wide in amazement, his voice carrying the same astonishment. Did she tell you that, Ben?
“Wouldn’t you, Ben?” Miss Carver repeated, this time more insistently, with a hint of the suspicion that never left her in all the years to come. “If you knew anything about who might have done it, or why, you’d tell Sheriff Stone, wouldn’t you?”
I couldn’t answer, and so I simply stood motionlessly before her, my mind frantically searching for some way out. I could feel the rope in my hand again, the one Kelli had thrust toward me, Here, hold this, and I know that some part of me desperately wanted to tell Miss Carver everything in a single, anguished flood of confession.
But I couldn’t do it.
“You would tell Sheriff Stone everything, wouldn’t you, Ben?” Miss Carver repeated.
I knew that I had to answer her, that I would not be able to get out of that room until I did. “Yes, ma’am, I would,” I said.
She did not believe me, and she made no effort to conceal that fact. Her eyes bored into me, and I saw the left corner of her mouth jerk down slightly in a look of absolute repudiation and contempt. “Mr. Gates says that he recognized Kelli, and since he’d had that run-in with you and her at Cuffy’s, he was afraid of being blamed.”
I said nothing.
“And so he just left her there,” Miss Carver added. She waited for me to answer her in some way, and when I didn’t she said, “Fine, then.” She said it stiffly, then added in a voice that carried the arctic formality with which she was to treat me forever after this moment, “You may go.”
I walked out of the room, down the stairs and out of the building. In the parking lot, I could see Todd still slumped against his car, with Mary next to him, her face pressed worriedly against his arm. She was staring down at the ground, but Todd faced northward, his eyes lifted toward the mountain, trained with a terrible precision, as I realized, on the upper slope of Breakheart Hill. I had never seen a more tormented face. Nor have I ever since that time.
After a while, Mary urged him into the passenger seat of his car, then got behind the wheel herself and pulled away. She did not wave at me as she drifted past, the car moving at a slow, funereal pace.
Normally I would have gone home, but the thought of sitting in the living room, watching my father shake his head in bafflement at the cruelty of man, was more than I could bear. And so I remained pressed against my car, watching the air grow steadily darker.
Night had fallen before I finally returned home. The lights were on in the living room, and as I pulled into the driveway, I could see my father under the lamp, sleeping in his chair, the newspaper spread over his lap. He had never looked more innocent, nor had innocence ever looked more threatening.
I got out of the car and walked to the front door, but I didn’t open it. Instead, I turned away, headed out into the yard and stood alone in the darkness.
I remained there a long time before I saw a car cruise up the street, then turn into the driveway, the beams of its headlights briefly sweeping over me before they blinked off.
It was Noreen who got out of the car. She came toward me slowly, her red dress like a stain upon the darkness.
“I called you before,” she said when she reached me. “Your father said you hadn’t come home yet.”
“I stayed at school awhile.”
She drew closer to me, her eyes watching me with an odd concentration. “I needed to talk to you,” she said, her voice thin, intense, full of the same urgency I could see in her eyes. She hesitated, as if unsure as to how she should begin, then said, “She called me, Ben.”
“Who did?”
“Kelli.”
I felt as if my skin had suddenly been pricked by a million tiny needles.
“The day it happened,” Noreen added. “She called me that day.”
“What did she want?”
She seemed reluctant to answer. “You, Ben,” she said finally. “She was looking for you.”
I felt my breath catch in my throat.
“She didn’t say why she was looking for you,” Noreen added quickly.
A wave of relief swept over me. “Well, maybe she just wanted me to give her a ride up to Breakheart Hill,” I said weakly. “She was always calling me for a ride.”