I nodded. “Yes, I believe there is a higher purpose, a higher power.”
“I do, too. I knew there would be a day when I would be asked to answer for my sins,” she said. She leaned back and closed her eyes. “I’ll tell you a story, dear. I’m not proud of it, but I think it’s getting on late for this old bird. Sunset is a-coming and dirty deeds best be aired before night comes.”
Her eyes opened. “That’s something my grandfather used to say. He was a fearful, superstitious old codger.”
She grasped at the quilt with gnarled pale fingers that looked like claws. “Would you like to hear a story, Detective? It’s a story about a secret that’s been kept for thirty years.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
It took an hour for Mrs. Kirshbaum to tell her story, and by the end I was an emotional wasteland. She paused early on, listening to the heavy steps of Canyon as he made his way up the stairs and down the hall and into her room. He set the tray down and gave us each a glass of iced tea. Then he sat in the corner, watching his mother, and at some point he joined in the story, adding details that only he would have known. In a way it was that much worse, hearing the two of them tell their sad tale, a nice enough mother and an accomplished son so intrinsically linked to Cedar Valley’s most notorious mystery.
The tale itself was straightforward enough.
But Sylvia Kirshbaum wasn’t just telling me a story; she was reliving the past, one excruciating memory at a time. And in my mind, I could see her: prim and proper, with her hair done up, and her dress hemmed to hit just about midpoint on her knees, and her pumps, sensible one-inch heels. This was 1985, after all.
Canyon was inconsolable that afternoon.
It was early July, one of those perfect, warm days that occur a handful of times between late spring and early fall, when the air is hot and the sky is blue and the world seems bursting with life and color.
Canyon was a delicate child, not yet showing the body type he inherited from his late grandmother, she of the narrow shoulders and the wide buttocks. Seven years old, skinny as a twig, with a nose that ran constantly from allergies and wet eyes that were red-rimmed and sensitive to bright lights.
“But why?” he asked and it sounded like “bud way.”
Sylvia Kirshbaum wiped her son’s nose again-the rate this child went through hankies!-and gripped his fingers around the cup of tea. His were pale, thin fingers that were longer than they should have been for his age and size, like a piano player’s fingers or a surgeon’s.
“Because, my dear heart, you’ll catch your death. Now, you must rest here while Mama goes to work, and when I get back, we’ll make a surprise for Daddy. How does that sound?” she asked.
If she was late again, Mr. McGuckin would call her into his office and make her sit there on the black leather sofa and he would stare at her over those horn-rimmed eyeglasses and scold her. Scold her, a grown woman, for punching in her time card one minute past her expected return from lunch.
There were no words. Canyon simply wailed as she checked her handbag, fished out her heavy brass key ring with the funny owl tchotchke, and locked the door behind her.
For one hour, he was safe and sound, inside the house.
Every minute of that hour represented an opportunity for something, anything, to occur to prevent him from going outside and setting into motion the terrible events of that summer.
But the clock went tick and tock and Canyon occupied himself, with no idea that Fate waited patiently just outside.
The familiar squeal of the postman’s truck brought Canyon to the door and gingerly down the front steps. He snatched the new issue of Boy’s Life from the tin box, leaving the Sears catalog and two slender envelopes behind. Back inside, in the kitchen, he poured a big glass of milk from the bottle in the icebox, and then checked the pantry again, in case his mother had managed to hide a box of cookies. But she hadn’t, so he contented himself with the glass of milk and a slice of cold pie. It was cherry, though, and slimy as snot, and he dumped half of it into the sink.
He whispered shitpie as he watched it slide down into the drain and then giggled and said it again.
Shitpie!
In the living room, Canyon lay on the floor on his stomach, his body carefully angled to catch a single ray of sunlight. He read the magazine, wiping his nose every few minutes on the back of his hand. He sneezed and pretended not to see the wet spots that appeared on the page in front of him. Instead he focused on the newest clue in the Mars Attacks! Mystery. With his tongue between the gap in his front teeth, he carefully penciled in the code and added it to the notebook he kept in his back pocket.
Movement outside the living-room window caught his eye. He peeked out and saw something very interesting. The Kirshbaums lived at the end of a cul-de-sac, just beyond which was a big meadow filled with pines and aspens and a trail that led down the creek and deep into the wooded open space. Making their way down the trail were two blond, older boys. Canyon recognized them from the middle school that adjoined his elementary school.
It was 2:15 p.m.
Moving fast, he pulled off his pajamas and left them in a heap on his bedroom floor, and yanked on a pair of cotton shorts and a dirty old shirt his mother kept trying to toss. By the time he got outside, the boys were almost to the end of the trail. By the time he caught up to them, he was out of breath and snot caked his upper lip. The boys turned as they heard him approach.
“Hey, guys, whatcha doing?” Canyon asked.
It took a minute for them to understand what he had said, and he blushed at the congestion and stutter that turned his words into indecipherable mush.
“He’s showing me a secret,” the younger of the two boys said, pointing to the older, taller boy.
“A secret, huh?” Canyon said. “Can I come?”
They looked skeptical. “I don’t know. You’re just a baby. A sick baby.”
“Please? I’m not a baby.”
One of them asked, “How old are you?”
“Nine,” Canyon lied. The older boy scoffed. “Okay, eight but almost nine. I’m just small for my age. Jeez.”
The two boys went off to the side of the trail and conferred in whispers. After what seemed an eternity, the older one beckoned to Canyon with his finger.
“You can come but you got to keep your mouth shut, okay? This is my secret lair and I don’t want a bunch of babies finding out about it.”
They went off the trail and walked along the creek for a ways until they came to a little hill. Just beyond the crest of the hill was a bramble of bushes, thick with berries and thorns. Canyon had never ventured this far in the woods and the bramble looked menacing and dangerous, like something out of the fairy-tale books his mother read to him.
The younger boy noticed Canyon’s pause. “C’mon, he’s not going to wait for us.”
In fact, ahead of them, the older boy had disappeared. Laughing, the younger one hurried to catch up to him. Canyon wiped his nose on his shirt. The bush swallowed up the older kids, and the sound of laughter sounded far away.
And then all of a sudden it was quiet, and Canyon stood in the sunlight, alone.
He wiped his nose again and took a deep breath and pushed into the thicket. The leaves and branches weren’t too thorny, after all, and he caught sight of the boys squatting in a small meadow, passing something between them. It was small, about the size of a cigarette, but it smelled different, sweeter.
“What’s that?” Canyon asked.
The blond boys looked at each other knowingly.
The younger one said, “Weed. Want some?”
Canyon shook his head.
“Come on, Canyon. Live a little,” the older boy said. He put the funny-looking cigarette to his mouth and inhaled, holding the smoke in as long as he could and then exhaling it in one big breath. He started coughing and hacking, his face turning beet red. The younger boy laughed but Canyon didn’t dare. He’d seen that big kid wallop too many boys at school.