I rode so slowly on the shoulder of the road that I could barely stay up, zigzagging my front wheel to keep my balance. Every few minutes a tractor trailer or molten-aluminum truck from the Kaiser plant would blow by and I would nearly lose my balance, but I kept at it, watching Eli on the tracks, across twenty feet of weeds and scrub grass. He never looked up. He arrived at school at a quarter after seven, a full hour before the bell would ring. I padlocked my bike and followed a safe distance behind, unaware that the school even opened this early. He walked past the janitors, who smoked cigarettes and carried rolls of toilet paper into the bathrooms. I followed him past the office, where the principal, Joe Boner, leaned against the secretary's desk, pleading with her about something. Past the glass trophy case with its pictures of former students who'd died in Vietnam and the award named for Woodbridge's brother. Finally, he turned into the gymnasium. I was stunned. Of all the places for Eli to kill an hour before school, I would never have guessed the gym, a veritable torture chamber for a kid like Boyle.
I caught up and peeked in the gym, but he was gone. There was an entrance to the boys' locker room at the end of the gym, but no way he'd have made it there before I got to the door. He'd simply disappeared. I wondered for a second if I'd made the whole thing up. Imagine. Eli Boyle walking two miles to school. Two miles back. With his gnarled legs and crooked feet? Imagine the fear he had of the bus stop, of the bullies of Empire. Imagine him going into the gym, of all places.
Then, in the gaps between the bleachers, I caught a glimpse of greasy hair, of overalls and flannel. I crept up behind the wood bleachers, which were pulled out so that only the bottom two rows were accessible. But it was enough that someone could slide underneath, and that's where Eli sat, on the floor beneath the bleachers, amid the gum and candy wrappers and smashed popcorn, slats of light coming in between the bleacher seats. He sat with his notebook open, writing something, or drawing, possibly the tanks and airplanes that he was always sketching.
His back was to me, and if he knew someone was watching he gave no indication, just sat curled up on himself, as if he could pull in more, disappear from the world. I opened my mouth to say something – I'm sorry – but nothing came out. I backed out of the gym and made my way down the hall. I peeked in the office, but the principal was now gone and the secretary was staring out the door, her head tilted, mouth wide open, like she wasn't seeing whatever was in front of her eyes, like she was imagining something entirely different.
My movement into her field of vision snapped her out of it, and she wiped at her eyes. "What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I go to school here," I said.
She straightened some things on her desk and swallowed. "I know. I mean… it's very early."
I opened my mouth to say something, but the principal's door opened and Mr. Bender popped his head out.
"Look, Peg, I'm sorry if I led you to believe that this was anything other than two people-"
She cleared her throat and nodded toward me, and Mr. Bender followed her gaze to me, standing flat-footed in the doorway.
"Oh, hello, Mason. What are you doing here?"
"I go to school here," I answered again.
"Right," he said.
He came out, his eyebrow up, like he was figuring a problem. "Okay then, well. I was just having a discussion with Mrs. Federick. And… if I led you to believe, Mrs. Federick, that" – and now he looked from me to her and back again – "that… uh, that the other bus driver I was telling you about would approve of me… you know, riding your bus… well, obviously, I've got a lot of time invested with that bus driver. As you do with your… bus driver. One ride on another bus doesn't…"
He seemed confused by his own words and he turned and went back into his office. Mrs. Federick stared at his door and I slipped away.
That day we cleaned out our desks and went outside for a huge game of tug-of-war with the other fifth-grade class. In a rare moment of kindness, Mrs. Chalmers-Wright-McKinley allowed Eli to skip the game, but his parole was cut short when she forced him to stand in the middle and be the judge of which team won. A ribbon was tied in the center of the rope and two lines were painted on the grass, about fifteen feet apart. We had to pull the ribbon over the line closest to us and Mr. Gibbons's class had to pull the ribbon over the line closest to them. In the middle stood Eli, staring at the ground.
"Go!" Mr. Gibbons said, and we pulled with everything we had, boys and girls alike. The rope snapped tight and then began moving toward their side, and something about the screams and the strain on that rope transformed Eli. He skipped to his right, holding up his right hand to indicate that Mr. Gibbons's class was winning. Fletcher and I were in the front; we led a charge back the other way and Eli sidestepped toward us, raising his left hand. Now the ribbon changed direction again and Eli, caught off guard, lost his balance but then regained it and began sliding away from us again. Staring at that ribbon, his eyes seemed engaged for the first time I could remember, and he smiled and made a funny noise that I realized was a kind of rusty laughter. I had to block Eli out to help my side stop the erosion, and the ribbon settled in the middle, and when I looked up, Eli had his arms straight out, indicating we were back at equilibrium. Behind me I felt something give, and then Fletcher lost his balance and kicked my legs out from under me, and the rope was pulled quickly the other way and from my back – as I was dragged across the grass – I saw Eli sliding sideways quickly, his right arm straight in the air, his glasses having fallen to the end of his nose, so intent was he on calling the progress of this match. The ribbon crossed their line, and he threw both his hands in the air to indicate that the match was over. Then he bent his knees and pointed both hands at Mr. Gibbons's class. They had won. He stood there for the longest time, both his hands pointed to his right, panting, a half-smile on his face. Then he straightened up, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and looked from one side to the other, shyly, as if asking, Did you see what I just did?
Everyone let go of the rope, the teachers blew their whistles, and we were escorted back to our classrooms to wait for the bus to take us home for the summer. No one said a thing to Eli; he simply curled up on himself again, slinking away before the moment could be taken from him.
7
I've been thinking about the purpose of a statement such as this. It is intended as a confession, obviously, something of a legal document (even scrawled on yellow pad, like some manic trial note). And yet this statement also has more than a whiff of memoir, of the commission of my death to paper. After all, who writes a memoir but the man whose life is over? The memoirist believes that he will live on in transcription, but in fact he is describing a life rather than living one, abandoning the visceral for the verbal. It is a kind of surrender.
I am finished. All the pretty detectives in the world can't change that. There is only one ending to a story like mine. And before I get on with that long and unforgettable summer of 1975, before I finish telling how Eli saved my life, and how I conspired to commit a murder twenty-five years later, I will reveal that ending – not just the ending of my own story, but the ending of all stories. It is this:
I died alone.
Now perhaps I should have confined myself to a strict legal document, wherefore and in furtherance and the like. But such a document could never begin to convey the depths of my misdeeds, nor of my contrition; there are facts here that simply do not adhere to the rigid structure of the Revised Legal Codes of Washington State.
Take the summer, for instance. What statute covers the feel of the sun that summer, its immediacy and grace, its heat on my browned forearms, on the tanned skin of my neck and shoulders? How can a lawyer explain the rush of pavement beneath my bicycle tires or the defiance of gravity committed by my tennis shoes? Perhaps you remember the length of your own July days, the endless possibilities that existed from the seat of a Schwinn, the swagger of boys moving down a suburban street with the streetlights beginning to hum and spark, the fearless poise of it all. The longing.