“I didn’t see a dead man,” said Rupert quietly. Nancy spared him a glance; Wallace and Joan ignored him, and Wallace continued:
“You could see his legs through the door. They were skinny. Like a skeleton’s. He was lying on the floor of the living room, where he died.”
“Do you think the dog killed him?”
Joan asked it softly. Wallace shrugged, and winced.
“You should get a bandage,” said Nancy. “And go see a doctor. Maybe you got rabies.”
“We can’t do that,” said Rupert, his voice louder than he intended. “Wallace lost the Webley when he got scared and dropped it without even shooting.”
“I was bit!” said Wallace, and Rupert said, “… after you dropped the gun,” and Joan said, “That’s enough,” and they all sat quiet a moment.
“We have to get the gun back,” said Rupert finally. “Wallace’ll get a beating if we don’t. So we’re resting up.”
“When are you going to go?” asked Nancy.
Rupert started to say, When Wallace is good and ready, but Wallace cut him off. “Right now,” he said. “Wanna come?”
“We’ve only got ten minutes until recess is finished,” said Joan. But she sounded uncertain.
“Someone might pick up the gun if we wait,” said Wallace. Silently, Rupert admitted that he was right.
Nancy opened up the bag she was clutching, reached in, and handed Wallace a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. She gave Rupert another one. The smell of peanut butter was thick.
“We thought you must be hungry,” explained Nancy, and Joan said, “That’s why we came.”
“We can eat on the way,” said Wallace. Taking the sandwich in his bad hand, he used his good arm to push himself up, and stumbling barely at all, he headed along the ditch, in the direction of home, of the dog’s house.
The Waite girls looked at one another; Rupert looked at both of them.
“We have to get the gun,” said Rupert.
Nancy nodded; Joan shrugged. “Might as well,” she said, and Rupert felt his heart race.
They walked in a line down the ditch: Wallace first, the Waite sisters following, first Joan and then Nancy, hanging close. At the back, Rupert. The ditch was excellent for their purpose, running deeper as it left the town, so that by the time they were past the business section and behind houses it was almost a gully. They bent low as they passed a lady hanging sheets in her back garden. But they needn’t have; she hummed around a mouthful of clothes-pegs as though she were alone in the world. When they were past, Nancy Waite giggled, and Wallace shot a glare back over his shoulder.
“Sorry, Wallace,” said Joan, drawing out his name like it was “Mother,” and laughing. Rupert laughed too, but he made a point of keeping it down.
There came a point where the walls were nearly cliffs, huge round rocks covered in slick moss; long pools of green-slicked water spread still in the shade of bent willow trees that towered at the edge, dangled roots in the air above their heads. Somewhere in the shadows, something splashed.
Had the Waite girls ever been down here? Rupert thought not; they both stayed quiet as they walked along this section. Because Rupert had been here before, he knew where they were: just a dozen yards from the main road to town, maybe a quarter mile from the concession road that would take him and Wallace home. Where the dog and its house were.
But the Waites lived in town — on Ruggles Street, in a red brick house that climbed up two storeys with awnings painted white — on the other side of town. They were going into strange territory. Rupert’s territory. Wallace’s. They didn’t become talkative until the trees spread, and they came back into the hot light of morning.
Nancy slowed, so she and Rupert walked side by side. “There’s not a dead body there, is there?” She asked the question as they climbed up a slide of sharp gravel, around a steel culvert and onto the concession road. Rupert’s breath was hot and dry in his throat; he had a hard time getting out what should have been a simple answer.
“I — I didn’t see one,” he said, then — afraid if he said no, Wallace made that up, she and Joan would just leave them and go back to school — added: “But there could have been.”
“Wallace wouldn’t lie.”
She reached the top just before him, and skipped off to join her sister, who was walking beside Wallace now. A scent, of soap and sweat and something else, lingered in his nostrils. Rupert crested the top and ran to catch up with the three of them.
“It’s not far now,” said Wallace, and that at least was true.
But they dawdled, so it took longer than it should have to reach the house where the dog lived. By the time they got to the top of the driveway, there was no getting around it: they were all four truant now.
Joan peered at the house. It was still, and very bright now that the sun was high. The front door was a rectangle of perfect black.
“It looks like nobody lives there,” she said. “It looks abandoned.”
“We should just get the gun,” said Rupert. “You remember where you dropped it?”
Wallace pointed in a general way to the left of the house. “Over there.”
“Where was the body?” asked Nancy.
“Inside.”
Rupert studied the yard. A breeze came up, carrying a sweet smell of fresh hay from somewhere beyond this place. It tickled the high grass. “I saw it fall,” said Rupert finally. He headed up the driveway a few steps and pointed to a spot. “Maybe here.”
“What about the dog?”
The question barely registered; Rupert couldn’t even say who asked it. As he moved closer to the house, it seemed as though he were moving in his own quiet world — as though he were following a thread of raw instinct, some part of his mind that didn’t think in words or even pictures, but just compelled. He almost could have closed his eyes as he stepped off the driveway into the grass, and kept on his course. Eyes open, eyes closed: the memory of the gun tumbling through the air just here, just so — landing in this place, not that or that — was just as vivid one way or the other.
Just as true — true as any other memory, like the silk touch of golden skin in the early, cool hours of a late-August Sunday…
…the hard impact of fist in gut…
…the hot memory of accusation…
…the trajectory of a gun, set loose from sweat-slicked hand — through sky —
—to dirt.
The gun lay nested in the grass at his feet. Rupert let his breath out and bent down — behind him, someone said: “You found it?” — and wrapped his fingers around the barrel. He lifted it first, like a hammer or an axe, then took the handle in his other hand — wonderingly put his finger through the trigger guard — and turned around.
The three of them stood close together — Wallace next to Joan, who held his arm. Nancy, clutching Joan’s skirt hem. The gun was heavy, and big for his hands — but finally, words returned to him, and he thought:
I could almost hit him. Miss the sisters. But hit him. Almost.
“I’ve got it,” said Rupert, and lifted the gun above his head. Wallace nodded, and held out his hand: “Give it here.”
Rupert took a breath, and looked at Wallace. “Not yet,” he said.
Wallace looked back at Rupert. “What do you mean? Come on.”
Rupert shook his head. “You said there was a body in there,” he said. “I want to see.” He beckoned with the gun and turned away from them, to face the house.
“What about the dog?” said a Waite sister — which one, Rupert could not say. He took hold of the gun by its stock, holding it in both hands and climbed the steps to the porch.