Joey cannot speak.
"It's so easy to destroy them, me. But it's even easier to do the right thing, Joey, even easier just to believe."
Pressure. Crushing pressure. Joey might as well be in a deep-sea submersible instead of a car, at the bottom of a trench four miles under the ocean. Thousands upon thousands of pounds of pressure per square inch. Testing the integrity of the car. Bearing down on him until he feels as though he will implode.
At last, when he finds his voice, it sounds younger than his years and dismayingly equivocaclass="underline" "I don't know, P.J. I don't know."
"You hold my life in your hands, Joey."
"I'm all mixed up."
"Mom and Dad. In your hands."
"But she's dead, P.J. A girl is dead."
"That's right. Dead. And we're alive."
"But… what will you do with the body?"
When he hears himself ask that question, Joey knows that P.J. has won. He feels suddenly weak, as if he is a small child again, and he is ashamed of his weakness. Bitter remorse floods him, as corrosively painful as an acid, and he can deal with the agony only by shutting down a part of his mind, switching off his emotions. A grayness, like a fall of ashes from a great fire, sifts down through his soul.
P.J. says, "Easy. I could dump the body somewhere it'll never be found."
"You can't do that to her family. They can't spend the rest of their lives
wondering what happened to her. They won't ever have any hope of peace if they think she's… somewhere in pain, lost."
"You're right. Okay. I'm not myself. Obviously, I should leave her where she can be found."
The internal grayness — sifting, sifting — gradually anesthetizes Joey. Minute by minute he feels less, thinks less. This strange detachment is vaguely disturbing on one level, but it is also a great blessing, and he embraces it.
Aware of a new flatness in his voice, Joey says, "But then the cops might find your fingerprints on the tarp. Or find something else, like some of your hair. Lots of ways they might connect you to her."
"Don't worry about fingerprints. There aren't any to find. I've been careful. There's no other evidence either, none, no connections except…"
Joey waits with bleak resignation for his brother — his only and much loved brother — to finish that thought, because he senses that it will be the worst thing with which he has to deal, the hardest thing he will have to accept, other than the discovery of the brutalized body itself.
"… except I knew her," says P.J.
"You knew her?"
"I dated her."
"When?" Joey asks numbly, but he is almost beyond caring. Soon the deepening grayness in him will soften all the sharp edges of his curiosity and his conscience.
"My senior year in high school."
"What's her name?"
"A girl from Coal Valley. You didn't know her."
The rain seems as if it might never end, and Joey has no doubt that the night will go on forever.
P.J. says, "I only dated her twice. We didn't hit it off. But you can see, Joey, how this will look to the cops. I take her body to the sheriff, they find out I knew her… they'll use that against me. It'll be that much harder to prove I'm innocent, that much worse for Mom and Dad and all of us. I'm between a rock and hard place, Joey."
"Yes."
"You see what I mean."
"Yes."
"You see how it is."
"Yes."
"I love you, little brother."
"I know."
"I was sure you'd be there for me when it counted."
"All right."
Deep grayness.
Soothing grayness.
"You and me, kid. Nothing in the world is stronger than you and me if we stick together. We have this bond, brothers, and it's stronger than steel. You know? Stronger than anything. It's the most important thing in the world to me — what we have together, how we've always hung in there, brothers."
They sit in silence for a while.
Beyond the streaming windows of the car, the mountain darkness is deeper than it has ever been before, as if the highest ridges have tilted toward one another, fusing together, blocking out the narrow band of sky and any hope of stars, as if he and P.J. and Mom and Dad now exist in a stone vault without doors or windows.
"You've got to be getting back to college soon," P.J. says. "You've got a long drive tonight."
"Yeah."
"I've got a long one too."
Joey nods.
"You'll have to come visit me in New York."
Joey nods.
"The Big Apple," P.J. says.
"Yeah."
"We'll have some fun."
"Yeah."
"Here, I want you to have this," P.J. says, taking Joey's hand, trying to push something into it.
"What?"
"A little extra spending money."
"I don't want it," Joey says, trying to pull away.
P.J. grips his hand tightly, forcing a wad of bills between his reluctant fingers. "No, I want you to have it. I know how it is in college, you can always use a little extra."
Joey finally wrenches away without accepting the bills.
P.J. is relentless. He tries to shove the money into Joey's coat pocket. "Come on, kid, it's only thirty bucks, it's not a fortune, it's nothing. Humor me, let me play the big shot. I never get to do anything for you, it'll make me feel good."
Resistance is so difficult and seems so pointless — only thirty dollars, an insignificant sum that Joey finally lets his brother put the money in his pocket. He is worn out. He hasn't the energy to resist.
P.J. pats him on the shoulder affectionately. "Better go inside, get you packed up and off to school."