“All right, Bo,” she said quietly, keeping her head perfectly still. “Talk to me.”
“This is all completely crazy,” Bo said, keeping his hand on her neck, hold her head still. “Nobody will believe any of this, and there isn’t enough money. Houses and things cost a lot more in California than they cost here. The money would be gone in no time, it just isn’t all that much.”
“I figured it all out, Bo,” she said. “Don’t you worry, it’ll be wonderful.”
“No, you can’t figure it out,” Bo replied. “It can’t be figured out. I can’t disappear on the same night that your whole family does. They’ll come looking for us, and they’ll find us, and they’ll bring us back.”
They were both quiet for several minutes now. Then Kathleen tried to move her head, but Bo tightened his grip a little and held her still.
“Bo,” she said, “we have to go away tonight. We have to do it just like I figured it out. If we don’t, they’ll put you in the electric chair.”
“What?” he said. “No, that’s not what will happen. They’ll send you away for a few years; you’re only thirteen, they won’t put you in the electric chair.”
“Not me, Bo,” she said. “You.”
Even before she spoke, Bo thought he knew what was coming.
“I never touched the shotgun,” she said. “I wore a pair of Mama’s gloves. But you touched the shotgun. You picked it up and you pumped it. They’ll find your fingerprints all over it, not mine.”
Bo made a small whimpering noise.
“I’ll tell them you did it, Bo,” she said, and her voice took on an edge he had never heard. “You better take me to California, or I’ll tell them you did it, and they’ll believe me; I’ll make them believe me, you know I can do it.”
Bo felt a great sadness. He knew she could do it, this little slip of a girl, she’d tell them every sort of lie, and they’d believe her. She’d sit in a courtroom and deny she’d ever called him and asked him to come out there. She’d say he’d made her do the things they’d done in the patrol car. She’d say it, and they’d believe her.
“You know what I could tell them, Bo.” Kathleen said.
He knew. She had always known what he was thinking. Bo knew everything in another moment. He knew the fix he was in and what he had to do to get out of it. After all, she had laid the whole thing out for him. Not the money, of course, he couldn’t do anything about the money. But the rest of it made perfect sense.
“Bo?” she said. It was her last word.
He tightened his grip, put his other hand on the back of her neck to help. He took a deep breath and did it. It didn’t take long, only an instant. She didn’t feel much, no more than a chicken felt when you wrung its neck. The crunching noise transmitted itself up his wrists and reached him through the air, and she was limp, gone. He sat there and stroked her hair for a few minutes, running through it all in his mind. Then he got up and did the things that Kathleen had told him to do.
A little under an hour later, he stopped the car near the top of the hill, got out, and waited. He had timed it nicely. There was a “whump”! not much of a noise really, and a flash, and the fog moved on the water as it ran through the gap in the roadbed. Soon, the gap widened, and a rushing noise reached him. After a few minutes, the rooftops had vanished. Donal O’Coineen and his family were under the lake.
38
For a long moment, it was quiet enough to hear the crickets. Then Howell spoke.
“All of them, Bo?” he asked. He took a deep breath and asked the question he had been waiting all night to ask. “What about the baby?”
Bo winced as though he had been struck.
Scotty came to life. “What baby?”
“Kathleen O’Coineen was pregnant,” Howell said. “That’s why Donal pulled her out of school.”
“How the hell did you figure that out?” she asked, dumbfounded.
“Lorna Kelly told me; she and Mary O’Coineen were sisters, remember. Kathleen had her baby a couple of weeks before the family disappeared. What happened to the baby, Bo?”
Bo made a vague gesture. “I didn’t know about the baby,” he said, heavily. “Honest to God I didn’t, not until after Kathleen was dead.”
“Tell us about the baby, Bo,” Howell urged. “It can’t hurt to tell us, now.”
Bo looked defeated. “I’d finished at the well and set the charge at the road, but I damn near forgot to get the transfer deed. I went back into the house for it, and the baby started to cry. I went upstairs. It was in a crib in the room that Joyce and Kathleen shared. It was crying, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“What did you do, Bo?”
“At first, I was going to throw it down the well,” Bo said, “but I couldn’t. It was a baby, and it was mine; I knew it was mine.”
“For Christ’s sake, Bo,” Scotty nearly shouted. “What did you do with it?”
“I thought about leaving in on somebody’s doorstep, but that would have only caused a lot of talk, made the newspapers and all. Then I remembered; when I came back from Korea, I flew from San Francisco to Atlanta and took a cab to the bus station. On the way, we passed the Georgia Baptist Children’s Home in Hapeville, out by the airport. It was the only orphanage in the state that I knew about. I called Eric and told him that everything was okay, but that I was tired and wanted to go home, that I’d bring his car and the deed to him in the morning. Then I put the baby in a box, and I drove it to Atlanta in Eric Sutherland’s car. It was the middle of the night, and there was no traffic. I gave the baby a bottle I found in the kitchen, and it was real good all the way to Atlanta; it didn’t cry or anything, it just slept. I guess I got there about four in the morning, before daylight, anyway. I left the box on the steps of what looked like the kitchen door and rang the bell. Then I got the hell out of there. I was back in Sutherland before Eric got up.”
Scotty, wide-eyed, was the first to speak. “What kind of box did you put the baby in?” she asked Bo.
Bo turned to her. “I didn’t even know whether it was a boy or a girl, until…”
“What kind of box was it, Bo?” Scotty demanded.
Bo hung his head. “It was a dynamite box,” he said, his face contorted with guilt. “I’m awful sorry, Scotty, I just didn’t know.”
The three of them stood in the room, silent, Howell looking back and forth from Scotty to Bo, baffled. “Hang on just a minute,” he said, finally. “What’s all this about a box?”
Scotty was staring incredulously at Bo, apparently unable to speak. She began speaking, never taking her eyes from Bo. “I’m adopted,” she said. “My parents got me from the Georgia Baptist Children’s Home, in Hapeville, in September of 1952. I had been left on the doorstep there in a dynamite box. My father used to tell the story all the time. ”Dynamite comes in small packages,“ he used to say.” She continued to stare at Bo as if she were seeing some fascinating creature for the first time. Tears began to spill from her eyes.
“Holy shit,” Howell said, looking worriedly at Scotty. She was flushed and was breathing rapidly.
“This can’t be happening,” Scotty said, still staring at Bo. “I’ve lived all my life wondering who the hell I was, and now I find out.” She suppressed a sob, then went on. “Let’s see, my paternal grandfather was Eric Sutherland, right?” She went on without waiting for confirmation. “My maternal grandfather was Donal O’Coineen. My mother is Kathleen O’Coineen, who, it turns out, was a mass murderer and who still comes to visit from time to time.”
“Huh,” Bo said.
“And you”… she pointed a finger of her unhandcuffed hand at Bo… “you are my father? Christ, I’ve been trying to put you in jail for three months!” She sat back in her chair and shook her head violently. “I know this is a weird time to think of this, but whatever happened to my journalistic objectivity and detachment? I’m up to my ass, I’m trapped in my own story! What editor would ever believe this? What reader would believe it?” She began sobbing. “I don’t believe it!”