The October air is a blade in my throat, squeezing tight with the effects of lingering panic. I forgot to grab a jacket, and the front pockets of my jeans are too small to shove my hands inside. A car rolls down my street. I hunker my chin against my neck, curling to block my face as much as I can, and pretend to scan the ground. I cannot speak about the trial, and if they recognize me, they’ll ask. Or they’ll ask how I am. And I am not to make a sound.
No sounds. No sounds. No sounds.
I step farther off the road and slide between the trees, exhaling a vaporous breath once I’m no longer visible from the road. Leaves crunch underfoot. Squirrels chide at me from perches on branches like old women screeching from their front porches at young boys tearing across lawns: Stay out of my yard, Michael Walton!
“So it’s true. You got off.” A familiar voice spins me around. Timmy Roberts stands between two trees, his red hair cut in a bowl around his head, a single faded strap of his book bag slung over one shoulder. I remember the way his cat hissed at me, then screeched, clawing and spitting, tongue curled like a straw, and I catch myself smiling. She’d been thin and easier to cut through than the others.
Timmy sneers, and the pigment in his freckles becomes more pronounced. I stare back at him, unmoving. He must be skipping school, I realize. It’s Wednesday and barely midmorning.
“What? Cat got your tongue? I heard you have a thing for tongues.” He sticks his out and wags it. “You think you’re too good now, is that it?” He advances, shoulders leaned toward me, his hands balled to fists. “You’re still Tarson trash. Nobody’s scared of you, whether you did it or not.”
He scoops up a rock and hurls it at me. I twist at the hip, and it glances off my stomach.
“Say something, you piece of trash. Or did your momma sew your mouth shut? I bet she whipped you good when you got home. I bet you ain’t got no skin left on your ass. She should’ve done us all a favor and buried you alongside your daddy.” His face is red now, his dark eyes squinting. “You a ghost now? Is that it? Somebody killed you and your ghost is haunting these woods? You’re just standing there like a damn ghost! Could I run right through you, you son of a bitch? Could I?” He screams the question, his voice echoing in the expanse of the still, foggy woods. He slings his book bag to the ground, and he charges me.
Maybe he doesn’t see my father’s walking stick.
Maybe he doesn’t think I’ll use it.
Maybe he doesn’t think I did any of it, after all.
I sweep the stick behind my head, the way my mother has a hundred times, remembering the one September my father helped me learn how to swing a bat for the boys’ church baseball team.
It’s in the wrists, Michael. Step your weight forward, back to front, through the hip. Don’t lift the elbow high; keep it low. A level swing makes the bat sing. Drive the elbow, then come the wrists, fast and smooth.
Timmy’s face splits like a dropped melon. He falls backward, his body a cut tree, and he crashes to the mat of rotting leaves. He slaps his hands at his liquid features. His front teeth are gone. He’s sputtering, sounds choking through the fluid at random. I pull off his shoes and socks. He kicks at me, unseeing, his eyes filled with blood and tears. I cover my hands with his socks and wipe his mouth out, clearing the chamber for want of cleaner sound. He screams, and the note is shocking, sharp, and true. A black key pressed down, a foot on the pedal, holding the note. I rock back on my feet, goose bumps rising on my arms, pure vibrations shimmering through every bone in my body.
Timmy stops thrashing, the initial daze and shock appearing to wane, and struggles to sit up. So I coil the stick behind my head and bring it down again.
* * *
Timmy has a hundred-dollar bill folded into a square in the toe of one shoe. If I’m Tarson trash, so is he, and I’d bet my life he stole the money. It’s been at least a year since I set foot in his house, but I can’t imagine it’s changed much since then. His daddy is alive but gone, and his mom is here but passes each day on the couch in the smoke-filled front room of their house, a bottle of whisky always within reach. His mom got sick about the same time mine did. Sick looks different on everybody.
I pick up his ankles and drag him backward. He is shorter than me but heavier, and within a minute I am sweating despite the cool air. His hands trail behind his head. His fingers are pudgy and soft, and I imagine he would have a better feel for piano keys than I do.
I stop and kneel to examine the fat pads on each fingertips and compare them to mine, which are narrow, the bone just beneath the surface. Is this all I lack—a quarter-inch layer of flesh?
I drop his hand and stand to search the surroundings. No one comes out here anymore, but once Timmy doesn’t come home, it’ll be only a day or two before someone suggests searching Tarson Woods. But no one knows these woods like I do.
A stone’s throw from here, Cold River cuts through Tarson Woods and bends in a teardrop shape. An old tree uprooted last fall and fell across the water. It’s tempted plenty of kids across, and some come to school wet and sandy after an attempt. One boy was swept nearly a mile downstream when he plunged into the frothy current, swollen with a week’s worth of rain. But we haven’t had a drop in weeks. Rocks will be exposed, water slow and thin. It would be the perfect place for a boy skipping school to take off his shoes and book bag and try to walk across, arms out to the side, toes gripping the slick, bright moss, chin held up so he couldn’t become fixated on how high he was, what might happen should he lose his balance.
MICHAEL Chapter 19 | October 11, 1989 | Tarson, Georgia
TWO HOURS LATER, I STAND at the counter of the secondhand shop, Timmy’s hundred-dollar bill in one hand, my other hand resting on an electric keyboard.
“Sixteen dollars, even,” the cashier says.
I hand him the hundred.
“Do you have anything smaller? I don’t have enough change to break this.”
I want to tell him it’s all I have, aside from the three singles in my jeans pocket, but I can’t speak. Not yet. The instrument doesn’t belong to me.
I stare beyond the man, blinking away a surge of heat. The man blurs, the background becoming clear. On the shelves behind the counter stands a line of wooden carvings of miniature pianos, most of them uprights, with one baby grand, scale perfect, sitting dead center.
“Is there anything else you might want?”
I point to the baby grand carving.
“Oh, that’s more than…” He pauses, regarding my face. “That would make up the difference.” He takes Tommy’s hundred-dollar bill, then plucks the piano from the counter and hands it to me. It’s surprisingly light, not laden with legacy and expectation and failure.
“Do you have a hobby? Baseball or hunting?”
I shake my head.
“I could teach you how to carve. If you want. You could carve a little design into your stick. Your initials or something. Make it harder for somebody else to claim as their own. Not when it’s wet, mind you. You’ll want to let it dry all the way out first.”
As he wraps the piano in paper, I examine the stick, making sure the side with the darker streaks faces me. Cold River couldn’t draw all of Timmy out of the wood, but the red has faded to brown and could be mistaken for a natural effect.