Crooked (24 page)

Liz peered across the yard. “An old one?”

“Yeah.”

“Not Hurricane or Ruby?”

After a second's hesitation, Amos decided to lie. “No.”

Liz seemed relieved to hear this. “Need any help?”

“No.”

When he was done burying the bird, Amos sat on his box inside the coop, holding Hurricane in the palm of his hand, settling the bird, stroking his broad head, saying, “It's okay. It's going to be okay.” Finally the bird grew still and Amos stopped talking. But he didn't leave. He stayed there so long that another of the pigeons flew down with a quick shuffle of wings and landed on his shoulder, and then another followed, so that at last there Amos was, a boy with one pigeon in his hands and two more roosting on his shoulders while he sat, not moving, not talking, just wondering what in the world to do next.

39

TWO CONVERSATIONS

When Clara called Amos Thursday night, Liz said he was out in the pigeon coop. It seemed to take so long for him to come to the phone that Clara wondered if he was coming reluctantly or maybe didn't want to come at all, so that she was all the gladder when she finally heard his voice.

“Hi,” he said.

And just like that, Clara knew something was wrong, and asked what.

“Nothing.”

Clara took a deep breath. “Look, Amos, I know last night I was kind of creepy, but it was because I was mad, but now I'm not, not at all.” She paused. “I played hooky today. I didn't know what I was going to do when I started out playing hooky this morning.” She waited, and then she just went ahead and said it. “But it turned out that I spent most of the day thinking about you.”

Amos didn't say anything.

“I guess you haven't been thinking about me, huh?” Clara said.

“No, it's not that.” He waited. So did Clara. Then he said, “I doubt you'd remember, but there was a pigeon I really liked, a red one.”

“Ruby,” Clara said.

“Yeah.”

“Why? Did something happen to her?”

“Yeah,” Amos said, and explained what he knew. When he was done, Clara said, “What do you think killed her?”

“I don't know,” Amos said. “That's what's so weird. I'd checked on all of them this morning before school. I
held
Ruby. She was fine.”

“So you think some
body
did something to her?”

Amos didn't answer.

“You do, don't you?”

“Maybe.”

A bad feeling moved through Clara. “No guesses?”

A second or two passed before Amos said, “No guesses.”

After a long pause, Clara said, “You think Eddie, though, don't you?”

Silence, then, “I don't think anything, Clara.” And then: “The truth is, I
don't
think Eddie. I mean, how could Eddie possibly know that Ruby was my favorite?”

This time it was Clara's turn to be quiet. Because she knew how Eddie might know. Only she couldn't say so to Amos.

It was just one more case of the truth being worse than the lies.

Third period Friday, Clara found Eddie out behind metal shop with two other boys, who vanished when Eddie gave them a get-lost look. “It's funny you're here,” he said, turning back to Clara. “I was just thinking about you.”

Clara brushed past this. She knew what she meant to say, and she meant to say it without any preparation. “Amos MacKenzie's favorite pigeon died yesterday,” she said, and watched Eddie's face, but it registered nothing. His smile didn't change one iota. “Didn't even know the hero had pigeons,” he said.

“Yeah, you did, Eddie. I told you about them. That day we went for a drive.”

“How could that be,” Eddie said, grinning, “when that drive didn't even exist?” His grin was set. “Isn't that what you told me? ‘This never happened.'”

“C'mon, Eddie. I don't care what you tell me as long as it's the truth.” To this, she added a lie that she thought might make it easier for him to confess. “I mean, I don't really care if you
did
do it. It was only a pigeon. But I just want to know.”

Eddie's grin slowly dissolved. He looked serious. He looked directly into her eyes, just as he had that day in the halls before he smoothed his fingertip along her nose. “No,” he said, “I didn't kill the hero's stupid pigeon.”

She believed him. And the fact that she believed him changed things. There was a silence. From somewhere within the shop came the rhythmic
clink clink clink
of hammer to metal. It coincided roughly with Clara's heartbeat.

“I got some roses on Monday,” she said.

“Oh, yeah, those,” Eddie said. He ducked his head and rubbed his neck. “Well, those are another thing. When it comes to those, I don't have what they in presidential circles call deniability.”

“The note said ‘sorry.' Sorry for what?”

Again Eddie grew serious. He leaned close enough that Clara could smell the sweetness of the mint he was chewing. “For that little ride on Sunday that you never took,” he said.

“I also found a note taped to my upstairs window,” Clara said.

Eddie's face broke into a broad grin. “That was what I'd call fun.”

Clara's heart was pounding. Eddie was no longer grinning. He was staring. His eyes seemed to go right through her. She wished he would do something, but she didn't know what.

“You doing anything tonight?” he said.

“No,” she said, forgetting her arranged meeting with Amos, but then, remembering something else, she said, “But I can't do anything tonight.”

“How about tomorrow night, then?”

She shook her head. “It's not that I have plans. It's my dad. He's gone on business till Tuesday.”

A mistake. Clara felt at once it was a mistake to have said her father was gone, and as if to confirm this fear, a sudden flicker of recognition registered in Eddie's eyes. “So my aunt's staying with me,” Clara said quickly. “My aunt Marie.”

She felt her face flush with this lie, and she watched Eddie's serious expression relax into an odd, satisfied grin. “Sure,” he said. “I understand.”

40

A BLUES BROTHER'S BROTHER

Just before midnight, Amos had fallen into a deep dreamless sleep, and he had awakened before dawn Friday morning with a strange sense of focus. Take the bull by the horns. Turn and face the enemy. It's what his mother had done with their financial problems. It's what real people did. Amos turned on the light and dressed in his father's boxer shorts and V-necked undershirt. Then, while his mother was in the shower, he put on one of his father's shirts, which fit, and one of his father's thin dark ties. He decided to try a suit on for size, a dark somber suit. It fit with a loose baggy look that Amos liked, and he felt comfortable in it. He put on his black high-top basketball shoes. Then, while his mother was still in the bathroom and before his sister had even gotten out of bed, Amos stole out of the house.

In the cold bright sunlight, Amos walked and breathed deep. He already had his direction in mind, his destination, his course of action. He turned north on Walnut, avoiding Genesee, and walked uphill toward the expensive homes of Bandy Ridge. He leaned forward, into the grade, and kept up his pace until he turned into the long cobblestoned driveway of the house he'd decided to visit. Standing before the wide white door, Amos didn't pause before ringing the bell.

Though it turned out it was not a bell. There were chimes, a short melody of rich tones. From an unseen speaker, a woman's voice said, “Yes?”

Amos said, “I need to talk to Sands.”

A moment passed. “May I tell Sandra who's calling?”

“Amos. Amos MacKenzie.”

“Of course. Let me see if she's available.”

Amos waited what seemed like a long time. Finally the enameled front door swung open. Warmth from within spread out. Sands stood there in shorts and a loose white T-shirt with some kind of fancy white-on-white embroidery at the neck. She broke into a smile. “God, with a hat and dark glasses, you'd look like a Blues Brother!” She broke into an easy laugh. “Or maybe a Blues Brother's brother!”

Amos didn't laugh. He waited patiently until Sands wasn't laughing, either. “I want to correct something,” he said. “I just want to tell you that my mother
does
work at Bing's, and I'm sorry I didn't say so last night.”

Sands smiled. “No need to apologize,” she said.

“I'm not apologizing to you. If anyone deserves an apology, it's my mother.”

Sands seemed to think he was suggesting that she apologize to his mother, because she said, “Hey, that's between you and your conscience. My rule is, Never apologize, never explain.”

Amos gave her a somber stare. “I'm also here for my shirt.”

Sands's eyes widened. “The one you gave to me?”

Amos nodded. “And the one you're now going to give back.”

Sands seemed amused. “Why would I want to do that?”

Amos looked away for a moment, then redirected his gaze to Sands. Some of this technique, he realized, he'd learned from Eddie. In a calm, steady voice, he said, “So as to avoid difficulty in your personal life.”

Sands laughed, but not very hard. “Like what kind of difficulty?”

“I know stuff. For example, I know exactly how you and Sophie cheat in geometry.”

Sands held his gaze for a few seconds, then all at once her eyes and smile seemed to give way. It was as if her whole aura collapsed. She opened her mouth as if to speak but didn't. She spun and walked away, leaving the door partly open behind her. He watched her disappear.

A few minutes later, a Hispanic woman appeared. “Miss Sandra sends this to you,” the woman said, and in her extended hands, laundered and neatly folded, lay Amos's green shirt.

Amos stared at Clara's house from the bus stop across the street, standing in the shadows of a newly leafed elm. Clara's mother's dirty car was out front with the
For Sale
sign in the window. Her father's car was gone. As Amos watched, Ham ambled around the corner into the front yard, found a spot of sun on the front porch, circled tightly, and lay down.

Amos felt in his pockets and found a pencil and a business card from Long's lawn mower repair. THIS IS FOR YOU, he wrote in small block letters. SORRY ABOUT SANDS. AMOS. He stepped out of the shadows, opened the Wilsons' side gate, and latched it behind him. In the planting beds along the path, the soil was dark and chunky and gave off the rich pleasant smell of just-turned earth. Three terra-cotta rabbits sat in a row, as if waiting for the first tender shoots to appear. As Amos approached the front door, Ham's eyes snapped open and he let out a low growl. “Hey, Hambone,” Amos said in a low, calming voice. “It's just me, Amos.” He held out his hand, which Ham sniffed, then licked. Amos leaned the green shirt against the front door, tucked the note into its front pocket, and walked away.

There, Amos thought.

Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn't. That didn't matter. What mattered was that he'd done something, and he was just getting started.

41

SETTING OFF IN THE DARK

Clara's skin ached. She was sitting in World Cultures thinking of Eddie Tripp. What had he meant when she'd said her father was away on business and something had flickered in his eyes and he'd grinned and said, “I understand”?
What
did he understand? Clara didn't know, but there was something in that look and those words that made her a little queasy.

Clara thought of how in this very class, she'd learned about communities in ancient cultures that would symbolically gather up all their sins and crimes and put them in a headdress and then put the headdress on a goat and drive the goat from the community, so they could get rid of the sins and crimes without really accounting for them, so that everybody could feel better about themselves and their neighbors. “This,” Mrs. Templeton had said, “is known as a scapegoat.”

Clara thought about her own neighborhood. Ever since she could remember, almost every strange thing that occurred and couldn't be explained was blamed on the Tripp brothers. Some government checks had disappeared from several mailboxes. Neighbors blamed the Tripps. A cat's head was found in someone's trash can. Blame the Tripps. Someone put sugar in the sixth-grade teacher's gas tank. Blame the Tripps. And when Amos MacKenzie's favorite pigeon died? Blame the Tripps. But nobody ever proved these things. So maybe Eddie and Charles didn't do them at all. Maybe Eddie and Charles were just the scapegoats.

Still, there was something creepy about the way Eddie had smiled and what he'd said. That was what was making her skin ache.

For the rest of the day Clara wasn't sure who she wanted to see in the halls, Eddie or Amos or neither or both. For a while, she saw neither.

She did see Bruce, however, coming out of study hall.

“Hey, did you check out Amos today?” Bruce said, and when Clara shook her head, Bruce said, “He's wearing this goofy suit with a tie and everything. You ask why and he goes, ‘I've got an appointment.'”

“An appointment? Who with?”

“That's the funny part. He won't say. He just vagues out on you.” Bruce grinned and shook his head as if in wonderment. “I don't know about our Amos. He used to be the dependable type, and now he's just as weird as the rest of us.”

An hour later, when Clara finally did spy Amos in the halls, she was relieved at the way her spirits rose, the way her heartbeat quickened.

“Hey, it's Joe Friday,” she said as they fell into close and easy proximity.

Amos grinned and glanced down at his clothes. “It's my father's suit. I tried it on for size this morning and kind of liked it, so I just left it on.”

This seemed like the old Amos to Clara, the calm, quiet, friendly Amos. His eyes weren't nervous. He didn't mind standing in the halls talking with her. “Bruce said you said you had an appointment.”

“Yeah, but I haven't had it yet.”

“But who with?”

Amos shrugged. “It's kind of personal. I can explain better afterward.”

“After
what,
though?”

Amos shrugged and smiled. “After the appointment.”

This was exasperating, but before Clara could pose another question, Amos said, “I left you something by your front door at home.”

Mild pleasure worked through Clara. “You did? What is it?”

Amos ignored this. The passing bell rang loudly. The clamor in the hall intensified. “So I'll see you tonight right after the play?” he said.

Clara nodded happily and began to backpedal. “C'mon,” she called, “tell me what it is.”

Amos stood fast, a rock around which other students streamed. “Well, it's not a new car,” he said, grinning, “and it's not white roses.”

The green shirt lay folded and propped against the front door. In the pocket, on the back of a business card, was a message. THIS IS FOR YOU, it said. SORRY ABOUT SANDS. AMOS.

Clara's pulse accelerated slightly. Her mood, already bright, brightened further. She suddenly realized her skin no longer ached.

She began to fold and band her newspapers, but her eyes kept floating off to the shirt, lying neatly on the front porch bench. Once or twice, she got up and moved it slightly, just to touch the soft flannel.

Clara nearly ran through her route, came home, made some Top Ramen, and still had some time to kill before walking to Melville for the play. She tried to read, but her gaze kept drifting toward the shirt, which sat now on top of her dresser. She was feeling too good about it, she decided, and whenever you felt too good about something, it was the same as inviting a comeuppance.

Clara jumped up, grabbed the shirt, and climbed through the ceiling of the hall closet to the attic, where her hope chest was stored. There wasn't much in it yet for a trousseau, only a brooch her grandmother had given her, a baby quilt, and a pair of embroidered pillowcases. Otherwise, it held old artwork, old birthday candles, and her old collection of Seneca arrowheads. Clara laid the shirt neatly on top and looked at it for a long moment.

Then Clara climbed down the ladder, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and regarded her crooked nose for one last long moment before setting off in the dark for Melville.