Mister Death's Blue-Eyed Girls (15 page)

I tell her I couldn't come to her funeral, no one wanted me there. I tell her I wish it was me that was dead, not her. I tell her I'll always love her, I'll never forget her. Nevernevernever...

I try not to think about Ralph, he didn't come to her funeral, I looked for him, he definitely wasn't there. The son of a bitch.

I reach under the flowers and I scoop out a handful of dirt. I dump it on my head, I rub it into my hair, I smear it on my cheeks. And then I sit there and let the rain fall.

Tuesday, June 19 5:00
P.M.

 

H
E
ought go home now—it's late, almost five, and it's raining—but he's scared of his brother. He knows he shouldn't have gone near the funerals, but he doesn't think anyone noticed him sitting quietly in the back of both churches. Funerals are like weddings, there are always people there that other people don't know but think belong there. Maybe they're relatives or family friends, who knows.

His brother can't understand, but he had to be there, had to see them one last time. He needed to know how he feels about the dead girls. Is he glad they're dead? Or is he sorry? Would he do it over again or would he stand up to his brother and say No I won't, I won't do it and if you do I'll tell. Would that have stopped him? Probably not.

At the funerals, he didn't feel as bad as he thought he would, but he still feels like maybe they shouldn't have done it. Those girls will be dead forever. He and his brother took their lives. Took them. Stole them. They can't give them back. Once you're dead you're dead. And nothing can bring you back to life.

But in a way, they deserved it for laughing at his brother. They made fun of him, they said he was a jerk, they told him he was ugly, they even said he was a fag. Not just that night but other times. Cheryl, especially. She made fun of him at school and made him miserable and didn't even care. It was all a joke to her, something to laugh at.

The other one, though. Bobbi Jo. Maybe she didn't deserve it. She was kind of nice when she wasn't with Cheryl.

His mind spins this way and that way, and he realizes he still doesn't know how he feels. Except for one thing. He wishes they hadn't done it. Him and his brother.

He walks so long, up one street and down another, block after block, always on side streets where nobody will see him. Once or twice he sees Buddy's car and ducks out of sight. He hopes Buddy hadn't recognized him in the graveyard.

Why did Buddy chase him? What would he have done if he'd caught him? Does he know it was him and his brother who did it? He shivers, more scared than ever.

The rain keeps falling, the day ends, dark comes, he's still walking, walking, walking. He doesn't have a watch but he knows it's late.

He wanders down the path and into the woods and stops under the tree his brother hid in. Ahead is the footbridge. He pictures the girls walking toward him, laughing and talking, wearing their pretty summer skirts, swinging their purses on long straps. The sun shines on their blond hair. Pretty girls. Blue-eyed girls.

He wonders if he should have run out of the woods and told them to turn around and go home. "Run," he could have cried, "run for your lives." But they would have laughed at him, and his brother would have shot them anyway and maybe shot him too for messing up.

They were pretty, those blue-eyed girls, but they were mean. No one has the right to laugh at someone because he wears the wrong clothes or combs his hair the wrong way or has pimples. He touches his own cheek, feels the rough skin, the pustules of acne, just like his brother's face. You can't help having pimples.

But still, all those people in the churches crying. So many sad people. He had no idea so many people would care. They'll get over it, they'll forget—but will he?

All that blood, the way they looked and felt, limp and heavy, their eyes looking at him but not seeing him or the sky or anything.

Dead blue eyes, their pretty skirts bloody, their pretty blond hair bloody, their pretty faces bloody, especially Cheryl's. Oh, she looked bad. He dreams about her every night, coming toward him, her face almost gone, her blouse and purple skirt red with blood, she's like a zombie. When he dies, she'll be waiting for him. She'll get him then, she'll drag him down to hell and leave him there. And she'll be laughing. Yes, she'll have the last laugh.

He starts crying. Oh God, let this be a dream, don't let me have done this, let me be sleeping while my brother does it. He paces up and down under the tree. He thinks Cheryl is watching him from the branches over his head, he thinks Bobbi Jo is on the other side of the tree, always moving so he can't catch her no matter how often he walks around the tree trunk.

He pounds his head against the tree until he feels blood run down his face. He's fourteen. How long will he have to live with what he's done? Forty years, fifty years, more?

He could get the gun and kill himself right now. Walk in the front door, go down the basement steps, lift the gun off the wall, and shoot himself.
Bang.
Just like his brother killing the girls.

He could but he won't. He's afraid to die, he's afraid of hell.

He wipes his forehead with his jacket sleeve and walks across the bridge, past the place where they died. His heart pounds, he gasps for breath, he's dizzy with fear. Their ghosts are here, he feels the ice cold touch of their fingers. With one on either side of him he runs, stumbling, stiff legged, sobbing, but they stay with him, laughing, calling him crater face, ugly.

You'll never get away from us, they say. No matter where you go, we'll follow you.

A
FTER
the burials, the Boyds and the Millers sponsor a dinner at St. John's school cafeteria. Ladies from the Sodality serve fried chicken, potato salad, baked beans, cole slaw, string beans cooked with bacon, rolls, sodas, and brownies. Families sit together, mothers and fathers keeping their children close. Safe. The priest and the minister stand in a corner talking softly.

Ellie and I fill our plates and sit at a table with other kids from school. No one knows what to say, no one eats much. The air is heavy with sorrow. It suffocates us, mutes our voices. Everyone is scared.

Ralph should be here, but he's not. He wasn't at the funerals or the burials either. I looked for him. And, yes, okay, it's true, I looked for Don, too. I was hoping—and this is really awful—I was hoping he'd see me in my purple skirt and my white blouse with the little purple flowers and think I looked pretty. It's my church outfit. I've never worn it to school. I feel horrible for thinking about things like that at a funeral.

I can't look at the Millers or the Boyds. I keep thinking Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Boyd wonder why their daughters are dead and not Ellie and me. I wonder about it too. If Ellie and I had been ready when Cheryl and Bobbi Jo came to the door, would all four of us be dead? Or would four have been too many for the killer to shoot? Would all four of us be alive? My mind goes back to this over and over again. Was it fate? Was it chance?

If Cheryl and Bobbi Jo were alive, we'd probably be at the Bijou, eating popcorn and watching
Picnic.
We'd seen it twice already, but it's our favorite movie. Especially the scene where Kim Novak and William Holden dance. That's the part we love. She comes down those steps and oh, I wish I was just like her. Unfortunately I'm more like her kid sister, but there's always a possibility that maybe someday. Some Day. I can hear the song in my head, "Moonglow." I see them clinging to each other, dancing slow and sexy, swaying, like Cheryl and Buddy.

It's hopeless. No matter what I think of, I always come back to Cheryl and Bobbi Jo.

After a while, Paul and Charlie take Ellie and me aside. "Do you want to go for a ride?" Charlie asks.

Ellie and I look at each other. Yes, I think, yes, let's get away from all this death before I go crazy.

Ellie nods. "Okay."

We tell our mothers and then we force ourselves to say goodbye to the Millers and the Boyds. It's hard to look at their faces. Instead, I find myself staring at my feet and the ugly brown linoleum floor.

Mrs. Boyd hugs Ellie. "Don't be a stranger," she whispers. "Come see us. You've always been like one of the family."

"I will." Ellie hugs her hard and slowly backs away. She won't do it, I think. She'll want to, she'll think she should, she'll
know
she should, but she'll put it off day after day until it's too late to go. She'll avoid the Boyds, she'll stay inside if she sees them in their yard. And she'll feel guilty. She'll hate herself.

Or maybe that's what I'd do. Maybe Ellie will be brave and do what she should do.

Outside, the rain has slowed to a misty drizzle, what Mr. O'Brien calls an I rish rain, soft and warm. Paul's car is parked under a streetlight on a side street. The windshield shines with raindrops.

I climb in the back with Charlie, and Ellie and Paul get into the front. We head down Oak Avenue, passing all the places we know so well, including the Bijou. The billboard says
PINIC
is showing at four, six thirty, and nine p.m.

"That sign always has at least one missing letter," Paul says.

"Maybe they only have one C," Charlie says.

"There he is again." Ellie nudges Paul and points as a boy in a black suit turns a corner and heads down Chestnut Street toward the park.

"Who?"

"I saw him at Bobbi Jo's burial," Ellie says.

I crane my neck, but he's already out of sight, vanished in the rain.

Paul looks at Ellie, puzzled. "I saw lots of people I didn't know at the funeral."

She shrugs. "There was just something funny about him. You know, not ha-ha funny, odd funny. Like he didn't belong there."

I don't tell anyone I saw Buddy. Who did belong there. Even though no one else thinks so.

"Where are we going?" Charlie asks.

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't care."

"Not Top's," says Ellie. "I'm not hungry."

"Me, either," I agree.

"Just drive," Charlie says. "We'll know the place when we get there."

So that's what we do. Drive around town until it's dark. Paul heads out into the country. He stops at a liquor store on the edge of Route 40. Veteran's Liquor, it's called. A soldier's face is on the sign. His eyes are electric, they flash off and on, off and on, two bright blue bulbs.
WINE AND SPIRITS SOLD WITHIN.
It's been there since the war. My dad says they have good prices on Calvert whiskey and National Bo. He should know.

"Why are you stopping here?" Ellie asks. "We're underage."

Paul looks around the parking lot. When he spots a down-and-out guy sitting on the curb, he gets out and walks over to him. They have a short discussion. Paul gives the man money and gets back in the car. A few minutes later, the guy comes out with a case of Rolling Rock and something in a brown bag. He hands the case to Paul and sticks the bag in his jacket pocket. "Thanks, kid," he says, and walks away.

"Piece of cake," Paul says to Ellie.

"Drunks will do anything for a pint of whiskey," Charlie says.

Ellie and I glance at each other. It's a lot of beer for four people, I think, but I don't say anything. She doesn't either.

Paul pulls back onto the highway and heads toward Rockledge dam. It's a famous make-out place. Cheryl used to brag about the stuff she and Buddy did there. Most of the time I wasn't sure what she was talking about. Ellie said she made it up from stories in
True Confessions.

"Did she cry the next day?" I asked once, and Ellie and I just about died laughing.

Before we turn into the parking lot, Paul cuts the headlights. "Just in case any cops are around."

He finds a nice dark place, far from the other cars, maybe half a dozen, and opens four bottles of beer and passes them around.

We sit there in the dark. Paul lights a cigarette and offers the pack to the rest of us. We each take one. Luckies. Unfiltered. Bits of tobacco stick to my lip, and I puff cautiously. I'm not ready to try inhaling again.

Charlie laughs at the way I smoke. "Oh, Long Tall Sally," he says, "you're the funniest girl I know."

I stare at him, wondering if my feelings should be hurt. After all, I'm not trying to be funny. But the thing is, it's the most normal thing anyone has said since the funerals. So I laugh too. It feels strange. Like maybe I shouldn't.

We drink our beer and talk about what we'll do this summer. Go to the bay beaches, everyone agrees, play the nickel slot machines, maybe win enough to buy lunch. Go to Five Pines swimming pool, go to the quarry up in Rockland, take the boat across the bay to Tolchester. It's like we're trying to convince ourselves we can make this a normal summer, an ordinary summer, just like we'd planned before everything changed.

We talk about movies. The boys have no interest in seeing
Picnic.
"Even though it stars Kim Novak," Charlie says, "it's got a dumb plot."

They want to see
The Searchers,
but Ellie and I hate Westerns and John Wayne.
Carousel
is out because it's a musical and the boys hate musicals. Anyway, Ellie and I have already seen it twice. It's one of our all-t ime favorites. By the time we run out of movies, we've agreed to go to the drive-in next week and see
Godzilla, King of the Monsters
or
The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
which I think might be too scary for me but I don't tell them because they might laugh. But not tonight. Tonight we want to stay here in Paul's car and drink beer and smoke and talk.

After we've each drunk two or three beers, Paul says, "Do you think Buddy did it?"

It comes out of nowhere. The murders again. Suddenly nothing's normal after all. We're back to the day, the day, the day ... the day we all want to forget and can't. Cannot Forget.
Not ever.

Ellie draws a deep breath and says, "Of course he did."

"Yeah," says Charlie. "Even if they never prove it, I know that bastard did it."