The True Detective (17 page)

Returning to the highway, he drives along. “None of this would have to be,” he says. “If you wouldn’t act like you have. You’re the one who makes things awful. Do you know that? I could forgive you, and give you a doughnut—after what you did. Why can’t you be like that with me?”

The boy ignores him, keeps staring away.

“You could be driving the car,” Vernon says. “If you were nice, I could be teaching you how to drive. If you were my friend.”

Turning to him, the boy says, “You’re not my friend.”

Vernon loses his breath for an instant and has to check himself or it seems he will start to cry. He continues driving. “Thank you,” he says.

Approaching an intersection—a sign says
STOP AHEAD
—he begins to grow increasingly tense, as if, again, already, he is going to cry. Slowing down—only one other car is in view, at a distance—and not quite stopping, he accelerates, as if unnoticeably, and passes through the intersection.

He drives on. His hurt passes. Stores, drive-ins, and fast-food outlets line both sides of the highway here, and he sees from a gun law sign that they have crossed into Massachusetts. The boy seems too subdued now to try anything; still it makes Vernon tense to be around so many cars and people.

Intentionally, he drives past the Gibbs Self-Serve, to look it over. The gas station looks workable to his plan; if he pulls in on the outside of the furthest row of pumps, no one should notice the right side of his car, where the boy is seated. A quarter of a mile along, he turns around to start back.

“I’m going to turn in here,” he says. “You don’t have to be my friend if you don’t want to. But don’t forget what I said.” As he slows down and his directional signal flashes, he adds, “There’s no reason why you wouldn’t be able to get out and pump the gas, you know, if you weren’t so mean.”

Rolling into the station, Vernon sees that another car is pulling in directly behind him and he panics for an instant, until he sees the car turn away to another row of pumps. Pulling up outside the far row, he parks at the first pump then, so no one can park behind him. He turns off the motor, leaving his hand on the keys. “You do anything at all,” he says. “You do anything, and I’m going to jump back in, go some place, and put you in the trunk.”

Removing the keys, stepping from the car, he leaves the door ajar. But after four or five steps, he turns to walk back.

He gets into the car and slams the door. He sits there.

“You were going to try something, weren’t you?” he says, “I know you were.”

The boy glances at him but doesn’t speak.

“I’m going to do it. I’m going to put you in the trunk.” Vernon is returning the keys to the ignition.

“I didn’t
do
anything,” the boy says.

“You were going to!”

“No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t.”

Vernon inserts the key, starts the motor.

The boy is crying. “Please don’t do that,” he says. “I didn’t do anything.”

“How do I know you won’t try?” Vernon says.

“I won’t,” the boy cries. “I swear I won’t.”

Vernon holds. “Do you really promise?” he says.

“Yes, I do,” the boy says. “I do.”

“How do I know you mean it?”

“I said I won’t do anything,” the boy cries.

Again, Vernon turns off the motor. Then he says, “As soon as I can trust you, I’ll take you back home. Don’t you know that?”

He gazes at the boy, into his eyes. It occurs to him that neither of them knows anything of this, of what is happening, and a shiver passes over him.

Removing the keys, stepping from the car and closing the door, Vernon walks directly to the glassed-in booth. Removing his wallet, he takes out a ten-dollar bill. He is deciding to attempt to trust the boy. A trial run, he is thinking.

At the window, as a man steps away before him, he slides the ten-dollar bill through the opening, and says, ‘Five dollars’ worth, lead-free, right back there.”

A large girl takes the ten to make change. Vernon looks back at his car’s windsheld. There is the boy’s face, down low, under an upper glare, unhappy, looking at him. Raising a hand, Vernon waves. The boy shows no response. The girl says, “Thank you.”

Five dollar bills in his hand, Vernon walks back. The boy keeps looking away, will not meet his glance.

Gas pumped, on the driver’s side, where the boy is not in view, he rehangs the pump and reenters his car.

In a moment, driving back along the hamburger offerings, he says, “Because you were good, I’m going to buy you something more to eat. A hamburger. Maybe some french fries. Are you hungry? Would you like that?”

“Yes,” the boy says.

Vernon presses his directional signal for Burger King just ahead on the right. He feels a small thrill, a slight sense of wellbeing. Maybe things will work out.

Pulling around, they join a line of two cars, immediately one. “You don’t even know my name, do you?” Vernon says. “Do you?”

The boy shakes his head.

“I’m not going to tell you either,” Vernon says. “That way, even if you wanted to tell on me, you wouldn’t be able to, would you?”

The boy sits there.

“If you can be nice, in a while I’ll untie you,” Vernon says. “And just take you home. It’s as simple as that. If you promise not to tell.”

They wait. Then Vernon says, “All I wanted, in my heart, was to do this. Take you out places. Buy you hamburgers. Teach you how to drive a car.”

Glancing around, through his misted eyes, Vernon sees that the space next to the intercom-menu is vacated. He downshifts, rolls ahead.

“Everything on your hamburger?” he says to the boy.

The boy nods, as if to say yes.

“French fries?” he says.

Again the boy nods.

“Would you like a milkshake, a chocolate milkshake?”

The boy nods again.

Turning, rolling down his window, Vernon is greeted by a static voice saying, “Your order please?” and on the edge of his vision he is aware that the boy has turned his head to watch him, and he thinks it might be a good sign. With new hope, he speaks to the glass sign, to place their order, food they will eat together, he is thinking, beyond which their problems will no longer exist, on which thought he adds, “And two hot apple pies,” and turns to look at the boy, to see if he has generated the slightest expression of approval.

T
HE PHEASANT
. I
T WAS RIGHT HERE
, M
ATT THINKS
,
ALTHOUGH
there is before him now the cinder-block backside of a
warehouse. Sprague Oil, he knows, is in the other direction, beyond the fences, near the river. Everything is changing.

The tall bird was a shock, the way its color stood out in the field. They were on the paved street and the bird was standing in the crushed, bleached weeds looking like one of those paintings they sell near the traffic circle, and Eric was whispering beside him,
“Don’t stop! Keep walking! Keep walking!”

Thirty yards along, past some trunks of dead trees, Eric took over like a sergeant, whispering all kinds of instructions, and Matt went along with it, he remembers, even though he was older, because Eric had all the ideas. And—even though he’d admitted it only that once, sort of—because he was a little scared of the big bird back there in the weeds. What if it went for your eyes?

Shifting to the far side of the road, even into a ditch, as instructed by the Marine sergeant, his little brother, he made his way back past the pheasant, and returned across the road to the driveway beside a house, on the other end of the field. Raising his arm, he opened his fingers, but did not wave, in the signal the big-game hunter had told him to give.

Eric started toward him, carefully. Going to his toes, being quiet, Matt watched the glossy bird—which hardly moved, except for its neck—and he watched Eric beyond the bird, entering the field one step at a time, as if he were playing statue.

What was so amazing was that the dumb bird did almost exactly as Eric said it would. Standing there, watching, Matt saw things about his brother he had never seen before. He saw that they were different. Eric had more nerve, Matt saw, although he had known at once it was nothing he’d ever admit to anyone.

The bird’s head cocked then and held, alert to something. There were its green colors, its red face and the white ring around its neck, its green-blue oil-on-water feathers. It stood
like a full-sized jewel, a glossy vase, in the sand-colored weeds. On tiptoe, Eric took one step and then another.

The bird took off! It half flew, half ran suddenly, flicking its toes, opening its wings, gliding fifteen or twenty feet, and down, out of sight.

Eric, holding a moment, took another step. And another.

The bird’s head came up. There was its deep, dark eye. Periscope up, Matt thought, his heart racing; he remembered thinking, too, how dumb the bird was not to fly all the way away, into some other country, at least across the wide river into the State of Maine.

Eric took more slow-motion steps. One step at a time. You dumb bird, Matt thought. He’s going to get you.

Eric crouched, out of view, and Matt wondered what he was doing. He must have found a path, he thought, and was duck-walking or sneaking along on his stomach. The bird stayed in place, still periscope up, looking around so its red jowls jiggled. A minute passed. All at once, twenty feet closer to the bird, Eric’s face lifted into view, looking so intent, so like an Indian brave from a movie screen, that Matt would have laughed were he not so impressed.

Eric continued crouch-walking. Matt could see him and the pheasant. One step at a time. The pheasant stood in place. Then, on a step, the pheasant also took a step. Eric froze. Nor did Matt breathe, as he watched.

Eric exploded all at once, and the bird exploded. Matt was startled. There was the dark pheasant, sailing right past him, over the driveway, and down out of sight behind the house. There, too, was Eric, saying,
“Couldn’t you get him?”
as he ran by.

Matt went after him to catch up. Behind the house, in a yard of cut grass, Eric was looking all over and saying, “He came
down right here. He’s gotta be right here. Look down there, before he takes off again.”

Eric found him. “Here he is!” he called. “We got him!”

He was crouching under the steps of a small porch at the rear of the house. Joining him, looking through the square openings of the latticed side of the steps, Matt saw the pheasant.

Slipping under the porch, crouching, they had a better view of the bird in under the steps, closed in by the latticed side walls. “What a stupid place to go,” Eric said, as if to the bird.

“What if somebody comes?” Matt said.

Eric ignored this; as he was in charge, Matt ignored it, too.

The bird was three or four feet away. He crouched near the second-to-lowest step. There was his deep shiny eye on one side. There, less lighted, were his oil-on-water colors. The ring around his neck. His spotted rust-colored body. His bouquet of tail feathers, a foot long and drooping.

“We have to kill him,” Eric said.

“What?” Matt said.

“We can’t take him home alive,” Eric said. “If we’re going to have him for dinner, we have to kill him, and clean him.”

“Oh,” Matt said. But then he said, “What if he goes for your eyes?”

“Mister Pheasant, you made a real mistake,” Eric said.

“Let’s let him go,” Matt said.

Eric ignored this, too. “Let’s get some rocks and zonk him,” he was saying. “Stay right here. Don’t move.”

Crouching back under in a moment, Eric had his shirttail in front filled with rocks, stones, and pebbles, which he let tumble to the ground. “Okay,” he said, “We are going to have pheasant dinner. Mom will go berserk.”

Eric threw and missed half a dozen times, the rocks banging off the underside of the steps, before Matt said, “Let me try.” At least he could throw better, as he was always a better athlete.

Using a sidearm, with Eric out of the way, he whipped around and fired a rock which ricocheted sharply off the unpainted wood. On his second shot, with a
thunk,
he hit the pheasant in the body, but it was Eric who made a sound, saying,
“Ouch.”

Matt drew his arm back to fire again, and Eric said, “Maybe we should let him go.”

Matt fired. This time, he clipped the bird somewhere about the head, although in a glancing shot.

“Maybe it’s not fair,” Eric said.

“What’s that mean?”

“Maybe it’s not fair,” Eric said. “He doesn’t have a chance.”

“It was your idea!”

The bird blinked an eyelid.

“I think you got him,” Eric said.

“Well, what did you expect?”

Crouching, Eric duck-walked a step closer. “Let’s help him,” he said.

“You better watch it, he might go for your eyes.”

“I think he’s tame,” Eric said.

“Tame?”

“He could be somebody’s pet. I bet he understands what we’re saying.”

“Hey, Mister Pheasant,” Eric said to the bird. “Come on now, we’re not going to hurt you anymore. Come on now.”

“Better be careful!” Matt said.

Crouching, reaching in, Eric gripped the bird all at once in his hands. “See, he’s tame,” he said, backing out with him.

“Jesus, keep him away from your eyes,” Matt said.

Out from under the porch, holding the pheasant away, Eric walked back in the direction of the field. Matt followed. “You’re going to be fine, Mister Pheasant,” Eric was saying. “You’re going to be okay now, so don’t worry. Hey, his eye’s bleeding.”

In the knee-high weeds, Matt stood next to Eric to study the bird’s eye. A droplet of blood, as dark and thick as a drop from a girl’s bottle of nail polish, had appeared on the surface above his eye.

“You think he’ll die?” Matt said, for this, too, was Eric’s territory.

“Nah,” Eric said. “It’s just a nick. Or his eye wouldn’t blink.” And Eric said, “He’s tame. I can tell.”

The bird’s face became familiar. They stood looking at it.

Then Eric said, “Here you go, you dumb bird.”

He gave the bird a launch into the air. Its wings came up and flapped and caught and it sailed over the weeds a distance and settled in once more, out of sight, fifteen or twenty or thirty feet away.