Where the Broken Lie (13 page)

I never really considered that bad things could happen to me or anyone I loved. In a strange way, I believed it even less after those bad things did happen.

As a child, I had difficulty dealing with the fact that Katie Cooper once did exist and then did not, and often found myself imagining otherwise. There was comfort to be found in pretending that Katie had never existed at all, that all those wonderful memories never were. With Ethan, the pain came from imagining all the memories we would never have.

They were exactly opposite pains in that way, Katie and Ethan.

We heard stories of Slim Jim in the days that followed his arrest. How he had left his home in Northern Iowa when he was seventeen. How he drifted from town to town through the Midwest—sometimes riding the rails, sometimes hitchhiking. How he took odd jobs, slept under bridges, ate what he could when he could, and never stayed in one place for more than a couple weeks. Sometimes leaving by his volition. Sometimes not. Probably with all his belongings tied up in a red bandana that hung off the end of a long wooden stick, I had imagined.

The theory went that Slim Jim lured Katie into walking with him down the tracks toward Glidden, the next town over. That never sat right with me, though. Katie was too smart to have gone off with Slim Jim like that. I always figured he must have forced her to go with him.

Slim Jim never confessed to the crime, but he couldn’t provide an account of his whereabouts either. Before his case ever got to trial, Slim Jim Johnson was found guilty by an informal jury of his incarcerated peers. The sentence was death and it was carried out immediately. Prison justice has zero-tolerance policy for pedophiles.

… it always bothered him, how people could judge others without really knowing them or understanding them. Never understanding how a person got to be the way they were. People learn one or two things about you and they think they know you. They put you in a box that you can never get out of. He often thought about the box people would put him in if they knew everything he’d done …

Rather than sit around and tally up all the unanswered questions I had been collecting, I decided to write a letter back to Mr. Innocent, which was how I had come to think of the man who had authored that letter by Slim Jim’s grave. There are a million things I want to ask him. Which questions do I uncork and pour onto the paper
?

Who are you? Why did you write this? Why did you wait so long? If Slim Jim didn’t kill Katie Cooper, who did? Can we meet in person?

In the end, though, I ended up replying to his one-word letter with a one-word letter of my own—a command and a plea:

Explain

I sign the letter and fold it slowly and perfectly, giving myself a few extra seconds to think about what I am doing. I slide it into a yellow envelope and put it under the rock by Slim Jim’s headstone. I consider waiting in hiding to see who picks it up, but in the end decide to wait and see if Mr. Innocent will come forward on his own.

Over time, people change and then again they don’t. Just like with Charlie, I recognize Edie Dales the instant I walk through the doors at Mustang’s. A striped Polo and khakis, his dress is the same as it had been back then. Literally the same it seemed. Both the pants and the shirt were faded and speckled with small holes. When he recognizes me, he smiles that missing-tooth smile that over the years has become a missing-teeth smile.

“Hey there, Thathafrath,” he says and I can’t help but laugh at the ridiculous lisp.

“Hey, Andrew,” I say. And then, remembering how much I hate him, “Maybe you should consider a new pet name for me. Try ‘Pecker’, it’s easier to pronounce and it’s stood the test of time—right, Son?”

“Sure has, Pecker,” Son says, sliding a beer in front of me.

“Now, thee … thee, I alwayth knew you wath a thmart mouth. Alwayth knew you badmouthed me behind my back. I wath right, wathn’t I, Thathafrath?”

“Yeah, I thuppothe I wath,” I said.

“That’th funny, Thathafrath. Yeth, thir. Very funny.”

I don’t respond.

“Never would have talked to me like that back in the day, though—eh, Thathafrath?”

I ignore the question and sip my beer.

“Bigger and braver now, though. Eh, Thathafrath? All grown up, are ya? Not afraid of getting your ath kicked, huh?”

I attempt to redirect the conversation. “So what are you doing these days, Andrew?”

He slams a full glass of beer, burps loudly and says, “Dentitht.” slapping his knee. “No, no, wait, no, I’m a Thpeech Therapist,” he says and again howls at his own joke.

It’s the kind of laugh you aren’t supposed to laugh along with.

“Hey, what’th the matter, Thathafrath? You don’t think I’m funny? Hey, you gotta laugh, right?”

I think about that day on the basketball court, me fisted up and wanting to punch Edie in the nose and him not the least bit afraid. Seeing the fear in me and knowing that I wasn’t going to hit him. Of everything that happened on the basketball court that day—the elbows, the shoves, the taunting, his filthy mouth on Katie—the thing that bothered me the most was his utter confidence that I wouldn’t dare hit him. Even after all that he had said and done. How he had hissed, 
“Who are you kidding, Sassafras? We both know you ain’t gonna hit me.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Gotta laugh,” I say. And then after a second, “Hey, you know what I always thought was funny? That nickname we had for you back in the day—Edie. You remember that? Edie? Like the girls name.”

Edie nods vigorously and gulps down another beer.

“Yeah, that wath funny, alright. Only did hear it the one time mythelf, though. Remember that, Thathafrath? Remember what I did to Timmy Carmichael when he called me that?”

Two black eyes and one broken nose. Yes, I remembered.

“Man, I could be a real hard ath back then, couldn’t I? Mak’th me feel a little guilty when I thee Timmy thee’th days, walking around town with hith kids. He’th got two little girlth, you know that? Yeah, probably better off with girlth, guy like that. Know what I mean? Got two boyth my own thelf, but thome men aren’t meant to have thons, now are they? You gotta boy, Thathafrath?”

For the first time since we’d started talking, Son interjects.

“Hey Andrew, didn’t you tell me to cut you off at 11,” Son says, pointing at the clock on the wall behind him. “Maybe you’d better get going.”

Edie ignores Son and repeats his question to me. “Well? You gotta boy, Thathafrath?”

Edie slaps his knee and shouts, “You don’t, do you? Thee? I knew it! No offenth, Thathafrath, but you’re like Timmy in that way. Better off with girlth?”

“Andrew,” says Son from behind the bar.

“It’th kinda like … what do they call that? Thurvival of the fittetht—thomethin’ like that? You know what I’m talkin’ about? That thing where the thtrong live and the weak die.”

A fury bubbles in my chest and I say, “Careful, Edie.”

“What?” he asks, raising his arms in innocence. “What did I thay? I’m just thaying that the weak die. Hell, that ain’t nothin’ new. That’th Darwin. The weak die, Thathafrath. The weak die.”

I jump from my bar stool and throw my beer mug against the wall. “Edie, if you don’t shut the hell up I’m going to knock out that last jagged tooth you got hanging from that shithole mouth of yours.”

Edie slowly rises from his bar stool and smiles that missing-teeth smile.

“You gotta blow off thome thteam, Thathafrath? Bring it on, I’d be happy to help.”

“That’s enough,” says Son. “Sit down, both of ya.”

But it’s too late. I lunge toward Edie and hold my fist up in the same way I had that day on the basketball court. And like that day on the court, Edie stands unflinching and fearless.

“Who are you kidding, Thathafrath? We both know you ain’t gonna hit me.”

Except that this time I do hit him. And just like I promised, I knock out the last tooth in his smile.

Well, sorta.

In the million or so times I had fantasized about hitting Edie, he always falls to the floor hard, shakes his head a couple times, and then slides his jaw back and forth with one hand. He stands up slowly and walks away with a newfound respect for me. Perhaps even fear.

In reality, when I punch Edie’s mouth I knock his head hard to the right and mess up his hair a little, but that’s about it. He doesn’t fall and he doesn’t check for a broken jaw. Instead, he turns his head back toward me slowly, smiles a bloody smile and then yanks out the tooth I had managed to loosen. He examines it, shruggs, stuffs it in the front pocket of my shirt.

“Thouvenir.”

Then he hits me with a quick one-two that drops me to the floor.

As Son walks him out the door, I can hear Edie laughing and spewing out a string of lispy insults.

Later that night as I lie in bed drunk and defeated, I whisper, “Mithter Innothent,” and laugh at the unfunny thought, at the real possibility. Edie was the filthiest soul I had ever known. And though I couldn’t be sure he had killed Katie Cooper, I was more than sure of one thing.

He had it in him.

Our three tables form a perfect triangle, he and she and I. Her reading, unaware of any world outside of her book. Him watching, unaware of any world outside of her. Me watching them both like two panda bears in captivity.

I can see how she is making him love her. It is in the way she sits with one foot on the floor and one crossed over her lap. The way she is slouched over the table with her head propped on hand and elbow. And it is in the way her long sun-touched, brown hair hangs carelessly down the right side of her tilted head, her left hand periodically sweeping it back and then adjusting horn-rimmed glasses. She is captivating, this young woman.

He practices the conversation in his head and his lips move involuntarily with each thought. He repeats the same phrase under his breath, changing his tone and the height and angle of his eyebrows with every new effort.

He opens a spiral notebook and begins to write. It is the furious scribble of a man angry with himself and I can only guess that he is cursing his own lack of courage. His head wiggles as he writes—side to side, front to back—the way I imagine Mozart must have looked when possessed by the succubus of new music, only the ink and quill missing.

He does not see her approach.

“Excuse me,” she says.

Startled, he literally jumps out of his chair.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she says with a giggle and a slight touch of his arm. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just, I wanted to see if you had a pen I could borrow.”

“A what? A pen?”

Then looking at his hand like it has something stuck to it that he does not quite recognize, he says, “A pen. Sure, take this. This is a pen.”