Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) (42 page)

I have no idea where this fiction came from. But even as I spewed it out, I could see Dylan drenching himself, could see him gasping when the first gush of cold water hit his shoulders and back. I could see that broad big-toothed grin. I could see the spray from the hose making a rainbow in the air.

His father smiled. “I think he might have mentioned you to his mother and me.”

“We had some pleasant conversations,” I told him. “About his music. His girlfriend. And I was just wondering. How is Dylan doing these days? Do you know . . . I mean . . . Where is he living now? Is he still playing music?”

Maybe fifteen seconds passed. “Last time we heard anything was a couple days after he left here.”

It was what I expected, what I already knew in my heart. I asked, “Was he in Tennessee by any chance? He always used to talk about going to Muscle Shoals to become a musician.”

“He didn't talk long. Said he was using a friend's phone. We called the number back, but it just kept ringing. A week later there was a recording said the line had been disconnected.”

“Did he say where he was?”

“Missouri,” he said.

“Branson?”

He shook his head. “It wasn't the right area code for Missouri. I looked it up.”

“He might have been using a cell phone.”

“His mother said he sounded like he'd been drinking or something. He hung up before I got a chance to talk to him.”

I have sent a letter to Margo, the woman who sells my paintings in Manhattan, instructing her to send to you all profits from the sale of the paintings still in her gallery—and by the time you read this, my paintings will have more than tripled in value! Please distribute the money equally between Livvie and Dylan's parents. I hope that Dylan's mother and father will use the money to track him down, hire a good investigator, get the boy home again. I hope they can salvage his life better than I was able to.

In my studio you will find a new painting on the easel. This goes to Livvie. When you see it, you will know why. Tell Livvie that I painted Jesse as I see him now, not those other times but now, with my eyes wide open.

The Jeep is hers too. The house and everything in it. The necessary papers are all in the safe in my closet. The door to the safe is open. Maybe she won't want any of these things after you tell her what I did. Maybe she couldn't stand to live here. In that case, she can sell everything and keep the money, I don't care. Or maybe you don't have to tell her, Marcus. I don't know what's best. I'm leaving all that to you. You are my clean-up man.

As for this journal, you decide. If you think Livvie should have it, give it to her. I trust to your expertise and your compassion. If you want to give it to the newspaper, show it to the world, so be it. I do not care. My reputation, my work, it is all behind me now. Now there is only the something else. The next something else.

There's a word I would like you to look up, if you will. It's important, Marcus, so please, after you've finished reading this journal, please do this before you do anything else. I need for you to know this word.
Jhator
.

I went back into the woods this morning, Marcus, just to see how it might feel. And you know what? It felt fine. So I will be returning there this evening, in the hour of magic light. I think that if anybody can understand why I have made this choice, you can. You cared about me when no one else did, not even myself, and that has meant so very much. Please forgive all I have done. And please understand why I must go now. There are no answers here, but I have to believe that there are answers to be found. And I am anxious to discover them. I love you and I love Livvie, but I love Jesse more. And the boy who shoots crows is waiting.

T
HERE were more pages in the journal but no more writing. Gatesman sat there turning page after empty page until he had turned the final one.

He closed the back cover and sat there awhile. Then he used his cell phone to call his office. He spelled
jhator
for Tina and asked her to call back as soon as she had found a good definition. She pretended to be irritated with him, said, “Do you think that's all I have to do? Help you improve your very limited vocabulary?” And he knew that she would make him wait fifteen, maybe twenty minutes or more, only because he had refused to tell her why he wanted the information, refused to satisfy her curiosity. This made him smile. And the sound of her voice brought him back to his own world again, back to where he needed to be in order to get his work done.

During the past hour he had been aware in a distant way of the few cars passing out on the asphalt, those lives in hurried movement, those purposeful lives. His own car had surely been noticed parked there in Charlotte's driveway.
What's the sheriff doing out here this morning?
people must have wondered.

He went to his vehicle then and popped open the trunk, zipped open a black canvas duffle bag in which he always kept a change of clothes—khaki trousers and a navy blue sweatshirt with a white Nittany Lions logo across the chest. He lifted the clothes out, laid the journal inside, laid the clothes on top, and zipped the bag shut. He closed the trunk lid. Then he stood there in the driveway and tried to slow his breath. The air was clean and light, but his limbs still felt heavy. Maybe one matter had been resolved, but there was still work to be done. There was still, as always, unpleasant duty to attend to.

He had some calls to make, but he would wait for Tina's call first. Charlotte had asked him to wait. And he was in no hurry now.

The air was so clear and the sunlight so sharp that it stung his eyes. He thought the scent of the air unusually light and clean, in a way it can be only in spring—not the sad, still cleanness of autumn nor the sharp, stinging cleanness of winter; not the heavier, clean quiet before a summer thunderstorm, but the almost-cool, trembling cleanness of fields and trees greening, and he felt this cleanness deep in his chest, an ache that felt as deep as the sky.

“Jhator,”
he repeated to himself, and wondered what it meant, though he had his suspicions. He turned to face the woods then. From where he stood, it all looked so quiet.