Favorite Sons (7 page)

Friendless “Loner” Killed in Crystalton

Other than Sheriff Kelso, I was the only one interviewed for the story.

The Nash brothers walked over late that evening. I was lifting weights in the workout room I had constructed in half of our two-
car garage. “What the hell are you doing talking to a newspaper reporter?” Adrian asked.

“He surprised me over at Connell's. Hell, I didn't know he was going to put all that in the paper.”

“We're supposed to be keeping a low profile. Remember?”

“Yeah, Adrian, I remember.”

Pepper started laughing. “It's a good cover.”

*    *    *

It took about two days before people in town, mostly the same mothers who had treated Petey like a raccoon in the trash, began referring to him as “that poor Sanchez boy.” In death, Petey was transformed into a pitiable character. Mostly, I think it was out of sympathy for his mother, who posed for a photographer from the
Herald-Star
holding a photo of Petey, her sunken eyes moist with tears. Women took casseroles and hams and baked bread and desserts to the Sanchez house. They offered them used but good clothing so the kids would have something decent to wear to the funeral home. The Catholic Women's Club took up a collection and purchased a cheap fiberboard casket.

It was all well intentioned, but a goodly number of the women who were outwardly mourning Lila and Earl Sanchez's loss were secretly glad Petey was gone. In a part of their heart where they never wanted another human being to peek, they were happy that the Lord took Petey before he could hurt one of their children. They said things like, “Perhaps it was for the best as he would never have had a good quality of life.” But what they were thinking was, “Thank God, I don't have to worry about that crazy bastard hurting one of my kids.”

I understood their sentiments. Never had I walked the streets or ridden my bicycle when, in the back of my mind, I wasn't worried about an encounter with Petey. And I wasn't any different from other kids. I understood that he had problems that were beyond his control, but to us he was crazy and aggressive, and I was glad he was dead, though I greatly wished I had not had a front-row seat to his demise.

T
here was no shortage of things to worry about. I worried about Sky Kelso and his brush cut showing up at my door, the possibility of Deak cracking, going to juvenile hall, and not getting to play sports. Mostly, however, I was worried about my mother. Our family was not something from a Norman Rockwell painting, and she did not need one more problem. I sometimes looked at myself as the last chance for someone in the family not to disappoint her.

My mother was the first female letter carrier in Crystalton. She took the position when it was largely a male job, and the
Steubenville Herald-Star
wrote a story about her that ran with a photo of her standing in front of the post office, austere in shorts stretched against her wide hips, black walking shoes, and a heavy leather bag hanging from her shoulder.

She was a good mother who, when at age eight I came home crying after being told that I was the “suckiest” player on my baseball team, took me to the field every evening after dinner and hit me grounders and pitched batting practice until she could no longer lift her arm above her shoulder. She also taught me how to bait a hook, pound a nail, and say “Yes, sir” and “No, ma'am.” And she would not hesitate to pin me against the wall if I needed it. When I was in the fourth grade she gave me a slap up the back of the head for an infraction that I can no longer recall, and I threatened to call the police. “Really?” she said in a very calm voice. She pointed to the phone on the end table near the couch. “There's the phone. Go
ahead and call them. They can have whatever's left of you by the time they get here.” That was the end of my threats.

I don't remember my dad. His name was David, but everyone knew him by the nickname of “Mugs.” He left home when I was still in diapers and Mom didn't talk about him. There were a few photographs of him in the shoeboxes of snapshots in the hall closet, and he appeared to be a man of insignificance, thin, with a hairline that began at the top of his skull, stooped shoulders, and a belt cinched up so tight that his pants bunched up around his waist. When I was in kindergarten, I asked Mom if I had a father.

“Everyone has a father,” Mom said.

“Where's mine?”

“I don't know.”

“Why?”

“He left.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.”

“Why?”

“He didn't say and I didn't care to ask.”

“Where did he go?”

“Away from here.”

“Is he coming back?”

“It's highly unlikely.”

That, as I recall, was the only conversation we ever had about the old man. Simply, he was not there, not a factor in our lives, and not someone she wanted to waste time or words discussing.

My brother was twenty-three, eight years older than I was, and had no dominion over his life. Responsibility overwhelmed Steven. Discipline was just another word he could not spell. He caved under the slightest pressure and was so bereft of confidence that he could barely make eye contact with you. A few times each season, he would take the bus from Steubenville to watch me play. He would stand alone, hands in his pockets, and sometimes leave without ever speaking to me. My mother, having raised three children alone while working full time, had long before lost patience with him. His solution was to be a shadow, have little contact with us, and stay high or drunk as much as possible.

My sister, Virginia, was six when I was born. As a high school girl, she was not particularly attractive, but she was heavy in the chest and starved for attention, which is a dangerous combination around hormonally enraged teenage boys. At seventeen she was impregnated by Nick Simpson, a nineteen-year-old dropout from Riddles Run who at the time was the only one of the four Simpson brothers not in prison, a point my sister noted with considerable pride. Nick showed up at the house with a cigarette tucked behind one ear and grease caked under his fingernails, and said he intended to “make things right and marry Virginia Sue.” My mother vetoed the offer, and we never saw Nick again. Virginia's son was just over a year old when she got pregnant by a guy named Lou Nicoletti from Mingo Junction. He had stringy hair and a nervous laugh. By the summer of 1971, she had a three-year-old son and a fourteen-month-old daughter and lived in a trailer park near Empire, getting heavier and angrier by the day. I'm sure Lou Nicoletti rued the day he ever crawled on top of her.

I didn't like Virginia. She was vocal in her belief that I was spoiled and Mom's favorite. To this day I don't believe I was ever spoiled, but I was probably Mom's favorite. That distinction was not an especially difficult echelon to reach considering the competition.

I had lived a carefree life until the moment I witnessed one of my best friends drop a mentally retarded kid with an Indian hammer. I visualized us getting arrested and going to court in handcuffs, newspaper photographers' flashbulbs popping in our eyes. Consoling each other behind the rail are Mr. and Mrs. Nash and Mr. and Mrs. Coultas. Off to the side, forgotten in the moment, is my mother, standing alone and dabbing a tissue to her eyes. Her last child, the one for which she had such hopes, has also disappointed her. As the vision replayed over and over in my head, I became even more resolved to stifle the events of Monday morning.

It was important, I believed, to get more time behind us, more hours and days separating us from the events on Chestnut Ridge. I became consumed by the clock. On the wall behind the kitchen table hung a clock in the shape of a black cat. White numbers encircled its round stomach. With each passing second its curled tail swung like a metronome and its eyes moved back and forth in the opposite
direction of the tail. During breakfast and lunch, or whenever I had a spare minute, I watched as the sweep hand made its circuit. The tail swished, the eyes rolled, and the seconds beat slowly into minutes, the minutes into hours. Its workings made a hollow tick-tock that I had never noticed before the passage of time became so critical. Long after I had left the kitchen the noise thumped in my ears like a song that gets hung up in your brain and won't release its grip, playing over and over again. Time had never moved so slowly.

The previous fall, we had a career day at school and a detective from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation was one of the guest speakers. He had a no-nonsense demeanor, a Marine haircut, and condescendingly referred to us as “all you little darlings.” At one point, he opened a window and fired up a cigarette, holding it outside as he talked, bringing it in for an occasional drag. He continued to talk even as he rolled the corner of his mouth and expelled smoke in the general direction of the window. In the hours after we left Petey in the weeds I thought of two points the detective had made during his talk.

One was that the first twenty-four hours after a crime were the most critical in any investigation. That is the period of time when witnesses are most likely to come forward and volunteer information. If an investigator doesn't have a solid lead in that first day, the odds of solving the crime drop exponentially. After a week, it becomes nearly impossible, especially if other crimes begin tugging at investigators' time.

The first twenty-four hours after Petey was killed passed without his body being discovered. The clock didn't start running, I assumed, until the emergency squad members pulled Petey out of the bushes and the sheriff's detectives began scribbling notes while milling around the crime scene. That was about 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday. That's when the clock started to run.

The second point the detective made was that after a case grows cold, it is rarely solved by science or good detective work, but by criminal stupidity and the inability of the perpetrator to keep his mouth shut. The detective said, “They always tell someone—a girlfriend, a buddy, or another perp. I don't know why, maybe it feels good to get it off their chest, maybe they're bragging, but they always
talk, and when they do, that's when things start to unravel. He breaks up with the girlfriend and she calls us, or he doesn't pay his buddy back some money he borrowed, and then it comes out.”

I thought of Deak. At first, I thought it was a good idea that Deak had gone off to church camp. I thought getting him out of Crystalton was a good idea. While I was up on the roof cleaning the gutters, however, I started worrying about him being at church camp. I was afraid that he would be so moved by the spirit that he would feel compelled to tell someone about Petey. I was grateful, however, that we United Methodists did not have confessionals.

*    *    *

The autopsy on Petey Sanchez was completed on Wednesday afternoon. Early Thursday morning, Ralphie Ketchum, who was a crane operator at Weirton Steel and worked part-time at the Williamson & Keller Funeral Home, drove the station wagon up to Pittsburgh to pick up the body. Visiting hours were scheduled for Friday evening, the funeral for 11 a.m. Saturday.

As she was heading out the door Friday morning, Mom said, “What are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Good. When I get home from work we'll eat, then get cleaned up and go to the funeral home.”

Dammit! She had feinted with her right, then blindsided me with a thunderous left hook. I staggered; my legs felt like jelly and I could see the lines of black closing in from both sides. Saliva pooled in my mouth. I backed into a corner, my hands covering my face for protection, trying to clear my head and regain my balance. “The funeral home—why?” I knew why, of course, but I was stalling, trying to come up with an excuse not to go. She was crafty like that, casually asking about my plans for the evening as though she had no real interest, allowing me to drop my guard and walk right into the punch.

I heard her coming back through the sunroom and into the kitchen. “What do you mean, ‘Why?' The calling hours for Petey Sanchez are tonight.”

“I don't really want to go.”

“It would be nice if you did.”

“But I don't like funeral homes and I didn't like Petey Sanchez. He gave me a traffic ticket that time when I was six.” I lifted my chin and pointed to the “J” scar. “And he did this to me when I was ten, remember?”

It made her smile. “That was a long time ago. I was not endeared to him, either, but I see his mother every day on the route and she's a sweet lady. I doubt many people will go and I want to make an appearance. It'll mean a lot to her. Besides, his sister is in your class. It will be nice to pay your respects.”

“Yeah, but I never talk to her. I hardly know her.”

“It'll take ten minutes, and I don't want to go alone.”

“But, Mom . . .”

She started for the door. “We'll go right after dinner. Be ready.”

I almost wished she had just surprised me with the plan at dinner, rather than giving me the entire day to let my stomach stew on it. The cat's tail and eyes moved in rhythm. The door clicked shut behind Mom. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. The hollow beating echoed through my head. There was no follow-up story in the morning paper, just the paid obituary.
Peter Eugene Sanchez . . . a loving son . . . Earl and Lila . . . taken from us by the hands of someone unknown . . . preceded in death by his grandparents . . . brothers Earl Jr., Wayne, Johnny, Gary, Bill . . . Sisters Ruth, Wilma, Susan . . . services to be held . . . Interment at New Alexandria Cemetery . . . Rev. Clark A. Loakes presiding.
Tick-tock. I fetched my transistor radio from my top dresser drawer and went out back to clean the garage, my work assignment for the day.

While I was cleaning and stressing alone about the funeral home visit, Pepper was out jogging and stopped by the garage when he saw a plume of dust energized by my push broom billowing like a miniature storm cloud through the bay door opening and into the alley.