Living with the hawk (19 page)

“That's right. Your father wanted the two of you to talk.” She looked from him to me, and back again. Stood up abruptly. “Perhaps, a few minutes alone together would be useful. I'll be just down the hall.”

Neither of us moved until the door had clicked shut behind her. I was watching the closed door when Blake spoke. “You still think I had something to do with it, that I helped kill her. That's what's going on, isn't it?”

I shrugged again.

“You shrug like that one more time, I'm gonna rip your head off.” He paused, waited at least twenty seconds, leaned toward me. “I asked you a question.”

“I . . . don't know . . . what to think.”

“You really think I could do something like that?”

“Maybe . . . I don't know. I saw you piss on — ”

“Okay, I lied, yeah, I did that. But I was drunk, I didn't know her, she was just — ”

“Amber, she was Amber Saunders. She didn't deserve that kind of — ”

“You think I don't know that?” He'd been leaning toward me, his eyes full of anger, but now he slumped backward, seemed to cringe into his chair. His eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Lord, I'm so ashamed of that. It's why I lied to you. Seems like weeks now, I haven't been able to look you in the face. Knowing that you knew. That you might tell Mom and Dad. Hell, I've hardly looked anybody in the face.”

I was furious with him. “I'd never tell them that.” It was true, I realized, and suddenly I knew why. “My God, it would destroy them. I wouldn't believe you could do such a thing. Except I saw you do it.”

His words were barely audible. “And I am so sorry.” His eyes were wet with tears, and mine must have been wet too. He was a blur across the table. Still, I could see that he had more to say. His voice was firmer when he spoke again. “You wouldn't tell Mom and Dad, but you told the police.”

He wasn't being fair.

“Not about Amber. About Anna. She was dead, and someone had to pay. I saw where she fell; I saw the piss in the snow.”

My brother flinched. But then he reached toward me, both hands flying up from underneath the table. The cuff on one hand clanked against the table top as he grabbed my hand, and I suddenly felt sick inside. “I liked Anna!” he said. “I wouldn't — I'd never do a thing like that again. No matter how drunk I was.” He held my hand so tight I thought he might break it. “And I wasn't drunk. The whole night I never had a single beer.” He saw that he hadn't swayed me yet, he'd have to put it into words. “I'd never piss on Anna. You can't believe I'm that kind of scum.”

There was so much intensity in his eyes, so much heat it felt as if the air between us might ignite.

“Come on,” I said at last. “I never called you scum.” It wasn't much, but it was all that I could give him then. After what must have been another minute, both of us glaring at the other, my mouth clenched shut, he released my hand. Although it stung like mad, I wasn't going to rub it.

“Ever since . . . since that football party, you've been looking at me like I was just a piece of shit.” There was an eraser on the table in front of him. He placed one hand upon it and began to rub it back and forth beneath his palm. “A dirty piece of dog shit you'd stepped on by accident. Which is exactly how I felt.”

“I never thought that way.”

“Oh yeah? And something else you've got to understand. I wasn't there. You need to get that through your thick head.”

“I never said you were.”

“What?”

“When I phoned Crime Stoppers. I just couldn't do it. The others, sure — but not you.”

Blake reached for me again, but I pulled my hand away just in time. “You stupid ass,” he said, “that's why they're after me. No bloody wonder. They think I ratted on them.”

“But you went down to the police station — ”

“Yeah, because I thought you turned me in. I had to clear my name. And now — thanks to you — I'm done for.”

I was about to tell him, sorry, no, that's not how it was meant to be, but I heard the door open, footsteps entering the room.

“I hope you two ironed a few things out,” Ms. McKinnel said. She took her seat again, set her briefcase on the table, opened it, and pulled out a pad of foolscap. “We've got some serious work to do here. I need to be sure I've got everything absolutely right about what happened that night. Where you were and when. Everything you saw.” She'd been gazing across the table at my brother, but now she turned to me. “I think it would be best, Blair, if you'd leave us to it.”

When I left the room, my brother still sat with his head down, the eraser sliding back and forth beneath his fingers, the light from overhead glinting on the handcuffs.

“You work things out with Blake?” my father asked.

I started to shrug but caught myself. “We had a talk, yeah.” Didn't we though? And now I knew I should have given the cops his name too, but oh no, I had to spare him, and now the other guys thought he was the one who turned them in. Oh man, what a screw-up.

“I don't know what's come between you,” he said. “Put the two of you in one room, you can hardly breathe the air it's so thick with tension.”

“I guess . . . we haven't . . . been getting along all that well.” My comment was as limp as it sounded.

“You don't know how it tears up your mother — the two of you . . . and now . . . everything else that's happened.”

He couldn't say it. I think he was feeling it even more than my mother. Did he believe that Blake was guilty — no matter what he claimed — was that what was going on?

“You still think he's guilty?” The words seemed wrenched from deep within him. “That's got to be what it is. You really think he had something to do with that girl's death.” When he finally looked at me, his eyes, which so often of late appeared red and tired, were pale as a mirage. I suddenly wished I could hug him.

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

He took three breaths before he spoke. I could hear the inhalations.

“You did, but not now?”

“I . . . don't know.”

Another three inhalations. It was weird, but his breath came out so softly that I never heard him exhale. It was as if he was only breathing in, sucking all the air from the room, sucking it in until finally he'd swell up and explode.

“Why,” he asked, “why would you think he was guilty?”

If I told him what I'd seen that night in Fosters' yard, it would be like ripping out his heart. I shook my head.

“Your mother figured right away it was you who turned him in. But you already know that.”

I knew it, sure, but still I felt a tremor in my stomach. I kept my mouth shut.

“Come on, Blair. Don't treat me like a fool. You're the one who came to me with that cock-and-bull story about advice for your friend at school. Wanting to know the right thing to do.” When he paused, I had to look away. “Why?”

“He was acting different. Something bad had happened, I knew that, something that really bothered him, and he was always with those other guys. Everybody knew what they were like.” It was crazy, I know, it didn't make any sense, but I couldn't tell my parents he'd pissed on Amber even though I'd as good as told them he'd helped kill Anna.

“Your brother swears he's done nothing wrong, but you can't seem to credit that possibility. Because something's come between you.” He slowly shook his head. “Do not judge,” he said, “so that you may not be judged.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Why do you see the speck in your neighbour's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”

“That's the Bible, eh?”

“It is indeed. From the Gospel According to Matthew. You might want to think about it. I suspect it has some application to the present situation with you and your brother.” He smiled at me, or tried to smile, hoping maybe that it would be a help to me in some strange way. He stood up.

I suppose I could be thankful he'd never mentioned Cain and Abel.

As he passed me now on his way toward the door, he dropped his hand to my shoulder, let it linger there a few seconds.

Night time. Pale clouds and a dim moon. The car turns from the road into an open field, its headlights off, follows a trail, stubble and snow everywhere, the stubble like a brush-cut on the head of a man going bald. Traveling too fast on the rough trail, the car bounces once, swerves, almost slides into the field, but the driver cranks the wheel, tires spinning, snow spraying behind, gets it going straight. Drives it through the narrow opening between caragana hedges, their overgrown branches reaching out as if to block the trail. The car bounces again as it hits a shallow snow-filled ditch, begins to sink, the ditch collapsing, growing, snow sucked into the crevice, its sides caving-in, but the driver guns the car, the back wheels catching something solid, and the car lurches over the edge of the crevice, back onto the trail. Slowing down, it continues another thirty yards, brake lights flashing as it rolls to a stop behind another car, a silver Camry. No door opens. The Camry's headlights are extinguished too, but its motor runs, the car a silver shadow on the snow. Voices can be heard from inside. Urgent voices. Twice the taillights flash when a wandering foot strikes the brake. Then quiet, the second car hunched down like an animal waiting to attack. Caraganas behind it, on the other three sides brush, a tangle of black trees, broken limbs, grasses soughing in the wind. High in the trees, a branch is moving too, dropping half a foot, quivering as a huge, dark hawk lands, its eyes glowing red, brighter than Mars.

A door opens on the second car, no sign of an interior light, a leg swung over the frame, one foot descending to the snow, another leg appears, a dark figure rising beside the car. He walks toward the trees. Toward the biggest, thickest tree where a branch sways beneath the heavy bird — it's not a hawk now, but something else — its neck stretched down and naked now, red coals gleaming in its eyes. The figure doesn't see the bird. He stops, slowly turns his head in a half-circle, nods, begins to walk again. A framework lighter than the trees around it, planks nailed together, like the skeleton of a building, a ladder beside it which the figure climbs, mounting steadily toward the swaying rope until he stands beneath it — I recognize him then — the noose falling over his head, and I look away just in time.

I sat up in bed. A gallows — but that was crazy, they didn't hang killers in Canada, not anymore, they didn't. I switched on the light. Breath still shaking in my throat, but here there was no hawk — no vulture either — and my brother, I knew, would never face a noose.

Did he do it? Help the others kill her?

I didn't think so. Had I changed my mind, or was it that I didn't want to think so?

No, there were reasons rushing in — now that it was too late — reasons I should have thought about before, but had somehow pushed aside, overlooked. Was I jealous of Blake — was that what it was? — so mad at him I could hardly think?

For many days he'd worn his shame like that woman with the scarlet letter we'd heard about at school. She'd been knocked up — bore a child out of wedlock, was what the teacher said — and I had thought, yeah, but it took a guy to help her. And what about Blake, was he the kind of guy who'd beat up a drunk so he could screw his girl? Would he think she was just an Indian, it didn't matter what you did with one of them, would anybody ever give a damn?

He'd looked down on one girl, unconscious, shivering on the ground. Could he help to kill another?

But he liked Anna Big Sky, and I didn't think he was a racist. Sometimes he said some stupid things, sure, but I remembered the first week of school, Anna passing in the hall — before I even knew her name — some skinny guy saying, “Snooty Indian broad,” and my brother telling him to stop being such a dork.

If he wasn't a racist, was it possible that he just hated women? Half the guys in school gave girls a rough time, shooting off their mouths and all, but I didn't think Blake was one of them. He'd had a steady girl when he was in grade eleven, Kathy Trimble — she always teased me when he brought her home — but they'd broken up in the summer holidays. Sure, but they were still friends. At the Freshie Dance he'd danced with her two or three times, and I sometimes saw them hanging out together in the halls. Yeah, but what about Amber Saunders? Could anything be worse than what he'd done to her? Lord, the way she must have felt when she figured out what had happened — humiliating. But he'd said he'd never do a thing like that a second time, and I knew he felt humiliated too.