Relief Map (24 page)

“We have your guy!” Jocelyn called to them.

“You don't!” Dominic yelled. “You're wrong!”

One of the policemen spoke into the radio on his shoulder. “Don't come any closer!” shouted the other.

“Here he is!” Ron said, pushing Mark forward. Mark stumbled a few feet and turned his head slowly this way and that, squinting at Ron, taking a long stiff-shouldered
look at the police by the van. “Go on,” Ron said, shoving him again.

The crowd was growing. People were coming out of the houses on Forgeman's Row, drawn by the noise through open windows, and clumping together with the members of Ron's search party. Thirty or forty people now stood in the road, craning their necks. Ron gave Mark one more push and the boy started to walk toward the barricade, head down, trailing untied laces. The shouting started again from the cops, the raised hands. “Stop right there!”

Mark's eyes were half-closed. He was still high on muscle relaxers, and he walked as if a string connected to his navel were pulling him forward, tilted at the hips with his arms and legs loose, squinting in the sun that cut at a low angle down the road. Dominic went after him, adding his rumbling voice to the chorus of yells. “Mark, stop! Stop!” he said, out in front now and alone, reaching after him. Mark stopped without looking back, sat down on the ground and crossed his legs slowly, laboriously, moving his knees with his hands. The back of his white shirt was soaked through with sweat. He bowed his head. Dominic reached him and tugged on his arms.

“Dominic, come back here right
now
,” Lena shouted. Nelson made a move to go after him, but Livy grabbed his arm: the policemen had both unholstered their guns.
More vans appeared from the highway, taking the left onto Prospect Road too hard.

Ron waved his hands at Mark's back. “Go
on
, I said!” He looked back at the crowd, appealing to them, showing them his palms. “Get him out of here!” he shouted. His voice was so hoarse it had no pitch. “Get it over with!” he cried.

Dominic had gotten Mark to his feet and was walking him back toward the crowd, holding him up, the skinny boy sagging against his broad chest. “Don't bring him back here!” Ron yelled, his voice cracking as it went higher. He was holding a pistol. He lifted it—it shone briefly. He stepped toward Mark, seizing his arm.

There were panicked shouts and then a pop that perforated the air. Ron stopped percussively, one knee lifted, his chin abruptly pressing toward his chest, and then he was a heap on the ground and blood was everywhere. There was a sigh from the crowd, a terrible sound Livy had never heard before, the air draining from so many lungs. The policemen toppled the sawhorses and ran toward them, one shouting into his radio, the other with his gun still drawn. A wave of people pushed forward, toward Ron where he lay on the ground, and at the same time another wave pushed backward, as half the crowd began to flee toward the bridge. It was at that moment that another bang, like a gun but not quite like a gun,
sounded from up the road. A couple of silver canisters ricocheted off the retaining wall that held back the hill and skittered across the asphalt. Livy turned in confusion to Nelson. She had a moment to notice the panic on his face before a cloud of tear gas hit her.

She was momentarily blinded and suffocated. She tried to run, her knees banging together, her eyes squeezed shut. “Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!” she shrieked. She forced her eyes open and saw the wheeling dark hill and the white glare of the sky and then closed them again. She dropped to her hands and knees, coughing, and someone collided with her, fell over her back and lay beside her retching. She put out a hand and found an elbow.

“Dom?” she said.

Someone was shouting, “Fuck.” There were running feet. She turned toward the roadblock and opened her eyes: red and blue lights. The elbow pulled away. It was Dominic, she could hear him muttering to himself.

“We gotta get up,” she said.

Nelson was on the other side of her. She got to her feet, tears running down her cheeks. Her vision was pale and mottled, as if haphazardly bleached. Policemen were dragging the roadblock aside, and more were pouring out of a van just coming to a stop. Dominic pushed himself up and ran. Livy and Nelson went after him, back
the way they had come. At the intersection of White Horse and Prospect Livy spun to look back, tripped over her own feet, and toppled backward, hitting her head.

There was a warm darkness. When she opened her eyes Nelson was crouched over her, his glasses missing. The police were a hum in the air, a change in color. She knew they were everywhere but could not keep her eyes open to see them. Someone was chanting—many people were chanting—voices shouting “On the ground” over and over, with an interspersed chorus of weird sputtering and wailing and cursing that seemed to respond but not connect, as if she were hearing the soundtracks to two movies playing over each other. She pushed herself up on one elbow and put her head on Nelson's leg. She could hear a woman sobbing nearby. “Who's crying?” she said.

“Ron's wife,” he said. He kneaded her arm with his fingers.

“They shot him,” she said, unnecessarily. “Can you see?”

“Not really.”

Her own eyes were shut. It hurt less that way. She felt the collar of his T-shirt with one hand and then put her face against it. The burning in her eyes made it hard for her to control her balance. Ron Cash's wife was crying and cursing.

“What's happening?” Livy said.

“They're arresting everybody.”

She lifted her face away from his shirt and narrowed her eyes at the road. There were streaks in her vision. It was like old glass and the sunlight burned and burned. She saw Dominic sitting against the bridge wall and little Lena Spellar with her arms around him, balanced on the balls of her feet.

“Where's Mark?” she said.

“I don't know,” Nelson said. He sounded sad.

She closed her eyes and counted to ten and then opened them again, wiping tears and mucus off her face. There was Jocelyn, in her red shirt, with a policeman in a navy blue uniform pulling both her hands behind her back. Jocelyn was shaking her head like an animal, her hair sweeping her shoulders. There was a burned smell everywhere. Livy thought of running, but she could barely stand and there was nowhere for the two of them to go.

She was seized by the wrists and pulled upward. She smelled sweat and floral deodorant; cuffs clicked on her wrists. “Get down,” said a woman's voice. Livy's knees were pushed out from under her and she was down again, her cheek pressed against the road. Knuckly hands pressed all over her body, into her armpits, under her stomach, high up between her legs.

“She's clean,” said a woman.

Nelson caught his breath beside her. A policeman was pressing his foot down between Nelson's shoulder blades, leaning on him, while the woman patted him down. Livy went rigid. The scab on her cheek had torn open and there was blood in her mouth. The policeman stepped away from Nelson and crouched in front of her.

“What happened to your face?” he said.

She looked at Nelson and then understood that this was the wrong thing to do. “Nothing,” she said. She had to lift her head to speak clearly. “I fell.”

“You fell? On your face?”

The man had a chip in one of his front teeth. She stared at it.

“Is that what happened to your arms, too?” he said.

She couldn't see them but she could feel the raw places. There was the wide scrape along her forearm, and the earlier scratches too, from running through the woods when they came back from the pharmacy. “I fell out of a tree,” she said. Saliva ran over her lip. She couldn't wipe her mouth.

“Is that right? You climb trees?”

“Yes sir.”

“Fucked yourself up pretty bad.”

“Yes sir.” Something more was needed. He was staring at her, his blond eyebrows beetling. “It was stupid,” she said.

He leaned down close to Nelson. “Are you a friend of hers?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Is that what happened to her? She fell out of a tree?”

“Yes.”

“She's clumsy like that? She climbs trees, gets banged up?”

“Yes, sir, she does that a lot.”

“She seems a little old to be climbing trees.”

Nelson breathed deeply once or twice. He was trying to collect himself. “You're never too old,” he said.

The policeman raised his eyebrows. “You're full of shit,” he said, but then he laughed.

“Call an ambulance, ambulance, ambulance, ambulance,” cried Ron Cash's wife. Her voice seemed to come to them through the trees. It was the worst kind of scream: an adult scream that whipsawed like a child's. Livy wanted to move across the six inches of gravel that separated her from Nelson.

She saw Jocelyn's shoes and lifted her head. Jocelyn's hair hung over her face. The cop holding her shoulder told her to sit and she hesitated, and then bent at the knees and sat. The three officers stepped to one side and conferred. Jocelyn lifted her head and looked at Livy. Her eyes were bloodshot and her mouth was tightly closed. It was so hot, even in the shadows of the trees,
and the sound of the creek at the bottom of the hill made Livy thirsty.

“Did you see Mark?” Livy said.

“Who's Mark?” Jocelyn said.

“The kid.” Livy shook her head in frustration. “The one you took to the cops.”

“You all were hiding him,” Jocelyn said. “You stupid whore.”

Livy's mouth dropped open. “He's not the one they were looking for.” Jocelyn had known her since she was a child. She'd stopped her from crossing the road once when a car was coming.

“You were hiding him!” Jocelyn said. Her face was hollow, her hair sticking to her cheeks.

“Shut up, both of you,” said the female officer.

“We didn't want to hurt anybody,” Livy said. She started to cry. She pressed her face into the gravel. Shelly Cash had gone quiet. There were sirens in the distance, on the highway, coming closer.

“Why did you do it?” Jocelyn said. “Why did you do it?”

“She didn't do it, you bitch!” Nelson said. “You're
confuse
d
!”

“If you all don't shut the fuck up I'm putting you in the van now,” said the policewoman. She spoke into her shoulder. “Carter, how long are we going to wait on that second van?”

Jocelyn was crying. “I want to see my son. I haven't done anything,” she said.

A van rumbled around the corner, and then another. Livy was pulled to her feet and her knees failed to lock under her; she felt like she was on skates. Doors slid open. A catbird was screaming close by. She closed her eyes, trying to take the edge off the burning, and when she opened them again she saw several policemen with managerial expressions, hands stretched out in her direction.

They put her in the van with Jocelyn and stone-faced Lena and the grieving Shelly Cash, whose sobbing was hypnotic, a weighted spiral that lifted and dropped. With her eyes closed Livy felt only half-conscious. She was locked in a small space with a handful of pained women and she would never see Nelson again and her parents would never find her. She would live here; it was her world. Ron
Cash was everywhere, a shadow on shadows.

5

They were taken to the police station in Maronne. Halfway there the van stopped at a light and Livy pressed her forehead against the wire over the window and looked out. She could see a hatchback waiting patiently beside them at the light, a toddler in a baby seat in the back.

They pulled into the lot behind the police station, bumping a little over the curb. Later Livy remembered this interval as if there had been cotton stuffed in her ears; the bright afternoon was muted. The driver of the van got out and walked around to open the rear door, all business now, not really looking at their faces as he flooded them with light. Livy was stiff and her eyes still burned, but it was bearable now.

The police station was cool, bluish, and bright, like an aquarium. It felt like a long time since she'd been
under electric lights. The handful of police at the desks scattered around the room looked up when the little group came in. Shelly Cash had stopped wailing; Livy looked at her and saw that tears were dripping from her chin. It was a mistake to look at this woman, Livy decided. It made her stomach heave. She kept her eyes ahead.

They were led down a narrow tiled hallway. The cop removed their handcuffs and waved them into a holding cell. Livy drifted as far as the back wall and then stopped to turn and look back, like a lap swimmer. It was only then that she noticed Shelly Cash was gone.

Livy sat in the cell with Lena and Jocelyn for hours. From her bench against the wall she could see the narrow gray-and-white hallway and two and a half of the panel lights that lit it. In the distance, she heard shouting and doors clanging open and shut. She and Lena and Jocelyn did not speak or look at each other for a long time. She supposed the two women were thinking of their sons.

Whenever Livy closed her eyes she saw Ron Cash, the laundry-bag heft and shape of him on the ground. She wanted her parents now; their disappointment in her no longer seemed important. She was afraid for them. She hoped they had burned everything, buried the ash. As the time passed her hopes were phrased
more and more like prayers.
Please, please, let them be waiting at home
. And every time she closed her eyes: Ron Cash.