The Banks of Certain Rivers (24 page)

Highest priority is making sure you
get to stay there.

I love you, Wen. Please please please
don’t worry about this.

-N

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

My landline rings again, and
this time the
name on the ID is not a prank: Kent Hughes, the
reporter assigned to covering the school district by our local
newspaper, the Manitou Bugle, is calling me. The Bugle does okay,
mostly, though I have a theory that declining revenue from classified
ads has pushed it into tabloid journalism over the past few years.
Most people I know in town refer to the paper as “The Manitou
Bungle.”

If ever there was a tabloid story for our local rag to feast on, mine
is it.

“Kent,” I say plainly when I pick up. “I have no
idea why you’re calling.” I’ve known Kent Hughes
for a long time; he covers high school sports as part of his beat.

“Neil—”

“Wait! I know why you’re calling. We are indeed going to
win the state cross country championship this year. Only the Port
Manitou girls’ squad, though. Boys will come in seventh or
eighth.”

“Are you okay?”

“What do you want, Hughes?”

“This video.”

“No comment.”

“You’re in it.”

“No comment.”

“Did you do that?”

I savor a pause, and repeat: “No comment.”

“Okay, off the record. What the fuck, Neil?”

“Exactly.”

“It doesn’t look good. And it doesn’t look
like…well, it doesn’t seem like the Coach Kaz I’ve
known for a while.”

“Why don’t you say so in the paper?”

“That wouldn’t be very objective reporting.”

I snort at this. “Like the Bungle has ever worried about that
before? All right, make it an editorial then.”

“Seriously,” Kent says, “can you give me anything?”

“No, I can’t. I will not comment on any of it. That’s
your quote. Well, wait, I do have one thing.”

“Really?”

“Jennings and Vandekemp are going to deliver an awesome one-two
punch at state.”

“You are messed up, Kaz.”

The conversation with Hughes makes me feel somewhat better, until it
hits me that the story will run in tomorrow’s paper, and that
the attention I receive from it will probably be awful. But if I
really didn’t do anything to that kid, and the video is fake, I
shouldn’t have anything to worry about, right?

BALLS, INC. rings in again on my home phone, and I do not answer. I’m
turning down the volume on the answering machine just as Chris comes
in through the front door, and the sound of the latch makes me jump.
I didn’t even hear his car in the drive. He drops his backpack
and gym bag with a
whump
in the entryway before joining me in
the kitchen where he starts to make a peanut butter, jelly and banana
sandwich. On the stove, the lid on our big pot rattles over rapidly
boiling water.

“Hey, Dad,” he says with complete nonchalance as he
rummages through our pantry.

“Hey?”

“Rough day, huh?”

“You could say that.”

My son shakes his head. “That video is so bogus. Don’t
even worry about it. It’s total crap. We were watching it in
history.”

“Well, I am kind of worrying about it now, to tell you the
truth.”

“Dad, it’s so fake!”

“There are some people who aren’t so sure, Chris.”

“It was weak that they sent you home. Boys’ and girls’
cross country were talking about doing a sit-in in the halls
tomorrow—”

“No, no, no,” I say, grabbing his arm and turning him so
he’s facing me. “No way. Absolutely not. You have to tell
them they can’t.”

“Why not? It’s bogus what they did.”

“A disruption at school is not going to make
anything
easier for me, okay?”

“I can’t tell them what to do.”

“If it happens, you’re not joining in.”

“Why not?”

“Seriously? Chris? I am most likely going to be fired, okay?
This looks really bad. I’m the one who has to prove it didn’t
happen, not the other way around.”

“You’re not going to get fired. No way.”

“Christopher.”

“All right, Dad, how about this then. I was watching it with
Greg and Sparks, and they were trying to figure out who posted it by
looking at some stuff on the YouTube account. Greg thinks he knows
who put it up.”

“Who was it?”

“I can’t remember the kid’s name. Let me text
Sparks—”

“Hold up,” I say. “Will you promise me something?”

“Sure. Anything. What’s up?”

“If you guys find anything out…wait, let me say
something first. Greg is really good with computers, right?”
Chris nods. “If you guys want to look into it, great. But I
don’t want you or Greg or Sparks doing anything shady or
illegal, okay? No hacking.”

“You’d call it cracking in this case, Dad.”

I roll my eyes. “Whatever you call it, don’t do anything
sketchy. If you find something out, let Mrs. Mackie know about it.
Have Sparks or Greg tell him, not you. I don’t want it to look
like you’re getting too involved with it. Because if I get
sued, my position could be weakened by—”

“Why would you get sued?”

“Chris?” I look at him, and suddenly it’s apparent
to me that he might not realize the seriousness of the situation at
all. “Okay, if you look at the video, it looks like an
unprovoked assault. By me, an adult in a position of trust, on a
minor child. That’s a pretty big deal.”

Chris stares at me, furrowing his eyebrows as he processes what I’ve
just told him. The doorbell rings, and it startles both of us. Chris
looks out the window, and what he reports makes my skin go cold.

“Two police cars, Dad.”

“Oh,” I say weakly. “Oh, jeez.” I go to the
door, and waiting there is Peter Tran, a former student of mine now
all grown up and in a uniform, along with another cop I recognize
from seeing around the school in the Just-Say-No-to-Drugs-mobile.

“Officer Pete,” I say, and I nod hello to the other one.
“Come on in, guys.”

“Hello, Mr. K.” Peter says. “Hey, Chris!” My
son is peeking out from the kitchen, seemingly transformed back into
a little boy by the presence of uniformed authority in our home. I
offer the cops a seat in my living room and try not to shake as they
remain standing; it has dawned on me that there’s a possibility
I could be leaving my house in cuffs.

“This is Rick Coombs, our school resource officer—”

“I’ve seen you on campus,” I say, and Officer
Coombs smiles stiffly beneath his mustache and nods. He’s
holding a pen and notepad, and in the leather pouch on his belt on
the side opposite his holster I can see a shiny pair of handcuffs.

“I’m guessing you know why we’re here,” Pete
says.

“Probably not to investigate all these prank phone calls I’m
getting lately,” I say. They glance at each other, expressions
unchanging, and I wonder, for a moment, what Chris would do if they
take me with them. He’d be fine here alone, I know, but would
these guys be okay with that? Maybe I could send him over to Alan and
Kristin’s house, with a message for Al to come bail me out.

Pete clears his throat. “Can you tell us what happened last
Friday?”

I recite the story, as best I remember it, from practice that
afternoon to my ride home. Rick Coombs takes notes while I speak. I
tell them how I didn’t recognize any of the kids, how they
seemed nervous about being in trouble, how they all seemed to vanish
after I got hit.

“I was a mess,” I say, angling my face up to the light
and pointing to my lip. “There was blood all over my shirt. I
can show you the shirt if you want.”

“Maybe later,” Pete says. “Why didn’t you
report the fight to anyone?”

I think about this. “At the time it seemed pretty
insignificant.”

“Getting hit in the face was insignificant?”

“I mean, I guess I would have said something about it. But I
had some other things come up this week.”

“What’s your history with Cody Tate?”

“I’d never interacted with him until I broke up that
fight, and I didn’t even know it was him until I was told this
morning,” I say, and Pete Tran and the other cop look at each
other. “I’d never heard his name until a few days ago.”

Pete leans toward the kitchen, where Christopher, I’m sure, has
been hanging on every word of this exchange. “Chris? Hey bud,
can you give us some privacy for a few minutes while we talk with
your dad?” Chris scurries off down the hall, and I hear his
bedroom door click shut.

Rick Coombs clears his throat. “There are some photos going
around,” he says, “allegedly of—”

“Denise Masterson,” I say. “I know her family. My
wife and the mom were close. The kid was a student of mine.”

“Have you seen them?” Coombs asks.

“No. My son told me someone offered to show them to one of his
friends, but the friend declined.” As Coombs scratches out a
note I quickly add: “I reported that to Peggy Mackie, by the
way.”

He nods as he stares down at the pad. “When did you first learn
about them?”

“The pictures? It was the beginning of the week.” I tell
them about my history with the family, and how Peggy had suggested I
help as a liaison with them if necessary. “That was all on
Monday.”

“Not last week?” Pete asks.

“No. It was Monday of this week. I’m pretty sure.”
I almost add: “If I can be sure about anything,” but I
decide that it’s probably not a very smart thing to say.

Pete cocks his head, looking like he’s searching for just the
right words. “Mr. K., would you say you’re pretty worked
up about these photos?”

“I haven’t even seen them, so I couldn’t really
form any opinion other than feeling pretty bad for her parents. And
for her. More like disbelief when I first learned about it, because I
know Denise well and it didn’t really seem like something she
would do. Then when Chris gave me a hint about what they were of, I
felt awful. But that was only yesterday.”

“Okay,” Pete says. “That should do it for now.
Rick, you got anything more you need to ask?” Rick Coombs
shakes his head. “We’ll be in touch if we need to speak
to you again.”

“Again? You mean…you’re done? Nothing else? Right
now, I mean.”

“No, we’re all set,” Pete says. “Thanks for
your time.”

“Do you have any questions for us?” Rick Coombs asks,
flipping his notepad closed.

“I do, actually,” I say. “Does that video seem real
to you guys?”

The two of them glance at each other, and Pete Tran hands me his
card. “We need to talk to a few more people,” he says.
“If you think of anything else you may have forgotten to tell
us, give me a call, okay?”

I follow them to the door, and watch them through the screen as they
return to their cars and drive away through the rain. Chris slinks
back to the living room, and I when I join him we both collapse next
to each other on the couch.

“You look a little pale, Dad.”

I let out a small laugh. Our boiling pot still clatters in the
kitchen. “To be honest,” I say weakly, “so do you.”

While Christopher gets started
on making pasta, I force myself to go to the spare room and check my
email. Sure enough, in my personal account, there’s an email
from a Barton Garvey, Esquire; the subject reads: VIDEO. Kathleen
brought him up to speed, he writes, he works out of Grand Rapids and
would be happy to help me out. When I see at the bottom of the
message how much he would charge by the hour—even with a
discount for being Kathleen’s brother—to help me out, I
close the message without responding. A quick mental calculation
tells me that roughly two days of my work equal one hour of his.

Maybe I’ll write him back later.

More messages are in my school account, and I’m filled with the
unpleasant feeling that maybe this flood of electronic abuse is
something directed at me specifically rather than the district as a
whole. I delete the obviously bad messages, the unknown and random
senders, and am left with only a few legitimate-looking ones. One
subject says: PHYSICS QUESTION, and I open it. The body of the
message says DOES IT SINK, DO YOU THINK NEIL? And when I scroll
down….

There’s a photograph of a log floating in a swimming pool.

I stare at the picture for a long time. This cannot be meaningful. It
cannot represent what I think it represents. It cannot.

I will not allow myself to believe this has any sort of meaning.

A little shaken, I delete the message, close the laptop, and tell
Chris I’m going to see Alan and I’ll be back in a bit.
There’s an assortment of jackets in our front hall closet and I
pull one out at random, realizing, when I’m a few steps out the
door in the rain, that it must belong to my son because the sleeves
hang past my hands. It will be fine. I flip the hood over my head and
my ears fill with the sound of raindrops slapping on nylon.

No one answers when I knock at Alan’s door. I let myself in and
call his name, and he greets me with a shout from his study:

“Come on in, Neil! I’m back here!”

The room is dark when I enter except for the glow of computer
monitors; Alan is flying his make-believe plane in some perfectly
rendered make-believe world. He’s wearing headphones too, and
he holds up his hand to me when I try to talk.

“Less than two minutes, Neil. I’m on final into
Heathrow.” He turns the steering yoke with small motions and
punches buttons on his keyboard, muttering pilot jargon the entire
time.

“Flaps at thirty…gear down and locked…little hot,
little hot coming in here…there we go.” The imaginary
plane touches down with a very real-sounding squeal of tires, and a
smile spreads across Al’s face.

“How about that? Greased her right in.”

“Hey, something’s up, Al. I have something going on.”

“Hang on, I need to taxi to the gate.”

“For fuck’s sake,” I groan, throwing up my hands.
“I’ll come back later.”