The Banks of Certain Rivers (40 page)

“I told you he’d be home,” she says.

“I know,” I say. “You were right all along.”

“You still have some stuff over here at Al and Kristin’s,
should I bring it all back to your house, or do you need me to wait a
bit?”

“Hold up on that. Let me talk with Chris a little first.”

I head back inside and peek into his room.

“Are you hungry?” I ask.

“More just tired,” he says, still covering his eyes.
“Really, really tired.”

I enter his room and sit on the floor, leaning my back against his
bed.

“Am I going to get in trouble for this, Dad?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “We need to call Mrs.
Mackie to let her know where her boat is. I’ll call her in a
little while.”

“Maybe I should call her. I’m the one who took the boat.”

“How about I’ll call first, tell her what happened, and
you can talk to her after that. Okay?”

“Okay.” Chris doesn’t say anything for a long time.
After a while I hear him sigh.

“Am I in trouble with you?” he asks.

“God, no.” I shake my head. “You’re not in
trouble with me.” I consider this for a moment, this whole
concept of ‘trouble,’ and I let out a laugh. “What
about me? Am I in trouble with you?”

“How could you be?” Chris asks.

“I lied to you,” I say. “Or, okay, I deceived you.
You deserve to be angry. But,” I add, “if I’m in
trouble, I think you punished me enough. Let’s call it even.”
Chris laughs through his nose. I look at him and see his eyes are
still shut. “Lauren has some of my stuff over at Alan’s
house. She was going to bring it over here, but I understand if you—”

“Dad, I don’t care about Lauren. I mean, I told you, I
don’t care if you have a girlfriend, okay? I wasn’t even
that pissed because you lied to me. It was finding you passed out.
That’s why I blew up. I thought I was losing you. I guess I
panicked. That’s why I was mad.”

“Never again, Christopher. I swear.”

“Okay.” A pause. “Lauren’s really pregnant?”

“She really is.”

“Man. Are you going to get married?”

“At some point,” I say. “I’d like to, yes.”

“Okay. That’s fine. You should have told me, you know, a
lot earlier.”

“I know I should have, Chris.” I wait, and open my mouth,
but what I want to say is hard in coming.

“Chris?”

“Yeah?” he murmurs.

“That time….” I lean my head back and look at his
ceiling. “That time in the barn. All of that time. I forgot
about it. I’m not kidding, I made myself forget about it. God,
Chris, never again. I’m ashamed to even think about it now. Did
it really happen? Or is it like that video? Did it really happen like
that in the barn?”

Are we alive because we remember things, or because we can forget?

“You’re my son, Chris,” I go on. “You’re
my son, my family, and I love you.” I turn my head to look at
him. I want him to know I mean it. He knows nothing though; he
breathes deeply with his head turned and his mouth slightly parted,
alive and unknowing in the deepest of sleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

While Christopher rests, I
call Peggy Mackie and
explain what happened. She doesn’t
say anything while I tell the story, just listens, and finally says
“Hm.” I think she understands. She’s dealt with a
lot of teen boys in her career.

“We’ll fly down later this week and bring her back,
Peggy,” I tell her. “Or if you know someone you’d
rather have sailing her home, that’s fine, I’ll pay to
get her back up here.”

“No, it’s okay. I just want you aboard with Chris when
you bring the boat back. No solo trips. And I want Chris to call me
to tell me all this himself.”

“I think he was planning to do that,” I say.

“Did Pete Tran stop by to talk with you?”

“Nope. Never saw him.” It’s not a lie, either; I
don’t mention that I might have been away from my house.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on with this. If you
end up not talking to him, just come to the district office tomorrow.
Seven o’clock.”

“See you then, Peggy. Thanks for being so understanding about
this.”

Lauren, at my insistence
,
comes over to spend the night. She was reluctant when I asked, but I
told her she should. Chris knows, I explained, he understands. He’s
okay with it. So she comes. I go into Christopher’s darkened
room to put a blanket over him before we go to bed, and Lauren stands
in his doorway with me and rubs her hand up and down my back while we
watch him sleep.

Chris stays home from
school on Tuesday. Lauren greets him in the morning and he sheepishly
says hi. I’m working on breakfast while they talk out in the
living room, and I can’t help but listen to them.

“I’m sorry about everything that happened,” I hear
her say.

“Seriously,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.
I’m over it.”

“If you’re angry with me, I understand. But I want us to
talk about it, because, you know, I’m here.”

“I was kind of angry at my dad. But we already talked about it.
I know why he didn’t tell—”

“It wasn’t all him, Chris. I was part of keeping it a
secret too.”

“I understand,” he says. “We talked about it. I’m
not angry anymore. It’s fine. Are you going to move in?”

“I hope so. But I want to ask you if it’s okay. This is
your space too.”

“There’s enough room,” Chris says. “And I’ll
be leaving for to school next fall, so, yeah. It’s no problem.”

“Thank you. I don’t want it to be weird. Any weirder than
it already was. Or is, I guess.”

“So you didn’t really spill anything on yourself the
other day, did you, Ms. Downey?”

“No,” she says. “I didn’t. And I want you to
call me Lauren.”

“It’s kind of strange for me to say.”

“Well, you aren’t going to call me mom or anything like
that instead, I hope.”

Chris laughs. “No, I don’t think so. I’ll stick
with Lauren.”

Pete Tran does not come by at any point during the day.

At six I shower
and
dress; the sport coat I wear, my only sport coat, was last donned a
little less than a year ago for the end-of-season cross-country
awards banquet. I should at least look presentable for whatever I
have coming.

Chris asks if I want him to come, and I reply with an emphatic
No
.
Lauren asks me the same thing, and my answer doesn’t change. I
tell her if I am to be publicly lashed, I’d like to bear the
weight of the experience by myself. She shakes her head, goes to my
room, and returns in a moment in a dress and sweater.

“I am coming with you,” she says. “And that’s
that.”

I’d like to think I’ve become pretty good at handling
these burdens on my own, but, like she says, I guess that’s
that.

We say little on the drive to the district offices. Lauren holds my
hand on the drive, and she holds my hand as we walk into the
building. The boardroom is not as filled with people as I’ve
seen it in the past, but I am surprised to see a number of teen boys
there sitting at in two rows of chairs along with a number of adults
behind whom I assume to be their parents. I’m also surprised to
see Steve and Leland Dinks seated in with them. Leland sees me enter
and nods, and he gives Lauren a warm smile. I’m suddenly very
glad she’s there with me. Cody Tate is seated in the room too,
his nose and eyebrow clear of any scrapes. He sees me enter and
quickly looks away. A stern-looking man sits next to Cody, and next
to the man are two more men in suits. Kent Hughes from the paper is
in the back of the room, tapping away at an iPad on his knees. Pete
Tran, in civilian clothes, is standing by Jo and Frank Masterson.
Their daughter is not with them. Pete steps over to greet me just as
I’m taking a seat.

“Were you looking for me yesterday?” I ask as we shake
hands.

“I was, in fact.”

“To cuff me?”

Pete screws up his face. “Why would you think that? We got a
little break. You can tell your friend his theory was close, but not
quite there.”

“My friend? What friend?”

“The pilot. The guy with the miniature golf course.”

“Alan,” Lauren says.

“
Alan
called you?”

“More than once. I had a feeling this was all crap, but he knew
it from the beginning. When he told me how the blood was on the kid’s
face, that’s when I really understood it was bogus.” He
nods over to the boys. “These guys are going to explain it. Oh,
and those emails….”

“Yes?”

Pete draws a notepad from his packet and flips to a page. “Did
you ever know someone named…Victor Tesh? Former student,
maybe, or someone you knew in Lansing?” I shake my head; I’ve
never heard the name before.

“Or what about the Marshall Place Apartments in East Lansing?”

This is a surprise. I haven’t heard that name in a long time.
“That was…I lived there. With my wife. Well, girlfriend,
then. My last year in college.”

“The guys downstate are on it. I’ll keep you posted.”

Peggy Mackie enters the room and nods hello when she sees me, and
Pete excuses himself to go talk with her. A short man with a mustache
scoots over to introduce himself after Pete is gone.

“Mr. Kaz…Ka…” he tries.

“Kazenzakis,” I say.

“I’m Gary Burke from the teacher’s union.”

“I got your call,” I lie.

“Great, great. Listen, I’m here to—”

The official-types start to enter the room and Gary Burke falls
silent along with all the other small conversations that had been
mumbling through the space. Stu Lepinski comes through the door with
an accordion file under his arm followed by a couple board members I
don’t really know; Gracie Adams files in last and they all take
seats behind microphones set up at the table at the front of the
room. A screen, glowing a washed-out blue from the light of a
ceiling-mounted projector, has been pulled down behind the table.
Next to me, Lauren leans close and rests her hand on my forearm.
Peggy closes the doors to the room, and Gracie clears her throat into
her microphone.

“I’d like to get going here,” she says. Gracie’s
face wears a sour expression, and I get the distinct feeling she’s
avoiding looking at me. “Peggy?” At the mention of her
name, the boys all stare into their laps, as if in church.

“So we’re here to talk about this business with Mr. K.,”
Peggy says. “I guess to start, we need to see how this thing
was made. Who is going to show us? Why don’t you go over to
that table, I think you’re all ready. It should be all set up
for you.” Two boys rise from their seats, along with their
parents, and shuffle to a laptop set up at the side of the room.
Peggy flips out the lights, and the hanging screen is bright with the
projection of a computer desktop. Even though the room is dim, I can
almost feel how the boy seated at the laptop is shaking.

“So, um,” he starts, “we kind of—”

“Can you speak up, please?” Gracie says. “Into the
microphone.”

“Yeah, um, there was this video, the original video, there were
actually two of them.”

“Would you show us the videos?” Peggy asks.

“Yeah, sure.” The boy clicks away on the laptop, and on
the projection screen the student parking lot of Port Manitou High
appears. I am in the distance, frozen mid-stride. The boy clicks
again, and I begin running, growing larger in the screen.

“Hey!” I shout.
Hey!

I stand in the frame, talking. It’s hard to understand what I’m
saying. The audio is muffled, scratchy with the sound of the windy
day, and my hands are held out. I turn around and speak. At the
bottom of the frame is a flicker of white, Cody Tate’s shirt,
and the camera aims down to show him sprawled over the ground. I
reach to pull the boy up, and, with my hands on his shoulders, I
speak again. A boy’s voice fills the room, loudly over the
speakers:

“Tater’s a pussy, that’s what.”

Laughter rings through the clip, and Cody Tate begins to swing his
arms. My head snaps back as his elbow collides with my face and I
fall, careening back and out of the shot gone suddenly mad with a
view of shaking pavement and running feet.

“Holy shit, holy shit, dude!”

“Oh, holy shit, is he getting up?”

“Cody, you hit that fucking teacher, dude. You laid him out.”

“Yeah.”

“You got your ass handed to you first though. Gretch kind of
kicked your ass.”

“No way, dude. I had to like, fight him off me.”

I had to like, fight him off me.

When the video is complete, the kid at the laptop clicks and starts a
second one. It’s the same, almost the same, shot from a
different angle. The high school gym can be seen in the background.
It begins at nearly the same time as the first, with me running, but
it ends sooner, the moment I fall to the ground.

“So,” Peggy asks in the dark room, “that was how it
really happened?”

There’s a reply, but I can’t hear it.

“Excuse me?” Peggy says.

“I said yes, ma’am.”

“All right. Now, how did you make the version that showed up on
the Internet?”

The kid at the laptop gets up to trade places with the second boy.

“Well, Mrs. Mackie, we did some editing—”

“Obviously,” Peggy says, and a couple of the parents
chuckle. I do not chuckle. I notice in the dimness that Lauren’s
mouth is slightly agape, and realize for the first time how tightly
she’s gripping my arm.

“Yeah, so, we did some editing, and it was like, we took the
video of the guy, I mean the teacher, running toward us, this
part”—he clicks the laptop and I am running toward the
camera again—“we stopped it right…here. See how he
has both of his hands up? If you play through that all the way, you
see he’s just waving for us to like, cut it out. But we stopped
it before that. He’s also at the edge of the frame, so you
could think that Cody was standing just out of the shot.”