The Guardians (13 page)

    "That
yer fella?" Randy asks after the Domino's kid has left and Tracey returns
to our table. He's decided to use his Irish accent again.

    "Sure
is," she says. "You better watch yourself."

    "No
need to be warned about those pizza-delivery guys. They don't mess about."

    "Gary
played for the Guardians too."

    This
declaration changes things. And it makes Randy drop the dumb accent.

    "What
position?"

    "Right
wing."

    Randy
slaps me on the back. "That's where Trev played! Though that was many
moons ago."

    "So
my dad tells me."

    "Your
Gary, does he have a last name?"

    "Pullinger."

    "Rings
a bell," I say.

    "Bowl-More
Lanes," Randy says, clicking his fingers. "Didn't the Pullingers own
that place?"

    "Gary's
dad. But it burned down about ten years ago."

    "The
Bowl-More burned down?" Randy slams his fist onto the table in real
outrage. "Had many a birthday party there as a youngster. You remember,
Trev?"

    "I
remember."

    Randy
raises his mug. "Here's to Tracey and Gary. May you find love and
happiness."

    "Already
have," she says.

    The
night goes on to gain a comfortable momentum, buoyed by Bushmills and the Leafs
going into the third period with an unlikely two-goal lead over the Red Wings.
They will ultimately lose, of course. But for now, Jake's is a place of hope
and mild excitement and we are part of it.

    I
decide to quit while I'm ahead. I'm feeling pretty good, considering the grim
business of the day—not to mention the strange encounter with the boy, and an
observer I guessed to be Carl (though now, on the firmer ground of Jake's, I
doubt either was who I thought he was). But much more of what's making me feel
this way will only be pressing my luck. I'm tired. From the long day, from
burying a friend, from fighting to keep the Parkinson's hidden from the world.
And tomorrow I have to assume my duties as Ben's executor. A first-class
hangover would make that unpleasant task only doubly so.

    I
head up to the bar to give Tracey my credit card.

    "Wrapping
up?"

    "Just
me," I say. "I wanted to pick up the tab before my friend and I
wrestled over it. Though Randy is usually willing to lose that particular
fight."

    She
swipes my card and taps the terminal with a pen, waiting for the printed
receipt. It gives me a handful of seconds to study her profile up close. No
doubt about it: something of Heather Langham lives in this girl.

    She
looks up at me.

    "Sorry,"
I say. "It's rude to stare."

    "Were
you staring?"

    "Honestly?
I was thinking of someone else. Someone you remind me of."

    "A
girlfriend?"

    "No.
Just a person I looked up to."

    "Are
you flirting with me?" she says.

    "Is
that what this sounds like?"

    "A
little. But then, I don't really know you. And you're—"

    "An
old man. Old as your dad, anyway."

    "So
I don't know how guys like you go about things."

    "Well,
let me tell you. I'm not flirting. I'm confessing. A man who thinks he can see
someone in someone else, but is only dreaming."

    "Memory
lane."

    "That's
it. That's where I live these days." My right hand fidgets at this,
impatient at being still for the length of this exchange. "Trust me, I'm
harmless."

    "Trust
you?"

    "Or
don't. Just know that a fellow doesn't get to meet a true lady too often
anymore."

    She
considers me another moment. Then, out of nowhere, she punches me in the
shoulder. Hard enough that it takes some effort on my part not to let my hand
fly to the point of impact to soothe the hurt.

    "Dad
said you were pretty good. Back in the day." She laughs.

    "Oh
yeah? Good at what?"

    She
laughs some more before ripping the receipt from the machine and sticking her
pen between my trembling fingers.

    Over
the days that followed the night we found Heather Langham in the Thurman house
we repeatedly reminded each other to act normal, a direction that raised
questions in each of our minds as to what our normal might be. However I ended
up resolving this, I considered my act a fairly accomplished performance. It
certainly convinced my parents, classmates and, for stretches as long as a
couple of hours at a time, even me.

    Sarah,
on the other hand, was a more skeptical audience. Right off she noticed something
had changed. I assumed her main concern was that my feelings for her had waned,
in the way Carl's did for the girls he cast aside. With the benefit of honesty,
I assured her that I loved her, that I was aware of how lucky I was to have
her, that nothing had come between us.

    "This
isn't an 'us' thing," she said. "Something's wrong with
you.
"

    I
recall one lunch period when we drove out to Harmony with plans for what Sarah
called, in a singing voice, an "afternoon delight." But to my
astonishment, my normally enthusiastic teenage manhood offered no response to
her attentions in the Buick's folded-down back seat. There were now two secrets
I had to keep: I couldn't tell Sarah about finding Miss Langham, and I couldn't
tell my friends about failing to get it up with a naked Sarah Mulgrave.

    I
don't remember us talking about it, huddled under a blanket of parkas, studying
the patterns of frost our breath made over the windows. The significance of our
skin against skin, dry and cool, was clear enough. Something had turned. And
even though I was the one who knew what she couldn't know, I couldn't say how
this knowledge had found power over us here, in our place, in Harmony.

    "You
guys ready?"

    Her
question, the first words spoken since I rolled onto my back in defeat, so
clearly matched the current of my thoughts I worried I might have been speaking
them aloud.

    "Ready?"

    "The
playoffs. First game's on Friday, right?"

    "Seaforth.
Sure."

    "Seaforth
sucks."

    "Shouldn't
be a problem."

    "I
said hi to the coach today at school. It was strange."

    I
propped myself up on an elbow. "How do you mean?"

    "I
don't know. I'm standing there, and he stops and looks at me like I've grown a
second head or something. Made me feel like a freak."

    "Sounds
like he was the one being freaky."

    "It
was just weird."

    "He's
a weird guy."

    
That's
not true
,
I heard Sarah reply through her silence
.
He's
the most not-weird grown-up we know
.

    I
pulled my pants on. The denim hard and unyielding as wet canvas left to freeze
on the clothesline.

    "We
should get back."

    "Back
to what?" she asked, and we both laughed. What was funny was how only two
days ago we both would have been certain of the answer, and today we weren't
sure.

    I
can't recollect exactly what people said over twenty years ago, even if I
repeat their words into this Dictaphone as though I can. These moments are
memories, and shifty ones at that, so what I'm doing is the sort of half-made-up
scenes we used to watch on those
That's Incredible!
TV specials, shows
that "investigated" the existence of UFOs and the Loch Ness Monster
using dramatizations of witness accounts. It wasn't the truth, but the truth as
someone remembered it, and someone else wrote into a scene. So that's me. A
That's Incredible!
dramatizer.

    One
thing I do remember, however, was Sarah's description of the coach's gaze when
she stopped him to say hello. I may have made up the "grown a second
head" part, but I definitely remember her saying how his look made her
feel like a freak, because it was precisely the same thought I had at practice
after school that day, when the coach entered the dressing room and, in looking
at us, his team, wore an expression of suppressed shock, as though he had
opened the wrong door and been confronted with chattering sasquatches.

    The
moment passed so swiftly I don't think any of the older players noticed. They
weren't looking to see if the few days since Heather Langham's disappearance
had had any effect on the coach. But we were looking. And we believed we saw
something in the way he had to work up an effort to scratch some plays on the
blackboard, remind Chuck Hastings to stay high in the slot on the penalty kill
and praise Carl for the blocked shots he took to the ribs in the season-ender
against Wingham.

    What
was more, the coach seemed to notice our noticing. For the rest of practice I
thought I caught him studying Ben or Carl or Randy or me, watching us in the
same furtive way we watched him.

    And
then there was the coach's asking Ben how he was doing.

    Was
there anything odd in that? We didn't think so either. So when Ben told us that
night, as we tossed twigs onto a small fire we made in the woods behind the Old
Grove, passing a flask of Randy's dad's gin between us, that there was evidence
to be gleaned from the coach's inquiring after him, we shot him down.

    "He
called me son," Ben said. "'Hey there, Ben. How're you doing, son?'
It was fake. Like he was reading a line someone wrote for him."

    "Are
you saying he knows?" I asked.

    "How
would
he know?" Ben answered. "Unless he was watching the place.
Unless he was there."

    "You
think he was in the cellar?"

    "Didn't
it feel like
somebody
was?"

    This
stopped me for a second. It stopped all of us.

    "All
I'm saying," Ben said, "is if you'd done something wrong—something
really, really wrong—and you didn't want that wrong thing to be found out, you
might keep a pretty close eye on the business."

    "Return
to the scene of the crime," Randy said thoughtfully, as though he'd just
coined the phrase.

    "That's
right," Ben said. "And there was no better place to watch over Miss
Langham than down there."

    It was
strange how over the period of less than a week Ben had gone from the dreamiest
of our group to the voice that carried the greatest authority. Our overnight
leader.

    "If
he knows it was us," Carl said, "then he knows we might talk."

    "That
would also follow if he was aware that I saw him from my window."

    "Wait,"
I said. "Now all of a sudden you're
sure
it was him?"

    But
Carl didn't let Ben answer. "He sure looks aware of everything to me. And
if we're right about that, he's not going to want us blabbing."

    "No,"
Ben said.

    "He
might try to stop us."

    "He
might."

    Randy
unzips, pees into the fire. A wet sizzle that sends up smoke, momentarily
enveloping us all in shadow. "The coach wouldn't fuck with us," he
said.

    "He
fucked with Heather," Carl said.

    "We
still don't know that," I said.

    "We
don't?" Ben asked, the flames returning to life as Randy finished his
nervous dribbles. "You saw the coach today. Do you really think somebody
else did that to Miss Langham? Can you honestly say you think he doesn't know
that we know?"