The Paperboy (24 page)

“He doesn’t want to be connected to this in any way,” Yardley Acheman said. “He doesn’t want to talk to anyone else about it.” He glanced quickly at Charlotte, who was still facing the window, and then at my brother. “You can’t blame him for that,” he said.

“Who is he?” Ward said.

Yardley scratched his chest. “This is the hard part,” he
said. “The only way the guy would talk to me, I had to promise to keep him completely anonymous.”

Ward nodded. “What’s his name?” he said.

“It’s
completely
anonymous,” Yardley said. “I had to give him my word. He’s in a position to get some work with the state.…”

“But who is he?”

Yardley Acheman shook his head. “You’re not listening,” he said. “I had to make a promise to get him to talk to me, and I can’t break it. There’s a principle here.…”

Ward looked at him a long time. I do not know if he believed him or not.

“It was the only way it could be done,” Yardley said. “I can only tell you he exists, and he recognized the picture.”

“How did you find him?” Ward said.

“The hard way,” he said. “We went through the county records.”

Ward thought it over.

Yardley Acheman shrugged. “It’s a matter of trust,” he said. “I can’t violate that.”

Charlotte turned suddenly away from the window and walked, without a word, out of the office and down the stairs, as if she had just realized she didn’t belong in the room.

I
T WAS NECESSARY
to see Hillary Van Wetter again before a story could be written. Charlotte and Yardley Acheman, for reasons that were not clearly drawn, were no longer speaking to each other, and she sat next to me in the car on the drive to the prison, with Yardley and my brother in back. She wore a blue dress and did not seem as concerned with her appearance as she had on the earlier visits. She looked
in the mirror only once, after we had stopped in the parking lot.

What had happened in Daytona Beach had taken the excitement out of things for her, I think, and she was left with a situation which, while of her own making, bore no resemblance to the one she had envisioned.

H
ILLARY VAN WETTER WAS
led into the interview room in leg irons and handcuffs and pushed down into his chair. The bruises under his eyes had faded since the last visit.

The instructions were familiar now, mindless and repetitive. The smell of the place, the way words sounded in this room—it was all the same. Charlotte crossed her legs, showing some thigh, and lit a cigarette. And in some way that was the same now too. Hillary studied her a moment and then looked directly at Yardley Acheman.

He knew.

She smiled at him, unsure of herself.

“Don’t you look nice,” he said, sounding too polite, as if he were talking to tourists.

“Thank you,” she said, and crossed her legs the other way. She felt his eyes and tried to hide from them. Every move she made to hide herself seemed to please him more.

“We found the man in Ormond Beach,” Yardley Acheman said, and Hillary turned to him, nodding as if he were interested.

“The one who bought the sod,” he said.

“That’s good news,” Hillary said, smiles all around.

“He made a note of the day and the amount he paid,” Yardley said. “He remembered you from your picture.”

Hillary looked back at Charlotte, and from her to Yardley Acheman.

“That’s good,” he said again, without looking at Ward, and then he moved his gaze to Charlotte. “These newspaper boys done me a big favor, wouldn’t you say?” She nodded back, trying to diagnose the nature of the change that had come over him.

“It isn’t done yet,” Ward said.

“They’re going to let me loose now,” he said.

Charlotte had begun to nod again when my brother said, “We don’t decide that.”

For a moment the smile disappeared from Hillary’s face, but he was acting. “I know that,” he said, and then the smile reappeared, narrower than it had been before. He looked right at Charlotte and spoke to my brother. “I know your limitations,” he said, and she blushed.

“Open your mouth a little bit,” he said to her.

She looked at the rest of us, then back at him. She shook her head no. “That’s private,” she said, almost whispering.

My brother said, “There’s one thing we need.”

“What thing is that?” Still looking at her.

Ward didn’t answer at first, and Hillary said, “What is it?” sounding suddenly angry. Never taking his eyes off her.

“To speak with your uncle again,” Ward said.

Hillary turned slowly back to my brother. “I expect that’s up to him,” he said.

“It could help if you give us a letter to take to him,” my brother said.

“A letter,” he said.

“A note, something to tell him to trust us.”

On that word, Hillary turned and stared at Yardley Acheman. “What do you think about that?” he said. “You think I ought to tell my uncle to trust you?”

Yardley Acheman didn’t move. The smile spread across Hillary Van Wetter’s face again. His teeth were yellow, the whole place smelled of disinfectant. A long ways off a man
yelled, and the sound was hollow as it echoed down the halls. A light shone through the small window in the door and particles of dust hung in the air.

I stood up, wanting to move, and walked from one side of the room to the other, passing within a foot or two of Hillary’s chair. He smelled like disinfectant too. The door opened and the guard leaned in with his head.

“No contact with the prisoner,” he said. “Do not pass on any materials, written or otherwise.”

“Mr. Van Wetter is going to need a pen and paper,” my brother said.

“You’ll have to see the warden,” the guard said and closed the door.

When he was gone Hillary said, “The truth is, Tyree ain’t much of a reader anyway.”

My brother looked at him, becoming impatient. “He’d recognize your handwriting.”

Hillary thought it over. “Numbers,” he said. “He can read numbers.”

“Is there something we can tell him,” Ward said, “he’d know it came from you?”

Hillary shook his head as if he didn’t understand.

“A story, something that happened, so he’d know you want him to talk to us.”

“A story that happened,” Hillary thought, and he stroked his chin. The chain holding his wrists rattled once against the handcuffs and then was quiet. “There was a girl,” he said, “something happened to her.” He waited, but that seemed to be as much about it as he wanted to say.

“What girl?” my brother said.

“Lawrence’s wife,” he said. “A girl from out of the family, he’ll remember her.”

“Lawrence,” my brother said, and Hillary nodded.

“What happened to her?”

Another pause. “Went away,” he said. He stared at his legs, studying the irons attached to his ankles.

Ward looked toward the door. “They can’t hear what you tell us,” he said.

“Sometimes you don’t have to hear a certain thing to know it.”

“Prisoners talk to their attorneys in here.…”

“Attorneys,” Hillary said, and as I watched, his mood turned dark, or perhaps was only revealed. “It comes right down to it, they can’t do nothing more than paperboys. Come right down to it, the only ones can do something in here is the man, and he can do whatever his whimsy is. They ain’t nothing to stop him.”

In the corner, Yardley Acheman closed his eyes and dropped his head into his hands, as if he’d had as much of this as he could stand. Charlotte lit another cigarette and leaned toward Hillary, her elbow resting on her knee. He could see some of her chest.

“Look at it this way,” Yardley Acheman said, “what do you have to lose?”

Hillary turned slowly to the corner where Yardley was sitting.

“What are they going to do, electrocute you twice?”

“Shut up,” Charlotte said, and that made Yardley smile. He shook his head, as if he would never understand women, and then he shut up.

“It doesn’t have to be about the woman,” my brother said. “Just something I can tell your uncle, he’ll know we have your confidence.…”

“My confidence …” He played with that a little while.

“What happened to her?” my brother said. “Lawrence’s wife …”

Charlotte dropped the cigarette she’d just lit onto the floor and ground it out with the tip of her shoe. She didn’t
want to hear what happened to Lawrence’s wife, but she said, “Tell the damn story,” and for that moment, she and Hillary already could have been married.

“There ain’t a story, the way you tell it and somebody listens,” Hillary said. “The girl’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“She was from the outside; one day she was there, the next day she was gone.”

“Did she go back to her family?” my brother said, and Hillary began smiling again.

“I wouldn’t think so, no sir,” he said. Hillary stared at my brother and then finally turned himself back to Charlotte, and looked at her as he spoke to Ward.

He said, “I would think she went back whence she came.”

He knew she had been with Yardley Acheman. He was telling her he knew.

“Ashes to ashes,” he said. And then he smiled at her in the way he was smiling earlier. “Tell Tyree,” he said, “ashes to ashes. See what he thinks about that.”

M
Y BROTHER AND YARDLEY ACHEMAN
got in the backseat again on the ride to Lately, Charlotte was in front with me. She’d said good-bye to Hillary when the guard came for him and hadn’t spoken since. She hadn’t even waited at the car door for someone to open it.

“Ashes to ashes,” Yardley said, “what a subtle guy.”

It was humid, and the air conditioner was dripping on Charlotte’s shoes. She was staring straight ahead, as if she were fixed on something a long ways down the road.

“What is that supposed to mean?” she said, sounding tired.

“Worst case,” Yardley said, “they ate her.”

Charlotte put a cigarette in her lips and punched in the lighter on the dashboard. After it popped back out, Yardley Acheman said, “Not that it makes any difference.”

Charlotte turned suddenly and stared at him over the seat back. Her shirt pressed against her side and took the shape of her breast. “Will you shut up?” she said.

“You don’t mind, we’re trying to figure something out back here,” Yardley Acheman said, and he sounded hurt, the same tone he took when he argued with his fiancee on the telephone. “Trying to save your intended from the state of Florida’s electric chair.”

“Ashes to ashes doesn’t mean they killed a girl,” Charlotte said, and she was furious, “it’s biblical.”

Yardley laughed out loud.

She turned back around, disgusted with everyone in the car. “Hillary was right about you,” she said, meaning that for all of us. “You’ve got no empathy.”

“Hillary said that?” Yardley was playing with her now.

“In so many words.” And then she closed her eyes, exhausted. “Everybody in the world isn’t stupid, Yardley,” she said. “And even if that was true, it wouldn’t make them any smarter, working for the
Miami Times.”

Yardley laughed again, and she seemed discouraged.

“You see right there, that’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “I’d rather have one compassionate person on my side than all of you put together.”