The Quiet Streets of Winslow (22 page)

“You think it's that simple.”

“It is that simple.”

“Let's say you're not you,” Sam said. “Let's say you're a man who was caught in the act and yet claims to be innocent. You think your father should believe you?”

“That's not the case.”

“But what if it were?”

“Nothing follows from a statement not true to fact.”

“Where did you hear that?” he said.

“A class in logic.”

“So much for what does or doesn't seem logical?” Sam said. “Is that the point you're making?”

“I'm not making any point,” I said. “But yes, I suppose so.”

“I'm investigating a murder, Nate. That's all. It's my job. The stakes are not high for me, but they are for you. I'd like to see you care about that.”

After he left I saw him walk toward the house, hesitate, then get into his SUV. I put my Coke can in the trash, then I picked up the model plane and threw it in there, too.

chapter thirty-two

TRAVIS ASPENALL

“I
'
M KIND OF
interested in Jason,” Harmony said. “I'm sorry, Travis. I didn't mean to hurt you.”

She told me that at my locker, at the end of the day, then walked down the hall to hers. I looked at my books, the jacket I kept on the hook, my gym clothes, a pair of old gym shoes I had had in there forever, which didn't fit. I stared at everything, trying to figure out what you were supposed to do when the girl you liked didn't care for you anymore.

I told Billy about it on the bus the following morning, on what was his first day back. There had been the funeral, which my parents and I had gone to, then there had been the day his mother had insisted that he and his sister stay home. His sister was still home, and Billy could have stayed out longer, but there was nothing to do at home, he said, except think about it, and he didn't want to think about it.

“Jason's not into Harmony,” Billy said, after I told him what Harmony had said to me. “That's what he said to me, anyway.”

I was surprised.

“I bet for her it was the army thing,” Billy said. “That connection they had.”

“I forgot about that.”

“When people die, everything changes.”

“Harmony's brother's alive.”

“Yeah. Well, sort of,” Billy said.

He had his hands in his backpack, feeling around for something. He was disorganized, as his father had been. Billy could misplace anything anywhere, and like his father he could get frustrated and lose his temper easily, but also like his father he could find his own anger funny. It was the most likeable thing about him, and different from how I was. It took a lot to make me angry, but once I was I stayed angry for a long time. I had always been that way.

“You need to find another girl right away,” Billy said. “Harmony needs to see that you don't give a shit.”

“You think that'll bring her back?”

“You don't want her back.”

“Then why do it?” I said.

“So you don't care if she sees you looking pitiful, like you do now.”

“I don't look that way.”

“You do,” Billy said.

He had found what he was looking for and held the backpack open to show me—a ziplock bag with a small amount of marijuana in it, maybe enough for three doobies, not that I was an expert.

“You're crazy to bring that to school,” I said.

“I found it at my father's and didn't know what else to do with it. Cy looks through my room. He says he doesn't, but that's bullshit. Anyway I'm thinking I'll cut school, leave after first or second period,
and go get stoned somewhere, if you want to come. I don't care where we go. It doesn't matter. I don't want to be anywhere. You probably don't either.”

“Not much.”

“Harmony might just be screwing with you,” Billy said. “Making it seem like she's not interested so you'll be more interested. You know how that goes.”

“She's not like that.”

“Maybe she wants you to think she's not.”

“No,” I said. “She's not.”

Outside the sky was already bright, with the sun coming up earlier. Soon it would be summer. I looked out the window and felt there was nothing to look forward to anymore except life the way it was before Harmony, only worse. I was mad at her, and I had a lot of things in my head that I wanted to say to her. But it felt useless, like trying to break a wall with your hand. It wouldn't get me anywhere. Worse, she would see that it mattered to me.

As we pulled up to the school I wanted to believe that if I went in and spoke to her she would look at me the way she had before. It was possible, I thought, just as it was possible that aliens would land on the school roof, or that when I got home that afternoon Jody Farnell would be sitting at the kitchen table with Sam Rush and Nate. There were a lot of things you couldn't alter. I knew that; everybody knew that. So much for knowing something, I thought.

“Let's not go in,” I said to Billy. “There's time enough for us to go out to the parking lot, hang out at the back until everybody's in. Then we can go wherever.”

He was nodding his head before I finished saying it.

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER
we were in the principal's office. We both knew that Billy's father was what kept us from being asked to open our backpacks, what kept us from being spoken to as if it were a crime, our getting caught as we were heading out into the desert. Somebody had seen us, a teacher, probably. Billy was upset about his dad and wanted to talk to me. That was what they assumed, and I guessed that was partly true, although not the way they were picturing it.

“The counselor would like to talk to you, Billy,” Ms. Deakin said. “We understand how difficult this is for you, especially your first day back.”

“Do I have to?”

“No. Of course not. But it might be—”

“I'll see if I need to,” Billy said, “I mean, as the day goes on.”

“You just let us know,” she said.

W
E WERE SENT
to class, which was English, for both of us, and when people looked at Billy—everybody knew about his father now—he didn't look at any one person, just sat down and gave me a glance like, Shit, I should have known this was how weird it was going to be.

Harmony was in her seat in the window aisle with the sun on her hair. It was hard to look at her and hard not to. She wore jeans and a red, long-sleeved T-shirt. She had on gym shoes with the laces undone. Mr. Drake was reading to us, and I tried to keep my eyes on our textbook, as Harmony was. “
When you are old and gray and full of sleep / And nodding by the fire, take down this book
. . .” Mr. Drake read slowly, as if he had written it. “. . .
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, / And loved the sorrows of your changing face
. . .”

“What does Yeats mean by
pilgrim soul
?” he stopped to ask. “Does anybody have a guess?”

A girl in the first row said, “Does it have something to do with the pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving?”

“Yeats was Irish or something, not American,” said the boy behind her, “so yeah, well, no.”

“Pilgrims are just people who make pilgrimages,” another girl said, “like to holy sites, so maybe this girl in the poem used to do that.”

“But why
pilgrim soul?”
Mr. Drake said. “Why put those words together?”

“Because she has a wandering soul,” Harmony said, “a soul that's looking for something.”

“Such as what?” Mr. Drake said.

“Maybe something that means more.”

“Maybe that's why her face was sorrowful and kept changing,” a girl said. “She needed what she was looking for. It wasn't this random thing with her.”

“So why do you think that might have been appealing?” Mr. Drake said. “After all, other men, we're told, loved her for her beauty. Only this person, this narrator, loved her for this quality.”

“Because she wasn't like anybody else,” a boy said.

“Well, a girl with three heads wouldn't be like anybody else, either,” Billy said, “but this guy wouldn't have been into her.”

“Maybe he loved her because he couldn't have her,” said somebody else.

“He wanted her because he couldn't be like her,” I said. “He didn't have that quality himself. That's why he noticed it in her.”

“So at the end of the poem he wants her to do what?” Mr. Drake said.

“Take down the book he wrote,” a girl in the back row said, “and dream of how she used to be.”

“Yes,” Mr. Drake said. “He wants her to
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled / And paced upon the mountains overhead, / And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”

Everybody was quiet, listening or thinking or just sitting there, waiting for the bell to ring. I was just sitting there, too. I didn't look up.

chapter thirty-three

SAM RUSH

I
HAD ASKED
L
ESLIE
Hoover to help locate Wes Giddens, and she left me a message saying she had; how about meeting her for lunch in the dining room of the Prescott Inn?

She was there when I arrived. She was a tall, slightly heavy woman, ten years younger than I was, with light, curly hair, a pretty face, and a genuine smile. A few years ago I had considered asking her out, then learned that she had a boyfriend. Since then, she had married him.

“I had no luck for the longest time,” she said, after we ordered, “then I went over what you had told me about Wes Giddens wanting to start a new life, and I thought, how exactly would you go about that? What would your first step be? And I thought, you'd start by changing your name.”

“And?”

“I see that you're just as patient as always,” she said, and went on. “That led me to check into who had gone to court, in the past five years, from Winslow, to legally change his name. A lot of people have, it turns out, and Wes Giddens did, four years ago. He had it changed from Wesley Joseph Giddens to Joe W. Weneka, and the only Joe W. Weneka
on record who shares his birth date lives in Albuquerque, at 2210 Santa Fe Road. I've got the phone number for you.”

“But didn't attempt to call him, correct?”

“You're welcome,” she said.

“Thank you,” I told her. “But is the answer yes? You refrained from calling him?”

“Of course it's yes,” she said. “I know how to do things, Sam. I know the drill. You have a tendency to underestimate people. Haven't I told you that like fifty times?”

“I'm a quick learner,” I said, and we laughed.

“I also checked into colleges and universities,” she told me, “as you suggested. He's a pre-nursing student at the University of New Mexico, a senior, with good grades.”

“Thanks, Leslie. Really.”

Our hamburgers appeared, and we shifted the subject to politics at the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department, about which she always knew more than I did. She was smarter about it as well, knew what to say to whom, when, and why. I didn't like politics and didn't do what was in my best interest, as she often told me. She was right, but I didn't see myself as willing to change.