The Best American Mystery Stories 2000

Edward Falco The Instruments of Peace

From Playboy

The kid drove up in a chartreuse sports car. Convertible. He arrived with the top down, his dark hair windblown, a small gold ring in his right ear. When he stepped out of that car in my driveway, wearing blue jeans and a red T-shirt, my sixteen-year-old daughter went ghost pale and leaned back against the wall by the living room window. I was in the kitchen making breakfast, scrambling eggs in a pink bowl with a wire whisk. I could see my daughter’s back, and beyond her, through the window, Chad Barnnett, the youngest son of a well-known criminal. He was tall — six-one, maybe six-two — broad-chested and muscular. I had agreed to give him a job for the summer. We lived in the boondocks on a small farm where we stabled standardbreds from the racetrack ten miles away toward town. It was just me and my daughter. Her mother had left me before Amy had turned three.

“Oh my God,” Amy said when she could finally speak. “Is that him?”

“Seems likely.” I put the eggs down on the stove and joined her at the window, Chad appeared to have decided he was at the right place. He pulled a lightweight jacket out from behind the front seat, slipped it on, and started up the walk to the front door.

Amy bolted for her room. It was a little after nine and she’d been out of bed for an hour, though she hadn’t showered and cleaned up yet. She stopped at the stairs and pointed to me emphatically. “Do not tell him I’m up,” she stage-whispered. “Tell him I was out late last night and I’m sleeping in.” She charged up the stairs two at a time, like a little kid, her pale-blue, wrinkled sleepshirt billowing out behind her.

I went out to meet him, and whatever anxieties I had about housing the son of a gangster dissipated quickly. He had a sweet smile and the kind of good looks that charmed even an old guy like me, who had essentially been ordered to give him summer work, as well as a place to stay. Not that I was actually given an order. Ollie Lundsford, the trainer who accounted for virtually all of my farm’s business, had asked me to do him a favor. Every Friday night, I played poker with Ollie and a bunch of characters from the track, and I saw him just about every day. When he asked me to hire Chad, I didn’t think twice. I hired someone every summer anyway. Still, there was something in the tone of his voice that suggested an urgency to the request that couldn’t really be refused. “I need you to do me a favor,” he had said — and the word “need” had carried a ton of weight. Chad offered me his hand. “Mr. Deegan?”

I nodded, we shook hands, and I invited him in for coffee. In the kitchen he sat at the table and commented on the huge copy of Shakespeare’s collected plays that was propped up and open on the counter next to the stove so I could read while I was cooking. He asked me if I was reading Shakespeare; I told him I was, and he told me he had read him for the first time in his English classes. He was twenty-two and had just finished his first year of college after working odd jobs out of high school. He liked sports, especially basketball and football, both of which he played on intramural teams. By the time I called up the stairs for Amy to join us, I wasn’t worried anymore about this kid being the son of Jimmy Smoke, which is what the papers called his dad.

“Amy,” I yelled from the foot of the stairs, holding the skillet in my hand and scrambling her eggs. “Come on down here and meet our guest.”

A moment later Amy came into the kitchen wearing apple-green velvet-trimmed pajamas that looked more like elegant evening attire than something you might sleep in. Her shoulders were bare and her breasts were prominently outlined under a flimsy camisole before she covered herself — to my great relief — by buttoning a matching cardigan. Her hair was brushed, and she had make-up on.

Chad stood up when she entered the room, and they shook hands politely. “Pleasure to meet you, Amy,” he said in a tone of voice downright avuncular, which pleased me.

“Uh-oh,” Amy said, gesturing toward Chad’s eggs, toast, and orange juice. “I see my father’s started taking care of you already.” She sat next to Chad at the table. “You got to watch out for him,” she whispered, as if I couldn’t hear her. “If you let him, he’ll be tucking you into bed at night.”

“Amy thinks I’m overprotective.” I put her eggs and toast on the table in front of her, and buttered her toast and dipped it in egg before she figured out the joke and slapped my hand away.

Chad laughed. He said, “You guys are pretty funny.”

“We’re a team,” I said. “Me and Amy.”

“Oh, please,” Amy rolled her eyes. “I can’t wait to get out of here and go to college. This is like hell, living in the middle of Nowhere, USA. You know how far you have to drive to get to a decent music store? Two hours. You know—”

“Amy,” I said. “I’m sure Chad wants to hear about how miserable your life is.” I picked up Chad’s plate and gestured for him to join me. “Time to see the farm.”

Outside, the early summer weather had turned the land into an expanse of mud and grass. Everything that wasn’t green was brown and muddy — and a lot of what was green was muddy too. Things would remain that way until July, when the heat finally baked the ground dry. In the anteroom, two pairs of galoshes stood upright and waiting. I picked up my pair and directed Chad to a closet, where old galoshes and boots were piled in a corner. “I hope you don’t mind mud,” I said. “You’ll be living with it for the next month.” On the brick walk, I looked up and drew in a deep breath of fresh air and let the sun warm my face. “So,” I said, when he came up beside me, “you have a girlfriend?”

“Several,” he answered, grinning in a way that was supposed to be a between-men thing, as if he expected me to pat him on the back for being such a hotshot.

“I’ll show you the barns first,” I said.

Chad followed along quietly while I gave him the tour. He seemed troubled by the mud, which he sank into up to his calves at one point, muddying his clean denims. There were a handful of fractious racehorses on the farm, and I pointed them out to him first. At the stud barn, we stopped in front of His Majesty’s stall. HM was the worst of the lot. “This one,” I said, pointing to HM, who had come to the front of the stall to check out Chad, “stay away from him. I’d put him down if it was up to me, but Ollie insists on keeping him.”

Chad moved to the stall. “He doesn’t look mean,” he said. “He doesn’t look any different from the others.”

“Take my word for it,” I said. I moved him along.

Just out of the barn, he stopped suddenly and looked around, as if he were actually seeing the place for the first time. He looked up toward the mountain ridges, which were already lush and green, and his eyes followed the satiny folds of hollows and rises down to the green pastureland of the farm, which was divided and enclosed by white fences. Inside the farm’s corrals, horses grazed lazily.

“Not a bad place to spend your summer,” I said. “As long as you don’t mind working some.”

“I don’t mind,” he said.

At his cabin, he leaned against the door frame to pull off his boots.

I opened the door for him. “It’s hardly luxury,” I said. “But it’s cozy enough.”

He looked through the doorway at the single bed with its brass headboard, at the oval, cord rug in the center of the wood floor, and at the red-and-white-checked curtains over the windows on the back and side walls. “It’s nice,” he said. “It looks good.”

I opened an old ball-foot armoire I had dragged over from the storage barn and cleaned up a few days earlier. “This is your closet,” I said, and then I pointed to the bathroom, which was directly across from the bed. “I thought about putting a door on the bathroom for you, but then I figured, it’s only you in here, so—”

Chad nodded. “Be fine.”

“Okay, then. I’ll send Amy to get you for lunch.” I started for the door.

“Mr. Deegan,” he said, stopping me. “I didn’t mean, before, what I said about having girlfriends... I didn’t mean to sound like some sort of loverboy or something. It’s not like that.”

“That’s good,” I said, “because—” I was standing in the doorway and moved back inside the cabin and closed the door. “Because Amy’s at that age now where she’s still a kid but doesn’t want to be one anymore. It’s a dangerous age for a young girl.”

“I understand,” Chad said. “You don’t have to worry about me.” He brushed his hand through his hair. “I’ll tell her I have a serious girlfriend.”

“Good,” I said. “Because, don’t tell her I told you this, but—” I hesitated a moment, not certain I should continue. I said, “She hasn’t even had a first boyfriend yet. She’d be mortified if she knew I told you that, but it’s something you should know. It’s because we live out here in, as Amy says, Nowheresville. Still, she thinks she knows things, but she doesn’t know anything yet.”

“Like I said,” Chad touched his heart, as if swearing an oath. “You have nothing to worry about from me.”

I put my hand on his arm, as if to say thanks, and then turned to leave.

“Long as we’re talking,” he continued. “You know about my family, right?”

“I know what I read about your father in the newspapers.”

Chad closed his eyes for an instant, as if gathering the resolve to explain and pushing down frustration, like a celebrity who’s just been asked the same dumb question for the millionth time. “He’s not my father,” he said. “He’s my mother’s husband. We have a simple relationship. I hate him and he hales me.”

I looked at him in a way that I thought might prompt him to explain, but his eyes had gone steely, as if he had just said all he had to say on the subject. I pushed a little. “Doesn’t that worry you?” I asked. “Having someone like that hate you?”

“My mother would never let him do anything. I’m not worried.”

“Well,” I said, meaning to dismiss the subject, “maybe time will make you closer.”

“I doubt it,” he said. “He had my father killed.”

“He had—” I started to echo him stupidly, the amazement in my voice momentarily turning me into the boy.

“You can see the problem.”

“I guess so,” I said. “Like Hamlet.” I had no idea how to continue.

“I have nothing to do with Jimmy and he has nothing to do with me. So you don’t have anything to worry about on that score either. I just want to be a college student with a summer job, you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do,” and I touched his arm. I said, “I’ll send Amy for you for lunch,” hoping my tone let him know that the subject of his family was done with as far as I was concerned. On the way back to the house, I turned it over in my mind. I was curious, of course, but I wasn’t about to ask. In a way, it made me feel protective. Amy never understood that about me, my protectiveness. Linda, her mother, hadn’t either. There’s a reason for it. I was raised poor, in a bad part of Brooklyn. My father was a mean drunk, my sister was raped when she was sixteen, and when I was not much older I was robbed and beaten half to death by two guys wearing sweatshirts with hoods pulled to tiny openings around their eyes. They beat me just because they wanted to — no special reason.

After the attack, I spent months in the hospital, my heart full of murder. Nights, I’d have dreams in which beatings my father delivered merged with the street beating. Days, I’d fall into long, bloody reveries of violence so awful it frightened me — half daydreams, half trances in which I’d inflict every manner of nightmare on the men who beat me. For a while I thought I was losing my mind. I came back slowly. I didn’t lose my mind and I didn’t withdraw from the world. I just moved to a more secluded part of it. My father’s boss owned a horse farm up in the mountains, and I went to work for him when I got out of the hospital. I’ve worked around horses and on farms ever since. I became careful, protective.

Amy couldn’t appreciate these things, but I thought maybe Chad could, having been through some himself — and after working with him only a few weeks, it was clear that I was right. He rapidly turned into a combination ally and mediator in my frequent, though usually minor, conflicts with Amy. Whatever he told Amy, she seemed to hear clearly. I suspected his working without a shirt, sweat glistening over the muscles of his chest and stomach, had something to do with the explanations always being so convincing.

In any event, things ran a lot more smoothly with Chad on the farm. Amy seemed happier with him around, even if he did — as he had told her — have a serious girlfriend. She took to going to bed early most nights and sleeping late in the mornings, and in general appeared to be more relaxed and comfortable than she had been in years. She was looking forward to the fall, when she’d start her senior year in high school. Chad turned out to be excellent help, working all day, finishing up the jobs I’d given him, and often going on to other things that needed doing. Evenings he spent in his cabin, hardly ever going into town. The only problem I had with him involved the phone bill, which was exorbitant. When I took it to him, he explained he was calling a girlfriend and buddies from home and college and agreed to pay the extra charges. When I pointed out that if he didn’t cut back on the calls, he’d wind up sending a good portion of his summer earnings to Ma Bell, he nodded, hut not resentfully, the way Amy would have nodded. By midsummer, I was already worrying about his leaving and thinking of ways I might entice him back next year.

Ollie stopped by the farm more frequently with Chad here, which I also considered a benefit. Ollie was probably less than ten years older than me, but he always treated me in a fatherly way. He was a stocky, blond-haired, blue-eyed Swede with a fondness for poker and his stout, churchgoing wife. He supposedly had some dubious connections at the track — I had heard this implied by other trainers and farmers — but I never heard a word about it from him, and I never saw him do anything the least bit unseemly. Asking me to hire Jimmy Smoke’s son for a summer job was the only thing in twelve years that had given me the least cause for worry — and that was going fine. Then, on a morning in the first week of August, when I was at his stables picking up hay, he invited Amy and me to his house for dinner.

I backed my truck into the stable and lowered the tailgate, while he opened the stall door and dragged out four bales of special high-grade hay he had been holding for me. He tossed a bale onto the truck. “Hey, Paul,” he said. “The wife’s making something special tonight. Why don’t you and Amy come out and join us?”

I didn’t answer right away. I pulled a bale of hay from the stack, threw it onto the truck, and went back for another, which I slid onto the tailgate. Ollie had never invited me to dinner before. Ollie never invited anyone to dinner. I said, as if he didn’t know it, “We’ve never been to your house for dinner. Actually, we’ve never been to your house at all.”

“This will be the first time then, won’t it?” he said, tossing a bale of hay at me, playfully too hard.

I was knocked back a couple of steps before regaining my balance. “Okay,” I said. I didn’t see how we could refuse. “What should we wear?”

“Dress nice,” he said. “My wife’ll bring out the good china. We’ll do the whole deal for you.” He winked at me and closed the stall door. “Be there by seven. Don’t be late.” He turned and hurried to the other end of the stable, where he had an office.

At my truck, I pulled a ball of twine from under the front seat and took my time tying down the hay, which didn’t need to be tied down at all. The pit of my stomach stirred the way it does when something doesn’t seem right. I was tempted to follow Ollie into his office and ask him what was going on, why all of a sudden the invitation to dinner. By the time the hay was tied down, I had decided to let things play out as they would. I got back into the cab of the truck and instead of heading out the front entrance I did a three-point turn and started down the dirt road that crossed the stables and went through the farm and wound around to a back entrance, which was closer to town, where I planned on stopping at the supermarket. In the rearview mirror I saw Ollie come out of his office. He watched me drive away, looking annoyed. I usually asked him if it was all right to drive across the farm — but he had walked away and I couldn’t imagine why it wouldn’t be Okay. I couldn’t imagine — until I passed the bunkhouse where he sometimes put up extra help.

At the back of the house, taking overnight bags out of the trunk of a deep-blue Lincoln Continental, were two guys who might as well have had the word “gangster” emblazoned in neon on their backs. They wore dark suits with dark shirts and matching dark ties. Their hair was cut short and slicked back. At the sound of my truck, one of them turned around quickly, and I saw the straps of a shoulder holster before he could adjust and button his jacket. Then the other turned around and our eyes met as I drove past. They didn’t look happy. In my rearview, I saw one of them slam the trunk shut, and then they both went into the bunkhouse. I drove only a little farther up the road before pulling onto the grass and spinning back around toward the stables.

Ollie was still standing outside with his hands on his hips, and I pulled the truck right up to his toes before cutting the engine and jumping out and slamming the door. “Ollie,” I said. “Guess who I just saw.”

Ollie set his jaw and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Two of the king’s men. Back at the bunkhouse.”

He looked perplexed. “You saw who?”

“I saw the two guys Jimmy Smoke sent. That’s why we’re having dinner together tonight, isn’t it? So it’s just the kid on the farm when they get there?”

Ollie looked at me with disgust and shook his head slowly. He went back into his office and stood by the open door, waiting for me to join him.

I hesitated a moment, then went into the office and took a seat at the side of his desk, as if I were about to be interviewed for a job. I stared at his empty leather chair.

Ollie closed the door. “You saw two guests of mine. They’re staying at the bunkhouse.”

“No... “ I said, slowly, as if I had considered and then rejected his assertion. “I saw two killers. Sent to do something to a boy I’ve been working with all summer. A kid I like.”

“Really,” Ollie said. “You like him?” He walked around me and took his seat behind the desk.

“Yes,” I said. “I like him.”

Ollie leaned forward. “Why would you think—”

“Will you stop it?” I said. “I know about the kid’s relationship to his stepfather. I know who his stepfather is. I know they hate each other. Now all of a sudden you arrange for me and Amy to be off the farm, and two thugs show up wearing guns under their thug uniforms. Have I led you to believe I’m a stupid man, Ollie?”

“Never thought it for a second.”

“Then stop bullshitting me.”

Ollie folded his hands in his lap and looked at me patiently. “Those phone calls you mentioned, the ones the kid was making all over the country? What if they weren’t to his college buddies and his girlfriend? What if the little asshole was trying to have Jimmy killed? What if the clown had it stuck in his head that Jimmy killed his father and nothing but revenge would do? What about that, Paul? Would that make things a little more understandable to you?”

I hesitated before answering. Half of me was ready to argue with Ollie. The other half was in shock to hear him tacitly confirm a killing. After a long moment, I said, “The details are supposed to make a difference to me? Not that I’m sure I believe them. But what is it you think — that if I understand why, then it’ll be okay? I’m not going to have a problem with two killers coming out to my farm after a kid who’s working for me?”

Ollie put his elbows on the desk and covered his face with his hands. He spoke into his palms. “All that I said is what if.”

“Well, what if nothing. It makes no difference.”

“None at all?”

“None,” I said, still amazed he’d think it might.

He crossed his arms on the desk and moved closer to me. “What if I happened to know for a fact that Jimmy’s raised this kid like his own son? That he did everything a father could do, but the kid’s been screwing up since puberty, between girls and drugs and money? What if Jimmy’s spent a small fortune between abortions and lawyers and rehab with this kid, and now the little asshole is hell-bent to do away with him, hell-bent trying to pull together every old enemy Jimmy’s got? What if, Paul? What if it’s either one way or the other, Jimmy or Chad — and this is all Chad’s doing? This is the way Chad wants it? Then what? Still make no difference?”

“I don’t believe it about this kid,” I said. “He’s—”

“He’s slick, is what he is,” Ollie said, raising his voice a little.

“That’s not the way he comes across to me.”

Ollie stared at me. “I thought you were smarter than this,” he said. “I thought you knew more about the way things were than this.”

“How’s that?” I said. “What have I ever done to make you think you could arrange a murder on my farm and I’d look the other way?”

“What I just said,” he answered. “I thought you knew the way things were.”

“Look. I’m going back to the farm; I’m warning Chad.”

Ollie stood up behind the desk. “And what good will that do, Paul? Except to complicate your life.”

“Is that a threat?” I said. “To complicate my life?”

“Not from me,” Ollie said. “I can’t tell you what Jimmy’s going to do.”

I said, “I thought that you were my friend.”

“I am your friend,” he said. “Come to my house for dinner tonight. What’s going on between Jimmy and Chad — you can’t do anything about it. Only a fool would get in the way of a thing like this. It’s an act of God. The only thing you should be looking for is how to keep you and yours safe. That,” he said, “is what I thought you’d understand.”

“Like I said,” I started for the door. “I’m going back to the farm. I’m finding the kid.”

“Think about what you’re doing,” Ollie said. When I was already out the door, he called after me. “I’ll be expecting you for dinner!”

I didn’t answer. I got in my truck and went out the front gate and started for the farm. My foot fell heavily on the gas as I sped along the two-lane roads, worrying over Ollie’s threat. I didn’t believe he’d do anything to harm Amy or me. I didn’t think it was possible I had so misjudged the man. Nor did I think he’d let Jimmy Smoke do anything to us — as long as it was in his power to prevent it. That, of course, was the problem. What if he couldn’t keep Jimmy Smoke from, say, burning down the farm, which is where his name came from, as I understood it — his connection to mysterious fires. While I was worrying about all this, I recalled Ollie stopping by the farm a few days earlier to check on His Majesty — he had looked the horse over, gone through his stall, even asked me if he was as mean as always — and I realized with absolute certainty that he kept HM for Jimmy Smoke. I was sure of it. When the time came that Jimmy needed a believable accidental death, HM would be waiting. Sometimes I’m good at reading things, and I read this with certainty: Chad was going to wind up in the stall with HM, crushed and beaten to death. He’d get Chad out of the way in an accident no one would question — an accident on a farm where the kid was working a summer job hundreds of miles away from Jimmy and his associates. Jimmy got rid of his kid, and he kept his wife. When I realized these things, I started worrying that maybe I had misjudged Ollie all these years. Maybe I’d be in trouble once I warned Chad.

None of this, though, had any bearing on what I was about to do. I wouldn’t let it. When I considered Ollie’s arguments and they began to gather weight — what if this was really a skirmish in a war between killers? I reminded myself that Chad was a kid, a boy, and that to go eat a pleasant dinner while he was getting beaten to death would make me a murderer. That pushed me hard, that thought. On the farm, dust flew up in clouds behind the truck as I drove the dirt road out to Chad’s cabin. The horses looked up from their grazing to watch the truck speed by, as if they were my audience. Otherwise, the farm was so quiet, you’d think no one worked it. Amy was in the house probably, enjoying the air-conditioning. Chad was either working or eating lunch. I pulled up to the cabin and hit the brakes, and when I skidded into the concrete foundation, the rubberized front of ray bumper thumping into the cabin wall, I realized how fast I had been going.

I got out of the truck carefully, not wanting to look panicked. At the cabin, I knocked twice and when Chad didn’t answer, I opened the door and stepped inside. I was shocked for a moment by the mess. The bed was unmade and the sheets were rumpled and soiled. The floor was littered with garbage: grocery store bags, pizza boxes, clothes, even farm tools. I noticed, sticking out from under the bed, the wooden handle of a twitch I had been looking for just that morning. I knelt to retrieve the twitch and then jumped back at the sight of someone moving in the bathroom. It only took me an instant to realize it was my own reflection in the mirror. When I straightened up, my heart was pounding. The mess in the cabin made me angry. It seemed like a small matter compared to the larger situation at hand — but it angered me. I couldn’t help it. Even the walls, which I had painted at the beginning of the summer, appeared soiled. At the top of the bed, a large discolored area darkened the white paint. I couldn’t imagine what had made the stain. Sweat? Did he stand on his bed and lean against the wall naked and sweaty? The stain had roughly the proportions of someone’s back.

I muttered a curse at the condition of the cabin and looked around one more time for damage. In the bathroom I noticed a grapefruit-sized hole in the plasterboard by the sink, and my mouth fell open. When I examined it, it looked like he might have simply put his fist through the wall. “Son of a bitch,” I said aloud, and I touched my hand to my forehead and looked down, gathering my thoughts. At my feet, the bathroom’s wastebasket overflowed. Under a crumpled, stained sheet of toilet paper, something glittery caught the light, and when I moved the paper away with my toe, I saw it was an empty condom wrapper. I kicked the basket over and scores of wrappers spilled onto the floor, along with a good number of used condoms, some of them still soggy, others stiff and brittle. I leaned back against the sink and heard myself moan, as if I had just been told someone I love had died. In the bedroom, a brief search turned up Amy’s pajamas, the apple-green ones she had worn on his first day at the farm. They were folded neatly in one of the armoire’s drawers, along with several other items of her clothing — and something about how her few things were neatly folded and stacked, surrounded by the squalor of his things, made it all more painful. I picked up the pajamas and held them to my chest, and when I turned around, Chad was standing in the doorway.

At first he looked like the same Chad, same boyish, sweet expression. Then he saw that I was holding Amy’s pajamas, and he noticed the overturned wastebasket, and the pleasant expression on his face melted away. It was as if a mask came off, revealing someone I didn’t know, someone different: cold where Chad was warm, impenetrable where Chad was vulnerable. He stood in the doorway, his legs spread as if for solid balance, his arms crossed on his chest. He said, “She wasn’t going to stay a virgin forever, Deegan. She’s nearly seventeen.”

I dropped her pajamas back into the dresser drawer. I wanted to ask him when it had happened. I wanted to ask how long it had been going on. I knew, though, that it had to be at night, after I was asleep. Probably every night. The whole damn summer. That was why she had taken to going to bed early and sleeping late. It explained her mood too — which I realized now was happiness. Hard to believe, how I didn’t see it all summer. She was in love with him.

Chad remained in the doorway, solid as a statue. I wanted to get past him, into the sunlight and out of the squalor of the room. He met my eyes, his stare hard and powerful, as if he were the stronger man and he knew it. “Chad,” I said, “just get out of my way.”

He didn’t move. “Deegan,” he said, “you can’t protect her from the world. I’m telling you as a favor. She’s not dumb. She sees the way you’ve kept boys away from her, the way you’ve kept her hidden out here.”

“You’re giving me a lesson on raising kids, Chad? After taking advantage of my sixteen-year-old daughter. After—”

“I didn’t take advantage of her, Deegan. I’m the best thing that ever happened to her. Those are her words. Ask her. She’ll tell

“I’m sure,” I said. “I’m sure she will.” I looked down at the floor a moment and then back up at Chad. I took a step toward him. “Get out of my way, Chad.”

He moved aside. “It’s insulting,” he said, “trying to keep her from growing up. Not letting her make her own choices, whatever the consequences.”

I stepped past him. From outside, I said, “You make a good argument, Chad. You make your point well.” I closed the door on him and walked away.

At the house, I found Amy sitting on the porch rocker, writing in her journal. She was wearing a white summer dress with bright-red flowers, and she had her legs crossed under her, the light cotton fabric draped over her knees and the chair. She appeared sullen and barely looked up until I spoke to her, telling her we were going to the Lundsfords’ for dinner. She gave in without a serious struggle. She went up to her room and a minute later, I heard music come on. In the living room, I sat and held my head in my hands. I wasn’t thinking much about anything. Somewhere outside a colt whinnied, and the sound slid through the house, high, along the ceiling and out the windows, while the low pulse of bass notes from Amy’s room traveled through the floorboards.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in a strange, spacey state of mind. It seemed impossible that I would just go to Ollie’s for dinner while I knew Chad was being beaten to death. I would tell him. I had to. Yet the afternoon went by and I never left the house. At six, I went up to my bedroom and showered and dressed for dinner. I knocked on Amy’s door to tell her we would be leaving soon. She didn’t answer right away, but opened the door instead and offered me a bright smile and a kiss on the cheek. She said she’d be ready in half an hour, and I said fine and then went downstairs, thinking that gave me plenty of time to go tell Chad. But I never left the kitchen. I stood by the sink looking out the window, until I heard Amy coming down the stairs. I was looking at the mountains, at their velvety coat of trees in the evening light and the way the darkness of the hollows was accented by the bright sun on the rises, turning the lush green woods into a garment fit for a king, thick and luxurious, draped over the body of the mountains.

“Well?” Amy said.

I turned away from the window and found Amy dressed neatly in a long, dark, drawstring skirt and a modest white blouse. “You look lovely,” I said.

Amy smiled and did a pretend curtsy.

In our car, in the driveway, with Amy in the passenger’s seat alongside me, I took the keys from the glove compartment. I put them in the ignition but hesitated then, as if I were trying to remember something.

Amy said, “Is anything wrong?”

I turned to look at her but didn’t respond.

“You’re sweating,” she said, and handed me some napkins from the glove compartment.

“Must be hot flashes.” I mopped the sweat from my forehead and understood in that moment that I was planning on going to dinner and leaving Chad to his fate; that someplace, on some level, I had decided that Ollie was right, that what was going on between Chad and Jimmy was one act in an endless bloody drama and that my responsibility was to Amy, to keep her safe, to take care of my family. I also understood in that moment before I started the car that I couldn’t do it. I said, “Would you mind waiting one minute, Amy? I need to tell Chad something before we leave.”

“What?” she asked, obviously annoyed at my timing.

“It won’t take a minute,” I said, and I hurried from the car to the pickup, which was parked alongside us in the drive. I winked at Amy as I drove away. She looked back at me as if I had grown another head.

At the cabin I flung the door open without knocking and found Chad standing by the armoire. “Chad,” I said, approaching him. “How well did you do in that English class?” I hit him hard across the chest with a forearm and knocked him down on the bed. “Remember Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? Remember what Claudius tries to do to Hamlet?”

For a moment he looked like he was going to jump at me. Then he seemed to change his mind. He said, “What the fuck are you talking about, Deegan?” He pulled himself along the mattress and sat up with his back against the headboard.

“I saw two guys at Ollie’s farm. They were driving a blue Lincoln Continental and wearing shoulder holsters. I saw them right after Amy and I were invited to dinner by a guy associated with your stepfather, a guy who’s never invited anybody to dinner before in his life.”

Chad didn’t say anything, but his face started to go pale at the mention of the blue Lincoln.

“You recognize the car?”

“It’s mine,” he said. He stopped abruptly, as if he suddenly remembered who he was talking to. “What did they look like?”

“Turns out your stepfather owns HM, Chad. Why do you think he would own a horse like that? That’s a dangerous animal.”

Chad seemed to think a moment. “Sure,” he said, talking more to himself than to me. “Of course.”

“Be gone when I get back, Chad. You can leave Amy some sort of note — but don’t see her again. Is that fair?”

He didn’t answer. He was still pale and looking away from me, at the far wall, as if he were looking through it to the mountains beyond.

I closed the door firmly and drove back to Amy, who was waiting for me with a puzzled, exasperated expression. “All done,” I said, and started for Ollie’s.

It didn’t take long to figure out why Ollie never invited anyone to his home. We weren’t in the house two minutes before Margaret asked us if we were saved. In the years since I’d last seen her, she’d gone from stout to massive, and the glittering intensity in her eyes struck me as half mad. She brought out the Bibles, three of them, one for Amy, one for me, and her own. Ollie watched all this with a sad, impotent expression, letting us know he was sorry for her behavior but unable to do anything about it. Until dinner was ready, Amy and I sat trapped on two uncomfortable, straight-back chairs, answering questions posed by Margaret about our interior, spiritual lives. She asked questions, we answered politely, and then she lectured us, beginning every little speech the same way: When you know Jesus, she’d start, and then she’d tell us how much fuller our lives would be once we were saved.

Ollie and I never got a chance for a private word, though I’m not sure I would have told him anything. From time to time, while Margaret went on and on, I worried over the consequences of what I had done. I imagined a blue Lincoln Continental arriving at our door and delivering a pair of thugs who’d execute us, gangland style, a bullet apiece in the back of the head. At one point, I had a vision of the farm in flames, while a dark-suited young man held a gun to the back of Amy’s head. The image was so disturbing, I think I must have made a noise of some kind, grunted or moaned, because Ollie and Amy both turned to look at me, though Margaret went on, deaf to anything but the import of her message.

Eventually there was dinner, a dried-up, barely edible meat loaf. Margaret had indeed brought out the good china for us, but she had apparently neglected to wash it before setting the table. The plates and glasses, even the pewter candleholder at the center of a wrinkled, white tablecloth, were coated with a thin, greasy substance, the kind of grime that might accumulate after years of disuse on a pantry shelf. It was a strange experience, that meal. It began with a standing grace, during which we all held hands while Margaret intoned St. Francis’ Prayer, the one that begins Lord, make us the instruments of thy peace. No one ate more than a bite or two of meat loaf, which Margaret seemed not to notice. By the time we were back in our car, heading for the farm, Amy had gone from discomfort to distress to amusement. “She’s crazy,” she laughed, grasping her seat belt with both hands, as if she needed to steady herself. “The woman’s out of her mind!” She leaned close and gave me a deadpan look. “Did you see that meat loaf?” She screamed.

I laughed along with Amy, but my thoughts raced ahead to the farm. There was a stretch of driveway right before we reached the garage from which Chad’s cabin was visible, and the spot alongside the cabin where he parked his car. It was late but the moon was almost full and Amy would be able to see the cabin clearly if she was looking — and I suspected she would be looking. I started up the drive speedily, hoping to hurry past the clear view of the dark cabin, and then almost hit the brake when I saw Chad’s chartreuse convertible. Alongside me, Amy stretched and yawned, though I had seen her head turn toward the cabin as soon as it came into view. “I’m sleepy,” she said.

I nodded, my throat suddenly so dry I wasn’t sure I could speak. I got out of the car at the house and stood silently while Amy started for the door. I listened hard but heard only the sounds of the farm: a breeze rustling leaves, a horse rattling a bucket in one of the barns.

“Are you coming?” Amy held the door.

I looked down at the front tires, as if I had been concerned about the car, and then followed Amy into the house. I went to the kitchen and opened the fridge. I cleared my throat. “I think I need something to eat.”

“No kidding,” Amy said. She pm her arm around my shoulder and looked into the fridge with me a moment. “I’m tired, though.” She kissed me on the cheek and said, “I’ll see you in the morning,” and went up to her room.

I closed the refrigerator, and when I heard the door to her room shut, I turned off the lights and looked out the back window. Chad’s car was exactly where it had been when Amy and I left. I hesitated a minute at the sink, looking out at the farm’s shadows, at the fence and the posts and the dark planks of the barns, the only sounds those coming from Amy’s bedroom and the dull knocking of my own heart. I went out the back door and cut through a corral, walking at first but then jogging until I reached the steps of Chad’s cabin. The lights were out, but the door was half open. “Chad,” I said, and it came out sounding like a question I was asking myself. I pushed the door open and called his name again, though it was obvious, even in the dark, that the cabin was empty. In the bathroom I heard a steady trickle of water falling from the shower nozzle. I turned on the lights and the only things I saw clearly before bolting out the door and hurrying to the stud barn were the bloody handprints on the shower stall.

“I told him,” I said aloud. I almost shouted it. When I reached the barn, I was running, and when I saw the light on in HM’s stall, I knew what I was going to find. I stopped running before I got to the stall. HM stood looking out, facing me. He threw his head back twice, cocky and full of himself. “You bastard,” I said to him, and then I said, again, “I told him.” I knew what I was going to find in the stall and I didn’t want to see it, and then when I did finally step up to the door and take hold of the bars and look in, it was as if I had stepped into a dream. I felt the numb paralysis of a nightmare, and I was unable for an instant to understand what I was seeing. When I did finally understand, I couldn’t think about it. I backed away from the stall empty-headed. I backed away from both of them, with their dark suits and dark ties, their heads bashed in. their faces bloody and slack over the crushed bones of their skulls. I backed away from the sight of them and walked out of the barn dazed.

I made my way toward the house, through the open gates of the empty corral, in the moonlight. I was stunned and dizzy. I wasn’t thinking at all. I was listening — to the small sounds coming from the grass at my feet, to horses moving in the pastures, like there was a peaceful song being composed around me in the dark somewhere and I had to strain to hear it. I was looking — at the mountains, which seemed to undulate in the moonlight, powerfully, like ocean swells. I made my way toward my house, as if moving to a place of safety, a place where I could rest and figure things out. As I neared the back door, a light came on in Amy’s bedroom window, and I stopped a moment and watched her lean close to her dresser mirror, carefully examining her face, and then lean back and begin lazily brushing her hair. I touched my face and felt that both my hands were slick with still-wet blood — and for a moment then I must have lost my mind, because I stood there thinking I had murdered them, those two kids in HM’s stall, those boys who were only Chad’s age if not younger. It lasted a second or two, that belief, that knowledge that I was the murderer, before I solved the equation and understood that the bars of the stall must have been bloody and I got blood on my hands when I gripped them. But still, it lingered, that sense that I was the murderer. I was shaken. I struggled toward the house, surrounded by the peace of dark mountains and fields, knowing only that I needed to get cleaned up before Amy saw me. I didn’t want to frighten her. I didn’t want her to see me with blood all over my face and hands. I didn’t want her to wonder who I was.