The Last Child

CHAPTER FOUR

People were not right. The cop had that part straight. Johnny had peered over more fences and into more windows than he could count. He’d knocked on doors at all hours, and he’d seen things that weren’t right. Things that people did when they thought they were alone and no one was watching. He’d seen kids sniff drugs and old people eat food that fell on the floor. He once saw a preacher in his underwear, hot-faced and screaming at his wife as she cried. That was messed up. But Johnny was no idiot. He knew that crazy people could look like anybody else. So he kept his head down. He kept his shoes laced tight and a knife in his pocket.

He was careful.

He was smart.

Johnny did not look back until he’d gone two full blocks. When he did turn his head, he saw that Detective Hunt still stood in the road, a distant speck of color next to a dark car and green grass. The cop was still for an instant, then one arm rose in a slow wave, and Johnny rode faster, careful to not look back again.

The cop scared him, and Johnny wondered how he knew the things he knew.

Five.

The number popped into his head.

Five bruises.

He pedaled harder, pumped his legs until the shirt on his back clung like a second skin. He went north to the far edge of town, to the place where the river slid beneath the bridge and widened out until the current went flat. He rode his bike down the bank and dropped it. Blood pounded in his ears and he tasted salt. His eyes burned from it, so he wiped at them with a grubby sleeve. He used to fish here with his father. He knew where to find the bass and the giant cats that hugged the mud five feet down, but none of that mattered. He never fished anymore, but he still came here.

This was still his place.

He sat in the dust to untie his shoes. His fingers shook and he did not know why. The shoes came off, then he touched the feather to his cheek and wrapped it in his shirt. The sun put fierce heat on his skin, and he looked at the bruises, the largest of which was the size and shape of a large man’s knee. It wrapped around the ribs on his left side and he remembered how Ken held him down with that knee, shifted his weight whenever Johnny tried to squirm out.

Johnny rolled his shoulders, tried to forget about it, the knee on his chest, the finger in his face.

You’ll fucking do what I fucking say…

Open hand slaps to Johnny’s face, first one side, then the other, his mother passed out in the back room.

You little shit…

Another slap, harder.

Where’s your daddy now?

The bruise had yellowed out on the edges, gone green in the middle; and it hurt when he pushed it with a finger. The skin went white for a second-another perfect oval-then the color rushed in. Johnny scrubbed more salt from his eyes, and when he moved for the river, he stumbled once. He stepped in and river bottom pushed between his toes; then he dove, and warm water closed above him. It wrapped him up, shut out the world and bore him tirelessly down.

Johnny spent two hours at the river, too worried about Detective Hunt to risk more of his search, too ambivalent about school to make going worth his time. He swam across the river and back, made shallow dives from flat rocks baked hot by the sun. Driftwood lay in silver stacks and wind licked off the water. By late morning he was physically worn, stretched out on a flat rock forty feet downriver from the bridge, invisible behind a willow that dragged long strands in the black water. Cars made the bridge hum. A small stone clattered on the rock beside his head. He sat up and another pebble struck him on the shoulder. He looked around and saw no one. A third rock glanced off his leg. It was large enough to sting. “Throw another and you’re dead.”

Silence.

“I know it’s you, Jack.”

Johnny heard a laugh, and Jack stepped from the wood’s edge. He wore cutoff jeans and filthy sneakers. His shirt was yellow white, with a picture of Elvis in black silhouette. He had a backpack on his back and more stones in his hand. One side of his mouth turned a sharp edge, and his hair was slicked back. Johnny had forgotten that it was Friday.

“That was for ditching without me.” Jack walked over, a small boy with blond hair, brown eyes, and a seriously messed up arm. The right one was fine, but it was hard to miss the other. Shrunken and small, it looked like someone had nailed the arm of a six-year-old to a kid twice that age.

“Are you angry?” Johnny asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll give you a free hit to make it even.”

Jack held the hard smile. “Three hits,” he said.

“Three with your girl arm.”

“Two with the hammer.” Jack cocked his good fist, and his smile thinned. “No flinching.” He stepped closer and Johnny flexed his arm, pulled it tight to his side. Jack spread his legs, drew back the fist. “This is going to hurt.”

“Do it, you pussy.”

Jack punched Johnny in the arm, twice. He hit hard, and when he stepped back, he looked satisfied. “That’s what you get.”

Johnny rolled his arm, tossed one of the pebbles and Jack ducked it. “How’d you know I’d be here?”

“It’s not rocket science.”

“Then what took you so long?”

Jack sat on the rock next to Johnny. The pack came off and he stripped off the shirt, too. His skin was burned red, peeling on the shoulders. A silver cross hung on a thin steel chain. It spun as he opened the pack, winked silver in the sun. “I had to go home for supplies. Dad was still there.”

“He didn’t see you, did he?” Jack’s father was a serious, hard-ass cop, and Johnny avoided him like the plague.

“Do I look like an idiot?” Jack’s good hand disappeared inside the pack. “Still cold,” he said, and pulled out a can of beer. He handed it to Johnny, then pulled out another.

“Stealing beer.” Johnny shook his head. “You’re going to burn in hell.”

Jack flashed the same sharp smile. “The Lord forgives small sins.”

“That’s not what your mom says.”

He barked a laugh. “My mom is one step away from foot washing and snake handling, Johnny man. You know that. She prays for my soul like I might burst into flame at any moment. She does it at home. She does it in public.”

“Get out.”

“That time I got caught cheating? Remember?”

Three months ago. Johnny remembered. “Yeah. History class.”

“We had a meeting with the principal, right. Before it was done, she had him on his knees, praying for God to show me the path.”

“Bullshit.”

“No shit. He was so scared of her. You should have seen his face, all scrunched up, one eye squinting out to see if she was looking at him while he did it.” Jack popped the top, shrugged. “Still, can’t blame him. She’s gone off the deep end and is trying just as hard to take me down with her. She had the preacher over last week to pray for me.”

“Why?”

“In case I’m touching myself.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Life is a comedy,” Jack said, but there was no smile left. His mother was scary religious, born again and taking no prisoners. She was on Jack all the time with threats of hellfire and damnation. He played it off, but the cracks showed.

Johnny opened his beer. “Does she know your dad still drinks?”

“She says that the Lord disapproves, so Dad put a beer refrigerator in the garage, his liquor, too. That seems to have settled it.”

Jack chugged. Johnny took a sip. “That’s some crap beer, Jack.”

“Beggars and choosers, man. Don’t make me hit you again.” Jack chugged the rest of his beer, then stuffed the empty in the pack and pulled out another.

“Did you do your history paper?”

“What did I say about small sins?”

Johnny scanned the area behind Jack. “Where’s your bike?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I didn’t feel like riding it.”

“It’s a six hundred dollar Trek.”

Jack looked away, shrugged. “I miss the old one. That’s all.”

“Still no sign, huh?”

“Stolen, I guess. Gone for good.”

The power of sentiment, Johnny thought. Jack’s old bike was piss yellow with a three gears and a banana seat. His dad bought it second-hand and it had to be fifteen years old. It had been gone for a long time. “Did you hop the train?”

Johnny’s eyes slid to the stunted arm. Jack fell from the back of a pickup when he was four and shattered the arm, which turned out to have a hollow bone. He’d had an operation to fill the hollow core with cow’s bone, but the surgeon must have been pretty bad, because it never really grew after that. The fingers didn’t work that well. The limb had little strength. Johnny gave him hell about it because it made the arm a nonissue between the two of them. But that was just cover-up. When it came down to it, Jack was sensitive. He saw the glance.

“You don’t think I can handle a train jump?” Angry.

“I was just thinking of that kid, you know.”

They both knew the story, a fourteen-year-old from one of the county schools who tried to hop the same train and lost his grip. He’d fallen under the wheels and lost both legs: one at the thigh, one below the knee. He was a cautionary tale for kids like Jack.

“That kid was a wimp.” Jack rooted through one of the outer pockets of the backpack and came out with a pack of menthols. He pulled out a cigarette with his bad arm and held it between two baby fingers as he lit it with a lighter. He sucked in smoke and tried to blow a ring on the exhale.

“Your dad buys crap cigarettes, too.”

Jack looked at the perfect blue sky and took another drag. The cigarette in his small hand looked unnaturally large. “You want one?” he asked.

“Why not?”

Jack handed Johnny a smoke and let him light it off the coal on the end of his own. Johnny took a drag and coughed. Jack laughed. “You are so not a smoker.”

Johnny flicked the butt into the river. He spit into the dirt. “Crap cigarettes,” he repeated. When he looked up, he caught Jack staring at the bruises on his chest and ribs.

“Those are new,” Jack said.

“Not so new.” Johnny watched the current carry a log past their rock. “Tell me again,” he said.

“Tell you what?”

“About the van.”

“Damn, Johnny. You know how to suck the joy out of a day. How many times do we need to go over it? Nothing’s changed since the last time. Or the time before that.”

“Just tell me.”

Jack pulled in smoke and looked away from his friend. “It was just a van.”

“What color?”

“You know what color.”

“What color?”

Jack sighed. “White.”

“What about dents? Scratches? Anything else you remember?”

“It’s been a year, Johnny.”

“What else?”

“For fuck’s sake, man. It was a white van. White. Like I told you. Like I told the cops.” Johnny waited and eventually Jack settled down. “It was a plain white van,” he said. “Like a painter would use.”

“You never said that before.”

“I did.”

“No. You described it: white, no windows in the back. You never said it looked like a painter’s van. Why would you say that now? Was there paint spilled on the side?”

“No.”

“Ladders on the roof? A rack for ladders?”

Jack finished the cigarette and flicked his own butt into the river. “It was just a van, Johnny. She was two hundred yards away when it happened. I wasn’t even sure it was her until I found out she was missing. I was coming home from the library, same as her. A bunch of us had been there that day. I saw the van come over the hill and stop. A hand came out of the window and she walked up to the side. She didn’t look scared or anything. She just walked right up.” He paused. “Then the door opened up and somebody grabbed her. A white guy. Black shirt. Like I’ve said a hundred times. The door closed and they took off. The whole thing took like ten seconds. There’s just nothing else for me to remember.”

Johnny looked down, kicked at a stone.

“I’m sorry, man. I wish I’d done something, but I just didn’t. It didn’t even look real.”

Johnny stood and stared at the river. After a minute, he nodded once. “Give me another beer.”

They drank beer and swam in the river. Jack smoked. After an hour, Jack asked: “You want to check some houses?”

Johnny skimmed a rock and shook his head. Jack liked the game of it, the risk. He liked creeping around and seeing things that kids were not supposed to see. For Jack, it was an adrenaline thing. “Not today,” Johnny said.

Jack walked to Johnny’s bike, where the map was wedged into the spokes of the front tire. He pulled it out, held it up. “What about this?” Johnny looked at his friend, then told him about his run-in with Detective Hunt. “He’s all over me.”

Jack thought it was bullshit. “He’s just a cop.”

“Your dad’s a cop.”

“Yeah, and I steal beer from his fridge. What does that tell you?” Jack spit in the dirt, a universal sign of disgust between the two boys. “Come on. Let’s do something. It makes you feel better. We both know it. And I can’t sit out here all day.”

“No.”

“Whatever,” Jack said, and shoved the map back between the spokes. He saw the feather tied to Johnny’s bike. It dangled from a cord looped around the seat post. He took it in his hand. “Hey, what’s this?”

Johnny stared at his friend. “Nothing,” he said.

Jack ran the feather between his fingers. Light made it glisten at the edges. He tilted it against the light. “It’s cool,” he said.

“I said, leave it alone.”

Jack saw the new angle in his friend’s shoulders, and he let the feather drop. It swung once on its cord. “Jeez. It was just a question.”

Johnny relaxed his fingers. Jack was Jack. He meant no harm. “I heard that your brother picked Clemson.”

“You heard that?”

“It was all over the news.”

Jack picked up a rock, rolled it from his good hand to his bad. “He’s already being scouted by the pros. He broke the record last week.”

“What record?”

“Career home runs.”

“For the school?”

Jack shook his head. “The state.”

“Guess your old man is proud,” Johnny said.

“His son is gonna be famous.” Jack’s smile looked real, but Johnny saw how he tucked his bad arm more tightly against his ribs. “Of course he’s proud.”

They went back to drinking. The sun crawled higher, but the daylight seemed to dim. The air grew cool, as if the river itself had chilled. Johnny got halfway through his third beer, then put it down.

Jack got drunk.

They spoke no more of his brother.

It was noon when they heard the car downshift on the road. It stopped at the bridge, then turned onto the old logging track that led to the high bank above them. “Shit.” Jack hid the beer cans. Johnny pulled on his shirt to cover the bruises, and Jack pretended that it was a normal thing to do. It was an old argument between them, whether or not to tell.

A high, metal grill pushed through the weeds that grew between the ruts of the track, and Johnny saw that it was a pickup, waxed. Chrome threw off glints of sun and the windshield was mirrored. When it stopped, the engine revved, then died. Three of the four doors opened. Jack stood up straighter.

Blue jeans. Boots. Thick arms. Johnny saw all of that as the older kids circled to the front of the truck. He’d seen them around. They were high school kids. Seventeen, eighteen years old. Grown men, or close to it. One had a pint of bourbon in his hand. All three were smoking cigarettes. They stood on a lip of earth where the bank fell away to the water. They looked down on Johnny, and one of them, a tall blond kid with a raspberry birthmark on his neck, nudged the driver. “Look at this,” he said. “Couple of junior high faggots.”

The driver’s face showed no emotion. The guy with the bourbon took a pull on the bottle. Jack said, “Fuck off, Wayne.”

Birthmark stopped laughing.

“That’s right,” Jack said. “I know who you are.”

The driver thumped the back of his hand on Birthmark’s chest. He was tall and well built, handsome in a postcard way. He regarded Wayne coolly, then pointed at Jack. “That’s Gerald Cross’s brother, so show him a little respect.”

Wayne made a face. “That little dipshit? I don’t believe it.” He took a step, leaned over the bank and raised his voice. “Your brother should have signed with Carolina,” he said. “You tell him Clemson is for pussies.”

“Is that where you’ll be going?” Johnny asked.

The driver laughed. So did the kid holding the bourbon. Wayne ’s face darkened, but the driver stepped forward, cut him off. “I know you, too,” he said to Johnny, then paused and took a drag on his cigarette. “I’m sorry about your sister.”

“Wait a minute,” Wayne said, and pointed. “That’s this guy?”

“Yes, it is.”

The words came without visible emotion, and the blood fell out of Johnny’s face. “I don’t know you,” Johnny said.

Jack touched Johnny’s arm. “That’s Hunt’s son. The cop’s son. His name is Allen. He’s a senior.”

Johnny looked up and saw the resemblance. Different hair, but the same build. The same soft eyes. “This is our place,” Johnny said. “We were here first.”

Hunt’s son leaned out over the bank, but was clearly not disturbed by the confrontational tone. He spoke to Jack. “Haven’t seen you around in a while.”

“Why would you?” Jack said. “We’ve got nothing to say to each other. Gerald either, for that matter.”

Johnny looked at Jack. “He knows your brother?”

“Once upon a time.”

Allen straightened. “Once upon a time,” he said, and there was no emotion in the words. “We’ll find another place.” He turned around, stopped, and spoke to Jack. “Tell your brother I said hi.”

“Tell him yourself.”

Allen paused, then offered an empty smile. He gestured to his friends, then got in the truck and started the engine. They backed up the dirt track, disappeared; then it was just the river, the wind.

“That’s Hunt’s son?” Johnny asked.

“Yeah.” Jack spit in the dirt.

“What’s the problem with him and your brother?”

“A girl,” Jack said, then looked out over the river. “Water under the bridge.”

The mood soured after that. They caught a garter snake and let it go, shaved driftwood with their knives, but it was no good. Johnny was talked out and Jack sensed it, so when a distant whistle announced the southbound freight, Jack pulled on his shoes and packed up. “I’m going to split,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Unless you want to pedal me back to town on your handlebars.” Johnny followed Jack up the bank. “You want to hook up later?” Jack asked. “Catch a movie? Play some videogames?”

The whistle called again, closer. “You’d better roll,” Johnny said.

“Just call me later.”

Johnny waited until he was gone, then unwrapped the pinfeather from his shirt and slipped the string over his neck. Dipping his hands in the river, he dabbed water on his face, then smoothed the feather on his bike. The water made it gleam, and it slid between his fingertips, crisp and cool and perfect.

Johnny skimmed some more stones, then went back to the rock and lay down. The sun was warm, the air a blanket, and at some point, he dozed. When he woke, it was with a start. The day had slid to late afternoon: five o’clock, maybe five thirty. Dark clouds piled up on the far horizon. A breeze carried the smell of distant rain.

Johnny hopped off the rock and went to find his shoes. He had them in his hand when he heard the whine of a small engine. It approached from the north, fast. The whine climbed to a scream, a motorcycle, pushing hard. It was almost to the bridge when Johnny heard another engine. This one was big and running wide open. Johnny craned his neck, saw the concrete abutment that ran along the bridge and beyond that a slice of green leaves and sky gone the color of ash. The bridge began to shake, and Johnny knew that he’d never heard anything hit it so fast.

They were halfway across when metal hit metal. Johnny saw a shower of sparks, the top of a car, and a motorcycle that cartwheeled once before the body came over the rail. One of the legs bent impossibly, the arms churned, and Johnny knew that it was a mistake, a pinwheel that screamed with a man’s voice.

It landed at Johnny’s feet with a wet thump and the double snap of breaking bones. It was a man in a muddy shirt and brown pants. One arm twisted under his back, angle all wrong, and his chest looked caved in. His eyes were open, and they were the most amazing blue.

Brakes squealed on the road. Johnny stepped closer to the injured man, saw skin torn from one side of his face, right eye starting to go bloody. His good eye locked on Johnny as if the boy could save him.

Up on the road, the big engine gunned. Tires barked in reverse. Johnny felt the vibration when the car rolled back onto the bridge.

The injured man’s jaw worked. “He’s coming back.”

“It’s okay,” Johnny said. “We’ll help you.” He knelt in the dirt. The man held out his hand and Johnny took it. “It’s going to be okay.”

But the man ignored Johnny’s words. With a surprising strength, he pulled the boy closer. “I found her.”

Johnny focused on the man’s lips. “You found who?”

“The girl that was taken.”

Johnny felt cold shock. The man’s body seized, and blood shot from his mouth onto Johnny’s shirt. Johnny barely noticed. “Who?” he said again, then louder. “Who?”

“I found her…”

Above them, the big engine idled. The injured man rolled his eyes up, his fear obvious. He pulled Johnny so close that he smelled blood and crushed organs. The man’s eyes crinkled at the edges, and Johnny heard a single word. A whisper.

“Run…”

“What?”

The man’s grip tightened. Johnny heard how the big engine rumbled and spat, then something like steel on concrete. The man’s hand clenched so hard that nails cut Johnny’s skin.

“For God’s sake-”

The body seized again, spine locked tight, broken arm twisting.

“Run…”

Johnny looked down, saw a boot heel push dirt, and something clicked in his mind.

This was not an accident.

Johnny looked at the bridge and saw a hump of movement: a head and a shoulder, a man moving around the front of the car. It was a shadow man, a cutout. Johnny felt the blood on his hands, sticky wet and going cold.

Not an accident.

The man’s body seized, head slamming dirt, boot heel drumming. Johnny tried to pull his hand free, had to jerk with all he had. Noise on the bridge. Movement. Fear was a knife that went in low and touched some deep place in him. Johnny had never been so scared in all of his life, not the day he woke up to find his father gone, not the times his mom winked out and Ken got that gleam in his eye.

Johnny was terrified.

Frozen.

Then he turned and ran, along the river, down the trail. He ran until his throat closed, until his heart tried to claw free from his chest. He ran fast and he ran afraid. He ran until the giant black monster stepped from the shadows and grabbed him up.

Then Johnny screamed.