The truth of the matter

PART IV
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Fever This time the past came back to me in fragments and in dreams.

I was in a courtroom-but the courtroom was bizarre. The angles of the walls slanted in and out as the place got larger and smaller. The judge’s bench was huge. It towered above me, seeming to soar up toward a ceiling as high as the sky. The judge was an older man with a lot of silver hair. He glared down at me from his great height where I sat at the defense table far, far below. The defense table seemed to sit in a pool of glaring light with the rest of the court in shadows around me. In that glaring light, I felt exposed and vulnerable, put on display like a butterfly pinned to a board.

I was on trial for the murder of my friend Alex Hauser. Alice Boudreaux, the county prosecutor, a squat woman with frosted blond hair, was marching back and forth in front of me. She was talking to the jury, wagging her finger in my direction. The jury box was sunk in deep shadow. All I could see of the jurors were a dozen pairs of eyes, gleaming in the darkness, staring at me where I sat in the glaring light.

“The defense will tell you that Mr. West passed a lie detector test-and that’s true,” Boudreaux said as she marched back and forth, “but when you consider the other evidence, the overwhelming evidence against him, passing that test only proves what an accomplished liar he truly is. Consider this: By his own admission, he’s almost certainly the last person to have seen the victim alive. He and the victim argued violently before the victim went into the park. Traces of the victim’s blood were found on the defendant’s clothing. The murder weapon had his fingerprints on it and his DN A.” She stopped in her pacing and leveled a finger directly at me. “This is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the only possible verdict is guilty.”

Her words sent a cold jolt up my spine. I knew, of course, that it was Waterman who had put the traces of Alex’s blood on my clothes. It was the Homelanders themselves, as I found out later, who had planted the murder weapon with my DN A. The whole thing was a frame-up from start to finish. And yet as I listened to the prosecutor tick off the evidence against me, I was sickened by the idea that people all around me were believing her.

I turned to look at them-at the other people in that distorted dream courtroom. I saw dozens of people sitting in the weird, shifting shadows behind me. Even in the dark that came and went as the walls moved in and out, I recognized some of them. People from school, teachers, students. People I’d grown up with. Relatives. Some of their faces were illuminated for moments at a time by spotlights that seemed to shine out of nowhere and pick them out of the dark. I saw my friends-Josh and Rick and Miler-leaning forward intently, listening intently to every word the prosecutor said. I saw Beth, casting me quiet looks and gestures of encouragement whenever I turned to her. I saw my father, frowning angrily at the prosecutor as he watched her moving back and forth across the courtroom.

And I saw my mother. She was sitting beside my father and he had his arm around her. She wasn’t crying now, but I could see by her pallor and her unnaturally bright eyes that she was devastated; terrified by what was happening to her son. I felt the terrible weight of her grief and fear. And I felt the terrible weight of my own guilt for having chosen the path that made her feel this way.

Then I spotted Mr. Sherman. He was sitting near one shifting wall. He saw me look at him. He smiled at me and nodded, as if some secret communication were passing between us.

The sight of him made me nauseous. I felt the movement of the shifting, shadowy room inside me as if I were standing on a ship in a raging sea. Some lines from the Bible went through my mind, a passage about sailors in a storm:

They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits’ end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble…

I wanted to cry out to the Lord too, but what could I cry? He knew what none of my friends or family knew: that I wanted to be found guilty-that I had to be found guilty for the plan to work. All I could ask was that he would comfort the people who loved me, that he would comfort my mom especially…

I turned away from Sherman to face the front of the room again. There was the prosecutor, her face pressed terrifyingly close, her features all distorted as she shrieked at me:

“Guilty!”

Startled, I snapped out of the fever dream-but not out of the fever. For a moment, I was awake in a haze of heat and sickness. Where was I? What was happening to me? The room I was in was a foggy, shifting blur.

“Mom…,” I heard myself groan.

And I heard her answer, “Ssh. It’s all right now.”

I turned eagerly to the voice, lifting my hand. I felt a cool hand take mine. I searched for my mother’s face. And there she was… But wait, no, it wasn’t my mother. It was another woman. Blond, weary. Did I know her? Yes… at least I’d seen her before… But I couldn’t quite remember who she was. Still, her voice was gentle and comforting.

“Just lie quietly.”

She put a washcloth on my forehead. It was cool and damp, and the feel of it against my burning skin was incredibly soothing.

“Guilty…,” I said.

“No, no, no,” she murmured. “It’s going to be all right.”

I shook my head at her. It would never be all right. “Guilty… guilty…,” I tried to explain.

From far away, I heard another voice: “Is the man dying, Mommy?”

“No, sweetheart,” she said. “He’s just sick and tired, that’s all.”

I held on to her hand. “I’m so sorry,” I said.

“I know. Just rest.”

I felt myself sinking again, falling down and down and down into the foggy world of the past…

“Look I’m just asking you to think logically here. I just want you to ask yourself some simple, logical questions about the things you’ve been taught to believe. That’s not evil, is it, Charlie? Asking questions is just what a teacher is supposed to do. Isn’t it?”

The voice was murmuring low-practically whispering- in my ear. There was nothing else. Just darkness. Just that voice. I knew the voice, but I couldn’t place it right away, couldn’t figure out whose voice it was.

“I mean, when you get a different set of facts, you have to reconsider the situation. Right? You might think the sky is always blue or the grass is always green, but if you wake up one morning and the grass is red, well, you have to reformulate your opinions around those observations. Different information requires a different worldview.”

Slowly, as if lights were coming up on a stage in a theater, the scene became visible around me. I was in a restaurant. It was in my hometown, but it was not a restaurant I knew. It was a sort of cocktail lounge in a mall. It was dark with black walls, low lights, small tables, far apart from each other. There was a bar where men sat slumped over their drinks while a basketball game played soundlessly on the TV on the wall.

This was not the kind of place I would normally go to. It was sleazy. People sitting around drinking in the middle of the afternoon. But that’s exactly why we were here. It was the kind of place where no one we knew would see us.

I turned to look at the man who was speaking to me. It was Mr. Sherman, my old history teacher. Again, the sight of him made me feel kind of ill, as if the room were going up and down on a stormy sea. He was close to me now, sitting right next to me in a booth seat at a small table. He was leaning toward me over our lunch plates. I could feel his breath as he spoke.

“Look, no one likes to abandon cherished beliefs,” he went on in that insinuating murmur. “I mean, we all find these old superstitions comforting and reassuring-I know that. No one likes to find out that something he was taught as a child by his parents or teachers might be wrong. But you have to be realistic. You have to consider the facts.”

I looked at him. I forced myself to nod, as if I were considering his words, as if he were making headway in convincing me. To be honest, I didn’t much like pretending in that way, but that was what I was supposed to do. That was the job Waterman had given me. I was supposed to make Sherman think he was changing my mind, convincing me to join the Homelanders.

But all the while, I could see right through him. I mean, I had taken history from him two years in a row. I knew exactly the way he argued. He would begin by making these broad generalizations that had an element of truth to them. He would say: You have to use your reason. Or: When the facts change, you have to change your opinion. Which, of course, are true statements as far as they go. But it’s easy to twist even the truth and use it for false purposes.

Now Sherman went on, murmuring in my ear: “As long as you were living your safe, middle-class life, you thought everything in America was perfect. You were all full of big words like ‘liberty and justice for all,’ and you thought that was the situation you were in. But now things have changed. Now you’re being falsely accused, aren’t you? You’re being railroaded into prison for a murder you didn’t commit. And all of that is being done by the very American system you respected and trusted.”

This was such typical Sherman, it almost made me laugh. You thought everything in America was perfect. That was just dumb! I wasn’t some kind of slaphappy idiot or blind patriot. I knew there were problems and evils here just like there are problems and evils everywhere there are human beings. But over time, no other country has been more free or caused more freedom to spread around the world or protected freedom more around the world. And if people aren’t free, what are they? If you don’t start with that, what have you got?

That’s what I was thinking, but that’s not what I said. What I said was, “Yeah… yeah, I guess I see what you mean. But what about these people you’re with-these Islamo-fascists seem like pretty nasty types to me.”

Sherman made a motion with his hand, brushing this objection aside as if it were nothing. “Look, you know me, Charlie. I don’t believe in any God or religion. That’s just old-fashioned superstitious stuff from another age. But these people are committed to bringing this unfair system down, and that’s what I’m committed to also. When the smoke clears, that’s when we’ll make our real move, that’s when we’ll turn this country into a place where there’s no unfairness at all, where everyone has the same amount of money and property, and where no one says anything hateful, or treats anyone unfairly.”

“Because you’ll be telling them not to,” I couldn’t help saying. “You’ll be deciding for them what’s right and what’s wrong and making them do it.”

“Oh, hey, Charlie. Don’t give me this ‘We, the People’ stuff, all right? Look around you. Most people are idiots. They can barely put two thoughts together in a row. You want them deciding what’s right for the country?”

Well, again, I wasn’t there to argue with him. I was there to pretend to be convinced by him. So I said, “Okay. So you’re saying democracy isn’t always such a good thing…”

“It’s not, Charlie, believe me. It’s the wrong way to go. People need to be forced to do what’s right.”

“But what if they don’t agree. You’re talking about killing people then, aren’t you?”

“No, no, no,” said Mr. Sherman-but always keeping his voice low, always keeping his face close to mine so no one else could hear what he was saying. “I’m talking about saving people, Charlie. Saving all the people who die because of America’s evil.”

I would have paid cash money to tell him what I thought of him just then. But I did my job. I said, “Uh-huh.”

“Listen, Charlie, here’s the thing,” Sherman went on softly. “Let’s say you get convicted of Alex’s murder.”

“Well, I hope I won’t…”

“I know, I know,” he said, cutting me off. “But let’s just say you get unfairly convicted and sent to prison. You could be forty or fifty before they set you free again. That’s your whole life gone, Charlie. For what? For a lie. For nothing. Just because they needed a scapegoat.”

I swallowed hard, as if I were considering his words. “Yeah? So?”

“So these Islamic guys you hate so much?”

“I don’t hate them. I just disagree with them.”

“Whatever. The thing is: they have deep contacts in our prisons, a lot of powerful contacts. If you joined with us, I could arrange for you to break free of any prison they try to put you in. Instead of rotting away behind bars until you’re an old man, you could be living free, fighting to make this a better country.”

I leaned toward him and was about to answer, but as I did, I felt that nausea again. The way the dark room shifted back and forth and the way Mr. Sherman pressed his face close to me and the way he kept whispering in that soft, intense, insinuating way-it was all sickening.

I shook my head a little, trying to clear it. It seemed to be getting darker around me. It was harder and harder to see the restaurant.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “Okay. Just for the sake of argument, if I joined up with you, what would I have to do?”

The light got dimmer and dimmer. The walls of the restaurant disappeared in the encroaching darkness. The darkness spread toward us like a stain, the other tables disappearing first, then our own table getting dimmer. Soon, I could barely make out Sherman himself, even though he was right next to me.

Finally, blackness.

I reached out blindly. A gentle hand took hold of mine. A woman’s kindly face hovered over me.

“Ma…?” I moaned softly through my fever.

“It’s all right, sweetheart.”

“Didn’t want to hurt you…”

“I know. It’s all right.”

“So sorry…”

“No, you did the right thing.”

“Made you cry…”

“It’s a sad world sometimes. Sometimes people have to cry, that’s all.”

“Never wanted…”

“I know. It’s all right.”

I clung to her cool hand for comfort. Her face swam in and out of focus. Sometimes I thought it was my mom and sometimes I wasn’t sure. I wanted to see my mom so much. I wanted to be home again so much. I was tired of being on the run, tired of being alone.

“Ma…,” I whispered.

“Ssh,” the woman whispered back. “Just rest.”

I sank back into dreams and memory.

I came into a strange and shadowed place. It was some kind of garden maze, but instead of hedges there were corridors formed by high trellises. The trellises were covered in twisting branches that sprouted thorns, like rosebushes with all their flowers gone. I moved through patches of bright light into patches of deep darkness. Somewhere not far away, I could hear voices murmuring:

“The court is now back in session. Judge William Taggart presiding.”

“The bailiff will bring in the jury.”

It was my trial. In this dream-memory, it was going on at the same time I was wandering in this strange, barren garden maze.

I turned a corner and stepped into a dark square. I had reached the center of the maze. I thought there was a statue here, the figure of a man. But as I stood and looked at it, the statue let out a sigh. It was no statue at all. It was an actual man, waiting for me in the depths of the maze’s shadows. I couldn’t see his face. I could only make out his figure.

“Has the jury reached a verdict?” came the voices murmuring in the distance.

“We have, Your Honor. We find the defendant, Charlie West, guilty of murder in the second degree.”

There was a loud cry that seemed to go into my heart like a knife.

“Charlie! No!”

It was my mother, her voice rising above the general murmur of the crowd’s reaction. Her cry broke off into painful sobbing that went on and on beneath the pound, pound, pound of the judge’s gavel.

“This court will come to order!”

The noises of the courtroom faded slowly. My mother’s sobbing was the last sound to disappear. Then it was silent here at the center of the dark maze. I stood in that silence with the eerie figure in the shadows.

After another moment, the figure spoke to me: “Hello, Charlie.”

I don’t know why, but his voice sent a chill through me. I peered at him, trying to make out his face, but I couldn’t. Everything felt strange and uncanny to me. I knew I was in a dream, but I knew it was partly real too, partly a memory of something that had really happened to me.

“You understand what’s going to happen now, right?” the dark figure said.

I nodded. I shivered. I knew. “I’m going to prison.”

“That’s right. Not for long, though. The Homelanders have already arranged for your escape. And we’ve already arranged for you to get away with it.”

I nodded. My heart was beating hard.

“Frightened?” the man asked me.

I shrugged. I guess I was frightened a little. And sad too-sad about my mom and all the pain I was putting her through. But there was something else as well. I was excited. I was ready for the mission to begin, ready for the fight to begin, ready to do what I had been called to do.

“I’ll be all right,” I told the shadowy man.

The man’s voice grew grim. “You’re going into a dangerous world, Charlie. A world full of twisted people with twisted philosophies. They will try to use you to commit any atrocity they can. And if, for even a second, they suspect you’re not completely on their side, they will kill you without a second thought.”

I put my hands in my pockets, lifting my shoulders around my ears. “I know all that. I’m ready.”

I could feel the man smile in the darkness. “I’m sure you are. You’re a special guy, Charlie. That’s why we came to you in the first place.” He stepped toward me. Again, I strained against the shadows, trying to see him. I could just make out the outline of his features. “And now, before they take you away, there’s one last thing I have to tell you. A technician is going to come to you in your cell. He’s going to install a device inside your mouth. The device can be activated by a sound code, which he’ll teach you. When the device is activated, it will release a chemical for you to swallow…”

I stared at him. “What do you mean? Like a suicide pill? In case I get captured and tortured or something?”

“It is in case you get captured and tortured. And it is a pill of sorts. But it won’t kill you. We knew you wouldn’t use something like that.”

“That’s right. I don’t do suicide.”

“Fair enough. But what this pill will do is wipe out your memory. That way, no matter what happens, you won’t be able to reveal anything about us, the people who sent you, the organization we represent.”

I shook my head, trying to understand. “If I activate this device and swallow this stuff, I’ll lose my memory? I won’t know who I am?”

“No, no, it shouldn’t affect your long-term memory. You’ll still know who you are. You’ll remember most of your life. We’re not sure, in fact, just how much of your memory will be erased. The drug is still experimental. But we figure about a year or two of your past will disappear. The point is: you won’t remember being sent on this mission or who sent you.”

I just stood there in the shadows, thinking about it. A year or two of my life, gone. All the stuff that had happened to me. Beth… “Will the memories be erased forever?” I asked.

He gave a small, sad laugh. “To be honest, Charlie, if you find yourself in a situation where you need to use this thing, it’s not likely you’ll live much longer, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean.”

“But, just as a point of information? If you do get caught and you do get tortured and you do swallow this chemical and then, somehow, against all odds, you manage to survive and find your way back to us… Well, in that very unlikely series of events, we have an experimental antidote to this drug as well. I would say there’s a good chance, under those unlikely circumstances, that you’ll be able to restore most of the memory that was lost.”

I thought about it some more. Then I nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s roll.”

Then there was one of those sudden shifts in scenery that you get in dreams. I was no longer in the thorny maze. I was back in the courtroom. The bailiffs had my hands pinned behind my back. They were just closing the cuffs around my wrists. I was calling out to my crying mother.

“It’s gonna be all right, Mom. Don’t be afraid. Everything is going to be all right, I swear. Never be afraid.”

The judge’s gavel was pound-pound-pounding on the bench.

“The court will come to order!” he said loudly.

I cast a last look back at the people in the gallery-at my mom, at my dad with his arms around her, his face grief-stricken; at Beth, trying so hard to keep from crying as she showed me an encouraging smile; at my friends, Josh and Rick and Miler, tapping their chests with their fists to let me know they were still with me in their hearts-everything seemed to fall away beneath that steady pound, pound, pound of the judge’s gavel…

Which now became another pounding, a different sort of pounding, somewhere nearby.

My eyes snapped open. I was awake. My gaze roamed over the white ceiling above me. Something was different. I was more clearheaded. I was covered in cold sweat.

My fever had broken.

I licked my dry lips. I turned my head on the pillow to look around. I was in a small bedroom. I was lying on a single bed against one wall. A woman-the same woman who had caught me after I’d broken into her house-was seated on a wooden chair by my bedside. She was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans now. She looked tired. She smiled at me. I tried to smile back.

The pounding…

Even though I was awake, the pounding from my dream continued. I realized now: It was not the judge’s gavel. It was someone knocking on the door in a nearby room.

The woman gave a sigh and pushed out of her chair to her feet. Instinctively, I reached for her.

“Ma’am…,” I said weakly.

“It’s all right,” she said softly. “I’m just going to go see who’s at the door.”

I let my hand fall back onto the thin blanket on top of me. I lay where I was and watched her move out of the room.

The pounding continued. I heard the woman call out, “All right, all right, I’m coming.”

I heard Sport add his opinion with a short, sharp bark.

In the next several seconds as she crossed to her front door, my eyes traveled around the little room. It was bare, stark. Just the bed, the chair, a dresser with some framed photographs on it. No window. No pictures on the wall, just peeling old-fashioned wallpaper with purple flowers. There was a bowl of water on a small table by the woman’s chair. There was a washcloth in the bowl-the cloth she’d been using to keep me cool. There was a bottle of aspirin and a couple of empty juice cartons on the floor too. I guess she’d been giving me aspirin and juice to keep me going.

About a million questions were flashing through my mind. How long had I been here? Hours? Days? How long had I been feverish and hallucinating, lying helpless while this woman I’d never met sat beside me and cared for me? Had I said anything to her? Had I spoken in my sleep? Had I given myself away…?

The pounding stopped. I heard the door open. I heard the woman’s voice again, “Down, Sport,” she said. Then she said, “Yes?”

“Hello, ma’am,” a man answered her. With a jolt of fear, I recognized the voice just a second before he said, “My name is Detective Rose. I’m with the police.”