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.“Horror, it ain’t my thing.Too much of that in real life.” He wanted to say how Larry’s versions, way back when, were better, but French cleared his throat.“If we can end our Oprah book club, we was just telling Larry here that his guilt won’t go away till he owns up to what he’s done.Ain’t you found that to be the case, 32?”“Only if he’s done something.” Silas sensed French stiffen, heard Lolly squeak in his chair.“Tell em, Silas,” Larry said, “that we used to be friends.”“Yeah,” French said.“Tell us, Silas.”“We was,” he told Larry.“Friends, huh?” French kept his eyes on Silas.“Yall meet at school?”“No.” Larry seemed stronger now, buoyed, a splotch of color coming into his cheeks.He shifted in his sheets, flexing his hands.“We couldn’t be friends there cause Silas was black.We used to play out in the woods.Remember, Silas?”“This might,” French said, “be a good time to get back on track.You want to tell us what really happened to Cindy Walker, Larry?”“Wait,” Silas said.The sheriff coughed behind them and French fixed him with a hard gaze, one that said, Don’t fuck up.“I took her where she asked me to,” Larry said, oblivious, it seemed, to the tension mounting in the room.“And I let her out.Then I drove off.”“That’s what you’ve been saying all these years,” French said.“Tell us the rest.It’s time, Larry.Like I said, it ain’t going away, this guilt.”“It wasn’t him,” Silas said.“Constable Jones,” the sheriff now, “you want to wait in the hall?”“No, I don’t.”The room quiet except for the tick and beeping of Larry’s machines.Silas aware of the chief’s hot eyes on his face and the sheriff’s on his back like the red dots of laser sights.“Is there something you want to say, then?” French asked.Here it all came.A quarter of a century bunching up on him, bearing down, a truck slamming on its brakes and its logs sliding forward, over the cab, through the window, the back of his head, shooting past him in the road.“It was me,” he said, turning away from French.“You.”“I’m the one picked her up after Larry dropped her off.In the woods.I’m the one let her off at her road.”Larry said, “What?”French clamped his fingers on Silas’s shoulder and turned him so he could see his face.“Wait,” he said.“It was you that Larry took her to see in 1982?”Yes, it was him.“You mean,” French said, “he’s been telling the truth all this time? And that you, in fact, were the last person to see her alive?”Silas nodding.“It was you?” Larry asked.“Yeah.”“She was pregnant,” Larry asked, “with your little baby?”Silas had taken hold of the bed rail.“Is that why you left?” Larry staring at him.“Went to Oxford?”“Part of why.”“To meet her?”Silas said, “Larry—”“Was it a boy or girl?”“What?”“The baby.Your baby.”“There wasn’t,” Silas said, “a baby.”French pulled his hand away in disgust.“Jesus Christ.”“Roy—” Lolly said.Larry looking puzzled.“Larry.” Silas made himself face him.“I’m the one owes you an apology.More than that.See, Cindy, she wasn’t ever pregnant.She just…said that cause she knew you’d bring her to see me.I didn’t know that’s what she was doing, then.We were in love, or thought we were.”Larry saying nothing, his open face.“That night,” Silas went on, “after you dropped her off? We drove out to a field we used to go to, and we argued.She wanted to run away together, but I—” How to say it.“I had my baseball career ahead of me, and my momma was after me not to see her.It wouldn’t have worked, for half a dozen reasons.So I just took her home.”Larry said, “Took her home.”“Yeah.”“You got there early.”“Yeah.She didn’t wait on you cause she was mad at me.She just run off down the road, in the dark.”“Where Cecil was.”“Yeah.”They stared at one another, Silas aware of what Larry must be thinking, how Cecil would have stood up as she came in the door, her face red, tears streaking her cheeks, him holding his beer, stumbling forward, toward her, yelling.Outside, Silas driving away in his mother’s car, faster and faster, Larry heading there at the same moment, the two boys missing each other by a few minutes, maybe their cars even met on the dark highway, lights on high beam, both too distracted to think of dimming, both flinching against the oncoming bright.“He killed her,” Larry said.The doctor was back in the room, tapping his watch.“This interview”—Lolly stepping between Silas and French, putting an avuncular arm over both their shoulders—”might need to be concluded, fellows.For now.”“Wait,” Larry said as French began to fasten his restraints.“We were friends.Weren’t we, Silas?”Tell the fucking truth, 32.Silas.“You were, Larry,” he said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]