Acre Under a Green Sky

But no one came to my room that night. And nothing was said about it the next morning. It would never be mentioned, except in whispers. It would be our little secret. No one need ever know.

We had become co-conspirators with my parents in whispers and secrets. God forbid the outside world should ever know what went on in our house. I couldn't have known then that every house around me resounded with whispers and secrets; that in fact, these murders grew from a seedbed of whispers and secrets. Sadly, I did learn in time that we were not alone.

It was around supper time a week or so after I attacked my father in our living room. The streets were deserted, and there was an eerie light in the sky. I was restless and alone. It was the first time I can remember not liking myself; needing another's company as a means to avoid my own. And the sky was so strange; light and dark at the same time, and nothing moved to catch my eye –– not even a leaf.

I would find Garry at his house. Perhaps we could get into some trouble –– something really bad. The light seemed to add another dimension to everything. I walked the streets to Garry's house keenly aware of the colors and shapes of things as if I were walking inside a still photograph or a frame from a comic book. It was very discomforting, and I longed to have Garry to dispel the feeling and the light.

Finally I reached the walk leading to his front door, and it seemed to me I was seeing –– really seeing his house for the first time –– the neat row of shrubbery in front of the porch, the glider on the porch, the front door itself, and the little brass plate surrounding the doorbell.

I was reaching for the doorbell when I heard Garry's father shout and there was a crash of breaking dishes. My heart stopped, and I withdrew my hand as if from fire. Garry's mother screamed, and there were more shouts and what sounded like a whole table of dishes being violently overturned. There were more screams and shouts, and in my mind's eye I saw Garry in the midst of it and my heart cried out for him.

I backed away and hurried off hoping no one saw me. I never breathed a word of it to him or to anyone else. I could never humiliate him by acknowledging that I knew, but I could never see him in the same light again. I was surprised and grateful to find myself not so alone in my own secret world, but now I had to keep his secret too, and I felt more alone than ever.

But, like I say, that was a week or so after the night I attacked my father. That next morning I awoke fully clothed. No one had pulled my shoes off in the night. Apparently, I was not a child anymore. I would have to fend for myself, so I took those shoes off myself and changed clothes for the trip to Lincoln. One way or another, I was going to Lincoln that day.

Danny was awake in his bed, and I could see by the look on his face that he knew what had happened the night before. He must have heard it all. He didn't say anything. He just lay there looking at me as if I'd grown a second head. Sometime in the night I had joined the world of grownups terrorizing the sleep time of small children. Danny didn't know what to make of me. I left our room without saying a word.

I walked through our house that morning feeling a new presence there. It was possessed in the same way the house across the street was possessed. Something had moved in and taken over. Or perhaps it had always been there and was only now making its presence known, but it was dark and evil and it was transforming us all. Slowly. Insidiously.

Later I found myself sitting next to my father in the car as he drove down the steep hill to town, and I wondered how one fixes car brakes to fail. Do you cut through a wire or saw through a pipe? Do you simply unscrew a bolt from underneath? I turned and looked coldly at him as if I were listening to what he was saying, but I was visualizing his panic when he discovers that the brakes are gone. I see him desperately trying to maneuver the car as it picks up speed. Now, he's throwing his head back –– screaming, screaming.

"Why ask if you're not interested?" he was saying.

"What?"

"You're not listening."

"I was thinking about Gladys is all."

"You didn't get enough sleep. That's the problem."

I couldn't believe my ears. Every word was a lie. Only our eyes told the truth.

Gladys Mulley had simply been doing Joe a favor. She happened to know of a jeweler who did good engraving work, and she volunteered to drop the bracelet off. The whole thing meant less than nothing to her.

We were on our way to see Luka in the jailhouse in Lincoln. My father saw no reason to change our plans since nothing had happened the night before. Everything was fine. Nothing happened. We will never speak of it. And I bought into the scam by asking if we were still on for Lincoln that day. I was learning how to play the game, too. But I had a secret plan. I would move in with Luka across the street as soon as he was freed. He would need someone with him after all this. I was hoping for a moment alone with him to broach the subject. But there was an even more immediate reason to tag along and endure these moments alone with my father, and that was to protect Luka from my father's rage. Luka had lied to him, and my father wanted to know why. It would be my father's second confrontation in as many days. I honestly felt that my presence might diffuse my father's anger; though I don't know why. It didn't the night before.

Now, my father was telling me that Will had come up against a brick wall in the Janet Banner McConnell murder investigation. Will didn't know what to do next; short of finger printing everyone in town. There were no suspects –– none.

And as my father droned on; more to himself than to me, I learned that you can obliterate someone you love simply by taking them apart feature by feature. The whites of his eyes were cloudy dull with flecks of yellow, and his black eyebrows were mussed with one long, errant whisker of a hair jutting up and out like a soldier out of step. His nose was shiny white with angry hairlike veins in the crevice around the nostril. His lips were dry and cracked, and his teeth were irregular and yellow. His freshly shaved beard was bald in spots, and his jaw was jowly. Yes, this was a face I could hate anytime I wanted. There was not a trace of the man I had once loved there.

And he saw it in my eyes when he pulled the car to a stop in the jailhouse parking lot and turned to me. He winced and looked mystified, but all he said was, "Are you feeling okay?"

I said nothing.