Like a Charm (33 page)

'And they become rivals,' I said, 'and one part of the world starts to worship me and the other half starts to worship you, and they start to have wars and crap.'

'An excellent idea, Mr Watson.'

We played silently for a while, going back and forth from the trash glacier to the large flat rock and placing imaginary houses, schools and temples in a grid pattern. The cities grew, side by side, and I couldn't help but notice that Lamar's civilization was somehow more clever than mine, that the way he placed his bits and pieces of trash actually resembled a metropolis as though seen from an aeroplane. We completely covered the rock, and then I felt it was time. I flicked a white plastic bottle cap towards Lamar's city. It struck and toppled a milk carton.

'What are you doing?'

'My people have been secretly amassing weapons,' I said, 'and now they're ready for battle.'

'All right.' I saw Lamar's smile, wide and white. He grabbed an old pen and flung it towards my biggest temple. I laughed and picked up a flattened Coke can, skimming it off Lamar's city. We went back and forth a few times this way until Lamar said, 'And now the gods themselves are called upon to fight.' We started walking over our cities, smashing everything with our feet, kicking down the schools and auditoriums, the city halls and restaurants. We shattered and scattered all our work until the entire civilization was reduced to rubble. 'And now,' he said, fully absorbed in the game, 'it is time for me to send my only son to live among the people.' Lamar knelt down on the rock and placed a red twisty-tie that he had fashioned into the shape of a cross in the middle of all the rubble.

For some reason I felt my face turn hot. I said, 'That is ridiculous bullcrap.'

'What do you mean?'

'You're just repeating some crap they told you in church.' I was repeating my father, actually, who hated everything about religion and went into a tirade whenever it came up.

'OK,' he said, 'forget it.'

'I've already forgotten,' I informed Lamar, walking away.

'We could play
Star Trek.'
Lamar got up and came after me. 'Or war. You could be Spock.'

I turned round. 'I don't feel like playing
Star Trek.'

'Do you want to watch TV?' he said. 'You could come to my house.'

I punched him. He rubbed the patch of skin I had punched and kept walking beside me. 'We could build up the civilization and smash it down again.'

'I don't think so.'

'We could—'

'You never know when to shut up, Lamar,' I said, 'do you?'

We walked back across the pedestrian overpass, crossed the turnpike, me angry for no real reason and Lamar with his head down, and continued that way until we came to our houses.

Then, right before I walked into my yard, I punched him in the arm so hard he fell on the ground.

I was in the driveway, listening to music on an old transistor radio I had found in my dad's closet, when two police cars drove up next door, one black and white, the other a plain sedan. The policemen got out, went to Lamar's house, and knocked. Lamar's mom answered. She wore a beige pant suit. I turned the radio off and went to stand by the fence to hear what was happening. I remember her saying, 'What?' I remember Lamar's sister, Estelle, coming to the door. She'd had her hair done. I turned round from the fence and saw my mother standing at the door of our house. She had a package of Kraft macaroni and cheese in her hands. I heard one of the policemen ask for Lamar. Then the two policemen in suits went inside and the other two waited for a while on the front lawn.

One of them turned his face towards the sun.

A couple of minutes later I saw Lamar come out. His mother was right behind him. They went to the police car and one of the officers opened the door to the back seat. They got in, and the plainclothes policemen got in the front. They started the car up again and drove away, leaving me standing in the yard holding the transistor radio, Estelle in the door of Lamar's house, and my mother behind me. When I turned to look at my mother's face I saw something in it, some delicate movement along the jaw.

'I want you to tell me what happened.' She sat me down at the kitchen table.

'What happened to what?'

'What did Lamar do?'

'Lamar didn't do anything.'

'Why did the police come for him?'

I remember this: I was crying. I didn't know why. I felt like an idiot. Thirteen years old, and I was crying.

'If you know something,' my mother said. 'If you know anything, you have to tell me . . .' Her voice was shaking. She was thin and tall, with short curly hair. It occurred to me for the first time just then that she was a person.

A local girl – it was Tiffany Engleton, I found out later – had discovered the body of a boy in the vacant lot behind the Safeway supermarket on the turnpike. The police suspected that a fight between two neighbourhood boys had gone too far, and for the time being they were calling it an accident.

It was Benjamin, I realized. Benjamin was dead.

Lamar had actually killed Benjamin, just like he said he would. I went to my room and sat on the edge of the bed with my hands in front of me. I wondered what I should do. What are you supposed to do when someone kills someone? I felt like I should pray or visit his grave or do something solemn.

Then, right around seven thirty there was a knock at the door. 'Mom,' I heard Jean say, 'it's the police.'

My mother went into the living room, and I walked in behind her.

They were the same two plainclothes detectives I had seen earlier.

'Good evening, ma'am,' the older one said. 'I'm Detective Alta, and this is Assistant Detective Claridge. We were wondering if we could have a few words with your son.'

The older detective had short grey hair and a polyester blue blazer. The younger one, I'll never forget, had hair that was completely white.

'Of course,' she said. 'Please. Come in.'

My father reclined in his vinyl easy chair in front of the television. He turned the volume down with the remote control.

The police detectives nodded to him and sat down on the couch.

'Can I get you some coffee?' my mother asked in her idiotic June Cleever voice. 'A soda perhaps?'

'Thank you for offering,' the older detective said. 'But we're just fine.'

I stood in front of the coffee table.

'And how are you?' the detective asked.

'Me?'

'Yes.'

I looked at my Adidas. 'Fine.'

'The boy who lives next door,' he said. 'Are you friends with him?'

'Lamar?'

'Yes, Lamar Duncan.'

I had breathed out, I think, but for some reason I couldn't breathe in.

The detective said, 'Is he a friend of yours?'

I looked at my mother.

'They're friends,' she said. 'Lamar gave him an ant farm.'

'An ant farm?'

'For his birthday.'

'Is Lamar a nice boy?' the detective asked me.

'He's nice,' I managed to say.

'Does he . . . does he pick on other kids sometimes?' The detective came forward off the couch, almost crouching on the floor.

I couldn't think of a response. My face was on fire. I kept thinking of Benjamin. I kept imagining him naked on a stretcher in a hospital somewhere. The freckled skin, the long black hair.

'Tell the truth,' my mother said.

'We pick on him.'

'What's that?' the detective asked quietly.

'We pick on Lamar. Benjamin does mostly.'

'I see.' The detective put a hand over his mouth and his eyes closed for a moment. He cleared his throat, then slapped his legs. 'All right then.' He smiled a thin smile.

'One day Lamar said he would kill Benjamin,' I blurted.

'Lamar said that?'

'Yes, sir.' I never said
sir.
I don't even know where I got it.

There was snot coming out of my nose. I wiped it away.

'What is Benjamin's last name?'

'Herman,' I said.

'Why don't you go to your room now?' my father said. It was the first thing my father had said to me in weeks.

I turned to look at him. I knew from one look that I was going to get it later.

I hadn't bothered to open the ant farm yet, and in my room I ran my hands over the box, tracing the words with my fingers.
ANT FARM! The fun, scientific way to learn about the insect kingdom!
I kept picturing Benjamin without his Judas Priest T-shirt on for once, lying naked on a steel examining table like the victims in an episode of
Columbo.
I opened the ant farm box and started flipping through the booklet that came with it. There were line drawings that showed all the different types of ants in the colony. There was the queen, the worker ants, or drones, the nursing ants that took care of the larvae.

My parents restricted me to my room that whole next day, only allowing me to come downstairs for a baloney sandwich at lunch and, later, a TV dinner. The entire neighbourhood was talking about Lamar, I could feel it. On the one hand I was dying to get out there, to find out exactly what had happened. On the other, I was absorbed by Lamar's ant farm booklet. There was an ad on the back for other kits from the same company; there was a chemistry set, a microscope, a junior electrician's set . . .
the fun, scientific learning series.
I kept staring at it, thinking of all the things there were to know, and of how I didn't know a fucking thing.

The following morning I saw Lamar through my bedroom window. He had his legs folded under him and was sitting near the chain-link fence that separated our yards and was tearing blades of grass into smaller and smaller pieces and then throwing them up in the air while making soft, slo-mo exploding noises. I snuck downstairs and slipped through the kitchen door.

'Hey,' I whispered.

He didn't turn around.

'Lamar,' I said a little louder.

He barely looked up.

'What happened?'

He shrugged.

'Are you in trouble?'

He started moving funny, his whole body kind of shaking. I took that as a yes.

'What did you do?'

'They didn't tell you?'

'Who?'

'The police.'

'They just asked if we were friends.'

He nodded.

'Did you kill Benjamin?'

He threw a few blades of grass into the air. 'I killed Anthony.'

I had leaned my arms over the fence and had been rocking the whole thing back and forth. Now I stopped. 'Anthony?'

'Yup.'

'Why?'

He tore a handful of grass into tiny pieces, then scattered them, his arms beating like wings. 'I don't know.'

'What do you mean, you don't know?'

'I mean, I don't know.'

'Was it an accident?'

'No.'

'Did he fall down and hit his head –'

'No.'

'– on a rock or something?'

'I pushed a piece of wire into his neck.'

I imagined it, the sharp end of an old broken wire hanger going into the soft part of Anthony's neck. 'And then what happened?' Involuntarily, I touched my own neck.

'He started to bleed.' Lamar turned to look at me. 'Really fast. It was like all the blood in his body came out at once.'

Oh, man.

'Where was it?' I said. 'I mean, exactly.'

'By the dumpsters,' he answered. 'Right between them.'

It was late afternoon, and there was an almost imperceptible coolness in the air. Autumn was weeks away, but I could feel its approach, like an aeroplane about to land.

'Are you going to go to jail?'

He thought for a minute. 'First I'm going to go stay with my grandmother, and then there's going to be court.' Lamar threw some grass into the air. 'And then they'll send me to jail, I guess.' Then he looked up at me. 'Where's Benjamin?'

I shrugged. 'I haven't been hanging out with Benjamin.'

'Why not?'

'Why
Anthony?' I
pictured that kid, his fat stomach, the way his eyebrows looked like two caterpillars crawling across his face. 'Why didn't you kill Benjamin?' I said, and then more softly, 'Or me?'

Lamar started shaking his head back and forth, not like he was saying no, more like he was getting ready for something, like he was about to break into a run. 'I wouldn't kill you guys,' he said. 'You and Benjamin . . . you guys are my best friends.'

Then autumn came just like I knew it would, and then the winter, and the next spring, and so on. There was a trial. At first there was a subpoena for me to go and tell them about what Anthony had said that day on the god-rock, about Lamar threatening to kill Benjamin, but then they said I didn't have to, after all. I never really hung out with Benjamin much after that. We kind of went in different directions. Lamar's family stayed just as they were, only Lamar wasn't there anymore. He went to live with his grandmother, and then was put into a state facility for young people who've committed dangerous crimes. I finished junior high, and then high school, and then, if you can believe it, I was accepted to college on a partial swimming scholarship. After the whole thing with Lamar, my parents tried to get me into sports, thinking it would keep me out of trouble, and swimming was the only physical activity I could stand. I spent my whole first semester of college swimming and reading. I had a talent for the butterfly, it turned out. I was no superstar, believe me, but I placed third in the 500 metres a couple of times. And sometimes when I was swimming I would start to think of Lamar and how he thought we were his friends and I would stop, and I would have to get out of the pool and tell the coach I had a cramp.

Anyway, when I came back for that first winter break my parents picked me up at the airport and drove me home. I saw him there, standing in the window. Lamar. Jesus. He was a lot older now, and taller. But he was still skinny. He was still the same old Lamar. He had his chest out and his fingers were kind of moving around in front of him, the way he had stood there when he was a kid and we were all playing in the yard, and he was watching. He had that faraway look. I couldn't tell if he saw me, because his eyes didn't move.