Tangerine (31 page)

"Right."

I raised my hand and got Ms. Pollard's attention. I said, "I gotta go. I'm sick again." I hurried into the hall, pushing past a stream of kids all the way to the office. I asked to use the phone and left a quick message for Mom. "Come back. Right away. I'm sick again." An aide led me into a sterile black-and-white room that turned out to be the nurse's office. I slumped down into a black chair and waited there—dry eyed, speechless, numb.

Mom returned at nine o'clock to sign me out. She told Dr. Johnson, "I guess we sent him back to school too early."

I rode home in a painful trance. Finally, when we pulled into our development, Mom said, "This cold of yours is really bad. It's really persistent."

I nodded slowly. "Yeah." I thought,
How could she believe that? How could she believe that I'm in the sixth day of a severe cold, when I have not coughed or sneezed even one time? Has it even occurred to her that that isn't the truth? That I might be making it all up? Probably not.
I decided to share part of the truth with her. I said, "Luis Cruz is dead."

She thought for a minute. "Who, honey?"

"Luis Cruz. He's Tino and Theresa's brother. He was at the grove the day you drove me out there. I guess you didn't see him. He came to nearly all of our soccer games. But I guess you didn't see him there, either. He used to pick tangerines on Merritt Island. He injured his knee doing that. He played goalie for Tangerine Middle School. He invented a new variety of citrus. Then a tree branch broke off and hit him on the head."

I looked over at Mom. She was nodding sympathetically. Did she want to hear more? Maybe the whole truth? Did she want to hear anything bad? Should I come right out and say,
Actually, Mom, he wasn't killed by a tree branch. He was killed by Arthur Bauer, on orders from Erik.
What would she do if she heard that? Would she swerve into a utility pole? Or would she do what she always did back in Houston—take my temperature and threaten to call the doctor?

I didn't say anything else. When I got into the house, I went straight to Dad's IBM and logged on. I put in a CD-ROM called
Health Text
and searched for "aneurysm." I found out that it's not a blood clot at all. It's a "weakening of a blood vessel," like a little bubble that swells out from a vein or an artery. That's all there was about it, so I got online, searching for a medical home page. The Tangerine County Medical Center listed one called "Ask-a-Nurse." I got into it and typed, "Can you get an aneurysm from an injury to the head?"

I received a reply right away: "No. You are either born with an aneurysm, or you are born with the tendency to get one."

I typed in, "Can an aneurysm kill you?"

"Yes. An aneurysm can burst, causing a massive stroke and death."

"What could cause it to burst?"

"The aneurysm gradually deteriorates due to the constant pressure of the blood passing through it."

"Could an injury to the head cause it to burst?"

"Yes. An injury to the head could further weaken the aneurysm and cause it to burst."

"Would this happen right away, or could it happen a week later?"

"It could happen right away, or a week after the injury, or a month after, depending on the condition of the aneurysm."

I typed in "Thank you," and logged off. I had my answer. Luis had been killed by Arthur Bauer on Tuesday, but it had taken six days for him to die. That shot from the blackjack had been just as deadly to Luis as a shot from a gun.

I went upstairs and lay on my bed until three-thirty. Then I called Henry D. "Henry, what else did you hear about Luis?"

"I haven't heard anything new from Wayne. I did hear from Dolly that Luis's funeral is going to be on Thursday at noon."

"Oh. All right. I'll be there. Do you think the whole team will go?"

"I expect so. They all knew Luis. A lot of us owed Luis for things. A lot of us got rides from him in that truck of his."

"Yeah. Look, if you hear anything else, anything at all, especially from Wayne, will you please give me a call?"

"I sure will."

At dinnertime, Mom knocked lightly on my door and brought in some vegetable soup and a basket of rolls. I pretended to be asleep. She put them down quietly and started to leave, but she turned and saw that my eyes were open. She said, "How are you feeling, Paul? How is that cold of yours?"

I didn't answer, so she just smiled weakly and continued out.

I stayed out of school again today. I got dressed at about ten and went out back to sit for a while. Mom came out with the telephone and handed it to me. "Another girl," she said. "A different one."

I waited until she went back in to press the button. "Hello."

"Paul Fisher?"

"Yes."

"This is Theresa Cruz."

"Theresa? I'm really sorry to hear about what happened—"

She interrupted me; her tone was all business. "Yeah, I know that. Look, I have to tell you something: Don't you be coming to Luis's funeral."

I stammered, "Uh, OK."

"Henry says you're talking about coming. But Tino and Victor and those guys are saying some bad stuff. So you had better not show your face at Luis's funeral. I'm calling to tell you that."

"All right."

"I don't want any more bad stuff to happen, especially not at the funeral."

"No. Of course not."

"So I'm just telling you." Then she hung up.

I sat there with my mouth wide open. They knew! They knew everything! Theresa, Tino, Tomas and his brother, Victor and the others—they all knew the truth! They knew that Luis came looking for Erik last Tuesday. And they knew what happened to him at the school. They knew that he didn't get hit by any frozen tree branch. How did they know?

I jumped up and hurried through the gate to the front of the house. I turned left and headed down the sidewalk. I had to get away. I had to think.

My mind was racing with questions:
Did Luis tell someone about it? Of course he did. If he told me about it, he told other people, too. Did I really think I could keep this a secret from them all? Does everybody in Tangerine blame me now? Am I just as guilty as Erik?

I was all the way down at the entrance pond before I stopped. I stood there and stared at the dark water until I finally understood. And it was so very simple.
There's no big mystery here. The truth about Luis is obvious to all of the people around him.
Their
lives are not made up of bits and pieces of versions of the truth. They don't live that way. They know what really happened. Period. Why would that seem so mysterious to me?

I sat on the bank and stared at the lifeless water. After a few minutes I heard a noise behind me and turned. A little boy on a little bike had pulled up about ten feet away. He looked to be about five years old—not old enough to be out on the road by himself. He sat there staring at me, astride his red twenty-inch bike. Then he pointed at the pond and said, "They say there's a gator in there."

I looked back at the pond. I wanted him to leave, but he went on, "They say a gator came outta there last year and ate a kid."

I turned back toward him. "Oh yeah? Who says that?"

"My mom and dad."

I shook my head. "Well, forget it. That didn't happen."

He shook his head right back. "My mom and dad say it did."

I thought about that. I thought about my own mom and dad, and I looked him right in the eye. "Then they're lying to you. They're telling you a story just so they can keep you scared. They want you to be scared. Do you understand?"

He stiffened. "My mom and dad don't tell me stories."

I rose up onto my knees so that we were eye-to-eye. "Oh no? Did they ever tell you a story about a kid who went swimming right after he ate, and he got cramps, and he drowned?"

"Yeah."

"Well, did you ever meet that kid?"

"No."

"OK. Did they ever tell you about a kid who climbed a utility pole to get his kite back, and he got electrocuted?"

"Yeah."

"And did you ever meet that kid?"

"How could I meet him if he's dead?"

"How about a kid who got bitten by a stray dog, and he got rabies, and he started foaming at the mouth? Did they ever tell you about him? And did you ever meet him?"

The boy straightened out the front wheel of his bike and started to back away.

"My mom and dad don't lie to me."

I got onto my feet. My voice was rising. "No? How about this one: Did they ever tell you about the kid who went out to play football in a thunderstorm, and he got struck by lightning, and he got killed?"

He shook his head.

"Or this one: Did they ever tell you about the kid who climbed a tree with a sharp pair of clippers in his hand, and he fell out of the tree, and he stabbed himself? Did they ever tell you about either one of those kids? Did you ever meet either of them?"

"No."

"Well, I did. I met both of them."

He continued to back away. I shouted after him, "What about this one: Did you ever hear about this kid, this stupid kid who wouldn't listen to anybody, and he stared at a solar eclipse, and he went blind? Did you ever hear about him? Did you ever meet him?"

The poor kid pedaled away as fast as he could. I didn't watch him go. I bent over and looked down at my own murky reflection in the water. Like the final words of a ghost story, I muttered, "Well, you have now."

Mom left the house at ten o'clock this morning. She was gone for most of the day. I was here alone.

At exactly twelve noon, I pulled out my blue suit from the closet, the suit that I had worn to Mike Costello's funeral. I put it on, without a shirt, shoes, or socks, and walked out through the patio doors, into the backyard. I must have looked like an idiot.

I walked straight out until I was facing the gray wall. I had no clear idea what I was going to do. I just knew that I had to do something. For a while I stood there staring at the ground, like an idiot. Then I bent forward and wedged both hands into the space between the wall and the sod. I pulled the sod up and toward me, so that the whole piece of it rolled back onto my feet with its roots sticking up. Beneath it was a rectangle of white sugar sand two feet long and three feet wide.

I got down on my knees, like an idiot, on that upside-down piece of sod, and started to scrape away the sugar sand. I scooped up big handfuls of it, piling them on either side of the rectangle, until I reached the dirt below. I stared at that dirt in fascination, thinking how odd it was that I had never seen it before. This was the dirt that we lived on. The dirt of the tangerine grove that we burned, and buried, and plowed under, and coated with sand, and landscaped over. Here it was.

The sweat started to drip off my forehead, fogging up my glasses. I yanked them off and threw them over to the side. I didn't even know where they landed. Then I bent over that hole in the dirt until my face was an inch above it. I thought about Luis Cruz, a man I barely knew. I thought about Luis Cruz being lowered into this ground, never to come back up. I felt the tears start to well up deep inside of me. Once they started to come, there was no stopping them. I wept, and sobbed, and poured tears into that hole in the ground. Like an idiot? No, I don't think so.

When I was finished I stood up, brushed the dirt from my knees and my elbows, and located my glasses. I pushed the sand back into place and rolled the sod back into position. Then I came back in here and threw my suit into the garbage.

It's remarkable. Strange and remarkable. I feel like Luis is a part of me now.

I feel like a different person.

It's nearly midnight on Friday. It's been a night to remember.

I just got off the phone with Joey. He called to find out if I'm all right. I think I am. In fact, I think I'm more than all right.

Joey said that everybody at his party was asking about me. I guess that would include Kerri, the date I never had. I told Joey everything that I knew about tonight, and he told me what he knew. Between us, I think we managed to piece together what happened at the Lake Windsor High School gym.

Let me start at the beginning. I took another bogus sick day today. Mom didn't care. She seems to be having problems of her own. She spent a couple of hours on the phone this morning, holding a yellow legal pad in her lap. I went walking through and I heard her talking to someone at the Sheriff's Department.

Anyway, both Mom and I managed to do what Dad asked—to be ready at six o'clock to go to the Senior Awards Night. I wore black pants that were too short for me and a white shirt that was too tight. Mom commented, "That's it, Paul. We have to get you some new clothes this weekend. Definitely."

The seniors had to be at the gym at six-thirty so they could learn where they were supposed to stand and what they were supposed to do. To Dad this meant that we had to arrive at six-thirty, too, even though Erik was riding with Arthur Bauer.