Thicker Than Blood - Crouch Blake. Страница 75

Woodside, Vermont: November 1, 1992

Sat in my booth at the pub all afternoon, read the most atrocious collection of papers I’ve ever had the misfortune to grade (coffee better today). Highlight was the piece on gladiators. Curious amount of detail on the lunch interlude executions. Well researched. Author thoroughly interested in his subject matter. Hmm. Awarded him a C+, because, let’s face it, it was still a real piece of shit.

Woodside, Vermont: November 6, 1992

Called on our execution expert in class today. Never do that again. He turned red, wouldn’t answer me, look at me. Stopped him on the way out of class and apologized for embarrassing him. What a peculiar kid. Asked him if he liked beer. He said no. Coffee? No. Finally, just asked what the fuck he did like, and he smiled sheepishly, said pancakes. We’re having pancakes tomorrow.

Woodside, Vermont: November 7, 1992

Met this Luther kid at the Champlain Diner. Had breakfast for dinner. Think he was suspicious of why I wanted to see him outside of class. For the first twenty minutes I bored him to tears with a slew of questions, like where he was from, where he lived in Woodside, if he liked school…he was having a terrible time, so I mentioned how much I’d enjoyed reading his term paper. That brightened him up, started asking all sorts of things about the gladiator fights, Caligula. Told him about my thesis, shared some of my theories. He was very impressed. We were waiting for the waitress to bring the check when this woman passed by our table. Real pretty thing. Watched Luther watch her, and I saw it. Hard to put into words. Let’s just say I sensed something in him, in those three seconds his eyes followed the movements of this Woodside knockout. When he looked back at me, I couldn’t help but smile. His black eyes had become…reptilian. I thought Luther was going to say something, but he just blushed.

He’ll do.

Woodside, Vermont: December 9, 1992

Last day of classes. Haven’t spoken to Mr. Kite in a month. On the way out of class, told him I looked forward to seeing him next semester. Said he wasn’t coming back. Flunked out. That shy, ashamed, little boy again. Made sure to get his home address. Maybe I’ll take him to the desert next summer.

Ocracoke Island, North Carolina: June 11, 1993

Been following LK around this island for two days. What fun! Lives with his parents in an old, stone house on the sound. Last night at 10:30, he went for a walk by himself. If he goes again tonight, I’ll take him.

IN Swan Quarter Vi boarded the last ferry of the day. Once the vessel had cleared the pilings, she grabbed the loaf of moldy bread Max had suggested she take and stepped out of the Cherokee.

She strolled back to the stern where a flock of chatty gulls tailed the boat. As the wharf and timber pylons diminished in the wake, Vi untwined the twist tie and pinched off a chunk of bread. The moment she extended her arm a fat gull swooped down and grabbed her offering in its beak.

As she fed the birds and watched the coastal plain of North Carolina shrink into a fiber of green, she thanked God for the people she loved. She prayed for Max, for her parents, for strength, and lastly for her sergeant’s recovery.

Barry Mullins had taken his son, Patrick, out for barbecue after winning the cross-country championship last night. They were both in the hospital this morning with food poisoning so Vi would be interviewing the Kites on her own.

A little boy came and stood beside her. She noticed him watching and asked if he’d like to feed the seagulls. When he nodded she handed him a piece of bread.

"Just lift it up like this. They’ll come right down and steal it."

The boy lifted the fuzzy-blue bread and gasped when a gull snatched it. He looked up at Vi and grinned. She gave him the rest of the loaf and walked to the bow.

It was near dusk now and when she looked west she could no longer see the mainland. Eastward, the Pamlico Sound stretched on into a horizon of gray chop with no indication of the barrier islands that lay ahead.

Again she thought of the woman who’d been hanged at the Bodie Island Lighthouse. The image had been with her all day thanks to a tasteless photograph she’d seen on the front page of a tabloid. She wondered if praying for the dead made any difference.

Clutching the railing, she stared down at the water racing beneath the boat.

The engine clatter, the cry of the gulls, the briny stench of the sound engulfed her. On the assumption that prayer was retroactive, she closed her eyes and prayed for the fifth time that day that the woman hadn’t suffered.

The sun sank into the sound.

Vi checked her watch, saw that she’d been on the water now for more than two hours. The village couldn’t be far. As the sky and sound turned the same sunless shade of slate, she imagined Max or even Sgt. Mullins standing here beside her in the mild headwind. She wouldn’t mind her sergeant’s patronization right now and she thought, I was doing fine until the sun went down. Just like staying with Mamaw and Papaw when I was ten and the homesickness that set in after dark and the crying on the phone begging Daddy to come get me and him saying no baby you’ll feel better in the morning.

A light winked on in the east—the Ocracoke Light.

Vi turned away and walked back to the Jeep.

In her briefcase in the backseat there were photographs to memorize—bearded, bald, fat, skinny, mustached, and cleanshaven—the mugs of Luther Kite and Andrew Thomas.

ONE of the stewardesses on my flight into Charlotte was a North Carolina native and her southern accent moved me to tears. I hadn’t heard a true southern drawl in years. It isn’t the backwoods sheep-fucking twang Hollywood makes it out to be. A real North Carolina accent is sweet and subtle and when you haven’t heard one in seven years, it sounds like coming home.

My flight landed in Charlotte-Douglas International Airport just before midnight and by 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning I was hurtling north in a 5-speed Audi with I-77 all to myself. I thought being home again would flood me with nostalgia but as I cruised through the piney piedmont darkness my only sensation was the ulcer that had burned in my gut since leaving Haines Junction.

At Exit 28 I left the interstate, and driving the familiar backroads toward Lake Norman, started catching glimpses of the water through the trees. When I finally saw my mailbox in the distance and the tall pines that lined my old driveway like sentries, I pulled over onto the side of the road and turned off the engine.

I walked along the shoulder of Loblolly Lane until I reached the mailbox. My gravel road had been paved and two hundred yards away at the end of the drive, cars were parked in front of my house, their chrome reflecting the warm illumination of a porchlight. It astounded me that someone had the gall to take up residence in the home of a suspected serial murderer. How did they sleep at night? Did it never occur to them that Andrew Thomas might one day come home? I’ll bet they got my place for a steal.

I jogged a ways down the drive but then thought better of it. Stopping on the smooth blacktop, I inhaled the scent of pines and remembered walking up this drive with Beth and Walter ten Decembers ago, placing luminarias in preparation for a Christmas party.

As I stared at my old home, part of me thought, Fuck this place. I’m not that man anymore. But the other part of me wanted to stand on the deck and see Lake Norman again and the blue light across the water at the end of Walter Lancing’s pier; wanted to pretend he could just stroll into 811 Loblolly Lane and climb the staircase up to his old bedroom. And when he woke in the morning maybe he’d be that writer again. Maybe he’d have his name back. Maybe his mother and Walter would be alive and the events of seven years ago nothing more than the plot of his latest novel.