Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (16 page)

We were early and the restaurant was empty. Luke found us a booth near the large windows that overlooked the main square; they were open and a nice breeze was drifting in. Sunshine had a pink, bottom-hugging summer dress on, and even I’d changed out of my painting overalls and put on a black silk shirt with a black skirt. I felt kind of pretty. The late sun was doing that slanting thing I found romantic, especially when it slanted off River and made his deep brown hair shine. 

That will be perfect,
he’d said. 

I looked around the restaurant, and out the windows into the town square, and then at River again. He was leaning back into the seat, his arms behind his head, as if to say:
Nothing to worry about here, Vi . . . I’m the most relaxed guy in the world . . . nothing on my mind . . . nothing up my sleeve . . .
 

His nonchalance was annoying. It was. But then I noticed the yellow paint on his right forearm, and my irritation . . . melted. 

I ordered pesto and margherita. The pizzas arrived in less than twenty minutes, and the crust was thin, black in spots from the wood fire. Delicious. 

Graziella wandered over while we were eating,and made a long speech in Italian that no one understood. Except River, who actually did speak Italian, like I’d guessed. He said something back to her, smooth and fast, and she laughed. Then she called out,
“Gianni!”
and her dark-haired son came over.She sent him off to the kitchen and he came back with a bowl of pistachio gelato for each of us. 

In sixth grade I stood next to Gianni while we had our class photo taken. And the whole time I couldn’t take my eyes off the long brown sleekness of his arm, next to my white one. Even when we were supposed to be looking at the camera, I kept starting at Gianni. But he just smiled at me, when he caught me staring, and I’d kind of liked him ever since.It helped that he always said hello to me,when the other kids in my class didn’t. 

Gianni squeezed into the booth next to Sunshine and Luke, so now all three of them were sitting across from River and me. He put his elbows on the table, and Sunshine pressed up next to him, smiling. 

But he was looking at me. “The new issue of
Fresh Cup
came out,” he said. Gianni’s English was perfect, since he’d grown up in Echo, but his voice still held the low, emphatic speech patterns of his native Italian. 

I nodded.“I saw it in the café.What’s the latest news?” 

Gianni’s eyes lit up.“Pour-over coffee,still,
molto bene, molto bene
. But Ma won’t let me serve it, even if we just roasted juicy, tropical Kenyan beans that would be perfect for it. It’s traditional espresso only. Because we’re
Italiano
. I did order the special kettle, though, so you’ll have to come over and try it, after hours sometime. It should arrive in the mail this week, so we could—” 

“I’m River.”He held his hand out across the table.“New to town. I’m living with Violet.” 

“He rented the guesthouse,” I added, a bit too quickly. 

Gianni let River’s sudden rudeness roll right off him. He reached forward and shook River’s hand.“I’m Gianni.” There was a pause, and River looked at me, and Gianni looked at me, and I turned to the open window and tried not to look at anyone. 

Luke was staring out the window too, fingers to his scalp, checking his auburn hairline in the reflection. But he stopped when I caught him. 

“So have you all heard the news?”Gianni asked,after a few seconds of silence. 

“What news?” Sunshine asked. She put her ice cream spoon in her mouth and pulled it back out, nice and slow. “I don’t like to read the newspapers.They make my head hurt.” 

I kicked her leg under the table, but she ignored me. 

“Something strange happened in Jerusalem Rock. Everyone’s talking about it because it’s kind of like what happened here, with the kids in the cemetery. Only worse.” 

“Where the hell is Jerusalem Rock?”This from Luke. 

“It’s a small town about two hours south of here,” Gianni answered, and his eyes were sort of shadowed and unreadable.“Two days ago a group of people in Jerusalem Rock met in a field outside of town and accused some old woman of witchcraft. They tied her to a stake and threw rocks at her until she passed out. And then they set her on fire.” Gianni paused, and took a deep breath. “They said she was a witch because she had red hair.
Red hair.
What’s going on with the people around here lately? Did someone put LSD in the well?” 

“What . . . what happened to the woman?” I asked, in a whisper, because all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. “The red-haired woman. Did someone rescue her? Was she all right?” 

Gianni looked at me and shook his head. “No, Violet. She died. And they put a little girl up on the stake next, a little redhead, and were shouting accusations at her. Their hands were full of rocks, ready to throw, when the police finally arrived. She was just nine years old. Scary, no?” 

None of us said anything. River just kept staring at Gianni, and Gianni was looking at me, kind of worried, and I was watching River, and suddenly my hands were shaking and then I was shivering a little all over and I felt sick. 

River. The glow. He left. He could have gone to Jerusalem Rock, that day he disappeared, he could have done it, it could have been him, who else would it have been?
 

“Gianni,” Graziella called from the kitchen. “
In cucina
.
Subito
.” 

Gianni shook his head again and slid out of the booth. “Consider getting yourself some San Pellegrino, is all I’m saying. Probably best to be on the safe side, and get your water from Italia for a while.” 

Gianni disappeared through the kitchen door. Sunshine and Luke started talking to each other, but I couldn’t pay attention to what they were saying. River refused to look at me. He just turned and stared out the windows. The part of my leg that was touching his felt hot, suddenly, burning hot, so I started inching away from him in the booth. 

River tensed. His shoulders jerked backward and his head snapped up.I stopped moving and followed his gaze. 

Outside in the town square, two dark-haired girls sat underneath a tree, one reading a book out loud to the other. A skinny kid with shoulder-length red hair and a cowboy hat sat on the swings, watching a mother with twin toddlers as they walked by.Jimmy the popcorn man sat in his popcorn cart, chin on his chest, asleep. It was a happy scene. I breathed deep, and felt a little better. 

And that’s when I saw him. Daniel Leap. Jack’s father. He was drunk. Really drunk. He staggered, one unsteady foot after another, into the middle of the village green, and stood there, swaying side to side, sucking the sweetness out of my town. 

I felt River fidget beside me. He was also watching Jack’s pa. His eyes had narrowed into tight slits, and his face looked . . . eager. So eager, his jaw was clenched tight with it. 

That eagerness scared me. Sitting there in the booth next to River, fear began to claw and claw at me like water claws at a drowning man, until my throat constricted and I half choked. Something was going to happen. Sunshine and Luke were busy flirting, and their backs were to the windows anyway. River’s hand gripped mine underneath the table, but his skin felt cold and my fingers went limp inside his. I watched Jack’s father, swaying in the square. I watched as he put a hand into his pocket. I watched as he pulled out something silver, something that sparkled in the fading sun. 

I watched as he lifted it to his neck. 

I watched as he slashed it across his throat. 

Nothing happened. One second. Two seconds. Three. 

And then the blood poured. 

It gushed down the front of his yellow shirt, and his shirt went slick, and crimson. 

Jack’s pa turned white,stark white,against the dark red of his shirt. He looked at the silver thing in his hand as if seeing it for the first time.He threw it from him.It hit the sidewalk and skidded a few feet. 

The mom with the toddlers screamed. The two darkhaired girls screamed. Jack’s father fell down to his knees. One second. Two. And then tipped over on his side, and didn’t move. 

Sunshine jumped up at the screaming and looked out the windows. Her mouth opened, and a weak little wail dribbled out of her lips. Luke sprang to his feet. He followed her gaze. His hands went to the table and gripped it tight. 

A man killed himself in front of me. In front of the town. And River made him do it. I knew it. I knew it like I knew I was near the sea by the taste of salt in the air. I knew it like I knew the sound of Luke’s steps as he walked around the Citizen. 

I knew it like I knew the feel of River’s arms around me, when he was fast asleep. 

Sunshine kept wailing her weak, drooling wails, and I was shaking all over, my fingers, my legs, my head . . . 

River’s face was blank.He didn’t look guilty.Or ashamed. He didn’t look like anything.His hand still squeezed mine underneath the table.I shook it off.I pushed myself out of the booth and ran out of the restaurant. 

I stopped running when I reached the screaming woman with the toddlers. She was quiet now, staring and silent, her hands covering the eyes of the two twin boys so they couldn’t see what lay at her feet. 

I looked at the gaping slit in the man’s throat, and the front of his shirt, covered with blood, at the ground beneath him, also covered in blood. The grass was black with it. 

Something caught my eye off to the left. 

A razor. 

Sunshine was beside me now. She let out another weak scream. A crowd was forming around the body. The two girls.The popcorn man.The cowboy kid. Luke. Graziella. Gianni. 

I took one more look at the body on the ground. And then went back into the restaurant. 

River still sat in the booth. He saw me, and smiled, like it was nothing. Like it was all
nothing.
 

I left. I took the path through the woods toward home. But when I got halfway, I turned around and went back. 

I walked through town, past my high school. 

I found Jack in his plain,bare kitchen,in the dark,staring into space like he was waiting for something bad to happen. Which it had. 

“I decided to run away once, after my dad had been drunk for a whole week straight,” he said, after I entered without knocking. He was sitting on a rickety chair by a cheap wooden table. I wondered if the lights were off because he liked it that way, or because the electricity bill hadn’t been paid. I was familiar with both. 

“I tried to fake my death first, like Huckleberry Finn,” Jack went on. “With the pig’s blood. I even went into the butcher’s, and asked about getting some. But the guy started to ask a lot of questions, so I left.” 

I glanced around the kitchen. Its sad walls were covered in faded wallpaper, and you could taste the rotting optimism of the sweet pink-flowered print, now coming off in strips. There were empty bottles of liquor in the sink, and the smell of smoke, and dust, and unchanged garbage. And I compared it to the Citizen’s kitchen, with its high ceiling and big windows and yellow couch and good food in the fridge for once. 

“You want to get out of here?” I asked. 

Jack nodded. He got up and walked down the hallway that led off the kitchen, and returned a few minutes later with a backpack. He followed me out of the house. 

We avoided the main square, the sound of an ambulance siren echoing in our ears, and walked to Citizen Kane in silence. 

I supposed he would find out soon enough,about his pa. No doubt he’d already guessed. Flashes of Daniel Leap’s white face and blood-drenched shirt kept hitting my brain like a fist.I didn’t know much about kids.Especially smart kids who noticed everything and looked at me with big smart blue eyes under reddish brown hair. The tips of my fingers were still shaking and my heartbeat was hard and irregular and
off,
like all my shaking had shook my heart out of position and it couldn’t find its way back. 

So I took Jack into Citizen Kane’s kitchen.He sat down on the yellow couch and watched me while I grated fresh ginger into two glasses of homemade lemonade. Freddie used to do the same thing whenever I was unhappy. 

Jack and I sat on the yellow kitchen couch,in the weak evening sun, and sipped the spicy, sweet, tangy stuff, and felt better. Or I did, at least. And whether it was the ginger or the memory of Freddie,I didn’t know.But my fear dissolved a little. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it did. 

Afterward,I brought Jack to one of the guest bedrooms on the second floor. It was dusty, but the sheets were clean . . . or had been once, when they were put on the bed, which I hoped wasn’t that long ago. It was kind of a manly room, with olive-green wallpaper and dark curtains and carpet and a black brick fireplace. 

Jack took a look around. He didn’t say anything. But I think he liked it. 

He put his backpack down on the bed and then leaned his thin body against the carved fancy-pants bedpost. “Was it Pa?” he asked, looking straight at me, thin lips pressed hard together. 

“Yes,” I said. 

“Is he dead?” 

I stared back into his dark blue eyes. “Yes.” 

I went over to the old lamp by the bed and turned on the light.It was thick and yellow,and filled the guestroom with a fuzzy sort of warmth.I could see the brown freckles on Jack’s nose and cheeks now.And his dry eyes.I cleaned the dust off the nightstand with my palm. 

“Did River do it?” 

My heart stopped. And then started again. “What do you mean, Jack?” 

“Did he use the glow and make Pa kill himself?” 

I swallowed, and took a breath.
River had told him about the glow?
“No. Yes. Mostly yes, I think.” 

Jack didn’t say anything for a few minutes,just gazed at the fireplace, though it didn’t have a fire in it. 

I looked at the ceiling. Citizen Kane had high ceilings in all its rooms, and it usually gave the house a sense of air and space. But tonight the ceiling didn’t feel nearly high enough.This bedroom, and its old satin bedspread, and big wood bed, and six shrouded windows, was stifling. 

“I’m sorry,Jack,”I said finally.“I’m going to make River leave the guesthouse. I’ll make him go far away. I will.”