تنه

TRUNK

Hodges walks the path through the undeveloped land from the Birch Street end, and finds Pete sitting on the bank of the stream with his knees hugged to his chest. Nearby, a scrubby tree juts over the water, which is down to a trickle after a long, hot summer. Below the tree, the hole where the trunk was buried has been re-excavated. The trunk itself is sitting aslant on the bank nearby. It looks old and tired and rather ominous, a time traveler from a year when disco was still in bloom. A photographer’s tripod stands nearby. There are also a couple of bags that look like the kind pros carry when they travel.

‘The famous trunk,’ Hodges says, sitting down next to Pete.

Pete nods. ‘Yeah. The famous trunk. The picture guy and his assistant have gone to lunch, but I think they’ll be back pretty soon. Didn’t seem crazy about any of the local restaurant choices. They’re from New York.’ He shrugs, as if that explains everything. ‘At first the guy wanted me sitting on it, with my chin on my fist. You know, like that famous statue. I talked him out of it, but it wasn’t easy.’

‘This is for the local paper?’

Pete shakes his head, starting to smile. ‘That’s my good news, Mr Hodges. It’s for The New Yorker. They want an article about what happened. Not a little one, either. They want it for what they call “the well,” which means the middle of the magazine. A really big piece, maybe the biggest they’ve ever done.’

‘That’s great!’

‘It will be if I don’t fuck it up.’

Hodges studies him for a moment. ‘Wait. You’re going to write it?’

‘Yeah. At first they wanted to send out one of their writers – George Packer, he’s a really good one – to interview me and write the story. It’s a big deal because John Rothstein was one of their fiction stars in the old days, right up there with John Updike, Shirley Jackson … you know the ones I mean.’

Hodges doesn’t, but he nods.

‘Rothstein was sort of the go-to guy for teenage angst, and then middle-class angst. Sort of like John Cheever. I’m reading Cheever now. Do you know his story “The Swimmer”?’

Hodges shakes his head.

‘You should. It’s awesome. Anyhow, they want the story of the notebooks. The whole thing, from beginning to end. This was after they had three or four handwriting analysts check out the photocopies I made, and the fragments.’

Hodges does know about the fragments. There were enough charred scraps in the burned-out basement to validate Pete’s claim that the lost notebooks really had been Rothstein’s work. Police backtrailing Morris Bellamy had further buttressed Pete’s story. Which Hodges never doubted in the first place.

‘You said no to Packer, I take it.’

‘I said no to anyone. If the story’s going to get written, I have to be the one to do it. Not just because I was there, but because reading John Rothstein changed my …’

He stops and shakes his head.

‘No. I was going to say his work changed my life, but that’s not right. I don’t think a teenager has much of a life to change. I just turned eighteen last month. I guess what I mean is his work changed my heart.’

Hodges smiles. ‘I get that.’

‘The editor in charge of the story said I was too young – better than saying I had no talent, right? – so I sent him writing samples. That helped. Also, I stood up to him. It wasn’t all that hard. Negotiating with a magazine guy from New York didn’t seem like such a big deal after facing Bellamy. That was a negotiation.’

Pete shrugs.

‘They’ll edit it the way they want, of course, I’ve read enough to know the process, and I’m okay with that. But if they want to publish it, it’ll be my name over my story.’

‘Tough stance, Pete.’

He stares at the trunk, for a moment looking much older than eighteen. ‘It’s a tough world. I found that out after my dad got run down at City Center.’

No reply seems adequate, so Hodges keeps silent.

‘You know what they want most at The New Yorker, right?’

Hodges didn’t spend almost thirty years as a detective for nothing. ‘A summary of the last two books would be my guess. Jimmy Gold and his sister and all his friends. Who did what to who, and how, and when, and how it all came out in the wash.’

‘Yeah. And I’m the only one who knows those things. Which brings me to the apology part.’ He looks at Hodges solemnly.

‘Pete, no apology’s necessary. There are no legal charges against you, and I’m not bearing even a teensy grudge about anything. Holly and Jerome aren’t, either. We’re just glad your mom and sis are okay.’

‘They almost weren’t. If I hadn’t stonewalled you that day in the car, then ducked out through the drugstore, I bet Bellamy never would have come to the house. Tina still has nightmares.’

‘Does she blame you for them?’

‘Actually … no.’

‘Well, there you are,’ Hodges says. ‘You were under the gun. Literally as well as figuratively. Halliday scared the hell out of you, and you had no way of knowing he was dead when you went to his shop that day. As for Bellamy, you didn’t even know he was still alive, let alone out of prison.’

‘That’s all true, but Halliday threatening me wasn’t the only reason I wouldn’t talk to you. I still thought I had a chance to keep the notebooks, see? That’s why I wouldn’t talk to you. And why I ran away. I wanted to keep them. It wasn’t the top thing on my mind, but it was there underneath, all right. Those notebooks … well … and I have to say this in the piece I write for The New Yorker … they cast a spell over me. I need to apologize because I really wasn’t so different from Morris Bellamy.’

Hodges takes Pete by the shoulders and looks directly into his eyes. ‘If that were true, you never would have gone to the Rec prepared to burn them.’

‘I dropped the lighter by accident,’ Pete says quietly. ‘The gunshot startled me. I think I would have done it anyway – if he’d shot Tina – but I’ll never know for sure.’

‘I know,’ Hodges says. ‘And I’m sure enough for both of us.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. So how much are they paying you for this?’

‘Fifteen thousand dollars.’

Hodges whistles.

‘It’s on acceptance, but they’ll accept it, all right. Mr Ricker is helping me, and it’s turning out pretty well. I’ve already got the first half done in rough draft. I’m not much at fiction, but I’m okay at stuff like this. I could make a career of it someday, maybe.’

‘What are you going to do with the money? Put it in a college fund?’

He shakes his head. ‘I’ll get to college, one way or another. I’m not worried about that. The money is for Chapel Ridge. Tina’s going this year. You can’t believe how excited she is.’

‘That’s good,’ Hodges says. ‘That’s really good.’

They sit in silence for a little while, looking at the trunk. There are footfalls on the path, and men’s voices. The two guys who appear are wearing almost identical plaid shirts and jeans that still show the store creases. Hodges has an idea they think this is how everybody dresses in flyover country. One has a camera around his neck; the other is toting a second light.

‘How was your lunch?’ Pete calls as they teeter across the creek on the stepping-stones.

‘Fine,’ the one with the camera says. ‘Denny’s. Moons Over My Hammy. The hash browns alone were a culinary dream. Come on over, Pete. We’ll start with a few of you kneeling by the trunk. I also want to get a few of you looking inside.’

‘It’s empty,’ Pete objects.

The photographer taps himself between the eyes. ‘People will imagine. They’ll think, ‘What must it have been like when he opened that trunk for the first time and saw all those literary treasures?’ You know?’

Pete stands up, brushing the seat of jeans that are much more faded and more natural-looking. ‘Want to stick around for the shoot, Mr Hodges? Not every eighteen-year-old gets a full-page portrait in The New Yorker next to an article he wrote himself.’

‘I’d love to, Pete, but I have an errand to run.’

‘All right. Thanks for coming out and listening to me.’

‘Will you put one other thing in your story?’

‘What?’

‘That this didn’t start with you finding the trunk.’ Hodges looks at it, black and scuffed, a relic with scratched fittings and a moldy top. ‘It started with the man who put it there. And when you feel like blaming yourself for how it went down, you might want to remember that thing Jimmy Gold keeps saying. Shit don’t mean shit.’

Pete laughs and holds out his hand. ‘You’re a good guy, Mr Hodges.’

Hodges shakes. ‘Make it Bill. Now go smile for the camera.’

He pauses on the other side of the creek and looks back. At the photographer’s direction, Pete is kneeling with one hand resting on the trunk’s scuffed top. It is the classic pose of ownership, reminding Hodges of a photo he once saw of Ernest Hemingway kneeling next to a lion he bagged. But Pete’s face holds none of Hemingway’s complacent, smiling, stupid confidence. Pete’s face says I never owned this.

Hold that thought, kiddo, Hodges thinks as he starts back to his car.

Hold that thought.