“Let me at least get you cleaned up.”
She gets up with the flashlight and goes inside the bathroom for a basin and washcloth. She also grabs a University of Cambridge T-shirt, which she inherited from her husband, out of her drawer. When she returns to the dining room, Charles still hasn’t moved. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing. The quiet roars in Verdene’s ears as she holds the wet rag over his eyebrows. Slowly she wipes his forehead, the area above his mouth, and his hands. He winces when the damp cloth touches his upper arm where there’s a gash. Verdene gets her first-aid kit and dresses it. “Calm down and just breathe,” she hears her mother’s voice say to him in a whisper. It must have been all the boy needed to hear, because as soon as Verdene says this, he breaks down. His body jerks with loud sobs, his hands covering his face. “What happened, Charles?” she asks, trying hard to keep her voice steady.
“Ah kill someone,” he says. “Ah hear dat police aftah me now. Mama Gracie warn me.”
Verdene regards him closely. His frame appears small and wilted in the light of the kerosene lamp. He doesn’t look like a murderer, though his confession looms large inside the house, moving and shifting things. Something in the house braces. After a second or two, Verdene grabs a chair. “You what?” she asks.
“Ah kill someone,” he repeats. “Him rape my girlfriend.”
This time Verdene lets his statement fall inside the quiet like a single hair landing on the wooden floors. Not since she knelt by her father’s stiff body on the kitchen floor after she watched him suffer a heart attack has she felt so paralyzed by ambivalence. She peers at Charles through the cloud of this memory, thinking how she had hurt with guilt for days, and how there were no remedies to quell the agonizing pain that she never expected to feel for the person who she thought deserved it. Verdene gets up and kneels in front of Charles. Her instinct is to grab him and comfort him, but instead she says, “Do you know for sure that he’s dead?”
Charles nods. “Yes.”
“Maybe you didn’t kill him. Maybe he’s just hurt.”
“Ah know for ah fact dat him dead. Dat me kill him.” His jawbone clenches. “When me look pon him face an’ see him smiling like di devil himself, knowing dat him rape my girl, all ah wanted to do was to kill him. But ah didn’t know when or how dat force tek ovah me. Next t’ing me know, me see Mama Gracie an’ she tell me how dey pronounce him dead at di hospital.”
“Oh, Charles . . .”
“Me neva mean fi kill him.”
“I know you didn’t mean to.”
Charles looks at her. His face is colorless. Verdene has a feeling that if this man is really dead, then so is Charles. Not because of how the police treat criminals, but because of the guilt she senses has already begun to wear him down. Verdene wants desperately to ease his anxiety, so she decides on logic. “If you can prove that he raped your girlfriend, then maybe you can argue that you did it in defense.”
Charles shakes his head and covers his face again. “There’s no proof. It ’appen years ago.” Verdene rubs his back, feels his muscles tense up again. “I can’t stay here,” he says suddenly. “I can’t stay in Rivah Bank. Ah must get going.” Verdene silently agrees, though she would never think of saying this out loud. She would have offered him a hiding place, but then she would have to explain to Margot when she drops by after her shift at the hotel and sees a boy—an alleged killer—inside the house. And besides, Margot can never be seen here by anyone. So Charles must go.
“At least change off first and eat something before you go,” Verdene tells him.
“Ah can’t eat anyt’ing.” He takes off his bloody shirt and puts on the one Verdene gives him. “Thank you for this,” he says, smoothing the fabric over his chest, his fingers trailing the University of Cambridge letters. He folds his soiled shirt, and Verdene offers to bury it outside, next to the dead dogs. She thinks of things to say to convince him that justice might still be on his side, but cannot come up with anything. “You must really love her. That girl?” she says as he heads toward the door. He pauses with his hand on the handle. The darkness is thick outside, since it’s overcast and there are no stars or a moon tonight. One would think it might finally rain; but Verdene won’t hold her breath. “Yes. I do,” Charles replies.
“I would’ve done the same thing,” she says.
Charles lets go of the knob. He leans against the doorpost and looks Verdene right in the eye. “Yuh know, ah used to be afraid ah witches.”
With that, he leaves her in the dark. She looks around the house. Not since she returned to it, wanting to be closer to her mother, has she felt so alone. How repelled she is tonight by the floors, the walls, the curtains, the burglar bars by the windows through which most days she can barely see the wide expanse of the sky.
30