“I understand,” he said, looking off into the distance for a moment. “There’s a line—a maturity line. Not always determined by age.”
“There’s one boy who’s hesitant,” I said. “He only has a couple of examples of his work in this entire, uh, project. Probably didn’t want to be there. If you could find him, he’d break down and feed you the other two. The other two are more practiced. One of them is rather a pro with his lettering. No drips.” I turned the photo around, pointed. “That’s your ringleader, your idea man. He’s very confident. His work is all over the wall—he’s your Picasso. You need to get that boy into art class, Mr. Jeffries.”
“Joe.”
I glanced up but returned quickly to the prints. It was fascinating, the interplay of ego and ethics that played out on the side of this brick wall. One boy was all bravado, sweeping gestures and full, round lettering. Another boy was less so, but willing. I could almost picture the second keeping an eye on the first, to guide his own efforts. His lines were thicker, slower, clumsier—but they, like the strokes of the first boy, were well represented. He’d enjoyed himself. He had wanted to be there. “Here’s your number two,” I said. “He’s a follower. Probably not heading up the junior high student council, but you guessed that already. He’s a lefty, too, by the way.”
“A lefty who is not on the student council. Got it.”
I grinned at the prints. “Like I said, it’s imprecise as an identification tool. What would work much better is to look for a dumping ground for about six nearly empty spray-paint cans, and then use the fingerprints on them as your evidence. Or have the sheriff go around to the places that sell the paint to see who’s been buying a variety. Will they sell spray paint to young kids around here? Lots of urban areas don’t.”
“We’re a little behind the crimes in Parks.”
“Your third guy here,” I said, drawing a finger over the blocky letters of a shaking-lettered obscenity. “He doesn’t want to be there, and probably hasn’t done it before. He’s your weak link.” I peered at each print, searching for the work of this particular boy. “Righty. Not very tall. Not as tall as the others, I mean. None of them are tall, or they would’ve painted higher on the building.”
Joe took earnest notes, as though they could somehow tell him what to do next. For the third boy I described a sense of self-preservation, a wavering ethic of right and wrong. He was clumsy fisted—perhaps chubby, for all the grace lacking in his few attempts at lettering—and he probably stumbled through a great deal of his miserable days with his head turned toward his buddies. He was sloppy. He would still have some of the paint under his nails.
I had been jotting notes for my report back to Sherry, and when I finally pulled myself out of them, I’d nearly forgotten Joe was there. He was silent, watching the progress of my pen across the page. I turned my notes away. “Sorry. I—I get caught up, I guess.”
“No wonder. It’s really interesting. All very logical, but with just a little touch of something like—”
Don’t say hocus-pocus. Don’t say magic. Just this once.
“Psychology. I’m afraid to let my handwriting near you.”
“Most people are,” I said.
Joe turned a new page in his notebook and started sketching something.
“You don’t have to do that.”
He huddled over his page like a seventh grader preventing a classmate from cheating. “I want to. If you see something horrible, just—just break it to me gently.”
He turned the paper over and held it in front of his chest.
It read Will you have dinner with me next week?
My eyes darted quickly over the lines, closures, and the dot of his question mark, putting on the show he had probably wanted me to give for students: furrowed brow, finger tapping on chin. The show was, first, the show, because I had the feeling he wanted to see my consideration. But the show was also a cover. My thoughts scurried. I gave the page real attention while he gave me the chance.
But it was rude to meditate for too long over the particular slant of that question mark, when the question was still in the air. And—suddenly I wanted very much not to study the handwriting too closely, to do what other people would do. To stop thinking about flight, to stop thinking about the worst possible thing that could happen, to say yes instead of no.
When he stood to leave, he touched, very delicately, the top of my hand with a finger. Just an acknowledgment of my hand by his before he walked away.
“Ah, I almost forgot,” he said and came hurrying back to the table. “This is from Keller. Something you’re working on for him, I guess?”
He handed over a sturdy package that had been sealed expertly. It was heavy.
“Oh, sure,” I said. Actually, I’d imagined that this meeting with Jeffries was my penance with the sheriff for being nosy, but it looked as though I’d be doing as much work as he wanted me to.
I WALKED TO my truck admiring the way the sun threw anonymous shadows across my path, each its own small Rorschach test. The day had turned itself around so easily on the chance of a full sun, a cloudless sky. Nature’s own hocus-pocus, because where I had felt closed in last night, I now felt more free and alive and hopeful than I had been in years. The pieces of my life were drawing themselves, finally, along a straight line, like characters on a page.
I opened the driver’s side door and tossed the envelope onto the passenger seat and took a last look around the square. A couple stooped over a little boy dangled between them. A woman in pink jogging pants led a tiny dog across the street, talking to it with a high-pitched, smoosh-mouthed voice. On the low retaining wall around the courthouse green, a group of boys taunted and jeered and fought—
One of the boys was Joshua.
One boy tugged at Joshua’s shirt, nearly pulling it off his skinny back. I almost cried out, but stopped myself and looked feverishly around for Jeffries. He could put a stop to it.
But then the two boys broke apart and shook their stretched shirts back into place. They grinned and laughed, and drew back in for more.
Now I knew what I was seeing. Just boyhood in the wild. Like his video games, but in person, in the sunshine. Joshua wasn’t just on the receiving end of the attacks, either—he was in the fray. He leapt in the air, pretending to land on the feet of one of the other boys, slowly enough to let the kid pull back. The other retaliated with a slow-motion punch that landed in the air to the side of Joshua’s face. From this far away, I could only hear a few yipping words. They were like dogs let loose in a park.
Four or five boys, plus Joshua, wheezing with laughter. They moved around fast enough that I kept counting them, trying to make sense of all these friends—
One of them, Steve Ransey.