Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

“We don’t have any business talking about it,” Duncan Gitterhouse said harshly. “I don’t know why I came here for this ridiculous class reunion. It was insanity.”

“Don’t know why you came back, Duncan?” Tad said softly. “I think you do. You couldn’t stay away. None of you could. You had to know if anyone ever suspected what we did that night. And you wanted to find out what that night did to the rest of us, how it changed our lives. We shared something so powerful it will bind us together always. I was sure you’d all come back.”

“Still the amateur psychologist. Tad?” Harriman asked sourly.

Tad shrugged.

“It was your fault what we did that night, Tad,” Lowell Oliver said, beginning to blubber in a near-alcoholic crying jag. “You were always the ringleader. We followed you like sheep. Whatever crazy, sick schemes you thought up—”

“We were just kids,” Gitterhouse argued angrily. “Just irresponsible kids, all of us. Nobody could be held accountable—”

“Just kids? We were old enough in this state to have been tried for murder,” Tad pointed out.

There was a heavy silence. Then Tad murmured slowly, “I used to go past the place on the creek where old Pete Bonner had his house-trailer. For years you could see where the fire had been. The ground was black and the rusty framework of the house-trailer was still there. It was finally cleared away when the shopping center was built, but every time I go by that place I think about the night old Pete Bonner died there. And I think about us. A person acts; the act is over in a few minutes. But the aftermath of the act lives on in our emotions, our brains, perhaps forever. We committed an act twenty years ago. The next day, they buried what was left of old Pete. We’re stuck with that for the rest of our lives.”

They fell silent again, each thinking back to that night. It was true that Tad had been the ringleader of their tight little group, and the night of their graduation, it was Tad who thought of the final, monstrous prank: “Let’s set Pete Bonner’s trailer on fire.”

“But Pete’s liable to be in the trailer,” one of the others had said.

“That’s the whole point,” Tad had grinned, then explained, “After tonight, we’ll be going different directions. Duncan is going into medical school. Lowell’s going into the Army. Jack’s going to business college. I’ll probably stay here. We need to do something so stupendous, so important, that it will weld the four of us together forever. So, we’ll roast old Pete Bonner alive.”

Tad had pointed out to the rest of them that Pete was the town drunk, an old wino who had no family. It would be like putting a worthless old dog out of his misery.

Because of the hypnotic-like hold Tad had on the others, they had agreed — sweating and scared — but they’d agreed.

That night after graduation exercises, Tad led them to Pete Bonner’s trailer with cans of gasoline and matches. As they ran away from the blazing funeral pyre, the screams of the dying old wino followed them.

“I can still hear that old man screaming,” Duncan Gitterhouse said, his hands shaking as he chain-lit another cigarette.

“Tad, you said we’re stuck with what we did for the rest of our lives,” Jack Harriman sighed. “It’s true. I’ve made a pile of money, but what good is it? I can’t go to sleep without pills. I eat too much. My doctor says I’m going to have a coronary in five years if I don’t quite eating so much, but I can’t stop. It’s an emotional thing, a compulsion. Look at poor Lowell there. He’s spent the last five years in and out of alcoholic sanitariums.”

Duncan Gitterhouse nodded. “My practice is a success. Compensation, I guess. I have the idea that if I save enough lives, I’ll make up for the one we took. I do five, ten operations a day. But my private life is a shambles — my wife left me years ago; my kids are freaked out on drugs.” He turned to Tad Jarmon. “I suspect you didn’t get off any better than we did. Tad. You never married. You’re stuck here, in the home you grew up in. I don’t think you can leave...”

They sat in the park for a while. Then they got up and went off to their respective motel rooms — Tad to his big, old-fashioned house with white columns.

In his study. Tad took down one of his journals from a bookshelf. In his neat, precise hand, he carefully described the events of the evening, recording in detail all that Jack, Duncan, and Lowell had said. Following that entry, he added his prognostication for their future. “I would estimate that Jack will be dead within ten years, probably suicide if he doesn’t have a stroke first. Lowell will become a hopeless alcoholic and spend his last years in a sanitarium. Duncan will keep on with his practice, but will have to turn to drugs to keep himself going.”

He sat back for a moment. Then as an afterthought, he added, “I will continue to live out my life here in this old house, on the inheritance my father left me, eventually becoming something of a recluse. Duncan was right; I can’t leave. It is a psychological prison. But I am reasonably content, keeping busy with my hobby, the study of human nature, that will fill volumes when I am through.”

He put the journal away. Then he turned to another bookcase. It was lined with similar neatly bound and dated journals. He went down the line until he found one dated 1953. He opened it and flipped the pages, stopping when he came to the date of their graduation, then he started to read:

“Tonight being graduation,” he had written, “I decided we must do something spectacular. A crowning achievement to top any previous prank. Early in the afternoon, I stopped by Pete Bonner’s trailer. I had in mind giving him a few dollars to buy us some whiskey for the evening. Being underage, we couldn’t go to the liquor store ourselves, but Pete is always ready to do anything for a small bribe. I was surprised, indeed, when I walked into Pete’s trailer and found him sprawled out on the floor. He was quite dead, apparently from a heart attack. If I hadn’t found him, he’d probably have stayed there for days until someone accidentally stumbled upon him as I had done. I immediately got a brilliant idea for a colossal joke and a chance to test a theory of mine. They say time is relative. If someone believes he has committed an act, it’s the same to him as if he has committed the act. The consequences, as far as they affect him, should be the same.

“This time the joke would be on Jack, Duncan, and Lowell. They’re so gullible, they’ll do anything I tell them. I hurried home and swiped the wire recorder out of Dad’s study. I recorded some agonized screams and put it under Pete’s trailer, all hooked up so it would take only a second to turn it on. I then went over to talk to Jack, Duncan, and Lowell. I convinced them it would be a great idea to burn up Pete’s trailer and roast Pete alive. Of course, they had no way of knowing Pete was already dead. Tonight, after graduation, we slipped down to Pete’s trailer with gasoline and matches. I went around the other side, pretending to slosh my gasoline around, and reached under the trailer and switched on the wire recorder. As soon as the flames shot up, we began hearing some very convincing screams. It will be most interesting, in future years, to see what effect tonight’s act will have on the lives of Jack Harriman, Duncan Gitterhouse, and Lowell Oliver.”

Tad Jarmon closed the journal and leaned back with a cold, thoughtful smile.

When they were first married right after graduation from college, he had never been able to spend enough time with her. They bought a small cabin in the North Woods with no communication to the outside world, and spent every weekend there, walking hand in hand, sitting by a roaring fire, lost in each other — that is, when they weren’t chopping wood or hauling water from the brook, huffing and laughing at the unaccustomed exertion.