Bruce DeSilva - Cliff Walk

“Thank you. I really appreciate this.”

“Need me to pick her up in the afternoon?”

“No. I’ll be off by then, so I can do it.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“I’m setting up a car pool with some of the other mothers in the neighborhood, so we should be okay.”

“Good. But if you run into a problem, you can count on me.”

“Thanks so much,” she said. Then she turned and dashed down the stairs.

Fifteen minutes later I collected Marta from her apartment, led her to the Bronco, and asked her to buckle her seat belt for the short drive to Feinstein Elementary School on Sackett Street.

“I’ve been listening to you practice every night, Marta,” I said.

“I hope it isn’t disturbing you, Mr. Mulligan.”

“It’s not. I’m enjoying it. You play beautifully.”

“Old Man Pelligrini doesn’t think so. He bangs on our ceiling every night. Yesterday, he came to our door and yelled at Mama. Said he was going to call the police if I didn’t stop making those awful screeching noises.”

“He’s just a grumpy old man. Don’t let him get to you.”

I pulled up in front of the school, let Marta out, and watched her skip up the walk. I didn’t pull away until the door swung shut behind her.

That afternoon, just fifteen miles east of Providence, 492 kids spilled out of the red-brick elementary school in the little town of Dighton, Massachusetts. Most of them scuttled onto waiting buses, but thirty-eight of them lived close enough to walk, Patrolman Robert Dutra told me later as we sat together in his squad car and sipped cups of takeout coffee. Parents wary of the alarming news from Rhode Island were waiting for most of the walkers, but sixteen of them, mostly third- and fourth-graders, were on their own.

Dutra watched six of the walkers cut across the school parking lot and turn left onto a sleepy country road. The other ten scampered down the long macadam driveway toward Somerset Avenue, the closest thing the little town had to a main road. The small-town cop had been on the job for a year-long enough to know what he should be doing but not long enough to be bored by his baby-sitting assignment.

“A crossing guard was on duty at the corner of Somerset and Center,” he told me. “I knew I could count on her to look after the kids.” So he pulled his cruiser out onto the country road to keep an eye on things there.

Peter Mello, a nine-year-old fourth-grader, walked north on Somerset Avenue with three of his friends. The crossing guard helped Peter’s friends cross Center Street and watched them scoot north. Then she stopped the light traffic on Somerset so Peter could cross it and head east on Center Street.

The crossing guard’s name was Shirley Amaral. She’d been doing this job for eight years, and she’d always taken her responsibilities seriously, but the news from nearby Rhode Island had made her extra-vigilant. Normally she would have headed home once the children passed her post. This time, she remained on the corner so she could keep an eye on both Peter and his friends as they walked toward their houses. None of the kids lived more than a half mile from school.

About a hundred yards from the corner, Center Street drops steeply, beginning its decent to the Taunton River about a quarter mile away. Amaral watched Peter drop out of sight down the slope and then turned her attention back to the boy’s friends. When she lost sight of Peter, he was sixty yards from his front door. He never got there.

“Think this has something to do with the child murders in Rhode Island?” Dutra asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“If you didn’t think so,” he said, “you wouldn’t be here.”

The Red Sox traded Manny Ramirez away two seasons ago, but I wasn’t going to be the one to break the news to my best friend. He was Rosie’s favorite player, and the news would surely break her heart. I unfolded the autographed Sox jersey with Manny’s number 24 on the back and draped it over the shoulders of her gravestone, just as I did every time I visited.

It was late in the year for the grass to be this green. I knelt in it and read the inscription on the headstone for what had to be the hundredth time: “Rosella Isabelle Morelli. First Woman Battalion Chief of the Providence Fire Department. Beloved Daughter. Faithful Friend. True Hero. February 12, 1968-August 27, 2008.”

Rosie had been racing to a house fire on a foggy night when her car crashed and burned. The fire had been deliberately set. I’d feed the arsonist to Cosmo’s pigs while he was still breathing, if only I knew who he was. Rosie and I had been best friends since we were six years old. Over the years, dozens of other friends had come and gone. Work had gone from bad to good to bad again. Lovers had consumed and then abandoned us. Through it all, Rosie and I told each other everything. Some habits are hard to break.

“I’m carrying a gun now, Rosie. Got it right here under this loose jacket. I’d take it out to show you, but I know you never liked guns. Some very big guys warned me to keep my nose out of something, and, well, you know how I am. I hope I don’t have to shoot anybody, but I might if they come back.”

H. P. Lovecraft, the master of classic horror fiction, was at rest nearby, hidden behind a thicket of azaleas. Not far off, Thomas Wilson Dorr was entombed, his failed rebellion no longer a threat to Rhode Island’s ruling class. Ruggerio “the Blind Pig” Bruccola was just behind a row of rhododendrons, buried with the last few secrets he’d managed to keep from the feds. My best friend was never at a loss for stimulating company.

“I’m tired, Rosie. Tired of watching the newspaper business collapse. Tired of the Maniellas and their dirty business. Tired of writing about dead and missing kids. Maybe I just need a little time off, but all I can manage right now is a night out. I’ve got tickets for Buddy Guy at the House of Blues in Boston tomorrow night. Same place we saw him jam three years ago. I’m taking this woman I know. You’d like her, Rosie. She’s smart and funny and loves the blues. Drop-dead gorgeous, too. Only thing is, she doesn’t seem to like me very much.”

Off to the east, gulls swooped over the Seekonk River. Rosie and I sat silently for a while and listened to their rusty-hinge cries. This was Swan Point Cemetery, but I didn’t see any swans. I wrapped my arms around the cold granite headstone and gave Rosie a hug. Then I stood, removed the jersey from her shoulders, folded it, and walked past a dozen graves to my car.

I turned the ignition, popped Buddy Guy into the CD player, and growled along with him:

You damn right, I’ve got the blues.

That evening, I flopped on my mattress with a book by a former Tampa Tribune reporter named Ace Atkins. Crime novels were his parachute out of the newspaper business. If only I had that kind of talent. Ace was one of my favorite writers, but I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering. After reading the same paragraph four times, I gave it up, snatched the remote, and tried channel surfing. A Law & Order rerun, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Rachael Ray cooking something I wouldn’t eat on a dare, Keeping Up with the Kardashians , Jim Cramer bellowing bad investment advice, a NOVA special on frogs, The Golden Girls (which seemed to be on twenty-four hours a day), a meaningless game between two bottom-dwelling NBA teams… Finally I landed on a Charlie Rose interview with some economist I’d never heard of. Rose was the television equivalent of a bottle of Ambien and a whiskey chaser, but I was so restless that not even he could put me to sleep.