J.T. Warren - Remains

“You’re not Johnny, are you,” she said. “Don’t lie. I know I ain’t well. I know you ain’t Randolph, neither, so don’t try that.”

I didn’t move. “No,” I said.

“Don’t try to tell me who you are. I ain’t gonna’ believe nothin’ you say.” She wiped at her eyes again.

“Okay,” I said.

“I know Randolph ain’t comin’ home ever again. Somebody done took him. I know that.”

I nodded. After a while, when it seemed that she was stable again, I stood up to leave. I wanted to tell her everything I came here to say, about Randy, about the bones, about how I knew, but I couldn’t. I tried to the entire time we sat there.

“If you are who I think you are, then let me ask you somethin’,” she said. I turned toward her. She seemed to be waiting for me to say something, so I nodded. She looked down at her own knees, then back up, “Where’d you take him?” When I didn’t answer, she asked “My boy. Where’d you take him off to? I know it was you took him, else you wouldn’t’a come here. I just want to know where he is. I just want to be able to put him in that little box out yonder.”

I turned for the door, and she whispered something else as I turned the handle, but I didn’t hear it. I closed the door behind me, and locked it. I stopped, and almost turned to look in the window, but didn’t. I had just managed to put the key back in the box, and close the door to it when Kevin emerged from the room I’d heard noises in. The nurse was adjusting his shirt. Kevin looked at me, and his eyes seemed empty. I nodded. He looked down at the floor.

The nurse glared at me. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“Nothin’. Snooping around. Bored.” I couldn’t make my voice find a whole sentence.

“Well, get away from that. Shit, for all I know, you’re some perv come to fuck one of the ol’ ladies or somethin’.”

“Nah,” Kevin said, “he ain’t no perv, are you?” he asked, turning his gaze back to me. “Give us a sec?” he said, and his eyes moved quickly from my face to the elevator. I walked that way, but I already knew what was going to happen. As the door dinged open, and I stepped inside, I saw the nurse pull out his wallet, and the wad of cash he handed to Kevin.

The ride was silent for a bit. From time to time, I glanced over at Kevin while I drove. He’s staring out the window, or maybe at his own reflection in the glass. Just past his face, the stars twinkle. The streetlights do their best to block out everything else. The radio was off.

“Did she tell you?” he asked without turning.

“No,” I said, “but she—I don’t know— dreamed or something.”

He nodded, and kept staring. “Randolph,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time with her,” he said.

“What?”

He huddled himself up tighter, drawing his legs up onto the seat. “She wanted someone to mother. Someone to fill the empty back up.”

“So you—you—what?” I asked.

“I let her talk,” he said. Something in his voice meant more than that, though.

“Is that how you know all of this?” I asked.

He nodded, but said nothing for a long time. We were almost to the turn-off into his subdivision when he asked “what was he like?”

“Who?”

“Randy,” he said, and turned his head some.

“I dunno. He was a kid,” I said. A picture formed in my head of him, his head barely above the water, the first time I’d tried to teach him to swim. Another picture flipped over on top of that one, as if they were actual photos, of Randy on my bike. Then I thought of the coffin, and how narrow it was. “Just a kid,” I said.

He shook his head, “he had to be more than that.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Because you’re in love with him.”

I pulled the car up into the dirt area near the front of the trailer. I turned it off. We sat for a while, not looking at each other or saying anything. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

He moved his feet down onto the floorboard again, leaning his side against the chair so that his head rested. He stared at me, then blinked slow, saying “You wanted to know what to do. That’s why you went to see her tonight.”

“Wanted to know what to do about what?” I asked, turning away from him.

“You know that there is no way the Sheriff can allow those bones to be named as Randolph McPherson.”

“What? You’re not making any sense,” I said. In his eyes, there was a distant gleam. He was looking somewhere far beyond me, far beyond the car’s window behind me.

“If they name those bones Randy’s, then there’ll be an investigation. The FBI will come in here, Mikey. You know that the Sheriff can’t allow that. You know he’s going to have to say that those bones belong to some drifter, or maybe a kid from that work farm up near Bigbee River. If he says that they belong to a boy who lived in this town, then all kinds of people are going to come in here, Mikey. This town has too many secrets to keep.” His voice was flat as he talked, and the words seemed to come at a steady rhythm. He was talking through some kind of trance, just like Randy’s mother had.

“But what if they are Randy’s? I mean, he can’t make them not belong to the kid,” I said.

Kevin blinked slowly, again, and sat up straighter in the chair. His eyes met mine, and a chill ran across my shoulder blades, again. “What makes you think he couldn’t?”

“But there’ll be DNA tests, or whatever, right? I mean something . Aiken said that Jim Clarke is looking at the bones. He’ll be putting out a report or something, right?” I said. A part of me could hear the pleading.

Kevin shook his head, “Do you think that the wives and mother’s around here are the only people he’s attacked? Do you think that a couple of illegitimate children and a hooker or two are the only secrets in this town, Mikey?”

“Then what am I going to do?” I asked.

“That’s what you have to tell me. You could just leave.”

I couldn’t. He knew I couldn’t, too. It showed on his face. “I have to—I have to—have to get someone to know that—that those are—are Randy.”

“Are you sure they are?”

“Yes,” I said, and felt as if something huge had been lifted off of me. I knew it, at that moment. To this day, I don’t know why it took all of that to make me sure, but I knew that I wouldn’t have come back unless I knew already. Somehow, with no evidence or idea even what might happen, I had known that these bones were Randy. I had known I was coming back to finally put him to rest.

Some part of me was certain that Kevin was right, too: the sheriff was going to do everything he could to make sure no one thought of the remains as Randy. He couldn’t let them.

“What does Jim Clarke have to hide?”

“Let’s just say he gets in to his work.” The tone in Kevin’s voice made it clear what he meant.

“How do you know any of this?”

“You were the one that left, Mikey, not me. I stayed here. I know these people. I know them.”

We sat there for a long time, just breathing. “What happens if I don’t believe you about any of this? What if I say that this all sounds like some sort of horror movie, and decide to get on a plane and walk away?” I asked.

“You still could. There will come a time when you won’t be able to go back the other way if you don’t like how things are unfolding, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

“So, what are you, some sort of guru?” I asked.

“Don’t take this out on me, Mikey; you’re the one who’s thinking about taking on the Sheriff. You can still walk away from this. All I’m saying is that what happens for you depends on what you decide to believe right now. You know those bones are Randy’s, though. I can see it in your eyes,” he said, and leaned forward so far, I thought he was going to kiss me. Instead, his hand found my shoulder, and squeezed, “Like I said; I know you went there tonight to see if she would tell you what to do. I know what she said to you, though. I think if you pay attention, you’ll find that she did tell you everything you needed to know.” He turned, and opened his door. The car light came on, and the shadows in the empty car were too much. I got out.