Chris Bohjalian - Before You Know Kindness

She stood up a little taller, not that she believed that her height-such as it was-was going to help her much now, and waited.

“I’ll bet you’re Charlotte McCullough. My name is Lorelea. Lorelea Roberts.” She stuck out her hand, and Charlotte took it. “I’m with the Times. I’m a writer.”

“I had a feeling.”

The woman smiled. “Can we talk?”

Reflexively, before she could stop herself, she glanced back toward the auditorium, hoping someone was emerging who could rescue her. But there was no sign of any help in that direction.

“I heard there was going to be a press conference tomorrow,” the woman continued, “but then it was canceled.”

“Really?” She hoped she sounded surprised, though after she spoke she honestly wasn’t sure what was supposed to have surprised her: the fact there had once been a press conference scheduled or that it had been canceled.

“It was going to be tomorrow afternoon. At some law firm. Your father’s law firm, I presume. True?”

She nodded, and as she moved her head she feared that already she had revealed too much.

“Ah, but then it was canceled.”

“I should go meet my mom,” she said quickly. “I’m supposed to catch up with her in, like, five minutes.”

“You’re meeting her in her classroom, I bet.”

“Yes.”

“Then can I have just a few of those minutes? Please? When we’re done, I could walk you to your mom and ask her a couple of questions, too. The truth is, I already have my story, and I just want to confirm the facts. That’s all. I won’t ask you anything I don’t already know, I promise. I just want to do what I can to get it right.”

“You already know what happened?”

“Uh-huh. Absolutely. I’ve talked to a lot of your father’s friends in the animal rights community-folks he’s spoken with since he got back to work. And I’ve connected with a number of people in New Hampshire.”

“Have you spoken to my father?”

“No, but I’m trying.”

Charlotte swallowed hard and tried to think. She made a production of switching her backpack from her left shoulder to her right to give herself time, because the disparate strands of an idea were starting to coalesce in her mind. Her dad had wanted a press conference because he was pissed off at the way hunters blasted a bazillion deer a year. Well, the press conference may have been off, but this Lorelea Roberts seemed nice enough. And very professional. Perhaps, she reasoned, she could use this interview to say some of the things her father would have wanted said if the event had gone forward as planned. Given her unfortunate history with firearms, she guessed she was in about as good a position as anyone to talk about the evils of guns. And she’d certainly grown up around her share of animal rights propaganda, so some of it had to have registered.

At the very least, she could make the point that, clearly, it hurt like heck to be shot.

Besides, she wouldn’t be telling this lady anything she didn’t know. Hadn’t the woman said that she already had the full story and was just checking her facts?

“So, what do you think?” Lorelea was asking, her voice a low, seductive, almost conspiratorial whisper. “Can you give me four minutes?”

“Okay,” she agreed slowly. She had the sense this could be a huge mistake if she weren’t smart. She’d have to play this one carefully.

“Good. Thank you,” the reporter said, instantly pulling a pocket-sized digital recorder from her windbreaker pocket as she spoke and clicking a button on its side. “This happened on July 31?”

“I guess so.”

“A Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“And you thought you were shooting at a deer?”

She started to nod and then caught herself. She saw the trap: If she said she was shooting at a deer, the newspaper would have the daughter of a senior FERAL executive taking a potshot at a wild animal. That would do no one any good. And so instead she changed direction and answered (and she could almost see how proud of her Father would be), “I didn’t know the gun was loaded. It was one of those horrible mistakes that, like, just happens.”

“Why were you even holding the gun?”

“Curiosity, I guess. I mean, the thing is, you saw the damage it caused. My dad practically lost his arm. He was nearly killed! That’s what a gun can do. That’s what a gun does to all those deer-to any animal. Hunting is just the most gross thing. And it’s not a sport. Please. What chance does a deer have against something like that? Like none, that’s how much. Zip, zero, nada. And my dad is in constant pain,” she said, and behind the reporter she saw her mother and the headmaster stomping down the hall, but she was on a roll and she didn’t care. This was a stage, she was discovering, she could handle.

Moreover-and this was a point that mattered to her-she was doing this for her dad.

“How does that make you feel?”

“I feel terrible, of course. And that’s the lesson here,” she said, as her mother and Mr. Holland surrounded Lorelea Roberts. “We are inflicting a lot of pain on a lot of animals. And what for? Do we need deerskins for clothing anymore? I don’t think so. Do we need to eat deer meat? No way. I mean, my parents’ freezer at home has got all kinds of imitation meat that tastes just fine. They even make imitation chicken fingers now, and-as we all know-chickens don’t even have fingers. Am I making sense?”

“You’ll have to leave,” Mr. Holland snapped, unwilling to hide his annoyance with the reporter. Normally, he was a pretty good-natured guy, especially since her mom was one of his teachers. “You didn’t check in at the front office and-”

“I’m an alumna,” the reporter said, smiling. “My mother is an alumna. My grandmother was an alumna. Lorelea Roberts.” Now she offered her hand to Mr. Holland. “You arrived five or six years after I graduated, but I’ve read in the alumnae magazine about the terrific work you’re doing here. I’m sorry we haven’t met.”

“You still should have checked in at the office, Ms. Roberts.”

She spread her hands palms up in a gesture that was a little like an apology and a lot like a dismissal. Charlotte saw the eyes of the other two adults land squarely on the small recorder.

“And you have to turn that thing off,” her mother said. “Right this second.”

“No, it’s okay,” she told her mom, surprising herself.

“Charlotte?”

“Really, I know what I’m doing and I know what I want to say,” she went on. Then she reached for Lorelea’s hand with the recorder and actually steered it toward her face. “There’s one more thing I want to add. Actually, it’s two. Can I?”

She could tell that her mother and the headmaster wanted to stop her, but either they didn’t want to make a scene in front of this reporter-who happened to be what Grandmother Seton liked to call a Brearley girl herself-or they trusted her just enough that they were going to let her plow ahead. When they remained silent, Lorelea said to her, “Looks to me like you’re good to go.”

“Okay, here we are. I think the company that made the gun should make it really obvious when the darn thing is loaded. It would have been nice to know, thank you very much, that there was a bullet in the rifle when I picked it up. Second, I made a huge mistake that night, the biggest one I will ever make in my life. At least I hope it was the worst mistake: I hate to think what worse shi-” She caught herself before she had finished the word, then resumed as if nothing had happened, “Anyway, I love my dad. I love him a ton. I would give anything in the world to be able to go back in time and give him back his right arm. Okay?”

Lorelea looked at her and seemed to be considering this. Then she nodded and clicked off the recorder.