"What? C'mon, Willie. You know me." My skin was all gooseflesh. "You don't think for a minute..."
He gave me a look—anger and pain mixed. "How can you know what a feller will do? One who don't ha
ve to pay no mind to the Ten Commandments?"
I stood there naked, shaking in the sun, my mouth wide open. "Willie! You know me," I protested. But I didn't know myself. A flood of horror washed over me. I had meant to kill Ned Weston. I could deny it to the day I died, but I knew I'd felt the rage boiling in my head that proved me kin to every murderer in history from Cain to Jack the Ripper.
"Still," said Willie, "they had no business mocking Elliot, much less your pa."
I jerked my head to agree, but I couldn't make myself look him in the eye.
"How're you gonna get home—like that?"
A quick glance assured me that he wasn't smiling. I should have known. Willie's too kind a soul to pile up on a person's despair. "Here," he said, unbuttoning his shirt. "You're turning blue. Put this on at least." He handed me his shirt. Willie's shirt barely scraped my privates, but it was better than nothing.
"What am I gonna do?" I asked him miserably. He thought I meant about being naked, but I meant way more than that.
"There's the icehouse," he said. "You can wait in there till I can fetch you some more clothes."
Ma and Pa. I thought my heart had sunk as low as it could, but it plunged into an even deeper gorge. What would they think of me? They'd know soon enough. Mr. Earl Weston was probably halfway to my house by now, nonetheless—"I don't want my folks—"
"Don't worry, Robbie," he said kindly. "I ain't as dumb as you think."
I wanted to deny it, but he was right. I did think I was smarter than him. I guess I thought I was the smartest boy in Leonardstown—nearly. Well, look what it got me—bare bottomed as a pig and blushing like a girl. And ashamed as Judas Iscariot.
The icehouse stands on the north side of the pond. Every winter the Cutters saw blocks of ice and store them, each layer covered in sawdust, in a pit in the center of the house. Then, come summer, they make a fortune selling ice to everyone in Leonardstown.
There were no windows in the wooden shack, only a door. It wasn't locked. Willie and me went in. Now I really began to shiver. By the light from the doorway I saw there was a splintery stool on one side under where the tongs and picks and ice saws were hanging. It made me feel a little like I was in a butcher shop, more like the meat than a customer.
"I'll need my shirt."
"What?"
"I'm sorry, Robbie, but I can't walk into town half naked."
He was right, of course, but I sure hated to give up what little protection his shirt afforded. I took it off and handed it back. "Hurry, won't you?"
"Fast as I can manage it," he promised. He shut the door after him, leaving me plunged in complete blackness. I worked my way along the wall to where the stool was. I didn't want to fall into the ice pit by mistake. I felt for the tongs and picks and then found a space of clear wall I could safely lean against. The splintery stool didn't seem inviting to bare buttocks.
Outside, a bird called and another answered. They sounded happy and full of life. I got tired of leaning. Besides, the wall was rough and could share its splinters as well as the stool could. I tried sitting on the cold dirt floor but had to get up soon. Mostly I stood on one foot and then the other. Time had no meaning in the darkness. Even after my eyes got accustomed to it and I could see tiny bits of daylight through the chinks in the wall, I felt as though I had been confined in that dark dungeon forever. I didn't dare to crack the door. Suppose some more of the boys came to swim? Suppose Mr. Weston sent the sheriff to arrest me? Suppose Pa came looking for me?
I tried not to think. Everything that came to my mind twisted my stomach. What did the Weston boys mean calling Pa and Elliot monkeys? Was their father accusing Pa of believing in evolution? I knew that word, all right. It was the worst thing you could do even if you weren't a preacher—to believe that man wasn't created by God on the sixth day but had descended from the apes.
Even to someone who had decided not to believe in God—even to an avowed unbeliever like me—the idea of having a monkey for an ancestor was disgusting. Just because they had faces like people didn't mean we were kin, for goodness' sake. A thrush and a vulture both have wings, but that doesn't make them kissing cousins.
To taunt me, which those boys did love to do, even to taunt me that my pa would be so stupid and godless as to entertain the possibility—and then to take poor Elliot as proof—even in a joking way ... They had no right!...
Dear God. I had nearly killed Ned Weston....I began to breathe funny. I was freezing cold and sweating at the same time. Oh, Willie, I begged, hurry up. Please. I wanted out of that dark shed even if I had no place to go. I needed clothes. But after that—after I put my clothes on—then what? It wasn't just the fear of Mr. Weston or the sheriff. It was Pa. The shame I would bring him. Mabel Cramm's bloomers were nothing compared...
Dok dok dok. Who in Hades was knocking? I stooped down, squatting as close to the ground as I could, my breath so loud, I was sure it would give me away.
The door was gently pushed open a few inches. I waited, my eyes on the dark form in the crack.
"Robbie? You dere?"
Elliot? What was he doing here? I was furious. What was Willie thinking, getting Elliot mixed up in this?
"Robbie?" he called again in his soft, tentative voice, pushing the door open just wide enough to squeeze in. He started forward.