Necessary Evil

Contents

Necessary Evil—Acknowledgment

Necessary Evil—Author’s Note

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

Necessary Evil—Acknowledgment

I would be remiss in not acknowledging the part played by the Catholic Church in the creation of this novel. Absent the Church hierarchy’s galactic display of hubris and distorted priorities in choosing to shelter and reassign child-molesting priests and thereby further the betrayal of innocent individuals under the influence of sexually deviant guardians of the faith, Necessary Evil would never have been written.

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Necessary Evil—Author’s Note

A specific chronological setting is not identified for Necessary Evil, but from its context the reader would be correct in assuming it to be contemporary with the writing of the book, roughly the period between 2001 and mid 2004. Beyond that time placement, the author wishes to note a certain time displacement that will be apparent to some readers. The Claretian Theological Seminary in Southern California ceased to function under that name in 1972. Visitors to the site near Calabasas will now find it occupied by Soka University of America. In a Soka expansion in 1997, 21 of the original 39 Claretville buildings were demolished, leaving very little to remind a visitor of the sprawling seminary complex of years ago. In writing Necessary Evil, the author took the liberty of moving Claretville’s existence in time to a more contemporary setting.

As the publishing of this work slipped inexorably into the future, the event was overtaken by the horrific destruction of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, in August and September 2005. New Orleans and the bayous and waterways of the Lower Atchafalaya play dominant roles in the novel, but today these areas remain heavily damaged by water and debris, and present a tragic scene of human loss and devastation. The author joins the voices of all Americans in support of the region’s recovery from this terrible disaster.

Viewed from altitude, the meandering Atchafalaya waterways of Louisiana present themselves as a lazy tangle of glassy fragments, unrevealing of the life-and-death dynamics hidden beneath their surface. Billy Ray Hawkins had not yet reached his fourteenth birthday and had never been at altitude, but he was well acquainted with the terrors lurking beneath the surfaces of many things. The Louisiana bayous, with their generally silent and lethal residents, represented only one category, but they would be sufficient and would satisfy his needs.

Taking several weeks to review the options available to him, and after assessing his own capabilities anda degree of flexible morality he was beginning to consider a valuable asset, Billy had come to a firm decision. The decision evolved swiftly into a plan, and then, at a slower and more deliberate pace, the details of the plan took shape. He refined and caressed each detail until it became part of his being. Now, after establishing all the many elements required, the day of execution had arrived.

CHAPTER 1

Once again Billy was awakened by loud voices coming from down the hall. Over the past months, he had successfully conditioned himself to sleep lightly, to be ready to intervene if he perceived argument turning to violence. Slowly the voices returned to a subdued level and then faded away, but the event was the last he would tolerate. The voices had come from his mother’s bedroom. Billy still referred to the room as strictly his mother’s, even though she now shared the space with her new husband. The simple change of habitation status carried insufficient weight to affect Billy’s renaming of the space, which still triggered in him sharp memories of his father.

After mourning the passing of her husband for nearly three years, Elizabeth Hawkins found that the merciful kindness of fading memory and the healing nature of passing time had opened a portal through which she was permitted to sense the need for an adult companion. Two years later, she remarried and tried to re-form the foundation of a family existence. After being the man of his small family for five years, Billy tried to make a place for his new stepfather, but he encountered great difficulty including the individual as a family member in any of his thinking. Finally sensing progress in the matter, he had been close to making a place for the man in the community of his mind. Then episodes of violence brought Billy’s effort to an abrupt halt.

Billy had heard his family’s history countless times, but he never tired of reviewing the highlights. His mother, Elizabeth Susan Catlin, daughter of native Louisiana school teachers, was born and raised in Baton Rouge. After completing high school, Elly received a full four-year scholarship to Rice University in Houston. Inspired by the satisfaction that always shown in the eyes of her parents whenever they related one of the many teacher-student chapters in their lives, Elly embarked on a path leading to a degree in education.

Having participated in her share of college romances during her undergraduate years, Elly finally discovered her social existence firmly balanced by a young man she met during her graduate program. There was no question in Elly’s mind that Grady Hawkins’ passion for education, which at times seemed to exceed her own, was a strong factor in the chemistry attracting her to the lanky young man from Tennessee. Additionally, Grady’s boundless patience when confronted by any problem, and the engaging smile he employed to dominate nearly every situation, were both factors that had not gone unnoticed. One week after receiving their master’s degrees, Elly Sue and Grady became Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins, two young crusaders armed and driven to dispel any residual ignorance remaining in the world.

Even though Elly Sue and Grady had agreed not to be overly particular regarding the geographical area in which to begin their professional lives, the letter they received announcing a pair of openings in Patterson and Bayou Vista, Louisiana, gave them pause. The two small towns were well into the bayou country of southern Louisiana, and arranged themselves on opposing sides of a horseshoe bend in the Lower Atchafalaya River. Neither the prospects of swamp life nor the fact that the area under consideration was directly south of Baton Rouge and within reasonable driving distance of Elly’s parents added to the desirability of this new option. With little more than a combined desire to put their education and talents to work as swiftly as possible, a decision was made. Somewhere, on Borneo, perhaps, amid the universal chaos a butterfly had flapped its wings, and two young teachers began their trek from Houston to the bayous of Louisiana.

A recent bank foreclosure played into their hands by providing a long abandoned expanded cabin on Maple Bayou—identified as a cozy fixer-upper in the bank’s inventory. The property possessed appealing features of streams and inlets connecting with the Intracoastal Waterway, and direct access to a hard-surface road connecting with the nearby community of Idlewild, located at the geometric mid-distance between Patterson and Bayou Vista.

Still, the feature topping the list and selling them both on the otherwise unlikely newlywed home site was the giant, live oak tree standing behind the cabin. Grady’s way of boosting the property’s potential to his bride was to explain in detail just how he would hang a swing, suitable for two, from one of the tree’s high boughs. He would choose a strong branch, high enough to allow a long, leisurely arc in the shade of the ancient resident, which doubtless had witnessed much history flowing beneath its canopy. To cinch the deal, Grady charmed his bride by smiling broadly and explaining that, after all, he had minored in science, and knew much in the way of pendulums.

Accepting small loans from both parents to cover the down payment on their new estate, Elly and Grady Hawkins set up housekeeping on Maple Bayou. Simultaneously, they began their teaching assignments by filling in as substitute teachers and administrative assistants until the winter break, when they were promised full-time positions in the patterson and Bayou Vista elementary schools.

True to his word, Grady selected a strong, high bough in the old oak and fashioned a swing for two. The arc of Grady’s pendulum became one of Elly’s favorite environments, and did much to ease her into her new life.

After two years of adjusting to their new careers and customizing their fixer-upper, Elly and Grady felt the first stirrings of familyhood. Soon Elly was pregnant, and Grady had embarked upon yet another expansion to the house they had come to refer to as the Hawkins Estate. Devoting all his spare time to the construction effort, and enlisting some necessary assistance from friends and tradesmen, Grady finished the addition of two rooms just a month before William Raymond Hawkins was introduced into Maple Bayou.

In a mad dash to bond with their new environment, Elly and Grady learned as much as possible about the watery world surrounding them. This acquired knowledge they bequeathed in frequent doses to Billy during his early years. He learned the names and characteristics of all bayou features and life forms, their benefits and dangers, the ones to avoid and the ones to be used as tools, protection or food. All this information he filed away for future reference in the thirsty and fertile medium of his naturally inquisitive mind.

Billy developed a special relationship with his father, and valued as treasured activities the time spent with him in the dappled marshland and on the local waterways. The comfort and strength he found in the memories of odysseys with his father would become the foundation for Billy’s maintenance of stability, and for his survival in later years.

Eleven years after nurturing a bayou existence, the good fortune that seemed to rest near the Hawkins Estate decamped and fled for higher ground. Stomach pains that Grady had noticed growing more frequent and more intense were finally diagnosed as cancer. By the time of the diagnosis, the disease had already spread through several internal organs and was thus inoperable. Within four months, Grady Hawkins, husband and father, teacher of the young, was dead.

Gazing out across the expanse of marshland, with its stands of sweetgum, willows, and cypress along the margins where land became water, Billy reflected upon the events that had brought about the need for his morning activity.

Billy’s mother had been cautious about bringing another man into the family after the death of her husband. Grady and Billy had developed a special bond, the kind of close relationship only formed during a child’s early years. With Grady’s death, Elly knew that the brief history of time shared with his father would always reside in Billy as a reference against which other men would be measured. This special fact became a major guidepost for Elly during her carefully measured return to a social existence. Gradually venturing forth from carefully selected groups of trusted friends and acquaintances to an occasional date with a man she found interesting, Elly eventually fell under the influence of a man who was both a partner and heir in a family-run automobile dealership in Morgan City.

Selling came as naturally to Andrew Sorrell as getting up in the morning. It was never clear whether the gift of gaining the confidence of others had been handed down through genes from his father, who started the family enterprise, or had simply been acquired throughout his life. Regardless of the source of his abilities, however, Andy knew that the key to selling was to sell himself, and this he did on a routine basis in business and in his personal life. Andy received Elly’s insistence upon the slow pace of their relationship as a challenge to a major sale. After changing tactics many times and eventually overcoming Elly’s reluctance to involve another man in her son’s life, he lost track of the fact that it was all a game. He had sold himself too strongly—and signed a contract in the bargain.

The spectrum of Andy Sorrell’s intellect was not broad by nature, and he observed nothing of major significance in Elly’s insistence upon keeping her last name in common with that of her son. Holding the narrow view and arriving as quickly as possible to the desired goal would best describe what passed as philosophy for Andy. Thus, as the many foreign elements of marriage and family life settled in about him, panic ensued. After six months of Andy’s torturous efforts to adjust, his limitations were reached, and he struck out in frustration. Elly responded to the physical insult with a degree of understanding and forgiveness beyond her years, but for Billy the violence against his mother was the occasion for a clock to begin marking time.

Discovering his breaking point and finding that life went on, Andy maintained the view that adjustments would soon follow—not his, of course, but surely Elly would be more cautious in the future. Unknown to Andy, he and Elly were destined to be separated by more than uncommon names. A little extra makeup and a story of a brief encounter with an open cupboard door eased Elly through the social gates after Andy’s first blow cut her cheek and blackened her left eye, but in less than a month, Andy was once again confronted with his limited ability to negotiate the demanding pathways of marital existence. The resulting openhanded slap to Elly’s face could have resulted in more damage, but she learned quickly, and was moving out of the way as Andy’s hand grazed her lips. Still, flesh gave way, and blood was spilled—and Billy’s clock increased its tempo.

As Andy reflected upon his misfortune, it may have occurred to him that perhaps things would have been better if he had not acquiesced to Elly’s desire to begin their married life in her home, way out on Maple Bayou. If he had insisted on relocating his newly acquired family to the city, he would be on his turf, among his people. He would have places to run when his frustration became too much to bear. Perhaps it was not too late. If Elly would forgive this last mistake, perhaps she could be made to see the many advantages of moving to town.

Unknown to Andy Sorrell, his time had run out. Grady Hawkins’ influence upon his young son had sealed Andy’s fate, and Andy would remain a bayou dweller—forever.

Billy knew that Andy’s campaign to encourage Elly to move was an exercise in futility. As Billy observed it, Andrew Sorrell was just too ignorant to understand he had been on probation since the first time he had struck Billy’s mother. The probation period had ended with his mother’s second injury, and the following two-week truce and feeble campaign to encourage a move were all Billy required to write the final chapter in the short saga of Andy Sorrell.

Pendulums are simple things, but they can serve many purposes. Grady Hawkins had constructed and installed the swing at his new home on Maple Bayou as an offering of love to his bride, and as promised, it was hung from a high branch in the ancient, live oak behind the house. In the last year of his life, Grady decided to undertake a revision to the swing and make it a joint project for him and his young son. The simple seat of the swing was replaced by a broad-bench design, complete with a comfortable back, and was made wide enough to accommodate two people in cozy comfort at the end of a long day.

Grady took ample opportunity during the construction exercise to explain and demonstrate to his son some of the arcane and rather counterintuitive aspects of the everyday universe. Billy remembered distinctly the experiments he and his father had performed to prove two related principles: one, that within the reasonably small arcs of enjoyable swinging, the round-trip time of a swing was independent of the length of the arc; and two, the round-trip time was also independent of how many people were sitting on the bench. Understanding the trap of leaving a student with a limited explanation, and the accompanying vulnerability to erroneous assumptions, Grady explained to Billy that no magic was involved in the universe, and that if the tree-swing experiments were repeated with accurate instruments, small discrepancies would be evident. He added that a systematic progression of such experiments would lead naturally to facts that every child knew: swinging through large arcs would take a longer time, and the swing would certainly attain greater speeds.

At the tender age of seven, Billy Hawkins learned well the lessons that, in less than seven more years, would set his mother free.

Billy purposely selected a Saturday morning to execute his plan. It was his mother’s routine to volunteer her services on alternate weekends as a nurse’s aide at the general hospital in Morgan City, so Billy scheduled his final milestone to be on a Saturday while she was away. It was beginning to be routine for Andy to stay out late on Friday evenings preceding Elly’s hospital weekend, and to arrive home making a valiant effort to hide the alcohol-induced effects of an evening spent partying with his friends. He would then sleep late the following morning, not even waking to say goodbye to Elly as she left for the hospital. Later, reflecting on the matter, Billy came to the conclusion that it was really Andy who had selected his final day. Billy was simply the facilitator.

During the two previous weeks, Billy had made maximum use of the hours he managed to be home alone. He fashioned the simple elements required to activate the final episode of his plan. On the first day, he climbed the old oak tree and hung two strands of rope from the same branch on which his father had hung the family swing. These strands he fastened securely within the space between the lines supporting the swing—each new strand was deployed one foot inward from a swing support line.

Letting the two new strands hang freely, Billy returned to the ground and sat on the swing bench he and his father had constructed. Sitting bolt upright to his maximum height, he used a piece of chalk to mark a spot on each new rope strand that would approximate the position of the base of an adult’s head if he were sitting on the bench. Next he worked a loop into the end of one of the ropes, and arranged it so that when the loop was stretched fore and aft, the lowest-hanging portion was at the height of the chalk mark on the opposite strand. Repeating the process at the end of the opposite strand, and double checking to ensure that both loops were at the same height. Billy then climbed the tree again. Pulling the new ropes up to the anchoring branch, he bundled and tied them around two of the numerous smaller branches of the tree.

On the next available day, Billy picked out a plank from the small wood supply his father had maintained in a toolshed beside the house. This he cut to a length that fit easily between the original swing ropes. He then cut notches in the plank for the loops of the new rope strands to fit into, and securely nailed vertical boards across the front and back of the plank. The boards extended six inches above the top surface of the plank, and would serve to contain the payload of Billy’s new swing. A loose loop of rope was placed around the center of the plank, and then the assembly was installed within the new rope strands for a dry run.

As a release point for his new assembly, Billy selected the crotch of a tree branch near the maximum height the new auxiliary swing could reach. The release device would be a simple hammer handle, greased slightly and with a short line tied to it below the head of the hammer. With the new assembly hoisted to the anchor/release point, the hammer would be inserted into the loop around the center of the plank and then lodged in the crotch of the selected branch.

After attaching a light tag line to the loop around the plank, Billy climbed the tree, hoisted the assembly to the release point, and anchored the assembly with the hammer handle. A gentle pull on the line attached to the hammer released the new auxiliary swing and allowed it to attain a high velocity before passing through the stationary ropes supporting the family swing hanging innocently below. Grease would be added to the handle of the hammer on execution day to defeat the friction resulting from the weight of bricks that Billy would load onto the plank.

The residents of Maple Bayou included several alligators, mostly of small to moderate size. Requiring an accomplice to dispose of the future remains of Andy Sorrell, Billy reviewed the local reptilian population and selected one particular bull gator, whose size made him stand out from the rest, and who was clearly the dominant local forager. Three weeks before his scheduled event, Billy began to train his accomplice. Standing at the far end of the twenty-foot pier that Grady had built to provide a convenient place to tie up a small boat, Billy tossed chicken carcasses and other raw tidbits far out and into the large gator’s domain.

Although his school schedule meant that the gator’s new food source was available only on weekends, Billy observed that his new accomplice, like all cold-blooded creatures, was determined to conserve energy whenever he could. A lunch that did not require pursuit and capture fit neatly into the gator’s agenda. Gradually, by adhering to a set feeding schedule, Billy encouraged the beast to come in close to the pier between the hours of nine o’clock in the morning and noon. As disappointed as he may have been five days out of seven, the big gator began to show up on a daily basis. Finding it helpful to refer in his mind to the alligator by name, Billy called the beast Joshua.

Elly had made it a habit to read to Billy at bedtime during his childhood years. Grady would involve himself in the activity as well, and all members of the small family seemed to benefit from the experience. Bible stories were common among Elly’s selections, and of the biblical characters thus etched on Billy’s mind, Joshua held a special place. It was Billy’s conclusion that Joshua of old had few redeeming qualities, no mind of his own, and no discernible character at all. But Joshua had been infinitely trainable and became God’s thunderbolt as he introduced the non-Hebrew residents of Canaan to sanctified ethnic cleansing. Somehow the opportunist’s name seemed fitting for Billy’s soon-to-be reptilian accomplice. The thought crossed his mind that perhaps he was seeing himself in the figure of the alligator’s god, leading the creature to his bidding, and willing to release him when the animal’s job was done.

Billy woke early on the critical morning. He remained still and listened intently for the sounds of his mother’s rising and of her preparations to leave for the city. To assure himself that Andy was not moving about, Billy extended his period of silence a few additional moments after hearing Elly’s car drive away. Certain that Andy was not moving about, Billy got out of bed, dressed quickly, and left the house.

Scaling the old oak and edging his way once again out onto the large tree branch anchoring the swing, Billy released the two auxiliary rope strands and let them fall their full length. Then he returned to the ground and ran to the toolshed to retrieve the plank with the boards attached fore and aft. Quickly slipping the plank into the loops at the ends of the new rope strands, Billy stopped to listen for any noises that might indicate an unusually early rising of the only individual remaining in the house. He felt somewhat naked, realizing he was at a point in his preparation that would be difficult to explain away as a simple trifling with parts.

Satisfied there were no sounds coming from the house, Billy ran back to the toolshed and loaded a wheelbarrow with two dozen used bricks, retrieved from a pile his father had planned to one day fashion into a backyard barbecue pit for his family. The bricks were a heavy load and represented one element of Billy’s plan that had not been subjected to a dry run.

Finally setting the wheelbarrow down on its legs beside the swing, Billy allowed himself a brief rest to catch his breath before arranging the bricks in a two-layer pattern on the plank, within the tray area formed by the fore and aft vertical boards. The slack loop of rope around the plank now surrounded the bricks as well, and to this loop Billy reattached his tag line. With the end of the tag line in hand, and a hammer jammed into his belt, Billy scampered back up the tree and out behind the crotch in the branch he had selected as his anchoring point. Pulling the tag line and the attached, brick-laden plank upward along its arc was easy at first, but soon became more and more difficult. Billy was forced to complete the feat in phases, partially wrapping the tag line around a branch for support as he caught his breath.

With all the strength he could muster, he pulled the final segment of tag line through the crotch in the branch, then quickly pulled the hammer from his belt and forced it into the rope loop around the plank and bricks. Letting the hammer anchor and hold the plank aloft, Billy used his pocketknife to cut the tag line from the loop around the brick platform. He retied the tag line around the hammer handle just below the head of the hammer, then bundled and stuffed the line between two convenient branches.

Billy was nearly exhausted by the effort to hoist the plank and its cargo of bricks into the tree and out of sight, but he discovered new strength in the satisfaction of knowing that everything was working out according to plan. As he rested high above the normally innocent domain of his bayou home, he took a few moments to acquire a sense of the potential energy he had just installed in the hidden, leafy reaches of the old, live oak.

Back on the ground, he returned the wheelbarrow to the shed and stopped a moment to wipe some axle grease on the corner of a rag. Storing the rag in a pocket of his jeans, he next paused a moment to relieve his bladder at the base of the tree before returning to his anchor branch to await Andy Sorrell’s appearance and involvement in the morning’s agenda.

As Billy looked back over the activities preceding the major event on his agenda, it was clear to him that Andy Sorrell contributed to his own demise not strictly through his mistreatment of Billy’s mother, but also through Andy’s mundane predictability. It had become routine for Andy to sleep late after an evening out with his Morgan City friends, and then to carry out a set routine after rising. He would go to the telephone and call his dealership to find out the current status of activity in town. Assessing needs, he would assign various individuals to cover the tasks for which he would normally be responsible, and then grab a beer and head outside to the tree swing.

Grady Hawkins’ design of the swing’s bench seat permitted only one orientation for its passengers. The swing and seat were positioned so that a passenger was presented with a full view of the bayou waterway as he or she swung leisurely beneath the massive branches of the oak tree. Andy would set his can of beer beside him on the bench seat and, expending a minimum of energy, would maintain a small, easy arc, stretch out his arms upon the top of the backrest, and pass at least half an hour as though under deep hypnosis.

After smearing a thin coat of grease along the exposed wood of the hammer handle, there was nothing left for Billy to do but wait. He had kept well within the time period allocated for his preparations, and he knew that it could be as long as another half hour before Andy came outside to swing and contemplate life as he knew it. As his heart returned to a normal rate and rhythm, Billy sensed the combination of his hour’s exercise, the heat of the morning sun, and the comfortable perch he had selected in the canopy of the tree were conspiring to put him to sleep—but he became fully alert when Andy finally made his appearance.

From his position facing away from the house and toward the bayou inlet, Billy was unable to see Andy exit the house, but the event was announced by a muffled noise as the screen door slammed shut and woke Billy from an unavoidable moment’s slumber. A creature of habit to the end, Andy Sorrell sat down on the swing bench, placed his can of beer beside him, and initiated a small, swinging arc, one that would obey Grady Hawkins’ stated rules of pendulums.

Feeling a sense of infinite control come over him, Billy allowed several moments to pass as he watched Andy swinging rhythmically beneath him. In later years, Billy would reflect upon this brief investment of time as the period when a veil was lifted, illuminating the pathway into his future.

As Andy approached the far extreme of his small arc, Billy pulled sharply on the tag line connected to the hammer handle. Thus released, the brick-laden plank began its gradual conversion of potential to kinetic energy. A third of the way through the plank’s downward arc, the bench swing reached its maximum height and hung motionless for an infinitesimally small period of time before beginning its return journey.

Reaching maximum speed at the bottom of its arc, the plank entered the space between the bench swing ropes, and again energy conversion took place. For Billy, the event seemed to unfold in slow motion. Andy was launched out into a perfectly horizontal position, and then rotated one complete revolution, end over end, before impacting the ground and coming to rest six feet in front of the bench swing’s neutral position. His legs kicked twice in an uncontrolled spastic episode, and then he was still.

Unperturbed by the event, except for a slight slowing of the brick-bearing plank, the two swinging platforms continued on their respective trajectories, gradually releasing their energy and coming finally to their neutral, hanging positions. Billy forced himself to wait until all motion ceased before descending to the ground.

With his eyes wide open in a blank stare, Andy appeared to be in deep concentration. Only the absence of any signs of breathing and a small trickle of blood beginning to puddle on the ground at the base of his skull, gave any clear evidence that anything unnatural had occurred in the shade of the old oak tree.

Billy wasted no time in moving on to the next phase of his plan. Dragging Andy away from the tree and over to the burn barrel, which was used to dispose of soiled rags and scrap wood at the end of serviceable life, Billy stopped and quickly removed Andy’s pants and shirt. Glancing out at the water surface beyond the boat pier, Billy observed the eye ridges of several alligators in view. Joshua, as was normal for him at this hour, was the closest animal to the pier.

Knowing the last element of his plan to be a cleanup segment, Billy made no effort to conceal the trail he made as he dragged Andy’s naked body to the pier, then down the pier’s length to the end. Making certain that he had Joshua’s attention, Billy rolled Andy’s body off the pier and into the warm water of the small, adjacent lagoon. Not wanting to discourage his accomplice with the presence of a living human, Billy left the pier, looking over his shoulder to be sure that Joshua was moving toward the place where Andy had slipped below the water’s surface.

The top of Joshua’s head and his eye ridges disappeared from sight as they neared the spot, and were quickly replaced by a short-duration turbulence at the water’s surface. Then a small wake was visible, heading away from the pier and out of the lagoon. As he walked back to the burn barrel, it occurred to Billy that Andy was probably already halfway to Joshua’s meat locker—probably a sunken log, a tangle of mangrove roots, or a natural rock ledge in some protected portion of a nearby waterway.

At the burn barrel, Billy took out his pocketknife and cut away the zipper and metal buttons from Andy’s trousers. He removed the buttons from Andy’s shirt and stuffed all the loose items in his pocket as he ran back into the house. When Andy showed up missing, it would be best if a complete set of clothing went missing as well, Billy thought. A pair of shoes and stockings, a pair of shorts, and a light jacket would be sufficient. After all, surely Andy had been planning to return.

Scooping up Andy’s wallet, keys, and watch from a table beside the sofa where Andy had slept off his partying, Billy added these items and the jacket buttons to the zipper and loose buttons already in his pocket. All these he stuffed into Andy’s shoes. As the last element of his plan, Billy intended to row the family’s small skiff out into the slow-moving stretch of river paralleling the Intracoastal Waterway. Andy’s shoes, with a suitably sized rock in each one, would be lost overboard somewhere along the way.

After depositing the clothing in the burn barrel, Billy reversed the steps taken to load the bricks onto the plank swing, restored the bricks in the shed, and again climbed the oak tree, this time cutting down the rope strands that had supported the plank. The notched ends of the plank were sawed off and added to the barrel, as was one vertical side board that had made contact with Andy and still exhibited a bit of him at its point of impact. Then the rope strands were neatly coiled and stored in the shed, along with the reduced length of plank.

Billy ignited the burn barrel, then used a leafy branch as a broom to obscure all remaining signs of the morning’s activity. The small amount of blood that had leaked out of Andy was scooped up, along with a bit of underlying soil, and deposited in the lagoon. Two buckets of water and a few strokes of a broom did as much for the evidence remaining on the pier.

As he scanned the area for what he might have forgotten, Billy’s survey stopped at the bench swing. Curiously, Andy’s can of beer remained upright on the bench seat. Taking the can back into the house, Billy poured the contents down the kitchen sink drain, threw the can into the trash, and walked out to where Andy had parked his car the night before. The grease had been wiped from the hammer handle, and the rag added to the burn barrel, which was currently well into the process of evidence consumption, but Billy stuck the hammer back into his belt, for it was needed for one more task. Removing a long nail from his pocket and the hammer from his belt, Billy knelt at the front left tire of Andy’s car. Poor Andy, Billy thought, the man’s bad luck just never seems to end. The nail was driven its full length into the tread of the tire, and Billy could hear the slow hiss of escaping air as he walked back to the toolshed to hang up the hammer and prepare to go fishing.

Although he knew that questions would be asked and that possibilities existed beyond Andy walking into Idlewild to fetch someone to change his tire for him, Billy was also aware that the swamps and bayous of the Atchafalaya claimed new souls all the time. Smiling to himself, he thought, What better candidate could there be than a hung-over city boy who wandered off the road and got himself swallowed up in the mossy shadows?

Jenna Whitman’s fingers fell perfectly still at the piano keyboard, where she was practicing for her evening performance at school. The keys were still depressed, but the tones had long since died away, and she registered no image of the sheets of music standing open before her. Slowly, her situational awareness and time sense returned, but it was clear that yet another disturbing sensation had invaded her private domain. It had passed, but not before leaving a faint message indicating its origin. She smiled vaguely and reminded herself to ask Billy Hawkins what he’d been up to that morning.

CHAPTER 2

It’s not a big deal, Billy. I just want to hear about your adventures. I haven’t seen much of you lately, and I thought we could just talk a bit.

After she and Billy arrived at the school a half hour before the beginning of the school program, Elly soon wandered off to chat with other parents, leaving Billy temporarily among some of his student friends and a few of the evening’s performers. Suddenly Jenna Whitman was at his side, suggesting they meet later for a conversation. Billy appeared frozen before her and attempted no vocal response. Waiting for his apparent confusion to subside, Jenna became concerned at the degree of shock she observed in her friend’s eyes. Fearing he had stopped breathing, or that he might be inclined to run away, she reached out and touched him on the shoulder. Color slowly returned to Billy’s face, and he put together a few words in the form of a fractured response. Sure, Jenna. Whenever you say.

Running backstage, Jenna felt pleased that the strange connection with her friend was still in place, although a question lingered in her mind and interfered with her mental preparation for the recital: Why had Billy reacted so strangely to her simple comment? Boys were very strange, she decided. Certainly a few of them were. More important, they had seemed to be getting even stranger over the past year—and definitely more interesting. At thirteen she was finding her perception of the desires of those around her to be heightened, while the awareness of most boys seemed to remain as dull as ever. Jenna hoped the chasm between those realities would not become too great.

As he sat beside his mother at the evening’s talent performance, Billy quickly reviewed Elly’s response to finding her husband absent and unaccounted for when she returned from the hospital. It was Billy’s observation that her display of concern and confusion had been thin enough to allow a degree of relief to show through. It was the best he could have hoped for. He was uncertain of what he might have done if his irreversible actions of the morning had served only to further burden her life. She deserved happiness, and Billy was absolutely certain that it could not have been found with Andy Sorrell.

Elly seemed to tolerate the extension of Andy’s absence into the time slot of the evening’s performance at the school as just another example of Andy’s irresponsible behavior, but when there was still no sign of him after she and Billy returned home, her concern began to mount. With still no sign of him by the following morning, Elly placed a telephone call to the Morgan City dealership. She received a report that Andy had not been there for nearly a day and a half, and his father was becoming a little impatient with Andy’s latest exhibition of independence. Ultimately Andy’s disappearance spawned the usual police investigation, and the humble Hawkins home on Maple Bayou became the geographic center of the game. It was rapidly determined that Billy was the last known person to see Andy, and as a result, Billy was asked to restate his memory of that sighting.

By consciously placing a gauzy veil over his memory of the mechanics of the morning in question, Billy discovered it was easy to relate that he had seen Andy asleep on the couch in the living room as he prepared to go fishing. But the police investigator wanted a little more.

He didn’t wake up as you prepared your gear? the officer asked.

Billy had hoped he wouldn’t be required to fabricate responses to such questions, but he found the effort surprisingly easy. Andy turned once as I was getting some things out of the storage closet, he responded. But I stopped to let him settle before finishing up. It wasn’t so unusual to find him passed out...I mean, asleep on the couch some mornings, so I’ve learned to be quiet and not to wake him.

Billy kept eye contact with the officer throughout his instantaneous creation and delivery of the brief story, and was pleased with the officer’s apparent acceptance of the fabrication.

So your stepdad’s sleeping on the couch didn’t seem strange to you then? the officer inquired.

No, sir, Billy responded. He’d been out there before.

Appearing slightly embarrassed when asked the same questions, Elly reinforced Billy’s story with her own report that she passed by Andy’s sleeping form as she left for the hospital. Questions regarding Andy’s choice of the couch doubtless crossed the minds of many; but with two corroborating witness accounts and no extenuating circumstances, the investigation passed over Maple Bayou and headed for higher and less fertile territory.

Billy discovered that he felt no remorse about ending the Andy Sorrell chapter in the book of life. That degree of control or absence of human connection served well to insulate him throughout the entire investigation. From the time he accompanied his mother to the school performance, Billy rapidly reacquired his station as man of the family and protector of his mother, a role he vowed to take much more seriously in the future.

If Jenna Whitman conscientiously elected to postpone her catching up on events with Billy until the dust of Andy Sorrell’s disappearance had at least cleared to a low haze, her delay was completely unnecessary. To Billy’s mild satisfaction, he discovered himself completely unfazed by the formal police investigation. His awareness of the uncommon connection between him and Jenna, on the other hand, was a matter of significantly more concern. This connection—relationship, voodoo, whatever—spooked him, and there was no denying it. The only element of it that kept him from running the other way when Jenna approached was that the connection was not completely unilateral. It worked both ways, although he had to admit that Jenna was more receptive to its signals and less alarmed when they occurred.

In the end, Jenna’s innocent questions regarding Billy’s