Chapter 10
The Wall
He did not sleep.
He sat at the kitchen table until four with a cup of coffee going cold at his elbow, and a black smear on a stair upstairs that he had not gone near again. At five he put on his boots. At twenty to six, in the blue dark before the dawn, he got into the old car and drove across the sleeping town, past the closed bakeries and the lit bus shelters and a man in an orange vest sweeping a gutter, to the end of Dock Street.
It was very cold. A thin white frost lay on the road, and the sky behind the hill was the color of ash. He parked at the top and walked down. His breath went up in clouds. The gravel was loud under his boots, and a train was coming somewhere in the distance, a low long wavering sound, like a whale calling.
The tunnel was in front of him.
He had not seen it in six weeks. He had not looked. He had taken the long way round on every drive, and shut his eyes at the end of the street, and lied to Anna about construction. But it was only a tunnel. A brick arch under a railway line, black with soot, with a puddle at the mouth and a broken bulb in a cage. He stood at the foot of the road and felt something in his chest go quiet.
It looked small.
He had imagined it vast. In his mind it had become something else: a mouth, a hole, a place where the light ended. But it was just brick. A wind came out of it, smelling of wet iron.
There was someone sitting on the curb.
He did not see him at first. A shape in the shadow of the arch, small and hunched, with a hood, with a school bag between his feet. Tom's heart gave one hard bump, and stopped. Then the shape lifted its head, and he saw that it was a boy. A round-faced boy with dark hair and a pale pink nose. He was holding a paper cup. A thin curl of steam rose from it.
He was looking at Tom.
"Hey," said the boy.
"Hey."
"Are you lost?"
"No."
"It's just that nobody comes here," said the boy. "At this time. It's, it's not on the way to anything."
"I know."
"Are you from the city?"
"No."
"From the news?"
"No."
The boy looked at him. He had very clear brown eyes, red-rimmed, and a jaw that was beginning to stiffen. He looked at Tom's face, and his coat, and his hands. He took his time. Slowly, with a kind of dreadful patience, the pink drained out of his cheeks.
"Oh," he said.
Tom did not move.
"Oh," said the boy again. "I know you."
He stood up.
He did it carefully, as one stands with a broken rib. He was taller than Tom had thought. He put the cup down on the curb, and straightened, and wiped his palms on his jeans. He was breathing very fast. There was a vein beating in his temple.
"You're him," he said. "You're the cop."
"My name's Tom Walker."
"I know what your name is."
"I'm not here to."
"They showed your picture." The boy's voice cracked on the last word. "On the news. At the press thing. You were in the back. You were standing behind the chief, with your hat. I remember because you looked like, you looked so normal." He took a step. "I thought, he looks like a dentist."
"I know."
"What are you doing here?"
"I came to see the wall."
"You came to see the. Are you serious?" He took another step, and another, and then he was within arm's reach, with his fists tight, a boy of sixteen in a school jacket, shaking like a leaf. "This is his place. This is where he. You don't get to come here. You don't get to stand on his road."
"I know."
"Get out."
"Ben."
The boy stopped. His face changed. It went through three things, quickly: shock, fury, and a kind of terrible bewilderment, as of a child who has been called by a name he did not know that anyone knew.
"How do you know my name?"
"I read it," said Tom. "On his, on the account. The pictures. You were in a lot of them."
"You went on his page?"
"Yes."
"You went on his page." Ben's lip trembled. "You, you read the, you looked at his, you. You're not allowed. You can't just."
"I know."
"Why?"
"Because I didn't know who he was."
It was very quiet. The train had come closer. Its sound filled the valley, a deep rumbling pulse, rising and falling and rising again. Ben stood with his jaw set and his hands tight at his sides. The frost glittered. Behind him the dark mouth of the tunnel stood open like a door.
"You didn't know who he was," said Ben slowly.
"No."
"You shot him."
"Yes."
"And you didn't know who he was."
"I know how that sounds."
"No you don't." The boy gave a small gasp, a half laugh, and shook his head. "You really don't. You think it sounds, I don't know. Bad. You think it sounds sad. It sounds like a joke. It sounds like the worst, it sounds like, who does that? Who kills someone and doesn't even."
He hit him.
It was not a good punch. It came from the shoulder, wide and sloppy, with his eyes shut. It caught Tom on the side of the jaw with a dull wet crack, and he felt his teeth jar, and his head rock back, and a bright flash of white. He did not raise his hands. He stood in the road in the frost and let it come. Then another, on the cheek. Then a third, which glanced off his ear. Ben was sobbing. He was hitting him and crying, both at once, in great ugly gasping heaves, and the blows grew weaker and wilder, like a clock running down.
Then they stopped.
Ben stood with his arms hanging. His knuckles were skinned. His chest heaved. He looked at Tom with an expression of enormous wretched bewilderment, like a child who has hit a wall and found that it does not hit back.
"Why didn't you," he said. "Why didn't you stop me?"
"Because I deserved it."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got."
The boy's face crumpled. He turned his back. He walked three steps away, and stood with his hands over his face, his shoulders working, and for a long time neither of them said anything. The train went over the top of the tunnel, with a long thunder of iron, and the ground shook. A cloud of sparrows burst from a tree. Then it was gone, and the silence rolled back, enormous and cold.
Tom touched his jaw. It was already swelling.
"Ben," he said. "I'd like you to tell me about him."
They sat on the curb, a yard apart.
Ben had picked up his cup. It was cold. He held it in both hands and looked at it. His eyes were swollen, and he sniffed from time to time, and wiped his nose on the cuff of his jacket. He did not look at Tom. But he had not left.
"Why?" he said, at last.
"I'd like to know."
"Why do you want to know?"
"I don't know how to explain it."
"Try."
"I think." Tom took a breath. The air was very cold in his lungs. "I think if I don't know who he was, I can't be sure I'm not, I can't be sure what I did."
"You're not sure."
"No."
"You don't know if you."
"No."
Ben turned his head. He looked at the side of Tom's face, the bruise coming up along the jaw, the red mark on the ear. He looked for a long time. A line came between his eyebrows.
"He liked hot sauce," he said.
Tom said nothing.
"That's the first thing. Everyone says it. It's, it's the thing they put on the card at the funeral. Sam liked hot sauce. But it's not a joke. He really did. He put it on everything." Ben's mouth twitched. "One time, at the school canteen, we had ice cream. The cheap kind, in a cup, with the wooden spoon. And he put hot sauce on it. And he ate the whole thing. And he said, it's actually good. And I said, you're lying, and he said, try it, and I did, and I threw up in the bin."
"Did he laugh?"
"He laughed so hard he had to sit on the floor." Ben wiped his eyes. "You've heard it."
"Yes."
"On the video."
"Yes."
"It's the worst laugh in the world." He was crying again, softly. "It sounds like a, like a goose. It's so loud. Everyone in the library used to turn round. And he didn't care. He'd just keep going. I used to say, Sam, you sound like you're being strangled. And he'd say, that's the point."
A small wind lifted the scraps of paper at the curb. It was getting light. The black arch was turning gray, and then a very faint gold, and the far wall of the tunnel was beginning to show its first letters, one at a time, like a picture coming up in a tray.
"He hated tomatoes," said Ben. "He said they were wet. He was bad at maths. He couldn't do fractions. He used to count on his fingers under the desk. But he could remember every word to every song he ever heard. Every one. Once. He'd hear it once on the radio and sing it back, perfectly. Even the stuff in Spanish. He didn't know what it meant."
"He liked to draw."
"He didn't like to draw." Ben's voice sharpened. "He had to. It wasn't a hobby. It was like, like breathing. He'd be sitting in class, and he'd be doing it. On his leg. On the desk. On his hand. He had a marker on him all the time. He'd get sent to the office, and the teacher'd say, Sam, you can't draw on the furniture, and he'd say, I'm not drawing. I'm practising."
"Practising what?"
"Letters." He lifted his chin. "He wanted to be a sign painter. A real one. Like the old guys who do the shop windows, in gold leaf. He said nobody does that anymore. He said everything's vinyl now, and printed, and ugly. He said there's a whole language of it that's just dying. He said, Ben, if I don't do it, who will?"
"He was sixteen."
"Yes."
"And he knew what he wanted."
"He knew exactly," said Ben. "That's what's so. That's the thing I can't. Most people don't know. I don't. I have no idea. I'm going to be, I don't know. A plumber. My dad's a plumber." He laughed shakily. "But Sam. He had a plan. He had a notebook. With, with a list. Learn gilding. Get to Atlanta. Apprentice with Mr. Park. Mr. Park's got a shop on Edgewood. He wrote to him. Three times. And Mr. Park wrote back, once, and said, come see me when you're eighteen."
He stopped.
"Eighteen," said Tom.
"Yeah."
"He'd have been eighteen in two years."
"Twenty-two months." Ben nodded. "He counted."
Tom bent his head.
He sat on the curb with his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging, and looked at the frost on the cracked road. It was a thin white skin over black asphalt, and where his boot had scraped it, the dark showed through. He could not feel his fingers. He could not feel his face. He felt, quite distinctly, as if someone had taken hold of his chest with both hands and was very slowly pulling it open.
"Why was he running?" he said.
Ben did not answer at once.
"I know about the hearing. I read it. The diversion thing. I know he missed it."
"Yes."
"Was that why?"
"I think so." Ben blew out a long breath. "He was so scared. Of his mom finding out. She's, he used to say, she works so hard. She does these double shifts at the dentist. And her car broke, and her brother had to lend her money. And Sam had this thing in his head that every time he got in trouble, it cost her. Like a, like a bill. He'd say, I'm a tax on her."
"A tax."
"He was sixteen. He thought in weird ways." Ben wiped his nose. "And then in August, he got caught. And he thought, if I go to the hearing, they'll call her. She'll have to take a day. She'll lose the pay. So he just. Didn't. And every day it got worse. He couldn't sleep. He started jumping when a car went by. He said, I'll fix it. I'll finish the wall, and then I'll fix it. I'll go in and say I'm sorry. He said it was going to be, like, the last thing. The big one. And then he'd be done."
"The wall."
"This." Ben waved a hand at the arch. "Two months. He did it at night. In pieces. He wasn't, he wasn't tagging. He just wanted to say something. He wanted, he said, he said he wanted it to be real." He stopped. "He was making it for her."
"For his mother."
"Yeah. Sort of. He had this other thing too. In his closet. A sign. For her birthday. Mary's Kitchen. He was going to, it's the November. She turns forty-five. He'd been saving. He bought the board with his Saturday money." Ben's voice was no more than a thread. "But the wall was for. I think it was for everyone. For anyone who ever felt like, like they were just. Invisible."
Nobody's looking.
Tom lifted his head.
The light had come up.
It poured now into the mouth of the tunnel, thin and pale and level, and lit the left-hand wall from end to end. The letters stood out in it, enormous, glistening with frost, black and gray and white. They leaned a little, as if into a wind. They ran in a long, bold, unbroken line from the entrance into the dark, each one outlined, each one shaded, each one bearing, at its foot, a tiny neat cross.
NOBODY'S LOOKING.
And underneath it, half the size, the beginning of a second line.
I'M H.
It stopped there.
He stared at it. He had looked at it, in a way, on the screen. He had seen the picture. But a picture was a thing you could close. This was twenty feet long. This was a thing that a hand had made, on a wall, in the dark, at night, with great care, over two months. There was a pale place where the spray had gone over twice. There was a drip, quite small, at the bottom of a K. There was a short gap in the line of the shading where a train had passed overhead and the boy had stopped, and waited, and started again.
He had been so careful.
Tom put his hand against his mouth.
"It's not finished," said Ben. His voice came from far away. "I keep thinking I should. I've got the paint. His uncle gave me a can. I could do it in ten minutes. E, R, E. And I go to do it, and I stand here. And I think, it's not mine. It's like, it's like signing someone else's name."
"Yes."
"So I come here in the mornings. Before school. And I look at it. And I think, what does he want?" He gave a small cracked laugh. "That's stupid, right? He's dead. He doesn't want anything."
"No."
"What?"
"It's not stupid," said Tom.
Ben left at ten past seven.
He stood up from the curb, and shouldered his bag, and wiped his face one last time on his sleeve. He did not say goodbye. He walked three yards up the road and stopped, with his back to Tom, and stood a moment with his head bent.
"I'm still going to hate you," he said.
"I know."
"I don't know if I'll ever stop."
"You don't have to."
"I just wanted you to know." He turned his head, slowly. His face was swollen and blotched, and the eyes in it were old. "You can stay if you want. I won't tell anyone. I won't say you were here."
"Thank you."
"I'm not doing it for you."
"I know."
He went away up the hill, with his bag bouncing, a small dark figure against the pale sky, and Tom watched until he reached the corner and turned out of sight.
Then he got up.
His knees hurt. His jaw throbbed in time with his heart. He walked slowly into the tunnel, under the arch, into the cold and the dark and the smell of iron, and stopped at the first letter. He did not touch it. He stood with his hands at his sides, and looked at the N.
It was taller than he was. It had been done in one long stroke, from bottom to top, with a heavy sure hand, and the sides of it were perfectly clean. There was no hesitation. There was not a single wobble. It was the work of a boy who had known precisely what he was doing, and had been doing it with love.
What would you have been?
The question came up in him very simply, and without any fear.
What would you have made?
He walked along the wall.
He walked slowly, like a man in a gallery. He read each letter, as the mother had read it, one at a time. He saw how the O was a perfect circle with a spur at the bottom, and the B had a belly like a sail. He saw the places where the shading went from black to gray to the thin white edge, and how the white edge glowed in the dim light as if the letter were lit from within. He saw the small crosses. Seventeen of them. A signature. A thing a child puts on a drawing.
He came to the end.
The bare wall began there, pale and rough, with the stain below. He stopped. He looked down at it, the black patch on the ground, the shape of a spilled can, the dry curl of paint. And beside it, on the wall, at the height of a tall boy's hand, there was the single stroke of the letter.
H.
It was only half done. The upright was there, clean and black. The crossbar began and stopped. It ended in a short, light, trailing tail, a flick of the wrist, where the hand had gone away.
Where did he go?
He was here, with the can, in his hand. He was standing right here. He saw the lights. He saw us. And he ran.
Because he thought he was in trouble.
Because his mother would find out.
Tom put out his hand. He laid it flat on the wall beside the H. The brick was cold and rough and damp. It was only a wall. He felt nothing at all. He felt only the long, slow, terrible weight of being very, very tired.
"I'm sorry," he said.
It was no more than a whisper.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't. I didn't know."
Tink.
He did not turn his head.
Tink-tink.
The sound was at his shoulder. It was very near. It was the small metal tap of a key on a zipper, light and quick, a sound he had heard in the dark so many times that he knew it as he knew his own name. It stopped. The air beside him changed. It grew cooler. It smelled of paint, and warm cloth, and the sweet red edge of pepper.
"Okay," said Tom.
He took his hand from the wall.
"Okay. I'm here."
He turned.
The boy was standing beside him.
He was a foot away. He was not translucent, or pale, or shining. He was solid, and ordinary, and a little untidy, with the sleeves of his sweatshirt shoved to the elbows and a smudge of gray across his jaw. He had a black marker tucked behind one ear. He was looking, not at Tom, but at the wall, with his head on one side, and his lips a little pursed, as a man looks at a job he is not quite satisfied with.
He was sixteen.
He was exactly sixteen. Tom saw it with a kind of slow astonishment. He had seen him at eighteen, on a bus; at nineteen, in a mirror. He had seen him as a stranger, a shape, a figure on a stair. But this was the boy. This was Sam. This was the child of the video, and the alley, and the photograph in the news: a long thin boy with big hands and a crooked front tooth and a tiny scar through the left eyebrow. He was biting his lip. He was swaying very slightly from one foot to the other.
He looked, thought Tom, like someone waiting for a verdict.
"Sam," said Tom.
The boy did not look round.
"Sam."
Nothing.
"I know you can hear me." He spoke gently. "I think you've been trying to tell me something for a long time. I don't know what it is. I'm not very good at, I'm not very good at listening. I never was. Anna says. But I'm listening now. I swear. Whatever you want to say. I'll stand here as long as it takes."
The boy's shoulders moved.
It was a small movement. A breath. He turned his head, very slowly, and for the first time since the alley, since the fence, since the light, Tom looked into his eyes.
They were brown. They were dark brown, and clear, and wide, with long lashes. There was no anger in them. There was no horror. There was something Tom had not expected, and could not at first name, and when he did, it nearly brought him to his knees.
It was tiredness. The deep gray tiredness of a child who has been up all night, and wants to go to bed.
The boy opened his mouth.
His voice was low, and rough, and a little hoarse, with a crack in it, a boy's voice still breaking. It was the voice from the video. It was the voice from the thread of sound. It had no echo in it. It came into the cold air of the tunnel as simply as a hand laid on a table.
"I was going home," said Sam.
Tom did not move.
He stood there, with his heart thudding, with his mouth open and his hands at his sides. The words hung in the gray light. He heard them. He heard every one. He felt them go into him, slowly, one by one, like small cold coins dropped into a well, and fall, and fall, and not reach the bottom.
I was going home.
"You said," said Tom. His voice was a thread. "You said it was paint."
The boy looked at him.
"In the alley. You said, it's just paint. That's what you said. It was three words. I couldn't. I didn't hear." His voice broke. "I didn't hear you."
The boy did not answer.
He did not nod. He did not shake his head. He stood in the pale gold light with the marker behind his ear, and looked at the man in front of him with his enormous steady eyes. And Tom understood that he had said all he was going to say. That it was enough. That it had been, in the end, the only thing there was.
I was going home.
He had a key.
He had a bed. A mother. A sign half-painted in a closet. He had twenty-two months.
He was thirty yards from his own front door.
It came over him all at once. It was like a flood. It rose up through him from the soles of his feet, a vast and slow and black tide, and he felt it fill his chest, and his throat, and his eyes, and he did not try to stop it. He stood in the tunnel in the early morning and he knew.
He knew.
He did not know it as a theory, or a possibility, or a fear. He knew it as a man knows he is standing on a floor. He knew what the hand had been doing. He knew what the mouth had said. He knew that there had been a boy at the end of an alley, with his hands up, holding out a can of paint, trying to give it away. And he knew that he, Tom Walker, in the dark, with a gun, had been told. Had been told by every thing in the world. By a woman at a bus stop. By a dispatcher. By his own partner. By the boy himself.
And that he had not listened.
I killed him.
The sentence stood up in his head, quite plain. It had no color. It did not sound like a confession. It sounded like a fact, like the sun rose, like it is raining.
I killed him. He was sixteen. He had done nothing. He was trying to go home, and I killed him.
"I killed him," said Tom.
He said it aloud.
It was a small, flat, cracked voice. It did not seem to belong to him. It went out into the tunnel and struck the brick, and the brick gave it back, strangely changed, a little late, like something spoken in a dream.
Him, said the tunnel.
Him.
Him.
He stood quite still. The boy was gone. There was only the light on the wall, thin and gold, lying along the great black letters. And on the ground at his feet, where nothing had been before, a single small round shape. He bent. He picked it up.
It was a marker. A black one, nearly dry, with a chewed cap.
He held it in his hand for a long time. Then he put it, very carefully, in the inside pocket of his coat, over his heart, and walked out of the tunnel, into the morning, and began to climb the hill.