The Narrows(57)

The back of Brandy’s throat tightened.

Dwight looked at her. His eyes were moist. “A cop came to our house the other night and asked me questions.”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t know what to tell him.”

She could tell he was frightened. “They just want to find Matthew. You’re not in any trouble.”

“I know that. I just didn’t know anything that could help them find him.”

“It’s okay,” she told him.

“And I don’t want to get Matthew in trouble.”

“In trouble for what?” She leaned closer to him.

Dwight stuffed the mask back into the bag then set the bag down on the curb. Between his feet, the turtle trudged lethargically across the pavement. There were incongruous yellow racing strips along the sides of its neck.

“In trouble for what, Dwight?” she repeated.

“I know he’s not supposed to go out to Route 40 and down to the Narrows,” Dwight began before tapering off.

“Do you know something you didn’t tell the police? It’s okay if you do. You can tell me. Matthew won’t get in trouble. And I won’t tell anyone you told me.”

Dwight sawed an index finger back and forth beneath his nose. “Well, I was thinking…I mean, I don’t know for sure, but maybe he…maybe he went out to that old factory. You know the place I’m talking about?”

For a second, no, she didn’t know what Dwight was talking about. But then an image surfaced in her mind—the squat, stone building on the other side of the Narrows, abandoned and condemned since the fifties, or so she understood. She knew that many residents of Stillwater had once made their living working at the plastics factory before it closed down all those decades ago. According to her father, the closing of that plant had been the precursor to the death of Stillwater. After the plastics factory closed down, many people left town to find new jobs, leaving houses vacant and dark. Soon after, the shops along the main thoroughfares dried up. Ironically, having once been the lifeblood of the rural Maryland hamlet, the plastics factory had also facilitated its ultimate demise.

But why would Matthew go out to the old plastics factory? She asked Dwight as much.

“Promise you won’t tell and get him in trouble,” Dwight said flatly.

“I promise.”

“No,” Dwight said. “You have to swear.”

“I swear.”

“Now spit on the ground.”

“What?”

“You have to do it or else it doesn’t count.” The boy was dead serious.

“Okay, okay.” She spit on the pavement. “See? I swear.”

Dwight stared at the speckle of spit and nodded. This seemed to suffice. “The last time I saw him—the last day we hung out—we went down to the Narrows across from that old factory,” he said. “I wanted to see the dead deer Billy Leary said was down there—and it was, Brandy, we saw it—and I swear I made Matthew go. He didn’t want to go.”

Vaguely, Brandy recalled her mother chastising Matthew about going down there Friday evening while at the dinner table. If she recalled correctly, someone had seen Matthew and Dwight down there while driving along Route 40. She couldn’t remember all the details now, however.

“When we were there, Matthew thought he saw someone up by the factory.” He paused, contemplating his choice of words. Eventually, he said, “He thought he saw your dad, Brandy. He thought…he said he saw him hiding in the trees up by the old factory.”

Brandy simply stared at Dwight, not quite sure what to make of this new information. In fact, she wasn’t immediately sure she had heard him correctly.

“You said…my dad?”

Dwight nodded. “We went up to the factory and looked around but there wasn’t nobody there. We looked in the windows, too, but they were really old and dirty and you couldn’t see anything inside.” Again, his face twisted in contemplation. Quite possibly the memory troubled him, seeing how it was the last time he had been with his best friend. “At least, I couldn’t see anything. But I hoisted Matthew up and I think Matthew saw something. He didn’t say it, not exactly, but I think he did. He wanted to go inside.”

“Inside the factory?”

“Yeah. Like, he wanted to go inside really bad.”

“Did he go inside?”

“No. But he would have.” Dwight hitched his meaty shoulders. “I guess I got scared. It’s a creepy place and, anyway, it was getting late. And it just…well…I mean, I don’t know how to say it…”

“Just say it,” she told him.

“Well,” he said, “it’s just that Matthew…see, he’s never really up for doing anything where we might get in trouble or where things might get…I don’t know…dangerous or scary or anything.” He grunted the approximation of a laugh, which summoned a timid smile to Brandy’s face. “He’s a bit of a sissy, is what I mean.”

Brandy nodded, still smiling. “Yeah. He really is.”

“So I thought it was strange that he wanted to go inside so badly. It wasn’t like him. It scared me a little.”

“So what happened?”

“He said he would go in without me if I didn’t come along. But somehow, I managed to talk him into going home, so we left.”