Anything Is Possible(5)

Tommy felt his scalp break out into goosebumps. It continued, he felt the bumps crawling across his head. The sun seemed very bright, and yet it seemed it shone in a cone around only him. In a moment he said, “Son”—the word came out involuntarily—“you mustn’t think that.”

“Look,” Pete said, and his face had some color to it now. “He knew the milking machines could cause trouble—he’d talked about it. He’d said it wasn’t a very sophisticated system and they could get overheated in a hurry.”

Tommy said, “He was right about that.”

“He was mad at you. He was always mad at someone, but he was mad at you. I don’t know what happened, but he was working at your place, and then he stopped. I think he went back eventually, but he never liked you after whatever happened had happened.”

Tommy put his sunglasses back on. He said with deliberateness, “I found him playing with himself, Pete, pulling on himself, behind the barns, and I said that was something he couldn’t do there.”

“Oh, man.” Pete wiped at his nose. “Oh, man.” He looked up at the sky. Then he looked at Tommy quickly and said, “Well, he didn’t like you. And the night before the fire, he went out—sometimes he would just do that, go out, he wasn’t a drinker, but sometimes he’d just leave the house and go out, and that night he went out and he got back around midnight, I remember because my sister couldn’t sleep, she was too cold, and my mother—” Here Pete stopped, as though to catch his breath. “Well, my mother was up with her, and I remember she said, Lucy go to sleep, it’s midnight! And my father came home. And the next morning when I was at school— Well, we all heard about the fire. And I just knew.”

Tommy steadied himself against the car. He said nothing.

“And you knew too,” Pete finally said. “And that’s why you stop by here, to torture me.”

For many moments, the two men stood there. The breeze had picked up and Tommy felt it ripple the sleeves of his shirt. Then Pete turned to go back inside the house; the door opened with a squeak. “Pete,” Tommy called. “Pete, listen to me. I don’t come here to torture you. And I still don’t know—even with what you just told me—that it’s true.”

Pete turned back; after a moment he closed the door behind him and walked back to Tommy. His eyes were moist, either from the wind that was whipping up or from tears, Tommy didn’t know. Pete spoke almost tiredly. “I’m just telling you, Tommy. He wasn’t supposed to go and do those things in the war that he had to do. People aren’t supposed to murder people. And he did, and he did awful things, and awful things happened to him, and he couldn’t live inside himself, Tommy. That’s what I’m trying to say. Other men could do it, but he couldn’t, it ruined him, and—”

“What about your mother?” Tommy asked suddenly.

Pete’s face changed; a blankness of expression came to it. “What about her?” he asked.

“How did she take all this?”

Pete seemed defeated by this question. He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what my mother was like.”

“I never really knew her myself,” Tommy said. “Just saw her out and about once in a while.” But it came to him now: He had never seen the woman smile.

Pete was gazing at the ground. He shrugged and said, “I don’t know about my mother.”

Tommy’s mind, which had been spinning, rearranged itself; he felt himself again. “Now listen, Pete. I’m glad you told me about your father being in the war. I heard what you said. You said he was a decent man, and I believe you.”

“But he was!” Pete almost wailed this, looking at Tommy with his pale eyes. “Whenever he did something, he felt terrible about it later, and after your fire he was so—so agitated, Tommy, for weeks and weeks he was worse than ever.”

“It’s okay, Pete.”

“But it’s not.”

“But it is.” Tommy said this firmly. He walked over to the man and put his hand on Pete’s arm for a moment. Then he added, “And I don’t think he did it, anyway. I think I forgot to turn the machines off that night, and your father was mad at me, and he probably felt bad about what happened. He never told you he did it, am I right? When he was dying, and told you about killing those men in the war, he never confessed to burning my barns down. Did he?”

Pete shook his head.

“Then I suggest you let it go, Pete. You’ve had enough to contend with.”

Pete ran a hand over his hair, a piece of it stood up briefly. With some confusion he said, “Contend with?”

“I saw how you were treated by the town, Pete. And your sisters, too. I saw that when I was a janitor.” Tommy felt slightly winded.

Pete gave a small shrug. He still seemed vaguely confused. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, then.”

They stood a few more moments in the breeze and then Tommy said he was going to get going. “Hold on,” said Pete. “Let me drive down the road with you. It’s time I got rid of that sign of my mother’s. I’ve been meaning to do that, and I’ll do it now. Hold on,” he said again. Tommy waited by the car while Pete went inside the house, and very soon Pete came back out, holding a sledgehammer. Tommy got in the driver’s seat, and Pete got in on the passenger’s side, and together they drove down the road; the rank odor Tommy had smelled before was stronger now with the man next to him. As he drove, Tommy suddenly remembered how one time he had put a quarter near the desk where Lucy would sit when she was in junior high school. She always went to Mr. Haley’s room; the man taught Social Studies for a year, then went into the service, but he must have been kind to Lucy because that was the room, even when it later became the science room, that Lucy preferred to be in. And so one day Tommy left a quarter near the desk he knew she sat at. The school had just gotten a vending machine and there were ice cream sandwiches you could buy for a quarter, so he left the quarter there where Lucy could see it. That night, after she had gone home, Tommy went into the room and the quarter was still there, exactly where he had left it.