When Ghosts Come Home(30)

Jay had shrunk down in the sofa cushions, shrugged his shoulders. “I ain’t going to be here next year,” he’d said. “So it don’t matter anyway.”

“Well, Michael Jordan got cut his freshman year too,” Rodney had added. “And look at him now.”

But Jay had known he was no Michael Jordan. He was a gangly teenager with no friends who’d already lost interest in basketball, who spent most of his time watching television and riding a dorky bike and the rest of his time handling his brother-in-law’s rifle in secret, trying to gather the nerve to load it and take it into the woods behind the house.

By the time Jay and Cody had begun hanging out again, the air had grown cool, and Jay was finally wearing blue jeans like the rest of the kids, and so was Cody, although he regularly wore his black mesh tank top as if it were a required uniform, his skinny arms browned by the sun, his bone-white belly and chest seeming to glow through the screenlike fabric.

Although the high school, college, and NBA seasons had begun, basketball was over in Jay’s mind, and it must’ve been over in Cody’s too, because they never played and never talked about playing. Instead, they explored the woods surrounding the Grove and the piece of land where Cody’s family’s trailer sat. If they walked far enough, the trees—pines mostly, racked with vines and scrubby shrubs—gave way to an enormous swath of cleared acreage where expensive homes were being built. They could reach the water here where the ocean opened to the waterway that separated Southport from Oak Island. Cody talked about fishing, but he never brought a rod, and he talked about setting up tin cans for target practice, but he never brought a gun either.

They spent more of their time either throwing things into the water, looking for things the water may have washed ashore, or slinking around the construction sites, doing their best to steer clear of the carpenters and various contractors pouring concrete, installing windows, or hooking up HVAC systems on the cement pads that sat alongside the houses, many of which appeared close to being finished.

Cody always kept his eyes out for tools—hammers, screwdrivers, staple guns: the more expensive, the better. And he always came away with a bit of copper wire or a handful of unused nails or a strip of rolled carpet: things that had clearly been left behind but held value to him.

One late afternoon, on their way home from the water, Cody had spotted a heavy framing hammer that had been left behind on the front porch of a home that had been framed up but not yet walled in. Cody had picked up the hammer and bounced it in his hand as if testing its weight and ability to do the job.

“Man, you’d better leave that where you found it,” Jay had said.

“If they’ll miss it, they shouldn’t have left it.”

“That’s no reason to steal it,” Jay had said, realizing that he sounded more like his father than himself.

“They’re tearing down my woods,” Cody had said. “Used to be we could come down here and fish without nobody running us off.”

“Nobody’s running us off now.”

“Not yet,” Cody had said, “but I’m keeping this for when they do.” He’d turned, the hammer still in his hand, and walked toward the woods that would lead them home.

Cody had no idea what Jay had done back in Atlanta that had caused him to be sent to live with his sister and brother-in-law. He wasn’t necessarily embarrassed by what he and Kelvin had done, though his guilt over the fact that he’d done it directly to Mr. Wright and indirectly to his mother and father had done nothing but grow over the intervening months. The reason he hadn’t told Cody wasn’t the implied stamp of criminality that something like that would garner, but instead the expectations that an act like that brought with it. Jay didn’t know Cody well enough to know whether or not he was a bad kid—a thief, a bully, a liar—and he hadn’t seen him at school enough to discern anything from his actions there. But Jay did not want Cody to know that he, in fact, was capable of being a thief, because perhaps that would trigger something dark and malevolent in Cody that Jay had not yet seen surface, and then Jay would be expected to rise and meet it.

But nearly the opposite happened: the more Cody stole from the new development—the more tools and bits of wire and other materials he was able to secret away—the more Jay felt something angry and resentful and dangerous rearing itself inside him. His sister and Rodney had not sensed it, and he’d known they did not know him or understand him well enough to perceive anything real or true about him, and he knew for certain that the same could have been said of his teachers and the kids at school. Cody had become Jay’s sole fulcrum of expression, the one person who’d kindled in him the desire to impress.

The first time Jay had taken Rodney’s rifle out of his and Janelle’s bedroom, he’d walked out the front door and stepped off the porch, the powder-blue plastic case bouncing against his thigh where he held it down by his side. Cody had been waiting for him in the driveway. The day had been warm, the sun having already settled below the trees. Fall had come, and the afternoon had taken on a soft, gauzy light.

“Woah,” Cody had said, his eyes locked on the case. “Is that what I think it is?”

Jay had tried not to smile or flush with pride. He’d looked around, making sure no one had seen them. Janelle had gone to the grocery store and taken the baby with her, and Jay knew they had at least an hour before she would return. Rodney wouldn’t be home until closer to dark.