I’m sitting on my bed reading Extreme Gynecology when my father barges into the room. His face is red and sweaty. He sits on the edge of my bed, breathing heavily and twisting his hands in his lap. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says, standing up from the bed and walking across the room, headed for the door. He stops and turns around, comes back to the bed, sits down again. “Look,” he says, “you gotta help me.”
“What’s wrong?” I repeat.
“It would be better if I show you.” Some of the nervousness seems to have left him. His eyes go blank and he stands up, walking slowly over to the window. He points out. I sigh heavily, close my book and toss it to the other side of the bed, stand up, and approach the window. My room is on the second floor and has a pretty good view of the neighborhood.
“What? I don’t see anything.”
“Look over there.”
I look across the street, a couple of houses down, into the Robinsons’ yard. A boy lies face down at the edge of the sidewalk.
“I threw a rock at his head.”
“Jesus, Dad!” I’ve never known my father to be violent and this action surprises me. “That’s Benny Robinson. I go to school with him.”
“I’m afraid I clipped him a good one. He might be dead.”
“Jeez!” I clasp a hand to my forehead, massaging my temples.
“I couldn’t help it.” My father throws his arms to either side, begging me to argue with him. “I was picking the rocks out of the garden and he came along and just started … plodding through the grass.”
“So you threw a rock at his head?”
“Well, no, Mr. Smartass, I didn’t just ‘throw a rock at his head.’ I asked him to stop it but he just kept trampling and trampling.”
“Then you threw the rock at his head.”
“It was right there in my hand. It happened before I even knew what I was doing but … well, like I said, it clipped him pretty good. He made it all the way down there before he collapsed.”
“How am I supposed to help you? This is definitely not my problem.”
“I just need you to help me move the body. He’s kind of fat.”
“All the kids at school used to call him fat.” I sit back down on the edge of the bed. “I guess they won’t be calling him fat anymore.”
“Come on. We have to do it before your mother gets home. If she finds out …”
“She’ll what? Call the police?”
“Probably. You don’t want me to go to jail, do you?”
“Maybe you should. Throwing rocks at kids is … ghoulish.”
“Look,” he says, fishing his heavy wallet out of his back pocket. “I’ll make it worth your while.” He riffles the bills inside the wallet.
“What are we gonna do with him?”
“So you’ll help me?”
“Yeah. Do I really have a choice?”
“We might have to bury him.”
“Jesus.”
“We need to hustle up. Before anyone sees him.”
Together, we go downstairs. “You go on over there,” Dad says. “I’ll go out back and get the wheelbarrow.”
Reluctantly, I cross the street. Closing in on Benny Robinson I wonder if he’s dead or not. He looks dead. But that doesn’t always mean anything. Standing next to the probable corpse, I hear a door open and see Benny’s mother stick her head out. She screams in horror, passes out, and lands half in and half out of the door. Sirens scream in the distance. Looking over my shoulder, I do not see my father. I debate running and then think maybe it would be better if I just stand there. I think of the reward for taking the rap for Dad.
There’s no sign of him, even as the police fold me into their car and take me away.
