Mystic River / Таинственная река

1

When Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus were kids, their fathers worked together at a candy plant and brought the smell of warm chocolate back home with them. It stayed on their clothes, their car seats, the beds they slept in. By the age of eleven, Sean and Jimmy had already developed a hatred of sweets. For the rest of their lives they drank only black coffee and never ate dessert.

On Saturdays, Jimmy's father often visited the Devines to have a beer with Sean's father. He brought Jimmy with him so that he and Sean could play in the backyard. Sometimes there was also Dave Boyle, a kid with thin arms and weak eyes, who was always telling jokes he'd learned from his uncles.

Sean's father, a foreman, had the better job. He was tall and fair, with an easy smile that calmed his mother's anger. Jimmy's father loaded the trucks. He was small, his hair was dark, and he moved too quickly. Dave Boyle didn't have a father, just a lot of uncles, and the only reason he was usually there on those Saturdays was because he was clinging to Jimmy like lint. When he saw Jimmy leaving his house with his father, he showed up beside their car, asking “What's up, Jimmy?” with a sad hopefulness.

They all lived in East Buckingham, west of downtown, in a neighborhood of small corner stores and small playgrounds. The bars had Irish names. Women wore scarves around their heads and carried cigarettes in their purses. Until a couple of years ago, older boys had been taken from the streets and sent to war. They came back a year or so later, or they didn't come back at all. Days, the mothers looked for coupons in the newspapers. Nights, the fathers went to the bars. You knew everyone; nobody except those older boys ever left the place.

Jimmy and Dave came from the Flats, by the Penitentiary Channel, south of Buckingham Avenue. It was not so far from Sean's street, but the Devines lived in the Point, north of the Avenue, and the Point and the Flats didn't mix much.

People in the Point owned their places. People in the Flats rented. Point families went to church and stayed together. The Flats people were living like animals sometimes, ten in one apartment, trash in their streets, sending their kids to public schools, divorcing.

So while Sean went to his school in black pants, a black tie, and a blue shirt, Jimmy and Dave went to their school wearing street clothes, which was cool, but they usually wore the same ones three out of five days, which wasn't cool at all. They had greasy hair, greasy skin, greasy clothes.

So they probably would've never been friends if it wasn't for their fathers[1]. During the week, they never hung out, but they had those Saturdays, and there was something to those days, whether they hung out in the backyard, or wandered through the dumps, or rode the subway downtown, that felt exciting to Sean. Anything could happen, especially when you were with Jimmy.

Once they were at South Station, kicking an orange ball on the platform, and Jimmy missed, and the ball fell down onto the tracks. Quickly, Jimmy jumped off the platform, down there where the rats and the third rail were.

People on the platform went crazy, screaming at Jimmy. They waved their arms, looking for the subway police. Sean heard a rumble that could have been a train in the tunnel or just trucks in the street above, and the people on the platform heard it, too.

But Jimmy ignored the people. He was looking for the ball in the darkness under the platform, and he found it. As he was walking back, along the center of the tracks toward the stairs at the far end of the platform where the tunnel opened, a heavier rumble shook the station, and people almost jumped. Jimmy was taking his time now[2], walking slowly, then he looked back over his shoulder at Sean and Dave, and grinned.

“He's smiling. He's just nuts. You know?” Dave whispered.

When Jimmy reached the first step of the stairs, several hands grabbed him and pulled him up. People got Jimmy onto the platform and held him, looking around for someone to tell them what to do next. The train went through the tunnel, and someone screamed, but then someone laughed because the train went on the other side of the station, moving north, and Jimmy looked up into the faces of the people holding him as if to say, See?

That night Sean's father sat him down in the basement tool room. Sean's father, who often worked as a handyman around the neighborhood, came down there to build his birdhouses that were piled in a corner and the window boxes for his wife's flowers. He came down there when he wanted peace and quiet, and sometimes when he was angry, angry at Sean or Sean's mother or his job.

Sean sat quietly on an old red chair until his father said, “Sean, I know you like Jimmy Marcus, but if you two want to play together, from now on[3], you'll have to do it in view of the house. Yours, not his.”

Sean nodded. Arguing with his father was useless when he spoke as quietly and slowly as he was doing it now.

“We understand each other?” His father looked down at Sean.

Sean nodded. “For how long?”

“Oh, for a long time, I'd say. And don't be thinking about going to your mother about it. She never wants you to see Jimmy again after that stunt today.”

“He's not that bad. He's…”

“Didn't say he was bad. He's just wild, and your mother had enough of the wild.”

Sean saw something in his father's face when he said “wild,” and he knew it was the other Billy Devine he was seeing for a moment – the one that had disappeared sometime before Sean was born, and then came back, a careful man with thick fingers who built too many birdhouses.

“Remember what we talked about,” his father said and patted Sean's shoulder.

Sean left the tool room and walked through the cool basement wondering if he enjoyed Jimmy's company for the same reason his father enj oyed hanging out with Mr. Marcus, drinking on Saturdays, laughing too hard and too suddenly, and if that was what his mother was afraid of.

A few Saturdays later, Jimmy Marcus and Dave Boyle came to the Devines' house without Jimmy's father. They knocked on the back door when Sean was finishing his breakfast, and Sean heard his mother open the door and say, “Morning, Jimmy. Morning, Dave,” in that polite voice she used with people she didn't really want to see.

Jimmy was quiet that day. All that crazy energy was gone, and he seemed smaller and darker. Sean had seen this happen before. Jimmy had always been a little moody. Still, Sean wondered if Jimmy had any control over these moods. When Jimmy was like this, Dave Boyle seemed to think now it was his job to make sure[4] everyone was happy.

As Sean and Dave stood outside, trying to decide what to do, Jimmy walked over to the edge of the sidewalk and sat on the curb. “My dad doesn't work with yours anymore,” he said.

“How come?”[5] Sean sat down by Jimmy. He wanted to do what Jimmy did, even if he didn't know why.

“He was smarter than them. He scared them because he knew so much stuff.” Jimmy shrugged.

“Smart stuff!” Dave Boyle said. “Right, Jimmy?”

“What kind of stuff?” Sean wondered how much anyone could know about candy.

“How to run the place better.” Jimmy didn't sound sure and then shrugged again. “Stuff, anyway. Important stuff.”

“How to run the place. Right, Jimmy?” Dave repeated.

Dave was like a parrot some days. Right, Jimmy? Right, Jimmy?

“Know what would be cool?”[6] Jimmy's idea of cool usually differed from anyone else's.

“What?”

“Driving a car, you know,” Jimmy continued, “just around the block.”

“Just around the block,” Dave said.

“Yeah,” Sean said slowly. He could already feel the big wheel in his hand. “It would be cool.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Jimmy grinned and punched Sean's shoulder. He looked around. “You know anyone on this street who leaves their keys in their car?”

Sean did. But as he thought about the cars that held keys, Sean could feel the weight of the street, its homes, the whole Point and its expectations for him. He was not a kid who stole cars. He was a kid who would go to college someday, make something of himself that was bigger and better than a foreman or a truck loader. That was the plan.

He almost said this to Jimmy, but Jimmy was already walking down the street, looking in car windows, and Dave was running behind him.

“How about this one?” Jimmy asked loudly, stopping and putting his hand on one car.

“Hey, Jimmy,” Sean walked toward him. “Maybe some other time?”

“What do you mean? We'll do it. It'll be fun. So cool. Remember?”

“So cool,” Dave said. “Yeah!”

For a moment, Sean had even forgotten Dave was there. That happened a lot with Dave. Sean didn't know why.

“No. Come on.” Sean shook his head.

Jimmy's smile died. He looked at Sean angrily. “Why won't you just do something for fun. Huh?”

Dave looked at Jimmy, then turned and suddenly hit Sean in the shoulder. “Yeah, how come you don't want to do fun things?”

Sean had no idea how this had happened. Later he couldn't even remember what had made Jimmy mad or why Dave had hit him. Sean just couldn't believe Dave had hit him. Dave? He pushed Dave in the chest, and Dave sat down.

At that moment Jimmy pushed Sean. “What the hell[7] are you doing?”

Now they were in the middle of the street and Jimmy was pushing him, his eyes black and small, and Dave was starting to join in.

Jimmy was about to[8] push him again when he stopped and looked past Sean at something coming up the street.

It was a long dark brown car, like the kind police detectives drove. It stopped by their legs, and the two cops looked through the windshield at them. The driver got out. He looked like a cop – blond short hair, red face, white shirt, black-and-gold tie, his big belly hanging over his belt. The other one looked sick. He was skinny and tired-looking and stayed in his seat, staring into the side-view mirror as the three boys came near the driver's door.

The big man beckoned them with his finger until they stood in front of him. “Let me ask you something, okay?” He bent down. “You guys think it's okay to fight in the middle of the street?”

Sean noticed a gold badge on the big man's belt.

“No, sir.”

“You're punks, huh? That's what you are?” He pointed at the man in the passenger seat. “Me and my partner, we've had enough of you punks scaring people off the street. You know?”

Sean and Jimmy didn't say anything.

“We're sorry,” Dave Boyle said, and looked like he was about to cry.

“You kids from this street?” the big cop asked. His eyes scanned the homes on the left side of the street.

“Yes,” Jimmy said, and looked back at Sean's house.

“Yes, sir,” Sean said.

Dave didn't say anything.

The cop looked down at him. “Huh? You say something, kid?”

“What?” Dave looked at Jimmy.

“Don't look at him. Look at me. You live here, kid?”

“No.”

“No?” The cop bent over Dave. “Where you live, son?”

“In the Flats.”

“Your mother's home?”

“Yes, sir.” A tear fell down Dave's cheek and Sean and Jimmy looked away.

“Well, we're going to have a talk with her, tell her what her punk kid has been doing.”

“I don't… I don't…” Dave whispered.

“Get in.” The cop opened the back door of the car, and Sean thought the car interior smelled of apples. An autumn smell.

Dave looked at Jimmy.

“Get in,” the cop said. “Or you want me to put the cuffs on you?”

Dave climbed into the backseat, crying.

The cop pointed a finger at Jimmy and Sean. “And don't let me catch you on my streets again.”

Jimmy and Sean stepped back as the cop got in his car and drove off. They watched the car turn right at the corner, Dave looking back at them. And then the street was empty again.

Jimmy and Sean stood where the car had been, looking at their feet, up and down the street, anywhere, but not at each other.

Then Jimmy said, “You started it.”

“I didn't start it. He started it.”

“You did. Now he's screwed.[9] You know his mom is nuts!”

Jimmy pushed him, and Sean pushed back. This time they were on the ground, rolling around, punching each other.

“Hey!”

Sean got off Jimmy and they both stood up, expecting to see the two cops again but it was Mr. Devine instead, coming toward them.

“What the hell you two are doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Get out of the middle of the street.” Sean's father frowned as he looked up and down the street. “Weren't there three of you? Where's Dave? Wasn't he with you?”

“We were fighting in the street and the cops came…”

“When was this?”

“Like[10] five minutes ago.”

“Okay. So, the cops came and..?”

“And they took Dave.”

Sean's father looked up and down the street again. “They what? They took him away?”

“Took him home. I lied and said I lived here, but Dave said he lived in the Flats, and they…”

“What are you talking about? Sean, what did the cops look like? Were they wearing uniforms?”

“No. No, they…”

“Then how did you know they were cops?”

“One had a gold badge,” Jimmy said. “On his belt.”

“Okay. But what did it say on it?”

“I don't know.”

“Billy?”

They all turned and looked at Sean's mother, standing on the porch, her face curious.

“Hey, honey, call the police station, all right? See if any detectives picked up a kid for fighting on this street.”

“What kid?”

“Dave Boyle.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Let's just see what the police say. Right?”

Sean's mother went back inside. Sean looked at his father. He didn't seem to know where to put his hands. He put them in his pockets, then he pulled them out.

“It was brown,” Jimmy said. “The car was dark brown.”

“Anything else?”

Sean tried to picture it too, but he couldn't.

“It smelled like apples,” he finally said. “The car smelled like apples.”

An hour later, in Sean's kitchen, two other cops asked Sean and Jimmy questions, and then a third guy came and drew sketches of the men in the brown car based on what Jimmy and Sean told them. The big blond cop looked meaner on the picture, his face even bigger, but otherwise it was him. The second guy, the one who'd kept his eyes on the side-view mirror, didn't look like anything at all because Sean and Jimmy couldn't remember him well.

Jimmy's father arrived and stood in the corner of the kitchen looking mad. He didn't speak to Sean's father, and no one spoke to him. He seemed smaller to Sean, less real.

After they'd repeated their story four or five times, everyone left – the cops, Jimmy and his father. Sean's mother went into her bedroom and shut the door, and Sean could hear her crying a few minutes later.

He sat outside on the porch and his father told him he hadn't done anything wrong, that he and Jimmy were smart not to have gotten in that car. His father patted his shoulder and said things would be fine. Dave will be home tonight. You'll see.

Sean looked at the rows of cars on the street. He told himself that this – all of this – was part of some plan that made sense. He just couldn't see it yet. He would see it someday, though. He saw the place where he, Jimmy, and Dave Boyle had fought and he waited. He waited for the plan to form and make sense. He waited and watched the street, and waited some more until his father stood up and they went back inside.

Jimmy walked back to the Flats behind his old man. The old man smoked his cigarettes and talked to himself. When they got home, his father might give him a beating, or might not. After he'd lost his job, he'd told Jimmy never to go to the Devines' house again, and Jimmy thought he'd have to pay for breaking that rule. But maybe not today.

Jimmy walked a few steps behind his father, just in case[11]. He threw the ball up into the air and caught it in the baseball glove he'd stolen from Sean's house while the cops had been saying their good-byes to the Devines. Nobody had even said a word to Jimmy and his father as they'd walked toward the front door. Sean's bedroom door had been open, and Jimmy had seen the glove lying on the floor with the ball inside, and he'd picked it up, and then he and his father were out.

As they were crossing Buckingham Avenue, he'd felt that familiar shame and embarrassment that came whenever he stole something. Then a little later, as they walked into the Flats, he felt proud as he looked at the glove in his hand.

He had no idea why he'd stolen the glove. Maybe it had something to do[12] with Sean hitting Dave Boyle, and not stealing the car, and some other things that had happened over the year they'd been friends. Jimmy hated Sean, and he'd been dumb to think they could've been friends, and he knew he'd keep this glove for the rest of his life, never show it to anyone and never use the goddamn thing.

Jimmy looked at the Flats before him as he and the old man walked past the Penitentiary Channel, and he knew – he knew that they'd never see Dave Boyle again. Where Jimmy lived, things got stolen all the time. That's how he felt about Dave – he was stolen. Maybe Sean was feeling that way about his baseball glove now, knowing that it was never, ever, coming back.

Too bad, because Jimmy had liked Dave, although mostly he couldn't see why. Just something about the kid, maybe the way he'd always been there, even if you didn't notice him.

2

Jimmy was wrong.

Dave Boyle returned home four days after he'd disappeared. He rode back in the front seat of a police car. When the two cops brought him home, to his mother's house, reporters from the papers and TV were already there.

There was a whole crowd there that day – parents, kids, a mailman, two shop owners, and even Miss Powell, Dave and Jimmy's fifth-grade teacher. Jimmy stood with his mother and felt jealous as the cops and Dave were laughing like old friends, and pretty Miss Powell clapped her hands. I almost got in that car, too, Jimmy wanted to tell someone. He wanted to tell Miss Powell more than anyone. She was so beautiful and clean. Jimmy wanted to tell her he'd almost gotten in that car and see if she gave him the look she was giving Dave now. Miss Powell was uncomfortable there, Jimmy could tell. After she'd said a few words to Dave and touched his face and kissed his cheek, other people moved in. Jimmy was watching the crowd surround Dave, and he wished he'd gotten in that car, so he could see all those eyes looking at him like he was something special.

It all turned into a big party, everyone running from camera to camera, hoping they'd get on TV or see themselves in the morning papers – Yeah, I know Dave, he's my best friend, grew up with him, you know, great kid, thank God he's okay. Even later, when the reporters had all gone home, and the sun was starting to set, no one was going inside. Except for Dave. Dave was gone.

Dave's party was in full swing[13], but Dave must have gone back into his house, his mother, too, and when Jimmy looked at their windows, the shades were drawn. Then suddenly, one of the shades rolled up and he saw Dave standing in the window, staring down at him. Jimmy held up his hand, but Dave didn't move, even when he tried a second time. Dave just stared. He stared at Jimmy, and even though Jimmy couldn't see his eyes, he could sense blankness in them. Blankness, and blame.

Jimmy's mother came up to him, and Dave stepped away from the window. She put her hand on Jimmy's shoulder and said, “How you doing, Jimmy? You didn't say anything to Dave.”

He shrugged. “I'll see him tomorrow in school.”

His mother lit a cigarette. “I don't think he'll be going in tomorrow.”

“Well, soon, then. Right?”

Jimmy's mother nodded and blew some smoke out of her mouth. She was looking at him now.

“What?” he asked, and smiled.

She smiled back at him. “Hey, Jim,” she said. “You got a great smile, boy. You're going to be a heartbreaker.”

“Uh, okay,” Jimmy said, and they both laughed. He loved it when she called him “Jim.” It made him feel like they were in on something[14] together.

“I'm really glad you didn't get in that car, baby.” She kissed his forehead, and then she stood up and walked over to some of the other mothers.

Jimmy looked up and saw Dave in the window staring down at him again, a soft yellow light in the room behind him now.

Damaged goods. That's what Jimmy's father had said to his mother last night: “Even if they find him alive, the kid's damaged goods. Never be the same.”

Dave raised a hand. He held it up and didn't move it for a long time, and as Jimmy waved back, he felt sad. Jimmy was just eleven years old, but he didn't feel it anymore. He felt old. Old as his parents, old as this street.

Damaged goods, Jimmy thought. He watched Dave nod at him and then pull down the shade to go back inside his quiet apartment with its brown walls and ticking clocks.

Jimmy was glad, too, that he hadn't gotten in that car.

For a few days, Dave Boyle became a celebrity, and not just in the neighborhood, but also in the state. The headline the next morning read LITTLE BOY LOST/LITTLE BOY FOUND. The photograph showed Dave, his mother, and some smiling kids from the Flats, everyone looking just happy, except for Dave's mother, who looked like she'd just missed her bus on a cold day.

The same kids who'd been with him on the front page started calling him “freak boy” within a week at school. Dave would look in their faces and see anger he didn't understand. Dave's mother said they probably got it from their parents, and they'll soon get bored and forget all about it and be his friends next year.

Dave would nod and wonder if there was something about him – some mark on his face that he couldn't see – which made everyone want to hurt him. Like those guys in the car. Why had they picked him? How had they known he'd get in that car, and that Jimmy and Sean wouldn't? Looking back, that's how it seemed to Dave. Those men (and he knew their names, or at least the names they'd called each other, but he couldn't make himself use them) had known Sean and Jimmy wouldn't have gotten into that car without a fight. Sean would have run for his house, screaming, probably, and Jimmy – they'd have had to fight with Jimmy to get him inside. The Big Wolfhad even said later: “You saw that kid in the white T-shirt? The way he looked at me, with no real fear? Kid's going to kill someone someday, and not lose a night of sleep over it.”

It helped to give those men silly names: Big Wolf and Greasy Wolf. It helped Dave to see them as creatures, wolves, and Dave himself as a character in a story: the Boy Taken by Wolves. The Boy Who Escaped and found his way through the woods to a gas station. The Boy Who'd Stayed Calm, always looking for a way out.

In school, though, he was just the Boy Who Got Stolen, and everyone wondered what had happened during those four lost days. In the bathroom one morning, a seventhgrader stopped beside Dave and said, “Did you do it?” and all his seventh-grader friends started laughing and making funny noises.

Dave turned to face the older boy, but he suddenly hit him in the face.

“You got something to say, freak? Huh? You want me to hit you again?”

“He's crying,” someone said, and Dave's tears fell harder. It wasn't the pain that bothered him. Pain had never bothered him much, and he'd never cried from it, not even when he'd fallen off his bike. It was the emotions he could feel coming from the boys in the bathroom: hatred, disgust, anger, contempt. All directed at him. He didn't understand why. He'd never bothered anyone his whole life. Yet they hated him. And the hate made him feel dirty and guilty and small, and he cried because he didn't want to feel that way.

They all laughed at his tears, and Dave dropped his head, but the older boy was walking away with his friends, all of them laughing as they left the bathroom.

Dave sat down on the bathroom floor and wished he had the will to kill someone in himself. He'd start with that older boy, he supposed, and move on to Big Wolf and Greasy Wolf, if he ever saw them again. But, truth was, he just didn't think he could. He didn't know why people were mean to other people. He didn't understand. He didn't understand.