The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [46]
We made our way back to Gwen’s house as quickly as possible. To our surprise, all the adults were there—Dr. and Mrs. Robison, the Hallorans, Mickey’s mom and not-quite-stepdad, along with her baby brother.
“It’s an impromptu hurricane party,” Tally Robison said. “Your parents came here to wait for you all to return, and now people are worried it’s going to be like Agnes, with water rushing down the road. In which case, we’ll be stuck.” She seemed jolly about it. There were wineglasses out, the fathers had beers. Tally Robison liked parties and she tried to create them out of the flimsiest of pretexts. Still, we were struck by our parents’ naïveté, their assumption that we would all return safely. Didn’t they know, or had they forgotten: things could go wrong, so quickly.
Tim and Sean took their father aside and spoke to him. Certain things were not said, by unspoken agreement among all of us. We did not mention that we had a long-standing relationship with the man who was lying in the creek. We did not say that Mickey had pushed him. The story was only that Mickey had found him touching Go-Go and he had chased them both, then slipped and fallen.
“Touching? What do you mean by touching?”
“Just—touching,” Sean said, for he didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know.
Mr. Halloran then left the house with Dr. Robison and Rick, Mickey’s sort-of-stepdad. The boys wanted to go with them, fearful that the grown-ups could not find their way, but Mr. Halloran was adamant that they stay behind. They were gone for about an hour, but it seemed much longer. It seemed like days had passed before we saw the beams of their high-powered flashlights at the top of the hill. They came in through the basement door, and Tally Robison brought them towels and fresh T-shirts, then mugs of coffee with whiskey in them. She still wanted her party. She and the other women had played charades, and she wanted the men to join in.
“Where’s the—man?” Mickey asked.
“He was gone,” Dr. Robison said.
“Gone? Are you sure you went to the right place?”
“I mean—he didn’t make it. There was nothing we could do. I’ll call the police, but—you see, when he slipped, he fell and hit his head. He lost a lot of blood, and by the time we got there—” He shook his head. “We made our way down to the road, hoping to flag someone down, but there’s no one out there because of the storm. Our part of the road is clear, but there’s flooding farther down and up on Forest Park.”
“The phones are out,” Tally said.
“We’ll call in the morning, then,” Dr. Robison said. “We can’t leave him there.”
“Why not?” Mr. Halloran said, bolting his beer.
In the wake of the hurricane and the damage to the neighborhood, the police did not come for several days. We never knew exactly what Dr. Robison told them. We were not even sure if Chicken George’s body was found, or if it ended up being washed away as the stream gained in power. It rained very hard that night, and the streets did flood, as predicted, but they were empty by morning and everyone made their way home.
A week later, we went back to his house, perhaps the last thing we ever did as a group. It was empty, but then—it had been empty before.
“Do you think he had a funeral?” Go-Go asked.
“Who cares?” Mickey said. “He was a bad person. Not you, Go-Go. Chicken George.”
It was the right thing to say. Yet why did it sound as if Mickey was saying the exact opposite? In telling Go-Go that he was not a bad person, wasn’t she suggesting that some might think he was, that everything was his fault?
“What if he’s still alive,” Go-Go said. “What if he never really died?”
“It’s not like a horror film,” Sean assured his brother. “He died. He most definitely died. Dr. Robison said so.”
Chicken George died. From his head injury, according to Gwen’s father, but it was hard not to wonder about the water rushing around him, growing in power, carrying him and his guitar—where, exactly? Where did the stream end up? In the harbor, at a treatment plant? We knew the