Charlie St. Cloud Page 0,39
safer and ready to reveal a little more.
“First you get me drunk, then you take me on a forced march,” she was saying as they tramped up a hill. “Where are we going?”
“Trust me, it’s special.”
They walked on, and the moon finally poked through the clouds, gently touching headstones in every direction. “We used to sneak in here all the time when we were kids,” Tess said. “I made out with my first boy behind that obelisk over there.”
“Who was the lucky guy?”
“Tad Baylor. I think he was in your class.”
“The human fly?” Tad had run afoul of the law junior year, when he was captured stealing final exams from the copy room after scaling the wall of the administration building and climbing through a fourth-floor window. “You have excellent taste.”
“I was fourteen,” she said, “and he was a great kisser.”
They kept on going across the lawns. An owl hooted from the treetops. The air was cool, and Charlie buttoned up his pea coat.
“So how long have you worked here?” Tess asked as they passed through a plot of Revolutionary War graves.
“Thirteen years,” Charlie said. “Barnaby Sweetland gave me my first job here when I was in high school. He was the caretaker for thirty years. Remember him? The guy had a voice like an angel, and he ran the chorus at the Old North Church. Every day in the field, planting, cutting, sweeping, we could hear him singing to the skies.”
Charlie kneeled down near a gravestone and pointed his flashlight at the damp ground. “Barnaby showed me every single thing I know about this place.” He scooped up a handful of damp earth with an unmistakable aroma. “You’ve probably smelled this your whole life when you’ve gone outside in the rain. It comes from these strange compounds called geosmins. Barnaby taught me the chemical names for everything.”
Tess started to laugh. “Be still my heart,” she said.
Charlie smiled. His mind was cluttered with all sorts of obscure information, but now he had to wonder: Would a girl setting off to conquer the world ever really fall for a guy who lived in a cemetery and knew why grass and dirt smelled the way they did?
“This way,” he said, pushing forward into the night.
“So whatever happened to Barnaby?” Tess said, following closely.
“One winter he took a long walk in a snowstorm and never came back. I found his body up there on the Mount of Memory.” Charlie aimed the flashlight into the night. “He had a choir book with a note in it, saying he was tired of working so darn hard. After seventy-two years on earth, he was ready for the next world.”
“You mean he killed himself?”
“I don’t think so. He just wanted to spend the rest of eternity singing. That’s where he promised I would always be able to find him. You know, in the songs of the choir and the organ on Sundays.”
“Was he right? Can you still hear him?”
“Yes,” Charlie said. “If I pay attention, he’s always there in the music.”
They had reached the crest of a hill where two willows hovered over a small, square stone building above the harbor. Guarding the entrance were two columns and a pair of crossed baseball bats. Tess walked straight to the front steps. Charlie aimed the flashlight at the name ST. CLOUD carved on the lintel.
“Your brother,” she said.
“Yes, Sam.” Charlie traced the sharp outline of the structure with his beam. “Mausoleum, noun,” he said. “A floor covering used in crypts.” He paused. “That’s one of Sam’s jokes.”
Tess smiled, touching the smooth stone. “Is it all marble?”
“Imported from Carrara. They spared no expense. The driver of the eighteen-wheeler that hit us was drunk out of his mind. His company paid for every inch of this. It was all about public relations.” He ran the flashlight down one of the columns. “They gave the guy five years, but he got away with three for good behavior. He’s probably in a bar right now getting loaded.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He shook his head. “It was my fault. I never should’ve taken Sam to Fenway, and we never should’ve been on the bridge in the first place. If I’d been paying any attention, I could’ve avoided the crash, you know, gotten out of the way of the truck.”
And so without noticing, Charlie broke one of his cardinal rules. He began talking about Sam. With everyone else in the world, he had always dodged the topic. It only made folks uncomfortable and awkward.