. . . that would be almost the same as to shake a sleeping fiend, Dennis. Please, I know nothing.'
I could have told him that the fiend was already awake, but he knew that.
'Tell me what you suspect.'
'I'll call you back.'
'Mr LeBay . . . please . . . '
'I'll call you back, ' he said. 'I've got to call my sister Marcia in Colorado.'
'If it will help, I'll call - '
'No, she would never talk to you. We've only talked of it to each other once or twice, if that. I hope your conscience is clear on this matter, Dennis. Because you are asking us to rip open old scars and make them bleed again. So I'll ask you once more: how sure are you?'
'Sure,' I whispered.
'I'll call you back,' he said, and hung up.
Fifteen minutes went past, then twenty. I went around the room on my crutches, unable to sit still. I looked out the window at the wintry street, a study in blacks and whites. Twice I went to the telephone and didn't pick it up, afraid he would be trying to get me at the same time, even more afraid that he wouldn't call back at all. The third time, just as I put my hand on it, it rang. I jerked back as if stung, and then scooped it up.
'Hi?' Ellie's breathless voice said from downstairs. 'Donna?'
'Is Dennis Guilder - ' LeBay's voice began, sounding older and more broken than ever.
'I've got it, Ellie,' I said,
'Well, who cares?' Ellie said pertly, and hung up.
'Hello, Mr LeBay,' I said. My heart was thudding hard.
'I spoke to her,' he said heavily. 'She tells me only to use my own judgement. But she is frightened. Together, you and I have conspired to frighten an old lady who has never hurt anyone and has nothing whatever to do with this.'
'In a good cause,' I said.
'Is it?'
'If I didn't think so, I wouldn't have called you,' I said. 'Are you going to talk to me or not, Mr LeBay?'
'Yes,' he said. 'To you, but to no one else. If you should tell someone else, I would deny it. You understand?'
'Yes.'
'Very well,' he sighed. 'In our conversation last summer, Dennis, I told you one lie about what happened and one lie about what I - what Marcy and I - felt about it. We lied to ourselves. If it hadn't been for you, I think we could have continued to lie to ourselves about that - that incident by the highway - for the rest of our lives.'
'The little girl? LeBay's daughter?' I was holding the phone tightly, squeezing it.
'Yes,' he said heavily. 'Rita.'
'What really happened when she choked?'
'My mother used to call Rollie her changeling,' Le Bay said. 'Did I tell you that?'
'No.'
'No, of course not. I told you I thought your friend would be happier if he got rid of the car, but there is only so much a person can say in defence of one's beliefs, because the irrational . . . it creeps in.
He paused. I didn't prompt him. He would tell, or he wouldn't. It was as simple as that.
'My mother said he was a perfectly good baby until he was six months old. And then . . . she said that was when Puck came, She said Puck took her good baby for one of his jokes and replaced him with a changeling. She laughed when she said it. But she never said it when Rollie was around to hear, and her eyes never laughed, Dennis. I think . . . it was her only explanation for what he was, for why he was so untouchable in his rage . . . so single-minded in his few simple purposes.
'There was a boy - I have forgotten his name - a bigger boy who thrashed Rollie three or four times. A bully. He would start on Rollie's clothes and ask him if he'd worn his underpants one month or two this time. And Rollie would fight him and curse him and threaten him and the bully would laugh at him and hold him off with his longer arms and punch him until he was tired or until Rollie's nose was bleeding. And then Rollie would sit there on the corner, smoking a cigarette and crying with blood and snot drying on his face. And if Drew or I came near him, he would beat us to within an inch of our lives.