Like Walker, Chaplin has been brooding over the matter of that night. He was brooding long after the particles settled because unlike Walker he felt responsible for what happened. Walker wouldn’t know until Chaplin confessed to him, but the football hero blamed himself then and on and on, to this very moment.
‘You might as well know, I was in love with her. I thought I could tell her and she’d love me back, if I could only get her to come! Last party of the year, my last chance. Please try to understand.’
‘I’m trying.’
‘So it’s my fault she came out to the beach to spite that bitch grandmother. I begged. She had her own money by then, from her dad’s family. She had a new car so she could come and go when she wanted, and the hell with the queen of the Fort Jude Club. Did you know our moms were scared of her?’ Walker keeps his face so tightly closed that Bobby added, ‘You know, big old Lorna. Lorna Archambault?’
Tightening every thread in his body in a miracle of compression, Walker kept it all in. Regret. Rage. Everything that could send this encounter to the old, bad place. ‘Yeah.’
‘I begged Lucy to sneak out and come with me.’ Chaplin sighed. ‘I waited for hours before I gave up and the hell of it is, by the time she walked down on that sand in that silky white thing I was too drunk to take care of her!’
‘Not the first time,’ Walker said, too low for Chaplin to hear. He would get through this without hurting anybody; he had to. He gripped the arms of his chair and filled his head with white sound, through which Chaplin’s voice still came, but buffered. Remote.
‘I was so fucking drunk!’ Chaplin was the dog, begging to be whipped.
‘I saw.’
‘I loved her so much! It was my last chance to tell her, so I pulled her into that Jeep.’
Everyone has to sob out their story, Walker thought. Letting Chaplin talk was an act of mercy.
‘Beautiful girl, us guys puking drunk. What was I thinking?’ Chaplin wanted Walker to cry with him.
‘In hell,’ Walker said without explaining. He was at the beach that night, but for a different reason. Too late to protect her.
Then Chaplin told him a lot of other things: what happened before Walker caught up with them, what was said, and who . . . Walker would never show it, but it left him sick with anger. Clamped shut. It was unfair, really, letting the poor guy strip naked without giving anything back, but before everything, he had to keep control. There are things Bob Chaplin doesn’t know that Walker will never tell him.
There are things about Walker that nobody needs to know. That he struggles to keep hidden.
‘It’s OK,’ Walker said. ‘You can stop now.’ Please.
‘I was so wasted.’ Chaplin was bent on laying down his burden. At the end he looked relieved, like a Catholic coming out of Confession. As if he’d finally shaken off whatever sat on his head – monstrous, leaden. ‘Please try to understand.’
Grieved as he was, shaken and suffering, Walker overrode it. He stood, and Chaplin stood. Surprised, Walker found himself raising the blade of his right hand – not as weapon and not in warning, but as though to bless the man before he released him.
‘OK then.’ Then he let him go.
‘Oh, thank you.’ On the porch, Chaplain cried, ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t.’
It saddens him to think that men like Chaplin actually believe that there are things you can get off your back by confessing them, as though destiny is fair and open-handed. That he can get past what he did by giving it a name.
The poor sod believes there is in life an identifiable moment at which, when for good reason, everything goes bad.
Well, Walker is here to tell you that’s a crock of shit. Whatever is wrong within Walker Pike has been burning in there since the day he tumbled into the world, hopeful and unaware.
What happened with the old lady was inevitable.
He knows what he is and he fears it. The potential staggers him.
I’ve always been this way.
Knowing circumscribes his life in ways he freely acknowledges and does not resent. Walker is a solitary. He lives alone and walks shy of others’ lives. He stays out of their houses because it is important – not to keep his secret, but to keep them safe.