‘You would have, and Walker knows it.’ Bobby knows Brad is too stupid to grasp the relationship between the intention and the act: crazy night at the end of a bad week, they were all out of their mind on vodka, stoned and high on whatever else they were taking, wrecked by the pressure of last things. What would Bobby have done if he hadn’t been laid out facedown in the mangroves by the time it came down? What could he have prevented, that changed certain lives? He doesn’t know.
‘Fuck that old shit, Chaplin, forget it. It’s over.’
‘That’s not what Walker thinks.’
‘That night is long gone.’ Kalen jams his fists into his mouth, gnawing thoughtfully. Then he looks at Bobby over his knuckles and says cleverly, ‘Besides. How do you know it was me?’
‘Who else did you roll out of the Jeep before you got her to Lands End, Kalen? Buck and Stitch too? Chape?’
‘You were too loaded to know who was there what went down, asshole. Face it, you were drunk. You’re nothing but a fucking drunk.’
My name is Bob Chaplin and I am an alcoholic. If Bobby had been in his right mind he never would have let Lucy get into the Jeep that night, not after that thing with Jessie Vukovich, which was an abomination. He’d have grabbed the wheel and wrenched the Jeep off the road if he’d been in his right mind, he would have done it before they ever reached the turnoff to Lands End. Bobby groans. ‘I should have stopped you.’
‘Yeah, right. Like you were there at the end.’
‘But Walker was.’
‘Walker, Walker, what does Walker know?’ There is a pause during which Brad casts around for suspects. ‘It was probably Coleman, Buck always had the hots for her. Yeah, everybody knows he wanted that – what do I want to call her – that sweet little piece of . . .’
‘Don’t.’
‘Lucy.’
So Bobby lets him have it with both barrels. ‘She has a son.’
Now it is Brad’s turn to shrug. ‘She wasn’t pregnant that summer when she left.’
‘He’s in town.’
‘She wasn’t pregnant when she came back for Thanksgiving, either.’
‘That doesn’t change what you did.’ He means: what we did.
‘I don’t lie.’ It hurts Bobby to say, ‘This isn’t about just one of us, Brad, if it was, it never would have happened.’ Bobby was crazy-drunk that night, yes, and psyched to be riding along in the back next to Lucy Carteret, and what would have happened if he’d had her alone, would he have gone too far because he was in love with her? His voice drops a register. ‘It was all of us.’ Grieving, he thinks: It would have been different. I’m not like them.
Brad chooses not to hear. ‘Now, if you’ll just get me a cab . . .’
‘You can’t say a thing’s over just because you’re done with it,’ Bobby says gravely. Why is he so disturbed? OK, he loved her, he still does, and when she got into the Jeep that night he thought – he doesn’t want to know what he thought; they were all crazy out of control.
‘So I can get out of here and into some decent clothes. Back off.’
Bobby says, ‘We’re all involved.’
‘You’re standing too close.’
‘I’m responsible . . .’
Brad pushes. ‘Fuck it, Chaplin. Move.’
‘. . . and you’re responsible.’ He pushes back.
‘Shit I am. What makes you think it wasn’t Walker?’
‘Well now, there we have a problem,’ Bobby says. In another minute he’ll either have to back off or suffocate. ‘You pushed her down.’
‘How do you know?’
Bobby’s voice is low and clear. In a kinder world, he could be heard in the back of a courtroom or in balconies far above any stage, but his life went a different way and he’s just-Bobby, here with just-Brad. ‘I saw you.’
Bobby is too close to the truth about himself. He did see, but he was drunk and raving, too trashed to get up off his face.
Brad’s voice is a congested rattle. ‘Like, you think I did all that single-handed?’
‘What did you do, Brad? What happened?’
There it is: that hateful, careless shrug. ‘Beats me.’
Bobby grabs those baggy shoulders and starts shaking. ‘Tell the truth, you fucking asshole.’
And with a practiced, guileless, who-me grin that confirms all Bobby’s suspicions, Brad glides out of his grip. ‘Dude, I was too fucking drunk. How am I supposed