Page 48

“And you were there?” Alex asks.

“I was where?” Poppy loses the thread just that fast. Alex opens the windows a crack, letting a blast of freezing-cold air in to brace them.

“Tell me about Wade, Poppy. Tell me what happened.”

“Roger hated him. I didn’t,” Poppy says. “I liked Wade well enough, even though we weren’t close. But Roger has his panties in a bunch. Thinks Wade is gonna beat him for valedictorian.”

Poppy’s back there. In the moment. It’s what Alex wanted, and yet he still wishes he could stop it.

“ ‘This school will be a laughingstock if a nigger is our valedictorian.’ ”

The word is so jarring coming from Poppy’s mouth that Alex yanks his hand away like he’s been shocked. Especially since his imitation of Roger’s thick Midwest twang is so spot-on. Alex remembers the man’s grating effect from seeing him at Tate reunions over the years. He momentarily considers the possibility that he would have introduced his wife, his Black wife, to Roger in one of these encounters if the man hadn’t died before Alex met Simone. Would Roger have smiled in Simone’s face with the same lips he used to spew racial epithets. Of course he would have. Alex’s stomach churns and he cranks the windows even lower for another blast of cold air to sock him in the face so he can soldier on.

“So did you see him that night he disappeared?” Alex prompts. “Did Roger do something to him?”

“Roger told me to invite Wade to the diner… wanted me to say it was for a last-minute study session. But… but… then Wade was in the back seat drinking the beer Roger gave him on the way. Wade only sipped it. He was just being polite, I could tell. And then he wasn’t… he wasn’t okay. I didn’t know what was happening… ‘Guess he can’t handle his liquor…’ That’s what Roger said, but that didn’t make sense. He’d only had a few sips… Then Roger fessed up. He was just supposed to sleep. Miss finals. That’s all. But whatever Roger put in his drink…”

“What?” Alex asks.

“What?” Poppy parrots.

“What did Roger put in the beer?”

“Some pills? I don’t know. Made Wade choke. Then he was convulsing. I told Roger he had to pull over. We had to do something.” Poppy’s eyes are as glassy as the ice particles gathering on the windshield. “He drove a couple more miles, to get off the main roads, but by then… I tried to help him, I did. Like I told Father Mike. You have to believe me, okay?”

So Poppy did confess his sins to Father Mike; it makes sense that this is all at the top of his mind right now. He’d just told this story or a version of it to the priest, maybe to get some sort of absolution. The same sort he clearly wants from Alex right now.

“I do believe you, Poppy, I believe you,” Alex reassures him. He would have said it even if it wasn’t true, but Alex can see the remorse written all over the crumpled, shattered figure next to him. He would go to his grave defending that his grandfather didn’t mean to intentionally harm this kid. Still.

“So… what did you do?” Alex whispers. But he already knows what they did next, from Simone. It all adds up now. They drove Wade’s body to Marjorie’s.

“Roger said we had to get rid of him.”

Like the N-word, Poppy so cavalierly saying “get rid of him” makes Alex cringe, like the poor kid was garbage to be tossed away. The fact that this all seemed to be Roger’s doing is not offering as much solace as Alex would like. It’s also disconcerting that his grandfather is casting himself in the role of sidekick here, doing Roger’s bidding. He desperately wants Poppy to stop talking, but that’s not a luxury either of them has at this point. They have to see this terrible tale through to the end.

“We drove out to Marjorie’s place… the farm. It was so dark. She was sweet on me, and I knew she’d help us. Woulda done anything for me. Never let me forget it, though, either. Laid it on me real thick that I got her in trouble, when she told me she was using one of those diaphragm thingies so I wouldn’t have to worry. And then she held helping me over my head and tried to force me to marry her. You can’t be blackmailed into marriage, but she sure tried. I really thought she was going to turn me in when I married Carole. Risk I had to take.”

It’s funny how that would have been the headline, a real bombshell—his grandfather knocking up some poor farm girl; Alex almost having a secret aunt or uncle out there. But that “shocking” news was so inconsequential relative to the far more appalling revelations; it’s like coming upon a fly landing on a heaping pile of shit. You’re not trying to avoid stepping on the fly, it’s the shit you’re worried about. Poppy is mumbling something about a body, and Alex truly doesn’t know if he can take much more.

“I’d never seen a dead body before. His skin… it looked so ashen… I just couldn’t touch it. Never touched one of them before.”

Alex has no idea if he meant a dead body or a Black person, but he wasn’t going to stop and ask. The way his grandfather was struggling and straining pained Alex to see, as did having to wonder how much of it was due to shame or dementia. Alex could never know.

“Told Roger I wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t touch him. I vomited into the grass. Roger called me a pussy. I just wanted to go back to the dorms… to sleep. But we had to dig and dig and that took hours, and then we had to drive all the way to Garnett, and the sun was practically up by then.”

“You went to the reservoir? Why?”

“Roger took Wade’s shoes, he threw ’em out the car window. Said people would think Wade went swimming and drowned. His shoes had so many holes. I felt bad about that. His shabby shoes.”

That’s what his grandfather feels bad about? The shabby shoes?

“I would have gotten him new shoes. I can get him new shoes. Do you think that would help?” Poppy suddenly looks strangely hopeful, like he’s stumbled into a solution. Before Alex can answer, Poppy goes on.

“You understand. Don’t you. Of course you do, Leland. You get it. We do what we have to do. You’re just like me. Always have been.”

That might’ve been true about Alex’s father. But it’s not true about him. Alex has a bad habit of cataloging his many imperfections and weaknesses, especially in relation to his mythical father and legendary grandfather, but in this moment a new perspective snaps into focus. Flawed as he may be, Alex is not a man who would cover up a death and lie about it for decades. He’s not a man who would drive his family drunk and crash into a tree. For all that he’s tried to live up to the men who came before him, he has not in many crucial ways. Alex wants to believe he’s an upstanding moral person. But then again, you can have all the faith in yourself in the world… until it’s tested.

He silently puts the car in gear and pulls back onto the road. By the time they make it to Alex’s childhood home, dark and imposing as ever, his grandfather is sound asleep, chin slack, limbs limp, almost as though his body itself has surrendered to the release of his revelations.