I was unconscious until Wednesday ticked over to Thursday, so I don’t know exactly how everything played out, but I suppose that initially, as far as the police were concerned, all they had to go on was this—
One 13yo girl, Hannah Jensen, brought to the hospital with a BB gun pellet lodged in her left eye, recovering from emergency surgery. One 12yo boy, Patrick McConnell, suffering from blood loss and head trauma. One witness after the event, Alice Welcher, 62, who stated that said boy, unknown to her, had cycled into her driveway with said girl, also unknown to her, on the back of his bike. Situation—the injured parties were seemingly the only two people who could explain what had happened and yet both said boy and said girl were, for the time being, unconscious.
Meanwhile my father, Joe McConnell, Ulster County’s chief assistant district attorney, rising Democrat and would-be New York State assemblyman (the election was little more than two months away), did not hesitate for a moment before telling the police as much as he could. Yes, his son owned a BB gun, a Red Ryder. No, the gun could not be found at home. Following this my brother, Sean, having been swiftly hooked out of soccer camp, told the police that I was best buddies with Matthew Weaver and that we often cycled up into the Swangums with the BB gun concealed in a fishing rod bag.
So now, at least, I was not the only suspect.
Next, I presume, someone was dispatched to find Matthew, only to discover that he wasn’t home. In fact, Matthew had ridden over to Mannaha State Park, concealed his bicycle in a large patch of ferns and begun living survivalist-style somewhere near Jakobskill Falls, hoping to stay alive on a diet of wild blueberries. Possibly, were it not for his close encounter with a large black bear four days later, an encounter that sent him running almost directly into the arms of a park ranger, he might still be there now, the Mowgli of Mannaha.
Meanwhile, back to the hospital, approximately an hour after I awoke, an hour after my mom had soothed me and informed me of my fractured skull but explained that I was going to be fine, my father and two police detectives entered the room.
If I told them I didn’t remember anything, touching my shamed and bandaged skull as I did so, it was not intended as any kind of deliberate tactic. And yet, as it turned out, my temporary amnesia was a masterstroke, because it quickly became clear that Hannah had regained consciousness a few hours before me and the police detectives had already spoken to her. Shaking their heads, they took out their notebooks and that’s when I learned, from the mouths of others, the story of everyone’s role, my own included, in the tragic loss of a thirteen-year-old girl’s left eye. And it went like this—
Matthew Weaver, Hannah Jensen and I had ridden up to the Swangums together on our bikes the previous morning, setting out from the parking lot of O’Sullivan’s Dive Inn at or around 11:00 A.M.
Matthew had led the three of us to a spot in the woods where he and I often hung out.
Arriving at the spot, Matthew sent me away.
I departed.
Matthew tied Hannah to a tree.
Matthew proceeded to shoot at Hannah for several minutes with my BB gun.
Hannah passed out from shock when one of the BBs struck her left eye.
It was unclear how long she was unconscious but a few minutes after Hannah awoke, I returned to the scene.
At this point I was stumbling and faint, bleeding from a hole in the back of my head.
Nevertheless, I cut Hannah down from the tree and helped her back to civilization.
At which point, I passed out.
Yes?
Oh, just spectacular.
You see, sometimes you do nothing at all and everything turns out just peachy.
Next the detectives asked me what put the big hole in my head and I paused, as if waiting for a fog to clear, and told them I was strolling around killing time after Matthew sent me away but had gotten spooked by a snake. Fearing it was a rattler, I turned around and ran but, panicking, tripped and fell. No, I had no clue where Matthew might be now. Yes, I certainly could describe to them the spot where the shooting had taken place and tell them what it was we did up there. I was happy to help as much as I could.
Dad grasped me warmly by the shoulder. Good work, Patch, good work, he said. And now that I think about it, I’m fairly sure that was the last time in my life that my father ever looked proud of me.
* * *
ALTHOUGH HANNAH WAS JUST ALONG the corridor from me, I didn’t get to see her at all in the hospital.
In fact, it would turn out that our family’s time in Roseborn would soon come to an abrupt end and I wouldn’t set eyes on Hannah Jensen again for another two decades, until our accidental meeting on the concourse of Grand Central Station. So I never did get to ask her why she didn’t mention anything to the police about the fact that I was there and did nothing—not that I would ever have asked such a question at that age. Instead I became haunted by the thought that one day the police would find out about my cowardice and I would be sent to jail where, with good reason, my fellow prisoners would abuse and torture me for my role in such a despicable crime. If I had thought about Hannah’s silence as to my presence, I probably would have guessed it was some kind of tit for tat situation. OK, so I had done nothing to stop Matthew from shooting out her eye. However, I did go back for her. I did cut her down and help her get out of that place. Perhaps Hannah thought we were even.
Only it would turn out that the explanation for why Hannah Jensen had said nothing to the police was something completely different. But I wouldn’t learn this new side to the story for many years to come, several weeks after seeing her at Grand Central, a revelation that I overheard accidentally as she spoke on the phone. And now this revelation has become the monstrous secret that paces the perimeter of our marriage, like something that prowls in the shadows, a dangerous creature awaiting its moment, the right time to strike.
When it comes to our relationship, we have only ever stated one rule out loud, a rule made at Hannah’s request. We don’t talk about that day. Ever. And if Hannah doesn’t want to talk about it, then certainly neither do I.
So if I haven’t shown this account to you, Dr. Rosenstock, perhaps this is the reason why. Because to have kept the truth to myself for so long feels like a crime in itself, a terrible secret I couldn’t bear for anyone to learn.
Hannah least of all.
* * *
I TURNED THIRTEEN ON THE following Tuesday, one day after my return from the hospital and two days after Matthew’s arrest and immediate confession, which I found out about because, being Ulster County’s senior prosecutor, my father had privileged access to all the information on the Weaver case, despite the potential conflict of interest, his son being, to use his increasingly desperate phrase, only very loosely associated with the matter.
Summer birthdays were never riotous affairs—half of my school friends would always be away at camp or off on family vacations when the day fell. If you were lucky you might rustle up a half dozen boys for a trip to McDonald’s, followed by a matinee at the local movie theater. We’d watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for my twelfth birthday but this time around, on the day I officially became a teenager, there was an especially conspicuous lack of festivity. No school friends, no Happy Meal, no Ark-stealing Nazis and melting of faces by God-fire.
When I woke up, instead of having a present to unwrap, my mom handed me a card with some money folded inside. My parents had never given me money for my birthday and I would find out later from my brother they’d actually bought me Asteroids for my Atari but that, all things considered, the game being a shoot-’em-up in which the object was to blast apart objects of a roughly circular nature, my father had deemed the gift inappropriate and returned it to the store.
Anyway, what I’d really wanted was Pac-Man, so a few days later, that’s what I bought, Mom taking me to the store, although I told her I could easily cycle there on my own. But no, she insisted on driving. And then, seeing the looks cast at us from the faces of our fellow townsfolk, looks that suggested there was a foul smell in the air, quickly I understood why. Something was rotten in the state of Roseborn. Over the past several days, rumors had started to circulate and something had soured.
The looks on everyone’s faces? That foul smell in the air? It was me.