They were on the couch now, it had been an eventful hour and Judith Rainey was finally quiet, her head resting on Donald Growler’s lap while Judith’s husband Lawrence perched on a nearby chair.
Growler asked why he did it but Lawrence didn’t answer.
Night after night for seven years Growler plotted what he would do to the friends who had lied about him, sent him to prison … Growler imagining elaborate operas of vengeance, stages slick with blood, arias sung to pain. But not knowing why these former friends had stabbed him in the back had become worse than the betrayal itself, was like having a tiny voracious beetle lodged in his ear, eating its way to his brain, driving him mad.
“Larry, why?”
Unlike his wife who’d become hysterical under Growler’s questioning, Lawrence Rainey managed to park himself in some sort of mental quiet zone. He was seventy-two, his wife Judith was sixty-seven, they’d been married fifty years. Whenever this was mentioned, announced in church last Sunday for example, the Raineys received warm applause.
“Was it the elephant?”
Lawrence continued staring into the middle distance.
“You found the elephant, figured with me out of the way you could keep it for yourself?” Growler asked, his voice quietly solicitous … this had been gnawing at him for all these years and he genuinely wanted answers. “Oh Larr-y.” When Growler placed a hand on Judith’s head and stroked her wispy hair, Lawrence began leaking tears. “You and Judy testified I was with Hope the day she was killed,” Growler continued. “Why would you perjure yourselves like that?”
Lawrence stood. He wore flannel pajamas with prints of fish on them, bass and trout.
“Sit,” Growler commanded as you would a dog … and after a moment’s hesitation Lawrence sat down again.
Growler said nothing more for the longest time, he was tired but in no hurry … the Raineys’ living room silent except you could hear clocks ticking. Lawrence and Judith had been awakened past midnight by this man they’d known since he was a boy.
“I show you these?” Growler finally asked, drawing back his lips.
Astonishment caused Lawrence’s jaw to drop, Growler laughing softly and telling him to shut his mouth.
Lawrence complied.
“Do you know where I can find Kenny Norton or Elizabeth Rockwell?” No response. “Larry.”
The old man looked at Growler as if just then realizing someone had been talking to him. “I saw the photographs.”
Growler’s dark eyes widened, he sat up straight.
“I was … cleaning your uncle’s room after he died.” Lawrence’s voice gravelly with age and emotion.
“And you found Hope’s pictures?”
“In an envelope.”
“Where are they now?”
“You were going to get off on a technicality unless we testified like they said.”
“Like who said?”
Lawrence’s wet eyes blinked rapidly.
Growler spoke excitedly, “Larry listen this is important, who told you to lie about me … who was in those pictures with Hope?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t look, they were filthy and I didn’t …” His voice lost to weeping.
With thumb and finger gently on Judith’s chin, Growler turned her head to face Lawrence … whose weeping birthed a single wet sob as he demanded, “Why are you doing this!”
“Why am I …” Growler tried with some desperation to hold on to his composure. “Where are the photographs?” But his control was slipping away, his anger fueling itself. “What happened to the elephant, why all these goddamn lies about me!”
“I don’t know anything,” the old man pleaded.
When rage finally propelled Growler to his feet, Judith’s head rolled from his lap onto the floor, turning a full revolution before stopping face-up at the slippered feet of her husband … raising both hands to his mouth like a child who’s just spilled milk.