I SAW JEDDY ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL THE next morning. He had his cap on backward, which is what he did when he was having trouble with something. I knew him so well, I could almost tell what the trouble was. If he looked mad, it had to do with Marina or something that happened at school. If he was walking slow and looking sort of defeated, it was his dad. Jeddy was walking slow.
I came up on him and got into step.
“How’s things?” I said.
He didn’t answer.
I thought a little and said: “Guess what? Mr. Riley got arrested last night.”
“How come?” Jeddy asked, without looking at me.
“I don’t know. My dad got a call this morning. Mr. Riley’s up in the Fall River jail.” I was lying to Jeddy, but what I said was true. A man had come knocking at our door at 6:oo A.M. A half hour later, my father was on his way up to Fall River in our Ford.
“My dad said he’s been running rum,” Jeddy volunteered.
“Mr. Riley.”
“When did he say that?”
“A while back. My dad’s had his eye on him.”
“How come you didn’t tell me?” I asked him. I was happy to hear the chief had been watching Mr. Riley. It put him on the right side of the law, which, after last night, I hadn’t been sure of. Still, I thought Jeddy should’ve let me know since Mr. Riley was my father’s boss.
“It was police business,” Jeddy said, glancing over at me. I knew he was starting up on the argument we’d had. I didn’t want to do that anymore.
“How about riding down to see Tom Morrison on Saturday?” I said. “I’ve been back a few times. We could go crabbing on his raft.”
“Can’t,” Jeddy said, not looking.
“Why not?”
“I’m working at the farm on Saturday.”
“How about Sunday,” I said.
“I’m working on Sunday, too.”
“Not all day.”
“Yes I am,” Jeddy said.
I gave him a hard stare. When he finally looked back at me, I said, “You don’t want to be friends anymore?”
He gave a kind of defeated shrug, as if it was out of his hands.
“We don’t need to talk about anything. We could just . . . you know.”
“My dad said I don’t have time,” he told me. His eyes slid away. I could tell that wasn’t what his father had said.
“What’s going on, Jed? Is it my dad? Does the chief think he’s in with Mr. Riley?” It occurred to me that Chief McKenzie might believe that. My dad worked for Riley, after all.
Jeddy shook his head. “I just don’t have time,” he repeated.
“Because if he does, he’s wrong. Come on, you know my dad’s not in on it. He never would be.” I stopped walking and looked over. “I might be, but never him.”
I was dropping a clue, hoping Jeddy would ask me what I meant. In our good days, he would have. It was part of how close we were that we could read each other’s minds. You might be in on it? Jeddy would’ve said. What’s this “might be”? It would’ve given me an excuse to tell him where I’d been the night before. I was dying to be asked. I wanted to tell him about the Black Duck.
Jeddy didn’t look at me. He kept on walking. That scared me. It seemed as if a terrible new wall was going up between us and nothing I said or did could stop it.
For a moment, I thought I’d tell him anyway. I came so close. When I think back now, I know that’s what I should have done. If I’d kept to our rule of no secrets and told Jeddy what had happened at Brown’s, how I’d seen his dad and all, it might’ve brought us together again. We could’ve compared notes and talked through what was happening. That might’ve given us a larger frame to put around things, a frame that took in a few fog banks and murky nights, not just the sharp daylight of right and wrong, which was the kind of childish picture we’d been living in up to then.
We were entering new territory, Jeddy and I, only we didn’t realize it. The world was about to get tougher on us, more complicated, and there we were fighting with each other instead of sticking together as we’d sworn to do.
We came up on the school. I glanced over at him. He was looking kind of sick. I had a pretty clear idea by then what the trouble was between him and his father, and it made me angry. Chief McKenzie had no right to give orders like that. Whatever side of the rum-running business he was on—and I honestly didn’t know what to think right then—he had no right to cut Jeddy away from a friend like me. Why he would do it, I couldn’t understand. He knew me and he knew my dad about as well as anybody could. All I could think was, it must be a mistake.
“Listen, it’s all right,” I told Jeddy. “You can steer clear of me if it’s easier for you. Your dad will see the truth sometime, then we’ll get back together. Anyway, we’ll always be friends, right? Nothing can stop that.”
Jeddy didn’t answer. His head was turned away and I could see from how his jaw was set that he was holding himself in. He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t. We walked along in silence for a couple more minutes. At last, he gave the tiniest nod, as if he was saying good-bye, and lit out up the road. I stopped and waited till he was inside the school before going on myself. It seemed the right thing to do to give him some room.