Black Wood Read online

  “Are you worried,” I said.

  “What?”

  “About the trial.”

  “I don’t want to talk about the trial. I’m not supposed to. My lawyer says.”

  “Who’s your lawyer?”

  “The fuck do you care who my lawyer is?”

  “Just curious. Is he court-appointed?”

  “What ... ‘cause I couldn’t afford a real lawyer? Is that what you’re saying? Well, you’re right.”

  “I’d be terrified.”

  “I’m sure you would.”

  “I mean ... the prospect of going to jail.”

  “I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Goddamnit, why wouldn’t he open up to me like he’d opened up to her?

  “Why don’t you like me?” I said.

  “I don’t know you.”

  “You don’t want to get to know me.”

  “Why would I? You pushed yourself into our lives.”

  “I offered to help.”

  “You didn’t offer to help. You tried to blackmail us.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You want to know why I don’t like you? Because I think you’re weird.”

  “You ... you think I’m weird?”

  “I don’t go around spying on people.”

  “No. Just punching cheerleaders in the face.”

  Finally, Mr. Pierce took an exit from Route 9. This was it; now we’d find out where he was going. We came out on Burnt Block Road. Suddenly, I realised where he was going. There wasn’t much else around there. A gas station, an auto shop. And a motel. Mr. Pierce was taking his secretary to the “Burnt Block Motel”.

  “I know where he’s going,” I said.

  “Yeah. The ‘Burnt Block’.”

  It looked like my companion in crime was a bit of a detective himself. Perhaps we could open a dual agency. It would be like a buddy movie.

  We followed Mr. Pierce and his secretary (I really needed to find out her name) to the motel and pulled in across the street. They both got out and went into the front desk. I had to admit, it was a risky move. I mean, he’d left town, but the motel was only a few miles outside of Concord. Whoever was at the front desk might have recognised him. Was that all part of it, part of the illicit thrill? Thinking about him and his secretary, and Samantha and Charlie sneaking around, I realised the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

  They made their way up to one of the rooms. He let her in first, then glanced left to right and closed the door behind him. I wondered if it was for effect; there was no one around to see him. I looked at Charlie.

  “I should get out here and let you take the car back.”

  “Why?”

  “They could be a while. Besides, you can’t be seen out here. If you were spotted with me, or if he saw you, that could jeopardise everything. I’ll catch a bus back. It doesn’t matter now. We know what they’re up to.”

  He nodded, and I got out of the car and watched him drive away.

  Despite the fact that I had enjoyed spending time with Charlie, I was glad to be alone again. It was one thing following at a safe distance on Route 9, but at this close proximity, two guys sitting across the street in a parked car was conspicuous. I needed to be alone to do what I needed to do. I made my way into the motel courtyard and from there up the stairs to the second floor. I didn’t like it; it was very unlike what I was used to. I was used to night in the Black Wood; this was broad daylight out in the open. But I’d come this far, I had to be sure. I couldn’t take a chance that there was something else going on in that room between Mr. Pierce and his secretary. Blackmailing someone for going and sitting in a motel room for an hour doesn’t work.

  I made my way over to the room that they’d gone into, but the curtains were drawn. Curtains drawn in the middle of the day told me all I needed to know, but still, I had to know first-hand. If I went back to Samantha and told her it was a yes, I had to know that for sure. There was nobody around. I couldn’t see the front desk office, but he didn’t seem to be around either. I moved over to the door as quietly as I could and pressed my ear up against it. For a second, there was nothing. Then, I heard it. Him breathing heavily, gasping “Oh, Martha, baby”, her moaning, and the bedsprings creaking beneath them. That was all I needed.

  Funny. I wouldn’t have taken her for a ‘Martha’.

  I hurried back down to the courtyard. I sat in a corner in the shade and out of view of anyone coming down from the second floor. Checking my watch, I saw that the lunch hour had turned into an hour and a half. But, I guess, the boss could do that. About ten minutes later, the two of them emerged from the room. I aimed the camera and got off a whole roll of film: the two of them coming out of the motel room, looking sheepish. I might not have caught them in flagrante delicto, so to speak, but these shots would be the next best thing.

  They came down the stairs, with him looking left and right again. Not up there, I thought, down here. He dropped the key back to the front desk and then made for his car. No doubt the car ride back would be in silence as they both prepared themselves to face back into the office. By the time they got there, it would be as if nothing had happened. She’d walk in first, get chatting to the other ladies in the typing pool. A couple of minutes later, he’d walk in all smiles and moxie. No one would bat an eyelid.

  I watched their car fade into the distance and grabbed the first bus back to Concord.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Psychologists have a term: “self-actualisation”. It can be defined as “the motive to realize one’s full potential”. I’ve always thought that autobiographical writers do this through the act of writing. They invent themselves – the best version of themselves – through their writing. After all, our memories of things, they’re not always reliable, not always what actually happened. Nothing about us is set in stone. So, when we write, we’re engaged in the act of self-creation.

  Take Henry Miller. He used his life for his fiction and, therefore, the line became blurred. The question that has to be asked about someone like Miller is: where did real life end and fiction begin? Does it even matter? Someone once said of Miller: “He believed he owned himself, and that owning himself gave him the right to invent himself.”

  Of course, people would say, that’s not who you really are; that’s just who you are in a book. But isn’t that all that matters in the end – perception. I mean, we’ll all be gone someday and all that will be left will be the books. Give it enough time and no one will remember the real life. All that will be left is what’s in the book. That’s what people will believe. That will be your reputation. That’s what will remain of you.

  From the very beginning, this whole journey with Samantha and Charlie could be seen as a process of self-actualisation. It started small – some observing – and slowly built up into something else. The act of climbing a ladder and throwing myself into Samantha’s room was my first act of “self-actualisation”. From there, it was one thing after another, becoming a part of their circle, observing Samantha’s father and blackmailing him. All these things made me a different person –the confident person who could write this story that needed to be told.

  “So, it’s true?” Samantha asked me the next time we met. It was supposed to be the three of us, but Charlie didn’t show. He said he had to take his grandfather to a doctor’s appointment, so he couldn’t meet us. I had my doubts. It felt like he was avoiding me.

  “Yeah. It’s definitely true,” I said. I handed her the photographs I’d gotten developed. She flipped through them silently for a minute. Her shoulders dropped as she let out a sigh.

  “Huh.”

  “That’s it?” I said.

  “What?”

  “You just found out your father’s having an affair and that’s your reaction.”

  “What reaction were you expecting?”

  “I don’t know ... shock, anger ...”

  “I suppose I’m a little surprised he has the balls.
But why should I be angry? If I was him, I’d have an affair. What else has he got in his goddamn boring life?”

  “And you still want to go through with this?”

  “Hell, yeah. So how do we do it?”

  And there it was. We were blackmailing her father.

  It sounded somewhat insane when you said it out loud.

  Something happened then; the dynamic changed. I can’t quite put my finger on what it was. There was no outward change as such, from Samantha or from Charlie. Or from me, for that matter. I didn’t suddenly become “Mr. Super-Confident”. It would have taken a lot more than a handshake from Charlie to do that in those days. Nonetheless, something did shift ever so slightly.

  I mean, if I thought about it, it made sense really. I’d always been the nerd; the one looked down upon, the one trailing in their wake. And that’s how I’d begun the story – that same weak, ineffectual person. But, bit by bit, the dynamic had slowly changed. I’m not quite sure what it was. I think it was a slow gradual process, from that first night when I’d steeled myself in the back garden with Samantha. I’d gradually gained confidence, confidence enough to creep into her garden and climb to her bedroom window. From then on, little by little, my confidence grew until I was this other person.

  When I look at it now, I see that’s what I did. I created this mask for myself, this confident person. Someone who could stand toe-to-toe with Samantha and Charlie. Something, six months before, I never would have done. Certainly not with Samantha. Charlie, maybe, given his past and his history. He was still intimidating, but Samantha, she was a different league. I wouldn’t have done what I’d done those past months. Something had changed. I’d created this other “self”.

  And it didn’t necessarily change my life. But it did change the makeup of my personality somewhat. I could feel it. I held myself differently. No one else took too much notice apart from Samantha and Charlie. I think my parents did a little bit. They probably thought it was a girlfriend or something. But I carried myself differently, I walked differently, I talked differently. Barely perceptible, but there nonetheless.

  And, of course, there were cracks in the mask, there were crises of confidence. In my room at night, in my bed in the dark, the doubts might overtake me and I might shake out, break out in a cold sweat. But they would never see that. They would only see the mask.

  “We should get a newspaper,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “We need to do it properly. Cut out letters from headlines and paste them to the page spelling out the message.”

  “Why not just type it?”

  “Have you never read a crime novel? That’s how you get caught. They see that the letter L in the blackmail note is a little cropped on the top. They get your typewriter and check it out and, lo and behold, your letter L has a piece missing from the top.”

  “Okay, so we write it.”

  “Hello ... handwriting analysis?”

  “Obviously you disguise your handwriting.”

  “No matter how you disguise it, they’ll still trace it back to you. I’m telling you, the only way is to paste in letters from the newspaper.”

  “Don’t they have paste analysis?”

  I thought about it. “I don’t think so.” She threw me a look. “Oh. I see. That was sarcasm.”

  “Alright,” she said. “Get a newspaper.”

  As I assembled the various tools, I asked her, “What are we going to write?”

  “‘If you don’t want the whole town to know about your affair, pay us $20,000.’”

  “Wait ... us?”

  “What?”

  “Why are you telling him about us?”

  “I’m not. I’m not signing our names.”

  “So why mention us at all?” I said.

  “What else am I supposed to say?”

  “I.”

  “‘I’ sounds like one person.”

  “So?”

  “‘Us’ sounds more intimidating.”

  “Just say, ‘If you don’t want the whole town to know about your affair, you will pay $20,000.’”

  “But pay who?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll get to that in time.”

  I know they can’t have failed to be impressed by me. They knew what I was; they knew what I had come from. Yet, here I was, standing toe-to-toe with them. I could see the way Charlie looked at me now. I’m not sure if he was envious, or if it was a look of admiration, but there was something there, something that had been missing that first day he shook my hand, but that had slowly started to appear over time.

  But something else had changed in me. In the beginning, all I wanted was to be near them. I simply wanted to observe them. It was a dream to even interact with them. But then, something else happened. I wanted to be part of their relationship. And now that I was, I wanted more. I was jealous of Charlie. It had been enough to observe them, it had been enough to watch him with her, to live vicariously through him. I have to admit, I liked that it was our secret, that only she knew I was there. But the novelty wore off. It wasn’t enough. I wanted him to know that I was there, that I was part of this relationship. I wanted him to see what I was capable of.

  I wanted to be him.

  And he was beginning to see what I was capable of. He was beginning to see the “real” ... well, no, not the “real” me ... he was beginning to see the “mask” me. He’d never see the “real” me; I’d keep that well-hidden. But the “mask” me, he’d see plenty of that. As time went on, I’d get more and more confident. The “mask” me would grow stronger, until I wasn’t just his equal, I’d be standing above him, looking down. And Samantha would be looking up.

  No, it couldn’t have stayed a secret any longer. Had it stayed a secret, I couldn’t have gotten into the position that I eventually did, the position of being able to help them do what they needed to do. Once I was in that position, that would be the final turn of the screw. She would need me to do this thing, something that no one else could do for her. It would be something she’d never tell anyone else about. Even Charlie couldn’t help her do this. I was the only person who could do it. And that’s what I wanted: I wanted to be the one she turned to – solely – and not just as an alibi or a as messenger boy. And it was starting to come true. But I had to be careful. It was a very fine balancing act I was engaged in. The slightest wrong move here or there, the whole house of cards could come tumbling down.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Finally, the day of Charlie’s trial arrived. The morning of the ‘Trial of the Century’, it seemed like the whole of Concord was squeezed into Courtroom No.1 or were part of the overflow out in the hallway. I was at the back straining to see. Samantha and her parents were seated up front. They’d been given the seats in deference to the role they’d played in this Greek tragedy.

  From the back of the room, I studied Harry Pierce closely. It had been a week since we’d sent him the blackmail note and the photos. We’d had no further contact with him since then. The idea was to let him sweat and, when he couldn’t take anymore, then we’d arrange for him to hand over the money. But making Harry Pierce sweat wasn’t an easy proposition. I’d spoken to Samantha in school during that week and she said that he wasn’t acting any differently at home. And looking at him now in the courtroom – sitting proud-chested in front of the entire town – he didn’t look too worried.

  Judging by the crowd, it seemed the trial had sparked the local’s imagination. Not only the trial, but the whole relationship between Charlie and Samantha, and who Charlie was. By now, people knew a lot about him. His secrets were no longer exclusively mine. Tongues had started wagging and someone who knew someone talked. They knew where he lived; they knew he took care of his old grandfather. But because they met in the Black Wood every night, he was still a reclusive figure in Concord, rarely seen. Samantha was still seen and whispered about at school, and at the hair salon, and the diner. But Charlie was even more of an enigma now than ever. So, the t
own of Concord turned out to see the enigma.

  But the enigma never showed.

  The judge waited an hour, glaring intermittently at Charlie’s court-appointed lawyer.

  “I’m sorry, your Honour,” he said. “He promised me he’d be here.”

  “Your Honour,” the prosecutor interrupted. “Can we not just get on with this case? The police will eventually find Mr. Rhodes and bring him here. In the meantime, the jury and the rest of the good citizens of Concord will not have to wait on--”

  “Councillor, he is an eighteen-year-old boy who has never been in trouble with the law. Now, I understand the seriousness of the offence he is charged with, and while I am extremely unhappy with the disrespect he has shown this court today, I am not about to run roughshod over an eighteen-year-old and hold a trial in his absence. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Of course, your Honour.”

  Judge Lowell was an old buzzard, but he was a fair, old buzzard. “We’ll give it another twenty minutes,” he said, “and then we postpone until tomorrow.”

  And that he did. Twenty minutes later, he brought down the cavil with an irritated gesture, and said, “This case is adjourned until nine o’clock tomorrow morning.” He looked at the defence attorney. “Councillor, your client is on his last chance. He better be here tomorrow, or I will try this case in absentia.”

  The courtroom started to clear. I made my way out to the hall and stood, observing. Samantha came out with her parents. When she saw me, she mouthed the words, “Ladies bathroom. Now.” I shook my head, but she glared at me. What could I do? I headed for the ladies bathroom.

  I needed a break now; I needed them to be empty.

  They weren’t.

  “Young man, what do you think you’re doing,” asked a startled woman standing by the bathroom mirror.

  “Uh ... cleaning,” I said.

  “Cleaning?”

  “Yeah, got to, uh, clean the bathroom.”

  “And where’s your cleaning stuff?”