A Sudden Silence by Eve Bunting Page A

here about my brother's
life.
" My cool was going fast and my voice was beginning to shake. I leaned over and grabbed the guy's shoulder. "You did it! You killed him. You were drinking and..." I was shaking him so hard that his neck jerked forward and back, like a rag doll's.
    "Quit it, will you? I was there. I admit it. But I don't know if I killed him. That's what I'm trying to say."
    I stopped shaking him and stared down. "What do you mean?"
    "I..." He spread his hands. "I don't suppose you have a cigarette."
    "No. And never mind about a cigarette. Start at the beginning, the beginning of the night Bry was killed."
    "I was working, parking cars. I got off at eleven. I went down to the Marina and I had a bottle of bourbon and a six pack in my trunk and I sat in my car and had a few and..." He looked up, shaking back his long, straight hair. The sand clotted in it sprayed out like water. "Look, could I just go down to those guys and see if I can bum a cigarette?" He jerked a thumb toward a group of surfers.
    "No. Keep talking."
    "I guess ... I guess I drove home, after. My car was outside in the morning. I'd parked it in the middle of the road." He tried a small laugh. "Good thing I woke early. Four A.M ." He leaned over and I tensed, but he just pulled a piece of ice plant and began shredding it between his fingers. "I had to push it out of the street. Dead battery. I'd left the lights on." His voice trailed away. "Then I read about your brother. That's the way I would have come home." He glanced up at me, then back at the ice plant. "I went to the place where it happened ... where they said it happened. You know. You saw me. But I couldn't remember anything. If I did it, I'd have remembered back there, wouldn't I?" He was pleading with me, but I was the last person in the world he should have asked for understanding.
    "Do you remember throwing his shoe?"
    He cowered back a little. I guess I sounded fierce all right. "His shoe? I never saw no shoe."
    He had the skinniest neck and I wanted to get my fingers around it. I shoved my hands in my pockets.
    "The thing is," he said, "once before I found a big dent in my fender in the morning and I couldn't remember how I got it. And another time I was home and I had no car and I didn't know where I'd left it. That's why, you know..."
    "But you don't quit drinking, do you? You don't quit driving?"
    He didn't answer, trying instead to snap his ice plant stem, which bent like rubber. In the silence we could hear kids yelling in the surf. A sand crab scuttled under the bottom step.
    "Where's your car now?" I asked. "Do you remember that much?"
    "Sure. It's up in the lot, in employee parking."
    "Let's go."
    We climbed the forbidden steps. Fourth of July flags drooped from the lamp posts that lined the sidewalk. A guy on stilts, dressed as Uncle Sam, offered us a leaflet. Farther along I could see the front of Dad's car and I wondered if Chloe was OK. But I couldn't let myself worry about her now. The streets that lead to the beach are short and narrow. We turned down one of them, Broadway, and cut across the sand. The guy was limping bad but I didn't slow my pace.
    "What's your name?" I asked.
    He hesitated.
    "You might as well tell me," I said. "You'll never get away from me again."
    "It's Plum," he said. "Joseph Plum."
    I nodded. We climbed the path between the geraniums. He was fishing keys and a handful of loose change from the pocket of his pants, heading for a beige Honda in the corner of the lot. It was the same car I'd seen him get into that morning. He walked around the front and laid a hand on the hood. "See? No dents, no dings, nothing. That made me feel better, you know, when I read about the kid. I mean..."
    "You mean my brother."
    "These little foreign jobs, they bust a gut if you even look at them. If I'd hit somebody..."
    "You could have had it in a body shop since then."
    "No. I swear. And what body shop do you know that would do a job this good on a car this old?"
    I