Rabbit Holes

We still have the box for the chess set we’d gotten Kyle for his seventh birthday.  I assume we do, anyway.  If I were home, I’d keep it right where he left it.  Sylvia’s not likely to dispose of it.  She’s convinced I killed him, but I think there’s still a part of her waiting for him to walk back in the door with the chess pieces and board in his knapsack.  If I were home, that’s what I’d be hoping.

With only a week to go before … y’know … it doesn’t matter how crazy people think I am or what they think I’m hiding, so let’s go on with the interview.  Nobody would ever guess it, I don’t think.

He was always quiet – sweet and easy going and quiet.  Not in a scared, skittish way, but in a way that made you … well made me … feel like he was part of every moment that happened, but still detached. Maybe like a traveler.  I met a guy once who had taken a steamer across to Europe and basically worked his way hand to mouth from Calais across the continents to Saigon.   He was just doing his thing, soaking it all in.  Thinking back now, Kyle reminds me a lot of him.

Sylvia was having a baby, and then suddenly she wasn’t.  Ten weeks in, the doctor said, “Hmm …” over his stethoscope and then brought in his ultrasound tech to probe around for a good twenty minutes with more Hmmm-ing from him. He had a quiet conference with her in the hallway, then came back to us as I was wiping the jelly from Sylvia’s belly. “Sylvia, Michael, I have some bad news for you, but it’s not as bad as it could be.”

He dropped onto his rolling stool like wet laundry, and that’s when we found out that Kyle was going to be an only child, though the fetus that was going to be his sister, who we would’ve named Brie, would linger – if all went well and we didn’t have complications that forced us to do anything earlier – until eight weeks.  Three weeks more, and we’d have the procedure.

We were relieved and crushed when the day came to … take care of things.  Kyle was too young to know if we were sad or not, but we’d still spent thirty weeks making happy surprised faces, regardless of what we were really feeling. We went to the doctor, he stayed with Gram-gram, and then later Syl slept through that day and into the next.

Did I mention he loved reading to us?  He started reading when he was 4, just kind of picked it up.  He was very observant.  He’d watch you and figure out in an instant how things worked.  So, he started reading when he was four, and he’d read all the time.  If he wasn’t reading to us, he was reading to his toys.  

He’d go out into the yard and sit under the big oak out next to the pasture.  

The first time … I mean, there was this time I was standing at the kitchen window and saw him out there with his book on the little stump he used as a seat.  He was reading aloud, or at least it looked like it, because as he read he’d gesture along with the story.  It didn’t take much to figure out Cat in the Hat, even from a hundred feet.

But as I watched, he got up, put the book down, and walked off to the side of the tree.  He was looking down at his shoes and talking. He’d nod his head and look around, and move his arms, like he was having a normal, animated conversation with the ground.

It was cute, really, I mean he was seven, right, and here he was out there talking to God knows what – a bird, a butterfly, a worm, y’know?  I called Syl over and showed her what he was doing.  She rolled her eyes and laughed.  She thinks I’m a monster now, but that day, that first time, she rolled her eyes and laughed for fuck sake.  I mean, sorry – I know, language.  She laughed then, but now I’m a monster.

It was nothing. I was going to ask him at dinner what game he was playing with himself out there, but I forgot, and then it just became the thing he did. Everyone gets one quirk, right? He’d play with friends when they were over, and everything would be normal, right?  Nobody ever said he was acting strange.  When he was by himself, though, more and more often, he’d end up under the tree, reading and having these little chats.

After a couple more Saturdays and Sundays like this, I got curious, so I walked over to the tree.  He had rolled his little stump to the spot where he’d been going for his lectures.  He was reading Are You My Mother using different voices for all the characters. He heard my feet in the prairie grass coming up and glanced over his shoulder. He even gave me a little wave, but kept reading.

When I was about ten feet away, though, he just stopped and closed the book, waiting for me.  I asked, “Whatcha doin, sport?”

“Just reading.”

“Who are you reading to?”

“Huh?”

“You looked like you were reading to someone.  Y’know, like mama and I read to you, with gestures and showing pictures.”

He fidgeted and glanced toward the tree. A slow glance, really, like something caught his eye for a moment.  He shook his head a little and said, “Nobody.”

“Ah … well, have a good time.”

I walked back through the grass and over my shoulder, I heard him pick up where he was before.  His voice was a little different, though, like he was annoyed.  At me, I figured. 

“The big thing said ‘Snort!’ Oh no, said the – shhh – said the baby bird – no, shhhh – you are a scary snort!”

Tell me that wasn’t strange.  I should’ve guess something right then. If you’d been there … I don’t know. Guess you had to be there.

That went on for weeks.  He wanted to go out to the tree when he got home from school, but we usually told him no.  It was late; we had supper; it was going to get dark soon; we were going to have family time.  Usual stuff.  One time, though, he said, “Huh. Family time without family” and looked out the kitchen window at the tree.  Again, maybe someone else would’ve gotten suspicious.  Maybe you.  Maybe everybody would’ve just brushed it off like me.  Maybe if Syl had seen anything that I’d seen.  I drive myself crazy with these things, and it really doesn’t solve anything does it?  In a week, I’m going to take a needle regardless of whether I make sense of it.  

Every Saturday and Sunday, though, he’d take the chess set out of the box, grab a handful of books, and go out to the tree for hours.

On the 27th – this would be the day before - the 27th of October, it was getting close to supper time, so I went out to call him.  He was just sitting on his stump talking.  He’d look down at the chess set and make a move, then look up and say something.  Move, talk, move, talk.  I stopped at the edge of the prairie grass and just hollered to him, and he froze.  He packed up the chess set, grabbed his books and put them all in his knapsack, and started walking through the grass to me. About half way back, he waved.  Didn’t turn and wave, just kind of waved over his shoulder.

At supper, he was happy.  He was actually giddy. He asked about all kinds of things. He asked about how to make bologna sandwiches, and if all snakes were poisonous, and if we could go anywhere, where would we go.  A thousand questions.  He asked if he was always named Kyle.  That surprised us. He wasn’t always named Kyle.  Up until he was born, we expected to name him Bobby, well, Bob, Robert, but we’d never mentioned it to him.  I explained that to him and he just nodded his head like, “Yeah, I get it now.”

After supper, it was barely dark when he said that he was going to go to bed.  “Long day tomorrow” he said.

I asked him “Rough day at the office?” and he smiled at me, but in a sad way.

He hugged us both on his way to bed and kissed us both on the cheek, like he always did.  When he hugged Syl, he was about to walk away, then he stopped and just touched her on the cheek.  Like two seconds, and that was it.

She said, “That was sweet.”

We stayed up late that night.  Not sure why. We were just relaxing and never got around to going to bed until around 2am.  

Syl is the sleeper, so I’m the one who gets up – got up – when Kyle gets – got – up.

This was the 28th. Seven in the morning. It was barely light when I heard him in the kitchen, so I got up to see to him. When I walked in, he was dumping a crapload of milk into a crapload of cereal.  He’d gotten a Tupperware bowl out of the cabinet, like a quart bowl, and had practically filled it up with breakfast.

He started off kind of quiet as we sat there, then got real chatty, and asking lots of questions again.  “Hey, dad, are giraffes only in Africa?” “Hey, dad, is there any way to breathe under water?” “Hey dad, how long do shoes last?”  “Hey dad, did you ever have your appendix out?”  All kinds of stuff.

Right when he was scraping the last cereal out of his bowl and slurping down the milk, I realized I hadn’t started the coffee yet.  I went over and was filling the pot, getting the filter and grounds in place, and he hopped up, grabbed his knapsack, which was sitting on the floor next to his chair, said “Bye, dad!” and sprinted out the door.

I said “See ya in a bit, sport” but he was already out the door and running across the yard toward the tree. Through the window, he yelled, “I’m coming, tree!”  I could just barely hear it through the glass, but I heard him call out that he was coming.

The coffeemaker started gurgling and I stood there with my mug, right next to it, in front of the window, and watched him run.  He hit the grass and … he hit the grass and didn’t even slow down … not until he got to the stump.  He … he stopped and walked almost to the tree, then he turned and looked back to the house.  He saw me in the window – he had to see me in the window – he waved.  He waved at me, not just, y’know, toward the house.  He waved at me and then …

I don’t blame anyone for not believing me.  I don’t believe me and I saw it. I was there.  He waved at me, and then looked down, and, I don’t know, stepped forward maybe, and then he just went down.

He didn’t fall.  He was just standing there, and his body was sinking down.  Yeah, everyone looks at me like that.  It’s old. Real old. If you were there … if you were there, you might’ve killed yourself. Seriously. And not because you did anything, but because … there was nothing to do.

I just stared. God’s truth, I just stared for a moment or a minute or something.  I knew he was going to pop back up, but a part of me didn’t know that at all.  I didn’t even blink for God’s sake, because I wanted to see him the exact moment his head popped back up over the grass.

And then I started running.  T-shirt, shorts, no shoes, and I’m running so hard my heart was blasting in my ears before I was even off the patio.  I was yelling, screaming his name.  Syl said it woke her up because it sounded like I was angry, but … where was he, where did he go?  I had no clue and I was panicked.

I got to the stump and I could see his footprints at that point.  They walked from the stump about six feet, and just before the tree, they stopped.  There was dust there, and so I could see.  The cops could see his footprints stop right there, but they also saw my footprints covering every other inch of the area around the tree.  They could see where big feet stomped the grass for fifty feet in every direction.  What they roped off was maybe a quarter of an acre, going from the end of our lawn to the start of the grass, and all the way back to the chain link fence at the end of our property.  No gate, by the way.  Just fence. Six feet.  Keeps bobcats and stuff out.  Everything out.  Kids in, definitely.

I should have called 911 immediately, but it was insane.  I knew he had to be playing a game, laying down somewhere in the grass waiting to surprise me.  He backtracked without me noticing, then vanished in the tall grass.  I spent thirty minutes frantically dragging my feet through every inch of the grass, like he was a softball someone had lost.  I should have woken Syl up immediately, but how the fuck could I just walk out of the place I’d last seen my son?  You couldn’t do it.  Nobody could do it.  It took me half an hour.  By the time I staggered back to the house, I was seriously deranged.  Nothing could have happened but something did.  He couldn’t be gone, but he was.

I screamed - like six times - for Syl, as I was dialing the phone.  She came out and heard me trying to explain to the dispatcher or operator or whatever, what had just happened. Nothing after that made sense to her, which was hard. But you know what, nothing made sense to me from thirty minutes earlier.

It’s hard for me to blame her.  I saw him.  I couldn’t say I didn’t. I couldn’t say I looked away.  I saw him all the way right up to him vanishing.  I couldn’t even pretend that someone else appeared and grabbed him.  They fingerprinted everything inside the tape and all they found was me and Kyle. I can’t blame her for thinking it was me. I can’t convince her of anything I don’t believe, and I don’t fucking believe this.

So.  The jury took a week to convict me, but they only took thirty minutes to give me the death penalty.  Once you decide, based on what anyone could tell them, once you decide, it’s an easy decision.  Hell, if it was Sylvia in the orange jumpsuit, I’d have done what she did, and applauded what they did.

So, all of that.  I’m going to tell you something I didn’t tell anyone. Haven’t told anyone yet.  Nobody. Not Sylvia, not anybody.

It dawned on me at some point - I don’t remember when - that what he probably said when he was running through the yard, wasn’t “I’m coming, tree.”  I think – and I have no way to prove it – but I think Ithink-Ithink-Ithink - what he really said was “I’m coming, Brie!”

Yeah. That face. Right there.

Hand to God. This interview isn’t coming out until after the execution, right?  That’s what you said.

Anyway, tell the warden when you interview him, throw the switch. I don’t want to wait a week.  I want to go now.  I want to be able to sleep.  I haven’t slept right in months.