In Craven

Ruth sat in the empty dining room, biting her nails. Apart from the grinding of her teeth the house was silent as a crypt. She didn't realize it, not consciously, but she had behaved nearly identically the night Norman left. She'd sat. Bit. Worried. Now and then, she felt empty, existing in a sort of fatalistic void over which she had no control. She felt anything could happen and probably would.

John had been sloppy, even if he didn't know any better. His only smart move had been waking up his mother. He should have killed her at home, with a belt, pills, anything save for a damn pocketknife. She did not want to think about what he had to do – how long it took – to rip open her entire throat with a one-inch blade. Using the river wasn't utterly without sense, but who could have predicted that within two hours of dumping her there, someone would run across John's work? Ruth supposed it was simply bad dumb luck.

But all those dies were cast. There was nothing she could do about any of that. The cops had found the body. Soon they would piece together that John was the last to see her alive.

Ruth had scrubbed or burned every drop of blood from the house, but hadn't she read somewhere that the police use a black light that reveals blood residue, clear as day? The thought alone made her shiver. She could not allow them the evidence that would give them a warrant. They would suspect John, certainly, but suspicions never got anyone convicted – the beauty of America. If the police ever gained entry to their home, however, it would be over.

Ruth was (fairly) certain that the evidence they needed no longer existed. John's bloody clothes and his pocketknife were buried beneath rocks, earth, and rows of poison oak. She could corroborate his alibi, and few would doubt her – she was, after all, their elected representative. More than once that day she had considered how to utilize her clout as selectman against the people who hunted her son, but those roads all led to dead ends. There hadn't been a killing in Craven for fifteen years. Massachusetts lead the nation in the lack of violent crime, especially towns like theirs – small, rich and white. A freak occurrence like this, a flash of savagery within idyll, had the power to shock the world. This will be huge, she thought, and control of it will slip through my fingers.

Everything depended on her baby. It all sat on John's shoulders. When they came for him, he needed to be cooperative... and devastated. John had not acted since the fourth grade, when he played a banana in the school play, but Ruth needed him to give an Oscar-worthy performance
today.

There was an argument. Yes, that was nice and plausible. Jessica had too big a mouth for her own good and everyone knew she and John had their problems. John was driving her home and there was an argument. Jessica got angry, maybe called the size of his dick into question. He called her some bitter names. She demanded he let her out.

He pleaded with her, tried to apologize, but she had none of it. She said she would rather walk home than spend another second in that truck with him. He dropped her off on the shoulder of Route 124, muttering under his breath. Ruth woke when she heard her son storm into the house (at quarter to 3 A.M., she would say when questioned). She asked what was the matter but he just brushed past and locked himself in his room.

And who knows what sort of maniac was lurking in the woods by the side of the road, watching Jessica as John's taillights vanished – as the dark enveloped her?

The cuckoo clock in the kitchen brayed twice, making Ruth jump a little in her chair. Two o'clock, she thought as she rose. We're on borrowed time already.

John's room stank of gym shorts and looked like a tornado came in every Monday to clean, but Ruth had grown accustomed to the mess, even fond of it. The bedroom had haphazard decor, but not without style: in a catalogue, it would be called Teenage Jock Couture. The mess was a fashion statement, in John's own way. It was disorganized organization.

Ruth sat on the bed awhile, watching him sleep. It occurred to her that this – all this – was her fault. Had she failed to do right by him? Failed to show him how to be a man, failed him as a mother? Was she equally as responsible for what he had done?

I did not hold the knife, she told herself. John's brow furrowed as he slept. His chest rose and fell. I did not hold that girl down as I sawed the tip through the flesh of her neck.

Rose and fell.