A Good Friend

“I did it.”

And after that there’s the silence that comes with hearing those words said out loud. He’s standing right in front of me, hands in pockets, head down – this isn’t a moment he can look me in the eyes for – and his voice is small, just above a mumble.

“You hear what I said?”

“Yeah.”

There’s supposed to be more to it than that, more that needs to be said, but the words die in my mouth. I mean, there’s words all right: that girl’s hooked up to a ventilator, the side of her face is all smashed in, her jaw’s broken and all her teeth lost or dangling. She almost died. And we were all looking over our shoulders for what kind of monster… What sort of a man who’d be as vicious… but where those words should be is just this painful, stretched silence, this thickness of atmosphere between us.

“Darryl.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

“I don’t know why I did it.”

“That’s all?”

“What do you want me to say? I didn’t wake up this morning and think maybe I’ll just go out and grab a girl off the street and beat the crap out of her. It wasn’t supposed to happen, okay?”

“Not just any girl.”

“I don’t got no problem with Tasha. She was just there. I don’t know why.”

I don’t either. And it’s weird. Because you think you know somebody. You grow up with them, I mean you live three houses down. You walk to school ever day. You run together to avoid a gang of boys three years older who want to kick the shit out of you for some reason. You steal cash from your teacher’s wallet, but then you freak out and put it back. You help the lady next door find her cat. You tie string to the same cat’s tail. You skim stones together. You eat ice-cream. You tell each other those things that you wouldn’t tell anybody else, that you can’t tell your folks, that you daren’t tell other kids, that you deny to the face of your guidance counsellor. But your best friend, you tell. And he tells you all the same shit.

But you just don’t see this one coming.

Jarred taps my elbow, bringing me back to the here and now. “I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to need to get out of town.”

“You could turn yourself in.”

He shakes his head. “I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t stand it. I’m not cut out for fucking prison. And I can’t stick around; if the cops don’t get to me, they bloody will.”

Tasha’s brothers. Her mother. I’ve already heard in the pub the kind of threats they’re making, the sorts of things they’re going to do with ‘that piece of shit’, not knowing yet that that piece of shit walks past their house every day on the way to work, that they wave to him, ask him how his mum’s doing, offer to help clear her drains.

If they find him first…

“You know what those guys are like.”

Like some people whose sister got messed up really bad. I have a sister. I have Bessie. Bessie’s only twelve. If you’d confessed, and it’d been Bessie, I’d have done all those things. And perhaps a few more.

“They’ll kill me, won’t they?”

I nod, “yeah.”

“Look, I need some money.”

“That’s reason you told me any of this?”

“Not just that. Please. Can you just be a good friend and help me here? Please.”

I don’t have a lot on me. I agree I can send him some more. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he does know he’ll take the first bus south. Maybe try and square things with his Uncle Kenny. I agree that maybe that’ll work, but he’ll have this thing hanging over him for years, if not ever; he won’t get a good night’s sleep in a long time.

“I can’t do it. I can’t do it any other way.”

He doesn’t stick around. He clatters down the stairs, looking both ways, puts his collar up around his cheeks, and hunches into the rough, weathered denim. I have a feeling like I’m seeing him for the last time.

And I could make a phone call. I could make one of two phone calls. There’s a part of me – I think it has my mother’s voice – that says that’s what I should do. I stare at the phone – which stares back at me from the wall – for a moment my hand almost moves towards it. But I won’t, I know. I’m a good friend, right?

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work