Somebody Else's Music(36)

“That can’t help much,” Gregor said as Kyle Borden switched his engine off. “All anybody would have to do was go around to one side of the arch, and they’d be in.”

“It’s to tell people when the lifeguard will be on duty,” Kyle said.

Kyle got out of the car, and Gregor got out after him. The day was getting hot. Kyle headed toward the archway and Gregor followed, looking from one side to the other. He truly hated the country. He would far and away prefer to deal with a serial killer in a gang-infested ghetto than with anything at all that lived in harmony with insects and trees. The ground around the archway was sandy and dry. The plants that grew on it were anemic and scraggly. The trees in the immediate vicinity were pines. Gregor didn’t know what kind of pines.

“Michael Houseman,” Kyle said as Gregor went on following him. “Michael had just graduated from high school about a month before. We all had. Like most of us, he wasn’t doing much of anything. He was going on to college—”

“Where?”

“UP-Johnstown. We send a fair number of kids up there. It’s close, and it’s relatively cheap if you’re a state resident. And if you’re one of those people who don’t really know what you want to do, and don’t really care much about education. If you know what I mean. Betsy wrote this column once I read in the newspaper about education—”

“Liz,” Gregor said automatically. “I know. Education as an intrinsic good. In Paris Review. When I was trying to find out something about her, a friend of mine showed it to me.”

“I didn’t read it in a review. I read it in a newspaper. Never mind. Michael was one of those guys. He did okay in school without doing really well. He got, maybe, Bs and Cs. He played a little football without being a star on the team. He played a little baseball in the spring, same deal. He wasn’t particularly popular, but he wasn’t particularly not. Are you getting the picture?”

“It’s like a hole in the atmosphere,” Gregor said dryly.

Kyle Borden laughed. They had come to the end of a short path that meandered through the trees. A few feet away, Gregor saw a narrow beach that ended in a smallish lake. There was a tall lifeguard’s seat near the edge of the beach. There was a raft out in the middle of the water. The little beach was full of sunbathing mothers on terry-cloth towels and children throwing sand at each other.

“It’s like a public swimming pool,” Gregor said. “Not what I expected.”

“It is a public swimming pool,” Kyle agreed, “except instead of building a pool we built a lake. This is man-made. The town put it together back in 1964 because the people on the board didn’t like the idea of our kids going over to Kennanburg to swim there. There was getting to be an ‘element,’ if you know what I mean.”

“Not exactly.”

Kyle’s eyes slid sideways, cynical. “An African-American element. Welcome to Hollman in the sixties. Welcome to Hollman now, for that matter. Anyway, that’s why we built it. I was thirteen years old when it opened and I remember the first day. Dozens of people showed up, with folding lawn chairs and inflatable water toys. I even remember the first lifeguard. Bobby Resnick. It was the summer before his senior year in high school, and he went on to be the biggest damned deal in the history of Hollman. Captain of the football team. Homecoming King. He’s got a garage out on Route 15 these days.”

“Does everybody in this place know what everybody else has been doing for the last forty years?”

“Well, hell, Mr. Demarkian. There are some women in this town who could tell you whose great-grandmother slept with which traveling moonshiner in 1892 and how that ended up with three kindergarteners having red-haired eyebrows in 1957.”

Actually, Gregor thought, that sounded familiar. It sounded just like the Very Old Ladies on Cavanaugh Street. Kyle had steered them onto a path that skirted the sandy beach and went around in a half circle. “What does this have to do with Michael Houseman?” he asked.

“Well,” Kyle said, “that summer, Michael Houseman was the regular lifeguard here. There was a relief lifeguard for weekends, but Michael had the job Bobby Resnick baptized. So, unlike everybody else in this story, when that evening started, he was already here.”

“He was working?” Gregor asked.

“No. He had been working. He’d worked all day since ten o’clock. By the time the nonsense started, the park was officially closed. That doesn’t mean nobody was here, or that nobody was supposed to be here. All that the park being closed ever means is that there’s supposed to be no swimming allowed, and some of the teenagers don’t pay attention to that. But it’s not like the park was deserted. There are always people here in the early evening in the summer.”