Empire Falls

pass the boy had flourished. “What class do you have with Mrs. Roderigue?”
    “I don’t have one with her.”
    “Then why would she give you a pass?”
    “I guess she likes me.”
    “Why would she do that?”
    “Why would she like me?”
    Actually, that was exactly what Otto wanted to know, but he decided to rephrase the question. “No, why would she give you a hall pass?”
    A shrug. “We go to the same church. Plus she’s my aunt or something. My mother’s sister is her brother’s wife. Whatever that is.”
    “What that is, is no reason to give you a hall pass. Did you forge her signature?”
    “No way I’d do that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because you could find out.”
    “Not because it would be wrong?”
    “That too, I guess.”
    “I don’t want to see you in that cafeteria again during sixth period. Agreed?”
    Another shrug.
    “Do you understand? I’ll be checking.” Suddenly, he had a brainstorm. “Did you write this?”
    Zack Minty leaned forward, took the page and read it, then handed it back with what might have been a trace of a smile. “No.”
    Of course he had. Otto was suddenly certain of it. John Voss’s grandmother had a name, Charlotte Owen, and whoever wrote the note didn’t know this and either had no idea how to find out or was too lazy. A kid, then. This kid. “Not the kind of thing you’d do?”
    After expressing great perplexity at this question, he shook his head, “No.”
    “Because it would be wrong, or because you’d get caught?”
    “How would I get caught?”
    “Why do you and your friends torment John Voss?”
    “We don’t.”
    “What do you get out of it?”
    “I said we don’t.”
    As Otto started out of the building, the class bell rang and he saw Doris Roderigue standing in the doorway to her classroom. “Don’t ever let me catch that Minty kid with another hall pass signed by you,” he told her, not caring particularly whether any students overheard or not. When she began to say something, he handed her the hall pass. “Never again. Is that understood?”
    Outside, he just sat in the Buick until he calmed down. He didn’t give a hoot about Doris Roderigue, but the Minty boy’s last words were still ringing in his ears. When he was told he could leave, he’d gotten to his feet slowly, as if disappointed that their conversation had come to an end. He was limping, Otto noticed—no doubt to remind the principal that he played football and had been injured for the greater glory of Empire High. At the door the kid stopped and looked off at an oblique angle. “Where is John Voss’s grandmother?” he said, as if the odd nature of the question had just occurred to him. “Huh.”
    T HE BACK DOOR , like the front, was locked. Otto shouldn’t have tried it, but he did. After all, what would he have done if it was unlocked? Enter without invitation? After knocking several times, loudly, he went back down the porch steps and stood in plain sight, calling up to what he hoped was the old woman’s bedroom window, identifying himself and trying to look harmless and unthreatening in case she was peering out from behind the curtains. It occurred to him that perhaps she had heard him ringing the bell out front, perhaps had even looked out from behind the thick curtains that shrouded the front windows and, seeing a stranger there, become terrified. He even imagined her lying in a heap just inside the door, a stroke victim, and himself the cause. How would he go about explaining that? After all, there were no papers for the old woman to sign, simply his cold, intellectual curiosity, the need to know the answer to a question posed by a cruel prankster: Where is John Voss’s grandmother? As if that were any of Otto Meyer Jr.’s business.
    Standing in the middle of Charlotte Owen’s weedy lawn and staring up at the dark, curtained window, Otto could feel, despite the cold air, clammy perspiration tracking down his right side from his armpit. His nerve failing him, he was about to leave when he noticed the rusty iron stake. Because of the contour of the ground, only the top of it was visible from the base of the porch, but coming closer he could see that attached to it was a sturdy chain and at the end of the chain a metal clasp. Otto Meyer looked around for the canine suggested by these details, but there was no doghouse nearby, no water bowl back on the porch. And, of course, no dog had barked when he rang the bell. He kicked aside a clump of something