Strange Highways

him."
     Joey folded the loose flap of the plastic tarp over the dead woman's bare arm. There was something obscene about her punctured hand being exposed on the altar, even if St. Thomas's had been deconsecrated.
     Celeste waited silently for him to continue.
     "Looking back on it," he said, "maybe there was a weird manic quality about him that evening ... a dark energy. Right after dinner, he rushed down to his room in the basement to finish packing, then brought up his suitcases and put them by the back door. He was eager to get going, because the weather was bad and he had a long drive back to New York, wasn't likely to get there until two in the morning at the earliest. But Dad didn't want to see him leave. God, he loved P.J. so much. Dad brought out his scrapbooks about all those high-school and college football triumphs, wanted to reminisce. And P.J. gives me this wink, like to say, Hell, what's another half hour matter if it makes him happy? He and Dad went into the living room to sit on the sofa and look through the scrapbooks, and I decided I could save P.J. some time later by putting his suitcases in the trunk of his car. His keys were right there on the kitchen counter."
     Celeste said, "I'm so sorry, Joey. I'm so, so sorry."
     He hadn't become desensitized to the sight of the murdered woman in the bloodstained plastic tarp. The thought of what she'd suffered was enough to make him sick to his stomach, weigh down his heart with anguish, and thicken his voice with grief, even though he didn't know who she was. But he could not get up and turn his back on her. For the moment he felt that his rightful place was on his knees at her side, that she deserved no less than his attention and his tears. Tonight, he needed to be the witness for her that he had failed to be twenty years ago.
     How strange that he had repressed all memory of her for two decades - yet now, in this replay of that worst night of his life, she had been dead only a few hours.
     Whether by twenty years or by a few hours, however, he was too late to save her.
     "The rain had let up a little," he continued, "so I didn't even bother to put on my hooded windbreaker. Just snatched the keys off the counter, grabbed both suitcases, and took them out to his car. It was parked behind mine at the end of the driveway, in back of the house. I guess maybe Mom must've said something to P.J., I don't know, but somehow he realized what was happening, what I was doing, and he left Dad with the scrapbooks to come after me, stop me. But he didn't get to me in time."
      ... a thin but bitterly cold rain, the blood-filtered light from the trunk bulbs and P.J. standing there as if the whole world hasn't just fallen apart, and Joey saying again, "I only wanted to help."
     P.J. is wide-eyed, and for an instant Joey wants desperately to believe that his brother is also seeing the woman in the trunk for the first time, that he is shocked and has no idea how she got in there. But P.J. says, "Joey, listen, it isn't what you think. I know it looks bad, but it isn't what you think."
     "Oh, Jesus, P.J. Oh, God!"
     P.J. glances toward the house, which is only fifty or sixty feet away, to be sure that neither of their parents has come out onto the back porch. "I can explain this, Joey. Give me a chance here, don't go bugshit on me, give me a chance."
     "She's dead, she's dead."
     "I know."
     "All cut up."
     "Easy, easy. It's okay."
     "What've you done? Mother of God, P.J., what've you done?"
     P.J. crowds close, corners him against the back of the car. "I haven't done anything. Not anything I should rot in jail for."
     "Why, P.J. ? No. Don't even try. You can't ... there can't be a why, there can't be a reason that makes any sense. She's dead in there, dead and all bloody in there."
     "Keep your voice down, kid. Get hold of yourself." P.J. grips his brother by the shoulders, and amazingly Joey isn't repelled by the contact. "I didn't do it. I didn't touch her."
     "She's there, P.J., you can't say she isn't there."
     Joey is crying. The cold rain beats on his face and conceals his tears, but he is crying nonetheless.
     P.J. shakes him lightly by the shoulders. "Who do you think I am, Joey? For Christ's sake, who do you think I am? I'm your big brother, aren't I? Still your big brother, aren't I?