Lionel says: “Remember the God-damned groundhog, Jerr and I killed?” Lionel laughs, crumpling the beer can in his fist.

  Killed? You don’t remember this.

  “Slammed the fucker with the shovel. Flattened his fucking head.”

  Such vehemence, such an air of righteous indignation. “Mom told us to. Chased him all over the God-damned yard.”

  You are feeling just slightly faint, off-balance. No memory of a groundhog being chased all over the yard with a shovel, let alone killed . . .

  But here is a more disturbing memory: how, beyond the rear of the property, in the no-man’s-land above the river, your brothers hastily and carelessly buried the baseball bat that would incriminate them. So unreliable is memory, so surreal, you could swear you’d seen them kicking leaves, compost, debris over the body of Hadrian Johnson dumped into a shallow grave with the bat.

  Muttering to himself, laughing, Lionel fumbles for another can of beer and cracks it open. Offers this one to you—(if the gesture is mock-gallant you chose not to notice)— and you see yourself take the can from his fingers out of a wish to seem friendly to your brother, not to seem not-friendly to him, not wishing to offend him, or to suggest (to him) that you imagine yourself superior (to him), lifting the can still cool from the refrigerator to your lips, and taking a (small) swallow.

  Then handing it back to Lionel. As if this is something the two of you do frequently, sharing a can of Molson’s on the street.

  Such rapport between you! Indeed if someone were observing the two of you from the second floor of the house, your father for instance, frowning and staring, shaking his head in (bemused) disbelief, he would identify you not only as sister and brother but as close friends, companions.

  But you are choking, just a little. Swallowed the (bitter) beer the wrong way.

  “Weird. ‘Family’ means so much to people.”

  This is Lionel’s observation. Quite unlike anything you have heard Lionel say.

  “Well. There isn’t much else, is there?”—a likely reply, a female/sister reply, though you are not convinced that it’s so. “I mean, for most people.”

  Lionel shrugs. Drinks. Something angry, aggrieved about your brother’s thirst.

  Brightly you say: “It’s said that if life has no intrinsic meaning just having a family, keeping together, and alive, and keeping yourself alive, can provide the meaning.”

  These are words that you have heard, or have read. These are words Tyrell Jones would understand. Perhaps Tyrell is the originator of these exact words. Ironic that you of all people should be repeating these words as if you knew fully what they might mean.

  In that instant thinking—I will have my own family. I will begin—soon!

  The turning point of your life. This instant on the sidewalk at 388 Black Rock Street. When you leave South Niagara, which will be soon, you will begin the campaign to establish this new life.

  Lionel says, skeptically: “There’re different kinds of families. You get born into some, but others just come along. Sometimes—it’s just one person.”

  Again, this is not like anything you’ve ever heard from your reticent brother. Any of your brothers.

  You wonder if Lionel is referring to his experience in the prison. You wonder what he endured, so many years in a facility in which for part of that time he’d had to have been one of the youngest inmates.

  County prosecutors insisted upon charging Lionel as an adult, and sending him to an adult facility. Jerome Jr. and Lionel had both gone to the maximum security facility at Marcy. The other boys, likely as guilty as Lionel, or no less guilty, were treated more leniently. Your cousin Walt Lemire was sent to a youth facility from which he was released at twenty-one. Don Brinkhaus you’d heard had been long ago paroled from a medium security prison.

  You feel the unfairness of the sentence, as Lionel would have felt it. The injustice. How the world has been poisoned for him, the air he has had to breathe.

  You wonder if Walt Lemire and Don Brinkhaus know that Lionel has been released from prison and decide yes, of course they know. Their families would have informed them.

  You wonder if they live in the area, now. If Lionel has made any attempt to contact them.

  Probably not. For why?

  Reluctant to leave the old house, yet it’s time to leave, walk away. Just—turn, walk away.

  The last time you will see the house. You are sure.

  Still, you are restless, excited—you and Lionel both. Not ready to return to the house on Harrison Street. No.

  Making your way to the dead end several houses away, without needing to exchange a word.

  The first wilderness you’d known. Where, as a girl, you’d been warned not to “play”—You never know who might come along!

  Warned by your mother, many times. But the injunction could hardly be enforced for the dead end was so close, and overlooked the river.

  Municipally-owned land, never cleared and developed for building, a sprawling rectangle that encompasses several acres. Behind houses on Black Rock Street above the river, a narrow strip of land between private property and the river; at the dead end a wooded area crisscrossed with dirt paths, overgrown with brambles and wild rose, poison ivy and sumac. In underbrush near the street there are litter, debris, a filigree of rotted newspaper, leaves. Skeletal remains of once-living things like squirrels, birds. You smile to see familiar dirt paths through the underbrush, unchanged since the last time you were here.

  Following one of the paths toward the river. Steep dizzy drop to the river below.

  It’s a clear-sky day, the Niagara River is slate-blue. Dark rushing water churning as if alive.

  On the farther shore the cliff is exposed shale. Appearing wet, glistening. Staring from the window of the room you’d shared with your sister thinking there’d been rain, a recent shower, but no, just sunlight on sharp-edged rock.

  Bramble bushes catch at your legs, clothes. More litter on the ground than you recall. Partially burnt logs, scorched grass. Discarded beer cans, bottles. Lionel tosses down an emptied can for why not?—already so many.

  Fascinating how this path remains, maintained by generations of children, teenagers. Anonymous. Adults know nothing of such places hidden from (adult) view: vacant lots, tumbled-down trees, storm debris, ancient litter, rot.

  Broken plastic, Styrofoam, mangled and rusted remains of a bicycle—some of this trash might have been here when you were a girl. For who would remove it?

  If you were to move back to South Niagara, you think. To live with your mother. Take care of your mother who needs you. Take care of your brother who needs you. Early evenings when you’d drift to the dead end on Black Rock Street. Needing to be alone. In love with loneliness, melancholy.

  Happiness is not reliable. Melancholy is reliable.

  Below, a steep drop to the riverbank. Mostly rubble, sharp-looking rocks, construction debris—chunks of cement, rusted cables. If suddenly you need to escape, you are thinking. This is the only route.

  Dangerous, treacherous. You have not climbed down the (partly eroded) path in fifteen years.

  High above the river hawks are rising on drafts of invisible air. Gliding downward on fantastically widespread wings. Such grace, beauty. Sparrow hawks with scaly clawed feet, stabbing predator beaks.

  Is it possible that Lionel has already finished the second can of beer. He is drinking compulsively, with an air of impatience, anger. Cracks open the third without, this time, thinking of offering even a sip to his sister-companion.

  Saying suddenly, with an air of wonder as if the sight of the languid hawks has stirred him: “It wasn’t Jerr. People wondered. They thought it had to be him but it wasn’t. It was me.”

  “What do you mean?”—you have to ask. Though a chill has passed over you, you know exactly what Lionel means.

  “The one with the bat. I mean, the one who took the bat, when Jerr sort of let it drop. Like, he’d gotten scared. Freaked. So I took the bat, his hands were weak. It was like my hands took it from him, like the bat took my hands, and—I guess—I killed the black kid. Guess it was me. It wasn’t ‘killing’ exactly, it was like finishing something that was started. But it wasn’t Jerr like you all thought. Dad thought, too. And Mom.” Lionel swallows a large mouthful of beer, chokes a little, laughs. “It was me—‘Lionel.’”

  Your skin is crawling. Your mouth has gone dry. You are trying to remain calm. This is just conversation, you think. Just something your brother is saying in this secluded place where no one will hear him. Except you.

  Lionel laughs, with that air of wonder, incredulity. That he has made this confession to another person? To you? That he once did such a thing? Committed such an act? Laughter like pebbles shaken inside a tin container. Laughter that turns into a fit of coughing.

  Lionel has succumbed to coughing several times since you’ve seen him. Harsh, hurtful-sounding as if his throat is scraped raw.

  Saying now, ruefully: “Christ! Like I got lung cancer or something. Had to quit smoking at Marcy after twelve fucking years when they banned it. Let you smoke all you could afford until the last year I was there, then stopped it cold, like they didn’t give a shit if we all went crazy. Like, we would’ve killed for a smoke.”

  When you don’t reply to this vehement outburst, standing very still, staring at the hawks above the river, Lionel adds, laughing in the way he’d laughed as a teenager, joking with a friend: “A fuck or a smoke. You’d kill for the one but you’d really kill for the other.”

  Quickly turning, to walk away from your brother. A mistake! A mistake to have come here.

  Your accelerating heartbeat is a signal: you will have to run.

  But Lionel has been awaiting this moment, lunging after you just as you break into a run, seizing your left wrist and turning it, hard.

  “Where’re you going, you! Rat-bitch. Cunt. You ruined my life. And then you fucked up my parole.” The hoarse voice is bitter and aggrieved and yet elated. At last!

  Hopeless to plead with Lionel, you know it will be futile. Only make him more furious.

  Turning your wrist until you fall to your knees in pain. Agony. Is he going to snap your wrist, continuing to turn it? His face is livid, engorged with blood. The elation of revenge. So many years in preparation, now released, explosive. Lionel kicks you down onto the ground, grunting as he kicks your back, legs, your unprotected belly, with his heavy boot. Horror washes over you, your brother will kick you to death and leave your body here to rot in this wild place only a few hundred feet from Black Rock Street . . .

  There comes a rush of adrenaline to your heart like a shot.

  Somehow you have crawled away from him, the kicking boot, you have managed to scramble to your feet, though your body throbbing with pain, and the disbelief of pain. Like a wounded animal you are running from the predator, empowered by fear, terror. You have no choice but to take the downward, dangerous path, the path that is partly eroded, a nightmare path of exposed roots like desiccated nerves, no choice but to flee skidding and sliding down this path, toward the riverbank, for your maddened brother is blocking the way to the street, and the underbrush is too thick for you to take any other route back to the street.

  Lionel is screaming at you but isn’t going to follow you—not down the steep path. He doesn’t trust his legs, his coordination. His eyes.

  Frustrated, he picks up something to throw at you as a spiteful child might do—a clump of dried mud.

  “I’ll kill you. Murder you. Cunt! Rat!”

  Making your way down the path, sliding partway on your buttocks, afraid to stand upright for fear of losing your balance and falling. It is at least thirty feet to the riverbank below. Trying to think clearly, to recall where there’s a fork in the path that will lead uphill through a hillside of brambles and into the strip of land behind the old house. If you can do this—if the path doesn’t collapse into the river, or you don’t fall—you can escape between houses, you think. There are no fences dividing the properties. Even if Lionel pursues you, you have a chance to escape him.

  But it has been years, this stretch of the path is badly overgrown. Thorns tear at your clothes and skin, you are bleeding from a dozen small cuts. Panting through your mouth, sweating. There’s a harsh odor here of something chemical, like nitrogen.

  You remember—the smell of the river, beneath the Lock Street Bridge. Discolored water like thirty-foot snakes. You are nauseated, gagging. As if the earth is crumbling beneath you, you are in danger of losing your balance, falling onto the rocks below . . .

  But now, suddenly—the fork in the path. Overgrown, but you have found it. Struggle uphill, on hands and knees. Grabbing desperately at exposed roots, at grasses—haul yourself forward.

  By this time your furious brother has ceased shouting. Or you are out of earshot and can’t hear him. You are flooded with adrenaline, in a delirium of terror that is close to exaltation, such certainty—but also anger, rage. That you were so deceived, so blind—your brother had been planning to attack you all along, you’d had no idea.

  Wanting to forgive him. To love him. Take care of him. Wanting to be forgiven. How could you!

  The Guilty Sister

  OH, VIOLET . . . REALLY?”

  You have told Katie that you’ve just had a call from a friend in Mohawk, you must leave South Niagara today and return.

  In fact, within the hour. Though it is already early evening, and you will have hours of night driving ahead on the Thruway.

  Katie stares at you uncomprehending. Clearly she is very surprised, and hurt. Just when we’d started to be sisters again! Violet has always been so—unpredictable. Disappointing.

  Searching your face, hoping not to see whatever she fears to see, that you are withholding from her.

  (Though you will tell Katie what happened, in a day or two. When you’ve recovered and feel that you can speak on the phone calmly, convincingly.)

  Managed to wash your dirtied face, quick when you entered the house. Grateful Lionel hadn’t bloodied your nose, blackened an eye. Wincing with pain, he’d kicked you hard in the back, lower back, legs, lurid bruises will blossom across your lower body but safely hidden inside your clothing where Katie, for one, will never see.

  Palms of your hands scraped, bleeding. How you’d hauled yourself up the steep hill, desperate not to die . . . You shake your head, no. Not something you will want to recall if you can help it.

  Your hands, scrubbed with soap, stinging, are still shaking badly. Managing to repack your small suitcase which you’d only just unpacked. Too distracted to help you Katie stands in the doorway staring.

  “But what about Mom, Violet? What should I tell her?”

  Tell Mom that I have escaped with my life.

  “Tell Mom that I love her. I will call her, I will keep in touch. I will come to see her again, soon. Sometime.”

  Not wanting to think—But Mom won’t remember me. Already, Mom has forgotten me.

  “We’d thought you were going to stay a week at least, Violet. There are relatives who want to see you . . .” Katie’s voice trails off, she doesn’t want to sound reproachful. Though yes, your sister is disappointed with you. Again.

  You are thinking—relatives. But why did these relatives make no effort to contact you, let alone see you, for thirteen years?

  “Who is this friend who has called you, Violet?”—Katie sounds skeptical.

  “A friend. No one you know.”

  Of course. You know no one in my life.

  “I will keep in touch, Katie. I will be back, I promise.”

  “Will you!” Can’t help herself, Katie is an older sister. And you—

  Violet Rue.

  But Katie rouses herself, to help you pack. Though there is little to do, you have brought so few things. Telling you it would be a much better idea to drive in the morning, in daylight, when you are not so upset . . .

  To this, you make no reply. Katie scarcely knows how upset you are.

  But what about Lionel?—Katie has not asked.

  And so you will wonder, Does Katie know? How much does Katie know? You assure yourself: Katie could not have guessed how dangerous your brother is, or she would not have arranged for you to spend time with him alone.

  Our brother is a murderer. He is not the person you want to think he is.

  “Oh, Violet. I feel like—like I have failed you. . . . Forgive me.”

  “Hey. Forgive me.”

  Katie begins to cry. You hug your sister, pressing your hot face against her neck. So much to tell her. But no, not now. Now is not the time.

  Howard Street

  DRIVING ALONG SPARSELY INHABITED DELAHUNT ROAD. ON your way out of South Niagara, to the Thruway headed east.

  Gas station, fast-food restaurant, auto dealership, remnants of a trailer park, open fields. A potholed road, wide rutted shoulder where (you recall) Hadrian Johnson was bicycling when your brother Jerome, Jr. steered his car at him . . .

  But where, you aren’t so sure. Possibly, you never knew.

  Amsterdam Street, where Hadrian’s grandmother had lived. Howard Street, where Hadrian’s mother, Ethel Johnson, lived. Lives?

  North along Delahunt, searching for Howard Street. You’d thought that Howard Street was here, intersecting with Delahunt, but the street signs are unfamiliar, and not all the streets are marked . . . Not sure what to do for you have passed at least two (unpaved) streets without signs, either of which could be Howard. This is a part of South Niagara you don’t know, miles from Black Rock Street and the Niagara River—Where colored people live.

  As your mother might’ve said, carefully. Or your father.