Read I Was There the Night He Died for Free Online Page B

care.”
    Pass—Ms. Toronto’s family fissures aren’t my row to hoe, I’ve got my own domestic dramas to tend to—so please just pass me that jay, okay? Which she does, which I dooby do correctly the first time around this time, which presently nicely negates all of this all-of-a-sudden logic. Fuzzy-headed and nicely thoroughly fuddled once again, look at that: snow. It was there the entire time we were talking and I hadn’t noticed. Marijuana makes you notice things. I hadn’t noticed that before.
    â€œWhat are you … now?” The girl has taken back the spliff and is as obviously spaced as I am.
    â€œExactly,” I answer.
    â€œNo, I mean, what … what are you writing now? A new novel?”
    â€œNo, not a novel.” The girl waits, isn’t going to let it go, I can tell. “A music book. A book about music.”
    â€œWhat—like your personal Top Ten or something?”
    I give her as brief a brief as possible, to which she responds, “Awesome,” sounding for the first time like an actual teenager. She pulls her iPod out of the pouch of her hoodie and immediately begins thumbing it. “You’ve got to check this out, it’s total dope. Do you know Maps? They’re from the UK. They’re kind of like Spiritualized and Galaxie 500 but so much better.” She finds what she’s looking for and hands me the iPod. “Check this out.”
    I stand up. “I better not. It’s getting cold.”
    â€œNow you’re suddenly cold?”
    I’m high enough, I almost tell her the truth. That just like you should never mix alcohol and night-time swimming, I never mingle a good buzz with bad music. Or even music I don’t know for sure is good. And certainly not music recommended, no matter how heartily, by a transplanted teenager from Oakville. “I’m a grown-up, remember? I’m just being a responsible adult.”
    â€œWhatever,” the girl says, jamming her iPod back into her pouch and pulling on her hood and walking away from the swing set.
    â€œThanks for the lesson,” I call out after her.
    Still walking, and without bothering to turn around, the girl raises a statuary hand goodbye until I finally make out that she’s not, has been giving me the finger the entire time.
    I don’t know why, but even when I’m in the house, even later when I’m in bed, I’m smiling.
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    Chapter Three
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    It’s not the girl’s fault. Unless you were born here, why else would you care? Although care isn’t quite the right word. Obsess —that’s closer—although even that implies some sort of conscious act of concern when what it really comes down to is not being able to forget.
    It’s the fields—still rich and alive and giving. Corn, beans, squash, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, potatoes: every spring planted and every summer harvested and always on local dinner tables all year long regardless of what the newspapers or the television insist is this season’s big business boom or bust. Bank loans and broken tractors and bad weather, but still the land. And sundown of an August evening—the hot, humid air finally cooling, the shadows of the tall corn stalks stretching, the exhausting day’s work almost over—the peace of the land, too, the sun-burnt earth’s long, soft exhale.
    It’s the town. Battered, yes—economic winds blowing in from who knows where or why knocking down factory walls and boarding up storefronts and pushing people out of their homes—but not broken. The barber where your father and then you got your hair cut. The grocery store that’s still there, where it’s always been. The school that seemed so big when you were young but so small now that you’re not. The bar where everyone buys their first beer. The church where you learned what and what not to