Everybody wanted to tell him. The van owner wanted to tell him. The bakery woman wanted to tell him. Mrs. Prochazka wanted to tell him so badly she had both hands up. Officer Tibbetts held up his own hand, and they all stopped.
"Not you folks," he said. "Them."
Dennis opened his mouth. I knew exactly what he was going to say, because I knew Dennis. He was going to say, I hit him. He was going to say it plainly and completely and without one word of excuse, because Dennis's father had raised six children on the principle that a man who did a thing said he did it. And I knew, standing there on the gravel, that if Dennis said it to a police officer in front of a dozen witnesses, with the Corvette sitting right there with its door cracked open like an egg, something would happen to his life that could not be undone.
Win spoke first.
"I slipped," Win said.
Everybody looked at him.
He took the towel down from his face. The eye was half closed now, and the skin around it had gone the color of a plum. He got up, carefully, using the Corvette's fender, and he stood there in his white polo shirt with gravel stuck to the back of it, and he said, "I got out of the car and I slipped on the wet gravel. I hit the door with my elbow. I hit my face on the mirror."
The Corvette's driver's side mirror was perfectly intact. Officer Tibbetts looked at it. Then he looked at Win.
"That's what happened," Win said.
"Son," said Officer Tibbetts, "I've got about eleven people here who look like they're going to tell me something different."
"They can tell you whatever they want." Win's voice was steady. It was almost bored. It was the voice I would learn, later that summer, that he used when he was most scared, the voice he had learned from his father's showroom. "It's my face and it's my car. I'm not making any complaint. I slipped."
Officer Tibbetts looked at him for a long moment. Then he turned to Dennis. "That right?"
Dennis said, "No, sir." Because of course he did. "I hit him."
"Dennis," I said.
"I hit him," Dennis said again. His voice cracked a little at the end. "He said some stuff and I hit him. He didn't slip."
There was a very long silence. Somewhere on Middle Avenue a car went by with its windows down playing Bon Jovi.