The Third Hill North of Town

by Noah Bly

  Julianna kicked the floorboards again and plugged her ears. “Stop it, Michael!” she demanded. “Stop it right now!”

  Ben adored Julianna’s laugh, too. Of course, he adored everything about Julianna Larson, but her laughter was probably the thing he adored the most. He spent a lot of his time trying to get her going like this, but her brothers were the only ones who could really set her off. She smiled and chuckled frequently with everybody else, but Michael and Seth knew how to tickle her just right.

  I wish she thought I was as funny as them, Ben thought.

  Julianna didn’t know it, but Ben had been in love with her for years. He knew she didn’t feel the same way about him, though, nor did she have an inkling about his feelings for her. And she never would, if Ben could help it. There was no point to her knowing, after all, because even if she did feel the same way, they didn’t live in a world where they’d ever be allowed to act on those feelings. Still, he couldn’t escape the fierce ache in his chest he experienced whenever he was with her, nor keep from desperately wishing he could make her laugh just like this, all by himself.

  He stared at her quaking back and made himself guffaw along with Michael and Seth. It really wasn’t all that hard to do; she looked funny as hell sprawled out in the hay and flailing her arms and legs around as if she were being eaten alive by mosquitos.

  She gets prettier every day, he thought. He turned his head and blinked away unwanted tears before realizing it didn’t matter if anybody saw. They were all crying, and nobody would think twice about it.

  Seth Larson had a flash of insight as he watched Julianna’s antics in the hay. He realized he’d been worried about Julianna growing up because he was afraid she’d want to leave home once she was no longer a child. It was Seth’s biggest nightmare: the people he loved the most, leaving him forever. Many of his friends had abandoned Pawnee, moving to the city and never coming back, even for a visit. He could handle infidelity like this from his friends, but not from his family. Michael talked about leaving now and then, but Seth didn’t truly believe his brother would go. Michael loved their farm, and Pawnee, as much as Seth did. He might move away for a year or two on a whim, but Seth had slowly come to trust that Michael would always want to come home eventually. It was Julianna, though, that he’d been anxious about. With her mind and insatiable curiosity, the more grown-up she got the more it seemed there was nothing for her in a town like Pawnee.

  But she really didn’t want to go anywhere else. He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t seen it before, yet in that moment it was as plain to him as the weathered walls of the barn, or the strand of hay in Michael’s short blond hair. Julianna was happier than any of them, right where she was.

  “I hope you’re pleased with yourself, Michael,” Julianna moaned, finally managing to sit up again. Her dress was wrinkled and twisted and her bruised face was wet with perspiration and tears. “I think I ruptured something in my stomach.”

  The four of them eventually quieted. The sun sank from sight as they talked about this and that, and a quarter moon rose overhead, dim and lonely. As the western horizon faded to black the stars came out, one after another. Michael—with one eye glued to the telescope and the other closed—traced the major constellations with his finger for the others to follow: Scorpius and Libra, Virgo and Hercules, the Corona Borealis and Boötes. He quizzed Julianna on the brightest stars visible from the south side of the barn; she was able to identify Spica and Antares, but she forgot about Arcturus. Michael, predictably, started yawning long before anybody else began to get sleepy. He retired to the hay pile, and was soon snoring lightly. It was only ten thirty or so, but he’d been up since before dawn and couldn’t keep his eyes open another second.

  Seth lasted another hour or so before he began nodding off, too. The only light in the barn was from the moon and the stars as he leaned down and shook Michael’s shoulder.

  “Hey,” he said. “Time for bed.”

  Seth was wearing a sleeveless white undershirt and it was the only thing about him Julianna and Ben could make out clearly; his bare arms, much darker in contrast, were almost invisible. He pulled Michael to his feet and brushed him off. Michael grumbled sleepily at him as he did this, but all Seth said was, “You’re a mess, Mikey. You’re gonna be crawling with bug bites.”

  They called good night to Julianna and Ben and made their way down the ladder, Seth leading the way. Julianna listened for their voices after they reached the ground but if they spoke she couldn’t hear them; Michael was basically asleep on his feet, anyway, and Seth wasn’t much of a talker when he was tired.

  “I guess I should be gettin’ home, too,” Ben said. “Momma told me not to be too late tonight.”

  Julianna nodded in the darkness. She wasn’t sleepy yet and would have enjoyed talking to Ben a while longer, but she didn’t argue with him because she knew it was likely he was already in trouble with his folks for being out so late. He used to stay overnight all the time, sharing a bed with Michael, but ever since he’d gotten big enough to help his father run the farm, Silas and Mary Taylor had kept a much tighter leash on their only child.

  “Be careful walking home,” she said. “I’d give you a ride, but Daddy doesn’t want me driving at night by myself yet.”

  “He’s lettin’ you drive in the day?” Ben asked. He sounded jealous. “Since when?”

  “I drove home from church just this morning,” Julianna said proudly.

  Ben was usually in church but one of his father’s calves had gone missing that morning and it had taken Ben most of the morning to find it.

  Ben’s teeth glinted a little in the starlight as he grinned. “You run over anything?”

  Julianna smiled back. “Of course not. Seth and Michael screamed like fools all the way home, though, pretending I was going to get us all killed.”

  Ben chuckled and tried to think of something else to say. He wanted to stay and talk forever, now that it was just the two of them, but he knew if he didn’t get home right away he’d catch living hell from his folks.

  I wish I could kiss her good night, he thought.

  “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be workin’ with my dad most of the day, but I’ll come find you after supper?”

  She nodded again and reached out to touch his shoulder. “That’ll be wonderful. Momma said she wanted to make ice cream tomorrow afternoon. I’ll save you a bowl.”

  He lingered for another moment after she dropped her hand. The warmth of her fingers on his naked skin seemed to have immobilized him. He knew she didn’t think a thing of it, of course; she was affectionate by nature and often touched him in passing, taking his arm when they’d go for walks and even hugging him now and again when he did something she liked.

  “Did you fall asleep, Ben Taylor?” Her voice, soft and amused, brought him back to himself.

  He was grateful she couldn’t see him blushing. “Just about,” he answered, faking a yawn. “G’night, Julianna.”

  Julianna told him good night and watched him make his way across the loft to the ladder. His skin was so black he was almost impossible to see; she called out for him to be careful going down the ladder, and wondered to herself why he’d been acting so strange lately. She turned to face the stars once more, resolving to ask him the next day if something was bothering him.

  The night sky was so vast and beautiful it made her shiver in spite of the heat. She was glad Michael had shown her how to recognize certain constellations and individual stars, but it also seemed pointless to her, in a way. The stars were simply the stars, ageless and voiceless, and forever out of reach. What was the use in naming things so far beyond anybody’s understanding?

  “Julianna!”

  She jumped and banged her knee against the telescope’s stand, nearly knocking it over. The whisper had come from the other side of the barn, down by the main door. It was obviously Ben, and she opened her mouth to reprimand him for giving her such a fright.

  “Juli
anna!” Ben hissed again. “Get down here fast, and be quiet!”

  She didn’t know why, but goose pimples rose on her arms and neck. She ran across the loft as quickly as she dared and stared down at Ben, who was crouched at the base of the ladder.

  “What is it?” she whispered back.

  He waved his arms frantically for her to come down. “Rufus Tarwater’s right outside your house!”

  Chapter 10

  When Julianna Dapper saw the Welcome to Mullwein, Iowa sign on Highway 69, she knew the long journey was nearly over.

  “Look, Ben!” she cried. She turned to face Elijah, who was sitting in the backseat of the Beetle, daydreaming, and on impulse she reached between the seats and clasped one of his sweating hands in her own. “We’ll be home in time for dinner!”

  For want of a better plan, Elijah and Jon had allowed Julianna to guide them that day. She’d led them across Indiana and Illinois with no apparent interest in the back roads they traveled, but as soon as they crossed the Mississippi River into southern Iowa she’d begun to perk up, telling Jon, who was driving, to head straight west on Highway 2 “for a hundred and fifty miles.” Both of the boys had been startled by her specificity, and when they came to Highway 69, almost exactly one hundred and fifty miles later, she turned them southwest toward Missouri, and informed them they were almost home.

  Elijah sat up and looked around. There was a cattle lot and sale barn to the right of the asphalt highway, and a number of modest, unremarkable houses with well-tended green lawns on the left, but he saw nothing to explain Julianna’s elation. To him, it looked exactly the same as every other small Midwest town they’d driven through that day. Jon caught his eyes in the rearview mirror and shrugged, unimpressed, as well. Elijah stared down in bafflement at Julianna’s fingers in his own.

  A mere twenty-four hours earlier he would never have allowed someone to hold his hand as she was doing, but for some reason he didn’t really seem to mind such gestures from Julianna. To tell the truth he kind of liked the steadiness of her touch; there was something oddly comforting in it, in spite of the fact she was certifiably insane. Besides, he could see how happy she was, and he saw no reason to dampen her mood by pulling away from her.

  “So is this where you grew up?” he asked, hiding his skepticism about her claims of being almost “home.”

  Julianna squeezed his hand. “For goodness sake, Ben,” she chided, laughing. “You’ve been in Mullwein as often as I have. You know full well it’s still another thirteen miles to Pawnee.” She released him with another squeeze and turned to face Jon. “You’re welcome to join us for dinner, Jon. Ben almost always eats with us on Sundays, and Momma will have made enough food to feed an army.”

  She felt somewhat uneasy making such an offer, considering the lingering doubts she had about Jon’s character. Her parents certainly wouldn’t approve of her bringing a strange boy home without asking them first, and once they heard about his breaking the padlock at the Millers’ Dairy Farm, they’d likely forbid her from having anything further to do with him. Then again, she reminded herself, if Jon hadn’t given them a ride in his car she and Ben never would have made it home that day. Surely her parents wouldn’t be too upset with her for at least offering to thank him with a nice meal.

  It was a little past five o’clock on Sunday afternoon, and the temperature was in the nineties. The windows on the Beetle were open but the breeze blowing through them was hot and muggy, and the sunlight reflecting off the hood of the cramped little automobile was blinding. They had been driving ever since fleeing Sal Cavetti’s gas station, with only three short breaks from the heat-softened, blacktop highways of the rural Midwest. They had stopped twice to refill the car and use the bathroom, and once again for a quick lunch at a drive-in restaurant in Illinois, where Jon had bought an obscene amount of food for them. Jon and Elijah wolfed down four cheeseburgers each and several bags of French fries, and Julianna had eaten nearly as much as the boys. They had all been ravenous because Julianna had insisted on tossing out the leftovers from Bebe Stockton’s refrigerator, leery of spoilage.

  Their route for the day had miraculously skirted all large cities, and with the exception of a heart-stopping few minutes near the Iowa border—where a state trooper had followed them for two or three miles before veering off again—they had managed to stay clear of the law, as well. It was almost as if Julianna were intentionally taking precautions to avoid the police, but Elijah couldn’t make himself believe their good fortune had anything to do with a conscious strategy on Julianna’s part. She seemed to be relying on instinct, like a Capistrano swallow or a homing pigeon. The only downside to her choice of roads was that they hadn’t been able to find a clothing store open for business, so they were all dressed as they had been since early that morning: Julianna in her green dinner dress (looking none too fresh), Jon in his khaki shorts, and Elijah in jeans and Jon’s blue T-shirt.

  Elijah didn’t really know who he was anymore. Being at ease with holding Julianna’s hand was out of character enough for him, but wearing someone else’s shirt made him feel like an entirely different person. He was tempted to take it off again for the thousandth time that day—it had never really dried from the hand-washing Jon had given it earlier and was now soaked through with his own sweat, as well—yet he couldn’t seem to make himself do it. He knew it was silly, but he didn’t want Jon to think he was ungrateful.

  Jon had offered the T-shirt to him that morning when they’d returned to Sal Cavetti’s gas station from their frantic run down the alley, and Elijah had put it on immediately, without hesitation, even though he’d never before worn anyone’s clothes but his own, not once in his entire life. He wasn’t sure why he’d suddenly been okay with wearing something of Jon’s, but he knew it had to do with the resigned, hopeless look on the older boy’s face when he had come back in answer to Elijah’s cry in the alley. That look had haunted Elijah, and still did, because it was obvious Jon would have had a much better chance of survival on his own. His friend’s sacrifice moved Elijah deeply, and on impulse he had set aside all his habitual reticence and pulled the newly washed, wet shirt over his head, hoping Jon would somehow understand that to do so was not something he did lightly.

  Elijah had never been very good at expressing himself when things came too near his heart. He accepted hugs and kisses from his parents, but he could rarely respond in kind because emotional displays of all sorts made him squirm. Saying “I love you” was even harder for him, and he was utterly incapable of putting himself through that kind of fumble-tongued, red-faced ordeal more than once or twice a year, even though Mary or Samuel said it to him almost every day. Affection was a hole in the earth, waiting to swallow him up if he didn’t watch his step, and as far as he was concerned it was the better part of wisdom to stay as far away as possible from the edges of such an awful chasm. He was willing to venture near it now and then to make his parents or grandparents feel good, but he’d formed no real attachments to anybody outside his family, mostly because in his view it wasn’t worth the agony of one day being called upon to share his feelings.

  Whether he liked it or not, however, it seemed that both Jon and Julianna had somehow maneuvered him perilously close to the abyss. He didn’t know how this was possible, but as he stared at the back of their heads he found his heart hurting in the same way it sometimes did when his mother sang to herself while she was cooking, or when his dad sat beside him on the porch at dusk and talked to him about his day. He had never thought it possible to care so much for people he barely knew, yet he found himself wishing he were the type of person who could lean forward and touch the shoulders of these near strangers, for no other reason than because it seemed like the right thing to do.

  I’m going crazy, he told himself. Julianna got her crazy germs on me or something and turned my brain into mashed potatoes.

  “Turn south at the bottom of this hill,” Julianna instructed Jon, breaking into Elijah’s thoughts as they passed a smal
l high school gymnasium and crossed over a rough set of railroad tracks. She glanced at Elijah. “Can you believe how much roadwork they’ve done since we were here last, Ben? I barely recognize this town anymore.”

  Elijah sighed and helped himself to a bottle of Pepsi from a six-pack they’d gotten at the last gas station, using Jon’s trick with the seatbelt latch to remove the bottle cap. He took a long drink and stared moodily out the window at a Reorganized Latter Day Saints church on the top of a hill to the west as Jon obeyed Julianna’s orders, following the highway as it curved left past a boarded-up Dairy Queen. Jon half turned to ask Elijah for a sip of his Pepsi, but he only got as far as “Can I have . . .” before his tongue failed him.

  A sheriff’s car had just whipped onto the road behind them, lights flashing.

  Jon gasped in horror and accidentally let go of the wheel as the siren on the sheriff’s car began to wail. The Volkswagen swerved wildly for a second until Julianna grabbed it with a startled cry and fought to regain control of the vehicle.

  “Jon, look out!” Elijah screamed, losing his balance and tumbling over in the backseat just as he glimpsed something through the windshield that made him believe the world was coming to an end.

  Jon spun around with what felt like nightmarish slowness. He barely had time to register what Elijah was screaming about before he had to stomp on the brakes and bring the little Beetle screeching to a halt. He’d forgotten to step on the clutch, too, so the engine died. He seized the ignition key to restart it, but his hand fell away again at once, dropping lifelessly at his side.

  A second police car had rocketed out of an alley onto the road in front of them and was completely blocking the highway.

  When Jon, Elijah, and Julianna had fled Sal Cavetti’s gas station in Indiana that morning, the unstrung poet had not even seen them leave because he was still squatting on the floor behind the counter with his eyes closed, moaning to the empty room. After he heard the Beetle pull away from the gas pump, it took him ten full minutes to work up the nerve to rise and peer out the door, and then another soul-searching hour and a half before he was ready to notify the Indiana State Patrol about his harrowing brush with death. He had been afraid Elijah and Jon would return to murder him if they found he had been the one to finger them, but his hardy sense of civic duty—not to mention the five-thousand-dollar reward mentioned on the radio—at last compelled him to make the call, fortified by several reassuring bites of the pot brownie in his pocket, left over from breakfast.