Hopfrog leaned against the hood of his bug and yawned. "Missy's always been late, man."
Something about the way Hopfrog said that, Missy's always been late, man, seemed too familiar. Sure, Hop had known her since birth, practically, just like Joe, but he'd also known that Hopfrog looked at Melissa differently these days, not like a buddy, but like a woman. Joe didn't really like that. Then, he thought: Shit, am I gonna be one of those hothead rednecks who's always getting jealous 'cause some guy is after his woman? No way. "Yeah, I know, man," Joe said, ever the chameleon. "Hope your wheels don't break down like they did at Christmas."
"Look, dude, this bug is in primo condition."
"I'd have worked on it free down at the shop," Joe said. Sometimes he couldn't believe that Hopfrog had changed so radically since the vanishing of Patty Glass when they were still kids. After that, Hopfrog was never quite the same old Hop. He'd gotten into the drugs and partying too much and did strange things like running cross-country wearing purple granny glasses, or making his own special brand of brownies, to be distributed at lunch to the teachers' table—as it turned out, they weren't hash brownies at all, but had Ex-Lax laced through the dark frosting.
"I got some champagne in the back," Hopfrog said, pointing to the small bag in the back corner of the bug. Beside it was a pizza box from Luigi's. Hopfrog had thought of everything. He had been pretty much a leader before adolescence hit, and now, he was the outsider; but he still had the damned Boy Scout thing down. He was always prepared.
"Hey," Hopfrog said, holding a finger up into the air. "Feel that?"
Joe stood still, as if he were about to miss something.
"No wind," Hopfrog said. "That means a storm. Always a wind from the hills, unless we got a front moving in. You know, the first of one of those summer storms. Lightning, thunder, the nature thing. We'll get rained out over in the Malabars. Probably have to spend the night in Stone Valley. So, do I get to sleep between you, or at the foot of the bed?"
Joe was taken aback. He was not the kind of young man to understand the difference between this kind of joke and a real request. It wasn't because he was dense. It was because he had spent the majority of his formative years reading and writing stories that never seemed to go anywhere, working in his dad's gas station and hoping against hope to get out of Colony before he went crazy. He didn't like the idea of anyone, even a friend, joking about Melissa like that.
Hopfrog must've read his face. "Aw, come on, Joey, sit on it and rotate, it's only a little wedding humor. God, you either hang out with your loony old man sniffing high octane or you're down weeping over Russian lit, as if some dead guy like Tolstoy were sitting right next to you."
"Gee, Hop, you sure know how to sum a guy's life up, don't you?"
"Just seems you've made a lot of stupid mistakes in your life, you know? Like, for instance, dropping out of school when you were practically a fucking honors student and putting up with your old man making you do the dipstick thing and even in third grade accepting that dare to jump the bridge—Jesus, I can't think of a time since your birth when you didn't see the wrong thing to do and head in exactly that direction, Joey."
"Hop," Joe said.
"Yeah?"
"Shut up."
"Oh. Okay."
"If you're trying to tell me what I think you're trying to tell me, butt out. I've known Melissa and I would get married since we were kids. You're not just the best man, you're the only man. All I want from you is a ride over the hills. If there's a storm, I'll pay for your motel room. If there isn't, I'll buy you lunch. Try and remember that you're a friend and not my second conscience, okay?"
Hopfrog nodded and from the look on his face, probably wished he was drinking that champagne in the sack right that very instant.
Joe was tense.
Hopfrog was getting tense, too. So tense, he drew a Camel from his rolled up sleeve, lit it, inhaled deeply and exhaled a gray cloud of smoke.
It was going to be a tense day.
And it didn't get any better when Melissa Welles finally showed up.
10
"I'm not sure this is the right thing," she said.
Eight little words.
The eight most terrifying words in the language when you're sure that you're doing the right thing and have been depending on her to feel the same.
She looked great. In Hopfrog's words, she was her "kick-assiest," a compliment as far as he was concerned, an obscenity to the more conservative element that pervaded the town.
To Joe, she looked more beautiful than he had ever thought at the very moment she said those disheartening words.
He felt his face go red. It had been too good to be true, all of it, from the time they'd met in fourth grade and he'd had a crush on her but had kept his distance, to the time in sixth grade when he gave her flowers and she kissed him; and when Patty Glass had run away or been kidnapped or had fallen down a well or whatever, she had cried, and he had held her, the first time he'd ever comforted someone else; or when she told him she loved him, in tenth grade; said she'd marry him, in eleventh.
And now, "I'm not sure this is the right thing."
She wore her graduation gown. She'd just come running from the ceremony. Her hands were tucked into the slits of the dark gown; she only put her hands in her pockets when she had something to confess. She didn't even have her overnight bag with her.
She wasn't going to marry him.
He could see that.
She started speaking, but he didn't hear anything. He was beneath some current in the river. He was beyond all sound. All he could think of was that there was nothing left to live for. There was nothing worth having, or wanting.
Then she giggled. "Joe. Joey, come on. It's a joke. I love you, I'm all ready." From beneath her gown she withdrew her small red overnight case.
"Oh, my God," he sighed, and leaned forward, color coming back into his face, feeling the warmth of blood and sunlight and love again. He took her in his arms and kissed her lips and cheek and forehead. "I love you, too, oh, babe, I don't love your jokes, but I love you."
"Never could take a joke," Hopfrog said, slapping him on the back, spitting the butt of his cigarette on the street, "Let's make like shit and hit the trail before the posse comes after us."
11
They drove to the town limit and beyond, Hopfrog driving, Melissa and Joe together in the backseat. A storm was clearly coming down now from the Malabar Hills and they were almost at the Paramount Bridge, leaving the area, when Hopfrog, who was driving, said, "Looky there, boys and girls, a genuine wreckage of a car." He pointed off to the side of the road.
A Mercury Cougar lay on its side in the gully.
"There's Gump." Hopfrog nodded towards Joe's cousin Dale Chambers. "Wanna say howdy?" The officer barely noticed them as they drove slowly by. The wreck was still smoking. Dale, known by most as Gump because of a cartoon deputy on TV who looked just like him, was scratching his head. Voices came over the policeman's radio in his black-and-white Ford Torino.
"I wonder what happened," Melissa said and leaned against Joe. Her breath was sweet. She was chewing Juicy Fruit gum. She smelled like Charlie!, a vial of which she always kept in her purse. Didn't mix well with his British Sterling, but what the hell. He liked her smell. "You think anyone's hurt?"
Joe leaned forward, sticking his face out Hopfrog's window. "Hey, Dale!"
Dale Chambers turned away from the wreck. He recognized Joe, waved, and then waved them on. But he still had a puzzled look on his Gump face. Joe noticed that there was nobody in the car—as if someone had just wandered off, dazed and disoriented, from the wreck.
"Must be okay," Joe said, relaxing again into the backseat. He entwined his legs with Melissa's and thought it was going to be the happiest day of his life.
Hopfrog put his foot down on the gas and shifted gears. The VW hummed and growled to life again.
They drove onto the Paramount Bridge, but when they got to the middle of the brid
ge, the bug stalled.
Joe whispered in Melissa's ear, "Now, what else could go wrong?"
Rain was beginning to fall.
It was to be the first storm of summer.
Lightning played blue and white across the far hills.
There was a nice smell of honeysuckle in the air, though. Folks in the hills always said that honeysuckle was like a protection, that it meant good luck. Joe liked smelling it now, mixed with that fresh smell of new rain.
Up ahead, a truck was barreling down the road, directly towards them.
"Damn car!" Hopfrog said, bearing down on the stick shift. The VW kept stalling out.
Something was funny about Hopfrog's face, something Joe couldn't pinpoint.
Joe stayed calm. Nothing bad was going to happen. The truck would stop at the other end of the bridge. He and Melissa would be married by three in Stone Valley. Hopfrog would get drunk on his own champagne and have to sleep in a cot in their room at a motel. He and Melissa would be married and happiness would be starting its slow roll towards them.
Right now, only the truck seemed to be rolling towards them and it was harder to stay calm by the second.
They only had seconds, after all.
Melissa whispered, "Why isn't that truck slowing down?"
Hopfrog seemed to be looking, not at the truck or the clutch, but at something in the sky and his mouth formed a small o as if he had never seen the sky before.
Something else whispered,
What do you want the most?
Think real hard, Joe.
But keep it a secret. Keep it to yourself.
'Cause it's the one thing I'm gonna make sure you never get.
12
"Joe?"
He opened his eyes.
He was no longer a teenager.
He was in the Buick Skylark with his wife and kids.
His daughter, Hillary, was beginning to sing the "I love you" song from Barney. It reminded him for a second of Old Man Feely, because the tune was "This Old Man He Plays One."
It was no longer 1978.
Damn it. Or Thank the Powers That Be, one of the two.
"Joe? You okay?" his wife asked.
He glanced at her and worked up a smile. He was sweating. "We shouldn't've come back," he told her. "I shouldn't've, anyway."
She reached up and felt his forehead. "A little fever."
"Jenny," he said, "this is where it happened."
She drew her hand back. "We could've taken the new highway down. Why this way?"
"I wanted to see it again. To see if it's changed any. It hasn't. All these years and they haven't put a better road or bridge through this side."
"You want me to drive?" she asked.
"No, I'll be fine." He started the car up again.
This time, he crossed the bridge safely.
CHAPTER THREE
THE LIFE OF A BOY
The worst things always happen in broad daylight.
Billy Hoskins actually thought this as he leapt off the front porch of his house over on Third Street. The worst things to a boy of nine tend to be considered normal life to the grown-ups around him: arguments, scowls, mocking laughter, scolding, simple obscenities under the breath. His mother started the fights—at least, that's how Billy saw it. His father would come home at lunchtime for a peaceful meal and Billy's mother would start in. The fights were always about nothing, at least as far as Billy could tell. The dishwasher was broken, or the kitchen needed wallpapering, or Billy's dad had smiled at the waitress out at Hojo's the night before, or something silly. Billy didn't think he was going to get married when he grew up because wives seemed like such a bother. So, even though he'd been just about finished with his tuna sandwich and he had wanted to have one of the Chips Ahoy cookies that invited him from their package, open on the table where his mom had been clawing at them in her desperation to fill her mouth in order to keep in all the bad things she was about to spew, Billy shoved back from the table—almost knocking his chair over—as soon as his mom started in on how bad the heat had been the past summer and how dare his father keep her in the dark ages without an air conditioner. "There's sales down at Crawford's. We can get a kitchen unit and a bedroom unit, three hundred dollars. That's all."
"It's fucking November," his father said. "We're gonna have snow any day and you're gonna whine about that? Christ Almighty Goddamn it, woman. And why the hell's Billy home today? He should be in school, shouldn't he?"
"He had a fever this morning," his mother said, almost weakly. This wasn't entirely true, Billy knew. He had missed a lot of school this fall. His mother had slept in again, with that wine smell all around her, and he had just stayed in bed hoping the world would go away and both his parents would forget he even existed.
But then, around ten thirty, she'd gotten up and he'd given his line about not feeling well. She'd put her frosty hand on his forehead and cried out, "Oh, my God, baby, you're burning up!" This seemed to happen whenever she'd been into the wine that she called her "Beau-jolly."
Billy stepped back from the table. They wouldn't even notice him as he took off, would they? They'd just sit there and bicker about things. At night they were too tired to argue, but in the middle of the day, it was always a fine time.
It was the worst thing, as far as he was concerned, and he was sick of it. He grabbed his hooded sweatshirt and hurriedly tugged it over his head. He felt as if he were dodging bullets whenever his parents fought. It was what his cousin Alec called a DMZ, which meant something about a zone, like the part of town where there was a sign that read: Not zoned for horses. Something like that. He thought DMZ might stand for Demon Mother Zone, which pretty much summed it up for him.
The shouting continued.
"Well, I know you, I know you won't buy me an air conditioner come June and they'll cost more then, too."
"Jesus, we might have to send Billy to an orthodontist in another year and spend a couple thousand on his teeth—he inherited them from your side of the family—and you want to buy an air conditioner in fucking November!"
"He don't need braces, not as bad as I need things around this house." His mother began weeping.
But, by that time, Billy was leaping off the porch and was off and running up the street, not really thinking about where he was going, but just wanting to run as far away as he could from them, from that house too. It was a bad house. They had moved into it two years before, from their little apartment above the grocery store on Main Street. Ever since they'd gotten into that house, it had all gone as sour as milk in the sun. Billy hated the house. He wished somebody would torch it or something.
He stopped running when he reached the end of Third. It hit a dead end and Lone Duck Road. If he went to the left, he'd end up in town and would get in trouble for going so far. If he went right for about a mile, he'd end up in farmland, if he made it that far (and he never had, on any of his runs).
Straight ahead were Old Man Feely's apple orchards, all sweet and rotting with unpicked apples since the Old Man had gotten sick. All the kids went through there as a shortcut to school. Billy never had, because he wasn't old enough.
But today, he was going to.
He would pick some apples that would be good enough to eat and run away. Some nice person might give him a ride—if you cut through Feely's property, and got across the creek, you could make it to the highway. He had heard about a boy who was about fourteen who had made it out there and had gotten a ride with a trucker. The boy made it all the way to Charleston before he was brought back home. Billy's uncle was a trucker and was really nice. Maybe a trucker like that would pick him up and take him on his route with him. Then Billy would get away for a while and maybe his folks would feel sad that he was gone (he imagined his mother crying all over herself, and his father shedding a little pearl of a tear, wondering what they'd done to drive their precious child away. It made Billy smile to think of it). Then, after he'd had his adventure, Billy would show up again and tell them t
hat everything was going to be all right. "You learned your lesson," he'd tell them, just like his teacher Miss Gordon had told him so many times when he'd had his temper tantrums in school and she'd shut him in the little closet near the janitor's room. "You learned your lesson. Now you can come back and be a good boy again."
Being a good boy was important to Billy, but it was hard to do with all that yelling at home.
He ran up the thin dirt path that went between the scraggly apple trees. Exhausted, he slowed down and went in search of apples. He picked one up that was all shiny on one side, but when he turned it over, it was wormy and brown-rotted on the side that had rested in the grass. He found three or four more like this. He knew he had to have some apples or food of some kind for his journey—he should've grabbed the Chips Ahoy bag off the glass table in the kitchen before he'd run off. Then, he saw a few good apples, still on the tree, at the far end of the orchard. He walked that way and found more. He stuffed them into the kangaroo pouch of his sweatshirt. He got so many good ones that he had to put some into the back of his hood. You could never have too many apples for a journey like this.
He was getting tired and it seemed colder. If only he'd brought his Halloween candy. He'd be better off with candy since it came in wrappers and he could always sell it for money. He had counted twelve mini-Snickers bars in his sack from the night before and at least fifteen Baby Ruth bars (far too much candy corn, and since it was unwrapped and loose, it would be difficult to sell, he was sure). Maybe, he thought, I should run back to my room and get it. But it was a DMZ now. There was no turning back.
What was the use of dreaming about candy?
He'd never see it again, anyway. He'd never see his cat, Louisianne, either. He was positive now that he would never go home again. Thinking of how sad they'd all be without him, he wanted to cry, but his eyes wouldn't water up.
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