My wife once asked about it and I told her a lie before I was even aware I
meant to do so.
When I was done with the rag, I threw it away. It was filthy.
I got out a dozen eggs and scrambled six of them together. When they were
semi-solid in the pan, I added a side dish of crushed pineapple and half a quart of milk.
I was just sitting down to eat when my mother came in, her grey hair tied in a knot
behind her head.
She was wearing a faded pink bathrobe and smoking a Camel.
‘Gordon, where have you been?’
‘Camping,’ I said, and began to eat ‘We started off in Vern’s field and then
went up the Brickyard Hill. Vern’s mom said she would call you. Didn’t she?’
‘She probably talked to your father,’ she said, and glided past me to the sink.
She looked like a pink ghost. The fluorescent bars were less than kind to her face;
they made her complexion look almost yellow. She sighed… almost sobbed. ‘I miss
Dennis most in the mornings,’ she said. ‘I always look in his room and it’s always
empty, Gordon. Always.’
‘Yeah, that’s a bitch,’ I said.
‘He always slept with his window open and the blankets… Gordon? Did you
say something?’
‘Nothing important, Mom.’
‘… and the blankets pulled up to his chin,’ she finished Then she just stared out
the window, her back to me. I went on eating. I was trembling all over.
31
The story never did get out
Oh, I don’t mean that Ray Brower’s body was never found; it was. But neither our
gang nor their gang got the credit In the end, Ace must have decided that an
anonymous phonecall was the safest course, because that’s how the location of the
corpse was reported. What I mean was that none of our parents ever found out what
we’d been up to that Labour Day weekend.
Chris’s dad was still drinking, just as Chris had said he would be. His mom
had gone off to Lewiston to stay with her sister, the way she almost always did when
Mr Chambers was on a bender. She went and left Eyeball in charge of the younger
kids. Eyeball had fulfilled his responsibility by going off with Ace and his buddies,
leaving nine-year-old Sheldon, five-year-old Emery, and two-year-old Deborah to
sink or swim on their own. Teddy’s mom got worried the second night and called
Vern’s mom. Vern’s mom, who was also never going to do the gameshow circuit, said we were still out in Vern’s tent. She knew because she could look right out the kitchen window and see a light on in there. Teddy’s mom said she sure hoped no one was
smoking cigarettes in there and Vern’s mom said it looked like a flashlight to her, and besides, she was sure that none of Vern’s or Billy’s friends smoked.
My dad asked me some vague questions, looked mildly troubled at my evasive
answers, said we’d go fishing together sometime, and that was the end of it. If the
parents had gotten together in the week or two afterwards, everything would have
fallen down… but they never did.
Milo Pressman never spoke up, either. My guess is that he thought twice about
it being our word against his, and how we would all swear that he sicced Chopper on
me. So the story never came out–but that wasn’t the end of it.
32
One day near the end of the month, while I was walking some from school, a black
1952 Ford cut into the curb in front of me. There was no mistaking that car. Gangster
whitewalls and spinner hubcaps, highrise chrome bumpers. and lucite deathknob with
a rose embedded in it clamped to the steering wheel. Painted on the back deck was a
deuce and a one-eyed jack. Beneath them, in Roman Gothic script, were the words
WILD CARD.
The doors flew open; Ace Merrill and Fuzzy Brackowicz stepped out ‘Cheap
hood, right?’ Ace said, smiling his gentle smile ‘My mother loves the way I do it to her, right?’
‘We’re gonna rack you, baby,’ Fuzzy said.