Vapors: The Essential G. Wayne Miller Fiction Vol. 2

by G. Wayne Miller

  Despite the talking-to Dad had given me, that countryside put me in good spirits going over Morton’s Hill. Me and Sue had a pretty good time, too, playing in the overgrown lot across the street from her trailer park. We threw a Frisbee a while, and then I beat her three times straight at badminton, and then, when the sun was really starting to scorch, her mother served us lemonades in tall glasses filled with ice and topped off with confectioners’ sugar and a fresh-picked strawberry. We sat in the shade, drinking our drinks, and we talked another half hour about Greg Jones; he’s the boy Sue’s had a crush on ever since he moved to Cold Spring middle of last winter.

  Like I was supposed to, I was back home at 12:30, which is when Mom serves lunch summers and weekends during the school year. I pulled my bike around back to the shed, parked it and went in the back door to the kitchen.

  I knew right away something was wrong - and probably worse than just ordinary wrong, judging by the look on Mom’s face. It was kind of a frightening look, like she’d just seen a zombie, or was having trouble with her heart, or something grown-up scary like that.

  “You seen Billy?” was the first thing she asked.

  “No I haven’t,” I answered. “Not since I left for Sue’s, must be three hours ago.”

  “He’s not out back,” Mom said. I could have told her that, because I’d just walked through the back yard and it was empty. Which, come to think of it, was unusual. If he wasn’t in the house, Billy was always out back, playing soldiers in the sandbox or doing his animal act on the Jungle Gym or getting into mischief in the garage.

  “Maybe he’s down at the Joneses,” I said, meaning Greg Jones’ family. Greg’s got a younger brother, ‘bout Billy’s age.

  “I already called,” Mom said, her voice sounding more nervous than I’d ever heard it before. “He’s not there.”

  “What about the McAuliffes?”

  “Tried them, too. Not there.”

  “Well, I’m sure he’ll be back soon, Mom,” I said, trying to be encouraging, but not sure I was pulling it off.

  “He’s never done this before,” she said, and she was right. Much as he could be a brat, getting into my drawers and records and stuff like some kind of thief, Billy was in the habit of obeying Mom when it came to staying in the yard. Probably it was all the TV shows about kids being kidnapped, but Mom hardly ever let Billy get too far out of her sight.

  I never did get lunch that day, or even dinner. Mom spent the afternoon on the phone, calling Dad, and then friends, and then friends of friends, and then people she barely knew - almost everyone who had a phone in Cold Spring, I’d bet, before she ran out of names. Finally, she called the sheriff, and he sent someone right out. Me, I sat in front of the fan by the TV, watching the soap operas but not really watching them, if you know what I mean.

  Truth is, I was as worried sick as Mom.

  Now, I know I talked about how pretty Cold Spring is, but that was only half a truth - a white lie, is what Sue calls them. The full truth is that there are some ugly areas in and around our town. Oh, sure, you might say, there’s junk piles and rusted cars and old refrigerators and busted-up wringer washers on some folks’ lawns; every place has its sore spots, but that’s not what I’m referring to. And there’s litter sometimes in front of Adam’s Market, mostly Coke cans and Fritos and Hershey’s wrappers, but that’s not what I’m referring to, either.

  No, I’m referring to the ash heaps and sludge pits and empty barrels and remains of trucks that look like bony skeletons that Consolidated Coal Co. left behind when it pulled out of Cold Spring a good number of years before I was born, according to Dad. You go up into the mountains, and it doesn’t have to be very far, and you find all this - this and the mines, some of which are filled in with gravel or grown over with briars, and some of which are boarded up, and others of which are still as wide open as that day long ago when Consolidated up and left after hitting a vein of coal that wasn’t fit to be dropped down your Christmas stocking.

  Now I suppose Billy might’ve gone off to sit in the cab of one of those skeleton trucks, but it was thinking of the mines that made my stomach seem like it’d been tied in 100 knots. The more I thought on it - sitting there by the TV, Mom hardly taking her ear away from the phone - the more I thought on it, the more I seemed to recall Billy talking about those mines not a day or two before. I don’t know if Mom heard him rattling on like that, but I know by late that afternoon she must’ve seen only one thing every time she closed her eyes, and that was the entrance to one of those crumbling old shafts.

  By the time Dad got home, Mom was ready to fly. She’d already started in some with her crying, mostly sniffling up till then, but when Dad walked in that door she broke down and wept full-throttle for what must’ve been 1 1minutes. I was none too calm myself. Billy’d been missing at least six hours, and not a ghost of a trace of him.

  Dad got right into worrying.

  I bet I know what he was thinking, because by then I was thinking it too - about that guy from Pittsburgh, I believe it was, who came deer hunting out this way a few years ago and then plain disappeared, like he’d walked off the face of the earth without bothering to say so long. Two years later they found him, or what was left of him (and it wasn’t much more than a bunch of bones the animals had picked clean), deep inside Cold Spring Shaft No. 7. Cave-in had gotten him, and that had been that.

  They got the search party organized as the still-hot red sun was heading down behind the hills. The sheriff was in charge, but there were state troopers and out-of-towners joining in with the locals, too, maybe 150 in all. They had a couple of bloodhounds and a bunch of Broncos and Scouts and plenty of flashlights and rope. Our home was base station and they set up a radio on the kitchen table and after a bit Sue Parker’s mom came over to help out my mom. Mom tried to keep busy by making coffee for the searchers, but every half hour or so, she had to sneak off alone to her room.

  It was close to midnight when I overheard them talking about maybe having to drag Cold Creek. Not five minutes later, when I was alone in my room, Simon decided to speak up.

  He’d been quiet all day, probably hopping mad over Dad’s Special Talk, but now he wanted to tell me where Billy was. Sure enough, Simon told me, he’d wandered into the woods, gotten confused and scared, and somehow found his way into Cold Spring Shaft 2. I’d been to Shaft 2 myself more than once with the big kids who smoked cigarettes and talked dirty, so I knew what a tricky place it was to find, being, as it was, hidden completely in a tangle of brush.

  One more thing, Simon wanted me to know. Billy was Okay. He said he’d taken care of that.

  Without mentioning Simon, I asked Dad if anyone had checked Shaft 2. Don’t think so, he said; don’t reckon they know where it is. That’s when I offered to lead some of the men there. Something in my voice must’ve told Dad I was onto something and wasn’t lying or making up tales, because without even blinking he said yes.

  It was thundering and the rain was coming down in black sheets and the lightning was exploding in the sky, just like I’d predicted, when we set off up Kettle Road. Over Morton’s Hill, we went, along by a no-name stream, climbing, climbing, then dropping into a dale, our flashlights stabbing the black like a scene from Star Wars. Shaft 2 wasn’t even a mile from home, but it could have been a different world that night, it was so wet and spooky and weird in those woods.

  Well, if you read the paper, you know what happened.

  After a couple of false starts, we found Shaft 2. Lo and behold, there inside was Billy, shivering from the cold like a dog that’s gone for a swim in the middle of January. He was none too pleased with being in the dark, but he was going to be just fine. He’d gotten curious that morning, was all, and he’d followed the Simpson’s dog down the road and one thing led to another and then another and before he knew it, he was lost. How exactly he’d gotten into Shaft 2 Billy never did remember, but most likely it was a matter of sheer bad luck piled on a heap of misfortune, as Dad would later say. />
  After giving him some hot chocolate one of the troopers carried in a Thermos bottle, Dad carried Billy, still wrapped in an Army blanket, all the way home. Earlier, when he’d been gone only a couple of hours, Mom had talked about the licking she was going to give my brother, but I thought she would crush him to death when we walked into the kitchen, all of us safe and sound.

  “You must have been so scared, honey,” Mom said when the hugging and kissing had let up some. “You poor thing.”

  “It was okay,” Billy said, “because he took care of me. He said just wait, they would find me, he’d see to it.”

  Mom looked puzzled, like something wasn’t sinking in. “Who, Billy?” she finally said. “Who said that?”

  “Simon, who else?”

  Mom and Dad both looked at me when Billy said his name, and then they looked at each other, but it was only looks. After that night, they never did mention Simon again.

  Drive

  This was a fact: She was the most beautiful girl Joe Ricci had ever seen. He knew that the second he spotted her. Raven hair, straight and to her shoulders. A face the color of an August tan. A figure that makes an impact on a high-school junior. Wearing tight blue jeans and a silky white blouse. Movie-star stuff, like she’d stepped off the set of a Brat Pack production and wound up somehow in Warwick, Rhode Island.

  And she was by herself. Standing in the shadows over there by the bleachers like she was bored with life. Or nervous. Or maybe just stuck-up. Joe couldn’t figure it.

  “Ever see her before?” he shouted over the music to his buddy Robert.

  “Never.”

  “Maybe she goes to The Mount.” That would be Mount Saint Charles, the Catholic school.

  “Yeah? Then what’s she doing at a Toll Gate dance?” That was Joe’s public school.

  “Beats me.”

  “Probably somebody’s cousin. Visiting from outta town.”

  “Then how come’s she alone?”

  “What do I look like, Sherlock Holmes? You wanna find out, big guy, why don’t you ask her?”

  Joe looked over at her again, melting into the shadows like her class had just voted her Miss Wallflower or something. Girl with her looks . . .

  “I think I will,” he announced.

  “She won’t give you directions to the john,” Robert taunted.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Watch me now.”

  And with that, he was off. Cutting through the couples on the gym floor, that garage band Dead Dogs banging out a beat so bad it could’ve knocked off a whole kennel of them, Joe thought.

  He stopped when he was about ten feet away from her. God, she was gorgeous. Now that he was closer, he could see her eyes, as blue as the water off Beavertail on a perfect summer day. They should have been all over her, all these guys desperate for a little action, but they weren’t. Ken Driscoll, basketball captain. Billy Williams, the rich kid. Jo-Jo Jeffreys, the one with the brand-new Trans Am. All standing in a knot, staring slack-jawed at her, but not moving in on her. It was like . . .

  . . . like she was waiting for him.

  He laughed, that was so stupid.

  Touching the varsity letter on the outside of his jacket - it always gave him a boost, fingering that, especially in the middle of football season - he swaggered up to her.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hello,” she answered, fixing him with a look that felt like it had gone clear through to the back of his skull. He turned away, it was that uncomfortable.

  “My, ah, name is, ah, Joe. Joe Ricci.” His tongue felt like it had been glued to the roof of his mouth.

  “Mine’s Debbie,” she said, offering no more.

  “Are you, ah, from around here?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. Maybe from Newport, huh?” Boy, did he sound like a nerd. He hadn’t been this hopeless with a girl since junior high.

  “Providence,” she said.

  “Providence,” he echoed. “Oh, sure. That’s what I thought.”

  Debbie looked at him strangely, as if he’d just sprouted a third eye or something. He got the distinct feeling she didn’t like talking about herself.

  “Well, anyway,” he continued, fumbling, “it’s a great dance. Great band, Dead Dogs. Going places, those three.”

  “I think they’re the worst band I ever heard,” she said.

  “That’s what I meant,” he said, swallowing.

  And that was it - the extent of their conversation for the next five minutes. He stood next to her, unsure what his next move was going to be: give it one last shot, or walk away with his tail between his legs, the whole crew watching him like hawks that hadn’t seen a good meal in a week. That would be enough ammunition to keep those yahoos going till Christmas. He could hear them now: The Halloween Dance that big bad Joe Ricci crashed. Crashed and burned in a ball of flame, with no survivors. Oh, yes. It would be bad news.

  He had to give it another shot.

  “Listen,” he said, clearing his throat like he hadn’t hit puberty yet, “you wouldn’t want to step outside or anything, would you? I mean, it’s awful stuffy in here. And you were right. That group’s bad enough to kill several of what they’re named after.” He’d meant it to be clever, but somehow it didn’t come out the way he’d intended.

  Her answer stunned him.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’d like that.”

  “Really?” It wasn’t the coolest thing to say, but it rolled off his tongue before he could think.

  “Really.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  They left, she following him, he winking at the guys and getting the finger in return. They were just jealous, that’s all. A bunch of losers who couldn’t get a girl if they had an illustrated guide.

  They stepped outside, Debbie and Joe did. The late-October night was nippy - their breaths came out in clouds and you could feel winter in the air without even trying - but the sky was clear and the moon and the stars were bright enough to read. They crossed the parking lot, heading instinctively toward his car, a Plymouth Duster his older brother had handed down to him when he went off to college.

  “Nice night,” Joe said.

  “Beautiful.”

  “Going to be a frost, I bet.”

  It wasn’t the most exciting conversation, but at least his tongue didn’t feel like it was glued anymore.

  “Feels like it.”

  “Gosh, you must be freezing,” he said suddenly. He’d just noticed she didn’t have a coat. Just that silky blouse that was getting him excited.

  “I’m past the point of getting cold.” It was an odd remark, but he didn’t really pick up on it.

  “No, no,” he insisted. “Here,” he said, stripping off his jacket. “Wear this.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Sure you could. I have a sweater underneath. I’m too hot, anyway. I always get hot when I hear bad bands.”

  This time she laughed. He laughed, too. Things were going to be all right, after all. She was just one of those types that takes a while to warm up.

  She put his jacket on. “So where do you go to school?” he asked.

  “I don’t anymore.”

  “You already graduated?” It was possible. She looked his age, 17, but you could never tell. He’d met them before, like at the beach, girls who looked 16 or 17 but were really in college.

  “No,” she said. “I never finished.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not everyone makes it, you know, Joey.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Some of us get . . . stalled.”

  It was an awkward moment - awkward without any reason for it to be.

  “So,” he continued, trying to smooth over it, “you come to many dances? I don’t usually, myself. But Halloween - it’s the biggie, except for the prom.”

  “No,” she said, her voice having taken on a somber tone, as if some bad memory had bubbled to the surface. “This i
s my first one in a long time.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “I know.”

  After a bit, they went for a ride. She got in next to him in his Plymouth Duster, and he left rubber tearing out of the lot, and their conversation evened out, and pretty soon they were talking like they’d known each other a million years. He drove much too fast, taking the secondary roads down through South County, across to Narragansett, past the beaches, on back up Boston Neck Road, over the bridges to Newport. They turned the radio up all the way, and they sang along with it, and he laughed, and she laughed, too. They walked Third Beach, holding hands, and there - there, in view of the moon-washed Atlantic, the waves gently licking the shore, the ocean breeze carrying a final reminder of summer vacation and August tans - there, she let him kiss her.

  “It’s been so long, Joey,” she whispered in his ear as he was drawn into her magic. “It seems like forever.”

  He didn’t answer. Didn’t care what she was saying.

  Was lost.

  By the time they were back at Toll Gate, it was a quarter to three in the morning and Joe Ricci was crazy in love.

  “Where’s your car?” he asked Debbie.

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Then let me take you home,” he said.

  “I don’t think so,” she said flatly. “I couldn’t ride up that road.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I want to be alone. I want to walk.”

  “All the way to Providence?” He was incredulous.

  She nodded her head. “All the way.”

  “But that’s crazy,” he blurted out. “You could get hurt. You could get killed.”

  “I doubt that,” she smiled. “I really do.”

  “Can . . . can I see you again?”