by Greg Johnson
“No, not at all,” she said. “Hell is hell. Burning is burning.”
The girl had frowned, dissatisfied, but had not asked anything else. For years, the nun’s words had pestered Thorn’s memory at random moments. Hell is hell. Burning is burning. Now he let out his breath, exhausted. He realized he didn’t care. A dozen years of daily religious training leaked out of him in a few seconds, like water from an overturned glass. He lay down and felt a heaviness to his eyelids like the weight of damnation itself.
When he woke, the light in his room looked funny. He felt groggy and bewildered—he almost never took naps—and eased up to a sitting position. That’s when he glanced at the bedside clock: 3:20. He couldn’t believe he’d slept for so many hours. Maybe he was sick, after all? Bumbling around his room, he gathered fresh underwear and a clean T-shirt; he understood that he was fine. He was hungry, and he longed for a glass of ice water, but otherwise he felt normal. Only when he glanced into the wood-framed mirror hanging over his dresser did he understand how bad he looked. The faint reflection he’d glimpsed in the kitchen window earlier had been too kind: his stubbled face looked gaunt, sinister. He pawed at his hair with splayed fingers, then rubbed briefly at his eyes, but he didn’t look any better. He decided there was no point in shaving. He didn’t feel like the usual ritual of taking a shower, using his razor, brushing and flossing, blow-drying his hair…the hell with all of that. He did put on the fresh T-shirt and underwear, but then slipped back into his cut-offs and dug his sandals out from under the bed. He lifted his car keys quietly off his nightstand and slipped them into his pocket, then edged to the door.
He heard the distant noise of the television from the den. His parents would be in there, probably watching a baseball game, and he imagined Abby had driven off somewhere. Stealthy as a burglar, he opened the door and slid into the hall. Fortunately, he had parked his car out front last night instead of in the driveway, which was visible from the French doors off the den. He was able to tread soundlessly from the hall to the foyer and out the front door; he slipped into his car and sped off.
He drove. On auto pilot, his car went directly to Lawton Williams’s house, where there were several cars in the driveway: a Chrysler New Yorker, a lipstick-red El Dorado, and an ancient-looking Fleetwood the size of a small battleship. But no Porsche. Often Thom glimpsed Lawton and Ashley together at 10:30 mass, where they sat in one of the back pews presumably so that the instant mass ended they could make their escape and hurry off to fuck somewhere. Or so Thom thought, morosely. He gave a small laugh, but it sounded more like a croak. His voice felt rusty from disuse. Was it only last night that he’d been an ordinary teenage boy, chatting with his cute blond-haired date over a piece of chocolate cake at the Dessert Place? Now he drove through the winding streets of Ansley Park aimlessly, as though waiting for the siren to blare up behind him, the authorities to shackle his unwashed limbs and haul him off to jail. Or for the road itself to end abruptly, his car to spin along a wild tumbling descent into the fiery pits of hell. He gave another croaking laugh as he slowed for a red light at Peachtree. He looked both ways, then took a quick left not waiting for the light to change. Why bother? he thought. There was no point in following the rules. If you broke one, you might as well break them all.
He was not attracted to girls. Never had been. He held this thought in his mind for five seconds, maybe ten, then looked around him.
Another red light, but there was a car ahead of him so he had to wait. The car had an old bumper sticker that read SAVE THE FOX, and up ahead in full sight was the Fox Theatre itself, an Atlanta landmark that had been scheduled for demolition last year but had been saved by a vocal citizens group disgusted by this city’s willingness to achieve “progress” at any cost. Thom had mixed feelings about all this. He liked old buildings like the Fox and the Georgian Terrace hotel and the ancient downtown Rich’s, but he liked the towering new skyscrapers, too, especially the sparkling glass cone of the Peachtree Plaza Hotel. For a while in sixth grade, he’d thought he might like to be an architect one day, though math was his worst subject; lately he’d thought he might build houses, though he supposed you had to have plenty of money to get started. He had no idea what he would do, or even what he wanted to study in college, which was only two years away. The thought of college scared him, these days. At St. Jude’s he was popular because the kids had always known him and they had no idea he was slowly (or was it quickly?) turning into another person. A stranger. A criminal. A boy who would no longer date Melissa Hayes but might continue to pretend he did, who might in fact be willing to break almost any rule if he could get away with it. Open rebellion was not his style; he would be sneaky, sly. No one would suspect him because he had no history of being sneaky or sly. It was like that story they’d read in English last year, as if he’d always been Dr. Jekyll, but now the spirit of Mr. Hyde had infected his limbs, his swirling brain.
Later he would arrive home, shave and shower, make up some story for his parents about where he’d been, and somehow he knew the lie would be good enough; they would believe him because he could impersonate the boy they knew yesterday. Thom Sadler, their son. Their good son. He would lie smoothly and watch television with them for a while and then go back to his room and plot his next horrendous crime.
He turned off Peachtree at North Avenue, headed for the expressway. He wanted to drive—and to drive fast. Taking 1-75 northbound, he grew frustrated at the slower cars, but he resisted the urge to honk or to swerve from lane to lane. He hated people who drove like that. Out past the perimeter the traffic would be lighter, he reasoned. For now he was content to drive sixty, sixty-five. He could stand being good, he thought, so long as a bit of criminal pleasure hovered ahead of him, like a glistening red apple on a branch when he was so hungry, so thirsty. He could wait.
Yesterday he had read a longish story in the newspaper about the Atlanta child killer and had trouble keeping it from his mind in idle moments like this. The story was written by a psychologist who claimed the killer was probably not the KKK, as many people thought, but rather a “sadistic pedophile.” Thom usually flipped through the newspaper quickly, if he bothered at all, but the word pedophile in the headline had caught his attention. It was one of those expressions that gave a twist to his insides whenever he read or heard them—like sexual inversion, or sodomite, or the word homosexual itself. He didn’t care for gay, either. There was no good word, he thought. In the past few years, since Anita Bryant had her crusade, he saw the word in the newspaper a lot, or maybe he just noticed it more. Gay rights, gay marches. Gay men rounded up in local parks, or in highway rest stops. A couple of weeks ago, there was even a Gay Pride celebration in Piedmont Park, and a march down Peachtree Street, which the mayor and other officials had supported. If the Atlanta child murderer turned out to be a pedophile, the psychologist had written, would the city continue to be tolerant of the “homosexual lifestyle”? Thom noticed that the psychologist posed a lot of questions, rhetorical questions, but never answered them. Thom read the article twice but couldn’t tell if she approved of homosexuality or not. He wondered if either of his parents or Abby had read it; somehow he doubted it. He couldn’t remember a single instance of any member of his family referring to the “gay” issue, even indirectly. It was in a category, he thought, with masturbation and menstruation and bowel movements: something that polite Southern white-bread families like the Sadlers wouldn’t dream of mentioning.
Outside the perimeter, traffic did begin to thin out. Thom eased into the farthest left lane and pressed the accelerator. He was going seventy-five, then eighty. Though the sun glinted fiercely from the hood, Thom switched off the air conditioning and cracked his front windows, letting the warm wind funnel through the car. Excited, he punched radio buttons until he found some nameless hard rock song and twisted the volume upward as high as he could stand. He increased his speed steadily. To ninety. Ninety-five. He had never driven even close to one hundred miles per hour but today h
e would. As he zoomed past, a station wagon in the next lane honked at him, and Thom glanced over. A dark-haired man of about forty with a fleshy, angry face. He was mouthing something at Thom, who glimpsed a vague-looking wife in the front seat and several small children in the back, their faces like pressed flowers against the windows. The man wanted him to slow down, of course. If Thom had been another sort of teenager, he might have made a rude face or stuck his middle finger bluntly up in the air. Instead, he lowered his head and kept driving, a few seconds later noting in his rearview mirror that the wood-paneled station wagon had become a tiny speck in the distance behind him.
He was driving a hundred miles an hour. He felt a surge of intense choking emotion that must have been joy, and then he slowed the car. Back to eighty-five. Eighty. He took a few deep breaths. It was only a matter of time, he supposed, before he passed a patrol car and received his first ticket. Maybe he would lead the cop on a high-speed chase? Maybe he would run his car off the road into a deep ravine, killing himself? He slowed the car to seventy, then noticed a sign: REST STOP – ONE MILE. He needed to urinate, and his tongue was parched with thirst. Lane by lane, he eased to the right side of the interstate and exited, gliding down the long ramp and into the parking lot. There were several cars, a couple of pickup trucks, and to the far left in a reserved lot, a few freight trucks. The rest stop had a row of vending machines, an area with raggedy grass and a couple of picnic tables, and two brick buildings marked MEN and WOMEN. People trailed back and forth between the restrooms and the cars, children tugging away from their parents and pointing at the vending machines. Thom dug in his jeans and was pleased to find plenty of change; he was dying for a Coke. He got out of the car, locked it, and hurried into the men’s room.
The air was dank and smelly. Poor ventilation, and a fly buzzed around slowly as if dazed. There was a long row of stained urinals, none in use. Out of habit Thom went to the one on the far right, next to the toilet stalls. He stood there letting his mind wander, only half reading the familiar graffiti on the walls. It was the same graffiti he saw everywhere, though now striking his eye with the force of a personal affront.
“I give great BJ, be here 6/22 10 A.M. Truckers welcome!”
“I’m jacking my big dick while you read this, homo.”
“Fuck me HARD, white dudes, ev’ry night. 10 to 11. No niggers!”
Thom made a whistling noise of disgust. Idly, he looked down, adjusting himself, and saw that someone had carved a golfball-sized hole through the metal stall door. His face reddened. Had someone been watching him? Inside the stall there was sudden movement. The toilet flushed. Behind him, a man had emerged from the stall, his feet shuffling against the damp, gritty floor. Thom felt the back of his neck burning. He wanted to turn around but didn’t dare. His shoulders and back felt petrified as the man came up to the next urinal. Thom glanced aside and met the man’s narrowed eyes for the briefest instant. Tall, skinny, in his late twenties. Neither handsome nor homely. Blue jeans and a brown leather vest with no shirt.
“Hey,” the man said. “Hot day, ain’t it?”
Thom had zipped his jeans. He made a show of turning away from the man as he flushed the urinal.
“Yeah, sure is,” Thom said.
He fled, blindly.
Outside, his breath came quickly, his heart hammering. Fumbling with his keys, he managed to unlock the car door and start the engine, turning the air-conditioning on high. He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that his face was brick-red. His eyes looked pinched and scared. Almost as quickly as he’d started the engine, he turned it off again. When he saw the man emerge from the men’s room, Thom glanced in another direction. He waited until the man got in his battered red pickup and drove off. Exhaling, Thom grabbed his keys and opened his door.
He bought a Coke and went to one of the picnic tables, where he sat for a long time. People came and went. Single men, married couples. Families. Fathers took their squirming little boys toward the men’s room, mothers took their squirming little girls toward the women’s room; people drifted in and out, chatting or not chatting, looking tired or happy, pale or sunburned, a ceaseless flow of people, a ceaseless noise of slamming doors and cars revving their engines and driving off. Thom sat there quietly. An hour passed, or two hours. Afternoon shaded into evening. What was happening to him? That scared, almost wounded pair of eyes he’d glimpsed in his rearview mirror—who was that? These questions flitted through his mind every few minutes, but mostly he thought of nothing. Every once in a while he glanced at his watch. It was 6:30, it was 7:10. His parents would be worried about him, he supposed. He noticed how there were busy times and lulls at the rest stop; there would be several trucks and eight or nine cars, then only a couple of trucks and one or two cars. Then the cycle would all start again. A kind of rhythm was established, soothing his nerves. He felt that he’d become part of the landscape, that he belonged here. Almost nobody noticed him. When he finished his Coke, he bought another, then returned and sat down in exactly the same spot as though he’d never left.
Around eight o’clock, as the sky began turning a rosy deep violet in the west, a black hearse-like car drove up. An ancient Olds 98, ‘64 or ‘65. It sat there for a moment, and Thom watched it idly. Maybe the Atlanta child killer waited inside that car, deciding whether to strangle Thom or stab him or shoot him. Thom smiled, taking the last warm sip of his second Coke, or was it his third. Well, he thought with an odd thrill of satisfaction, he wouldn’t even put up a fight. Here he was.
After a few seconds the front doors opened. The driver was a teenage boy who looked even younger than Thom. He was slight and blond-haired but with sharp-chiseled, handsome nose and mouth and chin. The passenger was surely his mother, a petite woman in her thirties with an oversize blond perm and the same small, careful features as the boy’s. Then a back door opened and an older woman got out heavily. She must have weighed three hundred pounds. Her face looked doughy and unformed, her mouth puckered into a grimace of tired effort as she struggled from the car. The boy’s grandmother, Thom thought. Despite her weight, she had the same coloring and thinning blond hair as the younger woman, who now took hold of her mother’s flabby upper arm and led her off toward the women’s room. The boy said something to them and headed to the men’s.
Thom felt an urgent need to pee. He rose and stalked toward the men’s room and took the first urinal he saw and relieved himself. The blond boy was already washing his hands. When Thom approached the sink, he met the boy’s glance in the mirror.
“Hi,” Thom said. “That your mom and grandmother you’re with?”
The boy looked startled, but then he gave a quick, thin-lipped smile. He was wiping his hands slowly and methodically with the brown paper towels. They were the same towels Thom had used for years in parochial school: their damp, yeasty, terrible yet half-pleasant smell assaulted his nostrils.
“Yeah,” the boy said. “We’re going up to Chattanooga. My older brother got in a wreck, so we’re going up there.”
“Sorry to hear that. Is it bad?”
Thom kept drying his hands, though they were already dry.
“Broke his collarbone, cut up his face pretty bad. He’s not gonna die or anything.”
In the mirror, they watched each other. The boy had clear, almost translucent pale-blue eyes, like glittering marbles. So pretty. He had an innocent look about him, his skin smooth as a baby’s.
“You old enough to drive that car?” Thom said, with a tilted smile.
The boy ducked his head, grinning. “Nearly. I’m fourteen, but I’ll be fifteen next month. Then I can get a learner’s permit. My mom hates to drive on the highway, and Grandma’s scared to.”
“Bet you’re a good driver,” Thom said quickly. The remark was stupid, but he didn’t care. His eyes stayed locked onto the boy’s, and the boy gazed back at him steadily. It was almost like those jokey staring contests Thom used to have with his sister back in grade school, a game they played when there was
nothing better to do. But this was not a joke.
Finally, the boy said with a lazy blink of his pretty eyes, “Where you headed?”
“Me? Oh, back to Atlanta. I’m just riding around, sort of. Just got my license.”
“Yeah, I wish I could do that. By myself, I mean.”
“It’s great,” Thom said. “Nobody knows where you are, you know? That’s the best part.”
The boy stared at him, not smiling but not unfriendly, either. They’d both discarded their towels, and there was no reason to keep standing here. Yet Thom longed to touch the boy’s cheek, just once. Just with the tips of his fingers.
From outside, they heard a woman’s voice. “Meredith? You in there? Mer-e-dith!”
The boy turned his head sharply. “Yeah, I’m here!” he called. “Just a second!”
“Come on, baby, we got to go!”
All at once the boy crumpled forward, as if collapsing into Thorn’s startled embrace.
They hugged awkwardly for a second, maybe two.
The boy pulled back. “You’re nice,” he said. He was looking down. “Bye.”
He turned and hurried out.
Thom said, but not very loud, “Bye… Meredith.”
The boy had not heard. He was gone.
Dazed, Thom emerged from the men’s room a few seconds later. The black Olds was pulling out of the lot, and by the time Thom reached his own car it had merged with the stream of traffic heading north on 1-75. Thom started his engine and got onto the other ramp, heading in the opposite direction, toward Atlanta. It was getting dark, so he turned on his lights, careful to drive fifty-five miles an hour. There was no reason to hurry.