The Third Hill North of Town

by Noah Bly

  For her part, Julianna thought Connor Lipkin was a man named Tom Putnam, who had been a mild, shy janitor from her school days in Missouri.

  “Good morning,” she responded sweetly to Connor’s greeting.

  Her voice was low and husky, much like Nurse Gable’s.

  Connor, flushing, stepped out of her way, almost tripping over his feet in his haste to allow Julianna access to the outside world. She patted his arm in thanks, but he kept his head down even then, noticing only her long fingers and the feel of her cool skin on his wrist. His heart almost exploded at her touch, and he found himself wishing ardently for twenty-twenty vision, so as she walked away from him he could get a better look at the backs of her ankles, and the black pumps she was wearing.

  If there were any remaining doubt that Julianna was absurdly blessed with good fortune that morning, it would be banished by what occurred at this juncture. As she glided down the sidewalk and emerged at last from the shadow of the hospital, she was granted the biggest boon of her journey: Squarely in front of her, as if waiting for just this one special moment in its dull mechanical existence, was an unlocked automobile, with the key in its ignition.

  Edgar Reilly had never once, before that day, left his key in the car. The only reason he had done so that morning was because as he pulled into his designated space in the hospital parking lot, a bee had flown through his open window and attempted to land on the crown of his bald head. Edgar was allergic to bee stings, and deathly afraid of bees. He had leapt from the car, slammed the door, and dashed for the safety of the hospital, waving his arms about his head and swearing under his breath. Once inside, he realized he had left his key in his car, but as he kept his office key on a separate keychain and intended to only be inside for a short while, he decided not to risk another encounter with the bee until it was time to leave.

  Thus it came to pass that Connor Lipkin watched—and did nothing—as Julianna’s blurred, graceful figure climbed into the Edsel. He knew it was Edgar’s car she was taking, but he also knew Nurse Gable and Dr. Reilly were friends, and since the woman he had mistaken for Nurse Gable obviously had the key to the automobile, he didn’t bat a nearsighted eye as she drove away from him, waving. He assumed she was borrowing Edgar’s car on hospital business, which explained why she was dressed so formally. (Connor preferred her nurse’s uniform, of course, but he thought her dress was nice, too.) He placed a hand over the spot on his wrist where she had touched him, and he turned back to the hallway with an aroused smile.

  Edgar’s staff wouldn’t notice anything amiss until Nurse Gable returned to her office and went looking for her dress. By this time, though, the door Connor had been guarding was closed and locked again, and the painters were hard at work, and Connor and Jeptha were in another part of the ward, attempting to calm a patient named Phyllis Farmer, who was having a bad day. Phyllis believed Connor and Jeptha were trying to steal her “golden egg,” which was actually half an orange she had snatched from the breakfast table and promptly shoved, for safekeeping, under her ample buttocks. She put up a spirited fight, which ended up lasting the better part of an hour.

  This being the case, Nurse Gable wasn’t able to piece together what had occurred for some time. When Julianna’s absence was at length confirmed, there was a mad, unproductive search of the premises (leading, incidentally, to the discovery of the hugely overmedicated African violet in the nurses’ station), followed by a heated argument among Nurse Gable, Jeptha Morgan, and Connor Lipkin about whom to blame. This all took far more time than it should have, primarily because none of them wanted to be the one to give Edgar Reilly the bad news.

  Edgar was a more-or-less understanding employer, but when mistakes happened he had a baleful way of looking at the responsible party that they all dreaded—his displeasure underscored by the crisp, almost violent manner with which he would unwrap a Tootsie Roll or a caramel before popping it into his mouth—and they knew Julianna’s escape was the kind of error that could cost them their jobs. So when a red-faced and squinting Connor Lipkin finally screwed up his courage and knocked on Edgar’s office door, Julianna had been gone for nearly two hours.

  Coincidence doesn’t merely love insanity: It worships it.

  Back in the little town of Prescott, Maine, Elijah heard Julianna call him Ben as he settled into the backseat of the Edsel, but he chose not to correct her because he was trying to come up with the best way to ask for her newspaper. He was also fretting about how he was going to smuggle an outlawed item such as this past his mother once he was home. Mary Hunter was diligent and resourceful, and she knew her only child all too well. In the last few weeks she had even begun to frisk him for news-related contraband the instant he walked through the door.

  The front windows of the Edsel were open, but the wind on his face was hot as he mulled over various strategies. The sun was almost directly above them, and he felt tired and thirsty. He rested his head on the seat behind him and closed his eyes for a minute, grateful for the ride, because the walk home would have taken him almost half an hour. The humid air pouring into the car was thick with early summer fragrances; he could pick out the scent of roses and lilacs, but most of what he smelled he didn’t have a name for.

  In the front seat, Julianna tugged at her dress and made a mental note to speak to her mother about sewing her something that would fit her better. Her mother was an excellent seamstress, and Julianna seemed to have had yet another growth spurt. She supposed most fifteen-year-olds went through the same thing, but she hated knowing she wouldn’t be able to wear this exquisite green dress much longer. It was such a shame. She’d gotten so little wear out of it; she almost felt as if she’d never even worn it before that very day.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror at “Ben” and smiled to herself when she saw him close his eyes. She was glad he had accepted a ride; the poor boy was obviously exhausted. He didn’t get enough to eat, she knew, and it was a wonder he could even stay on his feet.

  She pulled up to the stop sign at a T intersection about a mile and a half out of town. To the right and not far away—though she had no idea of this—was Elijah’s farm; to the left was the open highway, leading eventually to the New Hampshire border, and from there to the rest of the country.

  She looked both ways, as if confused. She wasn’t, though; she was just waiting for guidance. Ever since she had begun her journey that morning, she had needed no map. Something had been advising her, telling her which way to go, and she implicitly trusted whatever this something might be. She knew all she had to do was wait a moment, and it would speak to her again.

  And it did, of course.

  Home is this way, she thought, turning left.

  Chapter 2

  Almost six thousand, Elijah concluded. That’s how many people die in the world every single hour. Holy SHIT.

  His fixation on the global mortality rate had sidetracked his plan to acquire Julianna’s newspaper. More importantly, it had also kept him from paying attention to his surroundings. With this latest equation solved, however, he opened his eyes at last and straightened up, gazing around. The intersection where Julianna had made her choice was now almost a mile behind them.

  Dammit, he thought. If she tells Mom I let her go the wrong way, I’ll catch hell.

  His parents didn’t allow him to curse aloud, but in his own head he followed a different set of rules.

  “Uh, ma’am?” He leaned forward, embarrassed. His shirt was sticking to his back. “We need to turn around.”

  Julianna found his eyes in the rearview mirror and giggled. “Since when do you call me ‘ma’am,’ silly?”

  Elijah didn’t know how to respond to this, so decided an apology was in order. “Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “My house is back that way.”

  Julianna shook her head and giggled again. “Honestly, Ben, you act as if I were born yesterday.”

  Elijah blinked. The gravel road they were on would soon merge with a blacktop highway. The woman was dr
iving fast, stirring up a lot of dust, and she showed no signs of slowing.

  He raised his voice a little to make sure she could hear him above the noise of the wind and the crunch of the tires on the gravel.

  “My name is Elijah.” The dust from the road made him cough. “And our farm really is the other direction.”

  “Elijah?” Julianna guffawed. “Where on earth did you come up with a ridiculous name like that, Ben Taylor?”

  Her laugh was throaty and full, and under other circumstances Elijah would have enjoyed hearing it. There wasn’t much laughter in his home; Samuel and Mary Hunter were a bit stern and rarely laughed aloud. But given that this woman apparently thought he was someone else, her mirth set him on edge.

  “My name isn’t Ben,” he insisted. “It’s Elijah. Elijah Hunter.” He grabbed the front seat for balance as the car slid onto the shoulder for a moment.

  Julianna made a dismissive sound with her lips that sounded like “pfff.” About a half mile in front of them was where the gravel road became blacktop. She could see the coming change in the road surface and she smiled, relieved.

  She called over her shoulder. “I can’t wait to be off this gravel! It’s so loud, isn’t it?”

  Elijah didn’t answer. He had finally noticed the hospital wristband on her left forearm, and was staring at it with queasy fascination. He was beginning to suspect that he might not actually be in the company of a Methodist Bingo Lady from Prescott, Maine, after all.

  Ninety-seven miles away from Elijah and Julianna, on a rural highway in the middle of New Hampshire, it was raining heavily, and Jon Tate stood on the side of the road with his thumb out, praying for a ride from the only car he’d seen for the last half hour. The blue Plymouth Fury didn’t even slow down, though, and as its taillights vanished over a nearby hill, Jon raised his hand high above his head and exchanged his thumb for his middle finger. He stood this way for a long moment, feeling like an obscene parody of the Statue of Liberty, before at last allowing his arm to drop to his side again.

  His blue T-shirt and khaki shorts were soaked through and clinging to his skin; his canvas sneakers were also waterlogged. He was carrying a plastic bag with his only remaining possessions in it: a toothbrush, a razor, three paperback books, his wallet, two pairs of clean boxer shorts, one pair of clean socks, and three hundred seventy-two dollars in stolen cash.

  Jon had been on the road since five o’clock that morning, when he’d caught a ride with a southbound trucker on the outskirts of Tipton, Maine. The trucker’s name was Clive Upton, from Montreal, and to Jon’s immense relief, Clive had asked no questions. He’d taken Jon out of Maine and into New Hampshire, but when they’d stopped to get breakfast, a radio had been playing in the diner and Jon grew agitated as the news came on. Clive was taking far too long to suit him, so Jon thanked him for the ride and lit out on foot, forsaking the Interstate in favor of an older highway where he thought he’d feel less exposed while hitchhiking.

  He was no longer happy with this choice. Two hours had passed since he’d left the diner and no one had stopped to pick him up.

  Jon was five foot nine and weighed 160 pounds. He was built like a wrestler, but he had never wrestled a day in his life; his broad shoulders and wiry frame came from good genes rather than disciplined exercise. He had deep-set gray eyes that always made him look tired, and a square, stubborn jaw. The rain plastered his short black hair to his scalp and streamed down his face, mingling with tears he could no longer suppress. He was frustrated and exhausted, and he couldn’t believe he was standing where he was, doing what he was doing.

  “I am so stupid,” he whispered. “I am just so fucking stupid.”

  Jon had lived in Tipton, Maine, all nineteen years of his life and had never intended to live anyplace else. His family was there, and all his friends, and he had a good job at Toby’s Pizza Shack, working in the kitchen. He didn’t make a lot of money at Toby’s, but he was able to pay the rent for his apartment above the town Laundromat, and he even had enough left over each month to keep his home well stocked with his two favorite things in the world: books and beer.

  When Jon had been in high school, his teachers described him as “smart as a whip” and “good-natured.” They also described him—usually in the same breath—as “lazy, apathetic, and disappointing.” All of these were reasonable characterizations, and Jon took no offense at any of them. He loved to read and he loved to drink, and felt that almost everything else was a waste of time. And since his graduation the previous year, he had done little else, either, aside from the necessary evil of working part-time at Toby’s. His parents had long since given up trying to get him to attend college, but after he moved out they began to speak about him to his two younger brothers in hushed, disapproving tones. They used him as a sort of cautionary tale, hoping that Billy and Evan, his siblings, would understand that unambitious people like Jon were little more than dead weight, dragging society down.

  Jon wasn’t troubled by this assessment, either, and only laughed when his brothers told him about it. Books were piling up around him, mixed with a fair share of beer bottles and cans, and he didn’t bother to explain why this was all he required from his life. He knew his parents would never understand the joy that came to him when he was sitting under a lamp in the evenings with a book in his lap. They’d never know how much pleasure it gave him when the only sound in a room was the rustle of a turning page, the only light a small circle around his chair as the rest of the town lay sleeping in darkness.

  Books were sacred artifacts to be studied with reverence and passion, and devoting his life to such a study seemed infinitely more worthwhile than any other occupation Jon could think of. Only when his eyes began to blur each night would he stop reading and go to the refrigerator for a beer; reading was far more enjoyable when his mind was clear. (Not yet of legal drinking age, he was forced to buy his alcohol with the aid of an older friend, who agreed to help him out in exchange for free pizza from Toby’s.) He’d be exhausted by this time, but his mind would be overstimulated by what he’d read; words and ideas scampered around in his skull like mice in an attic, keeping him awake for hours. He would return to his chair, turn off the light, and drink however much beer was required to subdue his brain and let him sleep. This always happened around dawn; there were usually five or six empty cans or bottles on the floor beside him when he abandoned the chair in favor of his bed. He’d sleep until early afternoon, work until late evening, and return home afterward to do it all again.

  He didn’t even own a car, because he didn’t want to work hard enough to pay for one. His friends assumed he was lonely, and invited him out often, but he seldom went with them. He enjoyed his friends, but not nearly as much as he enjoyed his books. He would also go out now and then for an evening with a girl, but only if he was particularly horny, and bored with masturbating. He liked sex, too, of course, but he found it far less fulfilling in the long run than a good novel or a witty essay. He knew this wasn’t the normal set of priorities for a nineteen-year-old male; he also knew his life was not exciting nor productive by anybody else’s standards but his own. But for him it was all the life he needed, or wanted, and he loved it dearly.

  Then two months ago he’d gotten the wrong girl pregnant.

  The girl’s name was Becky Westman, and Jon didn’t really even know her. She was pretty enough, with long red hair, a sweet smile, and a firm little gymnastic body. But from what little he could remember of their single encounter, he hadn’t much cared for her. She was dumb—for one thing, she seemed to think the Revolutionary War had been fought by cowboys and Indians in Wyoming—and she was childish, and she was a liar.

  She was also fourteen.

  The party that led to Jon’s downfall was given in honor of Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride, and so took place on April 18, in the neighboring town of Welford, about ten miles from Tipton. The host of this shindig was Tommy Somerset, a fellow worker at Toby’s Pizza Shack, who had a fondness for celebra
ting historical events that had, in his sober judgment, never received enough public acknowledgment. Recent galas at Tommy’s house had commemorated (with several kegs of Budweiser and a pantry full of Cheetos) the Battle of Fredericksburg, Sir Thomas More’s beheading, and the birth of Harriet Tubman.

  Jon, who knew almost nobody at the party and had only attended because he’d been promised access to Tommy’s large collection of books, helped himself to a great deal of beer, and then found himself with Becky in an otherwise deserted room, next to the bookcases. Their fellow party-goers had been drawn outside by then to watch a stirring reenactment of Revere’s ride, involving flashlights and bicycles in lieu of lanterns and horses.

  Jon had never met Becky Westman before, and she’d basically leapt into his lap the instant they were left alone together. Minutes later, as she rode and bucked on top of him on the floor behind the couch, he’d drunkenly joked that he was beginning to understand how Paul Revere’s horse must have felt. This had elicited her less-than-impressive “cowboys and Indians in Wyoming” remark, and the next thing he knew she was climbing off again, finished, and they were straightening their clothes in embarrassed silence. It was the only time they ever saw each other, and aside from those few sketchy details, he’d forgotten everything about it.

  Except for the fact she’d sworn she was eighteen.

  And two months later—on the night before Jon found himself standing on the road in the rain—his world had come crashing down. Becky Westman’s dad and mom, Phil and Carol, discovered their daughter was pregnant, and had forced her to reveal who the father was. Phil made a few phone calls to track down Jon’s dad and mom, and soon after that all four parents had shown up at Jon’s apartment, shouting, moments after he arrived home from work. Becky didn’t come with them; it was a school night for her and she was home in bed. She had been forced to attend summer school after failing most of her spring classes—including, sadly, both American History and Sex Education.