The Third Hill North of Town

by Noah Bly

  Jon grimaced at the back of her head. “East Bumfuck,” he mumbled in frustration, too softly for her to hear. He reached for a Pepsi in the paper bag by his feet and spoke to Elijah. “So where do you think the closest gas station is? Should we keep going straight, or turn around?”

  “Home is that way,” Julianna asserted, pointing west through the windshield. “I know that much for certain.”

  This was the first time Elijah had seen Julianna questioning her own skewed perceptions; her version of reality seemed to be in a serious state of flux, and he couldn’t help but wonder what was going through her head. He continued watching her in fascination as he answered Jon’s question.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I was asleep, too, but I don’t think we’ve gone through a town for a while. I probably would’ve woken up.”

  “Yeah,” Jon agreed, prying off the bottle cap with a seatbelt latch. “Me too.”

  He supposed he should be grateful Julianna hadn’t known about the reserve tank on the Volkswagen. If she had, she might have flipped the tank switch and burned through their emergency fuel, too, while he and Elijah were sleeping, and they might never have known they needed gas until it was too late to do anything about it.

  His bladder felt uncomfortably full, but he didn’t really like the idea of getting out of the car to pee. If a cop happened by while they were pulled over it could lead to disaster; the last thing they needed was to arouse the suspicions of some over-vigilant state trooper working the late shift by allowing him to set eyes on Elijah—or worse, have a conversation with Julianna. Still, it was hard to take such a scenario seriously. It didn’t seem likely the police in this part of the country would have information about them quite yet, and even if they did, the rural highway they were on was as devoid of traffic as the surface of the moon.

  He took a swig of Pepsi and nudged the back of Elijah’s seat. “Let me out, okay? I need to take a leak before we go on.”

  Elijah opened the door and all three of them squinted and winced as the dome light came on. Julianna opened her own door a second later and got out quickly, stretching her back before moving away from the car, murmuring that she, too, needed to “use the ladies’ room.” The night was hot and sticky, but the outside air was much fresher than the air in the car, and Jon took several grateful breaths as Elijah gingerly stepped out on the gravel shoulder in his bare feet and tugged the seat forward to allow Jon to get out, too. Jon wiggled free of the car and walked a few feet away for privacy; in the predawn stillness of the Indiana countryside he could hear his companions already urinating as he unzipped his fly.

  “Maybe you should drive for a while, Jon,” Julianna called out from the opposite side of the narrow highway. “I must be more tired than I thought.”

  “I think that’s a really good idea,” Elijah murmured from somewhere by the rear of the Beetle.

  Jon, yawning, heard the worry in Elijah’s voice about Julianna and simply nodded, forgetting that the other boy couldn’t see him in the darkness. They’d closed the doors on the Beetle after getting out, extinguishing the dome light, but the stars provided enough illumination for him to make out a telephone pole surrounded by tall grass on his left, and what appeared to be a snow fence not far from the shoulder of the highway. With his free hand he took another gulp of warm Pepsi and looked up at the night sky, listening to himself pee. A slight breeze blew through his hair and rustled the corn in a nearby field; he thought he could hear an owl hooting somewhere for an instant before it quieted again. In such a bucolic setting it was hard to come to terms with the idea that his world had fallen apart in the past twenty-four hours; the fear and dread that had consumed him ever since his parents and Becky Westman’s folks had come crashing into his apartment almost seemed as if it belonged to somebody else.

  He allowed himself to pretend for a moment he was just on a camping trip with friends, and there was a roaring fire and a full cooler of beer waiting for him once he finished emptying his bladder.

  We’ll roast some hot dogs and get drunk, he thought, and when we wake up in the morning we can all go back home.

  He pictured himself working a double shift at Toby’s Pizza Shack, then returning at last to the silence and peace of his own living room. His favorite chair would be there waiting for him, and a book, and when he flicked on his reading lamp it would create a small, cozy cocoon of light, just for him, like a spotlight on a stage. The shadows would be herded into the corners of the room and held at bay until he finished reading, and after that he’d have a beer or two and go to bed, where he’d sleep for twelve blissful, dreamless hours, safe from fire, bullets, pregnant girls, and lunatics.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Julianna exclaimed in disgust, disrupting his fantasy. “I must have taken a left instead of a right at the Iowa state line! That explains everything!”

  Jon zipped up his pants wearily. Thinking about beer had made him crave some; he wished he’d asked Julianna to buy him a case somewhere earlier that night. She probably would have said no, he supposed, but he should have asked her to do it anyway.

  I could’ve just told her it was ketchup, if she’d asked, he thought. He felt a surge of despair rise in his throat about the absurdity of their predicament. She wouldn’t have known the difference anyway.

  He shook his head and hawked up a loogie on the highway.

  “Jesus,” he whispered, turning around to go back to the car. “What am I doing here?”

  He’d only gone a few steps when Elijah’s subdued voice came from less than a foot away from him, close to the front bumper of the Beetle.

  “Jon?”

  Jon jumped, startled. The younger boy’s skin was so black Jon could barely make out his silhouette in the darkness.

  “Jesus, Elijah!” Jon gasped. “Don’t scare me like that!”

  “Sorry.” Elijah hesitated. He’d heard Jon’s despairing whisper a moment before and didn’t know what to say. He’d intended to share his apprehension about Julianna’s apparent instability, but now it seemed like the wrong time. He scratched at a mosquito bite by his belly button and tried to get a better look at the older boy’s face.

  “Are you okay?” he finally asked.

  Behind them, Julianna opened the driver’s door and crawled into the backseat. The door was still open, and the Beetle’s lime-green paint looked pale and sickly in the faint glow of the dome light shining on its hood through the windshield. She began singing softly to herself as she waited for them; the words “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands” floated out out of the Beetle as the two boys stood together in the night.

  Jon made a face and tossed the Pepsi bottle in the ditch. “Yeah, everything’s just hunky-dory, man.” He stared with ill-humor at Julianna through the glass. “I’ve never been better in my whole fucking life.”

  He was ashamed of the childish self-pity in his voice, but he couldn’t seem to do anything about it. He tried to apologize, but Elijah cut him off.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not feeling so hot, either.”

  Jon raised his head. In the scant light, Elijah’s face was drawn tight with worry; his skinny, naked torso looked gangling and defenseless, and he was balanced precariously on the sides of his feet, cautious of the gravel under his unprotected soles. Something about him, though, seemed to have changed from the last time Jon had looked closely at him. For one thing, he was carrying himself differently; his hands were no longer jammed in his pockets but hung loosely at his sides, and he was meeting Jon’s gaze instead of staring at the ground.

  “Hey,” Jon said, surprised. “You’re taller than me.”

  Elijah smiled shyly, but still didn’t drop his eyes. “I grew close to half a foot this last year. I’m almost as tall as my dad now.”

  Jon tried to return the smile. “My dad and me are exactly the same height. Mom keeps calling us twins because I look just like him.” His smile crumbled as he recalled his last encounter with Earl and Marline Tate, and bitter
ness crept back into his tone. “I guess I won’t hear her say that again anytime soon.”

  He stared at the car bumper, hoping Elijah hadn’t noticed the tears running down his face.

  Stop being such a goddamn crybaby, he chided himself angrily. It doesn’t help ANYTHING.

  Elijah had seen Jon’s tears, and he felt an answering sorrow rise in his throat. He, too, was thinking about his parents, and the hell they must be enduring right at that moment because of him. He had to find a way to call them, soon; they were probably going out of their heads with worry. He cleared his throat and struggled to control an unwanted quiver in his chin.

  Headlights suddenly appeared in the distance, coming from the west. Both boys started in fear, gaping down the highway at the approaching car. It was still a good mile off, but they scrambled to get back inside the Beetle before the driver of the other vehicle could get a good look at them. Jon dove behind the wheel seconds before Elijah fell into the passenger seat, yelping in pain from the rocks he’d stepped on in his rush to get there. They slammed their doors simultaneously and Jon fumbled for the switch that would transfer gas from the reserve tank into the Beetle’s engine.

  “Don’t be a cop, don’t be a cop, don’t be a cop,” Jon breathed. He knew the panic he was feeling was irrational, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that, cop or not, anybody who was out on the road at that hour and saw them would know who they were and what they’d done. He flicked on the headlights as the other car drew close, to keep whoever it was from seeing into the Volkswagen.

  “If you’re happy and you know it,” Julianna sang, oblivious to the tension her friends were feeling, “then your face will surely show it . . .”

  “Duck your head, man,” Jon ordered Elijah, talking over Julianna and reaching for the ignition key. The Beetle came back to life with a gratifying growl. “If somebody knows to look for us, you’re the one they’ll want the most.”

  Elijah obeyed Jon without hesitation. The other car drew even with them before Jon could put the Beetle in gear; it looked to be a Rambler, not a police car, and although the driver turned his head to look at them, he passed without slowing, his face a pale blur.

  Julianna abruptly stopped singing and sat up.

  “What’s Fred Marcy doing out so late at night?” she asked, her eyes following the taillights of the Rambler. “If he doesn’t get home soon, his wife will skin him alive.” She faced front again, feeling much more like herself now that she’d solved the mystery of why they weren’t back in Pawnee yet, where they belonged. “You don’t know Esther Marcy like Ben and I do, Jon,” she continued. “But she’s got a frightful temper. She once caught poor old Fred making eyes at Alice Boswell at the Fourth of July picnic, and she dumped a whole pitcher of iced coffee in his lap, right in front of everybody! Remember that, Ben?”

  Elijah was badly shaken. The random encounter with the other car, though harmless in itself, had reminded him just how much danger they were in. His concerns about Julianna and Jon had distracted him, and until the Rambler’s approaching headlights had intruded on his conversation with Jon, he had actually forgotten that even the routine act of stopping to pee on a remote highway now posed a significant threat. It would have been an ugly, unfair coincidence for a cop to show up right then and there, of course, but considering their recent history anything was possible: They simply couldn’t afford to be so careless.

  I need to get my head out of my ass and quit acting like a douche bag! he told himself angrily. He still didn’t know what a douche bag was, but he knew he’d been behaving like one.

  Julianna leaned forward. “Ben?” she prodded, sounding anxious. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  Elijah sighed, pulling himself together. “Yeah.” He was still bent over in his seat with his forehead on the dashboard. He sat up again with an effort. “Sure I remember that picnic, Julianna. I laughed so hard I crapped my pants.”

  He glanced over at Jon and they stared at each other for a moment in silence. Jon raised his eyebrows at him and a second later both of them began to grin in spite of themselves.

  “Language, Ben,” Julianna reminded, lightly flicking Elijah’s ear with an admonitory forefinger. “We’ll be home again soon, and if your mother hears you talking like that she won’t let you out of your house for a year.”

  It took every ounce of Jon Tate’s remaining self-control to keep from cackling like a madman. Maybe I’m nuts, too, he thought. Maybe I’ve been in the asylum with Julianna this whole time, and I’m just hallucinating. Maybe some doctor snuck some drugs into our pureed potatoes during supper, and I’m really strapped in a wheelchair someplace watching an episode of Gunsmoke.

  “She’s right, Elijah,” he murmured in a strained voice. “You could get into a lot of trouble for that sort of thing.”

  Elijah actually laughed aloud. It came out as more of a sob than a chuckle, though, and it died quickly. “Yeah,” he agreed, wincing as he rubbed his ear. “If I’m not careful I might even get my mouth washed out with soap.”

  Both boys attempted to hold on to their grins a little longer, but it was no use. They each took a deep breath at the same time, and let the air slowly out of their lungs in a synchronized sigh that only Julianna found amusing. Elijah looked out the passenger window as Jon put the Beetle in gear and pulled back on the highway.

  Dr. Edgar Reilly looked out the passenger window of Sam and Mary Hunter’s blue Dodge pickup, whistling softly between his teeth. His whistle was almost inaudible, but the tune he had chosen was familiar enough to both Sam and Mary that neither had any trouble identifying it from the few snippets of melody they could pick out above the hum of the tires on the pavement.

  Edgar Reilly often whistled “I’m a Little Teapot” without being aware he was doing it. All of his staff at the mental hospital in Bangor were familiar with this quirk, though none of them could have said for sure what provoked it. Connor Lipkin (the nearsighted Jungian) had postulated to the others more than once that it was likely only an unconscious attempt to alleviate stress, but Nurse Gable (who had known the good doctor longer) contended it went deeper than this, and was almost certainly a nervous reaction to repressed feelings of inadequacy. Jeptha Morgan (the freckled young orderly who was new to the hospital and unaccustomed to the nuances of psychoanalytical thinking) had only heard Edgar’s rendition of the teapot song once, yet argued forcefully it indicated nothing beyond a “shitty taste in music.”

  In this case, all three diagnoses would have been accurate.

  The current round of sub-tonal whistling had begun shortly after Edgar realized he was taking up nearly half the pickup’s ample seat. The Hunters were conspicuously trim and neat, and as such required little space for themselves. The two of them together, in fact, were more compact than Edgar by himself, and no matter how tightly he wedged himself against the passenger door to allow Sam and Mary more room, he still felt flabby and intrusive. Mary’s request that he not smoke heightened his discomfort, as did the lack of air conditioning in the truck, yet it wasn’t until Edgar made his fourth attempt to share his M&M’s with Mary—and was rebuffed, yet again—that his lips parted to emit their first soulful, sibilant lament.

  Sam Hunter had also declined to accept any candy (with a polite but firm “No, thank you”), but it was Mary’s nonverbal rejections that Edgar found particularly unsettling. He sensed no judgment of him per se in these refusals, yet there was still something hurtful to him about the curt, disinterested shake of her head, something distancing and remorseless, that made him feel the need to conceal just how many M&M’s he was consuming. To his own chagrin, therefore, he had begun to sneak them from his pocket, one by one, and pop them into his mouth whenever Mary’s head was turned. It was a distressing stratagem on many levels, but the most vexing aspect was that Edgar could no longer alphabetize the chocolates by color before eating them. And as this lessened his enjoyment of the entire snacking experience to a remarkable degree, Edgar couldn’t help but resent Mary f
or putting him in such a position. To be forced to engage in such a childish subterfuge was humiliating, and far beneath his dignity as both a doctor and a man.

  I’m projecting, he scolded himself, palming an M&M in his left hand (much as Julianna Dapper had concealed her caplets of Thorazine in the dementia unit). She’s not forcing me to do anything.

  He knew this was the case, yet the more he tried to reason away his resentment, the more influence it gained over his psyche. Mary’s inflexible behavior had begun to feel like an ascetic, sugar-free gauntlet, flung down on the seat between them, and he found himself taking it personally.

  Maybe she just doesn’t like chocolate, he speculated. Air hissed through his two front teeth. Or maybe she’s too worried about her son to eat anything at all.

  It was a little past four in the morning in upstate New York. Fire Marshal Orville Horvath and the Stockton Dairy Farm—where Chuck Stockton would soon make an unsuccessful attempt to hang himself—were ninety miles behind them, Gabriel Dapper was following them in his Cadillac at a hundred yards’ distance, and Julianna and her two “captors” had just finished urinating under a starlit sky somewhere in eastern Indiana. Edgar knew nothing of Chuck Stockton’s suicidal intentions, of course, or the whereabouts of Julianna and her companions, yet he still had more than enough to occupy his attention without also obsessing over Mary Hunter’s unwillingness to respond to his overtures of friendship.

  I’m behaving like a lovesick boy who’s just been spurned by the most popular girl in school! He flushed at this heartless self-assessment. What in God’s name is the matter with me?

  He squared his shoulders and peered manfully through the windshield, reminding himself there was no time for such foolishness. Lives might well depend on him in the coming hours, and the only thing that truly mattered was to find Julianna before she hurt herself or anybody else, and return her safely to the hospital.