“Registration?” He kept his hand on the butt of his gun as I reached inside the car. “Slow an’ easy.”
Did he think I was reaching for my .30-06?
He compared the two documents as if they might disagree in some fundamental way, then asked, “You got anything in your ve-hic-le I might need to know about?”
“No.”
“No, sir!”
“A dozen apples and a six-pack of Coke.” I didn’t mention the box of condoms. He’d surely take that the wrong way.
“Real funny. Mind if I have a look?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Why’s that?”
“If you had probable cause to search my car you wouldn’t need to ask.”
“You must be one of those jailhouse lawyers.”
I didn’t answer.
He handed back my documents and said, “You can go.”
I moved slowly—no need to give him an excuse. For what? I didn’t want to push him to find out.
He stood sweating behind his state trooper glasses with his hands on his hips as I put my license away and got in the Jeep. His effort to seem cool was undermined by the circles of sweat beneath his armpits.
Then he slapped the roof and said, “Drive nice.” He stepped back as I put the Jeep in gear.
“Next time, I’ll have a warrant.”
Jimmy confided that he’d been stopped, as well.
I asked him to elaborate.
“The guy’s a creep,” he said, and told me what had happened. He’d gotten the same general BS I had, but he’d been speeding. Not speeding carefully enough.
“To be fair, he could have given you a ticket.”
“I guess I’d rather have the ticket. I don’t want to owe the jerk.”
I didn’t tell him how often I’d seen the deputy watching for a chance to nail him. Or me. Or maybe Rhiann. Or that I’d watched Rhiann myself. Watched her come and go. And hang her laundry out. Watched her garden, wash her car, read her paper on the front porch. She never seemed to notice.
I understood Sinter’s obsession, if not his stalking.
I yearned for the woman with every fiber in me and felt her nearness strangely comforting. For the first time in my life, I was content.
Jimmy
“What’re you going to be when you grow up?” Beth asked me one afternoon.
It was the beginning of August—hot—and we were sitting on the bank of the swimming hole Steve told me he swam in when he was a kid. It was out in some farmer’s property but it wasn’t posted so it seemed okay to be there. We had our feet in the water. It was almost dark. Fish were jumping and the mosquitoes were starting to bite.
“We should bring fishing poles,” I said.
“You didn’t answer my question. And what would we do with fish?”
“Eat ’em.”
“Raw?”
I looked to see if she was kidding; she couldn’t keep from laughing.
“Naw. We could fry ’em on my exhaust manifold.”
“Really?”
I grinned. “Gotcha!”
“You still haven’t answered my question.”
“What was the question?”
She gave me a stern look, so I stopped kidding around. “A cop.”
“Like your dad?”
“Yeah.” I slapped a mosquito on my neck.
“You don’t have to be a cop just because your dad was one.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to be a cop?”
I shrugged and gave her the answer Dad used to give me. “It’s honest work. The pay’s good. And someone has to do it.”
“You want to be a hero, don’t you?”
I looked closely at her. She wasn’t kidding.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
She thought about that, then said, “Most people, I guess.”
“What do you want to be?”
She squished a mosquito on her arm. “A veterinarian.”
“You’ll be good at it.”
“If I can get into vet school.”
“You will.”
“You’re not the least bit prejudiced.”
I couldn’t help it—I leaned over and kissed her. She didn’t pull away.
When I did—finally—I said, “I’m sorry.”
She looked hurt. “Wasn’t it good?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Then why are you sorry?”
I just shook my head and kissed her again. And she kissed me back. I had to quit before I got too carried away.
“What?” she demanded.
“I love you.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder. “I wish summer would never end.”
“Might as well enjoy it while we got it.” I pulled off my shirt and dropped my jeans.
Beth stared at my boxers and pretended to be shocked.
“C’mon,” I said. “Last one in is a—”
She gave me that I-dare-you-to-say-it look.
“Sissy.” I grinned and dove in.
After that, it was hard not to think about going all the way. I wanted to. And she would’ve, but she was only sixteen.
“When’s your birthday?” I asked her one night. We’d been parked on a deserted street near her house, making out. We were both pretty excited; I had a hard-on.
“September.”
“September what?”
“Why? You gonna buy me a present?”
“Maybe.”
“September twenty-first.”
More than a month away.
Just before Labor Day, Beth and Steph suckered me into driving them to the megamall down on the interstate “to shop for school clothes.” It was between Greenville and Overlook—no big deal for me, but I hadda put up a little fight. “Only if I can watch you try them on.”
“We’ll model them for you,” Beth offered.
“Deal.”
The highway went through the top of a big hill, about five miles from Overlook. When you started down the slope, you could see the whole valley, down to the river, and my street and the two cemeteries and the layout of the town. From the top of the slope, everything looked tiny, like the miniature trees and houses on a train set. I wished I coulda blown off the mall and kept going to show it to Beth. I bet she would’ve loved the view.
We were two miles from the mall when I noticed that we’d picked up a tail—the goonmobile. “They got that heap fixed pretty fast.”
“What heap,” Beth asked. “Who?”
“Three guesses and the first two don’t count.”
She looked back and spotted our tail. “What are we gonna do?”
“Plan B.”
Steph said, “What’s Plan B?”
“Improvise.”
I speeded up a bit. The goons did, too.
I got into the left lane, floored it, and got about a half mile ahead, just before a curve that I knew was a big speed trap. As soon as I got around the curve, I moved over and slipped in between two big semis. The goons came around the curve accelerating, doing at least twenty over. They missed us completely. And they missed Deputy Sheriff Sinter doing radar up ahead. Until he put his flashers on.
I slowed down even more to let him into traffic in front of us. So we got a great view of the pull-over.
“God, Jimmy,” Beth said. “They’re gonna slaughter you if they ever get their hands on you.”
“They gotta catch me first.”
Rhiann
In August, the rights-of-way are blue with cornflowers and white with Queen Anne’s lacy parasols. I was on my way home one afternoon, taking in the beauty, when I noticed Rory doing radar—just after I passed him. I was fifteen miles over the limit.
Rory had to have noticed me but hope springs eternal. I took my foot off the gas but didn’t brake. Either he wasn’t paying attention or he’d decided to cut me some slack. He didn’t pull out after me. I wondered why, then p
ut him out of mind.
I always speed, ever since I was fourteen and the three guys I grew up with taught me to drive—cars they borrowed when we needed wheels. We always returned them, sometimes with more gas than when we left. We got really good at avoiding the police. In retrospect, we were insane.
Smoke was the best driver. He was normally fearless. And he was more patient—at least with me—than Steve or Billy were.
Billy was the most careful; Steve the most persistent.
By the summer Smoke was sixteen, he’d saved enough to buy a ’61 Ford that had bald tires, a bad clutch, and missed on half its cylinders. Steve, Billy, and I spent a lot of time on weekends and evenings helping him fix it up. We worked overtime at our jobs to put new tires and other parts on it. But then we had our own wheels. With our own chauffeur. Smoke owed us, but he would’ve driven us anyway because he loved driving. And he would never let anyone else drive his baby.
He’d picked me up one day, on our way to join Steve and Billy. But he took the long way around—down a farm road with long stretches of straightaway between the driveways. He put the pedal to the floor, and the speedometer needle went all the way to the right.
I sank back in the copilot’s seat and squeezed the armrest until my knuckles turned white.
Smoke eased off the gas. “You can’t be scared,” he told me. “You gotta accelerate into the curves and downshift when you brake. If you know what you’re doing, you’ll never lose control.”
Then he pulled over and let me take the wheel.
John
I was a child of the sixties, weaned on rock and roll. I learned to appreciate country music in prison, when I was forced to listen. Before that, I associated it with my abusive father. At Stateville, I bunked with a guy you didn’t mess with. He left me alone, but he insisted we listen to “real music”—country-western. He had a hundred pounds on me, so I didn’t argue. I noticed that when he turned the volume up, it drowned out much of the hideous noise from the tiers; I couldn’t miss the lyrics. For the first time in my life I was forced to see that country music always tells a story. I came to love the storytelling aspect.
The summer and fall of ’87, my life became a country-western song.
I wanted Rhiann Fahey so badly it hurt. It hurt to see her every day. It hurt whenever I didn’t.
Jimmy went back to school in September. I missed having him underfoot.
Deputy Sheriff Sinter—always lurking in our neighborhood—reminded me of ballads about badass outlaws. As far as I could tell, he was a rogue cop.
And there was no one to report him to.
Jimmy
After three months of working at a real job and seeing my girl on weekends, school sucked. I still worked after school, but being around John made me realize that school would be so much better if there were teachers like him. I lived for weekends.
Before I left for Greenville one Friday in September, I left Ma a note: “I’ll be late Sun. Nite. Don’t wait up.” Sunday was the day before Beth’s birthday. She was spending it with her family, who were giving her a party. After the party, when they were all in bed, Beth and I were gonna celebrate together.
There was a new moon. We hadn’t had a hard frost yet, so the crickets were singing. I parked on the street around the corner from her house and waited. And fell asleep.
Beth woke me when she opened the passenger door to get in. I got a quick look at her dress before she closed the door and the dome light went off. “You look great,” I told her.
“Thanks. Let’s get out of here before the neighbors see us and call the police.”
As I started the Chevy, she said, “I brought something.”
“What?”
“Let’s go somewhere private and I’ll show you.”
I used my parking lights to navigate the road out to the swimming hole. It wasn’t real dark—there were about a billion stars out. And a million crickets doing their thing. Beth leaned over and rested her head against my shoulder. When I’d parked facing the water, I turned off the lights. I left the motor idling because it was starting to get cold. I said, “Let’s get in the back.”
“We need some light.”
“Got that covered. C’mon.”
Beth dug her bag out from under the seat and got out.
I’d borrowed an old quilt from Ma’s linen closet and thrown it over the back seat. On the floor I’d left a candle lantern and kitchen matches. I lit the candle and set the lantern on the dashboard. Wedged against the windshield, it wouldn’t tip no matter how much we shook the car. And the glass sides kept the candle from blowing out.
We got in. Beth took a bottle out of her bag.
“What’s that?”
“Champagne. From my party.” She took two clear plastic cups out of the bag. “You ever had champagne?”
“A sip, maybe. At a wedding.”
She handed me the bottle. “You can open it.”
I unwound the little wire holding the top on.
“You’d better hold it out the window.” She got the two glasses ready.
I twisted the plastic cork back and forth until it shot off the bottle, sending up a fountain of foam. “Wow!”
Beth laughed. “That’s what it does inside your head. I think. Anyway, every time my mom has some she and my dad go upstairs and lock their door.”
I grinned and pulled the bottle inside and filled the glasses. I wedged the bottle on the floor between the front seat and the door. “Wait.” I leaned over the front seat to get Beth’s birthday present out of the glove compartment. “Put those glasses on the back ledge.”
When she did, I handed her the little velvet box I’d gotten at the jewelers.
Her eyes lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning. She opened it very slowly. The sapphire pendant inside glittered in the candlelight.
“Oh, Jimmy! It’s perfect.” She took it out of the box by its gold chain, and held it up. “Put it on me.”
In the bad light, it took a lot of fumbling to get the little fastener closed, but it was worth it to see how happy it made her. She stood up and leaned over the front seat to see it on herself in the rearview mirror. She turned around and threw herself on me in a big hug.
“We need a toast.” I reached for the glasses and handed one to her. “Happy birthday!”
We drank to that. The wine made my nose itch and my head spin. “Awesome.”
Beth grinned.
“You sure you want to go through with this?” I asked her.
She nodded. She finished her champagne and put the glass back on the ledge.
“What do we do?”
“I’m supposed to kiss you until you’re ready.”
“How will I know I’m ready?”
“You just will.” She didn’t look convinced. I wondered what kind of sex education classes they had at her school. “You’ve seen dogs do it, right?”
“No-oo. We don’t let them—”
“Forget I said that. Didn’t your mom ever—?”
“My mom said I should wait until I’m married and my husband’ll tell me what to do.”
“Jesus!”
“Don’t swear.”
“Sorry. Let’s start over. Why don’t I just kiss you and see what happens?”
We both leaned forward. And bumped heads. It was funny and we laughed. Only it wasn’t funny because she’d never even let me feel her very far up before. And now we were trying so hard to make our first time special and romantic like in the movies but it was getting more like a stupid sitcom.
I started to unbutton her dress. I could feel that I was getting ready.
She said, “This isn’t your first time.”
“No, really. It is.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“My ma’s got this book—Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex—she keeps right out in the open, in the living room bookshelf. I studied it.”
Beth grinned and pulled off my T-shirt.
“Han
g on a second,” I told her. “I almost forgot something.” I leaned over the front seat again. There was just one condom left in the glove box. Dammit, Nate! I grabbed it and dropped down next to Beth.
We got her dress off. I’d seen enough movies to remember to hang it carefully over the back of the front seat. Underneath, she had on this sexy white bra and panties.
Beth noticed the effect they were having and pointed at the bulge in my pants. “What’s this?”
I sucked in my breath.
She said, “Can I see?”
I unbuckled my belt. She unsnapped my fly and pulled the zipper down. “What’s in here?”
“Your new pet.”
She giggled. “Can it do any tricks?”
I hauled it out and said, “Let’s see.”
She stared at it. She giggled again.
I felt hot. I leaned into the front seat to turn off the engine. While I had my back to her, Beth pulled down my pants. When I turned back around, I shook them off and rested my knees on the back seat on either side of her, and leaned back against the front seat.
She kept staring at my dick like she’d never seen one before. Maybe she hadn’t. It was distracting.
“Can I touch it?” she asked.
“Sure!”
When she did, it started to come to attention.
Her eyes widened and she leaned away. “It’s so big!”
I grinned but I thought she looked worried. Maybe it was too big.
Hoping to set her at ease, I asked, “How ’bout a little more champagne?” I got the bottle and refilled our glasses.
She practically chugged hers. I took it easier; I could feel it going to my head. My dad had warned me that booze can ruin your love life.
Besides, I was enjoying the view.
I put our glasses back on the ledge, and lowered her onto the back seat, slipping a finger under her bra strap. “Isn’t this uncomfortable?”
“A royal pain.” She licked her lips.
I kissed them. Then I fumbled her bra off and kissed her beautiful boobs. By the time I got her panties off, I was ready.
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