Decision Point (ARC)

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  he continued into the empty intersection. That’s what they’d

  taught him in driver’s ed: you know you’ve come to a complete

  stop when the front of your car lifts up.

  At the next intersection, Jerry signaled his turn, even though

  there was no one around and took a left onto Askwith Street.

  The bassett hound nodded, impressed. “You’re a very careful

  driver,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Jerry was coming to another corner, where Askwith crossed

  Thurlbeck, and he decided to turn right. He activated the turn

  signal and—

  “No!” shouted the man.

  Jerry was startled and looked around, terrified that he’d been

  about to hit a cat or something. “What?” said Jerry. “What?”

  “Don’t go down that way,” said the man, his voice shaking.

  It was the route Jerry would have to take to get to school, but

  he was in no rush to see that old prison any sooner than he had

  to. He canceled his turn signal and continued straight through the

  intersection.

  Jerry went along for another mile, then decided he’d better

  not overdo it and headed back to the man’s house.

  “So,” said the man, “what did you think?”

  “It’s a great car, but …”

  “Oh, I know it could really use a front-end alignment,” said

  the man, “but it’s not that bad, is it?”

  Jerry hadn’t even noticed, but he was clever enough to seize

  on the issue. “Well, it will need work,” he said, trying to sound

  like an old hand at such matters. “Tell you what—I’ll give you

  two thousand dollars for it.”

  “Two thousand!” said the man. But then he fell silent, saying

  nothing else.

  Jerry wanted to be cool, wanted to be a tough bargainer, but

  the man had such a sad face. “I’ll tell you the truth,” he said.

  “Two thousand is all I’ve got.”

  “You worked for it?” asked the man.

  Jerry nodded. “Every penny.”

  The man was quiet for a bit, then he said, “You seem to be a

  fine young fellow,” he said. He extended his right hand across

  the gearshift to Jerry. “Deal.”

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  *

  Today was the day. Today, the first Tuesday in September,

  would make everything worthwhile. Jerry put on his best—that

  is, his oldest—pair of jeans and a shirt with the sleeves ripped

  off. It was the perfect look.

  He got in the car— his car—and started it, pulling out of the

  driveway. A left onto Schumann Street, a right onto Vigo. Jerry

  didn’t have any real choice of how to get to school, but was

  delighted that some of the other kids would see him en route.

  And if he happened to pass Ashley Brown … why, he’d pull over

  and offer her a lift. How sweet would that be?

  Jerry came to the intersection with Thurlbeck, where there

  was a stop sign. But this time he was trying to impress a different

  audience. He slowed down and, without waiting for the front of

  the car to bounce up, turned right.

  Thurlbeck was the long two-laned street that led straight to

  Eastern High. Jerry had to pick just the right speed. If he went

  too fast, none of the kids walking along would have a chance to

  see that it was him. But he couldn’t cruise along slowly, or they’d

  think he wasn’t comfortable driving. Not comfortable! Why,

  he’d been driving for months now. He picked a moderate speed

  and rolled down the driver’s-side window, resting his sleeveless

  arm on the edge of the opening.

  Up ahead, a bunch of kids were walking along the sidewalk.

  No … no, that wasn’t quite right. They weren’t walking—

  they were standing, all looking and pointing at something. That

  was perfect: in a moment, they’d all be looking and pointing at

  him.

  As he got closer, Jerry slowed the car to a crawl. As much as

  he wanted to show off, he was curious about what had caught

  everyone’s attention. He remembered a day years ago when

  everybody had paused on the way to school as they came across

  a dead dog, one eye half popped out of its skull.

  Jerry continued on slowly, hoping people would look over

  and take notice of him, but no one did. They were all intent on

  something—he still couldn’t make out what—on the side of the

  road. He thought about honking his horn, but no, he couldn’t do

  that. The whole secret of being cool was to get people to look at

  you without it seeming like that was what you were trying to do.

  Finally, Jerry thought of the perfect solution. As he got closer

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  to the knot of people, he pulled his car over to the side of the

  road, put on his blinkers, and got out.

  “Hey,” he said as he closed the distance between himself and

  the others. “Wassup?”

  Darren Chen looked up. “Hey, Jerry,” he said.

  Jerry had expected Chen’s eyes to go wide when he realized

  that his friend had come out of the car sitting by the curb, but that

  didn’t happen. The other boy just pointed to the side of the road.

  Jerry followed the outstretched arm and …

  His heart jumped.

  There was a plain white cross on the grassy strip that ran

  along the far side of the sidewalk. Hanging from it was a wreath.

  Jerry moved closer and read the words that had been written on

  the cross in thick black strokes, perhaps with an indelible marker:

  “Tammy Jameson was killed here by a hit-and-run driver. She

  will always be remembered.” And there was a date from July.

  Jerry knew the Jameson name—there’d always been one or

  another of them going through the local schools. A face came

  into his mind, but he wasn’t even sure if it was Tammy’s.

  “Wow,” said Jerry softly. “Wow.”

  Chen nodded. “I read about it in the paper. They still haven’t

  caught the person who did it.”

  *

  Jerry finally got what he wanted at the end of the school day.

  Tons of kids saw him sauntering over to his car, and a few of the

  boys came up to talk to him about it.

  And just before he was about to get in and drive off, he saw

  Ashley. She was walking with a couple of other girls, books

  clasped to her chest. She looked up and saw the car sitting there.

  Then she saw Jerry leaning against it and her eyes—beautiful

  deep-blue eyes, he knew, although he couldn’t really see them at

  this distance—met his, and she smiled a bit and nodded at him,

  impressed.

  Jerry got in his car and drove home, feeling on top of the

  world.

  *

  The next morning, Jerry headed out to school. This time, he

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  thought maybe he’d get the attention he deserved as he came up

  Thurlbeck Street. After all, even if the cross was still there—and

  it was; he could just make it out up ahead—the novelty would

  surely have wor
n off.

  Jerry decided to try a slightly faster speed today, in hopes that

  more people would look up. But, to his astonishment, he found

  that the more he pressed his right foot down on the accelerator,

  the more his car slowed down. He actually craned for a look—it

  was a beginner’s mistake, and a pretty terrifying one too, he

  remembered, to confuse the accelerator and the brake—but, no,

  his gray Nike was pressing down on the correct pedal.

  And yet still his car was rapidly slowing down. As he came

  abreast of the crucifix with it wreath, he was moving at no better

  than walking speed, despite having the pedal all the way to the

  floor. But once he’d passed the cross, the car started speeding up

  again, until at last the vehicle was operating normally once more.

  Jerry was reasonably philosophical. He knew there had to be

  something wrong with the car for him to have gotten it so cheap.

  He continued on to the school parking lot. Not even the principal

  had a reserved spot—it made his car too easy a target for vandals,

  Jerry guessed. It pleased him greatly to pull in next to old Mr.

  Walters, who was trying to shift his bulk out of his Ford.

  *

  Jerry was relieved that his car functioned flawlessly on the

  way home from school. He still hadn’t managed to find the

  courage to offer Ashley Brown a lift home, but that would come

  soon, he knew.

  The next day, however—crazy though it seemed—his car

  developed the exact same malfunction, slowing to a crawl at

  precisely the same point in the road.

  Jerry had seen his share of horror movies. It didn’t take a Dr.

  Frankenstein to figure out that it had something to do with the

  girl who had been killed there. It was as though she was reaching

  out from the beyond, slowing down cars at that spot to make sure

  that no other accident ever happened there again. It was scary but

  exhilarating.

  At lunch that day, Jerry headed out to the school’s parking

  lot, all set to hang around his car, showing it off to anyone who

  cared to have a look. But then he caught sight of Ashley walking

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  out of the school grounds. He could have jumped in his car and

  driven over to her, but she probably wouldn’t get in, even if he

  offered. No, he needed to talk to her first.

  Now or never, Jerry thought. He jogged over to Ashley,

  catching up with her as she was walking along Thurlbeck Street.

  “Hey, Ash,” he said. “Where’re you going?”

  Ashley turned around and smiled that radiant smile of hers.

  “Just down to the store to get some gum.”

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  “If you like,” she said, her voice perfectly measured,

  perfectly noncommittal.

  Jerry fell in beside her. He chatted with her—trying to hide

  his nervousness—about what they’d each done over the summer.

  She’d spent most of it at her uncle’s farm and—

  Jerry stopped dead in his tracks.

  A car was coming up Thurlbeck Street, heading toward the

  school. It came abreast of the crucifix but didn’t slow down, it

  just sailed on by.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Ashley.

  “Nothing,” said Jerry. A few moments later, another car

  came along, and it too passed the crucifix without incident.

  Of course, Jerry had had no trouble driving home from

  school, but he’d assumed that that was because he was in the

  other lane, going in the opposite direction, and that Tammy,

  wherever she was, didn’t care about people going that way.

  But …

  But now it looked like it wasn’t every car that she was

  slowing down when it passed the spot where she’d—there was

  no gentle way to phrase it—where she’d been killed.

  No, not every car.

  Jerry’s heart fluttered.

  Just my car.

  *

  The next day, the same thing: Jerry’s car slowed down almost

  to a stop directly opposite where Tammy Jameson had been hit.

  He tried to ignore it, but then Dickens, one of the kids in his

  geography class, made a crack about it. “Hey, Sloane,” he said,

  “What are you, chicken? I see you crawling along every morning

  when you pass the spot where Tammy was killed.”

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  Where Tammy was killed. He said it offhandedly, as if death

  was a commonplace occurrence for him, as if he was talking

  about the place where something utterly normal had happened.

  But Jerry couldn’t take it anymore. He’d been called on it, on

  what Dickens assumed was his behavior, and he had to either

  give a good reason for it or stop doing it. That’s the way it

  worked.

  But he had no good reason for it, except …

  Except the one he’d been suppressing, the one that kept

  gnawing at the back of his mind, but that he’d shooed away

  whenever it had threatened to come to the fore.

  Only his car was slowing down.

  But it hadn’t always been his car.

  A bargain. Just two grand!

  Jerry had assumed that there had to be something wrong with

  it for him to get it so cheap, but that wasn’t it. Not exactly.

  Rather, something wrong had been done with it.

  His car was the one the police were looking for, the one that

  had been used to strike a young woman dead and then flee the

  scene.

  *

  Jerry drove to the house where the man with the basset-hound

  face lived. He left the car in the driveway, with the driver’s door

  open and the engine still running. He got out, walked up to the

  door, rang the bell, and waited for the man to appear, which, after

  a long, long time, he finally did.

  “Oh, it’s you, son,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  Jerry had thought it took all his courage just to speak to

  Ashley Brown. But he’d been wrong. This took more courage.

  Way more.

  “I know what you did in that car you sold me,” he said.

  The man’s face didn’t show any shock, but, Jerry realized

  that wasn’t because he wasn’t surprised. No, thought Jerry, it was

  something else—a deadness, an inability to feel shock anymore.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, son,” said the man.

  “That car— my car—you hit a girl with it. On Thurlbeck

  Street.”

  “I swear to you,” said the man, still standing in his doorway,

  “I never did anything like that.”

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  “She went to my school,” said Jerry. “Her name was Tammy.

  Tammy Jameson.”

  The man closed his eyes, as if he was trying to shut out the

  world.

  “And,” said Jerry, his voice quavering, “you killed her.”

  “No,” said the man. “No, I didn’t.” He paused. “Look, do you

  want to come in?”

  Jerry shook his head. He could outrun the old guy—he was

  sure of that—and
he could make it back to his car in a matter of

  seconds. But if he went inside … well, he’d seen that in horror

  movies, too.

  The man with the sad face put his hands in his pockets. “What

  are you going to do?” he said.

  “Go to the cops,” said Jerry. “Tell them.”

  The man didn’t laugh, although Jerry had expected him to—

  a derisive, mocking laugh. Instead, he just shook his head.

  “You’ve got no evidence.”

  “The car slows down on its own every time I pass the spot

  where the”—he’d been about to say “accident,” but that was the

  wrong word—“where the crime occurred.”

  This time, the man’s face did show a reaction, a lifting of his

  shaggy, graying eyebrows. “Really?” But he composed himself

  quickly. “The police won’t give you the time of day if you come

  in with a crazy story like that.”

  “Maybe,” said Jerry, trying to sound more confident than he

  felt. “Maybe not.”

  “Look, I’ve been nice to you,” said the man. “I gave you a

  great deal on that car.”

  “Of course you did!” snapped Jerry. “You wanted to get rid

  of it! After what you did—”

  “I told you, son, I didn’t do anything.”

  “That girl—Tammy—she can’t rest, you know. She’s

  reaching out from beyond the grave, trying to stop that car every

  time it passes that spot. You’ve got to turn yourself in. You’ve

  got to let her rest.”

  “Get out of here, kid. Leave me alone.”

  “I can’t,” said Jerry. “I can’t, because it won’t leave her

  alone. You have to go to the police and tell them what you did.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t do

  anything!” The old man turned around for a second, and Jerry

  thought he was going to disappear into the house. But he didn’t;

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  he simply grabbed a hockey stick that must have been leaning

  against a wall just inside the door. He raised the stick

  menacingly. “Now, get out of here!” he shouted.

  Jerry couldn’t believe the man was going to chase him down

  the street, in full view of his neighbors. “You have to turn

  yourself in,” he said firmly.

  The man took a swing at him—high-sticking indeed!—and

  Jerry started running for his car. The old guy continued after him.