Glory Girl (7 page)

“John!” Mrs. Glory cried out in the front of the bus. Her voice was sharp with concern. The Glory bus had started to shimmy when it hit forty miles an hour, and this scared her.

“You want to drive?” Mr. Glory did not take his Pall Mall from between his teeth or look at her.

“No, but—”

“Then shut up.”

“But the shaking … and … the windshield wipers.” She was unable to remain silent, yet afraid to say anything more.

It seemed to her that nothing was right with the bus tonight. Not only was it shaking in a terrible way, but the windshield wipers didn’t seem to have enough power to push the heavy rain away. The click of the blades was getting slower and slower. If the blades stopped … She clutched the ruined pizza tighter.

Mrs. Glory watched her husband anxiously. He was leaning forward over the steering wheel, peering through the sheets of rain. His back was tense, his shoulders hunched. He puffed constantly on his cigarette. Mrs. Glory had the feeling that if it hadn’t been for the faint white line down the center of the road, they would already have been in the ditch.

“Please don’t go so fast, Dad,” Angel asked from the third seat. “It makes me sick after I’ve eaten.” It was so unusual for Angel to say anything about his driving that Mr. Glory slowed down slightly.

The trembling of the bus stopped, and Mrs. Glory looked around gratefully at her older daughter. “Thank you,” she mouthed as she turned back to watch the road ahead. The pizza in her lap dropped to the floor again, this time unnoticed.

On the back seat Anna had heard her father’s sharp retort. Her father was so different now from the way he was onstage. She knew how hard he worked on his stage appearance—Grecian comb to turn his hair black again, makeup to hide the bags under his eyes, scarves to hide his sagging neck.

But when he leaned so close to the mike that the audience could hear him breathing, and when he said in that low, sincere voice, “And now it’s hymn time, and tonight we would like to do my grandaddy’s favorite, ‘The Old Rugged Cross,’” Anna would forget all that. She would believe with the audience in his absolute goodness.

She turned back to the empty road that stretched behind the bus. She was more worried about Uncle Newt than about her father’s driving. Where would he go now? What was he going to do?

The Glory bus rounded a curve, veered over the white center line, and Mr. Glory brought it back with a sharp spin of the steering wheel. At that moment the windshield wipers stopped completely.

Mrs. Glory gasped and folded her hands beneath her chin in prayer. She closed her eyes. As she waited, she heard the labored click as the windshield wipers started up again. Her sigh trembled with relief. She opened her eyes to watch for the next crisis.

On the fourth seat of the Glory bus Matthew was curled up with his eyes closed. He was passing the time by planning revenge on Joshua. All evening, even when they had been sharing the game of Galaxians, revenge had been in the back of his mind. Now he was giving the matter his full attention.

This particular revenge had to be something special, he told himself. He couldn’t just pretend to lose balance and fall on him or something. It had to be
right
. Matthew was particular about his acts of vengeance.

As he lay there, listening to the rain, he began to go over the incident again. He remembered Joshua pushing him out of the way, saying, “He’s nobody. Just my brother.” Nobody! That wasn’t fair. He had as much right as Joshua to sign autographs. And the girls—well, there had been two of them. Joshua could have shared.

Suddenly he noticed a movement across the aisle. Joshua was scratching his stitches, something he had been forbidden to do. “You are not to touch those stitches,” he had been told at least a hundred times.

“Mom, Joshua’s scratching his stitches,” Matthew sang out happily.

“I’m not scratching them,” Joshua protested. “I’m scratching
around
them.”

“Huh-uh! I saw him. He was scratching his stitches.”

“You boys be quiet.”

Mrs. Glory turned and swatted the only twin she could reach—Matthew.

Matthew scrambled up in his seat. “That’s not fair! He scratches his stitches and I get hit!”

A second swat silenced him. Now, he thought darkly as he settled down again, he would have to have
double
revenge.

At the back of the bus Anna straightened. She could see car lights in the distance. She widened the clear circle on the window.

It was Uncle Newt! She had not scared him away, after all. Anna leaned her chin on her arm and watched, smiling, as the wavering car lights came closer.

A
SILENCE HAD FALLEN
inside the Glory bus. Both Mr. and Mrs. Glory were tensely watching the road ahead through the faulty windshield wipers. Angel was twisting her hair around her fingers, her eyes closed, her head laid back. The twins had fallen asleep on opposite seats, curled forward in identical positions. Anna was looking out the back window.

For the past five minutes Anna had been watching the car lights coming closer. She had now begun to wonder if it really could be Uncle Newt’s car. She had the feeling that Uncle Newt would have stayed back, merely kept the bus in sight. This car was moving steadily closer.

Anna got up. Holding onto the seats, she made her way forward. She slipped into the seat opposite Angel. “Angel?”

“What?” Angel did not open her eyes.

“What did Uncle Newt’s car look like?”

“Ancient.”

“Anything else?”

“Rusty, junky, falling apart. The first time I saw it I thought it had been abandoned. Then I saw him behind the wheel.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

Anna went back to the window. The car was even closer now. In the glow of the headlights she could see the sleek hood, the high chrome bumper, the smooth paint. “It’s not him,” she said to herself.

She raised her eyes. Farther back on the road, she saw the lights of another car, but Anna didn’t have much hope that that would be Uncle Newt either. She leaned her head against her arms and closed her eyes.

The rocking movement of the bus was putting her to sleep when a light in her face startled her. She opened her eyes.

The car was directly behind the bus now. Anna straightened. She thought at first that the car was going to pass, but it was too close. She leaned against the glass for a better view. At that moment she recognized the boy in the plastic jacket. He was beside the driver, leaning forward, grinning up at the bus. His drooping eyelids made slits of his eyes. He turned to the driver, said something, laughed.

For a moment Anna froze. There was something sinister about the boy’s expression. She remembered the look in his eyes at the restaurant, the anger in his voice as he had said, “Nobody calls me a punk.”

She got up. Swaying, she made her way quickly up the aisle. “Dad?”

“Don’t bother your father,” Mrs. Glory said in a strained voice. The windshield wipers were acting up again. Each time they slowed, her pulse quickened.

Mr. Glory did not look around. He was lighting another cigarette from the one he had just finished smoking.

Anna sat down in the seat behind him. “Dad, those guys are behind us.”

“What guys, Anna?” Mrs. Glory asked. Anna had her attention at last.

“The ones in the restaurant. You know, Mom, the ones who came over to our table, the ones Dad yelled at?”

“Did you hear that, John?” Mrs. Glory leaned across the aisle anxiously. Her round knees punched into the opposite seat.

“I heard.”

“Dad, I think they’re going to try something.”

“What, Anna?” Mrs. Glory asked.

“I don’t know—force us off the road or something. They’re too close.”

Mr. Glory’s eyes darted to the rearview mirror to check the headlights of the car behind. Then he stepped on the gas. Mrs. Glory clasped her hands over her heart as the bus began to shimmy. Danger was everywhere now—in the sluggish windshield wipers, the boys behind them, the trembling bus. “Please, John,” she moaned.

“Please what? Please let those punks run us off the road?”

“We don’t know that’s what they’re going to do. Maybe they’re in a hurry. Maybe they want to pass.”

“They can pass if they want to,” Mr. Glory snapped. “They have room.”

“John, they don’t. Slow down and move over a little. Please!”

With his lips clamped on his cigarette, Mr. Glory glanced down at the speedometer. He eased up on the gas pedal. Forty-five … forty … thirty-five … thirty …

Anna glanced from the speedometer to the back of the bus where the lights of the other car lit up the window.

“If they wanted to pass,” Mr. Glory said beneath his breath, “they’d pass. Pass, you punks!”

“What’s happening?” Joshua asked, rising from his sleeping position. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Anna said. “Just some boys trying to be funny.”

“What are they doing?”

“Nothing, just—”

Joshua scrambled down the aisle and looked out the back window. “It’s a Thunderbird,” he called. He knew cars. His voice rose. “And it’s getting ready to bump into us!” At that moment the Glorys felt the jarring thud as the car struck the back of the bus.

T
HE JOLT FLUNG THE
Glorys forward and then backward in their seats. Angel’s eyes snapped open. Matthew awoke as he hit the seat in front of him. The sound of Mrs. Glory’s sharp scream hung in the air long after they had recovered.

“John, pull over,” Mrs. Glory said then in a soft, pleading voice, her hands again over her heart. “Stop. Let them pass.”

Mr. Glory did not answer. His eyes darted from the rearview mirror to the road ahead.

“What’s happening now?” Anna called back to Joshua. He was at the window again, his forehead against the cold glass.

“Nothing,” he reported. “The Thunderbird’s still there, and it’s not slowing down. They’re blowing the horn!” His last words were lost in the long, arrogant blast of the car’s horn.

“John,
please
!”

At the wheel of the Glory bus, Mr. Glory started to tremble. This was something he had never been able to control. All his life the combination of helplessness and fear had caused his bones to rattle. As a boy his nickname had been “Shaky.”

“John!” Mrs. Glory cried sharply. She moved to the edge of her seat. She felt she had lost her husband’s attention. He seemed to be in a trance. “John!”

“He’s coming at us again!” Joshua called.

The Glory family tensed. Anna braced herself against the back of her father’s seat. Her knuckles were white.

“Hold on,” Mrs. Glory cried.

The jolt came then, hard. Anna’s head was flung against her father’s seat. She heard her mother scream, heard Joshua yell as he was thrown backward into the aisle. She straightened. In the pale light from the dashboard her eyes were wide with her own fear.

She wet her dry lips. “Maybe we
should
pull over, Dad.”

Anna put her hand on her father’s shoulder as she spoke, and she felt him trembling. It was as frightening as feeling stone tremble. “Dad?” She had never thought of her father as anything but hard and unyielding. She said again, “Dad?”

Mr. Glory did not answer. His shoulder jerked as he reached down to shift gears, again as he clutched the steering wheel. And beneath was the terrible shivering, as if his very bones had turned to ice. Anna was more alarmed by this than she was by the boys behind them.

“Dad, are you all right?”

As she leaned forward, waiting for his answer, Joshua screamed, “He’s coming at us again!”

Instantly Mr. Glory steered the bus to the right in a desperate attempt to avoid the jolt. Anna was thrown sideways. Behind them, tires screeched.

“That stopped them,” Joshua yelled in triumph. “They missed!”

“For now,” Matthew added. Both boys were at the back of the bus now, peering with white faces at the car behind them.

“I don’t believe this,” Matthew added. “Why doesn’t he leave us alone?”

Joshua said, “I told you we needed a CB. We could call the police!” Joshua was holding onto the seat with both hands now, swaying as wildly as if he were riding a bucking horse.

“He’s coming again!”

“Dad, he’s coming!”

Mr. Glory strained forward. His shoulders flexed as he steered to the right again. This time he went too far. Anna felt the front wheel slip off the crumbling blacktop and onto the soft earth. Mr. Glory yanked the wheel to the left.

The bus wavered on the edge of the road, swerving back and forth. The headlights shone first on the trees to the left, then on the stone bank on the right. The Thunderbird passed, sending a spray of water up onto the windshield.

At that moment the windshield wipers stopped. Mr. Glory peered blindly over the steering wheel. The world was lost in a sheet of water. He hit the brake. For what seemed an eternity the bus wavered.

Anna, with her hand on her father’s shoulder, knew the exact moment when her father lost control of the bus. He was pulling the steering wheel to the left with all his strength, and the bus turned to the right.

Anna gasped as the bus went completely off the road. A flash of lightning lit up the world, and Anna saw trees looming ahead.

For a moment the top-heavy bus swayed in the soft earth. Mr. Glory clung to the useless steering wheel, braced for the crash.

Before Anna buried her head in her arms, the windshield wipers swept across the windshield for one last time, and Anna saw the trees directly ahead. She held on for dear life.

T
HE HEAD-ON CRASH ANNA
expected did not happen. At the last moment the bus ground-looped. Skidding in the soft, slick earth, it hit the trees sideways.

There was the awful sound of metal scraping against wood, and a pause. Then, with a terrible slowness, like a prehistoric animal dying, the Glory bus turned over onto its side. It rested against trees, which bent beneath the weight.

The shock jarred Anna from her seat. She plunged across the bus and landed against the opposite window, her shoulder jammed into the cold glass. Drums overturned and crashed against the side of the bus. People screamed.