Authors: Peter Abrahams
WYATT WASN’T PREPARED
for things happening fast, but somehow when Saturday rolled around he had a date with Greer. The plan was to pick her up at her place, go to lunch, and then drive around while she showed him the sights of Silver City. Aunt Hildy always did her shopping on Saturday morning, and Dub had practice. Wyatt slept in, woke to a quiet house. He found himself looking forward to the day ahead for the first time in a long time; and he wasn’t thinking about baseball at all.
Greer lived in an old apartment building a few blocks north of the main street, meaning away from the river. He sat in the car, waiting outside. It was a four-story building, kind of grimy outside but with fancy little details under the grime, like two Greek temple–type columns framing the front door, and the stone head of some aggressive-looking creature sticking out of the wall above it, fangs bared.
The door opened and Greer came out. She wore the short leather jacket and jeans, wasn’t carrying a purse, not even a little one. In his experience, girls always carried a purse when
they went out. But no time to think about that. She opened the passenger door and slid inside.
“Hey, cowboy,” she said.
“Hi,” said Wyatt. Her smell reached him, a really nice smell, flowers and something else. He glanced over, caught the gleam of her eyebrow ring and a quick smile.
“Cut yourself shaving?” she said, touching the tip of her chin.
Wyatt touched his chin, checked his fingertip. Yes, a little red smear; he wiped it off on his jeans.
“If I was a vampire you’d be in trouble,” Greer said.
“I’m not worried,” Wyatt said. “I had garlic for breakfast.”
Greer laughed. “Vroom vroom,” she said. “Let’s see what this baby can do.”
For some reason, Wyatt had a mature thought at that moment:
She’s already seen what this baby can do, on that icy patch in the Torrance Bowl parking lot.
He stepped lightly on the gas and drove sedately down the street. Greer’s eyes were on him: he could feel them.
“Is that your own place?” Wyatt said, nodding back toward the apartment building.
“Yeah. I’ve got a one-bedroom.”
“Cool,” Wyatt said. Having your own place: what would that be like? “So you don’t, uh, live with your mother, or anything?”
“Correctamundo,” Greer said. “Hang a right at the top of the hill.”
Wyatt hung a right, followed a tree-lined street overlooking the river. The houses, big, old, nice-looking, but a
little run-down, were spaced far apart.
“Pretty much the oldest surviving part of town,” Greer said. “Dates from back when there was still silver in the mine. The mining directors lived here, plus doctors, lawyers, that kind of thing.” She pointed. “My mother grew up in that one.”
Wyatt pulled over. The house was tall, with balconies, a screened-in porch, and a conical tower at one end.
“I think it was white back then,” Greer said.
Now it was yellow with brown trim, the paint peeling here and there; and a blue tarp covered one section of the roof. “Who lives in it now?” Wyatt said.
“No idea.”
Curtains parted on an upper floor and someone looked out. Wyatt eased off the brake, let the car roll forward. “So, uh, where’s your mom living now?”
“An even sweller place,” Greer said. “Sweller than this was in its heyday.”
“Yeah? Are we going to see it?”
“Depends on whether you’re planning a trip to Seattle.”
“Your mom lives in Seattle?”
“Check.”
“Your parents are divorced?”
“You do a dynamite Q and A, you know that?”
“Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for.” She patted his knee, sending a small electric charge up his leg. “What would happen to human conversation if we didn’t have Q and A? Long silences, baby, end of story.”
Way over his head. Wyatt realized that he was out of his league. Greer was smarter and older, and had more of something else he couldn’t even label. But the next moment, right after all that was hitting home, some part of him, possibly the competitive part, rose up, refusing to simply fold. Driving down this fading street where local silver barons had once lived, he forced his mind to wrestle with what Greer had just said, to really understand.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“You don’t know what?” said Greer. “Hang another right.”
“Well,” said Wyatt, turning onto a long street that slanted down, away from the river, “there’s communication in silences, too.”
“Hey,” she said. And then more quietly. “Point taken.”
And not just good communication, either. Entering his silent home—home back up in East Canton—and sensing Rusty’s mood: that was communication, too. “Good and bad,” he said.
“Communication?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re so right,” Greer said. “Take my stepfather.”
“So your parents
are
divorced.” For some reason, he wanted to nail that down.
“Hard to come by a stepfather otherwise, unless you know something I don’t.”
That stung a bit. Greer’s words often seemed to do that, Wyatt thought, but he didn’t mind. In fact, he found himself laughing.
“Gonna let me in on the joke?” she said.
“No joke.”
“Then what’s funny?”
He glanced at her. She was gazing at him; no eye makeup today—she looked younger, closer to his own age.
You
was the answer,
you’re funny, and lots more than that,
but he kept the answer inside, instead saying, “What about your stepfather?”
“He’s the biggest asshole in the world,” Greer said, “but the worst—”
A gray squirrel darted into the road, just a few yards in front of them, moving right to left. Wyatt swerved to the right, away from oncoming traffic, if there’d been any, and hit the brakes, steering behind the squirrel. But at the last instant, the squirrel paused and then did the dumbest thing possible, darting back the way it had come. Next came a feeling like passing over the tiniest speed bump, a soft one.
“Christ,” Wyatt said, looking back in the rearview mirror. The squirrel—what was left of it—wasn’t quite lying still. He stopped the car and got out. “Christ.” The squirrel’s head was motionless and so was its body and three legs. But the fourth leg was twitching—more than that, really, the tiny paw making little scrabbling movements on the pavement, as though trying to get the rest of the animal up and on its way. Wyatt walked over, looked down. The squirrel’s eyes were open, at least the one facing up, but was the squirrel seeing him, taking him in? Wyatt couldn’t tell. All he could tell for sure was that the squirrel’s guts were all over the place and that one leg—rear, left side—was trying to
get the animal up and on its way.
Which wasn’t going to happen. The squirrel was beyond hope, finished, the only question being when.
Misery:
the word for describing the squirrel’s condition at that moment, and what did you do for creatures in misery? You put them out of it. Wyatt’s first thought was to get back in the car, turn around, run over the squirrel again. But he couldn’t do that: overkill, right? He now completely understood the meaning of that word; and not just overkill, but detached and cold-blooded—their meanings were clear, too. That left what? Stomping on the squirrel? To stomp on a living thing, and not in anger: he couldn’t do that, either.
Wyatt went back to the car, hearing the scritch-scratch of that one paw on the pavement the whole way. Greer sat in the passenger seat, her head turning to follow his movements. Wyatt opened the trunk, found an old, soiled towel used for wiping off his bat during drizzly games, and also took out the bat itself.
He returned to the squirrel, lying in a small but growing red pool. That one paw was still trying to do things, more feebly now. And that soft brown eye: on him for sure. Wyatt bent down, laid the towel over the body, at the same time hearing the car door open. He rose, took a deep breath, raised his bat, and brought it down on the lump under the towel, just as hard as he thought necessary, and no harder.
He felt Greer beside him. She gripped his upper arm, squeezed so hard it hurt, even made him gasp out loud. Nothing moved under the towel. Greer let go, squatted down, carefully rolled up the towel so no part of the body showed,
and took it to the ditch that ran beside the road. Greer placed the bundle in the ditch.
She turned and approached Wyatt. He realized she wasn’t as tall as he’d thought, a good half foot shorter than him. Without a word or any preliminaries, she took his head in her hands, pulled it down to hers, and kissed him on the mouth, hard at first and then softer. Not the first girl he’d kissed, but this was on another level, so much more knowledgeable. Wyatt felt the power of the person behind the kiss.
He heard a car coming and backed away. The car—a black-and-white cop car—pulled out of a side street and drove up the hill, slowing down and then stopping beside Wyatt and Greer. The window slid down and a cop peered out, a gray-haired cop with baggy eyes and a fleshy pink face.
“Some problem?” he said.
“Uh,” said Wyatt.
“Ran over a squirrel,” Greer said. The cop’s gaze went to her. “Put it in the ditch.”
The cop nodded. A moment or two of silence went by. “You Bert Torrance’s daughter?”
“Yeah,” Greer said, more grunt than verbal reply.
“Recognize you from the lanes.” Greer looked him in the eye, said nothing. The cop looked right back. “Drive safe,” he said. The window slid back up and he drove off.
Wyatt and Greer stood together by the roadside. “Isn’t small-town living grand?” Greer said. “That’s enough adventure for one day.”
“What do you mean?”
“Take me home.”
He looked at her. Her face was flushed, her eyes a little blurry. “You’re mad about the squirrel?”
“What would I be mad about? It was an accident.”
“But, you know, what I did after.”
“What you did after?” Greer said. “That couldn’t have been better, you blockhead.” She laughed. “So damn good it got me hot.”
Wyatt’s mouth went dry; his knees got weak. He found those weren’t mere figures of speech.
Greer’s one-bedroom apartment was on the top floor of the building with the strange stone head over the door. Wyatt didn’t get to see much of the living room—just barely taking in some musical instruments—electric guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin—before Greer took him by the belt buckle and drew him into the bedroom.
“First time?” she said, now on the bed.
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say—”
“No problem,” Greer said, working on that buckle. “Just relax.”
“Don’t think I can.”
She laughed.
Some time later, Wyatt felt more relaxed than he ever had in his life, and not just relaxed but something far greater than that, like the world was all right after all, and so was his place in it.
“So,” Greer said. They lay side by side, her head on his shoulder, in a slightly awkward position, in fact, even hurting
a bit, but Wyatt felt no hurry to make any changes whatsoever. “Where were we when we were interrupted?”
“Your stepfather,” Wyatt said.
“Right,” said Greer. “The biggest asshole in the world.”
“Not so sure about that.”
“There’s competition?”
“Yeah.” And Wyatt told her about Rusty, and a story or two about his home life back in East Canton, and how he’d come to Silver City.
“Wow,” Greer said. “We got parallels here, sports fans. Where’s your real father?”
“That’s the most amazing part,” Wyatt said.
THE NEXT DAY,
Sunday, rain slanting by in sheets outside the window, Wyatt back at Greer’s, the two of them in her bed.
“Normally I hate the rain,” Greer said. “But today I can’t think straight.”
“How come?”
“How come? If you don’t know, who does?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s your fault, you blockhead. You’re making me spacey.”
Then came a period of relative quiet, interrupted by the ring of Wyatt’s cell phone. He reached down to the floor, groped the phone out of the pocket of his jeans, checked the number on the screen: his mom. “Have to take this,” he said.
“Why?” said Greer.
He held his finger over his lips, pressed the answer button. “Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, Wyatt. How are you doing?”
“Great. Uh, fine. I’m all right.”
“Well, good. You sound happy.”
“Yeah, you know.”
Greer got a mischievous look on her face and reached for him under the covers. Wyatt left the bed, stood by the window.
“Where are you?” his mom said.
“In Silver City, Mom—you know that.”
“I meant now—are you at ho—at Dub’s aunt’s?”
“On my way.”
“In the car?”
“No.” Wyatt didn’t like lying to his mom, or to anyone, really. “At a friend’s.”
“So you’re making friends?”
“Uh-huh.” Wyatt felt Greer’s eyes on his back. He turned. She was sitting up in bed, making no attempt to hold up the sheets. Her finger made a quick pattern in the air: QA? He almost laughed.
“That’s great, Wyatt. And school?”
“Fine, Mom, everything’s fine. How’s Cammy?”
“She misses you.”
“I miss her, too.” Greer’s face changed; he saw a new expression on it, new to him, at least—eyes narrowed, two vertical grooves on her forehead, just above the nose. She came close to looking ugly, surely impossible for such a beautiful girl. Had he mentioned Cammy to her? No. Wyatt held his hand down, palm to the floor, at about Cammy’s height level. Greer’s face returned to normal. “And how are you doing, Mom?”
“No complaints, except for…” She went silent for a moment or two, maybe choked up. Then she cleared her throat and went on. “Except for you being away, and all. How are you doing for money, by the way?”
“Fine.”
“You sure? I could send you a money order.”
“Don’t need it, Mom. I can always get a job.”
“Schoolwork comes first.”
“I know.”
“But, uh, speaking of jobs—there may be some news about that.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Too early to say, so maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up at all.”
“Come on, Mom.”
His mother took a deep breath; such a close-up sound—she might have been right there in the room. Wyatt moved nearer to the window. Outside, it was raining even harder, water spewing out of the drainpipes on the houses across the street. “Promise to keep it under your hat,” his mom said, “but Rusty may have a job lined up.”
“Yeah?” That had to be good. “What kind of job?”
“A good-paying job. Not like at the foundry, and no benefits, but good-paying for times likes these. Rusty’ll be—if he gets it—driving a truck for Secondary Metals Services.”
“What’s that?”
“They’re out of Fort Collins, but the route’s all over the place.”
Wyatt didn’t get it. Fort Collins was three or four
hundred miles from East Canton. “You’re—we’re moving to Colorado?”
“Oh, no, certainly not now. I’d have a hard time getting a better job than what I’ve got now, and this is the worst possible time to sell the house. For now—this is if it all comes through—Rusty will be back home every second weekend, maybe a bit more often after they see him settling in. So, uh…”
Silence. The implication was pretty obvious: if Rusty got the job, he’d be pretty much moving out for the next while, meaning there’d be no reason for Wyatt not to move right back in. “Sounds good, Mom. When will you know?”
“Any day. I’ll call soon as I know.”
Another silence.
“I’ll let you go.”
“Okay, Mom. Bye.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too. Say hi to Cammy.”
“You can say hi yourself. She’s right here.”
There was a little rustling sound, followed by Cammy. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“Wyatt?”
“Yeah?”
“Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me. Who does it sound like?”
“It’s raining.”
“Here, too.”
“When are you coming home?”
“Not sure. I—”
His mom came on. “Okay, Wyatt, take care.”
“Bye.”
Wyatt clicked off, turned to Greer, still sitting up. She didn’t have a single tattoo on her body. That surprised him, surprised him in a good way, although he couldn’t have explained why. There was just the eyebrow ring; maybe the absence of tattoos made the eyebrow ring’s statement more special, or powerful, or something: he couldn’t take it any further, and as for what the statement was, he didn’t know that, either.
“When will your mom know what?” Greer said. “If you don’t mind me being nosy.”
“Rusty’s trying to line up a job.”
She thought about that, nodded. “Have you got any pictures of Cammy or your mom?”
He sat beside her on the bed, ran through some pictures on the phone.
“Who’s that?”
“Dub.”
“And that?”
“Just this girl I used to know.”
“She’s pretty. What’s her name?”
“Didn’t really know her that well. She was in my English class.”
“You like the apple-cheeked blond type? That’s not me.”
“I like your type. Here’s Cammy.”
“She’s adorable.”
“And here’s my mom.”
Wyatt’s mom hated having her picture taken. This one showed her all dressed for work, makeup on, having a last sip of coffee by the stove and trying to wave Wyatt off at the same time. Greer gave the photo a careful look. “She has beautiful eyes. They’re just like yours.”
“Yeah?”
“But the rest of your face comes from somewhere else.” Wyatt remembered Coach Bouchard’s old photo: there was no doubt about that. Greer handed back the phone. “Enough chitchat—come here.”
Dub and Aunt Hildy were in the middle of dinner when Wyatt got back. Spaghetti with meatballs and garlic bread, probably Wyatt’s favorite meal, and a place was set for him. They looked up. Something was wrong: Wyatt knew Dub very well, had been reading that face practically all his life.
“Hi, sorry I’m late.”
“No problem,” Aunt Hildy said. “Just a call would be nice.”
“Sorry.”
“I can heat this up if you want.”
“It’s fine like this.” And it was. Wyatt was starving. He realized he hadn’t eaten a thing all day, maybe a first. “How was practice?” he said, putting down his fork at last just out of decency.
“Not bad,” Dub said. “It’s such a piss-off.”
“Dub,” said Aunt Hildy.
“But it is, Aunt Hildy. They—we’ve got nobody close to
Wyatt in the outfield. He’d be starting in center and leading off, maybe even batting third.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Aunt Hildy said. “I meant your language.”
“Language?”
“Piss-off,” said Aunt Hildy. “We’re at supper.”
“Oh.”
All of a sudden, Wyatt started laughing, couldn’t stop. He covered his face with his napkin.
“What so funny?” Dub said.
“Drink some water,” said Aunt Hildy.
Wyatt drank some water, pulled himself together. “Thanks for dinner, Aunt Hildy. It was great.”
“You’re more than welcome. Seconds?”
“Yeah. Please.”
“You boys have homework tonight?”
“Not much.”
“Hardly any.”
“Meaning plenty,” said Aunt Hildy. “One of you go up and get started, the other helps me wash up first.”
Wyatt and Dub flipped a coin. Dub won and went upstairs. Wyatt got a dish towel and stood by the sink. Aunt Hildy believed the dishwasher used too much water, tried not to use it. She had a two-part sink, filled one half with warm, sudsy water, the other with plain, washed and rinsed the dishes, then handed them to Wyatt, in charge of drying and stacking in the cupboard. Aunt Hildy’s hands were small, square, efficient; Wyatt spotted a few faint liver spots on them.
“How’s everything going?” Aunt Hildy said, eyes on her work.
“Good.”
“School all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Holding up without baseball?”
“Yeah.”
“Dub told the coach all about you.”
“I know.”
“Next spring’ll be around before you know it.”
For a moment, opening the silverware drawer—Aunt Hildy’s knives and forks so much heavier than those at home—Wyatt felt a sharp sudden pang, like a real pain in his chest, from missing baseball. Then his mind moved on to Greer, and the pain was gone.
“Meeting new people?” Aunt Hildy said.
“Yeah.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that.” She turned to Wyatt, handed him the last dish. “Not my business, goes without saying, but you’re new in town, couldn’t possibly have learned the lay of the—how things are yet. Know what I’m talking about?”
“Not really.” Aunt Hildy hadn’t let go of the dish, meaning they each had a hand on it.
“I understand you’re seeing Greer Torrance.”
Wyatt felt himself turning red. He hadn’t told Dub, hadn’t told anyone. It was all so new. “How do you know that?”
“I just do.” Aunt Hildy let go of the plate. Wyatt lost his grip on it, snatched it out of the air with his other hand just
before it would have hit the floor. He turned, put the dish in the cupboard.
“Do you know her?” he said, his back to Aunt Hildy.
“Not face-to-face,” she said. “This is a small town, Wyatt—maybe not as small as East Canton, but small enough so nothing stays secret for long. I just feel your mom wouldn’t be too comfortable with you and someone like Greer Torrance.”
Wyatt turned. Sometimes he got stubborn, and when he did his chin tilted up, pretty much on its own. It was doing it now. “I don’t see anything wrong with her.”
“No, of course not. She’s very attractive—maybe a bit too old for you, what with girls being more mature to begin with, no offense—but there’s no way you’d be aware of her reputation.”
Wyatt’s chin tilted up a bit more. “Which is?”
“For one thing, I’m sure you don’t know that her father’s an arsonist. A firefighter of my acquaintance got burned that night.”
“Greer told me.”
“Told you about the firefighter?”
“Not that part, but about her father, yes.”
“And what about her role in it?”
Wyatt felt himself turning redder. “What role?”
“It was pretty clear that she was involved, too—they couldn’t prove it, is all.”
Wyatt didn’t believe that. He just stood there, shaking his head, not trusting himself to stay calm if he replied. He was starting not to like Aunt Hildy.
“And before that, she was into drugs—very lucky she
didn’t get thrown in jail herself.”
Into drugs—that could mean a lot of things. What did it mean to someone like Aunt Hildy, a middle-aged, small-town woman?
“I’m talking about serious drugs, like heroin,” Aunt Hildy said. “The police knew.”
Serious drugs? He’d seen no sign of that—her apartment was tidy, her skin unmarred, no mention of drugs, not even once, in any context. A thought came to him. “Do you have friends in the police?”
Aunt Hildy nodded. “A coworker is married to one of the sergeants.”
“This sergeant,” Wyatt said, “a beefy guy with a pink kind of face?”
She nodded again.
“He ran my plate?”
“It’s a small town, Wyatt, but with rough edges. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
He gave her a long look, not friendly. She blinked a couple of times. “I’m going for a walk,” Wyatt said.
The rain had stopped but the wind still blew, very cold. Scraps of cloud raced fast across the moon. Wyatt found shelter behind a tree, called Greer, got put straight into voice mail. He wondered about driving over to her place. Not cool. But he still hadn’t rejected the idea when his phone rang.
“Hello?” he said.
Not Greer, but a man. “Hi, there,” said the man. “This Wyatt?”
“Yeah—who’s this?”
“Sonny.”
“Sonny?”
“Sonny Racine,” the man said. “Your father, to one way of thinking.”