The Third Hill North of Town (22 page)

“I’m sorry,” he muttered awkwardly. He met Mary’s eyes and grimaced. “I didn’t mean to swear at you, but my mother is missing, and I don’t know how to help her. It’s making me a little crazy.”

Mary watched his face for a long moment before answering. “There’s no need to apologize, Gabriel. To tell the truth, I feel exactly the same way.”

Gabriel blinked at the sudden compassion in her voice, then looked over at his Cadillac, his chin trembling. “I think I need to be by myself for a minute,” he rasped abruptly. “Will someone please come get me in my car if you hear anything?”

“Of course,” Mary answered. “Of course we will.”

Gabriel thanked her and turned away quickly, and Mary, Sam, and Orville watched him return to his Cadillac. Orville was called over to the barn to speak to one of his men just as Edgar Reilly rejoined the Hunters in the driveway by the ruins of the house.

“That stupid damn dog should be euthanized,” Edgar whispered in indignation, watching Lucy the Rottweiler trot along beside Orville.

 

The lime-green Volkswagen with New Hampshire plates passed just north of Mansfield, Ohio, at 2:12 a.m. that same Sunday morning. Julianna was at the wheel by then and singing quietly to herself as Jon and Elijah slept; the hills and deep valleys around them were filled with phantoms and shadows, lit only by the stars and an occasional lonely porch or bathroom light from otherwise dark farmhouses beside the highway. Elijah’s socks and sneakers were in the small space behind the rear seat of the Beetle, drying, and the car smelled like unwashed bodies and leftover meatloaf. Elijah, shirtless and shoeless, was in the front passenger seat, his head resting against the window. Jon was curled up in the backseat and snoring lightly, though he kept waking every few minutes to shift position, unable to get comfortable.

“There’s a place in my mem’ry, my life, that you fill,”
sang Julianna. The song was called “Mother Machree,” and it was another of her father’s favorites.
“No other can take it, no one ever will . . .”

Chapter 8

C
huck Stockton’s beloved Volkswagen Beetle made several surprised, plaintive choking noises and then died on the road a little after 4:00 a.m. on Sunday, shortly after crossing into Indiana from Ohio. Julianna was driving, and her dismayed cry of “Oh!” awakened both Elijah and Jon.

“What’s going on?” Elijah asked, scrambling upright in the passenger seat and blinking rapidly. The Beetle coughed once more before lapsing into silence, like a mortally wounded man gasping out a farewell to a grieving spouse.

“The main tank’s empty,” Jon said, sticking his head between the two front seats as Julianna wrestled with the wheel to bring them safely to the side of the road. Jon’s neck was stiff from being curled up in the confines of the backseat and he felt stupid with sleep. “We’ve still got the reserve tank, but that’s only good for thirty miles or so.”

He stared out the windows into the darkness and swore under his breath when Julianna flipped off the headlights. They were on a deserted highway with nothing but the stars to see by. He twisted in his seat to peer through the small oval rear window, searching in vain for a hint of human habitation. He could detect a faint brightening in the eastern horizon, but it was only the first suggestion of the coming dawn, still an hour or two away.

“Why didn’t we stop to fill up someplace?” He couldn’t hide the irritation in his voice, even though he knew Julianna wasn’t really to blame for this.

She probably thinks she’s in a fucking covered wagon,
he thought.
It’s my own damn fault for not staying awake.

Julianna turned her head to look at him mildly. “I think there may be something wrong with your car, Jon.”

She didn’t say what else she was thinking, of course, but she believed her father’s automobile was far superior to this slow, uncomfortable vehicle of Jon’s, and she regretted the necessity of leaving the Model T behind at the Millers’ Dairy Farm.

Jon rubbed his eyes and sighed. His mouth was dry and his breath tasted sour. He knew it was futile to press Julianna for answers, but he couldn’t think what else to do. “Have we passed a gas station recently?”

She frowned. “Since Mullwein, you mean?”

“Mullwein?” Jon asked, perplexed. “Where’s that?”

“In
Iowa,
silly.” Lines appeared on her large forehead. Both boys were staring at her as if she were speaking a foreign language, and it was unsettling her. “Right where it’s always been. We filled up there ages ago.”

Julianna pondered the last few hours on the highway with a sudden feeling of vertigo. She remembered stopping to urinate next to the railroad tracks somewhere between the last gas station and wherever they were now, but that, too, seemed as if it had occurred quite some time in the past. The creases on her forehead grew more prominent and she turned to Elijah. “Shouldn’t we be home by now, Ben? Mullwein is only thirteen miles from Pawnee.”

Elijah’s heart had slowed again after the initial panic he’d experienced when Julianna had cried out and awakened him. He studied her long, elegant face and could see her confusion as she tried to puzzle out the inconsistencies in whatever story she was telling herself about their journey.

“We’re a long way from Iowa, Julianna,” he said quietly. “You’re not where you think you are.”

“But how can that be?” Her eyes probed his. “Did I take a wrong turn somewhere?” Her frown deepened. “I
know
we filled up in Mullwein, but I’m afraid I may have gotten us badly lost since then.”

No shit,
Jon Tate thought. He forced himself to speak patiently as he made another attempt to reach her rational mind. “You didn’t happen to notice if we went through any towns in the last half hour or so, did you?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t seen anything resembling a town in forever.” She bit her lip and faced front again, visibly troubled. “Just where do you suppose we are?”

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 bitterness 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.”