The Bachman Books

the places where Dicky had pounded on me. The idea that he was dead made for a strange, almost dreamy terror in my mind-and I saw a reflection of what I was feeling on Carol's face. He got fresh, and I let him, a little, she had said. What, exactly, did that mean to a bright college-bound girl like Carol? Maybe he had kissed her. Maybe he had even gotten her out into the puckerbrush and mapped the virgin territory of her burgeoning chest. At the eighth grade picnic, God save us all. He had been daring and wild.

'What happened to him?' Don Lordi asked.

Dick spoke slowly. 'He got hit by a car. That was really funny. Not ha-ha, you know, but peculiar. He got his driver's license just last October, and he used to drive like a fool. Like a crazy man. I guess he wanted everybody to know he had, you know, balls. It got so that no one would ride with him, hardly. He had this 1966 Pontiac, did all the body work himself. Painted her bottle green, with the ace of spades on the passenger side.'

'Sure, I used to see that around,' Melvin said. 'Over by the Harlow Rec.'

'Put in a Hearst four-shifter all by himself,' Dick said. 'Four-barrel carb, overhead cam, fuel injection. She purred. Ninety in second gear. I was with him one night when he went up the Stackpole Road in Harlow at ninety- five. We go around Brissett's Bend and we start to slide. I hit the floor. You're right, Charlie. He looked weird when he was smiling. I dunno if he looked exactly like a lawnmower, but he sure looked weird. He just kept grinning and grinning all the time we were sliding. And he goes . . . like, to himself he goes, 'I can hold 'er, I can hold 'er,' over and over again. And he did, I made him stop, and I walked home. My legs were all rubber. A couple of months later he got hit by a delivery truck up in Lewiston while he was crossing Lisbon Street. Randy Milliken was with him, and Randy said he wasn't even drunk or stoned. It was the truck driver's fault entirely. He went to jail for ninety days. But Dicky was dead. Funny.'

Carol looked sick and white. I was afraid she might faint, and so, to take her mind somewhere else, I said, 'Was your mother mad at me, Carol?'

'Huh?' She looked around in that funny, startled way she had.

'I called her a bag. A fat old bag, I think. '

'Oh.' She wrinkled her nose and then smiled, gratefully, I think, picking up on the gambit. 'She was. She sure was. She thought that fight was all your fault. '

'Your mother and my mother used to both be in that club, didn't they?'

'Books and Bridge? Yeah.' Her legs were still uncrossed, and now her knees were apart a little. She laughed. 'I'll tell you the truth, Charlie. I never really cared for your mother, even though I only saw her a couple of times to say hi to. My mother was always talking about how dreadfully intelligent Mrs. Decker was, what a very fine grasp she had on the novels of Henry James, stuff like that. And what a fine little gentleman you were.'

'Slicker than owl shit,' I agreed gravely. 'You know, I used to get the same stuff about you. '

'You did?'

'Sure.' An idea suddenly rose up and smacked me on the nose. How could I have possibly missed it so long, an old surmiser like me? I laughed with sudden sour delight. 'And I bet I know why she was so deternuned I was going to wear my suit. It's called 'Matchmaking,' or 'Wouldn't They Make a Lovely Couple?' or, 'Think of the Intelligent Offspring.' Played by all the best families, Carol. Will you marry me?'

Carol looked at me with her mouth open. 'They were . . .' She couldn't seem to finish it.

'That's what I think.'

She smiled; a little giggle escaped her. Then she laughed right out loud. It seemed a little disrespectful of the dead, but I let it pass. Although, to tell you the truth, Mrs. Underwood was never far from my mind. After all, I was almost standing on her.

'That big guy's coming,' Billy Sawyer said.

Sure enough, Frank Philbrick was striding toward the school, looking neither right nor left. I hoped the news photographers were getting his good side; who knew, he might want to use some of the pix on this year's Xmas cards. He walked through the main door. Down the hall, as if in another world, I could hear his vague steps pause and then go up to the office. It occurred to me in a strange sort of way that he seemed real only inside. Everything beyond the windows was television. They were the show, not me. My classmates felt the same way. It was on their faces.

Silence.

Chink. The intercom.

'Decker?'

'Yes, sir?' I said.

He was a heavy breather. You could hear him puffing and blowing into the mike up there like some large and sweaty animal. I don't like that, never have. My father is like that on the telephone. A lot of heavy breathing in your ear, so you can almost smell the scotch and Pall Malls on his breath. It always seems unsanitary and somehow homosexual.

'This is a very funny situation you've put us all in, Decker.'

'I guess it is, sir.'

'We don't particularly like the idea of shooting you.'

'No, sir, neither do I. I wouldn't advise you to try.'

Heavy breathing. 'Okay, let's get it out of the henhouse and see what we got in the sack. What's your price?'

'Price?' I said. 'Price?' For one loony moment I had the impression he had taken me for an interesting piece of talking furniture-a Morns chair, maybe, equipped to huckster the prospective buyer with all sorts of pertinent info. At first the idea struck me funny. Then it made me mad.

'For letting them go. What do you want? Air time? You got it. Some sort of statement to the papers? You got that.' Snort-snort-snore. Likewise, puff-puff-puff. 'But let's do it and get it done before this