“Amazing,” she keeps muttering as she stacks up things she wants to hear. “The only thing,” she concludes, “most of these yoyos have in common is nobody but you listens to them.”
“It’s my special talent,” he admits.
She snickers. “One of ‘m anyway.”
Presently she snugs into the crook of his arm to listen. It makes him feel good to have her there, warm and peaceful, next to him. Closing one text, he reaches for another and the vague awareness of her body intensifies. Her head is bent against him, right side pillowed on his chest, the upside of her face a soft-sculpture mask of misery, but she is tangibly female. He closes her in his left arm, supporting the swell of tit with his forearm. Under his lashes, he peeks. Through the thin material of the longjohns, the shadows of her areolae are visible. Rolling his wrist a little allows the tip of a finger to slip over the edge of one and it’s so silky. Dozing, she does not respond but he does. Hastily he shifts her to a less accessible position and tries to concentrate on studying. He’s a sick puppy, he chides himself, getting horny for her now.
He nudges her hip. “Hey.”
She opens her good eye sleepily.
“You can’t fall asleep here. Come on, I’ll tuck you in downstairs.”
Silently she complies.
After he turns out his own lights, sleep again evades him. From outside, a dim glow reflected from the porchlight leaks back through the ice frosting his windows. The peculiar muffle of snow descends on them like a Fortress of Solitude. When the sound of her distress comes from the tense darkness, he is relieved to go to her. Deanie never really wakes from her particular nightmare but he rocks and shushes and it quiets her.
The creaking of overhead floorboards breaks the crust of sleep well before dawn. Sam scoots upstairs and into his room and is sitting on the edge of the bed, yawning, when Reuben raps at his door.
“Looks like a snow day. Feel up to working?”
“For sure.”
They have been working over an hour before the radio confirms school is out. All day Sam and his father and Jonesy free vehicles from ditches, ruts, and snowbanks, separate others from telephone poles and trees and other vehicles, jump batteries, and move snow hither and yon. Food is peeled out of waxed paper, consumed behind the wheel or in the garage, from one hand, while the other pushes a pen through some necessary paperwork or punches the cash register.
Through the day, Sam begins to feel like a human being again. He knows no more reliable way to get sane than to sweat hard and breathe the crystalline air of the Ridge all day. To plant his boots on the fractured bones of the Ridge and see the world from its astonishing vantage restores him to himself as nothing else besides hoops.
Thinking often of Deanie at home, he frets. At least she’s healing well. Eating like she hasn’t been fed in a month. When they call it quits, well after the supper hour, he is eager to see her.
Every light in the house appears to be burning on his arrival so it sits in a matrix of brilliance reflected from the glassy surface of the snow. They have visitors, as evidenced by a Greenspark police cruiser—Rick’s dad—and Rick’s Skylark in the driveway. Laughter and music are audible as soon as Sam drops from the cab of his truck. Crossing the yard, he touches the hood of the wrecker, still warm as fresh bread; his father has driven home.
Kitchen full—Pearl nursing Indy by the stove, his dad sitting down to his late supper, Sergeant Woods copping a cup of coffee and a plate that from the smell and the crumbs and flecks recently held gingerbread and whipped cream. Ginger and cinnamon and vanilla, oh my, evoke a gurgle from Sam’s empty stomach. From the living room he hears the low timbre of Rick’s laughter and Sarah Kendall’s higher pitch.
Before Sam can finish stomping snow from his boots on the mat, Sergeant Woods rises.
“I’m just leaving,” he announces. “Walk me out, Sam?”
For all the neighborly courtesy in his leave-taking, there is no real choice in the invitation. Reuben gives Sam a reassuring nod.
Putting the shed between them and the kitchen, Woods stops Sam on the porch. “Judy Gauthier says she can’t remember what happened real well but she’s sure Tony didn’t hurt Deanie. Swears he never would do such a thing.” Sergeant Woods chews his lip. “Tony admits he was loaded. He claims you were there, Sam.” The cop’s steadying hand falls on Sam’s forearm. “Says he heard you belted her in the school parking lot Friday night and told you to stay away from her and you did his face for him. He says she tried to stop it and you hit her too.”
Sam’s thorax locks from his breastbone to the knot in his tongue.
“You should have told me about the business in the parking lot,” says the cop, “but never mind. I saw you leave, I saw Deanie after you left and she was okay. Lord told another story, bullshit about falling into a mirror, when he went into the hospital. He didn’t bother to mention her being injured either at that time. Just now she gave me this bullshit she gave that doctor about an accident in the Playground. When I told her what Lord had said, she crawled into her shell and pulled the lid down on me. Maybe when she’s had time to think about it, she’ll come around. Has Deanie said anything more to you about what we talked about before?
