Something I did, he rehearses, something I did got this girl hurt. I mean, not seriously—I bet it scars. I bet it hurts like a mad bastard. Goddamn it, I didn’t hurt her. It’s not my fault. Her freaking old lady did it. What kind of person puts a butt out on another human being, on her own kid? What am I supposed to do about it?
No way can he tell the old man this shit. His father would be on the phone to Laliberte before Sam finished stuttering butt.
He got off lucky himself, when he was in state custody during his folks’ breakup. His foster mother, Ma Lunt, was the best but it had still been a nightmare. Suddenly he had no mother, no father, no home but a caseworker and a judge ordering him from place to place in a state police cruiser. His grandfather Frank had been a Smokie and his Uncle Terry still was, so he hadn’t been afraid of the cops the way some kids might be. Somehow he didn’t think the Mutant would find the backseat of a cop car reassuring.
Maybe nothing would happen except he’d make himself extremely unpopular with the Mutant’s old lady and her shack-up—not that he gives a shit how that pair of losers feels about him. Weird as Gauthier is, though, her mother could probably get away with saying the Mutant did it to herself. The thought brings him to a full mental stop. She couldn’t have. She’s not that screwed up, is she? It’s a jump from tattoos to self-inflicted cigarette burns. All the same, she’s wicked bitched up, the Mutant is.
Screw it. The worst the old man will do is make him feel like he’s let him down. He’s sweating this shit all out of proportion, starting with punching in that frigging ceiling.
All at once, he’s okay. Maybe it’s crossing the line and being back on the familiar roads of Nodd’s Ridge but he definitely feels more like himself. It’s another universe than the one the Mutant lives in. Another dimension.
The wrecker is on the apron, ready to roll, at the Texaco. His father is visible in the office window.
As Sam enters, Reuben flicks his reading glasses from the end of his nose to the papers spread over the desk. He sits back in his chair and rubs the back of his neck.
“Bill Laliberte called. You want to tell me about it?” He smiles reassuringly at Sam’s chagrin. “Spit it out, kid.”
Fingers digging into his hip pockets, Sam shuffles and stares at the floor as the silence lengthens.
Reuben’s smile fades. He pushes back in the chair. “You hungry?”
Sam shakes his head.
Reuben shrugs toward the truck in the near bay of the garage. “Help me put the snows on this rig, then.”
Sam hangs his jacket on a hook and for half an hour, father and son work wordlessly and efficiently, changing the tires. Finished, they stack the off-season shoes on the truck’s flatbed.
Reuben shakes the kettle on the hot plate and makes himself a fresh cup of tea. Unasked, he makes one for Sam, loading it with honey and fresh-squeezed lemon. The familiar childhood nostrum eases Sam’s throat, making him realize how tense it had gotten.
His father slumps into his chair again. “Soon as Bill told me you’d busted up a lavatory, I thought of myself smashing that plate at breakfast the other day. I felt small when I did it, Sammy. Now I feel even smaller. I feel like I gave you permission to throw a tantrum.”
“It didn’t have anything to do with you.”
Picking up his bifocals, Reuben waggles them thoughtfully. “So what was it about?”
Mousetrapped. Shit.
“Nothing.”
Reuben folds the glasses carefully and slides them into their leather sheath. “Sammy. That’s bullshit of the purest ray serene.”
Sam grabs his jacket and takes a stride toward the door.
“Sammy.” In his father’s voice there is as much reluctance to pursue him as Sam feels to answer his question. “I know it’s tough for you to talk but pretending it was nothing won’t erase what you did or why.”
Hand on the doorknob, Sam is horrified to find himself on the verge of tears. He grips it tighter but he doesn’t turn it. Slowly he leans against it, closing his eyes. The cold glass chills his forehead.
“Are you worried about Pearl and me?” Reuben prods.
“No!” Sam lets go of the door, straightens up and turns to meet his father’s anxious eyes. “Whatever happens, you’ll both still be my friends.”
“What?” Reuben laughs painfully. “Jesus Christ, Sammy.” He rubs his chest as if it hurts. “It was just a tiff. I’m not leaving her and she’s not leaving me. I’m putting the new furnace in this weekend.”
The last, almost irrelevant assertion provokes a weak laugh from both of them.
“It wasn’t about you and Pearl,” Sam repeats.
Sufficiently distracted by the glimpse into his son’s grim view of the state of his marriage, Reuben lets it go.
“I’m going home to eat,” Sam tells him. “Be back in half an hour. You want me to bring you something? Looks like it’ll be a long night.”
“Pearl left supper here for me on her way home from the diner.”
They look out on twisting sheets of wet snow.
“There’s been plenty of warning on this one,” Reuben observes. “Most folks should be off the road by now.”
Sam grins. “If not now, we’ll have to yank them back onto it.”
After school the next day, the girls get the first home go at Hamlin. In the bleachers with his teammates, Sam notes coldly that the Mutant is winded by the end of the first quarter. She snorkles mucus so noisily it is audible over the thudding of feet and cries of the players in the reverberant gym. The Band-Aid on the back of her left hand makes him queasy every time he looks at her. Billie Figueroa comes in to spell her. In the third quarter, the Mutant’s on the
