or possibly a doctor. Sometimes they didn't talk about anything at all, just sat in comfortable silence.
It was during one of those silences, disturbed only by the soft creak of the swings, when Phillip had glanced up and said, almost conversationally, 'Hey. Do you recognize that car?'
Sue looked past the dirty playground equipment over to the flattened patch of dirt that served as a parking lot. She saw two rundown cars that the trailer-park moms had arrived in, a rusted-out Chevy and a Ford station wagon with fake wood paneling, parked right in front of the gate. Across the lot, in the shadow of a giant elm tree, sat a long, boxy sedan, a Plymouth or something, she wasn't sure. It was burnt orange with a black roof. From where she and Phillip sat now, there was just enough of a glare on the windshield that she couldn't tell whether or not there was someone behind the wheel.
'It's been there for a while,' Phillip said. 'It pulled up right after we got here. Did you notice?'
Sue shook her head, still swinging back and forth, dragging the toes of her Chuck Taylors in the cracked and drying mud. Shehadn't noticed, which was strange-her mother was always telling her what an observant girl she was. But the Plymouth had arrived so silently that it must have completely escaped her attention. Like it materialized out of nowhere, she thought, and shivered.
'What if it's him?' Phillip asked abruptly.
She glanced at him. 'Cut it out.'
'I'm serious. You know he's out there somewhere. It could be him.'
'Oh, please,' Sue said, in the drabbest voice she could muster. They almost never talked about the Engineer. Not because it scared them, but quite the opposite-it was old news, almost boring to them. All summer the Engineer was all that everybody in town talked about, certainly their parents and teachers and neighbors never gave the topic a rest.
He jumped off his swing. 'I'm going over there to check it out.'
'Oh, right.' She was used to this from him. 'What are you going to do, tap on the glass and ask him, Excuse me, do you mind if I check your trunk for human heads?'
'He always goes for the eyes,' Phillip said, not looking back at her. 'He shoots them out. He doesn't keep souvenirs.'
'That's disgusting.'
'It's true and you know it. It's in all the papers. And he only gets kids twelve and under.'
Sue stopped swinging. Phillip was still walking briskly away from her, headed through the high grass toward the makeshift parking lot, and that was when she realized that he was serious. He was really going. The clarity of his intention startled her so much that the first word out of her mouth-'Wait!'-came out garbled and almost inaudible. Jumping off the swing, she cleared her throat and hurried to catch up.
'Phillip, what do you think you're doing?'
'Just what I said. I'm going to check it out.'
'You can't do that.'
He cocked an eyebrow at her. 'Why not?'
She sighed. It was his favorite question, and half the time she couldn't answer it. She decided to discard whatever remained of her sarcastic detachment and address the issue head-on. 'Okay, what if it is the guy?'
'What's he going to do, jump out of the car and grab me?' Phillip asked, not slowing his pace. 'In broad daylight?'
'We're pretty far from town.'
'Come on,' he said, and if he was less sure of himself, he didn't let on.
'So what are you going to do?'
'I'm going to walk by, like I'm headed to the field, and as I pass him, just kind of take a look inside, see what he looks like. Maybe he's wearing the bib overalls with the blue stripes on them like that kid back in Wickham said.'
'Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly what he's wearing,' Sue said, not exactly sure why she was so reluctant to let Phillip get close to the Plymouth, only that the feeling of apprehension was building in her chest and abdomen, the way her head felt when she dove all the way to the bottom of the deep end of a pool. 'Come on, let's just go- okay?'
For the first time he stopped and stared back at her. His dark eyes were serious, as grown-up as she'd ever seen them, and all at once she knew exactly what he was going to look like as a grown man-it might've even been the first time that she realized she loved him, a little.
'What if it happens tonight?' he asked. 'And in the morning everybody's talking about some kid that got killed by the Engineer, and we both know we could've done something about it but we didn't. Do you want that on your conscience?'
She took a breath, considered any number of possible replies:That's not going to happen orMy conscience has nothing to do with this or simply the ever-popularOh please, but in the end she didn't say anything. They were a dozen steps from the edge of the bare, tire-packed earth, putting them twenty or thirty good strides from the orange Plymouth, and it was clear now that she wasn't going to stop him.
She glanced back over her shoulder to where the toddlers and their mothers had been playing, but the dingy little playground was empty. The blue Chevy and the rusty Ford were gone, must have left while she and Phillip were talking. The only car left in the lot was the Plymouth.
Sue nodded. 'If we see anything that looks funny, we run straight to the police. I mean it, Phillip.'
'No duh, genius,' he smirked. 'I'm not Magnum, PI.'
'Yeah, you're more like Higgins.' The banter, however lame, made her feel a little better, and the next thought was even more comforting.Of course it's not going to be the Engineer in there. Phillip could go up to the guy, climb in the backseat and ask him what he thought about the Red Sox's chances for the playoffs, it wouldn't matter because there's no way the man that killed a dozen kids is sitting right there, twenty feet away from us.
No, of course not. It wasn't the Engineer, it was just some worker bee from the paper mill, some lunchbox- toting working stiff like her own father who came down here to eat his onion sandwich and maybe sneak a warm Bud before going back to the factory floor. And when they got up to the orange Plymouth, Phillip would see that for himself.
Sue was still reassuring herself with these thoughts when the driver's side door opened and the man in blue-striped bib overalls looked out at them, and smiled.
6:38A.M.
Sue sits up fast, eyes wide open, panic dousing her like an ice-cold jet of water, shooting down both arms and fusing her spinal column into a steel rod. The road is jumping at her crookedly-so crookedly that it's not the road at all, it's a thick row of trees plowing in her headlights, and she jerks the wheel hard around, the Expedition's back tires skidding but finding something to pull against under the ice. And she's back on course, breathing fast, trying not to have a heart attack.
She checks the dashboard clock. How long has she been out?
A few seconds, she thinks. Certainly no longer. It wasn't like she was dozing, though. It was more like beinggone, transported, spirited away back to that summer day in '83. She can practically smell the metallic rust from the swing's chains on her palms and the high, acrid stench of the mill hanging in the air, the swamp below the bridge not far away. And despite the fact that it's got to be at least ten below outside with the wind chill, and the Expedition's broken side window is letting in all kinds of cold air, Sue realizes that underneath these strange, ill-fitting clothes she's filmed from scalp to ankles in a clinging layer of sweat. Not perspiration-kids didn't perspire, not even girls. They sweated.
The phone rings. She grabs it.
'Wake up, Susan.'
'I'm awake,' she croaks.
'You were drifting a little there,' the voice chides. 'Can't have that. Not with Veda relying on you to keep her alive.'
