discount for cash, on account of I don’t usually report cash transactions to my favourite uncle.”
I checked my wallet and found three twenties and three tens. “How much did you say for one day?”
“How does ninety bucks sound?”
I gave it to him. I had been prepared to pay a hundred and twenty.
“What are you going to do with your Duster there?”
It hadn’t even crossed my mind until just now. “Could I leave it here? Just for today?”
“Sure,” Pomberton said, “you can leave it here all week, I don’t give a shit. Just put it around the back and leave the keys in it in case I have to move it.”
I drove around back where there was a wilderness of cannibalized truck parts poking out of the deep snow like bones from white sand. It took me nearly ten minutes to work my way back around on my crutches. I could have done it faster if I’d used my left leg a bit, but I wouldn’t do that. I was saving it for Petunia’s clutch.
I approached Petunia, feeling dread gather in my stomach like a small black cloud. I had no doubt it would stop Christine… if she really showed up at Darnell’s Garage tonight and if I could drive the damned truck. I had never driven anything that big in my life, although the summer before I’d gotten some hours in on a bulldozer and Brad Jeffries had let me try the payloader a couple of times after knocking off for the day.
Pomberton stood there in his checked jacket, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his workpants, watching me with wise eyes. I got over to the driver’s side, grabbed the doorhandle, and slipped a little. He took a step or two toward me.
“I can make it.”
“Sure,” he said.
I jammed the crutch into my armpit again, my breath frosting out in quick little gasps, and pulled the door open. Holding onto the door’s inside handle with my left hand and balancing on my right leg like a stork, I threw my crutches into the cab and then followed them. The keys were in the ignition, the shift pattern printed on the stick. I slammed the door, pushed the clutch down with my left leg—not much pain, so far so good—and started Petunia up. Her engine sounded like a full field of stockers at Philly Plains.
Pomberton strolled over. “Little noisy, ain’t she?” he yelled.
“Sure!” I screamed back.
“You know,” he bellowed, “I doubt like hell if you got an I on your licence, boy.” An I on your licence meant that the state had tested you on the big trucks. I had an A for motorcycles (much to my mother’s horror) but no I.
I grinned down at him. “You never checked because I looked trustworthy.”
He smiled back. “Sure.”
I revved the engine a little. Petunia blew off two brisk backfires that were almost as loud as mortar blasts.
“You mind if I ask what-you-want that truck for? None of my business, I know.”
“Just what it was meant for,” I said.
“Beggin your pardon?”
“I want to get rid of some shit,” I said.
I had something of a scare going downhill from Pomberton’s place; even dry and empty, that baby really got rolling. I seemed incredibly high up—able to look down on the roofs of the cars I passed. Driving through downtown Libertyville, I felt as conspicuous as a baby whale in a goldfish pond. It didn’t help any that Pomberton’s septic pumper was painted that bright pink colour. I got some amused glances.
My left leg had begun to ache a little, but running through Petunia’s unfamiliar gear pattern in the stop- and-go downtown traffic kept my mind off it. A more surprising ache was developing in my shoulders and across my chest; it came from simply piloting Petunia through traffic. The truck was not equipped with power steering, and that wheel really turned hard.
I turned off Main, onto Walnut, and then into the parking lot behind the Western Auto. I got carefully down from Petunia’s cab, slammed her door (my nose had already become used to the faint odour she gave off), set my crutches under me, and went in the back entrance.
I got the three garage keys off Jimmy’s ring and took them over to the key-making department. For one- eighty, I got two copies of each. I put the new keys in one pocket, Jimmy’s ring, with his original keys reattached, in the other. I went out the front door, onto Main Street, and down to the Libertyville Lunch, where there was a pay telephone. Overhead, the sky was greyer and more lowering than ever. Pomberton was right. There would be snow.
Inside, I ordered a coffee and Danish and got change for the telephone booth. I went inside, closed the door clumsily behind me, and called Leigh. She answered on the first ring.
“Dennis! Where are you?”
“The Libertyville Lunch. Are you alone?”
“Yes. Dad’s at work and Mom went grocery shopping. Dennis, I… I almost told her everything. I started thinking about her parking at the A&P and crossing the parking lot, and… I don’t know, what you said about Arnie leaving town didn’t seem to matter. It still made sense, but it didn’t seem to matter. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking about giving Ellie a lift down to Tom’s the night before, even though my leg was aching like hell by then. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“Dennis, it can’t go on like this. I’ll go crazy. Are we still going to try your idea?”
“Yes,” I said. “Leave your mom a note, Leigh. Tell her you have to be gone for a little while. Don’t say any more than that. When you’re not home for supper, your folks will probably call mine. Maybe they’ll decide we ran off and eloped.”
“Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” she said, and laughed in a way that gave me prickles. “I’ll see you.”
“Hey, one other thing. Is there any pain-killer in your house? Darvon? Anything like that?”
“There’s some Darvon from the time Dad threw his back out,” she said. “Is it your leg, Dennis?”
“It hurts a little.”
“How much is a little?”
“It’s really okay.”
“No B.S.?”
“No B.S. And after tonight I’ll give it a nice long rest, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Get here as quick as you can.”
She came in as I was ordering a second cup of coffee, wearing a fur-fringed parka and a pair of faded jeans. The jeans were tucked into battered Frye boots. She managed to look both sexy and practical. Heads turned.
“Looking good,” I said, and kissed her temple.
She passed me a bottle of grey and pink gel capsules.
“You don’t look so hot, though, Dennis. Here.”
The waitress, a woman of about fifty with iron-grey hair, came over with my coffee. The cup sat placidly, an island in a small brown pond in the saucer. “Why aren’t you kids in school?” she asked.
“Special dispensation,” I said gravely. She stared at me.
“Coffee, please,” Leigh said, pulling off her gloves. As the waitress went back behind the counter with an audible sniff, she leaned toward me and said, “It would be pretty funny if we got picked up by the truant officer, wouldn’t it?”
“Hilarious,” I said, thinking that, in spite of the radiance the cold had given her, Leigh really wasn’t looking all that good. I didn’t think either of us really would be until this thing was over. There were small strain-lines around her eyes, as if she had slept poorly the night before.
“So what do we do?”
“We get rid of it,” I said. “Wait until you see your chariot, madam.”
“My God!” Leigh said, staring at Petunia’s hot-pink magnificence. It bulked silently in the Western Auto parking lot, dwarfing a Chevy van on one side and a Volkswagen on the other. “What is it?”
