be like that. Down the hill there, you could have seen them, don’t you think?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re letting it get to you, this dream. No use in that.”
Harry thought, No, not for you. You handle things when they happen. You just go in and take hold and wrestle them to the floor and beat their ass.
“Well, you listen. After a good night’s sleep, you won’t be thinking about all that.”
“I know.”
“You gonna eat some dinner?”
“I guess.”
“Hey, tell you what, this once, what say I have Mom bring it in to you? You can eat in your room, lay back a bit. Just rest.”
“Sure, Dad, that would be great.”
“You got it,” he said, rolling off the bed, causing it to lift Harry up a full two inches.
Daddy turned the little rotating fan on higher. It screeched and pushed some wind Harry’s way. His father smiled. It was a lopsided smile, like maybe he didn’t really know how to do it.
“You’ll be all right,” he said, and went out.
It actually was kind of fun, eating in the room, being alone, taking his time, sitting by the window looking out at the night.
They had this thing, his family did, and it was about eating at the table. You always ate at the table, and you talked.
It was never heavy talk. Daddy mostly listened to Mom and him talk, and Harry liked to talk, when it was easy talk. About everyday forgettable stuff.
But there were things he couldn’t discuss.
Comics. Books, the writers who wrote them. Neither of his parents were readers of that sort of stuff. In fact, it was his father’s shame that he could hardly read at all. Went through school up to the junior year and dropped out. Got that far and couldn’t really read. Oh, he could read signs, and a few simple things. Enough to get by, especially if you were doing mechanic work and knew your work and could sign your name. So it wasn’t a noticeable problem. But Harry knew it embarrassed him, his inability to really read well. In everything else he was as confident as Superman, but the reading, that bothered him.
And his Mom…well, she was smart, appreciated his love of books. But discussing any of the science fiction he read would have been about as much fun as talking to a goat about barbecue sauce. She didn’t get it. Same with the handful of video games he played. She couldn’t see the point.
His parents watched TV. Sitcoms and news mostly, listened to country-and-western music on old vinyl records. They seldom went out. If they did, it was maybe for a hot dog or hamburger, picking it up at the drive- through window. Visited relatives from time to time. Didn’t really have any friends. Not real friends like he had. Joey and Kayla.
Well, Kayla anyway. Joey, he was hard to figure.
But Kayla, she was all right.
He thought about her all the time.
But his parents, they didn’t have any real friends, far as he knew. Didn’t even have a good friend who moved off. Someone they could remember.
They had each other.
And him.
Daddy had his work, and Mom had him to try and put knee pads and helmets on.
That was pretty much all they had.
But he loved them. Dearly. And they loved him back.
His dad, a real tough guy, but soft when he had to be. He was Harry’s hero. Said what he meant, meant what he said. Talked the talk and walked the walk. He wasn’t scared of much, that Harry could see.
He wished he could be just like him.
Because he was scared all the time, and here he sat, whining in his room with the leftovers of his dinner. Harry got up, went to the window, and looked out. Dark.
He pushed up the window and took a deep breath. The summer air was as thick as old tire smoke, and just as hard to breathe.
He went to his door and closed it softly. It blotted out the sound of the television and the light from the hallway, left him in darkness.
He turned on the light, got his magazine out from under the bed, the one with the naked women in it, looked at it, but it wasn’t doing much for him. He turned off the light, put the magazine back, and lay down on the bed with his hands behind his head.
He thought again about his dad, how he tackled things like this. He wouldn’t just lie here. He’d go and investigate. He’d find out.
While Harry was thinking on all this, he fell asleep.
When he awoke it was still dark in the room. He got up, stumbled over, and turned on the light. He looked at the windup clock on the nightstand. It was five A.M.
All right, he thought. I got to do it. Got to be brave, the way my old man is brave.
Harry put on his clothes, turned out the light, pushed up the window, and slipped out the way he had slipped out the night he and Joey and Kayla had gone down to the tonk.
But now it was just him, all by his lonesome, and the sky was so big and the world was so wide and the shadows amongst the old cars and the trees were so dark.
He went softly by his parents’ window, trying not to crunch anything underfoot. He traveled across the road and down the hill at a smooth run. He knew the place well, so all he needed was a bit of starlight. He knew all the places around his home; he had played on every inch of that ground. Unless there was a new gopher hole or a snake, he was cool out there in the dark.
He went down and leaned against the honky-tonk, next to the window Joey had broken out.
He started to climb in, but hesitated.
There was nothing but darkness in there, and he didn’t even have a flashlight. What the hell had he been thinking?
Just looking inside made him nervous. The dark gave the impression of crawling, and the place looked even more desolate than when he and Joey and Kayla had been here last. He could feel bumps moving across his back, arms, and neck, like cold-legged beetles. He took a deep breath, took hold of the windowsill. A piece of glass stuck him. He jerked his hand back and bit the glass out and spit it away. He rubbed his bloody palm against his blue jeans.
He leaned over and looked closer at the sill, found some safe spots, put his hands there, and—
He couldn’t do it.
Couldn’t make himself do it.
He realized he was breathing fast, and it was making him feel dizzy, weak.
He made it as far as his yard, stopped to catch his breath and look over at the old cars next door. They were really ratty now, having been brutally bitch-slapped by weather and time.
He had loved those old cars once; now all he could remember was the last time he was in one of them, long ago, and that he had been scared. He didn’t remember exactly what scared him, but he did remember he had been frightened out of his wits and had never played there again.
Scared.
That was his theme song.
Scared with a chorus of Scared Again.
A memory or two unraveled, frayed. And it hit him.
When he was a kid, that’s what had happened, out there in the car. Stuff like that night in the honky-tonk. It’s why he had quit going to the cars. He had seen faces and heard sounds. He had almost forgotten, or had tried to forget, had tucked it away, but now it was coming back to him.
Harry took a deep breath, went over to the car that was once his favorite. The one that had frightened him those long years ago. He put his hand on the driver’s side door, hesitated.
