“Hey,” she said. And then more quietly. “Point taken.”
And not just good communication, either. Entering his silent home-home back up in East Canton-and sensing Rusty’s mood: that was communication, too. “Good and bad,” he said.
“Communication?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re so right,” Greer said. “Take my stepfather.”
“So your parents are divorced.” For some reason, he wanted to nail that down.
“Hard to come by a stepfather otherwise, unless you know something I don’t.”
That stung a bit. Greer’s words often seemed to do that, Wyatt thought, but he didn’t mind. In fact, he found himself laughing.
“Gonna let me in on the joke?” she said.
“No joke.”
“Then what’s funny?”
He glanced at her. She was gazing at him; no eye makeup today-she looked younger, closer to his own age. You was the answer, you’re funny, and lots more than that, but he kept the answer inside, instead saying, “What about your stepfather?”
“He’s the biggest asshole in the world,” Greer said, “but the worst-”
A gray squirrel darted into the road, just a few yards in front of them, moving right to left. Wyatt swerved to the right, away from oncoming traffic, if there’d been any, and hit the brakes, steering behind the squirrel. But at the last instant, the squirrel paused and then did the dumbest thing possible, darting back the way it had come. Next came a feeling like passing over the tiniest speed bump, a soft one.
“Christ,” Wyatt said, looking back in the rearview mirror. The squirrel-what was left of it-wasn’t quite lying still. He stopped the car and got out. “Christ.” The squirrel’s head was motionless and so was its body and three legs. But the fourth leg was twitching-more than that, really, the tiny paw making little scrabbling movements on the pavement, as though trying to get the rest of the animal up and on its way. Wyatt walked over, looked down. The squirrel’s eyes were open, at least the one facing up, but was the squirrel seeing him, taking him in? Wyatt couldn’t tell. All he could tell for sure was that the squirrel’s guts were all over the place and that one leg-rear, left side-was trying to get the animal up and on its way.
Which wasn’t going to happen. The squirrel was beyond hope, finished, the only question being when. Misery: the word for describing the squirrel’s condition at that moment, and what did you do for creatures in misery? You put them out of it. Wyatt’s first thought was to get back in the car, turn around, run over the squirrel again. But he couldn’t do that: overkill, right? He now completely understood the meaning of that word; and not just overkill, but detached and cold-blooded-their meanings were clear, too. That left what? Stomping on the squirrel? To stomp on a living thing, and not in anger: he couldn’t do that, either.
Wyatt went back to the car, hearing the scritch-scratch of that one paw on the pavement the whole way. Greer sat in the passenger seat, her head turning to follow his movements. Wyatt opened the trunk, found an old, soiled towel used for wiping off his bat during drizzly games, and also took out the bat itself.
He returned to the squirrel, lying in a small but growing red pool. That one paw was still trying to do things, more feebly now. And that soft brown eye: on him for sure. Wyatt bent down, laid the towel over the body, at the same time hearing the car door open. He rose, took a deep breath, raised his bat, and brought it down on the lump under the towel, just as hard as he thought necessary, and no harder.
He felt Greer beside him. She gripped his upper arm, squeezed so hard it hurt, even made him gasp out loud. Nothing moved under the towel. Greer let go, squatted down, carefully rolled up the towel so no part of the body showed, and took it to the ditch that ran beside the road. Greer placed the bundle in the ditch.
She turned and approached Wyatt. He realized she wasn’t as tall as he’d thought, a good half foot shorter than him. Without a word or any preliminaries, she took his head in her hands, pulled it down to hers, and kissed him on the mouth, hard at first and then softer. Not the first girl he’d kissed, but this was on another level, so much more knowledgeable. Wyatt felt the power of the person behind the kiss.
He heard a car coming and backed away. The car-a black-and-white cop car-pulled out of a side street and drove up the hill, slowing down and then stopping beside Wyatt and Greer. The window slid down and a cop peered out, a gray-haired cop with baggy eyes and a fleshy pink face.
“Some problem?” he said.
“Uh,” said Wyatt.
“Ran over a squirrel,” Greer said. The cop’s gaze went to her. “Put it in the ditch.”
The cop nodded. A moment or two of silence went by. “You Bert Torrance’s daughter?”
“Yeah,” Greer said, more grunt than verbal reply.
“Recognize you from the lanes.” Greer looked him in the eye, said nothing. The cop looked right back. “Drive safe,” he said. The window slid back up and he drove off.
Wyatt and Greer stood together by the roadside. “Isn’t small-town living grand?” Greer said. “That’s enough adventure for one day.”
“What do you mean?”
“Take me home.”
He looked at her. Her face was flushed, her eyes a little blurry. “You’re mad about the squirrel?”
“What would I be mad about? It was an accident.”
“But, you know, what I did after.”
“What you did after?” Greer said. “That couldn’t have been better, you blockhead.” She laughed. “So damn good it got me hot.”
Wyatt’s mouth went dry; his knees got weak. He found those weren’t mere figures of speech.
Greer’s one-bedroom apartment was on the top floor of the building with the strange stone head over the door. Wyatt didn’t get to see much of the living room-just barely taking in some musical instruments-electric guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin-before Greer took him by the belt buckle and drew him into the bedroom.
“First time?” she said, now on the bed.
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say-”
“No problem,” Greer said, working on that buckle. “Just relax.”
“Don’t think I can.”
She laughed.
Some time later, Wyatt felt more relaxed than he ever had in his life, and not just relaxed but something far greater than that, like the world was all right after all, and so was his place in it.
“So,” Greer said. They lay side by side, her head on his shoulder, in a slightly awkward position, in fact, even hurting a bit, but Wyatt felt no hurry to make any changes whatsoever. “Where were we when we were interrupted?”
“Your stepfather,” Wyatt said.
“Right,” said Greer. “The biggest asshole in the world.”
“Not so sure about that.”
“There’s competition?”
“Yeah.” And Wyatt told her about Rusty, and a story or two about his home life back in East Canton, and how he’d come to Silver City.
“Wow,” Greer said. “We got parallels here, sports fans. Where’s your real father?”
“That’s the most amazing part,” Wyatt said.
9
The next day, Sunday, rain slanting by in sheets outside the window, Wyatt back at Greer’s, the two of them in her bed.
“Normally I hate the rain,” Greer said. “But today I can’t think straight.”
