The Open Curtain Read Free Page B

the boy asked.
    “Nothing,” said Rudd. “I just don’t want to fight.”
    He started walking south. There was no city bus marker that he could see. The other boy pushed Rudd from behind again and he felt his head jerk and snap. It made a muscle in his neck ache. He kept walking. A few steps later the boy pushed him again.
    He stopped and put his books down.
    “I want to fight now,” he said, and held his fists awkwardly out.
    The other boy skittered a few steps back, smiled broadly. “Fuck all,” he said. “You’re not worth my time.”
    He was walking backwards on the side of the state route, his thumb out, books awkward under the other arm, slowly passing the cement works, when he saw the police car. He pulled his hand in, swiveled around. Putting his head down, he concentrated on walking forward.
    He heard the police car pull up beside him.
    “Hey,” the officer said.
    He stopped, looked up.
    “Come over here,” the officer said.
    He hitched his books higher under his arm. Walking over, he stood beside the car’s open window.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Rudd,” he said, his voice wavering, breaking.
    “What’s your first name?”
    “That is my first name.”
    When the officer implied that he was a liar, Rudd showed him the name written inside the cover of a schoolbook.
    “I’ll be damned,” the officer said. “What the Hell kind of name is that?” He pushed his hat back a little on his head to reveal a damp clump of hair.
    “You hitchhiking?” he asked.
    Rudd hesitated, nodded.
    “Don’t you know that’s illegal?”
    Rudd nodded again.
    The police officer looked up at him. “Didn’t nobody ever teach you to lie?”
    Rudd shook his head.
    “Not yet anyway. Get in,” the officer said, and when Rudd tried to climb into the front, “the back.”
    Rudd got in, pushing himself over onto the seat, staring at the grille between himself and the officer. He reached out and touched it. Putting his books down on the seat, he carefully wrapped his fingers around the door handle. As the officer began to drive, Rudd pulled the handle, pushed on the door slightly. It didn’t open.
    “Suppose you tell me where you were heading?”
    “Springville.”
    “I can see that. Where in Springville?”
    Rudd watched him through the grille.
    “I’m meeting my brother.”
    “You live in Springville?”
    “No.”
    “And your brother doesn’t either, is my guess. You’re going to Springville to raise Hell.”
    “No, he lives there. Half-brother. It’s kind of complicated.”
    “It’s always kind of complicated,” said the officer, smiling. “That’s what they all tell me right before I take them down to the station and book them.”
    Rudd looked out the window. They would give him some change for a phone call. He would have to call his mother. If she was in a good mood, she would come down to the police station, drag him home, yell at him a few hours. If not, anything could happen. He watched the trees flick by, then the county country-western bar, the turnoff to reach the freeway.
Welcome to Springville.
    “Aren’t you taking me the wrong way?”
    “You said Springville, right?”
    “But I—,” said Rudd. “I mean I thought—”
    “I figure a boy roped with a first name like Rudd already has about as much punishment as he can take.”
    They came to the middle of the town and the officer asked him where to go. He stuttered, started leafing through his books looking for the scrap of paper with the address on it.
    “Unless you were lying to me after all,” said the officer when after a moment Rudd still hadn’t answered. “I don’t cut slack to liars.”
    Rudd kept looking through the books.
    “You could have just written the name in those books without it being your name. How do I know they’re your books?”
    “Here it is,” he said, and read the address.
    They drove to Third, turned, drove east a few blocks. It was a corner house in the middle of a square plot, the house itself