Thirty Miles South Of Dry County Read Free Page B

killed and leave us without someplace to sit come tomorrow mornin’,” he said and followed Sven, who had already gotten into his Volkswagen and were gunnin’ the engine. “And we can’t let him go by himself.”
    “You’re both crazy,” I called, feeling a surgin’ panic in my gut at the notion of being left all alone here while my only two friends in the world drove headlong into Hell. “Dick…don’t.”
    He raised a hand. “I’ll get him turned around, don’t you worry.”
    Like I said, we was always good at readin’ folks, and that meant we could read each other too. As I watched Dick gettin’ into that car, I knew he didn’t believe he’d be able to talk Sven out of anythin’, but unlike me, he weren’t content to just wait it out.
    * * *
    The guilt grew like the vines.
    Even though I didn’t trust the kudzu—which had by that time climbed and coiled its way up under the shades so it were visible through the window behind me like some kind of queer sea creature in a glass tank—not to break through and yank me inside and to my death, I couldn’t move. I just sat on this bench, my back straight, hands on my knees, waitin’ and listenin’ to the vines shift and slither.
    Thinkin’.
    The sun went down, bruisin’ the sky above the mountains and makin’ the clouds blush. A light breeze rose up, hissin’ softly through the woods to my right, rakin’ the parkin’ lot and sendin’ dust devils dancin’. When I arrived at Sven’s, I’d smelled of cologne, which were cheap but better than the sour stale sweat I reeked of by then.
    I’d never felt so lonesome, and so annoyed at myself that I were focusin’ on my own emotions when my friends was probably up to their necks in God only knew what a few miles down the road.
    Hours went by, and I kept stiffenin’ at the hum of distant engines, even though I knew Sven’s Volkswagen, and it didn’t sound like any of them.
    I wondered what difference goin’ with Dick and Sven might have made to whatever way things was gonna turn out.
    And I wondered what I were gonna to do if they didn’t come back.
    The answer was obvious, a fool notion, but one I knew deep in my bones I were gonna have to see through if the dawn came and there were still no sign of my friends. My only friends.
    I’d have to go after them.
    The idea terrified me more than the thought of dyin’, assuming they wasn’t one and the same.
    * * *
    You’re probably too young to know what I mean, but when you get to be my age, you get yourself a series of rituals. You stop takin’ every day for granted. Any breath might be your last, so you set your day up in such a fashion that you can find your way from one end of it to the other without gettin’ lost. At best, if offers some stability when everythin’ else seems like it’s tugged free of its moorin’s.
    When I woke the next mornin’, I got up, knees achin’ from the unexpected strain of the day before, took a quick bath (though I’d already taken one the night before to rid myself of the vine-and-liquor stench), then went to the phone.
    I dialed Sven’s number, listened to the harsh siren of the disconnected signal, hung up and dialed again. Told myself it were no surprise he weren’t answerin’, as I only had the store number, and last time I’d seen that phone it had been off the hook with the listenin’ end of the receiver pokin’ out from beneath a spool of vines.
    So I tried Dick’s number. This time, there were a tone, and when it rung out, I had no excuse. Dick were always home this time of day. Always. But, I told myself, it were possible he got home late and stayed at Sven’s house. It would have been a first, but it were better than the other thoughts that kept spinnin’ ‘round my skull.
    I stood there for a time, phone in hand and beepin’ in my ear like the electrical pulse I could feel playin’ with my nerves, before I replaced the receiver and went outside to get the mornin’ paper. As always, our