 
The Drought

PART ONE

of Ten

Smashwords Edition, 2013
**An unedited version of this book was previously published under the pseudonym Lily White**

This is a work of fiction. All names, places, and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author.

Copyright © Chad Emerson, 2013

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Prologue

"DAMN IT, those firecrackers have been goin' off all day!" James Bauer said from the kitchen. He had put on the radio earlier to drown out the noise, but he could still hear it faintly. Across town, the tiny explosions rose in random patterns like gnats in his ear. Some kids, he imagined, with leftover fireworks from the Fourth of July, skipping school for a little midday mischief. Earlier James and his neighbors, Wilson Mackey and Wyclef Hendricks, had heard sirens Doppler on Jackson Boulevard. They hoped the cops were on their way to stop the kids before they set the town on fire – before they drove the three men crazy.

"Don't worry 'bout it, nigga," said the large black man who called himself Wilson Mackey the Second. "Just listen to the story fo' I get mad."

"All right, all right," James said, opening cabinets.

"Okay. Long time ago Cecil told me 'bout these fo' niggas – well, two niggas and two white muh-fuckas – raped this white chick at a party over in Hardyville, right in front of twenty-somethin' people. Crazy shit. You followin'?" Wilson took a drag from his cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray on the green felt poker table, ready to tell his story to anyone who would listen. Across from him sat Wyclef Hendricks, his skinny best friend, and in the kitchen, James Bauer, who rented the small low-income house. James grabbed a pitcher from the cabinet and began to search for the box of Kool Aid packets he kept for when he ran out of beer.

All three men lived on Brewer Street, the bad neighborhood of Hardyville. Wyclef and Wilson worked together and split rent on a small house across the street and a few houses down from James Bauer. They spent most of their time at James's, playing poker or drinking beer and cutting up. Wilson had come in with news about a man he knew being sent off to state prison and the story of an event that took place over twenty years ago. So far it wasn't making much sense – James Bauer did not yet understand how a man who had raped someone twenty years before could go to jail for it now. How was there still evidence after such a long time?

"You talkin' 'bout your brother Cecil?" James called from the kitchen.

"Yeah!" Wilson lit another cigarette, then said, "Anyway, these fo' niggas was at this party-"

"Heard this story ten fuckin' times," Wyclef interjected.

"Muh-fucka, James ain't heard it," Wilson said, slamming his hand on the table and knocking over stacks of poker chips. "Quit shakin' ya damn head and let me tell the story."

"Hurry up with the Kool Aid, James," Wyclef said, shaking his head despite Wilson's protests.

Wilson sighed. "These fo' niggas was at this party over in Hardyville and this white girl was there – prob'ly wasn't no older'n eighteen. An hour or so into the party, she musta had too many drinks or somethin' 'cause she passed out on the flo', and then these niggas I'm tellin' ya 'bout took off her pants and jumped on it like she was a fuckin' farm animal or somethin'. In front of everybody, man, but nobody would do nothin' 'cause half the people were so drunk and high they thought the shit was funny, and I guess the rest of 'em didn't wanna say shit 'cause everybody else was laughin'. So these niggas raped this woman right there in the motel room, and everybody just stood there."

"Bullshit, nephew," Wyclef said. "Hey, James, don't believe a word of this crock. This fatass is tellin' tales."

"It ain't bullshit, nigga, so shut the fuck up. So when this girl woke up, the last of the fo' was on top of her – some white boy from the 'burbs who had no business at that party worth a damn. See, only two of these niggas knew each other – the nigga-niggas, I think they was friends. The oldest muh-fucka was white, and he was the one raped her first. Skinny dude with a big belly. Turns out he was a college professor or some shit o'er at the community college in Hardyville – tell ya how I know in a few minutes."

"I already know how ya know," Wyclef said. "Hurry up with it. This shit gets old. And hurry up with the Kool Aid, nigga!"

"I can't find it," James called back. "Keep goin', Wilson. I wanna hear this."

"Glad somebody 'preciates my story." Wilson glared at his friend, then looked out the screen door to the yellow grass in the yard. The heat enveloping the house was beginning to distract him. "Hey, James, you ought to shut that door. It's fuckin' hot."

"Thanks for the late-breakin' news," James said from the kitchen, making no move to shut the door.

"His AC is busted," Wyclef noted.

"It's fuckin' hot," Wilson repeated. "Anyway, where was I? Oh, all right, this college professor muh-fucka raped the girl first, and then the two niggas. The first of the niggas was a football player in Hardyville – second string, kind of a pussy-ass, but I hear he ran a few good plays once or twice when they was so far ahead the coach let the bench-warmers in the game. The other nigga was s'posed to be some smart muh-fucka – like he gots a thirty-four on his ACT or somethin' – and he went at her next. Then the last boy, the other white one, he fuckin' knew the girl, I believe, but he raped her anyway. Guess he was drunk. Fo' niggas in like fifteen minutes, they say – fucked this girl all up, sent her to the hospital and everything. Say she woke up, laid there till the last muh-fucka climbed off her, and went and found her friend who'd run off with somebody. She was bleedin' and cryin' and, like I say, nobody really cared. . . . This is where it gets good."

James came through the door of the kitchen and leaned against the wall holding the empty pitcher. Wyclef, hot and thirsty, sighed at the pitcher. He passed James an expression of suffering, and James said, "In a minute. Where's this goin', Wilson?"

"Thing is," Wilson continued, "they didn't have much of a hospital in Hardyville back in the seventies. Hell, the town wasn't half as big as it is now. The girl was bleedin' and shit and they didn't really collect any semen or anything. Don't even know if they had one of those rape kits back then. Plus she wuz unconscious through the rape so she couldn't identify the first three rapists anyway. Said she couldn't remember the face of the one she saw. Shit, I don't blame her. I wouldn't wanna see that pimply muh-fucka every time I closed my eyes either."

"Get on with it," Wyclef said.

"Fuck you, nigga. So it didn't seem like nothin' was gonna come of it, you know? It's hard to prove a rape, for one thing, and they couldn't round up everybody at the party 'cause nobody did shit and they was all scared to come forward. It was everybody's fault, see? Not just these fo' niggas."

"But somebody turned himself in," Wyclef mumbled.

Wilson slammed the table again. "Quit ruinin' it! Yeah, somebody turned hisself in. Blabberin' muh-fucka. But here's the punch line, James: they all turned theyselves in eventually."

"I thought you told me only three of 'em did," Wyclef said.

"Remember I told you 'bout the guy I know just got sent to prison? He was one of the rapists. Gave hisself up like two weeks ago."

"No shit?" Wyclef was for the first time interested, as he had been interested the first time he heard the story over three years ago, before he decided none of it was true. "How'd he get caught?"

"Didn't get caught, nigga. Ain't you listenin'? Muh-fucka turned hisself in!"

"I don't believe that," James said. "They all turned themselves in? Bullshit. I spent a month in county, and that was enough to make me never want to break the law again – 'course I do, but that's beside the point. This is state prison we're talkin' about. Nobody's just gonna turn himself in when he can get away with it. Especially a bunch of drunk-ass rapists who probably think it wasn't their fault to begin with 'cause they weren't in the right state of mind. No way they turned themselves in."

"But they did," Wilson said. "All fo' of 'em."

"Keep talkin'. I'm gonna make the Kool Aid."

James returned to the kitchen. Cabinet doors opened and slammed shut. Drawers rattled with silverware and small tools, all the while Wyclef grew more and more impatient, the oppressive heat beginning to take its toll.

"Goddamn, I'm thirsty," Wyclef said. "Come on, James, shit! Don't make me drink water. I fuckin' hate water."

"Quit whinin'! Smoke a bowl or somethin'."

Wilson took another drag from his cigarette, blew out the smoke, and continued with his story when James and Wyclef shut up. "This last nigga just turned hisself in like two weeks ago, but like I say there was fo' of 'em. The first one turned hisself in the next day – I guess the guilt got to him, stupid rapin' muh-fucka. He spent a month in prison and got jumped by a bunch of Mexican fags. They had their way with him and killed his ass – muh-fucka got what he deserved, really, but then word got around to the second dude, and he felt so guilty 'bout the first one dyin' that he turned hisself in. He eventually got out on good behavior and work programs and shit – fuckin' system. The third muh-fucka got the worst deal of it all. He was married and had hisself a kid and everything – this was like five years later; his little girl was about thirteen. She got raped by some punk-ass white boy one night behind the damn car wash up the street here. When ol' dude found out, I guess what he'd done all came floodin' back or somethin'. Maybe put it all inta perspective. That's when he gave hisself up. Then this last nigga – shit, I don't know what did it for him, but he's fixin' to rot with the other one fo' a good while. Shit, knew the guy half my life and all along he was one of these muh-fuckas."

"Yeah!" James called from the kitchen. Wilson and Wyclef looked at each other and laughed, both surmising that James had found the Kool Aid. "Hey, so which one of 'em caved first, Wilson?"

"You tell me."

Wyclef sighed. "Not this shit again."

"Nah, let's see if he can guess. How 'bout it, James? Which one of 'em? Quit fixin' that Kool Aid and c'mere for a second."

"Hang on, I gotta get the sugar."

"Put a lot of sugar in it," Wyclef said.

James ignored him. "Describe the rapists again. Two niggas, two whiteys."

"Yeah," Wilson said. "One of 'em was an older dude – like forty or somethin'. He was a college professor. The second was a football player, a black dude. Didn't get much time on the field. The third was a smart muh-fucka, the other black dude. And the last was a young white boy from the better part of town who knew the girl – he was the one she saw when she woke up."

"Hold on, lemme think," James said.

Wyclef and Wilson heard the rip of Kool Aid packets, then sugar spilling into the pitcher, making a dry sandy sound that was both hollow and inviting. Wyclef lit a Black 'N' Mild, despite the cottony dryness of his tongue and the roof of his mouth, and went to stand on the front porch.

"Ain't you gonna wait to hear?" Wilson asked as Wyclef stepped outside.

"I already know."

Wilson nodded. "So come on with it, James! Who gave hisself up first?"

"Well . . . it wasn't the old fucker, 'cause if he gave a shit, bein' a college professor and all, he wouldn't've raped her in the first place – plus I figure he's the one with the wife and kid. Then you know how them fuckin' niggers are-"

"Hey!" Wilson called, laughing.

"-so I guess it had to be the white boy. You say he was fuckin' her when she woke up, right? And he knew her?"

"Yeah."

"Had to be him," James said from the kitchen. "He probably looked into her eyes, realized the seriousness of what he was doin' to her. Plus, if he knew her . . ."

Wilson nodded, returning his cigarette to his mouth and taking a long slow reflective drag. He blew out the smoke and rubbed the felt on the table.

Behind him, the screen door opened and Wyclef stepped through quickly. "Hey, did y'all hear that?"

"The fuck you talkin' 'bout?" Wilson said, not paying attention.

"Sounded like an explosion."

"Car probably backfired."

"More like a damn jet backfired."

"Maybe James cut one. How 'bout it James? Let one rip?"

For a moment there was no response, but then they heard the sound of the pitcher slamming onto the counter. "Goddamn it," James said, "there ain't no fuckin' water!"

"Mother fuck, are you serious?" Wyclef said.

Wilson stood up. "No water? Really?" He turned to Wyclef. "I wonder if we got any down at the house."

"I doubt it," James said. "I got a little trickle, but that's it. Fuck this drought, man! How the fuck am I supposed to make the Kool Aid?" He threw the plastic pitcher against the wall and watched it clatter to the floor.

"Don't get too rowdy, James. Wyclef might have to call up his li'l bitch wit' the scarred up tit."

Wilson snickered and James laughed out loud. Wyclef mocked them with a somber expression and suggested that his "li'l bitch" could lay them both out on the floor, which only evoked the predictable lewd comments from James and Wilson. "Shee-it, anytime," Wilson said. James uselessly turned the faucet on and off, listening to the soft hollow hum of the pipes, wondering how long it would take to fill the pitcher with the narrow trickle of water dripping into the sink.

Suddenly, from outside, came an enormous roar like dozens of cars whizzing at ninety miles an hour. At first, all three men thought the police might be raiding a house on Brewer Street – or perhaps the whole neighborhood – and had kept the sirens off to create the element of surprise. The growing roar sounded just like the hum of NASCAR engines, the screeching of many tires. But it was no such procession. Wyclef surprised Wilson, and even James from the kitchen, by jumping back, letting the screen door slam shut, and shouting, "Holy shit, mother fucker! What the fuck?"

Wilson thought the world must be coming to an end to cause Wyclef to enunciate himself so well, especially in a short string of curse words. He started for the door, trying to elicit from Wyclef's open-mouthed stare, what had evoked the outburst, and what that deafening sound was. Behind him, James came out of the kitchen, drawn to the gurgling and rushing noises as well, the empty pitcher again in his hand.

Together James and Wilson stepped out onto the porch, flanking Wyclef, who stared in disbelief at the sight before him.

Brewer Street, along with the yards of every half-acre tract surrounding it, had turned into a river of rushing water. The surge roared down Jackson Boulevard, pooling at the curb and rushing towards James's house – some even spilled from behind his house. The street's houses were now islands, some so ratty they threatened to pop off their foundations and drift off with the current, as had some of the smaller cars parked along the shoulder of the road, a couple of dog houses, several children's toys, a lawn mower, a chunk of picket fence, three dogs, a handful of screeching cats, and miscellaneous debris insignificant to the phenomenal whole that was the flood that had come seemingly from nowhere. The water was crystal-clear but deep enough that they couldn't make out the ground below – probably six inches deep, but it moved with destructive power. It pulled cars along slowly, as if driven by elderly people idling by on their way to church.

Other people from the neighborhood had come out to their porches, mothers pulling on small children who wanted to play in the rushing water, which would swallow whole any child with a parent stupid enough not to hold him back. James hoped no child had been outside playing; he thanked God most of them were at school. He and Wyclef were speechless.

Wilson, still charged by the strangeness of the story he had just told and wanting to comment, was the first to speak over the sonic blast of the current.

"Here's ya water, James. Now make the fuckin' Kool Aid."

"Goddamn," James managed to utter.

Wyclef shook his head and whispered, "Isaiah 44:3-4."

"I don't hear the fireworks anymore," Wilson remarked. "All I hear is water."

"Well, hell," James said, deciding no children had drowned during this almost biblical event. He knelt down and leaned over the side of the porch. "Might as well grab some before it all washes away." He dipped the pitcher into the water and it came out clear of dirt or debris. "What do you think, fellas?"

"Works for me," Wilson said. "It's that or I'm dunkin' my head in the Brewer Street River."

James laughed.

Wyclef said, "We closed the front door, didn't we?"

"Fuck if I know. You was right, by the way, James. The young white boy was the first to give himself up. Then he died in prison a month later and somebody else caved."

"Well, who was it?" James asked. "Come tell me while I make the Kool Aid."

"Y'all want Kool Aid now? After this?" Wyclef exclaimed.

"Fuck yeah," James said, laughing but shaking from nervousness. "All this water's making me thirsty."

James and Wilson stepped inside, leaving Wyclef to marvel over the great inexplicable flood. He stared at it as his two friends disappeared inside, no longer cognizant of his thirst and fixed now upon the debris floating down Jackson Boulevard and pooling on Brewer Street: large chunks of blue steel, a police cruiser flipped over on its hood, scraping down the hill, a satellite dish mounted on some sort of metal tower, wires dangling from it, and finally, almost as a spurt from some underground crevice that had belched up this whole mess, a human body, entangled in weeds, floating along in front of James's house. It was a body he recognized, and it made him want to scream, but for a moment he found that he couldn't speak.

"So tell me who caved next," James said inside the house, opening another packet of Kool Aid – he had spilled the other packet when he flung the pitcher across the kitchen.

"Nah, muh-fucka," Wilson said, speaking over the roar of the giant river that had come mysteriously to soak their bone-dry street. "You tell me who caved next. Anybody ought to be able to figure it out . . ."

On the porch, Wyclef Hendricks found the strength to scream.

He ducked back inside, his eyes bulging.

"Oh Lord, oh shit," he said. "Guys!"

"Yeah." James stepped out of the kitchen. "What's up, man?"

"I think somethin' happened . . ."

THURSDAY

Night

1.

ALEXANDRIA GREENBURY was watching the neighbor's sprinklers from her bedroom window when her mother called up the stairs for dinner. In the pitch black of the adjacent house's back lawn, two fine cones of water rose from the grass, one on each side of a walkway of stepping stones. The showers refracted the street light, resembling Christmas trees turned upside down – at least from Alex's elevated position – and although this shimmering display would strike most people as beautiful, Alex peered down at it with disgust.

The drought in the Southeast had lasted months longer than most of Louisville's meteorologists had predicted. It came with the summer of 2000 and had left the region's agriculture in ruin. In the fall, the leaves dried and turned brown within a week, falling noisily from branches without having brightened and changed color, and, pushed by the autumn wind, rattling over the dry ground until they settled into dusty culverts or fence lines. It was as if nature had skipped a heartbeat. Winter passed in Kentucky with not a flake of snow, and when spring came it did not bring the rains people had anticipated. The months of April and May only saw a combined total of 2.2 inches of rain. Lush fields turned to desert. Trees desiccated and splintered in the wind. Creek banks ebbed. Animals died.

And people changed, which she didn't understand. Havensburg was a town filled with farmers, game wardens, and Southern Living magazines, and every year middle school students took conservation classes to learn about the environment and wildlife, and what to do to help preserve what remained of these things. Yet no one showed any appreciation for the severity of the drought. Everyone within the city limits of Havensburg, Kentucky, seemed to find nothing wrong with wasting what remained of the town's water. Even those who undertook the responsibility did a poor job – her neighbors a case in point. The Simpsons thought that sprinkling the lawn at night to minimize evaporation, rather than in the daylight hours, was passable in these current circumstances as a good conservation technique. Alex found the idea impressively stupid. She believed any watering of lawns was a waste. Evaporation or no evaporation, her neighbors, the Simpsons, were still pouring precious water into the ground.

To the same extent, Alex believed extensive showering was wasteful, and her sister Elizabeth had become Havensburg's queen of showering. In fact, that's what Elizabeth Greenbury was doing as Alex turned away from the floor-to-ceiling window, crawled back onto her bed, and a few minutes later returned to the window the way onlookers double back to see a fatal car accident. Before the sprinkler system distracted her, Alex had spent half an hour listening to the sounds of the showerhead, the pounding water, the squeaking of her sister's feet on the shower mat, and that irrevocable gurgling sound of the drain. And now, while Patricia Greenbury prepared a four-course dinner downstairs – using water from the tap instead of bottled water, against her daughter's insistence – Alex sat on her enormous green bed, clutching one of her many teddies, and for the first time realized that she felt completely alone.

She felt alone in her protest of everyone around her wasting the little water left in the Havensburg Reservoir, her only supporter in the cause being her only friend, Debra Simpson, a fellow eighth-grader at Havensburg Middle School. In a few minutes, Alex expected to see Debra sneak out the patio door of her house and shut off the valve to the water hose. They had discussed her parents' lack of appreciation for the dearth of water in Havensburg and had resolved to take initiative. Debra would shut off the sprinklers, and Alex would watch for Debra's parents; if she saw them, she would turn off the light in her bedroom and Debra, seeing the signal, would make an excuse for leaving the house at night. Shutting off the sprinklers was a more serious offense than it seemed; the Simpsons were adamant about maintaining their lawn's beauty.

Soon Debra came out onto the dampened back lawn. She was barefoot and wearing plaid pajamas. Alex watched as she skirted the shower of the sprinklers and hurried to the valve of the water hose at the back of the shed close to the wooden fence. Debra closed the valve, waved quickly at Alex, and returned to the house.

As the sliding glass door closed and Debra disappeared into a room lit by the glare of a television, footsteps passed by Alex's bedroom, fading as they continued down the hall – at the end of which sat Elizabeth's room and an unused guest room.

Alex and her sister hadn't gotten along in over a year. They rarely spoke anymore. Elizabeth stayed gone most of the time, and when she was home, she shut herself in her room and painted. Alex had snuck into her bedroom a few days ago and found a painting of the dry deadpan field behind Havensburg High School, which students at school liked to call the Snake's Back because the ground looked scaly with the pencil-thick cracks that had formed as a result of the drought.

A little over a year had passed since Alex's younger brother and sister – a set of twins – had drowned in the pool while Elizabeth, who was supposed to baby-sit all three of them, Kate, Blake, and Alex, messed around with her boyfriend upstairs in her bedroom. Alex had replayed that day's events in her mind so many times, that she knew almost every detail of who was where and doing what at the time. Carl Zimmerman had just gotten Elizabeth's tank top off when they heard Alex's scream. Half an hour earlier, Alex's and Elizabeth's mother and father, Richard and Patricia Greenbury, had left for the fitness center and had asked Elizabeth to watch over the children while they swam in the pool. "And I don't want you inviting anyone over while we're gone," Patricia Greenbury had added, having recently caught Elizabeth and her boyfriend indecently "making out." Before Patricia's comment, Elizabeth had planned to work on her painting, but then she had decided – probably for spite – to call and invite Carl over.

As soon as Richard and Patricia left, Elizabeth dressed Kate and Blake in their bathing suits – they squirmed and squirmed and tried to run from the back porch naked – and helped them with their arm floats before instructing Alex to watch over them.

"Where are you going?" Alex asked.

"Carl's coming over. Stay with Kate and Blake and make sure they don't drown. Mom and Dad will have my ass." Elizabeth, still in her bathrobe, disappeared into the house, leaving Alex with the responsibility of caring for two wet and squirming children who could not swim on their own. It was the summer after her sixth grade year, and while Alex knew a thing or two about babysitting, she had never taken it upon herself to learn to swim. For one thing, she thought pools were wasteful – she thought this even before the drought of 2000, which grew steadily worse in the summer months and by September had made a desert of Kentucky and had obliterated its cash crops: corn, soybeans, and tobacco. Secondly, as a type two diabetic, Alex had very light skin and was susceptible to sunburn; she had a notable propensity to burn, actually. All it took was a minute or two in front of a window in the summer and she was baked.

Kids at school made fun of her pallid skin, but there were worse things they teased her about – the longest running joke in the history of Havensburg Middle School was that Alex and Debra were lesbians. However, of the humiliation Alex and Debra suffered, Debra's was inexorably the worst. The name Debra Simpson inspired the nickname The Missing Simpson or The Aborted Simpson – the latter suggesting that the real Simpsons hadn't wanted her. What made it worse was that Debra actually resembled a character from the cartoon. She had a large forehead, a small lower jaw, buggy eyes, and short, cropped hair that she could barely pull back into a ponytail; for the most part she kept her hair tucked back with a headband, and on windy days it separated in places and resembled the spikes of Lisa Simpson's hair, or so her classmates teased. And to make matters worse, Debra played the saxophone for the middle school band.

Alex wasn't far behind in the running, as far as malicious teasing was concerned. She played the clarinet – "the instrument for people who can't play an instrument," other band members claimed – and stayed by Debra's side all day long: they made an effort to have the same classes and the same lunch, and of course spent fourth period in the band room together, though, because they played different instruments, they weren't allowed to sit next to one another. Not that this stopped everyone in the sixth grade from calling them dykes and lesbians behind their backs. Alex and Debra, who were together all the time, who dressed similarly (a habit started by their mothers), who had similar hairstyles, and who were as pale as vampires, could have been understandably, if erroneously, mistaken for lesbians – had they not been sixth graders.

On that sultry July day, as Kate and Blake jumped intrepidly into the pool, Alex, sitting under the table umbrella on the deck, was happy for the first time in years to be outside. Despite the overwhelming sun, she looked forward to the day – Debra was planning to come over. Of course Alex and Debra had intended to go upstairs to Alex's bedroom, but plans had changed. With Carl Zimmerman coming over, Alex wouldn't have stayed inside even if she didn't have to watch her brother and sister.

When Debra, dressed in a bathing suit and a pair of shorts, crawled under the hedge wall bisecting their parents' back yards and climbed the steps to the deck, she asked where Elizabeth was.

"Upstairs calling Carl."

Debra grimaced. "Are they gonna . . . you know?" She symbolized the "you know" by rubbing both index fingers together, and Alex laughed in spite of her embarrassment.

"I think so."

Debra sighed and plopped down in the chair next to Alex. "So what are we gonna do, just sit here?"

"Watch my brother and sister, I guess."

With a note of reflection, Debra said, "I hate Carl Zimmerman."

The Greenburys and Simpsons lived in a subdivision called Cornerstone Lanes, so named because it was the southwestern cornerstone of Havensburg, a quarter of a mile from the middle and high school and only spitting distance from Foodland. There were four streets in Cornerstone Lanes, all creating prongs of a fork. On either side of each street stood six houses, putting two backyards together, some divided by board fences but most running together, causing frequent summer disputes over who owned what ground and, subsequently, who should cut what grass – though this summer there was seldom a living patch of grass to mow.

Alex's house sat back-to-back with the house of the Strasbourgs, who were always grilling hotdogs and steaks in their backyard. Gary Strasbourg even stood over his grill as Kate and Blake writhed about in the pool and Alex and Debra sulked over having to spend their day outside. The two friends watched the balding man in a chef's hat and apron, which said "Kiss the Cook" across the belly, as he put a hand to his back and pointed the spatula like a gun at the sizzling steaks, as if daring them to overcook.

Meanwhile, up in her room, Elizabeth Greenbury finished applying some deep-red lipstick, changed into a green tank top and short boxer shorts, and called her boyfriend Carl Zimmerman, the starting quarterback for the Havensburg Cacti.

"My parents are gone for most of the day," she told him.

"What are you wearing?" Carl asked in a contrived businesslike tone.

"Next to nothing," Elizabeth replied, detecting the smile in his voice, "but you know how cold it gets in here, so you better hurry before I change my mind."

"I'll be there shortly," Carl said and hung up.

Elizabeth spent a few minutes looking herself over in the mirror, and at some point decided to put on a pair of thong underwear under her boxer shorts. Elizabeth owned more thong underwear than any other girl at Havensburg High. If her mother ever found out, she would ground Elizabeth for life, so Elizabeth hid the thongs inside an old sweatshirt in her bottom drawer and periodically took them down to Peterson's Laundromat, next to Su Casa Realty and across the street from Foodland.

When Carl arrived not five minutes later – Havensburg was a one-stoplight town – he heard the splashing sounds of Kate and Blake in the pool and thought Elizabeth might be out back watching the little rodents. He came through the alley between the Greenbury house and the one next to it and greeted Alex and Debra with his smug charm.

"Afternoon, ladies," he said. "Nice day for a dip, isn't it?"

Alex thought, Nice day for a dipshit!

"It's too hot," Debra said, turning away from him.

"You girls are looking nice today."

"Thank you," Alex said mutely, wanting him to leave.

He stepped up onto the deck. Debra glanced at him.

"Having fun, kids?" Carl asked the swimming twins.

"Yeah!" Kate screamed.

Blake's response was, "Katie eats boogers!"

"Yeah!" Kate screamed again. The twins were four years old and had not yet entered school – they would have started the following fall.

"So where's the lady?" Carl finally asked. He stood up straight with a groan and turned to Alex and Debra. He didn't notice, as Alex and Debra hadn't noticed, that Blake's right arm float had come off. Luckily Blake had swum toward Carl and now lingered at the side of the pool, where he was able to latch onto the filter.

"Upstairs," Alex said.

"Upstairs," Carl repeated, and then jogged off the deck and to the back porch, where he disappeared into the house without even knocking first.

"God, he's a freakin' guido," Debra said, squinting at the sun, face grimacing at Elizabeth's window. Suddenly the curtains were snatched closed.

For a while, Blake swam with just one arm float. He was strong enough to hold out for a while. Upstairs, Elizabeth made a similar compromise, allowing Carl to break one strap of her tank top and fondle one breast to the point of bruising.

At the Strasbourg house, the smoke on the grill had settled to an occasional puff when a bead of grease fell on the ambers. Gary Strasbourg had moved on to the hotdogs. Willie Strasbourg was out in the backyard with his father now and seemed more focused on the Greenbury house than the hotdogs. While Carl pushed for another base upstairs, Alex and Debra watched Willie Strasbourg gawk at Elizabeth's bedroom window.

"Why doesn't he just take a picture?" Debra asked.

"Who would want a picture of Lizzy? Willie Strasbourg only likes her because he thinks she's hot. Wait till he finds out how bitchy she is."

"What is it with your sister anyway?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, why does everyone think she's such hot stuff?"

Alex shrugged.

As Carl Zimmerman removed his shirt upstairs, and as Willie Strasbourg went upstairs to his bedroom to get a pair of binoculars just in case Elizabeth came outside, Kate Greenbury, swimming to the side of the pool, took off her right arm float and gave it to Blake.

"Here, Brake, you can have mine," she said sympathetically – Alex heard her say this, but the significance of the words brushed right past her in the hot stiff breeze. Blake took the float with gratitude but soon dropped it. The waves carried the float out to the middle of the pool, and both Kate and Blake took off after it and immediately began to sink on their right sides – they rotated as if on axes.

Elizabeth's cleavage-baring green tank top had made its way down her midriff and abdomen, so it now only served as a waistband. Carl was on top of her, working to remove the shirt completely. She barely heard Alex's scream over Carl's heavy breaths and the drone of the air conditioner. When the scream finally filtered through the walls of the house, she had to unscramble her shirt, pull it back up, and settle for letting the side with the broken strap droop over her chest. She also had to put her boxer shorts back on, because by the time Alex screamed they were warming her knees, protecting them from the arctic climate regulated by the central air conditioning.

As for the Strasbourgs, Gary had gathered his hotdogs and steaks onto two plates and was carrying them inside when he heard the scream. The shock of the sound resulted in Gary spilling his hotdogs and steaks all over the back porch, which in turn resulted in his kicking over the grill and spilling hot ambers all over the deck, which in turn resulted in his inadvertently setting his house on fire.

The screams persisted before Gary could sweep the ambers free of the porch, and he had no choice except to race across the yard to Alex. As he crossed over into the Greenbury yard, Willie watched from his second-floor bedroom through a pair of Bushnell binoculars as first Kate, then Blake, plopped to the surface of the pool, face down, and floated there like bobbers. Alex and Debra leapt into the pool after them, pulled them out, and cried over their bodies as Gary mounted the steps and Elizabeth first came out into the yard - her hair a rat's nest, her lipstick smeared - to see what in the hell was going on.

"What happened?" she asked, Carl following closely behind her.

Crying, Alex screamed that Kate and Blake were dead. Debra stood up and moved to the side so that Elizabeth could join her sister by the small bodies. "They . . . drowned," Alex cried. "I didn't even see them!"

Gary tried to perform CPR on Blake but had no luck – he was not trained and succeeded only in forcing a mouthful of water out of the boy's lungs.

At first Elizabeth did not believe her. The absurdity of two kids drowning in the presence of so many people was too great. It was only when Gary knelt down to attempt CPR that she realized it was no joke. With Carl she had worked up quite a sweat, and her face had reddened, but now the color drained out of her.

At the same time Willie noticed the smoke rising from the yard below him.

"Goddamn it, Alex, I told you to fucking watch them!" Elizabeth screamed, clutching her sister by the shoulder. Alex cried harder, and a moment later Elizabeth began to cry as well.

"I'm s-sorry," Alex whispered.

Debra put her face in her hands and went back to her seat.

"I can't fucking believe you, Alex!"

Gary stood up and pulled on Elizabeth's arm. "Let her go. It was an accident. Just let her go."

"She fucking killed them!"

"It was an accident, Elizabeth. Now please calm down. You're upsetting your sister."

"I hope she's upset! Get your fucking hands off me!"

Carl Zimmerman suddenly snatched Gary's hand off Elizabeth's shoulder and pushed him backwards. Gary tripped over Kate's body and nearly fell into the pool. "You keep your fucking hands off her, buddy. And as for you," he said, pointing a finger at Alex, looking at Debra, too. "What were you two doing that you couldn't even watch your own brother and sister? Just what in the hell were you doing?"

Alex cried harder, but Debra stood up, chair toppling over.

"Elizabeth was supposed to be watching them! It's her fault! If you two hadn't been diddling around up there this wouldn't have happened!"

Carl started for Debra. "What did you say to me, you little dyke?" He grabbed her by the arm – it left a welt the size of a golf ball and a ring of bruises. "You two were right fucking here! And now it's Lizzy's fault?"

"You're hurting me!"

"Then shut up," Carl said and shoved Debra into her seat. He then went over and embraced Elizabeth, who had latched back on to Alex and was shaking her and crying hysterically.

Kate and Blake lay face-up on the deck, dripping wet, faces puffy and white. Everyone hovered over them, crying, until they began to smell smoke. At the sight of his blazing porch, Gary screamed, which caught everyone's attention.

"Jesus Christ," Carl muttered.

Gary took off toward the house, waving his arms emphatically at Willie and screaming at him to get out of the house. Gary's wife Erica was still at work, but he screamed for her, too.

The fire had engulfed the porch and was at the point that it had begun licking the window from which Willie stared at the events below him. Willie darted down the staircase and outside as his father attempted to extinguish the flames. Carl Zimmerman was magnanimous enough to go inside and call the fire department, and Debra followed him, leaving Alex and Elizabeth alone on the wet deck, kneeling by Kate and Blake, sobbing.

That was the day around which the lives of the Greenbury's would revolve for the next year – a day destroyed first by water, then by fire.

2.

After that, life turned to hell for a few months. Her parents, despondent to the point they almost lost their jobs, and Elizabeth and Alex traded hour-long bouts of crying and hiding from everyone. But by fall everything had returned to as near normal as possible, except for the absence of the twins and the relative silence throughout the house. Richard Greenbury vowed to get a grip on himself and help his wife through the ordeal so that she could help their remaining children. Elizabeth went on dating Carl regularly; the only thing that changed with them was that she was now able to leave the house as she pleased. Alex stayed in her room even more than usual, her only visitor Debra Simpson, who had just successfully shut off her parents' sprinklers.

Alex had grown sleepy waiting for dinner and had lost whatever appetite she might have had earlier. Ignoring her mother's calls, she curled up in her large green bed and stared across the room at the dark-green walls – virtually everything in the Greenbury house was green, the rugs and carpet included. It had been Elizabeth's idea.

The floor mats and shower curtain in the bathroom were also among the list of green items in the Greenbury house, and while her mother called up the stairs again and set the table – green table cloth and napkins – Alex heard Elizabeth taking her second shower of the day.

It was just as Elizabeth stepped out of the shower that Patricia's voice grew impatient. By the time Alex came out of her room, Elizabeth had returned to the bathroom for something she had forgotten – a pair of thongs she'd accidentally thrown in the laundry basket maybe. Alex passed her sister in the hallway without a word as Elizabeth stuffed something into the pocket of her green bathrobe and walked dripping to her bedroom. Alex went down the steps, and Elizabeth hurried through the cold hallway to her bedroom, where she had the window halfway open.

"Elizabeth! Dinner!"

When Alex reached the bottom of the stairs, Patricia asked her to go find Elizabeth, but Elizabeth appeared at the landing moments later and started down.

"Dinner's ready, Lizzy," Alex said.

"I heard her," Elizabeth said, brushing past her. Alex stood at the foot of the staircase for a moment, and then followed Elizabeth. In the kitchen, Patricia and Richard had taken their seats at opposite ends of the table. Elizabeth and Alex sat across from each other, and immediately the click-clack of forks and knives hitting china started up. No one spoke. Food was passed around, drinks were poured, and the quiet drone of the central air unit became the dominant sound in the house. Soon they could all hear the cuckoo clock on the mantle in the living room. At eight o'clock it nearly startled them.

Finally, after finishing two helpings of meatloaf and about a quart of mashed potatoes, Richard Greenbury said something.

"Is there gonna be a game soon?"

"Probably not," Elizabeth said. "They keep saying it's too hot."

"Oh. Is Carl pissed off about it?"

She shrugged.

"What's his jersey number, by the way?"

"44."

"What are the Cactuses now?" Patricia asked, producing frowns and confused expressions across the table.

"They're a football team, Mom," Elizabeth said. "And it's Cacti, not Cactuses."

Patricia sighed and lifted her plastic cup of red wine. "I meant how many games have they won?"

"There hasn't been a game yet," Alex said. She stared at her plate as she spoke, spilling a strand of hair into her mashed potatoes, which she'd barely touched. Patricia rationed Alex's food parsimoniously as it was – because of the diabetes – but even for her regular diet Alex hadn't eaten much.

"I didn't even know you followed the games, Alex," Richard said. "Aren't you gonna finish your mom's meatloaf?"

"Eat your meatloaf," Elizabeth said. "You look like a goddamn skeleton."

Patricia gasped as if she'd cut herself and spilled her wine, saying, "Elizabeth, watch that language!"

"You're a bitch, Lizzy," Alex said.

"Alex! Both of you shut up!"

"She called me a bitch," Elizabeth said.

"Shut up," Patricia repeated.

Elizabeth shook her head.

"Goddamn it, Lizzy, stop cussing," Richard said suddenly, laughing at his own off-beat joke. He smiled at Alex again, but she was no longer in the mood to smile.

"Richard, you're not helping here."

Patricia blew from her eyes a strand of hair that had fallen from her bun. Her face was flushed from yelling. She threw Elizabeth another scornful look and then stood up to get a towel to clean the mess she had made. Luckily the red wine would go unnoticed in the green tablecloth after a good wash.

"What's wrong with her?" Elizabeth asked no one in particular, brow curled. She repositioned herself in the seat to make it apparent the discomfort her mother and sister had caused her, and then began picking at her food.

"She doesn't like you cussing so much," Alex said.

Elizabeth stared long and hard at Alex, and then said, "Fuck it."

Richard sighed then and left the table. Sometime later the television clicked on and a stadium cheered for some football team or another. Elizabeth continued to stare at Alex for a moment, while Alex stared at her plate. Then she stood up and went back upstairs. Patricia returned to the table a moment later with her towel and broom to find that only Alex remained at the table.

"You need to learn to quit picking fights," she said while cleaning up the mess. "Your sister's hard enough to control without you getting her going."

"What? I didn't do anything, Mom! Why don't you tell her to stop taking so many showers all the time?"

Gathering the glasses, plates, and the towel with which she'd soaked up her mess, Patricia said, "I doubt the water your sister uses is having much of an effect on the community. Besides, everyone else wastes water. We might as well, too."

"That's irresponsible, Mom."

"Did you just call me irresponsible?"

"Yes."

"Well, let's just see who's-" Patricia stopped there. Shoulders slumping, she turned away from Alex, mumbled something to herself, and went to the sink to deposit the remaining dishes.

Alex had seen the faces of Kate and Blake in her mother's eyes. She rushed out of the dining room and upstairs to her bedroom, where, bawling, she undressed, crawled into bed, and cried herself to sleep.

3.

Sometime during the night, Alex pushed away her dark green blanket and climbed out of bed, covered from neck to knees with one of Elizabeth's hand-me-down t-shirts.

In the days when Elizabeth and Alex were friends and spent nights playing games such as "The Liz and Ally Talk Show," in which they gossiped about people at school – people like Benjamin Brusly, a quiet kid who always came to class with bruises on his cheeks and arms – Elizabeth often fell asleep on Alex's bed. During the night, Alex would sometimes sleepwalk into Elizabeth's room and climb into her bed, so when Patricia or Richard came into their rooms to wake the girls for school, they would find that the girls had strangely switched beds. After Elizabeth decidedly no longer had time to play childish games with her kid sister – about the time she started dating – Alex's incidents of sleepwalking dwindled to a few per month.

Yet, sometime during this night, Alex pushed away her dark green blanket and climbed out of bed, wearing Elizabeth's hand-me-down t-shirt, a Havensburg High shirt with a green "00" on the chest. She opened her bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway. Her feet, covered in droopy socks, slid on the cold hardwood floor. She left the door ajar and started slowly to Elizabeth's room, arms dangling at her sides. Her hair was a mess, and the white t-shirt created a fuzzy silhouette in the dim glow of the hall nightlight.

At the end of the hall, she pivoted left, turned the doorknob, and stepped into Elizabeth's room, where the air was twenty degrees warmer from the open window.

Elizabeth's bed was positioned under the window. Though Alex was asleep and couldn't see, Elizabeth lay on her stomach with her right cheek pressed against the pillow, which she gripped with both hands. She was completely naked – all but her buttocks and the upper half of her legs, which were draped in white sheets. The rest of her body – her calves, shoulders, and the small of her back – glistened with sweat under the light of the moon.

Alex moved across the room towards the bed. On her way, she bumped something tall and heavy. It fell over and crashed to the floor with a subsequent splattering sound.

Elizabeth sat up in the bed, the sheet falling away from her naked body. Her eyes fell upon Alex and widened, and then she snatched the sheet and pulled it up to her neck.

"Jesus Christ, Alex, I thought you were a ghost."

Alex had come partly awake and heard Elizabeth's voice in a dream. She looked down and saw she was standing over Elizabeth's paint stand, which lay splintered on the floor with green paint running all over the canvas with the Snake's Back painted on it.

"What was that noise?" Elizabeth asked.

Alex, weary and cloudy-eyed, woke up completely then, realized that she had ruined Elizabeth's painting, and bolted from the room, locking and then closing the door behind her. She ran to her own room and climbed into bed, hearing Elizabeth's scream a few moments later.

The sound of footsteps soon rushed past her room. Patricia and Richard tried the doorknob and then started pounding on the heavy oak door and calling Elizabeth's name.

"Elizabeth! Lizzy, what's the matter!?"

"Lizzy, honey, open the door!" Richard called. "Let us in, honey!" They pounded and pounded.

Alex heard the door fly open.

"My painting!" Elizabeth squealed. "It's ruined!"

"Honey, calm down."

"Mom, I spent three fucking weeks on that painting – and now look at it!"

"We'll get you a new canvas to paint on," Richard said in the hall, "but honey you've got to start keeping this window shut."

"What?"

"It was probably the wind that knocked it over," Richard explained. "And Jesus Christ it's hot in here. You're going to run up the electric bill with the window open all the time – it's hot outside, honey. Close that window and you can sleep with clothes on like the rest of us."

"It wasn't the wind!" Elizabeth said. "It was Alex!"

Alex listened as Elizabeth rushed past their parents into the chilly hallway. She barged into Alex's room, shut and locked the door to keep her mother out, and flipped on the light. Alex sat up in bed.

"Elizabeth."

"You ruined my painting, you little shit!"

In an irrational rage, Elizabeth, letting free her blanket, jerked Alex out of her bed and flung her halfway across the room into a chest blanketed with stuffed animals. A blue denim kitten broke her fall, but the impact left her with a headache. She began to cry.

"I'm sorry, Lizzy. I was sleepwalking."

It didn't get through. Before Alex could climb to her feet, Elizabeth was on top of her, first knocking her down and then sitting flat on her stomach. Because of Elizabeth's comparative muscle mass, she nearly crushed Alex. Alex found herself wheezing for a breath of air.

Patricia and Richard began pounding on the other side of the door. Elizabeth locked onto Alex's wrists and pinned her arms down against the large green "00" on her chest with her knees. Alex let out a stifled cry.

"Do you know how long I spent on that stupid painting? I spent three fucking weeks on that thing, and you ruined it like it was nothing!"

Alex kicked at the air but came in contact with nothing. Then she forced a knee into the small of Elizabeth's back, but Elizabeth only responded by backhanding her across the face. Tears welled up in her eyes, and the image of her naked, sweating sister blurred to a honey-colored mass sitting on her stomach.

Elizabeth grabbed the white Havensburg Cacti shirt by the collar and yanked. Alex mistook the ripping sound of the neck stretching as a part of her body giving way. "This isn't even your shirt! It's mine! Who gave this to you – Mom?"

Alex whimpered.

"Well, take it off. I want it back."

Elizabeth lifted herself from Alex's stomach, and Alex turned over reflexively, gasping for breath. Her abdomen ached. Her throat felt like it was on fire. "Elizabeth-" she choked.

From the other side of the bedroom door, Richard said, "Open this door, Lizzy."

"Elizabeth, you open this door right now!" Patricia called. "Alex!"

Alex scrambled to her feet and went for the door, but Elizabeth caught her by the shirt.

"Give me back my clothes! I want all of them back!"

She tried to pull Alex's shirt off from the back, in the style of a hockey player. Alex clung to it, afraid to be naked in front of her sister. She remembered having to undergo a physical before sixth grade and then again in seventh grade, after a rash of illnesses swept the middle school – ranging from the flu to shigellosis to bronchitis to meningitis. She had had to strip down to her underpants on that second trip to the doctor and wait on what she'd always thought of as wax paper with nothing but thin tissue paper to cover herself until the doctor came – an endless wait that ended with a creepy, smiley doctor waltzing in and her mother abruptly stepping out of the room. She called after her mother, but Patricia just closed the door. Alex had taken one look at the doctor and known that he liked his job more than he should. He pulled the paper shield out of her hands and asked her to lie down. As he poked and probed at her, all the while making light but condescending conversation about boys, school, and her dead siblings, she started to cry.

"Oh, don't cry, sweetheart!" the doctor said. "I'm sure your brother and sister are in a better place." He took this as an opportunity to peek down her underpants.

Her mother later told her that this was routine. "They have to check to make sure you're developing normally."

"He could have just asked," Alex replied, thinking, I would have said no.

Had Elizabeth asked for her shirt back instead of trying to rip it right off her back, Alex surely would have said no. While, like Elizabeth, Alex preferred to sleep with little clothing, she did not like to prance around in the middle of the day naked. But Elizabeth was determined to get her shirt back. The collar ripped and the neck split down the middle, stopping halfway through the "00" as Alex clung to it.

"Elizabeth, please!" she cried.

"Let the fuck go! I'm gonna kill you!"

"Let go of my shirt!" Alex cried, straining.

"It's not yours!"

"I didn't mean to knock over your painting – I was sleepwalking!"

"I don't give a shit!"

They played tug-of-war until Alex, whose energy had been expended by the end of the day as it was, couldn't hold on anymore and let go. She fell back against the oak chest, but this time the stuffed animals didn't protect her. She had knocked several stuffed animals off the lid, so now her head struck a place where there was no padding. The shirt ripped completely off, and her temple banged against the corner of the chest .

When Alex stopped moving – she later assumed – Elizabeth's frenzy abruptly ended, and she rushed to open the door. Richard and Patricia spilled into the room. Their arms lashed out like the vines of some mutant, horror movie plant and grabbed Elizabeth by the shoulders. They didn't immediately see Alex's slumped, bony body on the floor.

"What in the hell are you girls-" Patricia started, but then she saw a small lump in the corner of her eye. "Oh my god, Alex."

"She fell," Elizabeth said mutedly. "I didn't mean to hurt her."

It took them a while to revive her. Patricia wrapped her in a sheet and rocked her back and forth like a baby, rubbing her forehead, whispering in her ear. Richard was more firm. He shook Alex by the shoulders and tried not to hurt her as he smacked her across the face. She woke up sweating and shaking; she complained of wooziness and a dizzy feeling like riding a fast carousel. It was hypoglycemia. She hadn't eaten enough at dinner.

While Patricia rushed downstairs to get a cookie and a glass of orange juice, Richard sat with his daughter under the green light, which only added to her already green pallor. Elizabeth backed out of the room into the freezing hallway. Shivering and crossing her arms over her chest, she went to the bathroom and filled the tub to the rim with steamy water and bubble bath.

FRIDAY

Morning

4.

THE BIGGEST trouble to hit Havensburg since the drought had started to take its toll on the agricultural industry of Kentucky – trouble that actually surpassed the drought by leaps and bounds – really started when Benjamin Brusly and the high school janitor caught Principal Fredrickson smoking pot between the field house and the greenhouse.

Ben had not come far from his days of being beaten up every week in the boy's bathroom. His father was to thank for this. A Vietnam veteran and alcoholic, Callaghan Brusly suffered from night terrors, blackouts, and fits of rage. He owned the largest farm in Belden County. Neighborhood children often came out into their front yards in the late afternoon to watch Cal Brusly dust – or water, as was mostly the case these days – his corn and tobacco fields. Along with owning the largest farm, Cal Brusly owned and operated the only crop duster in Belden County and made extra money dusting or watering other farmers' fields. Since the beginning of the drought, however, he had begun to refuse service to his regular customers, citing the extra labor the drought made for him on his own farm.

Callaghan Brusly had played football in high school, which was the only reason Ben was on the team now. Ben hated football and didn't get along with anyone on the team, especially Carl Zimmerman, who called him out most of the time because he always had a bruise on his cheek. Despite his father's well-respected football career, Ben spent more time behind the field house smoking cigarettes during class than he spent in the field house lifting and meeting for practices.

When Ben came to school Friday morning, his best friend, Ronny Checker, the high school janitor – people called him Chubby Checker because he was fat – was waiting for him at the back entrance to the school. He was supposed to be wiping shit off the stall walls in the boy's bathroom and sweeping swollen tampons off the wet floor of the girl's bathroom, but when Ben got out of his truck and waved at him, the two headed down the row of cars to the field house.

"I've got to have a cigarette," Chubby Checker whined in a dog-tired breath. Sweat rolled down his neck as if he'd just been in the shower. "These damn kids, Benny Boy, they have me chasin' 'em with a mop bucket all over the place. I ain't been here half an hour and I'm already spent!"

"Don't look at me," Ben said. "I'm not the one smearing shit on the walls."

Chubby shot him a serious glance. "I better not find out it was you."

They laughed and turned a corner to the shaded alley, where they found, quite to their astonishment, that Principal Fredrickson was busy lighting up a joint. He had just taken his first hit when Chubby and Ben caught him.

Principal Fredrickson didn't see them at first. Back to the wall with one foot planted below his butt, he took a long drag of his joint and counted to ten before exhaling into the sky. The alley stank of marijuana, and smoke clogged the narrow, shaded strip of air from wall to wall. When Chubby greeted the tweaking principal, Fredrickson could do nothing but take another drag.

"Why hello, Principal Fed," Chubby said. He called Principal Fredrickson Fred, but because of his mild speech impediment, Fred came out as Fed.

Principal Fed's eyes swelled like boiled eggs and with the one bent leg he kicked himself away from the wall.

"Chubby . . . I mean Ronald-"

"Chubby's fine, Principal Fed. You ain't gotta act like we don't know each other."

Principal Fed wiped his forehead. The heat of the day swam around all three of them, even here in the shade, but Principal Fed grew suddenly nervous and got the worst of it.

"What the hell are you boys doing back here, Ronald? Mr. Brusly?" He wiped his forehead again and noticed the joint burning between his index and middle finger, ribbons of smoke trailing up his right arm. He stubbed it out on the brick and then smashed it with his leather shoe. With both hands free, he fastened the top two buttons of his collared shirt and fixed his tie.

"Just taking a break is all," Chubby said. "Looks like you're doin' the same."

Fed laughed nervously. "Yeah . . . well I don't think you boys should have seen that. Aren't you supposed to be in class, Mr. Brusly?"

"I guess."

"What do you have this period?"

"World History."

"Well, I guess a compromise is in order here, wouldn't you say?"

Chubby shook his head. "No need, Principal Fed. We didn't see a thing."

"Boys . . ."

"I didn't see anything," Ben said.

Chubby shrugged. "Me neither."

Principal Fed studied them for a moment and then sighed. "Well, all right I guess. I suppose I didn't see anything either."

"We're a bucket of blind mice!" Chubby said.

"Well," Principal Fed sighed, staring past the two malingerers toward the corner leading to the band room entrance and the backdoors, "I have work to do." Pushing past Chubby and Ben, he stopped and said, "Oh, and don't worry, Mr. Brusly, your mother won't hear a word of this."

"Thanks," Ben said, unsure what he was thanking him for – after all, Fed had been the one blazing up in the alley, not him.

Principal Fed scooted past them.

"Hold up there, Principal Fed," Chubby said suddenly, glancing at Ben with a smile. "You know what? I think I'm gettin' my vision back." He backhanded Ben in the stomach.

Principal Fed turned. "What was that?"

"Oh, I'm just beginning to recall a thing or two, that's all. Have a nice day."

Principal Fed abruptly stepped up to the comparatively short Chubby Checker, close enough to see his childlike dimples and the string of acne running along his jawbone.

"What are you saying, Ronald?"

Chubby grimaced as if to suggest that Principal Fed needed a Listerine strip. Principal Fed didn't move, but Ben took a step or two back. Fed was scrawny and didn't look like the fighting type, but then he didn't look like the pothead type, either. Chubby had been in several fights when he went to Havensburg High. He had even told Ben that once in fourth grade he had beaten up two bullies for calling him a tub of lard and a fat-ass.

"I'm saying," Chubby said, "I'll help you out, but you gotta help me out."

"I don't mop," said Principal Fed.

Ben laughed under his breath.

"A three day weekend sounds nice . . . for starters," Chubby said. "I want Monday off. And I want you to announce to those little shitbirds that the next time they smear their nuggets all over the walls, I'm pissin' in every one of their lockers. How's that? We got a deal?"

Principal Fed looked from Chubby to Ben, and back to Chubby. He sighed again and shrugged off the overwhelming heat of the sultry morning. Behind them, sprinklers hissed over the football field and the water tower's legs glared with the reflection of the sunlight. "Fine, a three-day weekend, but nothing more. I don't like being blackmailed," Principal Fed said finally. He stormed out of the alley and disappeared around the corner.

Chubby laughed a high ringing laugh and leaned against the wall.

Ben shifted his gaze from the end of the alley to his fat chuckling friend. "What the hell are you doing, Chubs?"

"Taking advantage," Chubby said proudly. "Now how about that smoke?"

"Fuckin' retard."

Reaching into his shirt pocket, Chubby pulled two cigarettes from a pack of Marlboro 100's. He handed a cigarette to Ben and said, "Hey, I got a day off, didn't I? Ol' Fed's so paranoid, he think's I'd actually turn him in."

With a Zippo lighter, he first lit Ben's cigarette and then his.

"He could have fired your ass," Ben said, taking a drag.

"Yeah," Chubby laughed, "and he could have fired the rest of me, too, but he didn't. Sweaty prick's got too much dirt in his boots."

"Huh?"

"We just caught him puffing the magic dragon on the job, and I know that's not the half of what he's into. Believe me."

"You think so?"

"I know so, buddy. You ever get a good whiff of him?"

Ben shrugged.

"Smells dead-up like coke. Nastiest shit in the world."

"You'd know all about smellin' shit, Fats Domino."

"Kiss ass," Chubby said, and Ben turned his face up and laughed a plume of smoke into the gutter overhead.

"Hey, speakin' of coke, I'm thirsty."

"Me too. Go get us some Pepsis."

"Go yourself, fatty."

"Come on, shitbird. I've been workin' all mornin'." He tossed a thumb at the wall of the field house. "Just go in here. Door's locked but you can take my key. Me, I gotta sit down for a minute. Heat's gettin' to me."

"Come with me and get out of the sun."

"Shit," Chubby said. "Day like today, with the windows open. Hotter in there than it is out here. You know that." He fished a buck-twenty in change out of his pants pocket and handed it to Ben. "Hurry up and get 'em before I dehydrate. Go on." Grunting, Chubby knelt down and planted his butt in the grass. He grunted again and said, "Well get on it, Benny! I swear, you young punks . . ."

"I swear, you lazy-ass janitors."

"Watch yourself . . . and it's custodians, not janitors."

They shared a laugh, and then Ben left to get the drinks. He returned a moment later and handed Chubby an unopened sweating can. Chubby drained it in several long gulps.

"Ah, nothin' like a good cold drink from the machine. Thanks a lot, Benny Boy." Chubby patted Ben on the shoulder. "If it weren't for football shit-birds like you, we wouldn't even have soft drinks at school."

Ben had slid down to the yellow grass next to Chubby and sat with his arms resting on his bent knees. He took the last swig of his Pepsi and crushed the can, tossing it against a section of the translucent greenhouse wall. It landed in a litter of dead grass, bubblegum wrappers, and wax paper from the pretzels and gigantic pickles sold at the home games.

"Why's that?" he asked Chubby, knowing why and asking only out of boredom.

"Because," Chubby explained, "all schools that don't have any money make deals with Coke or Pepsi companies for equipment, money, bleachers – hell, anything. You ever wonder why the scoreboards all say 'Drink Pepsi' on the sides?"

"Didn't really notice."

"Well, shit. Nobody but me notices anything. School doesn't give a damn that their students are rotting their teeth out and gettin' fatter and fatter. They just want new scoreboards and bleachers and commentary booths and snack stands and all that other shit."

"Chubs?"

"Yeah pal."

"Why do you say shit so much?"

"'Cause that's what I deal with all day long. Shit on the walls. Shit on the floor. Shit cloggin' up the john. You little ass-wipes don't care about the messes you leave. Don't care 'bout nothin' but yourselves."

Ben patted Chubby sympathetically on the shoulder. "I care about you, buddy."

"Eat shit," Chubby said.

A little while later, they went inside.

5.

Ms. Harwich called roll and phoned in the absent students – among them Ben Brusly, who only came to class about half the time. A running classroom joke had started at the beginning of the year in speculation about how Ben Brusly spent his class periods. People proposed everything from closet homosexuality driving him to gay clubs in Louisville to the notion that there never was a Ben Brusly and they had all imagined him. Willie Strasbourg just figured Ben cared as little about school as he did, only Ben had the balls to do something about it.

After a brief discussion with the office clerk, Ms. Harwich went to the front of the room to begin her lesson. Willie sat in front of Phillip Mancini, watching Elizabeth with furtive glances and trying not to be noticed by the teacher when she asked questions.

"Where did the Spanish Armada battle the English?" she asked the class with an elaborate sigh. She was standing next to the overhead projector with a meter stick. She waved it like a wand while no one spoke up or raised a hand. Then she waved her meter stick in Carl's direction and said, "How about it, Carl?"

Of course Carl knew the answer. He was a hard-ass around his friends, but in the classroom he sat in the front row and knocked down Ms. Harwich's questions as soon as she lined them up. He put the brightest kids in school to shame – even Willie, who rarely did his homework and could find no particular use for knowing the second husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine or Plato's protégé.

"The English Channel," Carl answered, and to his right Elizabeth Greenbury smiled, patted his arm, and crossed her legs.

"That's right, Carl. Now, can anyone tell me what resulted from this battle?" Carl smirked again and raised his hand. Every time he knew an answer - which was often - he glanced in either direction at the people sitting behind him, as if making sure they knew just how intelligent a man he was. "Anyone besides Carl," Ms. Harwich leered, and passed her own righteous smile at Carl. They had a subtle communication going between them – it had gone on all semester. Willie had noticed it the first day of class and wondered if something more than teaching was at play there.

Willie didn't notice the meter stick pointing in his direction.

"Mr. Strasbourg?"

He looked up to find Ms. Harwich staring at him and, scratching his head, he searched his memory for an answer, deterred by the gazes fixed upon him. "Yeah, um . . ." Then he broke off because Elizabeth Greenbury had turned to look at him. He watched her body shift as she twisted her midsection around to face the back of the class, where the rednecks and Mexicans and guys not privileged with an identity lurked. When she looked at him, he felt as if a snarling pit bull had spotted him and was staring at his neck, salivating. He could taste the bitterness of chalky classroom air but couldn't hear the teacher calling his name.

"Mr. Strasbourg?"

Elizabeth's shorts were too short for the school dress code, but girls like Elizabeth Greenbury could get away with it and Willie was glad. He stared at her plaid boxer shorts and dangerously low-cut tank-top and thanked the administration for hiring a pervert like John Fredrickson who let her get by with it.

"Willie, do you have an answer or not?"

Carl turned around. "Hey, Wonka. Answer the question."

"Carl," Ms. Harwich said.

Willie straightened up at the sound of Carl's voice. "I'm sorry, what was the question again?"

Ms. Harwich sighed. "What resulted from the battle between the English and the Spanish Armada?"

"Well," Willie said, "the Spanish Navy grew stronger."

Again, Ms. Harwich sighed. "Yes, that's true, Willie. But I want you to think on a much larger scale. What was the overall significance of the battle? From a global perspective?"

Willie Strasbourg shrugged, thinking, Who gives a shit? But he still wished he knew the answer, because just as he suspected Carl Zimmerman raised his hand again and Ms. Harwich let him answer.

"Because it stopped Philip the Second from re-imposing unity on western Europe."

"Right," Ms. Harwich said. "And do you know what that means, Willie?"

"That Carl's a brown-noser?"

"It means," Carl said, pivoting to face Willie, "that the English put the Spanish in their place."

"I suppose that's a way of putting it, and cut the humor, Willie," Ms. Harwich said. "You see, the English had smaller, more maneuverable ships than the Spanish. Add to that rank water, storms, insufficient food, and less ammunition on Spanish ships and you have an English victory. The English saw the larger outcome from their potential victory – which is what Carl just alluded to – and they knew they had to win, no matter what the circumstances or what was stacked up against them."

Willie had stopped paying attention. He was thinking about having to work tonight, wishing he had something better to do. There hadn't been a good card game in a while, and no one seemed to want to play pool anymore because the guys he hung out with – guys like Phillip Mancini and Matt Flagstaff – were too lazy to get jobs, so no money to be hustled.

Carl turned around again, a smug expression on his face.

"Somethin' on your mind, Carl, or is your face stuck that way?"

"You better tone down that lip."

"Or what? You'll write a song about it?"

A low rumble of laughter rose and Carl's face reddened. Willie thought he saw Elizabeth crack a smile, but Carl's sensitivity towards his music amused Willie enough that he didn't linger on the thought of her. Carl had played lead guitar for the school band for the past three years and supposedly sang original songs at coffee houses in Hardyville. As far as Willie knew, no one at school had ever heard these original songs, and the idea that Carl Zimmerman was in any respect bashful diminished whatever fear of Carl Willie had grown up with.

"Go back to your chocolate factory, Willie Wonka," Carl said, feigning poise. He snickered and so did Ms. Harwich, which aroused another low rumble of laughter from the entire class.

Then Elizabeth Greenbury uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, and the closest thing to World History that registered in Willie's mind were the Roman candles going off inside his head. She turned around and her shirt, tightening against her ribs like layers of cellophane over a plate of leftovers, accentuated the shapeliness of her abdomen.

Willie and Carl disregarded each other for the remainder of class. Carl held hands with Elizabeth and kicked at her shoes. Willie stared at her from behind and imagined taking her out to some abandoned barn in Raleigh and doing with her what Carl did every night. The thought excited him, but he soon dismissed it and returned to loathing the shift waiting for him at Peterson's tonight.

6.

Sharon Brusly's cramped little office barely had enough room to fit her desk and the filing cabinets without John spending most of his time there, coercing her or kicking his feet up on her tidy desk and complaining about the heat as she fumbled to finish her work.

For the most part, the door marked PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE was kept firmly shut and locked, so as to keep students and members of the faculty from barging in and finding out their little secret. It was a solid oak door, so there was no worry about the office clerk, Sheila Garrison, who took phone calls and wrote tardy slips, hearing a squeaking chair or desk – or the sudden thud of a filing cabinet striking the cinderblock wall.

Sharon despised the tiny office as much as she had come to despise Principal Fed. He always approached her when she was busy, for one thing – demonstrating his lustful wants by loosening his tie and removing his cufflinks one after another, always placing them at the very edge of the desk. In the process of their encounters, the cufflinks were always lost, even though Sharon and Principal Fed restrained themselves from engaging in the act itself until they safely tucked themselves away in Fed's larger office.

That Mrs. Brusly and Principal Fed were having an affair was a rumor that had risen and fallen sometime around her son's freshman year. After Principal Fed caught wind of the circulating gossip, he made an announcement over the intercom that if any of these hair-brained shenanigans continued, students would find themselves expelled and kicked out onto the curb before they had a chance to empty their lockers. It did not occur to him that he had warranted the rumors when he first seduced her with desperate tales of misfortune and promises of unofficial pay increases.

The first occasion of their affair began with John smoking a joint in his office and staggering in with the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He made the proposition in a straightforward and eager fashion. "I want you now," he said. "I'll pay you." He'd started to loosen his tie before she responded.

Sharon wasn't surprised by the offer. John had danced around it for months. Things had gotten particularly bad at home – Cal's spells had worsened and he was drinking more – and Sharon let John Fredrickson have sex with her because she feared she might have to leave her marriage but couldn't empty-handed. They had sex for the first time in his office, on the industrial blue carpet behind the desk, during second period, the least busy part of the day. There was only one knock at the door. They ignored it. Principal Fed had even taken the surprisingly clever initiative to turn off Sharon's light to make it seem as though they had gone on a lunch break.

For Sharon, the experience had been ephemeral and disappointing. She preferred it that way – though Callaghan mistreated her, she still felt disgusted with herself for cheating on him. The cheating, which started out as one incident, became a weekly ritual, and eventually led to John's habitual obsession, at which point he began to pursue her on a daily basis. She only allowed it because her secret account at First Federal had grown faster than she had initially supposed it might.

Sharon had stopped off at the bank on her way to work this morning to withdraw some money for groceries. Reading her account statement, she had sat and cried in the parking lot until the dial above the radio read ten till eight.

When John came into the office from outside and passed by her desk with the sweet tang of marijuana wafting off his body, she was not surprised. She knew well of his drug habits – he had even coerced her into smoking with him a few times. She reacted to the high by mellowing out, and had Principal Fed not been the stingy junkie that he was, and had Sharon been allowed by her husband to control the money she made – except for her secret money, from which she only drew money for necessities – she feared she might have fallen into the same dark pit of substance abuse from which Principal Fed would never find escape.

Principal Fed rushed through Sharon's office without so much as glancing at her. A moment later, she heard the familiar sniffing sound that was followed by a sigh of relief. Then he reentered the office and plopped down in the swiveling chair across from her.

"Goddamn janitor."

Sharon had been perusing a stack of emails from her boss's computer, as he had assigned to her before stepping outside to get some air. Principal Fed didn't read his own emails. Most of them were trash, he said. The only department he cared to hear from was the athletic department, he had told her, and whenever he got emails from teachers about their students' discipline problems, he wanted to firebomb the whole place.

Once during the last period of the day, she asked him where he got his drugs and he told her the story of the first time he went down to Brewer Street, the poor neighborhood, the first time he bought a dime bag of weed off a tall, skinny black guy sitting on his front porch with a .38 revolver in his lap. The drug dealer had been sipping a cup of grape Kool-Aid when Principal Fed strolled up. His name was Wyclef Hendricks. Principal Fed remembered him as a poor student but an excellent basketball player – until he dropped out of school junior year to pursue other endeavors.

"What the fuck you want?" Wyclef Hendricks had demanded when Principal Fed ascended the rickety steps to the porch. Wyclef tickled the butt of his revolver, and Principal Fed almost stepped in a healthy pile of dog shit. When he took a long look at the guy – his cornrows, his hazy eyes, his baggy Boston Celtics jersey and khaki pants, his Nike tennis shoes – he got scared, especially when he noticed the sleeping terrier under Wyclef's feet.

"I said what the fuck you want, nigga?" Wyclef repeated.

Principal Fed began to stutter. "Yeah, hi, how are you? Look I was wondering – if, um, this is even the, uh – I was wondering if you could hook me up with some – with some dope."

"You're the principal, ain't ya?"

"Uh-huh."

Wyclef loosened up all of a sudden. He scratched his goatee and smiled, parting his thick lips and revealing pearly teeth. "Shee-it, man. This is some fucked up shit. Principal Freddy wants to score some dope! Hey Wilson, come on out here! Get a load of Principal Fed! Ha-ha! Shit."

A tall man with a thick upper torso lumbered out the screen door in a wife-beater and looked Principal Fed up and down for a moment before grinning like a madman. Fed noticed that he was wearing a chain with a large "4" linked to it.

"Why Fred, my man! How you doin'? Still givin' the white kids a hard time?"

Principal Fed remembered this one, too. Wilson Mackey the Second was his name. He played defense for the Havensburg Cacti back in high school. During his second season, at an away game, he had broken a kid's spine tackling him in a blitz – it had snapped in half like a twig. It was rumored that the crack could be heard over the cheers of the fans, but Principal Fed had no time for rumors.

"Yeah, I'm doing well, Wilson. How about yourself?"

Wilson shrugged. "What you doin' out here anyway, Fed?"

Wyclef jumped up and hitched his pants. He grabbed the revolver, started to stuff it in his pants, then pointed it at Principal Fed without looking – only to indicate him – and said, "Man, this motha fucka wants to score some dope. What do you think?"

"No shit?"

"Ask him yourself."

"Well," Wilson announced heartily, "let's hook him up!"

That was how Principal Fed first got hooked. It went from grass to experimentation with mushrooms and LSD to a late night – at the school and in the company of Sharon Brusly – with two hits of ecstasy, which led to predictable events. Principal Fed's latest fix was cocaine. This would be his stopping point, his plateau. He would never progress to heroin. There wasn't enough of a market for it in Havensburg or Hardyville, he had told her once, and he dared not venture into the west end of Louisville, for he feared he might never return. For now he was content to snort coke and seduce his secretary, Sharon Brusly, with whom he found himself more and more obsessed. He had told her all these things, never keeping his love for her secret.

When he mentioned Chubby Checker, Sharon put down the stack of emails and asked what the janitor had done this time.

"He's not doing what he's supposed to, that's for sure," John said.

"What happened?"

"Nothing. I'll tell you later."

"You have an email from athletic. They want your opinion on holding off the first football game a few more weeks until the weather breaks."

"Oh, so Donny wants my opinion now, after . . . what'd he say – go fuck myself – last year? Remember, when I expelled that Lancaster kid for failing his drug test?"

"Brandon Lancaster, starting tackle?"

"Little shit."

"Donald suggests a scrimmage with Cecil County if it cools down next week. Apparently, the weatherman thinks this drought has reached its peak."

John grunted and said, "I doubt that. Fuckin' heat . . ."

Sharon studied the beads of sweat streaking down John's face, his disheveled nature, and the smell emanating from his clothes. His exhaustion and discomfort made Sharon feel warm, as if he had brought the heat in with him. "You're high, right?"

John nodded.

"Chubby saw you?"

"No."

"Then what happened?"

"Never mind, Sharon. I'll tell you later. I'm too pissed off to go over it right now."

Sharon nodded – later was better anyway. Right now it was ten-thirty, half an hour before first period ended. If their daily ritual was to go uninterrupted, they would have to get down to business, and, as if reading her thoughts, Principal Fed crossed through to her side of the desk by way of the foot-thick cranny between the desk and the wall. There, he leaned over, clasped his hands to both arms of her chair, and started sucking on her neck, enveloping her with his heat and his stench. The rest went as usual. He led her back to his office, first checking to see that her door was locked and shutting off her light. He shut his office door and locked it, too.

The second period bell rang with Mrs. Brusly, mother of the bench-warmer Ben Brusly, wife of the alcoholic farming fascist Callaghan Brusly, buttoning her blouse and searching the rough carpet floor for her torn pantyhose.

Afternoon

7.

Willie Strasbourg had taken the job at Peterson's Laundromat because his parents had one morning decided to make him pay his own car insurance, but later, when other job opportunities arose, he stayed put instead of moving to the clerkship at the Gazette or applying for part-time factory work at the various job fairs that had been held in Hardyville over the past year. In any other case, he would have chosen death over washing other people's underwear and socks, or unknotting sheets from a massage parlor when they balled up in the drier – even if gloves were in stock. There were plenty of jobs around the county, jobs that paid better, jobs where he didn't have to deal with the riffraff. What kept him clocking in at three p.m. every afternoon and suffering the humidity of so many tumbling driers for six hours was Elizabeth Greenbury.

Elizabeth came to Peterson's, as Willie understood, to wash underwear that she couldn't wash at home, for whatever reason. Sometimes she talked to him and sometimes she didn't. If she needed a roll of quarters or a soft drink, she would approach the little window to his office and Willie would tense up in his pivoting stool seat and stutter through six seconds of conversation. Other times she had the change, and Willie couldn't muster the courage to approach her, so he sat in the back office – a drywall box with a flimsy door and window – and watched her out of the corner of his eye while she washed and dried her thong underwear. Customers often grew impatient with him when he drifted off into a daydream and failed to hear their requests for the concessions Peterson's offered or a cup of bleach or a handful of fabric softener sheets. He wondered why people were so bitchy, especially when in the presence of such staggering beauty – perhaps because people like Elizabeth Greenbury exemplified the plainness of others, as eagles outsoar crows and diamonds outshine quartz.

That her beauty stood out in the Peterson Laundromat was no exaggeration. Couple together the rust-splotched washers, the piss-yellow walls, the moldy baseboards, the smell of fabric softener and bleach, and the cacophony generated by the machines, the agitated people, and the constant repetition of "Freebird" and "Sweet Home Alabama" on the jukebox, and Elizabeth was definitely a diamond in the coal mine.

Around ten after eight, the bell chimed over the door, and when Willie poked his head out of the office he found Elizabeth, her green duffel bag slung over one shoulder, following Carl Zimmerman to the corner where the Space Invaders machine blared its beeps and explosions. By now the place was nearly empty – just a few people waiting for their clothes to dry. Willie had been in the bathroom filling up the mop bucket in preparation for closing. At the end of the night he always took out the trash, cleaned the bathroom, wiped off all the washer surfaces, checked the washers and driers for lost clothes, and then mopped the floors before closing the register.

Normally he would have turned a customer away at this hour, but Elizabeth, of course, was special. He decided to let the mop soak for a while and took his seat on the pivoting stool. Through the window, he watched Elizabeth, dressed in the same short shorts and low-cut tee-shirt she had worn to school, sort through pairs of underwear and toss them into a washer. Her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. Beads of sweat hung around her thin eyebrows. Her calf muscles were a golden brown set against the sickly white of the washing machine.

When "Freebird" began on the jukebox, Willie was too entranced to notice. He didn't notice until Carl caught him by surprise by popping up in front of the window, grinning like a skeleton. "Man don't you love this song?" he said conversationally.

"No. People play it all the time. I hate it."

Carl frowned. "Well, who asked you anyway? Give me a roll of quarters, and stop staring at my girlfriend."

"I wasn't starin' at her. I was starin' at you, sexy."

"Funny, but I saw you."

Willie took Carl's ten and handed him a white and orange roll of quarters. Closing the register, he said, "You know what, Carl? You're right. I was starin' at her, and I was askin' myself how a girl like Elizabeth Greenbury could wind up with a dope like you. You mind answerin' that for me?"

"'Cause I got class, Willie Wonka. Now I know Lizzy tickles your pickle, but you might as well forget it. She doesn't truck with little peckers like you. I give her what she wants. I give her what all girls want . . ."

"And what's that?"

Carl smiled and said matter-of-factly, "What the hell do you think they want? They want me." He shook his head and walked away. A moment later Elizabeth sat in his lap and they began making out in front of the arcade game. Her hair fell over their faces in a curtain. Carl slid his hands around to the small of her back and under her shirt.

Willie watched the scene furtively, his fists cutting into the corner of the countertop. He had learned to deal with watching the two of them make out – living directly behind Elizabeth Greenbury and a family that loved to swim and grill out every summer weekend demanded it – but it still got to him, like seeing your best friend roll into your driveway with the new Schwinn you wanted for your birthday but that your parents couldn't afford.

For some reason watching Elizabeth and Carl make out picked at his nerves a little worse tonight than usual, so he was relieved when Juan Sanchez came through the front door with a bucket of quarters. Juan had a Pepsi machine outside his realty office, and once a week he traded his change to the Peterson Laundromat for bills. It saved Peterson the trouble of trading for quarters at the bank most weeks.

"How you doin', John?" Willie said when Juan approached - in an effort to assimilate to American life, Juan had unofficially changed his name to John. Willie felt he owed Juan at least the name Juan preferred, considering all he had done for the Strasbourgs. After insurance had paid off the burnt house, Juan Sanchez had had an exact replica of the Strasbourg home built in its place, and he only charged the Strasbourgs the cost of materials and one-third the normal labor charge. The house ultimately cost the Strasbourgs little more than half the price of the first house, and the gesture had earned many jobs for Juan and his contractors, as well as increased sales of real estate.

"Oh, you know," John said. He always responded this way when asked how he was doing. He had a funny voice because he even tried to sound American. His broken English sounded like cracks in the voice of a boy going through puberty. "You know, Willie, not doing as good as those two!" John concluded.

Willie peeked over John's shoulder and shrugged. "You got that right."

"Liking that Elizabeth girl still?"

Leaning forward, Willie said, "Yeah, man, but don't say it so loud."

"Ooh, sorry. She probably can't hear us anyway for the smacking sounds." John laughed. It was his kind of humor.

"Got some quarters to exchange?"

"Ooh, yes. Thirty-five dollars worth." He set a balled-up grocery bag of quarters on the counter, and Willie went about counting them four at a time and stacking them to his left. John, as always, waited in anticipation, as if he didn't know how many quarters there were to begin with. In the end, Willie counted thirty-six dollars and seventy-five cents worth of quarters. He pulled three tens and a five from the register and tried to hand John his change. "Ooh, just give me a Pepsi and keep the seventy-five, if you don't mind."

"Sure," Willie said.

He got John his Pepsi, and then waved the foreign man off.

When John was gone, Willie found to his amusement that he, Elizabeth, and Carl were now alone in the Laundromat. The late-night stragglers had finally moseyed on out. Willie hadn't even noticed that the whine of the last drier had stopped and the juke box was no longer playing "Freebird" or some sappy country song about an ex-wife's new beau.

It was almost dark now and the clock read eight-thirty. Willie came out of the office so he could lock the back door and one of the two front doors.

"'Bout to close?" Carl asked from a few aisles up.

Willie gave the door a shove to make sure the bolt had slammed, then locked the other door, deciding to close early – Peterson didn't mind if it was a slow night.

"Just did. But you guys can stay and finish your wash."

Elizabeth smiled in Willie's general direction. He thought to himself, Yeah, yeah, stay as long as you want. In the office, he sat back in his pivoting stool chair and watched Elizabeth Greenbury out of the corner of his eye until the screech of the spin cycle broke his concentration.

The driers were built into the left wall. When Elizabeth carried her basket of wet clothes around the corner of the office, Willie got to his feet. He could tell by the way she rushed on tip-toes that she needed to pee. The only bathroom was through the office. He got up and unlocked the office door, hearing the green plastic basket clatter to the floor. When the knock came, he opened the door and found her standing on one foot with her right leg crossed over the other. She held onto the doorframe to balance herself.

"Hey, can I use your bathroom?"

"Sure."

Elizabeth asked Carl to put her clothes in the drier and then turned back to Willie. After a moment he moved aside. Elizabeth uncrossed her legs and stepped past him. She let her fingers cascade off the doorframe and lightly brush Willie's arm as she walked to the bathroom. He bit his lip until she'd closed the bathroom door – an even flimsier rectangle of cheap wood.

The space between Elizabeth touching him and the click of the lock was a good moment – one filled with the smallest amount of intimacy, brief though it was. Without thinking, he rushed to shut the door and lock Carl Zimmerman out of the office. He spent the next minute with his eyes closed, listening to the sounds of Elizabeth Greenbury moving around in the bathroom. Her feet scooted across the tile when she walked. She tore her toilet paper off square by square instead of folding it. Before actually using the bathroom, she turned the water faucet on full-blast, presumably so that no one would hear her pee, and when she washed her hands he heard the squeak of both the hot and cold water knobs.

"Hey!"

The voice startled Willie. He opened his eyes to find that Carl had stuck his head through the little window over the cash register.

"What?"

Carl frowned. "Don't 'what' me you little bastard. Me and Lizzy are gonna get something to drink. We'll be back in a minute to pick up her stuff."

It was against Laundromat policy to allow customers to leave with loads in the washers or driers. Willie told this to Carl, and Carl replied, "Hey, come on man. There ain't a damned person here. You said yourself the place is supposed to be closed, so there won't be anybody coming in either. It's not like we're taking up somebody's spot."

"We have sodas here," he said. "They're only fifty cents."

With a snicker, Carl's head drooped. "I mean we're getting something to drink for tonight, if you know what I'm saying."

"Oh," Willie said. Carl snickered again, and their eyes met.

At that moment the bathroom door swung open and Elizabeth stepped out. Willie turned and immediately noticed that she'd forgotten to button her pants and that the seam of her underwear was showing. They were green.

"You ready hon?" Carl said near Willie's right ear.

"Yeah."

Willie coughed. "We're really not supposed to let anybody leave their stuff here."

"But it's only going to be for a minute," Elizabeth said. "I was going to ask you to watch my things, if you didn't mind." When she said "things" Willie thought of the word "thongs". Then he suddenly realized that with Elizabeth gone for a few minutes he could easily explore her belongings – her clothes and her purse. Even his wildest fantasies didn't hold a candle to the reality that a personal scavenger hunt through the laundry basket of the girl for whom he painfully longed was his for the taking.

"Don't be such a dick. Just let us go," Carl said.

An image of a drunken Elizabeth lying underneath Carl was the only thing holding him back, but even that obscure and awful thought didn't prevail. Willie would potentially learn more about Elizabeth Greenbury by exploring the contents of her purse than all of what Carl Zimmerman knew.

"All right, I guess," Willie said trying to sound defeated. "But don't be gone long."

Elizabeth smiled. "Thanks."

"What a swell guy," Carl sneered, retracting his head like a turtle and meeting Elizabeth at the corner of the office. They locked arms and walked out into the night. A siren wailed in the distance. The doors to the Blazer opened and slammed shut, and a moment later headlights shot through the plate glass.

When they were on the road and clearly out of sight of the Laundromat, Willie came out of the office. A drier tumbled away with Elizabeth's clothes, and on the yellow folding table close to it was her small black purse.

Willie looked from the drier to the purse and back again. Which would he scavenge first? He figured the safest bet was to examine the purse and then the laundry. If she showed up and found him leafing through her underwear, he could say the door had popped open – one of these doors popped open all the time – and all of her clothes spilled out onto the floor. The nearest liquor store was a mile away, across town, as far as he knew. He would have maybe ten minutes to do his snooping.

This was normally the time of night when Willie's imagination kicked into overdrive and he got scared. Going into the back hall to get the mop bucket was the worst of it; taking garbage out to the dumpster behind the store followed closely in the running. He had to carry garbage all the way down the dark corridor at the back of the store, a musky place filled with mice and custodial equipment, and out back to the dumpster. One time the mop handle broke and he had to walk up the hall to borrow John Sanchez's mop. Because there were only two naked bulbs hanging from wires on either end of the hall, he frequently bumped into things and stirred mice. An open air duct hung down over the entrance to the hallway, wafting out a constant warm draft of dusty air. Passing under it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

The first time Willie peered up into the dusty shaft, he had imagined a tentacle from some creature that had overtaken one of the multiplex's vacancies shooting out and coiling around his neck like a hungry boa constrictor. Only twice in his life had Willie ever pissed his pants – once in kindergarten, and once as a result of the air shaft. Rushing back to the laundry mat door after taking out the garbage, he had found to his dismay that the door was jammed shut. He panicked and began to scream and yell. He pounded on the door and beat it with a broom handle. Sometime between forcing his shoulder into the sturdy door and plowing his way through laundry baskets to the bathroom, a few trickles of urine leaked out of him – enough to noticeably wet the front of his pants.

It only occurred to him after Carl and Elizabeth were gone that the garbage needed to be taken out and the back Exit door needed to be locked. He did these things with a motivated swiftness, but it still took him a good five minutes to empty out all the trash bins and maneuver through the dark hallway.

When all the washers and driers shut off for the night, a laundromat can be quite an eerie place. Ticks and creaks and moans come from inside the walls – almost as if tentacles are snaking through the ventilation shafts – and the passersby who glance in from the sidewalk have ghastly white oval faces with black marbles for eyes. Everyone who walks by has his hands in his pockets and seems to be hiding something. Tonight, however, Willie was preoccupied and didn't entertain scary thoughts.

"Okay, time to get down to business," he spoke to the whispering walls after taking out the garbage. Without thinking, he went for the purse first, carrying it around to the side of the table which allowed him to keep an eye on the parking lot.

He got the zipper halfway open before the phone rang. Instead of jogging around to the office door, he simply reached in through the window and grabbed the phone off the receiver. It was a rickety old thing that cut out if you held it the wrong way.

"Hello?" he said, forgetting to greet the caller with the store-required, "Good afternoon, Peterson Laundromat. This is Will. How may I help you?"

"Willie Wonka! It's me, Phillip. Did you get paid today?"

Phillip always called on Friday nights for the same reason, and he always started the conversation by asking if Willie had gotten paid.

"Yep," Willie said.

"Good. There's a game tomorrow over at James Bauer's house. Probably just a bunch of football player faggots. We should be able to clean house."

"Really? Who all's goin'?"

"Just me and you, I think. I can't get Corey or Matt to go. They say they don't like the guys who're gonna be there. Shit, I don't like the fudge packers either – especially Carl – but they've got money to lose. And money's money . . ."

Willie paused for a moment, then said, "Did you say Carl's gonna to be there?"

"Uh-huh," Phillip said.

"Carl Zimmerman?"

"Do you know any other Carl in Havensburg?"

"I'll be damned . . ." Willie turned around suddenly to make sure Carl hadn't returned. His eyes scrolled past the purse in front of him. "I didn't know he played poker."

"Me neither. Hey, bring me some change from work 'cause I only have bills – and bring plenty. These bastards ain't gonna know what hit 'em."

"Look, Phillip, I gotta go. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"What's the rush?"

He felt the teeth of the zipper, the leather strap. "I need to close up."

Phillip puffed into the phone. "All right, I'll see you tomorrow. Can you give me a ride since Matt pussied out?"

"Sure."

"Thanks. They're starting around midnight, so don't be late. You know James's house, right?"

"Brewer Street?"

"Yeah, he's the only white guy in the neighborhood."

"Shouldn't be too hard to find, then."

"All right. See ya later."

Willie said goodbye and hung up the phone. For a moment he stood by the office window and held the purse, reflecting upon the call. He seemed to have stumbled upon an opportunity more rewarding than sharing a private moment with Elizabeth Greenbury's personal belongings. The chance to bilk fortunes from a clueless Carl Zimmerman – the sheer pride of doing such a thing – surely surmounted rummaging through measly tampons and compacts. Willie's history knowledge didn't compare to Carl's, but he was still certain he could best the football hero and guitarist at the game of poker. Poker was Willie's forte; it was his passion.

Carl and Elizabeth had been gone for nearly ten minutes when he started rifling through the purse. He decided that the laundry needed to come out of the drier first and grabbed Elizabeth's basket off the floor, carrying it over to the tumbling dryer inside of which lay a mountain of thongs varying in size and color. Willie pulled them out in handfuls and heaped them into the basket. He brought the basket to the same table as the purse and fumbled it onto the table, nearly tipping it over and spilling its contents all over the grimy floor. Excitement was overtaking him at this point.

Inside the basket were more than thirty pairs of thongs. Some were neon bikini thongs; some were black lingerie; some were whiter than Christmas; some were see-through; some had strings so thin they looked like thread. Willie picked them out one by one, inspected them with the abiding urge to laugh. He closed his eyes, felt their texture, pretended their warmth was leftover from Elizabeth's body, and tried to imagine what she looked like in each of them. He envisioned her with nothing on but a thong, in a thong bikini, in a white thong with a matching t-shirt, and finally began to laugh aloud.

This was remarkably ridiculous – that someone would go to so much trouble to hide an article of clothing. If her mother disapproved, or if she was too embarrassed for her father to see them, why didn't she just not wear underwear? What purpose did these ridiculous things serve, other than to entice Carl?

Willie decided to steal one. She had so many that she couldn't possibly notice one went missing, unless she kept count of them to make sure she didn't forget a pair in the bathroom or someplace where her parents might find it. If she did notice and approached Willie about it, he could place the thong in the lost-and-found basket and tell her to look there the next time she came in. Otherwise, he would find some recreational use for the article – perhaps he would pull it over Corey Baker's head in the hallway, or pin it to Matt Flagstaff's backpack when he wasn't paying attention.

At the bottom of the basket was an old green pair, wrinkled, faded, one that looked easy to forget. Willie picked it out of the pile, jammed it in his pocket, scooped the other thongs up by the handful, and dropped them back into the basket. By then they were scattered all over the table.

He looked at his watch. Ten minutes had passed. He jogged up to the plate glass and scanned the street for approaching lights. There were none.

He gave the night a second looking over and then returned to the table. So as not to look suspicious, he dropped Elizabeth's laundry basket in front of the dryer she had used. When she asked about them he would explain to her that this particular dryer occasionally overheated and he was afraid her clothes would catch fire.

Willie returned to the table and unzipped the small black leather purse. At the top he found a bag of makeup and opened it, finding lipstick, a compact, mascara, liquid foundation, eyeliner, eye shadow, and an assortment of tiny devices for plucking and curling and primping. He found a pair of tweezers buried down in the seam at the bottom of the small bag and toyed with it for a minute, but the makeup bag didn't hold his attention for long. He was in a rush and wanted to get to the interesting stuff quickly – if there was any interesting stuff to get to.

Setting the makeup bag aside, he next removed a black address book and four tampons. In the address book were phone numbers of girls at school – one breed of them from the cheerleading squad, another breed a group of girls who constantly wore overalls and smelled heavily of paint. Carl's number was there. To Willie's surprise, so was his number, but it was labeled "Gary Strasbourg". Following the death of little Kate and Blake, Patricia and Richard had made a neighborly agreement with Gary and Erica to exchange phone numbers in case of emergency. The numbers were then dispersed among the remaining siblings. It still surprised Willie that Elizabeth had kept it.

He didn't find anything particularly interesting about the address book, so he piled it with the tampons and the makeup bag and moved on.

She had a wallet that matched the purse. It contained her driver's license, a Discover card, memberships to a few stores in a mall in the neighboring town of Hardyville, thirty-seven dollars, a picture of Carl kneeling on the football field in his uniform, another picture of Carl perched on a stool behind a microphone with a guitar, movie ticket stubs, a library card, her student I.D., and a ticket stub for an R.E.M. concert.

Next he found a bottle of antacid tablets and set it aside along with everything else.

The bottom of the purse was lined with change, empty gum wrappers, empty makeup containers, and for some reason about a dozen marbles. For the most part that was it. He fished around a little more, going through the makeup bag and the wallet again to double check, but he didn't find anything.

Disappointed, he grabbed a handful of the items to return to the purse, intent on placing them in the exact order in which he had removed them, when he noticed two side pockets with zippers, one on top of the other.

The smaller pocket was in front of the other. Willie unzipped it and pulled out a small tin container of mints, only when he shook it the mints weren't there. He opened the container to find a string of six or seven condoms.

Willie returned the box to the small side pocket and opened the next one. In it he found a container of birth control pills. He took it out and counted the pills inside, and when he slid the pills back into the pocket, the corner of something jabbed him under the fingernail of his ring finger. He withdrew his hand cursing, shook off the pain, and then examined it. Blood seeped out of a tiny indentation under the nail. He sucked on his finger and felt around inside the pocket to find what had stabbed him. What he found was a Polaroid of Elizabeth, Kate, and Blake. Willie stopped sucking his finger when he saw it.

Judging from the twins' age, the picture was probably taken the summer before they died. Elizabeth looked about the same – maybe a tint lighter-skinned and a tad less sexy – but Kate and Blake were several inches shorter and fit neatly into Elizabeth's arms on the fold-out lawn chair. Blake, white chest and red hair, wore a pair of green swimming trunks that came down to his knees. Kate, freckly faced and red haired, had on a matching bathing suit with what looked like a tutu sticking out at her stomach. They both sat in Elizabeth's lap, laughing at the camera, a hand reaching up for each of her shoulders.

Elizabeth also wore a green bathing suit, only hers was a bikini. Her hair dripped and her body shined, as if she'd just been in the pool. She had on a pair of sunglasses. One leg was stretched out towards the camera and the other was bent under it at the knee, creating a backwards 4. She was smiling.

Willie wondered where Alex was and decided she must have taken the picture.

When a pair of headlights flashed over the interior of the store, it took him a moment to realize Carl and Elizabeth had returned.

Without thinking, he scooped everything into the purse and sprinted, purse in hand, to the office. He did not realize he was holding the purse until he had closed and locked the office door. By then there was a knock at the front door, which he suddenly remembered locking behind them.

He stuffed the picture into his left pocket, remembered the thong, and became suddenly nervous. Elizabeth and Carl were standing outside on the sidewalk, Elizabeth talking to Carl, Carl peering into the store with an impatient expression, pressing his face against the glass. Willie left the purse in the office because he couldn't be seen carrying it back out, but on his way to the door he thought of an excuse for taking it. He unlocked the door and stepped back to let them inside. A hot draft of air wafted in after them.

"What the hell did you lock the door for?" Carl asked, pushing past him.

"Some guy kept walking back and forth in front of the store. I think he was gonna try to rob the place," Willie said. This was his excuse. He turned to Elizabeth and said, "I put your purse in my office just in case."

"Oh, thank you," Elizabeth said.

Carl wasn't so grateful. "Why'd you need to take her purse if the door was locked?"

"I took her purse before I locked the door, and I didn't want the dude to see it sitting there."

"That was nice of you," Elizabeth said.

"Yeah, what a hero," Carl said.

"Also," Willie said, "I took your clothes out of the dryer because the timer sticks and it overheats. I was afraid it would catch the place on fire."

"Oh, thank you," Elizabeth repeated. She looked away for a moment. Her eyes went to some other world. Then she turned back to him. "Oh," she said.

"Let's get out of here, Lizzy," Carl said. "I'm sure Willie Wonka wants to get back to the chocolate factory."

"Okay."

Elizabeth went to the dryer to get her basket of clothes. Willie followed her that far and then continued past her when she bent over to pick up the basket. He went back to the office, grabbed her purse, noticed that he'd forgotten to zip it, did just that, and then brought it to her.

"Thanks again," she said, smiling.

"No problem."

Elizabeth took the purse and dropped it into the basket. "Well, bye."

"Bye."

She turned and met Carl at the door. Carl gave Willie a reproachful look and started to follow Elizabeth out the door.

"I'll see you tomorrow night, Carl."

Carl stopped the glass door from swinging shut. "What?"

"Tomorrow night. The card game. I'll be there."

"Is that right?"

"Yep."

"You any good?"

"I don't know."

"Got any money?"

"Just got paid today."

"Okay," Carl said. He thought a moment. "Well, I guess we'll find out who's smarter after all. Bring a lot of money, Willie Wonka."

"I plan to." Willie looked from Carl to Elizabeth. "I guess I'll see you there."

"Okay," Elizabeth said and waved. "Bye, Willie."

Carl snickered and followed Elizabeth out to the Blazer. A few minutes later Willie locked the door and left in his '87 Toyota Camry.

Night

8.

Sharon Brusly watched her husband come in from the field through the tiny window over the kitchen sink. His silhouette was almost black against the stained yellow sky as he carried a bushel of corn from the south field.

Sharon had spent the past hour cooking pork chops, carrots, potatoes, and cornbread for supper. She kept a large pot of water boiling on a back burner for when Cal brought in the corn. This was customary in the Brusly household: Sharon cooked, Cal farmed, and Ben acceded to his father's demands, whether they be to help farm, to do chores, or to run laps up and down the grass runway behind the barn.

The heat from the gas stove and the humidity created by the boiling water glued Sharon's dress to her body. She had taken off her apron half an hour ago and had unbuttoned all three buttons on the front of her dress. She had even taken off her shoes in an effort to cool off, but nothing was working.

In the haze of heat, she closed her eyes and replayed in her mind the encounter with Principal Fredrickson. Callaghan's feet scraped the plywood porch while in Sharon's mind John snorted a line of coke off her lower hip. It had been nearly as scorching in her cramped little office as it was in this blistering kitchen, only here the added nervousness Callaghan brought to the air made her sweat even more.

Sharon's mind wasn't focused solely on her boss and their illicit affair. After the bell had rung and Sharon had composed herself, Sheila Garrison had come into the office to inform her that Ben had once again skipped first period. He did this often, and while Sharon did not want to tell the boy's father, his increasing truancy had reached the point of delinquency. She had big plans for her son. She wanted to send him far away to college so that he would never have to fly a crop duster or throw a pass to a receiver ever again. But his behavior made that dream less and less tangible. Sharon now agreed with Cal's notion that the fat janitor Chubby Checker had something to do with Ben's rebellious nature.

Hovering over the steamy pots of food, she brooded about whether or not to tell Callaghan, until Cal kicked the screen door open and clomped inside. The straps to his overalls dangled to his knees, and his white, skin-tight t-shirt was ripped in places. He breathed heavily, spit tobacco juice into the garbage can by the door, and wiped his mouth.

"Hi, honey," Sharon said, feigning cheerfulness.

Cal dropped the bushel of corn on the scuffed kitchen table. "What's for supper?"

"Pork chops."

Cal sighed. "Goddamn it. Pork chops again?"

"Sorry, honey."

Cal started past her on his way to the hallway but stopped abruptly, turned, and pressed himself against her back. His chest was wet and he smelled of insecticide, sweat, and dirt. He squeezed her elbow aggressively and pinched her thigh.

"Damn it woman, why can't you cook for shit?"

Sharon winced, but instead of letting him know that he was hurting her, she tried to shake herself loose and said, flirtatiously, "Why can't you touch a woman for shit?"

Cal squeezed harder in both places.

"Ouch, honey!"

He leaned into her, pushing her upper half dangerously close to the boiling water and the open gas flames. He pressed his chin into her shoulder and whispered into her ear that he wanted to have his way with her, then and there. "There are plenty of women who know how good my touch is, baby . . . Come on and I'll show you."

"Ben is upstairs," she reminded him, squirming from his grip.

At the mention of Ben's name Cal straightened up. "That damn kid," he mumbled, hitching his loose pants. "He needs to get his ass outside and practice or toss some hay or somethin'. Ain't no wonder his lazy ass rides the bench every season."

"Don't be so hard on him," Sharon said. "He's just a kid."

"A lazy bum is what he is. I swear, baby, sometimes I wonder if we didn't raise ourselves a faggot."

"Oh, honey," Sharon said.

"Ben! Get down here!"

"Please don't yell," Sharon said, startled.

Cal huffed. "I ain't yellin', Sharon. Our son spends all his time up in that cave he calls a room. He'll see yellin' when I get him up in the loft hanging tobacco." The ceiling creaked, and then the pounding of feet on the stairs grew louder and louder until Ben appeared at the bottom of the steps in the living room. He came into the kitchen reluctantly. "Make use of yourself and strip this corn for your momma," Cal said as he pushed past Ben to the hall, stomped upstairs, peeled off his clothes, and climbed in the shower.

Ben sat down at the table. "Hi mom."

"Hi son," Sharon said. "How was school today?"

"Fine."

Ben grabbed an ear of corn and ripped off a fresh piece of green husks.

Sharon nodded from the sink. A few dishes clattered together. "Fine? How did World History go? Learn anything today?"

Ben stopped and sighed.

"Mom."

"What?"

He hesitated for a moment, as if considering lies. Finally, he mumbled something behind the tearing sounds corn shucks.

"Huh?"

"History was fine," Ben said.

Sharon stopped washing dishes and turned abruptly to her son. She stared at him intently as she dried her hands. To her left the vegetables boiled, and just over her shoulder the sky slowly sank, changing from a bright yellow to the color of tobacco leaves, and then to the color of tobacco juice before fading to various degrees of orange, red, and purple. Crickets, as thin as they were in these dry days, had begun to sing against a slight breeze.

"Ben," Sharon said, walking over and taking a seat next to him. "Why are you doing this to yourself?" Ben looked away and shrugged. "Well you've got to stop it! Do you want to end up like me? Stuck in a rut and suffocating?"

"I'm not gonna be like you, Mom."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because I'm not a woman, and I can't end up with somebody like Dad."

Sharon sat back. A lump rose in her throat. To distract herself from crying she grabbed an ear of corn and stripped it clean. Before she knew it she and Ben had finished the entire basket. Ben scooped up the leaves, took them through the screen door, and tossed them over the porch. A few chickens pecked at the fallen waste for a moment, then strutted away.

Gathering the corn, Sharon walked back to the stove, dropped them one by one into the pot of boiling water, and then returned to the table. This time she did not sit down.

"Ben, your father is right. If you waste all your time with the janitor, a janitor is what you'll be yourself. He says that all the time, and you should listen to him. I know he's not – he's not the best father on Earth, but he wants what's best for you. You know that, don't you?"

"He wants me to get a college scholarship for football, and it ain't gonna happen – no matter how hard I try. So why try? I don't want to play football."

"Well, what do you want to do?"

"I want to be able to have a friend without you and Dad trying to butt in and screw it up. I want to go to a school where my mother and the principal don't team up and keep a check on me. I want –"

"Whoa, whoa. What do you mean Principal Fed . . . Fredrickson and I keep a check on you?"

Ben rolled his eyes. "He turned me in, didn't he?"

"Of course not. Ms. Garrison told me after your teacher called in attendance. It's not like we wouldn't have found out anyway."

"Uh-huh. So Principal Fed didn't say a word?"

"What do you mean, Ben? How would he know that you skipped class?"

"Forget about it," Ben said. "I have to feed the dogs."

Ben started out the front door.

"Benjamin!"

"What?" he shot back. Sharon was angry, but she could tell Ben was too. Her source of anger was her son's inept understanding of the way things were, and Ben's was some presumption that John Fredrickson had screwed him over somehow, breeched some contract.

"Don't walk away from me!" Sharon said.

"I've got to feed the dogs, Mom. Dad'll get pissed if I don't."

"Don't talk like that."

From upstairs Cal interjected, "What the hell's goin' on down there?"

Ben stared at his mother for a moment. "I'm going to feed the dogs."

"We're not through here."

"You might not be."

"Ben!"

Suddenly a loud hissing sound came from the stove. Sharon jumped three feet and spun around. The pot of corn had boiled over and extinguished the gas ring. Ben watched as his tired mother set the pot on another burner and soaked up the spilled water with a dish towel. She noticed him slip out the front door, and, tossing the soaked orange towel into the sink, she made the decision – which she had vacillated over all afternoon – to tell Callaghan that Ben had once again skipped class.

9.

Ben fed the dogs out behind the barn and then dawdled around the field between the barn and the cornfield. Months had passed since the field was last bush-hogged, but the grass hadn't grown an inch from the last mow. Most of the grass had died within a month of the drought. Only a few patches beside the last row of cornstalks managed to survive only because of the residual mist from where Cal watered his crops with the crop duster.

The strip of field between the barn and the corn ran a quarter of a mile to a gate that led to the back fields. Callaghan used that strip to take off and land his plane. Ben remembered being seven years old and watching his father water the crops, always at dusk, when all he could see of his dad was a black outline of an airplane against the red and purple sky.

In those days Ben had loved his father. Callaghan showed him how to throw a football, flew him in the airplane every week, and often took him fishing at the pond in the back field. They spent a large part of the day together, during which Ben grew dexterous in the art of flying a plane, tackling a receiver, and even driving a tractor.

Callaghan still made him practice football daily, but the passion for spending time with one another had died, supplanted by bitterness and cruelty in these latter years. Callaghan exercised his power over Ben as a release for his stored-up anger. Every once in a while he took Ben out to fly the plane so Ben wouldn't get rusty in the art. "Learning to fly a plane will help you in more ways than you'll ever know," Cal had reiterated time and time again. "You might decide to farm for a living, and if you do, having a plane will give you an advantage over any other farmer in town. Or maybe you'll join the Air Force and go shoot down some sandniggers in the Middle East. Flyin' has many advantages."

After feeding the dogs – a German Shepard, a golden retriever, and a blue tick – Ben walked out into the field and picked up the warped football he and Cal had thrown back and forth thousands of times. He gripped it firmly, placing his index and middle fingers between the stitching. The sun had set by then and the moon poked out from a line of trees off to the east, just behind the house. A gust of wind made the cornstalks whisper. Ben, setting himself into position and pointing his shoulder into the cornfield, leaned back and launched the football. It sailed over the crop and crashed far enough away that he would never be able to find it. When Cal harvested he would most certainly grind it up into jerky.

For a moment Ben felt good. Launching and losing the ball gave him a rush. He wished it had been his only one so he could postpone practice until Cal bought him another one.

But there were five or six more in the house, and the only reason he had mustered up the courage to throw it was because Cal kept griping to him about leaving it on the runway. "It's an old ball anyway," Cal said. "It's about time to break out a new one."

Ben shrugged at the field and walked back to the barn. His dogs were munching away in their tin bowls, growling and wagging their tails. He knelt down beside the golden retriever – the only dog he considered his own – and scratched him behind the ears. The dog's name was Jim.

"Hey Jim," Ben said.

Jim flapped his tail and hit Ben in the side.

Ben stood up and walked around the dogs to the barn door. For no reason he pulled the wooden latch and went inside.

It was too dark to see anything, only the shimmer of the plane's body and wings. He felt along the wall for a light switch and found it.

A naked bulb flared to life overhead, casting long shadows across the corridor. The plane stood facing him. Its sleek steel propellers looked ready to start up and cut off his arm. Ben shied away from the propellers – as he'd done since he was a kid – and walked alongside the airplane, running his hand over the smooth red fuselage, stopping at the right wing. He thought about all the things his father had taught him about general-aviation aircrafts. This plane, a land plane, had a piston engine that spun the propellers and used regular gasoline. It was designed to fly at low altitudes and deliver a payload of pesticide, water, or fertilizer onto a crop. His father had taught him how to maneuver the plane, using such terms as "banking" and "yawing" to describe the motions. Ben could take off, turn, climb, descend, bank, roll, make the nose yaw right and left, and pitch the nose up and down. He had grown so dexterous in the art that his father sometimes allowed him to water the crops himself. Cal would sit in the backseat and peer over the body of the plane at the fields stretching off to the horizon.

Ben would also be focused on the horizon much of the time because either the plane simply did not come installed with an artificial horizon or it had broken long ago. There were several circular holes in the Flight Control Panel where glass had broken and gauges had been removed. Ben did not find this very safe but, as Cal told him, "All you need is a working engine, some gas, and a little sense of where you're at."

Cal never watched his speed or altitude. He didn't believe in it. He trusted his instincts far more than dated equipment, and he taught Ben to trust his instincts – and only his.

Despite his careful tutoring, Ben would never be a full-fledged pilot. Cal never trusted his son. A combination of the boy's ineptitude in school and his lackadaisical approach to the game of football instilled in Callaghan a general disappointment in his son, which affected his faith in the boy. That Cal thought Ben would inevitably screw up was only half of it. Callaghan suspected that, with a complete knowledge of flight, Ben might hijack the plane and either take it for a late-night spin like boosting a car or simply fly away and never return.

For these reasons Callaghan never taught his son how to land the plane.

From outside Ben heard his mother calling to him. He looked the red plane over one last time – the smooth body, the undercarriage, the double wings, the cockpit, the tail, and finally the propellers. When he left the barn, he again gave them a wide berth.

Flicking the light off, he closed the barn door and jogged to the side of the house, where he leapt up the side steps and entered the house through the kitchen.

His mother and father were seated on opposite ends of the table. They looked at him when he came in.

Ben could tell that Sharon had told his father everything. She had her back to him, and over her shoulder he could see that Cal's face was red with fury. His father looked intent on setting things straight.

"Sit down," he said brusquely. "We got somethin' to talk about."

Ben glared at his mother but used enough discretion to keep his father from noticing. He sat in the seat closest to his mother. Across the table sat a plate mounded with burnt pork chops and three bowls of overcooked vegetables. Sharon had already buttered an ear of corn on his and Callaghan's plates.

The moment Sharon reached for the mashed potatoes, spooning them for her husband and son, Cal launched into Ben.

"I don't know who the fuck you think you are, champ, but skippin' class to go light the reefer with some shit-cleanin' janitor ain't what I raised you to do. Just what in Christ's name do you think you're doin'?"

"We weren't smoking pot, Dad. I don't do that kind of stuff."

Sharon subtly looked from Cal to Ben, then settled her gaze on the potatoes. Uncomfortably, she thought of that powdery line of coke on her thigh, Fed snorting it off with shrill force and then leaning back, rubbing his red nose.

"I don't know what's gotten into you these days. It's gotta be that faggot ass janitor you hang out with. Why do you want to hang around a janitor anyway?"

"Because he's not an asshole."

Cal suddenly jumped up, shoving his chair back against the plywood wall, and took an open-handed swing at Ben, which Ben evaded easily. Sharon flinched. Cal shook a finger at Ben and said, "You watch that goddamn mouth at my table, you little ass-wipe. I've had enough of your lip already and I haven't even had my dinner yet. Now here's the news: you're never gonna skip class again. Not on my watch. If I catch you so much as walkin' into class late, I'll belt you up one side and down the other. Am I understood?"

Ben nodded. Rarely did Callaghan ever bluff regarding these matters. When he promised a belting he meant it. Ben had felt the full force of his father's rage with a fist clutching a leather belt – and sometimes with just a fist. In the old days Cal would bend him over his knee, pull down his pants, and belt him across the ass, leaving him striped like a zebra and unable to sit for days at a time. Ben had even seen his father use this method on his mother a few times when they were both drunk and fighting. In those days it was routine for Ben to see his own mother naked because she sometimes needed him to determine the severity of welts and bruises on her back and buttocks. At six or seven, Ben would stand naked in the bathtub while his mother inspected similar wounds on his back and buttocks.

But in more recent years Ben had refused his father the pleasure of degrading him by bending him over to whip him. When Cal felt the urge to beat his son, he had to fight to do so – not to say that Callaghan couldn't and didn't overbear his son. Ben was a terrible athlete and weak-spirited to boot. When he fought back against his father – which he always did – Cal just retaliated with harder punches.

Sharon, on the other hand, never fought her husband. She had learned that by taking one hard blow and then pretending to realize the validity of his actions she could potentially save herself the pain of more abuse. It was a part of Sharon's nature to put up with loads of shit for her own ultimate benefit. She had once decreed to herself that if Cal wanted her blood he would have to work for it, but that had resulted in miscarriages, which Cal blamed on her, making the abuse worse. She now resolved to put up with whatever she could and hope one day to get away from it. Perhaps this mindset was what allowed her to tolerate Principal Fed's shenanigans.

Cal was still staring at Ben with a stony face when Sharon dumped a heap of mashed potatoes onto her own plate and then put them on the table.

"Let's eat guys," she insisted.

Ben glanced at her sharply. Cal coughed and dropped back into his chair. Ben noticed that Cal's eyes were fixated on him. He said, "Anything else, Dad?"

"Don't get snippy. Yeah there is something else. You're gonna spend two hours after supper running sprints on the runway, and after you're finished I'll come out and we'll work on rushing some yards until you find a way to get past me."

"I can never get past you."

"Yeah, and you can never get past the guys on the field either. That's why you keep the bench warm for the real football players. Might as well wash their jocks and polish their cocks with what you're doin' for the team."

"Cal!" Sharon cried.

"What?"

"Please don't talk like that. You were just telling Ben to watch his mouth."

Cal thrashed his head in a violent nod and said, "I can say whatever the hell I goddamn well please. This is my table, paid for by my work and my sweat. When you start bringing home a decent paycheck from that piss-poor school over there, you can say whatever the hell you want. But right now, shut the hell up."

"I don't play because I'm not any good. I'm not an athlete, and I never will be. It's as simple as that."

"You're not an athlete because you sit on your ass all day long. It's a wonder you're not as fat as what's his name. Ronny Chigger."

"Checker."

"Whatever. It's a wonder you haven't blown up the way you lay around. Why I remember back when you used to want to get out and do things, play in the field, fly the plane, go fishin'. Hell that pond's been sittin' there for five years and nobody's touched it except me scoopin' up water for the crop."

"I go fishing all the time. Just not with you."

"That's not the point, son."

"Well I'm just saying I do stuff. I practice every day after school – it's not like I skip practice."

Cal huffed. "For all I know you do!"

"I don't, Dad. We just haven't had practice in a while because of the heat."

"I better not find out you're lyin'."

"You won't."

Cal grunted.

"Just finish your supper and get to work on those laps, and don't eat too much, unless you plan to spew it all over the runway."

Ben said nothing and instead stared at his plate and took an occasional bite of crisp pork chop or a glob of mashed potatoes. He tried to count the specks of black pepper on the carrots, and then how many pieces of corn there were on his cob.

After a while Callaghan noticed Ben was stalling and sent him outside without finishing supper.

"Damn kid," he said as the screen door slammed shut. Moths fluttering around the porch light tried to get inside. A thin chorus of crickets sang into the dry air.

After Callaghan got up and shuffled off to the living room to catch the tail end of the ten o'clock news and the football highlights, Sharon gathered the plates, dumped them in the sink, and began scraping all the leftovers from the pots and pans into one bowl. It was then that she noticed that she had left the pot of corn boiling and that most of the water, in the turmoil of heat, had evaporated out of the pot. The corn was dry and probably chewy.

Sharon turned off the burner, lifted the pot with a towel, and dumped what remained of the water down the sink.

By the time Callaghan remembered to go out and practice with Ben, he had downed eight Old Milwaukee's Best and had nodded off a few times. Ben, on the other hand, had worked up an impressive sweat – especially considering the lack of humidity.

Ben was walking up the runway, catching his breath, when Cal appeared under the blue glow of the barn's security lights. His feet scraped along the ground like wood on sandpaper.

"Slow down there, champ! What's the rush?" Cal said as he emerged from around the dark corner.

"I'm worn out," Ben said between breaths.

"Well get pumped. We've got some work to do."

Ben stopped and clutched his side. "Can't it wait until tomorrow? It's late, Dad."

Cal ignored him. He held out his hands.

"Where's the ball?"

Ben felt a lump in his throat. He remembered chucking it out into the corn field before dinner to spite his father.

Cal looked around. "Come on, where's the ball?"

"I don't know," Ben said. "Maybe the dogs got a hold of it."

"Goddamn it. Goddamn dogs. That ball's always out in the runway when I'm tryin' to land, but when I need it, it's gone."

"I'll get another one."

"All right. Hurry."

Ben winced at the sharp pain in his side as he jogged out of the light to the house. He returned a moment later with a brand new Rawlings football.

"Give it to me," Cal said.

Ben threw the ball in an even spiral. Cal caught it with one hand, bringing it in to his chest. He got a firm grip on the ball, index and middle fingers tightly hooked into the laces, and told Ben to go long.

Feeling like a dog fetching a stick, Ben took off down the runway, first sprinting at full-force – or at least what force he could muster after doing laps for an hour and a half – and then getting low and hooking to the left, just as the ball bulleted into his stomach. He cradled it instantly, came to a stop, and then sailed the ball through the air, back to his father. It glided perfectly.

Cal puffed sharply when he caught the ball.

"Nice shot!" he yelled. He shouted his instructions across the field. "Okay, here's how we're gonna do this. We'll act like it's the kickoff and you're a receiver. I'll throw the ball to you and you just try and get past me."

"Okay."

Cal prepared to launch the ball but stopped. "Oh, and I mean try and get past me, too. Don't just run around me. You know you've got me beat as far as speed, but half the guys out on that field can run over your ass like a freight train. Try and get through me, if you can."

Ben nodded in the dark and waited for the ball, which he could barely see in this dim and somewhat murky light. Ben relied completely on his father's military accuracy. Callaghan was an excellent marksman – with a football and with a rifle. Ben just stood there with his hands out and waited for the ball to come to him. He was too afraid to tell his father that he couldn't see the ball.

He heard the windy whistle of the ball spiraling through the air, and then it thumped him solidly in the chest. He held onto it and started jogging toward the moving figure before him, increasing his speed, tightening his muscles, arousing that feeling of having springs in his feet, ready to bounce here or there, to pivot right or left and spin his opponent like a top. With ten feet left between him and his father, Ben dug his toes into the hard, dry ground and lunged forward. He collided with Callaghan with the force of a car striking an ancient oak tree, his entire body curling around his father like the collapsing shock-absorbent front end of a shitty vehicle wrapping around the tree.

Callaghan wavered slightly but easily hooked Ben with his meaty arms and slung him in a circle. Ben hit the ground rolling and fumbled the ball. It danced across the grass and settled in a bald spot marked with dust and dog crap.

"That just ain't gonna cut it, boy. You've got to plow through me. Get up and let me show you how it's done."

Ben was already climbing to his feet.

"I know what to do, Dad. I just can't get past you. You're too strong."

"That's no excuse. There are plenty of guys on your own team who can put me to shame. Hell, I'm an old man. Take that Carl Zimmerman, the quarterback. That kid could hammer me. And he would demolish you, buddy. That's why you've got to get low and be a bulldog. You've got to plow through me. You've got to fly through me. That's the only way to stop me from drilling you or stripping the ball. Here, let me show you how it's done." Cal scooped the ball off the ground, disregarding the poop a few feet away, and tossed the ball underhand to Ben. "Throw me a pass and watch what I do."

Cal jogged out about fifteen yards and Ben threw him the ball. It was a wounded duck, but Cal – who normally would have reproached him for such a sloppy pass – was so intent on plowing through his own son that he didn't even notice. Even in the encroaching dusk, Cal caught the ball easily.

Now Ben was under the light, and his father was nothing but a hazy blur coming toward him at an indeterminate speed. Ben braced himself for a truck, and a truck he got.

Cal came barreling out of the dark with the ball hugged tightly to his stomach. He pushed his shoulder out, bent low, and drove into Ben at an upward angle, bringing him off his feet and putting him square on his back. Dust puffed up around him in swirling clouds. Grass crunched like paper. He lay there for the longest time with his eyes closed and watched the pain in his back materialize in colors under his eyelids. Then he opened his eyes and stared up at the swollen orange moon.

"That's the way to get through 'em," Cal said from somewhere nearby. "You got to get low and put your shoulder into it. You've got to fly right through them. See what I mean?"

Ben grunted and wiped a tear from his cheek as he climbed stiffly to his feet. "Yeah, I get it, I get it."

"Okay, then, go for a pass and we'll try it again."

Ben sniffed sharply to stop his nose from running. He dusted himself off, glanced at his father, and took off across the field, turning, waiting for that piercing point of the football to stab him in the stomach, and then, ball in hand, lunged as hard as he could at his father, got up, dusted himself off, and repeated it again and again well into the night.

"That's the way to do it, boy," Cal shouted each time, sometimes clapping his hands wildly, never seeming to grow tired. "Fly through me, sonny. I taught you to fly when you were little, so fly!"

They worked their way down the runway, starting each play a few yards farther from the barn and the house than the last. Eventually those buildings were ghosts hidden partially by a fence line and rows of tobacco. The runway sloped downward. Ben and his father gradually melted into the whispering, clattering stalks of corn and flapping tobacco leaves. Every thirty seconds or so a sudden rush of air would escape into the night and a body would hit dead grass. In less than an hour Callaghan was sober, and Ben had caught his third or fourth wind. They had moved out of the light long ago and now Cal resolved to no longer pass the ball but to hike the ball to Ben and then tackle him. This way made it more realistic for Ben anyway; the proximity more game-like.

Ben didn't get to bed until close to two in the morning. He crawled up to his room and fell onto his bed dirty and scratched up in places. By morning his neck and back would be stiff as a board, and he would discover that he had bitten his lip – either while practicing or some time during the night. He didn't remember biting it but was not surprised.

His sleep had been surprisingly restless. He lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, and began to recall all the highlights of his childhood – namely times when his father beat the hell out of him or his mother. The time he was seven or eight and Callaghan caught him peeing with the toilet seat down and threw him into the bathtub, turning on the cold water full blast. The time at age ten he had argued with his dad at the supermarket over what kind of cereal to buy and, embarrassed, Cal dragged Ben out to the truck, put him inside, and belted him. The time, also at ten, Ben had received an F on his report card, and Cal had picked him up by the ears and had thrown him onto the bed, knuckling him on the top of the head several times while screaming, "You want to be a retard? I'll make you a retard!"

Lately the battles had become mutual – this night was a prime example – but right now Ben's thoughts were less focused on tonight's beating and more on one particular period of his life when his father's rage had turned against itself. During periods of heavy drinking, Callaghan's blackouts had grown more frequent – blackouts in which he often turned violent and attacked Ben and his mother, spouting names like Albert and Mary (he suffered night terrors sometimes and cried out these names). Ben knew very little of his father's past, only that Callaghan had an uncle named Albert, and that Albert flew or co-piloted helicopters in the war, but every time his father blacked out or woke up screaming, Ben gained another snippet of information, like single frames in the documentary of his father's life. Ben woke up often between the ages of thirteen and fifteen to the sounds of his father screaming and weeping, sometimes crying to his wife, begging her to take his rifle and shoot him between the eyes. He would yell another woman's name, but Sharon was never upset. What upset her was when he pinned her down on the bed and screamed that he wouldn't let her fall – whatever that meant. Ben would lie on his bed and listen to the muffled ruckus below him: the break of a picture frame, the bump of a nightstand, a head hitting a baseboard, the squeak of bedsprings. Callaghan Brusly would yell and spit and cry and beg for death . . . and Ben would lie on his back, as he did now, and pray to a God he wasn't sure he believed in to grant his father's wish.

TO BE CONTINUED

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