been refused. Just an old man who couldn't get comfortable in his
truss. What in God's name had I been afraid of?
"I thank you for the ride and even more
for the offer," I said. "But I can go out that way--" I pointed
at Pleasant Street. "--and I'll have a ride in no time."
He was quiet for a moment, then sighed
and nodded. "Ayuh, that's the best way to go," he said. "Stay right
out of town, nobody wants to give a fella ride in town, no one wants
to slow down and get honked at."
He was right about that; hitchhiking in
town, even a small one like Gates Falls, was futile. I guess he
had spent some time riding his thumb.
"But, son, are you sure? You know what
they say about a bird in the hand."
I hesitated again. He was right about a
bird in the hand, too. Pleasant Street became Ridge Road a mile
or so west of the blinker, and Ridge Road ran through fifteen miles
of woods before arriving at Route 196 on the outskirts of Lewiston.
It was almost dark, and it's always harder to get a ride at night--when
headlights pick you out on a country road, you look like an escapee
from Wyndham Boys' Correctional even with your hair combed and your
shirt tucked in. But I didn't want to ride with the old man anymore.
Even now, when I was safely out of his car, I thought there was
something creepy about him--maybe it was just the way his voice
seemed full of exclamation points. Besides, I've always been lucky
getting rides.
"I'm sure," I said. "And thanks again.
Really."
"Any time, son. Any time. My wife . . ."
He stopped, and I saw there were tears leaking from the corners
of his eyes. I thanked him again, then slammed the door shut before
he could say anything else.
I hurried across the street, my shadow
appearing and disappearing in the light of the blinker. On the far
side I turned and looked back. The Dodge was still there, parked
beside Frank's Fountain & Fruits. By the light of the blinker and
the streetlight twenty feet or so beyond the car, I could see him
sitting slumped over the wheel. The thought came to me that he was
dead, that I had killed him with my refusal to let him help.
Then a car came around the corner and the
driver flashed his high beams at the Dodge. This time the old man
dipped his own lights, and that was how I knew he was still alive.
A moment later he pulled back into the street and piloted the Dodge
slowly around the corner. I watched until he was gone, then looked
up at the moon. It was starting to lose its orange bloat, but there
was still something sinister about it. It occurred to me that I
had never heard of wishing on the moon before--the evening star,
yes, but not the moon. I wished again I could take my own wish back;
as the dark drew down and I stood there at the crossroads, it was
too easy to think of that story about the monkey's paw.
I
walked out Pleasant Street, waving my thumb at cars that went by
without even slowing. At first there were shops and houses on both
sides of the road, then the sidewalk ended and the trees closed
in again, silently retaking the land. Each time the road flooded
with light, pushing my shadow out ahead of me, I'd turn around,
stick out my thumb, and put what I hoped was a reassuring smile
on my face. And each time the oncoming car would swoosh by without
slowing. Once, someone shouted out, "Get a job, monkeymeat!" and
there was laughter.
I'm not afraid of the dark--or wasn't then--but
I began to be afraid I'd made a mistake by not taking the old man
up on his offer to drive me straight to the hospital. I could have
made a sign reading NEED A RIDE, MOTHER SICK
before starting out, but I doubted if it would have helped. Any
psycho can make a sign, after all.
I walked along, sneakers scuffing the gravelly
dirt of the soft shoulder, listening to the sounds of the gathering
night: a dog, far away; an owl, much closer; the sigh of a rising
wind. The sky was bright with the moonlight, but I couldn't see
the moon itself just now--the trees were tall here and had blotted
it out for the time being.
As I left Gates farther behind, fewer cars
passed me. My decision not to take the old man up on his offer seemed
more foolish with each passing minute. I began to imagine my mother
in her hospital bed, mouth turned down in a frozen sneer, losing
her grip on life but trying to hold on to that increasingly slippery
bark for me, not knowing I wasn't going to make it simply because
I hadn't liked an old man's shrill voice, or the pissy smell of
his car.
I breasted a steep hill and stepped back
into moonlight again at the top. The trees were gone on my right,
replaced by a small country graveyard. The stones gleamed in the
pale light. Something small and black was crouched beside one of
them, watching me. I took a step closer, curious. The black thing
moved and became a woodchuck. It spared me a single reproachful
red-eyed glance and was gone into the high grass. All at once I
became aware that I was very tired, in fact close to exhausted.
I had been running on pure adrenaline since Mrs. McCurdy called
five hours before, but now that was gone. That was the bad part.
The good part was that the useless sense of frantic urgency left
me, at least for the time being. I had made my choice, decided on
Ridge Road instead of Route 68, and there was no sense beating myself
up over it--fun is fun and done is done, my mother sometimes said.
She was full of stuff like that, little Zen aphorisms that almost
made sense. Sense or nonsense, this one comforted me now. If she
was dead when I got to the hospital, that was that. Probably she
wouldn't be. Doctor said it wasn't too bad, according to Mrs. McCurdy;
Mrs. McCurdy had also said she was still a young woman. A bit on
the heavy side, true, and a heavy smoker in the bargain, but still
young.
Meantime, I was out here in the williwags
and I was suddenly tired out--my feet felt as if they had been dipped
in cement.
There was a stone wall running along the
road side of the cemetery, with a break in it where two ruts ran
through. I sat on the wall with my feet planted in one of these
ruts. From this position I could see a good length of Ridge Road
in both directions. When I saw headlights coming west, in the direction
of Lewiston, I could walk back to the edge of the road and put my
thumb out. In the meantime, I'd just sit here with my backpack in
my lap and wait for some strength to come back into my legs.
A groundmist, fine and glowing, was rising
out of the grass. The trees surrounding the cemetery on three sides
rustled in the rising breeze. From beyond the graveyard came the
sound of running water and the occasional plunk- plunk of a frog.
The place was beautiful and oddly soothing, like a picture in a
book of romantic poems.
I looked both ways along the road. Nothing
coming, not so much as a glow on the horizon. Putting my pack down
in the wheelrut where I'd been dangling my feet, I got up and walked
into the cemetery. A lock of hair had fallen onto my brow; the wind
blew it off. The mist roiled lazily around my shoes. The stones
at the back were old; more than a few had fallen over. The ones
at the front were much newer. I bent, hands planted on knees, to
look at one which was surrounded by almost- fresh flowers. By moonlight
the name was easy to read: GEORGE STAUB.
Below it were the dates marking the brief span of George Staub's
life: JANUARY 19, 1977, at one end, OCTOBER
12, 1998, at the other. That explained the flowers which
had only begun to wilt; October 12th was two days ago and 1998 was
just two years ago. George's friends and relatives had stopped by
to pay their respects. Below the name and dates was something else,
a brief inscription. I leaned down farther to read it--
--and
stumbled back, terrified and all too aware that I was by myself,
visiting a graveyard by moonlight.
FUN
IS FUN AND DONE IS DONE
was
the inscription.
My
mother was dead, had died perhaps at that very minute, and something
had sent me a message. Something with a thoroughly unpleasant sense
of humor.
I began to back slowly toward the road,
listening to the wind in the trees, listening to the stream, listening
to the frog, suddenly afraid I might hear another sound, the sound
of rubbing earth and tearing roots as something not quite dead reached
up, groping for one of my sneakers--
My feet tangled together and I fell down,
thumping my elbow on a gravestone, barely missing another with the
back of my head. I landed with a grassy thud, looking up at the
