“When are they leaving?”
“She’s going to meet him at the high school after period six; that’s what she said when she called me. He’s getting a dismissal slip.”
That meant they would be leaving Libertyville in less than an hour and a half. So I asked the last question, even though I already knew the answer. “They’re not taking Christine, are they?”
“No, they’re going in the station wagon. She was delirious with joy, Dennis. Delirious. That business of getting her to go with him to Penn State… that was inspired. Wild horses wouldn’t have kept Regina from a chance like that. Dennis, what’s going on? Please.”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “That’s a promise. Firm. Meantime, you’ve got to do something for me. It could be a matter of life and death for my family and for Leigh Cabot’s family. You—”
“Oh my God,” he said hoarsely. He spoke in the voice of a man for whom a great light has just dawned. “He’s been gone every time—except when the Welch boy was killed, and that time he was… Regina saw him asleep, and I’m sure she wasn’t lying about that… Dennis, who’s driving that car? Who’s using Christine to kill people when Arnie isn’t here?”
I almost told him, but it was cold in the telephone booth and my leg was starting to ache again, and that answer would have led to other questions, dozens of them. And even then the only final result might be a flat refusal to believe.
“Michael, listen,” I said, speaking with all the deliberateness I could summon. For one weird moment I felt like Mister Rogers on TV. A big car from the 1950s is coming to eat you up, boys and girls… Can you say Christine? I knew you could! “You’ve got to call my father and Leigh’s father. Have both families get together at Leigh’s house.” I was thinking of brick, good solid brick. “I think maybe you ought to go too, Michael. All of you stay together until Leigh and I get there or until I call. But you tell them for Leigh and me: They’re not to go outside after”—I calculated: If Arnie and Regina left the high school at two, how long before his alibi would be cast-iron-watertight?—“after four o’clock this afternoon. After four, none of you goes out on the street. Any street. Under no circumstances.”
“Dennis, I can’t just—”
“You have to,” I said. “You’ll be able to convince my old man, and between the two of you, you should be able to convince Mr and Mrs Cabot. And stay away from Christine yourself, Michael.”
“They’re leaving right from school,” Michael said. “He said the car would be all right in the school parking lot.”
I could hear it in his voice again—his knowledge of the lie. After what had happened last fall, Arnie would no more leave Christine in a public parking lot than he would show up in Calc class naked.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “But if you should happen to look out the window and see her in the driveway anyhow, stay clear. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but—”
“Call my father first. Promise me.”
“All right, I promise… but Dennis—”
“Thank you, Michael.”
I hung up. My hands and feet were numb with the cold, but my forehead was slick with sweat. I pushed the door of the phone booth open with the tip of one crutch and worked my way back to Petunia.
“What did he say?” Leigh asked. “Did he promise?”
“Yes,” I said. “He promised and my dad will see that they get together. I’m pretty sure of that. If Christine goes for anyone tonight, it will have to be us.”
“All right,” she said. “Good.”
I threw Petunia into gear, and we rumbled away. The stage was set—as well as I could set it, anyway—and now there was really nothing to do but wait and see what would come.
We drove a-cross town to Darnell’s Garage through steady light snow, and I pulled into the parking lot at just past one that afternoon. The long, rambling building with its corrugated-steel sides was totally deserted, and Petunia’s bellyhigh wheels cut through deep, unploughed snow to stop in front of the main door. The signs bolted to that door were the same as they had been on that long-ago August evening when Arnie first drove Christine there—SAVE MONEY! YOUR KNOW-HOW, OUR TOOLS! Garage Space Rented by the Week, Month, or Year, and HONK FOR ENTRY—but the only one that really meant anything was the new one leaning in the darkened office window: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. Sitting in one corner of the snowy front lot was an old crumpled Mustang, one of the real door-suckers from the ’60s. Now it sat silent and broody under a shroud of snow.
“It’s creepy,” Leigh said in a low voice.
“Yeah. It sure is.” I gave her the keys I’d made at the Western Auto that morning. “One of these will do it.”
She took the keys, got out, and walked over to the door. I kept an eye in both rearview mirrors while she fumbled at the lock, but we didn’t seem to be attracting any undue attention. I suppose there is a certain psychology involved in seeing such a big, conspicuous vehicle—it makes the idea of something clandestine or illegal harder to swallow.
Leigh suddenly tugged hard on the door, stood up, tugged again, and then came back to the truck. “I got the key to turn, but I can’t get the door up,” she said. “I think it’s frozen to the ground or something.”
Great, I thought. Wonderful. None of this was going to come easily.
“Dennis, I’m sorry,” she said, seeing it on my face.
“No, it’s all right,” I said. I opened the driver’s door and performed another of my comical sliding exits.
“Be careful,” she said anxiously, walking beside me with her arm around my waist as I crutched carefully through the snow to the door. “Remember your leg.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said, grinning a little. I stood in profile to the door when I got there so I could bend down to the right and keep my weight off my bad leg. Bent over in the snow, left leg in the air, left hand holding onto my crutches, right hand grasping the roll-up door’s handle, I must have looked like a circus contortionist. I pulled and felt the door give a little… but not quite enough. She was right; it had iced up pretty good along the bottom. You could hear it crackling.
“Grab on and help me,” I said.
Leigh placed both of her hands over my right hand and we pulled together. That crackling sound became a little louder, but still the ice wouldn’t quite give up its grip on the foot of the door.
“We’ve almost got it,” I said. My right leg was throbbing unpleasantly, and sweat was running down my cheeks. “I’ll count. On three, give it all you’ve got. Okay?”
“Yes,” she said.
“One… two… three!”
What happened was the door came free of the ice all at once, with absurd, deadly ease. It flew upwards on its tracks, and I stumbled backward, my crutches flying. My left leg folded underneath me and I landed on it. The deep snow cushioned the fall somewhat, but I still felt the pain as a kind of silver bolt that seemed to ram upward from my thigh all the way to my temples and back down again. I clenched my teeth over a scream, barely keeping it in, and then Leigh was on her knees in the snow beside me, her arm around my shoulders.
“Dennis! Are you all right?”
“Help me up.”
She had to do most of the pulling, and both of us were gasping like winded runners by the time I was on my feet again with my crutches propped under me. Now I really needed them. My left leg was in agony.
“Dennis, you won’t be able to work the clutch in that truck now—”
“Yeah, I will. Help me back, Leigh.”
“You’re as white as a ghost. I think we ought to get you to a doctor.”
“No. Help me back.”
“Dennis—”
“Leigh, help me back!”
We inched our way back to Petunia through the snow leaving shuffling, troubled tracks in the snow behind us. I reached up, laid hold of the steering wheel, and did a chin-up to get in, scraping feebly at the running board with my right leg… and still, in the end, Leigh had to get behind me and put both hands on my kiester and shove. At last I was behind Petunia’s wheel, hot and shivering with pain. My shirt was wet with snowmelt and sweat. Until that day in January of 1979, I don’t think I knew how much pain can make you sweat.