“He tried to kill me!”
“-and because he wouldn’t contribute any money to buy the pills.”
“There weren’t any pills.”
“Roy says there were, and it explains a lot.”
“Did he name even one of these wild dopers I’m supposed to be hanging out with?”
“They’re none of my concern. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Jeez.”
“I am worried about you.”
“But for the wrong reason.”
“Playing with drugs is stupid and dangerous.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“If you want to be treated like an adult, you’ve got to start acting like one,” she said in a lecturing tone that galled him.
“An adult admits his mistakes. An adult always accepts the consequences of his acts.”
“Not most of the adults I see.”
“If you persist in this bullheaded attempt to-”
“How can you believe him instead of me?”
“He’s a very nice boy. He-”
“You’ve only talked to him a couple of times!”
“Often enough to know he’s a well-rounded boy and very mature for his age.”
“He’s not! He’s not like that at all. He’s lying!”
“His story certainly rings truer than yours,” Weezy said. “And he strikes me as a sensible boy.”
“You think I’m not sensible?”
“Colin, how many nights have you gotten me out of bed because you were convinced something was crawling around in the attic?”
“Not that often,” he mumbled.
“Yes. That often. Quite often. And was there ever anything there when we looked?”
He sighed.
“Was there?” she insisted.
“No.”
“How many nights have you been absolutely certain that something was lurking outside the house, trying to get in through your window?”
He didn’t answer.
She pressed her advantage. “And do level-headed boys spend all of their time building plastic models of movie monsters?”
“Is that why you don’t believe me? Because I watch a lot of horror movies? Because I read science fiction?”
“Stop that. Don’t try to make me sound simple-minded,” she said.
“Shit.”
“You’re also picking up bad language from this crowd you’re running around with, and I won’t allow it.”
He walked away from her, into the junkyard.
“Where are you going?”
As he walked away, he said, “I can show you proof.”
“We’re leaving,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
“I should have been at the gallery an hour ago.”
“I can show you proof, if you’ll bother to look at it.”
He walked through the junkyard, toward the point at which the hill dropped down to the railroad tracks. He didn’t know for sure if she was following him, but he tried to act as if he had no doubt about it. He believed that looking back would be a sign of weakness, and he felt that he had been a weakling for too damned long.
Last night Hermit Hobson’s collection of wrecks had been a sinister labyrinth. Now, in the bright daylight, it was only sad, a very sad and lonely place. By squinting slightly, you could look through the dead and pitted surface, through the sorry present, and see the past glowing in all of it. Once, the cars had been shiny and beautiful. People had invested work and money and dreams in these machines, and all that had come to this: rust.
When he reached the western end of the junkyard, he had trouble believing what he could plainly see. The proof he had intended to show Weezy was gone.
The dilapidated pickup still stood ten feet from the brink, where Roy had been forced to abandon it, but the corrugated metal runners were not there any more. Although the truck had stopped with its angled front wheels in the dirt, the rear wheels had remained squarely on the tracks. Colin clearly remembered that. But now all four wheels rested upon bare earth.
Colin realized what had happened and knew that he should have expected it. Last night, when he had hidden successfully from Roy in the arroyo west of the railway line, Roy had not rushed immediately into town to wait for him at the house, but had finally given up the chase and had come back here to erase all traces of his plan to wreck the train. He had carted away every loose section of the make-shift track that he’d constructed for the truck. Then he had even jacked up the rear wheels of the Ford to retrieve the last two incriminating sheets of metal that were pinned under them.
The grass behind the truck, which surely must have been smashed flat when the Ford passed over it, now stood nearly as tall and undisturbed as the grass on all other sides of the junker; it swayed gently in the breeze. Roy had taken time to rake it, thereby removing the twin impressions of the pickup’s wake. On closer inspection, Colin saw that the resilient blades of grass had sustained minor damage. A few were broken. A few more were bent. Some were pinched. But those subtle signs would not be proof enough to convince Weezy that his story was true.
Although it was twenty feet closer to the brow of the hill than any of the other wrecks, the Ford looked as if it had been in that same spot, undisturbed, for years and years.
Colin knelt beside the pickup and reached behind one of the rusty wheels. He brought out a gob of grease.
“What are you doing?” Weezy asked.
He turned to her and held up his greasy hand. “This is all I can show you. He took away everything else, all the other proof.”
“What’s that?”
“Grease.”
“So?”
It was hopeless.
PART TWO
28
For seven days Colin remained in the house.
Restriction to quarters was one part of his punishment. His mother made certain that he endured the confinement; she called home six or eight times every day, checking on him. Sometimes two or three hours would pass between the calls, and sometimes she would ring him three times in thirty minutes. He did not dare sneak out.
Actually, he didn’t want to go anywhere. He was well accustomed to loneliness, comfortable and satisfied with just his own company. For most of his life, his room had been the largest part of his world, and for a while at least it would serve admirably as his entire universe. He had his books, horror comics, monster models, and radio; he could entertain himself for a week or a month or even longer. And he was afraid that if he set foot outside the door, Roy Borden would get him.
Weezy had also made it clear that when he had served his one-week sentence he would be on probation for a long time. For the remainder of the summer he would have to be home before dark. He didn’t tell her how he felt about that when she laid down the rule, but in fact he didn’t think of it as punishment. He had no intention of going anywhere at night. As long as Roy was running around loose, Colin would view every sunset with dread, as if he were a character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
In addition to imposing a curfew, Weezy took away his allowance for one month. He wasn’t bothered by that either. He had a big metal bank in the shape of a flying saucer, and it was full of coins and dollar bills that he had saved over the past two years.
He was distressed only by the fact that the restrictions would interfere with his courtship of Heather Lipshitz. He’d never had a girlfriend. No girl had ever been interested in him before. Not even a little bit. Now that he finally had a chance with a girl, he didn’t want to spoil it.
He called Heather and explained that he had been grounded and could not keep their movie date. He didn’t tell her the truth about why he had been restricted to the house; he didn’t mention that Roy had attempted to kill him. She didn’t know him well enough yet to accept such a wild story. And of all the people in Colin’s life, Heather was the one whose opinion mattered the most right now; he didn’t want her to think he was a nut case. When he explained his situation, she was very understanding, and they rescheduled their date for the following Wednesday, when he would be allowed out of the house again. She didn’t even mind that they would have to go to the early show and that he would have to be home by dark to satisfy the curfew his mother had imposed. For twenty minutes they chatted about movies and books, and she was easier to talk to than any girl he had ever known.