American Boy - Larry Watson [38]
“Glen didn’t slip on the ice, did he?” asked the doctor.
“He fell—”
“—Don’t, Matt. Don’t say it. Johnny told me what happened. Glen fell all right. With your help.”
“I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“Didn’t you.” The doctor turned and flipped his cigarette butt into the fireplace. “Johnny also told me what started the fight. I don’t know whether I should thank you or spank you. But I have to say, I’m leaning toward the latter. What’s gotten into you, Matt? The drinking, the brawling. This isn’t the Matthew Garth I know.”
What had gotten into me? Why, surely the doctor recognized the symptoms of Louisa Lindahl fever?
“Some of the things he said ... He had no right.”
“And now you’ve taken it upon yourself to determine what people have or haven’t a right to say? That’s awfully self-important, isn’t it?”
He didn’t expect answers to these questions.
“I’m capable,” Dr. Dunbar went on, “of defending myself against the Glen Van Dines of this world. And so is Miss Lindahl.”
I couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t included Johnny among those who could take care of themselves.
“But most of the time,” he continued, “no defense is necessary. Stupid people say stupid things, and both the people and their words are generally ignored or quickly forgotten.”
Dr. Dunbar was offering me a variation on the gentleman’s code of conduct, the same code Louisa had mocked. And in this case, I was with her. Far from being ignored, stupid things were usually remembered very well. And endlessly repeated.
He ducked his head down to look up into my eyes. “I’m not fond of having these talks, Matt. It hasn’t been that long since the last one. Is any of what I’m saying sinking in? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“I understand.”
“And?”
“I understand.”
He waited for more, but I had nothing else to say. The doctor flicked an invisible substance from the sleeve of his lab coat, then stood abruptly. “If you’re going home, you better leave now. Your mother might worry.” Dr. Dunbar turned his back to me, picked up a poker, and jabbed at the ashes of that dead fire.
The light snow that was falling earlier had stopped, but the temperature had kept on dropping. The packed snow creaked with each step. And as I walked my irritation persisted. It isn’t fair, I thought, it isn’t fair! I was walking home in the cold while Glen Van Dine slept under the same roof as Louisa Lindahl. It wasn’t fair!
11.
JOHNNY PUNCHED THE AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION button, shifting the car into neutral. Then he gunned the car’s engine. At the stoplight next to us was a customized ’49 Ford, into which its owner, Chuck Killion, had dropped a powerful non-stock engine. Chuck had also painted the Ford a red that at night looked like the color of blood.
Johnny put the car back in drive, and when the light turned green, he stomped on the accelerator. His father’s Chrysler Imperial had 413 horses under the hood, but the car still hesitated a moment before the tires took hold on the winter-wet pavement. But within a block, we were doing fifty and picking up speed. Chuck’s Ford was right beside us, so close that if he and I rolled down our windows, we could have shaken hands.
Up and down the street, car horns began to honk, the signal teenagers in our town gave to indicate a race was on. We were speeding east on Chippewa Avenue, four traffic lanes that paralleled the Northern Pacific tracks from one end of Willow Falls to the other. Chippewa was lined with stores, businesses, and eateries, and the glow of their neon signs doubled off their plate glass windows. Because of its length, it was the street that the town’s teenagers cruised to relieve their boredom. But after a few circuits, that activity could become boring, too. To make it less so, impromptu drag races broke out, taunts and threats were tossed from car to car, girls were beseeched to leave their cars and climb into others, and everyone was importuned for information about the location of parties.
This was a scene similar to those depicted countless