American Boy - Larry Watson [40]
My father and I had not been close, and among the reasons was his employment at Northland. He fitted screens to wooden frames—his endlessly repeated joke was, “lucky I didn’t strain myself today”—on the four-to-midnight shift, so he was asleep when I got up in the morning, off to work when I returned from school, and there throughout the evening. Even on the weekends he was often with his buddies from Northland. Hunting or fishing were their announced activities, but according to my mother, those were simply excuses to drink beer and tear around the countryside. Somehow my diminishing memories of my father had matched Northland’s shrinking fortunes over the years.
But I thought of him now for only an instant, just before the car finally stopped so close to a loading dock that I could see the splinters in its wood and the rust on its steel frame. The factory’s windows reflected the night blankly. Then I leaned across the seat and punched Johnny hard in the shoulder.
“Asshole,” I said.
Johnny slumped against his door, exhausted but elated. “What—you’re the only one who can act like a crazy reckless bastard?”
“You could’ve gotten me killed.”
“I thought of that. At one point I felt like I was sitting in the backseat watching what I was doing. Anyway, we probably wouldn’t have died. I mean, if we got into an accident.”
“We probably wouldn’t have died? Jesus!”
“I wanted to see what it was like!”
“You wanted to see what what was like?”
“You know, to take a risk. To not give a shit. Like the way you must have felt when you walked out to the garage with Van Dine.”
“I was just pissed. That’s all.”
Mercury-vapor lights mounted on the roofline of Northland Screens shone into the car, turning Johnny’s face a green so pale it was almost white. The ruddy blotches on his cheeks showed up as shadows. But the spectral light was a lie; he had never looked so alive. “Man, I wanted to stop so damn bad,” he said. “So I just kept making myself go, go, go.”
“That should tell you something. People who do this stuff don’t have to make themselves go. They have to make themselves stop.”
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t have done this with the Valiant. Six cylinders sort of makes the decision for you.”
I didn’t remind him that cars were hardly the only means available for risky behavior.
“Hey, I forgot to tell you,” he said. “Louisa asked if we want her to buy beer again.”
“Why?” I asked. “Is she running short on cash?”
“I don’t know why that bothered you so much. Rick Rizner charged us a couple times.”
“I guess I wanted her to do it out of the goodness of her heart. So what did you tell her?”
“That I’d ask you. But that probably we did.”
“And does she want to help us drink the beer again?”
“I think so. She gets pretty bored sitting around the house.”
“How about this Saturday night?” I suggested.
“Why not Friday?” countered Johnny.
“Because I think I can get out of work on Saturday, but not Friday. They’re having a big goddamn banquet. A fiftieth wedding anniversary or something.”
Johnny nodded. “Mr. and Mrs. Angleton. I heard my folks talking about it. Dad said it better be a quiet celebration or Mr. Angleton is likely to keel over from a heart attack. But Mrs. Angleton, he said, looks like she could go fifty more with a new husband.”
“If Louisa wants to come with us,” I said, “we should find someplace to go. Someplace other than the car, I mean.” My mother would be working Saturday night, but I didn’t mention our place as a possibility. Although I believed Louisa’s origins and ambitions brought her closer to me