I WAS IN A BLACK MOOD WHEN I LEFT THE store that afternoon, angry at Marina and sore from unloading stock all day. If I’d been smart, I would have headed straight back to my house and stayed put. But my mother was there, as she always was, ready and waiting to ask how my day had gone.
“Going home, kid?” Stanley Culp gave me the eye as I slouched by.
“Why would I want to go there?”
“So, you’re off for a ride? Well, take care of yourself.”
I wheeled my bike into the street and pedaled away, feeling his shrewd gaze on my back.
If there was, as there was later said to be, an old Ford station wagon with Massachusetts plates keeping watch on the store from an alley across the road, I paid no attention.
I didn’t care, either, that Charlie Pope, hustling away from the police station on some errand, shot me a cool glance over his shoulder and picked up speed.
Chief McKenzie, standing in the station door, was either just coming in or about to leave. His heavy profile faded back out of sight as I passed. Perhaps he was making a note of the direction I was taking, perhaps not. I couldn’t be bothered to pick up on such details.
I remember that Ann Kempton, the local seamstress, waved at me from her backyard as she took in laundry from the line.
A group of younger boys was in the field beyond the school whacking a baseball around and whooping it up. They’d been in the store buying sodas earlier, where they’d been warned to keep their voices down and wait their turn at the counter. I knew every one of them by name, such is the closeness of a small town, and now, hearing the crack of the ball on the bat, and their shouts, a darker feeling swept over me.
I was trapped in this place. While Marina visited Harveston and Boston, meeting up with the world, I hauled pickle barrels in Riley’s back room, where not even my father looked in on me anymore. He’d given up trying to make me into something he could like.
I laughed cynically, a Stanley Culp kind of laugh. I’d take a ride, all right. I’d go missing for a while. Supper could wait on me for once. Let them wonder where I was.
And so I set out toward the back country, down a road I’d seldom biked which wound away from the sea, past rocky farmland and shrub-clogged forests. The November daylight began to fade and still I went on, furiously at times, suddenly in a rage that even one-eyed Tom Morrison was no longer specially mine. He was Billy Brady’s friend, and Billy’s father’s before that. The free life he led came out of weakness and retreat, not anything strong he could pass on to me. He was as likely as anyone to bend before the wind.
And what a wind. I imagined Billy now, coming in by boat to the beach, striding up the path to Tom’s shack. Billy Brady, tall and broad-shouldered, his white Labrador loping at his side; Billy, with all the glory of the Black Duck blazing out, and his easy, joking manner that charmed everyone.
Deep in these thoughts, I rode on through the darkening landscape. Over an hour passed before I thought of going back. My legs had begun to ache. The sun was down by then, and the road dim. An eerie silence rose on all sides and I was suddenly aware that I was far, far out in the country. I was turning to head home when the sound of tires came from the bend ahead. I flicked on my bicycle lamp and drew to the side.
The vehicle, driving without headlights, rode toward me with a ghostly quiet. As it passed, I recognized the whir of a muffled engine and glanced back over my shoulder. It was a Ford coupe, one taillight out.
The vehicle braked, stopped and began to reverse direction. A moment later the car came up in back of me and I squeezed over a second time to let it by. But it hung back and, little by little, moved up closer until I felt the heat of the motor on my legs.
“Come ahead!” I yelled, gesturing for the driver to go past. He would not. When I looked back to see what the trouble was, a face pushed up close to the windshield and broke into a toothy grin.
Fear spiked through me. Even so, I couldn’t believe that anyone could mean me harm. A game is what I thought, and for another hundred yards, I played my part by riding as far to the left-hand side as possible without going in the woods. Finally, with a roar, the big roadster pulled out to pass and I thought I’d be left in peace. But that was not to be. With stealthy calm, the vehicle moved up until the broad side windows were abreast of me. Out of the corner of one eye, I saw faces through the glass.
“Hey! Give me some room!” I called out.
There was no response, and in the next second I saw that I wasn’t to be allowed even my slim edge of road. The side of the car moved closer until, with a last impatient swerve, it struck me. I lost my balance and went flying into the woods, where a darkness darker than night dropped over me.