Sunday. This is where it all went to hell. It was a trip we just shouldn’t’ve made, simple as that. We didn’t mean for it to go down like it did, at least Mixer and I didn’t. Bones, well, it’s tough to say what he was thinking. But he did show up armed, and that’s got to tell you something. As for me, I just wanted to get a straight answer, either to find out it was real or to put it to rest.
Maybe I’d better just begin at the beginning. We were in Bones’s uncle’s truck. It was an old beater his uncle kept out by the barn on his farm, and he wasn’t going to miss it on a Sunday afternoon. He’d found religion, big-time, and wouldn’t ever tend the fields on a Sunday. That’s how he put it, “tend the fields.” I think maybe that’s in the Bible.
Anyway, it’s not like we had a lot of options, ride-wise, and Haberman lived kind of far out in Little River. Bones was driving, because it was his uncle’s truck and because he had a learner’s permit, so it was practically legal. His mom thought it was good enough, anyway. We’d already found the place—the address is right in the phone book—and we’d cruised by once, real slow, to see if there were any other cars in the driveway. We knew there was no Mrs. Haberman, but we were just checking to see if maybe he had company or something.
There were no cars at all in the driveway, but the garage door was open, and we could just see his little MG in there in the shadows. It was late afternoon, kind of a gray day, and as near as anyone knew, we were all three of us up on the mountain fishing. We stopped at the end of the street, and Bones executed the worst K-turn in the history of driving. Bones was wired and on edge. He was geared up for trouble, maybe even looking forward to it. The truck kicked forward with a groan as he threw it back into drive. But there were only three houses on the whole street, all pretty far apart, so the chances of anyone seeing us, or of another car coming along, were pretty slim.
We came up on his house again, this time from the other direction. As we got close, Bones cut the engine and we coasted into the driveway. Bones handled this turn much better than the last one, and it was a nice paved driveway, so even the old rattletrap truck was fairly quiet. Unless Haberman was looking out the window, there was a halfway decent chance he didn’t know we were there. Bones pointed the truck off to the right, and we rolled to a stop halfway on the grass, so we wouldn’t be as easy to see from the house. We climbed out of the cab real quiet and just pushed the doors shut behind us.
Mixer took a rag or something out of his jacket pocket and put it over the rear license plate of the truck.
“In case anyone drives by,” he said.
I gave him a thumbs-up, because it seemed like a pretty good idea to me. There was no shortage of beat-up old pickup trucks around here, so without a license number, it would be hard to find one in particular.
“Thanks,” he said, and he was smiling, but you could see it was kind of a nervous smile. I was feeling the butterflies, too.
Looking back, I’ve got to say, our plan was not really all that solid. I think we’d sort of talked each other into thinking it made sense, but it started to come apart right from the start. I mean, you pretty much lose the element of surprise when you end up standing on the welcome mat and knocking.
But there I was, knocking like a Girl Scout selling cookies. At the last second, after the first knock, Mixer was like, “We’ll hide!” And they dove off to the side and crouched down against the wall, and I was left standing there, knuckles in the air. I’m not sure what the point was, except maybe that Haberman was more likely to open the door up for one dude than for three.
And probably of the three of us, Haberman was most likely to open the door for me. I sort of resented the idea of that, like I was some kind of teacher’s pet or salvage project or whatever, but I realized by the third knock that it was more or less true. If any of us was thinking clearly, it was Mixer.
Haberman’s face appeared in the glass of the door, pale and confused. His thin hair was sticking out at weird angles, and I knew right then that he’d been napping. My breath caught in my throat but I tried not to show it, tried to keep my face totally blank, like Throckmorton’s. But this was the wrong time to be thinking about the sheriff, and I felt my pulse rev.
Haberman’s eyes narrowed, sized me up. A few quick excuses raced through my head: I was just driving by and had a question about the book; I’m selling something, door to door: Care to order a magazine? A storm door (you really should have one)? Girl Scout cookies?
The door opened and I heard the shush of air slipping in around the weather stripping. It was dark inside and the smell of cigarettes hit me like a breeze.