was drawn to her fire. Lots of girls had liked him—they joked in high school that he was the JD of WiCo High. He’d seen James Dean in a movie, and didn’t think they looked at all alike. James had not met a girl who interested him until Anne. She knew what she wanted. And, at least for now, she wanted to be with James.
For all his mystique, James had no skill with girls. His friends assumed that because girls liked him, he must be experienced. He was aloof, and some girls took that as a dare. Mostly though, he just wanted to be left alone. Until Anne. James wasn’t worried about Anne’s feelings for him, but he didn’t trust his feelings for her. They could be dangerous. He could stand being hurt. He was not sure he could tolerate her leaving, if he let her get close to him.
She had given him this picture of her at their last meeting, in the library. “Something to keep the rats at bay,” she’d smiled. He’d fingered it, feeling her eyes on his face. Anne was beautiful. In the picture she was standing next to an elm. She wore shorts and a sleeveless blouse, and her light brown hair was pulled back from her face, her hands clasped in front. Her gaze was steady and sure, her smile confident. He could feel himself falling into her eyes. When he looked up from the picture, those same eyes gazed straight into his. He couldn’t trust himself to speak. Finally she giggled and turned away.
Now, in the quiet of his room, he mulled the changes in his life. His father had returned, but he was different somehow. He didn’t drink, for one thing. It didn’t make James hate him any less. James had watched his father fade, beginning with the clear morning on Washington Street. No one else had seemed to notice, in all the ruckus of David’s disappearance. But James had watched in anguish as his father grew fainter, like the dot on the TV screen after it’s turned off. When Nana had asked him about the guardianship, he’d brushed it off the way he’d shrug about what to do with his father’s old hat. No difference to me.
James had steeled himself to be cruel to his father in return for Sam’s coming back. But Anne had happened, and it was hard to remain focused on his anger. Instead, his reaction to his father had been more of a polite indifference. A distraction. He was delighted and worried with Anne’s attention. Was this the way life worked? Good and bad things happened together? First David disappearing, then his mother leaving—those were bad. Because of his confused feelings for his father, he was actually glad when Sam left. Since that period, he had tried to find his own peace with just Nana and Dylan for his family.
Father Mullenix down at the church had assured him, when his mother left, “Time… takes time.” He’d been right, of course. James liked the quiet, confident priest, who always seemed to be waiting when James would create an excuse to visit. Over time, James became a fixture at the church during the week, doing odd chores around the rectory and grounds. But never on Sunday. He resisted Father’s coaxing to come to mass, and he respected the priest for not pushing it.
James liked the older priest and the times they sat and talked passed naturally. At first, he’d expected Father to ask about his dad, or to lecture him about giving his dad a break. But the priest hadn’t mentioned Sam. He had thought about talking to Father about Anne, and his concerns about Anne’s father. But Anne was Methodist, and he was sure that would be the end of it as far as the priest was concerned.
James slipped the picture back in its hiding place at the sound of Dylan on the stairs. Time for baseball.
7 / Safe Passage
Sam didn’t talk much to Dylan, and even less to James. He seemed tentative, as if a phrase could somehow go off like a bomb. But he did talk to Nana, and to Dylan’s surprise, his father and Mr. Thompson seemed to be renewing an old friendship.
When Dylan’s dad returned, Mr. Thompson had come over to welcome him. Dylan at first thought it was about the car in the garage. Mr. Thompson had assured Sam he could move the Dodge across the street to his own house. Sam had allowed as how there was no need for a change just because he was here.
It was funny to Dylan how two quiet people could become friends, when that didn’t seem to happen with two loud people. Mr. Thompson never said much to Dylan, but he always had a way of making Dylan feel like he was listening when Dylan spoke. Maybe that was the reason Sam too felt comfortable with Mr. Thompson.
Dylan would sit on the porch and watch his father in the company of Mr. Thompson in the driveway, both bent under the hood of Mr. Thompson’s car, one or the other with an oily rag and some tool in hand. Or they might be in one front yard or another, gazing with bemusement at a lawnmower in need of attention.
The dad he remembered had been much taller, and more talkative. Of course, the other dad had a way of never getting around to the end of a sentence where the period is put. That dad would blurt, rather than speak, sometimes with wild eyes darting in company with the words. But Dylan also remembered a stretch of time before he finally left, when his father would lapse into silence, and the funeral-home pall would descend on the house. People who did not know him well would wait on him, expecting him to finish a thought. Often they just waited.
Now, Dylan found himself waiting. Would he get along with this other version of his father?
***
Stinger Owens lived on the south side of Crane Ridge. Sam had said once that in just about every town he’d been in, the south side was the bad side, and he wondered why this was so. Dylan had thought of Stinger then. Not that the south side of Crane Ridge was particularly dangerous. But Stinger was. The boy was large, and lumbered rather than walked, but somehow he could move across the school hall with blurring speed to slap an unsuspecting student. He was two years ahead of Dylan, so he was in the junior high.
Stinger’s beefy right hand had a heavy ring on it. When he slapped the back of your head, it hurt worst where the ring connected with your skull. The first time Dylan realized that James and Stinger were acquainted was this past summer on a hot afternoon, when Dylan was coming back from the library the long way, rounding the corner by Wilson’s Drug Emporium. Stinger had his back to him as Dylan passed, talking to one of his pals, Scooter Morris.
“—Can’t take a joke is all. We’ll fix him good when—”
Scooter’s eyes widened when he saw Dylan.
“Hey, little man! What brings you down to this part of town?”
Dylan slowed, out of range of Stinger.
“Just come from the library. Heading home.”
Dylan watched Stinger’s eyes. Something about the way Stinger furrowed his brow made Dylan’s skin crawl. His sloped white forehead bulged with a fatty thickness, and when it wrinkled, Dylan wondered what seismic effort it required to sort through the range of responses for the appropriate one.
Stinger’s forehead relaxed. He stepped toward Dylan. “Let’s see what the bookworm picked up at the library store.”
Dylan wondered if Stinger thought a library was like a store because he had never set foot in one. The calm on Stinger’s face worried him. He eased along the sidewalk, keeping between Stinger and the open street. He glanced down at the pile of books in his arm, dismissively. “Just some stuff on planes, and a Tom Swift book. You like Tom Swift?”
Stinger paused in his shuffle to consider the question. Dylan wondered if anyone had ever asked Stinger about his literary preferences.
Stinger cocked his head and studied Dylan. “What’s it about?”
Dylan gulped. “I can’t say I know. I just got it. But I read the first couple pages—” Dylan tried to remember
