next door to drive them to the doctor’s office. Rachel and Marty went, too, and both watched, fascinated, as the doctor sprayed Joe’s hand with something that smelled harsh and cold, pulled the nail from his hand with a pair of funny-looking pliers, then cleaned out the wound with a fat orange toothpick. All while Joe sat absolutely still and expressionless. After the doctor bandaged his hand and gave him a tetanus shot, he complimented Joe on how brave he’d been. Rachel thought he was incredibly brave too, even though she’d seen the muscles in his jaw twitch and the single tear that had escaped from the corner of his eye. Marty had just stared at him with an expression of total adoration on her face.
“Big deal,” Hal, then seventeen, had said when Rachel told him of Joe’s mishap. “What’s he want, a medal or a chest to pin it on?” But Rachel had known even then that if it had been Hal, he’d have run whimpering to their mother for comfort, then bellowed and thrashed and cried as the doctor had tried to treat him.
“Rae?” Joe said.
“What? Oh, sorry. I was someplace else.” She tossed back the remainder of her whisky and stood up. “I’m for bed. See you in the morning.” She paused, one foot on the bottom step of the stairs. “Or not, if you sleep late. We have to start setting up for the homecoming festival at eight.”
“Let me know if you need another strong back,” he said.
“We’ve plenty of those,” she said. “Most come with weak minds attached.”
“So one more won’t hurt.”
She smiled. “G’night,” she said, and climbed the stairs.
chapter ten
Saturday, August 5
Shoe was awakened by a spike of sunlight through the high window facing the foot of the bed. The bed was in the basement bedroom his father had built when Hal had turned twelve and had needed a room of his own. Shoe had inherited the bedroom when Hal had gone away to McGill University in Montreal to study business. His wristwatch, propped against the base of the lamp on the bedside table, read a few minutes to six. Still slightly jetlagged, he thought about closing the curtain so he could catch another hour of sleep, but he could hear the creak of floorboards and the quiet mutter of morning radio from upstairs. He got up, showered, dressed, then followed the smell of coffee up to the kitchen. Rachel, dressed in loose drawstring pants and a body-hugging tank top that complemented her compact muscularity, stood barefoot at the stove. She was laying strips of bacon in an ancient and blackened cast iron frying pan.
“I found your stash,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind, I made a pot.”
“Not at all,” he said. He poured a mug of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table.
“Should I do you some bacon?”
“No, thank you,” Shoe replied. He didn’t go out of his way to avoid fatty meats, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten bacon. It smelled good as it began to sizzle quietly in the pan. She put the package away in the fridge.
“In his letter, Mr. Cartwright wrote that he hoped Joey and I would patch things up,” Shoe said. “I wasn’t aware that Joey knew him.” Even though Joey had been his best and closest friend, he added to himself.
“Mr. Cartwright had a shelf full of chess trophies in his living room,” Rachel said, turning the bacon in the pan. “I remember Joey telling me that he gave demonstrations at the junior high school chess club. He’d play a dozen games at a time. When I asked Mr. Cartwright about it, he told me Joey was the only person who ever came close to beating him.”
“Joey was a good chess player,” Shoe agreed.
“You beat him, though, didn’t you?”
“Once in a while.”
“A lot, he said.”
Shoe shook his head. “Not true at all,” he said.
“Would you like to play a game or two while you’re here?” Rachel asked.
“I haven’t played in years,” Shoe said.
“Then maybe I’ll have a chance,” Rachel said.
“Maybe.”
When the bacon was crisp, Rachel put it into the toaster oven to keep warm, then broke two eggs into the pan. Hot grease popped and spit. Holding the pan at an angle, she basted the eggs with a spoon. The only cereal in the house was Cheerios, which to Shoe tasted like burnt cardboard. He got bread out of the fridge to make toast. Fortunately, it was whole wheat. And there was a jar of Robertson’s Scotch-style orange marmalade.
“Do you want toast with your cholesterol?” he asked Rachel.
She made a face. “Carbs? No, thanks.” She sat down and began to eat. When Shoe’s toast popped, he sat down facing her. “What do you think of the chances he’ll be at the homecoming?” Rachel asked.
“Joey? I’d be very surprised.”
She picked up a strip of bacon in her fingers, delicately bit off a piece and crunched it between her teeth. “So you haven’t seen him or spoken to him since … ” She hesitated.
“No,” Shoe said. She lifted a forkful of egg, dripping yellow yolk, to her mouth. “Have you?” he asked.
Swallowing, she said, “No. His mother died two years ago. I took Mum and Dad to her funeral. Joey wasn’t there. His father died eight or nine years ago. According to his sister, he wasn’t at his father’s funeral either.”
Shoe watched her swab the last of the grease and yolk from her plate with the edge of her thumb. She then stuck her thumb in her mouth, sucking noisily. Wiping her thumb off with a paper serviette, she grinned sheepishly at him.
“Pretty disgusting, eh?” Their parents had tried for years to break her of the habit of cleaning her plate with her thumb, obviously without success. “Can I ask you something?” she said. He waited. “What happened between you and Joey? Did you fight over Janey?”
Shoe hid his surprise behind his coffee mug. Janey Hallam had had nothing to do with his falling out with Joey. At least, not directly. He supposed, though, to an eleven-year-old Rachel, it might have appeared that way.
“We didn’t fight over Janey,” he said.
“What then? For ten years you and Joey were practically joined at the hip. What happened? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.” she added.
“Good,” he said.
Her disappointment was evident, but she said, “Okay.”
“You’re all right with that?”
“No,” she said. “Not really. But if you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”
“Do you remember when he was in the hospital for a week? It was in early May of our last year of junior high school.”
“I think so,” Rachel said. “He had an accident
