hardened his grin, as though he hadn’t meant to find anything funny just now. He looked over at his father, checking to be sure that he was okay, then turned back to Tommy. “Hell of a right hook you’ve got there.” He pressed his hand to the back of his head and checked his palm for blood. “But you always were strong as an ox, weren’t you?”
“Can you just stop talking?” Tommy asked.
“It doesn’t matter if he talks,” I said. “Don’t listen. Just get us over behind those trees.”
“It’s a hell of a world we live in, I suppose,” Gannon said with a sigh, as though resigning himself to something. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes and hummed so quietly that the sound was only there for a moment before being swallowed up by the lope of the engine as the car bobbled up and down over the rough-hewn field.
“I’m not the one who sent you that draft notice, Tommy,” Gannon said. “You’ve already let her get you into more trouble than you had to, son.”
“He’s not your son,” I said.
“You’re just a strong back to her, Tommy,” Gannon said, as though I hadn’t spoken. “She’ll never make it without you and she knows it. That’s the reason she’s dragging you along on this. Don’t you dare think it’s anything different than that. I’m the only person that can make this right with the draft, son. I’m trying to help you. They don’t treat dodgers too good.”
“Yeah,” I replied, “they send them off to war.”
Tommy let out a stiff laugh.
Though the ground was frozen and hard now, the winter had come with fits of warmth that had unlocked the earth into a bog only for it to refreeze days later, misshapen and awkward, like a heart riding the highs and lows of love and hate over the course of a long marriage. Here and there the ground dipped, long and deep as a starving belly, and the car was thrown down into a depression and all Tommy could do was hold tight to the steering wheel and keep his foot on the accelerator, uncertain whether or not we would be able to climb out of the hole in which we found ourselves. But Tommy was good behind the wheel and he got the car over to the trees that jutted out, dense and bare, on the far edge of the field.
“Right there,” I said, pointing ahead.
“I see it,” Tommy said, aiming for where the trees were thickest. There was a scrub of green pines and bare oaks. Not much, but enough to make the car difficult to see from the road when the sun finally came up.
“You kids really should think this over,” Gannon said. I thought I heard genuine concern in his voice, but whether it was for us or for himself was hard to say. As the car plunged into one final dip that sent us all bouncing, Gannon grabbed his father to steady the man. “It’s okay, Pop,” he cooed. “I got you.”
Tommy pulled the car to a stop and put it in Park. “Now what?”
“Leave it running,” I replied.
“What about poison?” Tommy asked.
“What poison?”
“Carbon dioxide.”
“Carbon monoxide,” Gannon corrected him, turning and looking at me through the thick Plexiglas divider. “He’s afraid we’ll suffocate while we’re sitting here waiting to be found,” he continued. “He’s got a right to be scared. It’s bad enough that you’re locking a sick man like my father in here, but if something happens to me while I’m waiting—anything at all, even if I have a damn heart attack from boredom—that’s manslaughter for the both of you. If you’re lucky. But they won’t let you have luck. Not with a dead cop on their hands. So they’ll swing for the fences. Try you both as adults. Murder. First-degree. ‘With foresight and malice.’ That’s what they’ll say.”
“Is that true?” Tommy asked.
Even I wasn’t immune to what Gannon had said. He’d managed to paint a picture in my mind—Tommy and me in a courtroom, on trial; Tommy would get the harder sentence because that had always been his lot in life; they’d send him to the electric chair and put me in prison; but they wouldn’t keep me there on account of how smart I was; they’d figure some way out for me on account of how I was special; that had always been my lot in life.
I walked on water. Tommy only choked on it.
“Just do what I told you, Tommy,” I replied. “We’ll leave the heat on medium and crack the windows. He’ll be fine. I promise.”
Tommy nodded in assent. He switched off the headlights and set the heater temperature as he had been told.
“Good,” I said. “Now get out.”
“Why?” Tommy asked.
“Just go, Tommy. I’ll be right behind you.”
Tommy stared at me. “I’m not going to do anything,” I said. I rapped my knuckles against the Plexiglas dividing the front and back of the squad car. “Couldn’t even if I wanted to. And you’ve got the gun, after all.”
“That’s right,” Tommy said, his voice full of sudden authority. “...that’s right.” Finally he opened the driver’s door and stepped out into the cold.
I turned in my seat, looking back on Jim Gannon. “Once the sun comes up it won’t take them long to find you. It’ll be a little embarrassing, so you’re welcome to tell them whatever story you want about how you wound up here. If I were you, I would say it was a prank.”
Gannon barked a sharp laugh. “A prank?”
“Yep,” I replied. “Just the local cops having a little bit of fun with you. You can say that you and them go way back. You just happened to run into them as you were passing through, on your way home from a law enforcement training seminar. That’ll explain why you were three states outside of your jurisdiction in your squad car and uniform.”
“Jurisdiction doesn’t apply with runaway children,” Gannon said. “But you already know that, don’t you, Virginia? You’re the smart one.” He slumped in the seat and checked the back of his head once more to be sure it wasn’t bleeding.
“Just say that they were some friends of yours and this was their way of being funny. They put you in the back seat of your own car and left you out here. It’s believable.”
“You got one hell of a mind on you,” Gannon replied. “But you already know that.”
“And he’ll be okay,” I said, looking at Gannon’s father.
“Are you asking me or telling me?” Gannon replied.
I looked out the car window at Tommy. He was standing just beside the car, watching our conversation.
Gannon’s eyes followed mine.
“Just let us go, Jim,” I said. My voice was softer than I had planned. There was a levee inside me that was on the verge of breaking all of a sudden. I didn’t know when it had begun swelling—I’ve never been particularly good with emotions. The energy it takes to keep all of the memories at bay tends to push down the feelings connected with those memories. It’s the only way that someone like me, who lives as much in the past
