Except now there was more. A brief scrawled message below the last line of printing.
Except now there was more. A brief scrawled message below the last line of printing.
Something moved inside him. Some huge thing. His throat closed up, then opened to let out a long, wailing cry that was only grief at the top. He swayed, clutching at the Acura’s roof, lowered his forehead to his arm, and began to sob. From some great distance he heard the truck doors opening, heard Steve and Cynthia racing toward him. He wept. He thought of Pie, holding her doll and smiling up at him. He thought of his mother, dancing to the radio in the laundry room with the iron in one hand, laughing at her own foolishness. He thought of his father, sitting on the porch with his feet cocked up on the rail, a book in one hand and a beer in the other, waving to him as he came home from Brian’s, pushing his bike up the driveway toward the garage in the thick twilight. He thought of how much he had loved them, how much he would always love them.
And Johnny. Johnny standing on the dark edge of the China Shaft, saying Sometimes he makes us live.
David wept with his head down and the EXCUSED EARLY pass now crumpled in his closed fist, that huge thing still moving inside him, something like a landslide . . . but maybe not so bad.
Maybe, in the end, not so bad.
