down the dirt driveway.
Moments later he was flying along the asphalt between farm fields, bare earth on one side with the oats and the broccoli all harvested for the year, the other side thick with withered potato vines, the crop ready to be dug. The night was clear and cold with an icy sliver of moon hanging in it like a curved claw; Spud paused on a hilltop to survey the barns, pastures, and clumps of dark forest that went on all the way to the western horizon.
Beyond that lay the Great North Woods, partly tamed in a few places but mostly wild, empty of people, and full of ways to die: youcould get lost and starve, sprain your ankle and freeze, or fall off a cliff and get stuck in a ravine, howling yourself hoarse.
Or if you went out there to kill yourself on purpose, you could do that, too. With, say, your dad’s old deer rifle which he hadn’t used for years, but which still stood in a glass-fronted gun case in the dining room, along with a box of bullets.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, age eighteen, Spud still had what his high school guidance counselor had called options. Like, he could join the army and go fight whatever war was supposed to be so important this week. Get his ass shot off while firing his weapon at other young guys he had nothing against.
Yeah, there’s a plan
, he thought sourly as he pushed off on the bike again. Like in a movie he’d seen in which poor kids were set to fighting each other in an arena; the winner got food, warm clothes, a chance at a life.
It was the losers, though, that he’d found fascinating. The looks on their faces as they realized:
Not me. I’m not one of the lucky ones. I’m not going to make it
.
He knew that expression. It was the same one he saw in the smeared bathroom mirror each morning when he brushed his teeth.
You gotta pull yourself up by your own bootstraps
, people said.
But he wasn’t that stupid. He’d actually been on the college prep track, taking physics and chemistry and doing quite well, thank you, until the old man got nailed with that last DUI and had his license to drive the big rigs yanked.
The swishing noise heard throughout the household then had been the sound of everyone’s hopes going down the drain, not just Spud’s own. So: no college. Pretty soon he was going to have to find some kind of work just to help support the household.
But pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps was still against the laws of physics. A guy like Spud, without money or connections, needed a way to get one or preferably both of those things if he was going to escape the living-dead existence that was Bearkill. And now he might’ve found that way: the lady cop.
His first attempt to profit from her arrival, confronting her in theFood King and practically demanding that she pay him for as-yet-unspecified information, had of course not worked; too ballsy, he told himself as he pedaled. Too fast, she didn’t even know him, and the way he looked—the body art, the nose stud and lip ring, plus his dreads and angry facial blemishes … No wonder she’d figured him for a creep. So he’d rethought his strategy.
Watch her
, the guy in the van had said, coming upon Spud on the street just outside her new office this afternoon.
Watch her. And tell me what she gets up to. I’ll pay
.
Spud had seen the guy around town a few times but not often; they weren’t friends. So his first notion had been to tell the new woman cop what he’d been asked to do, maybe try for a reward out of it. But after the way she’d gotten right up in his face, he’d decided it might be simpler—and safer; the guy had a mean vibe about him—just to do what he’d been asked.
Watch her
—
Hey, what could it hurt? Spud pedaled hard past the grassy front yard of a farmhouse with its wide freshly graveled driveway that led to the barn and silos. A startled spaniel flew furiously down to the dark road and ran behind him barking, then fell back.
He passed Town Hall, a low
Moments later he was flying along the asphalt between farm fields, bare earth on one side with the oats and the broccoli all harvested for the year, the other side thick with withered potato vines, the crop ready to be dug. The night was clear and cold with an icy sliver of moon hanging in it like a curved claw; Spud paused on a hilltop to survey the barns, pastures, and clumps of dark forest that went on all the way to the western horizon.
Beyond that lay the Great North Woods, partly tamed in a few places but mostly wild, empty of people, and full of ways to die: youcould get lost and starve, sprain your ankle and freeze, or fall off a cliff and get stuck in a ravine, howling yourself hoarse.
Or if you went out there to kill yourself on purpose, you could do that, too. With, say, your dad’s old deer rifle which he hadn’t used for years, but which still stood in a glass-fronted gun case in the dining room, along with a box of bullets.
Not tonight, though. Tonight, age eighteen, Spud still had what his high school guidance counselor had called options. Like, he could join the army and go fight whatever war was supposed to be so important this week. Get his ass shot off while firing his weapon at other young guys he had nothing against.
Yeah, there’s a plan
, he thought sourly as he pushed off on the bike again. Like in a movie he’d seen in which poor kids were set to fighting each other in an arena; the winner got food, warm clothes, a chance at a life.
It was the losers, though, that he’d found fascinating. The looks on their faces as they realized:
Not me. I’m not one of the lucky ones. I’m not going to make it
.
He knew that expression. It was the same one he saw in the smeared bathroom mirror each morning when he brushed his teeth.
You gotta pull yourself up by your own bootstraps
, people said.
But he wasn’t that stupid. He’d actually been on the college prep track, taking physics and chemistry and doing quite well, thank you, until the old man got nailed with that last DUI and had his license to drive the big rigs yanked.
The swishing noise heard throughout the household then had been the sound of everyone’s hopes going down the drain, not just Spud’s own. So: no college. Pretty soon he was going to have to find some kind of work just to help support the household.
But pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps was still against the laws of physics. A guy like Spud, without money or connections, needed a way to get one or preferably both of those things if he was going to escape the living-dead existence that was Bearkill. And now he might’ve found that way: the lady cop.
His first attempt to profit from her arrival, confronting her in theFood King and practically demanding that she pay him for as-yet-unspecified information, had of course not worked; too ballsy, he told himself as he pedaled. Too fast, she didn’t even know him, and the way he looked—the body art, the nose stud and lip ring, plus his dreads and angry facial blemishes … No wonder she’d figured him for a creep. So he’d rethought his strategy.
Watch her
, the guy in the van had said, coming upon Spud on the street just outside her new office this afternoon.
Watch her. And tell me what she gets up to. I’ll pay
.
Spud had seen the guy around town a few times but not often; they weren’t friends. So his first notion had been to tell the new woman cop what he’d been asked to do, maybe try for a reward out of it. But after the way she’d gotten right up in his face, he’d decided it might be simpler—and safer; the guy had a mean vibe about him—just to do what he’d been asked.
Watch her
—
Hey, what could it hurt? Spud pedaled hard past the grassy front yard of a farmhouse with its wide freshly graveled driveway that led to the barn and silos. A startled spaniel flew furiously down to the dark road and ran behind him barking, then fell back.
He passed Town Hall, a low
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