She didn’t believe him. She refused to call the cops, and she wouldn’t disturb the Bordens with a call at that hour.
At nine-thirty the following morning, she talked to Roy on the phone. Then she talked to his mother. She insisted on privacy, so Colin didn’t even hear her side of the conversation.
After she had spoken with the Bordens, she tried to make Colin recant his story. When he wouldn’t she became furious.
At eleven o‘clock, after an extended argument, she and Colin went to the junkyard. Neither of them spoke during the drive.
She parked at the end of the dirt lane, near the shack. They got out of the car.
Colin was uneasy. Echoes of last night’s terror still reverberated in his mind.
His bicycle was lying near the front porch steps. Roy’s bike was gone, of course.
“You see,” he said. “I was here.”
She didn’t respond. She wheeled the bike around to the back of the car.
Colin followed her. “It happened exactly the way I said it did.”
She unlocked the trunk. “Help me.”
They lifted the bicycle into the back of the car, but it wouldn’t fit well enough to allow the compartment to be closed and locked. She found a spool of wire in the tool kit and used a length of that to tie down the trunk lid.
“Doesn’t the bicycle prove anything?” Colin demanded.
She turned on him. “It proves you were here.”
“Like I said.”
“But not with Roy.”
“He tried to kill me!”
“He tells me he was home last night from nine-thirty on.”
“Well, of course that’s what he’d tell you! But-”
“That’s also what his mother tells me.”
“It’s not true.”
“Are you calling Mrs. Borden a liar?”
“Well, she probably doesn’t know she’s lying.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Roy probably told her he was home, in his room, and she believed him.”
“She knows he was home, not just because he told her so, but because she was home last night, too.”
“But did she actually talk to him?”
“What?”
“Last night? Did she talk to him? Or did she just assume he was up in his room?”
“I didn’t grill her in detail about-”
“Did she actually see him last night?”
“Colin-”
“If she didn’t actually see him,” Colin said excitedly, “she can’t know for sure that he was up there in his room.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No. It isn’t. They don’t talk to each other much in that house. They don’t pay attention to each other. They don’t go looking for each other to strike up a conversation.”
“She’d know he was there when she looked in to say good night.”
“But that’s just what I’m trying to tell you. She’d never do that. She’d never go out of her way to say good night to him. I know it. I’d bet on it. They don’t act like other people. There’s something really strange about them. There’s something wrong in that house.”
“What do you think it is?” she asked angrily. “Are they invaders from another planet?”
“Of course not.”
“Like in one of those crazy goddamned books you’re always reading?”
“No.”
“Should we call Buck Rogers to save us?”
“I just… I was only trying to say that they don’t seem to love Roy.”
“That’s an awful thing to say.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s true.”
She shook her head, amazed. “Did it ever occur to you that you might be too young to fully understand an emotion as complex as love, let alone all the forms it can take? My God, you’re an inexperienced fourteen-year-old boy! Who are you to judge the Bordens on something like that?”
“But if you could see the way they act. If you could hear the way they talk to each other. And they never do anything together. Even we do more things together than the Bordens do.”
“‘Even we’? What do you mean by that?”
“Well, we don’t do many things together, do we? I mean as a family.”
There were things in her eyes that he didn’t want to see. He looked away.
“In case you’ve forgotten,” she said, “I’m divorced from your father. And also in case it somehow slipped your mind, it was a bitter divorce. The pits. So what the hell do you expect? Do you think the three of us should go on picnics now and then?”
Colin shuffled his feet in the grass. “I mean even just you and me. The two of us. We don’t see much of each other, and the Bordens see even less of Roy.”
“When do I have time, for God’s sake?”
He shrugged.
“I work hard,” she said.
“I know.”
“Do you think I like working as hard as I do?”
“You seem to.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Then why-”
“I’m trying to build a future for us. Can you understand? I want to be sure we never have to worry about money. I want security. Big security. But you don’t appreciate it.”
“I do. I know you work hard.”
“If you appreciated what I’m doing for us, for you, then you wouldn’t have tried to upset me with this bullshit story about Roy trying to kill you and-”
“It’s not bullshit.”
“Don’t use that word.”
“What word?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Bullshit?”
She slapped his face.
Shocked, he put a hand to his cheek.
“Don’t smirk at me,” she said.
“I wasn’t.”
She turned away from him. She walked a few steps into the grass and stared at the junkyard for a while.
He almost cried. But he didn’t want her to see him crying, so he bit his lip and held the tears back. After a while, the hurt and humiliation were replaced by anger, and then he didn’t have to bite his lip any more.
When she gathered her composure, she came back to him. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I lost my temper, and that’s a bad example to set.”
“It didn’t hurt.”
“You upset me so much.”
“I didn’t want to.”
“You upset me because I know what’s going on.” He waited.
“You came out here last night on your bike,” she said. “But not with Roy. I know who you came with.”
He said nothing.
“Oh,” she said, “I don’t know their names, but I know what kind of kids they are.”
He blinked. “Who’re you talking about?”
“You know who I’m talking about. I’m talking about these other friends of yours, these smart-ass kids you see standing on street comers these days, the punks on those skateboards who try to run you off in the gutter when you walk by them.”
“You think kids like that would want anything to do with me? I’m one of the people they’d run into the gutter.”
“You’re being evasive.”
“I’m telling the truth. Roy was the only friend I had.”
“Nonsense.”
“I don’t make friends easily.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
He was silent.
“Since we moved to Santa Leona,” she said, “you’ve gotten mixed up with the wrong kids.”
“No.”
“And last night you came out here with some of them because this is probably a popular place-in fact, it’s just an ideal place-to sneak away and smoke some dope and do… all sorts of other things.”
“No.”
“Last night you came here with them, popped a few pills-God knows what they were-and then you tripped out.”
“No.”
“Admit it.”
“It’s not true.”
“Colin, I know you’re basically a good boy. You’ve never been in any trouble before. Now you’ve made a mistake. You’ve let some other kids lead you astray.”
“No.”
“If you’ll just admit it, if you’ll face up to it, I won’t be mad at you. I’ll respect you for accepting your medicine. I’ll help you, Colin, if you’ll just give me a chance.”
“Give me a chance.”
“You popped a couple of pills-”
“No.”
“-and for a few hours you were really gone, really out of it.”
“No.”
“When you finally came around, you realized you’d wandered away, back toward town, without your bike.”
“Jeez.”
“You weren’t sure how to get back here and find your bike. Your clothes were torn, filthy, and it was one o‘clock in the morning. You panicked. You didn’t know how you were going to explain all that, so you made up this foolish story about Roy Borden.”
“Will you listen?” He was barely able to keep from screaming at her.
“I’m listening.”
“Roy Borden is a killer. He-”
“You disappoint me.”
“Look at what I am, for Christ’s sake!”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Can’t you see me?”
“Don’t shout at me.”
“Can’t you see what I am?”
“You’re a boy in trouble and getting deeper.”
Colin was furious with her because she was forcing him to reveal himself in a way he never had done before. “Do I look like one of those kids? Do I look like the kind of guy they’d even bother to say hello to? They wouldn’t even take time to spit on me. To them, I’m just a skinny, bashful, near-sighted creep.” Tears shimmered in the corners of his eyes. He hated himself for being unable to hold them back. “Roy was the best friend I had. He was the only friend. Why would I make up a crazy story just to get him in trouble?”
“You were confused and desperate.” She stared at him as if her gaze would crack him and reveal the truth as she imagined it to be. “And according to Roy, you were mad at him because he wouldn’t come out here with you and the others.”
Colin gaped at her. “You mean you got this whole theory from Roy? This whole dumb thing about me taking drugs-it comes from Roy?”
“I suspected it last night. When I mentioned it to Roy, he said I was right. He told me you were very upset with him because he wouldn’t come to the party-”
“He tried to kill me!”
“-and because he wouldn’t contribute any money to buy the pills.”
“There weren’t any pills.”
“Roy says there were, and it explains a lot.”
“Did he name even one of these wild dopers I’m supposed to be hanging out with?”
“They’re none of my concern. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Jeez.”
“I am worried about you.”
“But for the wrong reason.”
“Playing with drugs is stupid and dangerous.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“If you want to be treated like an adult, you’ve got to start acting like one,” she said in a lecturing tone that galled him.
“An adult admits his mistakes. An adult always accepts the consequences of his acts.”
“Not most of the adults I see.”
“If you persist in this bullheaded attempt to-”
“How can you believe him instead of me?”
“He’s a very nice boy. He-”
“You’ve only talked to him a couple of times!”
“Often enough to know he’s a well-rounded boy and very mature for his age.”
“He’s not! He’s not like that at all. He’s lying!”
“His story certainly rings truer than yours,” Weezy said. “And he strikes me as a sensible boy.”
“You think I’m not sensible?”
“Colin, how many nights have you gotten me out of bed because you were convinced something was crawling around in the attic?”
“Not that often,” he mumbled.
“Yes. That often. Quite often. And was there ever anything there when we looked?”
He sighed.
“Was there?” she insisted.
“No.”
“How many nights have you been absolutely certain that something was lurking outside the house, trying to get in through your window?”
He didn’t answer.
She pressed her advantage. “And do level-headed boys spend all of their time building plastic models of movie monsters?”
“Is that why you don’t believe me? Because I watch a lot of horror movies? Because I read science fiction?”
“Stop that. Don’t try to make me sound simple-minded,” she said.
“Shit.”
“You’re also picking up bad language from this crowd you’re running around with, and I won’t allow it.”
He walked away from her, into the junkyard.
“Where are you going?”
As he walked away, he said, “I can show you proof.”
“We’re leaving,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
“I should have been at the gallery an hour ago.”
“I can show you proof, if you’ll bother to look at it.”
He walked through the junkyard, toward the point at which the hill dropped down to the railroad tracks. He didn’t know for sure if she was following him, but he tried to act as if he had no doubt about it. He believed that looking back would be a sign of weakness, and he felt that he had been a weakling for too damned long.
Last night Hermit Hobson’s collection of wrecks had been a sinister labyrinth. Now, in the bright daylight, it was only sad, a very sad and lonely place. By squinting slightly, you could look through the dead and pitted surface, through the sorry present, and see the past glowing in all of it. Once, the cars had been shiny and beautiful. People had invested work and money and dreams in these machines, and all that had come to this: rust.
When he reached the western end of the junkyard, he had trouble believing what he could plainly see. The proof he had intended to show Weezy was gone.
The dilapidated pickup still stood ten feet from the brink, where Roy had been forced to abandon it, but the corrugated metal runners were not there any more. Although the truck had stopped with its angled front wheels in the dirt, the rear wheels had remained squarely on the tracks. Colin clearly remembered that. But now all four wheels rested upon bare earth.
Colin realized what had happened and knew that he should have expected it. Last night, when he had hidden successfully from Roy in the arroyo west of the railway line, Roy had not rushed immediately into town to wait for him at the house, but had finally given up the chase and had come back here to erase all traces of his plan to wreck the train. He had carted away every loose section of the make-shift track that he’d constructed for the truck. Then he had even jacked up the rear wheels of the Ford to retrieve the last two incriminating sheets of metal that were pinned under them.
The grass behind the truck, which surely must have been smashed flat when the Ford passed over it, now stood nearly as tall and undisturbed as the grass on all other sides of the junker; it swayed gently in the breeze. Roy had taken time to rake it, thereby removing the twin impressions of the pickup’s wake. On closer inspection, Colin saw that the resilient blades of grass had sustained minor damage. A few were broken. A few more were bent. Some were pinched. But those subtle signs would not be proof enough to convince Weezy that his story was true.
Although it was twenty feet closer to the brow of the hill than any of the other wrecks, the Ford looked as if it had been in that same spot, undisturbed, for years and years.
Colin knelt beside the pickup and reached behind one of the rusty wheels. He brought out a gob of grease.
“What are you doing?” Weezy asked.
He turned to her and held up his greasy hand. “This is all I can show you. He took away everything else, all the other proof.”
“What’s that?”
“Grease.”
“So?”
It was hopeless.