Eddie knew that walk, those steps, the circle. In and out, doors and chains. Van doors slamming shut. Metal doors rolling closed. He’d stolen more than a few cars before he even had a license to drive, with no parent around to notice he wasn’t in bed. When he was in group homes, they rotated kids through quickly, and often even the well-meaning fosters couldn’t keep up with their names. Bigger boys started calling him Boost. He could make anything start. But he couldn’t lie to save his life. Then he got caught. At fourteen, he was looking at a two-year sentence in juvie.
Mr. Flemmons, a science teacher he barely knew from the school he rarely attended, had approached Eddie and his lawyer before the hearing. Eddie remembered never having felt so small before, sitting on that wooden bench, men in pressed suits and polished shoes passing behind Mr. Flemmons as he knelt on the floor in front of Eddie.
“Why do you like stealing cars?” he’d asked.
“I don’t like stealing them,” Eddie answered.
“So what do you like about it?”
“I like making them start.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m good at it.”
“I can teach you to be even better at it,” Mr. Flemmons said. “If starting the cars is the part you really like.”
Eddie had nodded, his eyes down, pimpled chin still stinging from a fresh shave with a disposable razor. Mr. Flemmons stepped aside, spoke to the lawyer, and strode down the hall a ways. Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie saw Mr. Flemmons knock on a big wooden door. It swung open, and he stepped inside.
The hearing was moved to the judge’s chambers. Eddie sat down at the nicest table he’d ever seen, and he imagined it was the same kind of table knights sat around and did whatever knights did when they came together. Eddie had wished the faces staring at him then were hidden behind armor—his lawyer, Mr. Flemmons, the judge, the prosecuting attorney, and the man whose car he’d been caught stealing. Eddie had touched his forehead to the mahogany tabletop, feeling how cool it was, how damp it immediately became with his sweat, the glossy table foggy with the heat of his drowning heart.
Eddie’s sentence became longer and shorter at the same time. He had to provide a list of all the cars he had stolen and where he’d taken them, then write a letter of apology to each of the owners as they were identified.
“I don’t know how to write too good,” he’d said.
Mr. Flemmons spoke up. “I’ll teach you. I can teach you everything you want to know about motors and electricity and batteries, too. But first, you have to agree to let me help you improve your reading and writing. You will not miss a day of school, and you will spend every afternoon in my classroom until your guardian picks you up.”
“And you will perform oil changes on my client’s car every three months until the day you graduate,” the other attorney had interjected, “and you will wash and vacuum it once a month.”
“Is he going to let me touch his car again?” Eddie had asked Mr. Flemmons. He heard the man turn away.
“Any slipups and this offer expires immediately and the original sentence will apply,” the man’s attorney answered for him.
Eddie remembered how he couldn’t speak, couldn’t make a single sound come out. So he nodded. The attorney and his client leaped from their chairs like the table had caught fire. The judge, his lawyer, and Mr. Flemmons stared back at him—two dark faces sandwiching an old white man with whiter hair. They had reminded Eddie of an Oreo cookie.
“This is your shot, Eddie,” the judge had said. “Don’t blow it.”
At first, the owner of the car would stay inside his brick house when Mr. Flemmons brought Eddie to service or wash the car. Then one day, about six months after the hearing, he was standing in the driveway in plain clothes and asked Mr. Flemmons to teach him, too. Mr. Flemmons stepped aside and asked Eddie to walk him through the steps. Then Eddie, his face and pants streaked in oil, had whispered, “Do you want me to show you how I started your car?”
Eddie smiled to himself as he sat on the old couch, remembering the curiosity like fishhooks that pulled up the man’s eyebrows. “Hell yeah,” he’d said.
The flicker of joy within him sunk, tethered, always tethered, to Hazel. His relationship with Stan Flemmons was one of the reasons Eddie had been supportive of Jonathon Walks taking her under his wing. Not that she was a troubled kid in need of a shot—Hazel was a saint. But she was also alone. Eddie might sing along to a favorite song on the radio in the car, but music was background noise to him, something to regard, like the temperature or the season. It could set a tone, sure. That’s why they used it in movies. Even tone-deaf folks like Eddie could take the hint.
Still, he was grateful for Jonathon. Even if Hazel was dead, and maybe she was… maybe she was… that man had brought the life back to her eyes for just a little while.
MICHAEL Chapter 39 | October 2004 | Tarson, Georgia
I PASS THE TARSON CITY limit population sign. It hasn’t changed, save the longer streaks of moss and the deeper pocks of corrosion. I wander aimlessly down Main Street. Perhaps my time in Atlanta has colored my perspective, but I swear the buildings look shorter, the road narrower, the lights slower.
An old Toyota Tacoma in front of me slows, approaching a green light at an empty intersection. Wiry gray hair crowns the driver’s peach-colored scalp in a crescent, and I nearly prompt him with my horn. I sit back and rest the heel of my hand against the six-o’clock position on the steering wheel of my Jeep.
One honk and everyone would think I’m not from around here.
I press my palm flat against the center of the wheel. The horn blares for a second and a half. The truck jumps ahead, then the brake lights flash. An older man hangs out the window far enough to look back at me. I roll my window down and stick my hand out, gesturing the opposite of an apology, emulating what I’ve seen a hundred drivers do on Atlanta’s streets.
The driver waves me off, his frown visible in the side-view mirror, and drives ahead. I turn at the intersection. I wasn’t planning to, but I don’t have any plan, really. Fate told me to come back, that she’s ready, that I’m ready. So here I am.
I am relieved to find that the antiques shop is still here, an open sign in the door. With any luck, Rick is still here, too, and I’ll be able to gauge the community’s reaction to my potential return without inciting a riot. I try to peer inside as I drive past, but the windows are dusty, and although I’m sure the store is stuffed from wall to wall with trinkets and junk, from the outside I see only brown. Even the plants in the window planters are curled and dying. I imagine they would snap between my fingers.
Bones don’t snap, by the way. They’re not brittle, not unless someone is really old and calcium depleted, or if the bones have been cooked. Raw bones are quite hard and remain so long after exposure.
I pull into a spot, one of three marked for the store, but the whole row in front of the sleepy strip of stores is completely empty. I leave my stick and my pack on the floor behind my seat and step out of the car. My shoes are the shiniest thing in this town, and I nearly consider changing them before walking farther onto the sidewalk. The sound of another car approaching spurs me along, and I push through the door to the antiques shop, a little bell above my head jingling to announce my arrival.