Chapter 4

Suppose You Were Wrong



Where I am lying is a corn field. I can’t see it because of the shadow of the berm, but I can feel the stubble of chopped-off corn stalks. I’d know it anywhere, the way the stalks jab up into your soft parts – your belly and thighs. I’ve played hide-and-seek in our cornfields on the farm enough to remember.
I can’t see the front of the liquor store from here, so I can’t tell what Mr. Ponytail is doing. All I can see is the dark back wall of the stores and, above it, the glow of those big fluorescent lights over the parking lot, like a white halo above the building. There’s a separate cloud of smoke rising from the back of the pizza shop and the smell of food spreading from it, a good smell. But I don’t want to stay here all night. I need to move to a position where I can see the store front.
The berm – it’s about four or five feet high – seems to go all the way around the parking lot, almost up to the highway. If I stay low and peek up over the top a few times, I can probably get in a position to spy on the Porsche. I didn’t plan to be crawling around in a corn field. I hope I’m not getting my clothes too dirty. The ground seems dry, not muddy, so maybe I can just brush myself off later. Here goes!
Moving to my right, I can now see the top of the side of the building – if I remember right, the end that has the beauty salon. What I couldn’t see back there in the dark are the weeds – Queen Anne’s Lace and some other leafy plants – growing atop the berm. The corn stalks are jabbing my knees as I creep low. A tractor-trailer just went by out on the highway. It was a Wal-Mart truck heading north, to Burlington. I can hear the whine of its tires fading as it moves away. Now a car just whooshed past the parking lot. I can see the beam of its headlights, white on the pavement, and the red dots of its tail lights as it moves south, beside and behind me.
Peeking up over the berm, I notice that I am now close enough to the road that I can see along the front of the building. The Porsche is still on the far side of the lot, and there are a couple of cars in front of the pizza shop and the Laundromat. I don’t see the ponytail anywhere. Guess he’s still in the liquor store.
But wait, the driver’s door of the Porsche is open slightly, and there is a case of beer on the pavement beside it. Where’s Ponytail?
Now Ponytail comes out the front door of the liquor store, holds it open behind him with his right hand and looks to his left and then his right, toward where I’ hiding. Now he’s going back into the store, letting the door shut behind him.
Another car is pulling into the lot now, an older Chrysler. Three women – middle-aged, I think – are getting out, not walking too fast because they’re talking with each other. I remember our pond ducks walking the same way and quacking to each other as they waddled toward the water.
Just as the ladies get to the pizza shop door, Ponytail comes out from the liquor store. I duck, slowly so as not to be too noticeable. He was behind the women from me and I’m pretty sure he couldn’t have seen me. In the dark, I hear a car door shut – slam, really. Then I hear wheels spinning and gravel spraying, which is a surprise because this parking lot is paved in asphalt. Maybe it was some sand left over from last winter when they spread it on the snow. Now I hear an engine winding up. I know the sound of a Porsche, so I know it’s Ponytail. And now I see him accelerating south on the highway, like a race car leaving a pit stop. When he shifts gears, his tires chirp. Boy, he’s in a hurry.
But that’s good. Maybe I can get a ride from those ladies if they are heading south when they leave. I’ll just have to stay low and crawl closer to the roadway behind this berm and keep an eye on their car so when the time comes, I can stand up and stick out my thumb.
Or maybe I should be thumbing north. I’m beginning to wonder whether this was such a great idea, leaving Harwich. It’s not too late. I could get a ride back to Burlington and take a late bus back toward school. No one would know, not even Will.
I’ve been thinking about going away for a long time. It has seemed like the best move I could make. At some point, you have to take your life into your own hands. I’ve heard Grandpa Maurice say that. He says he never would have had such an exciting life if, when he was only a bit older than I, he hadn’t taken his big step.
I don’t know exactly when that was. Grandpa Maurice is Mom’s father – Maurice Patenaude is his real name. He’s one of my favorite relatives. I love it when he stops at the farm – usually around July Fourth – every summer. When I was small, he would pick me up at the picnic table we had set up out under the big maple trees on the lawn beside the house and he would put me on his knee and tell me stories. His were the best stories.
“I don’t suppose I’ve ever told you about the time . . .” he would begin, and for the next long hour, I’d listen to his adventures on the great sailing boats where he has served as a mate. A mate is an important person on these boats. He is Number Two, right next to the captain.
Often, Grandpa Maurice’s stories are about near-disasters. Like the time they realized at the very last minute that the mast – the tall pole that holds up the boat’s sails – was probably taller than the bridge they were trying to sail under. The captain told Grandpa Maurice to climb up to the top of the mast and keep an eye on the bridge. Grandpa Maurice said he was actually looking down onto the bridge when he reached the top of the mast, more than one hundred feet above the water. He called down: “We’ll never make it,” and the captain reversed the boat’s engine.
It was too late, my grandpa says. So all he could do was reach out and push against the steel of the bridge truss and hope the mast didn’t break.
“If my hands weren’t so strong from so many years of hard work, on the farm and at sea,” he told me, “the mast would have hit the bridge and broken.”
Instead, he was able to protect the mast until the captain got the boat running in reverse.
Whenever he’s told me a story like this, Grandpa Maurice has ended by saying what a wonderful adventure it was. And then he says he never would have had it if he had settled for the life that others had chosen for him.
For some reason, as I’m thinking about him, I can smell the bath soap Grandpa Maurice uses – Dial. I would be falling asleep in my bed at Harwich, thinking of his stories and smelling his soap and feeling the rough stubble of his beard which he used to rub against my cheek when I was little and hearing his voice – it sounds like music being played, rising and falling and growing hushed one minute and commanding as a judge the next – and I would imagine my own big step, some time in the distant future.
Maybe that’s why I supposed this journey I’ve set out on was the right idea. Now, crouching in the dirt and corn stubble, I wonder whether it was wrong all along. But then I think about how hard some jobs on the farm can seem at times, so hard you think you can’t work any more or your arms will fall off. And then you work anyway and, without you noticing, time passes, the work is done and your arms are still hitched to your shoulders.
So I’m hiding out from one ride. I’ll get another one, maybe from those ladies in the Chrysler. I see them coming toward the door with a couple of pizza boxes. I’ll just move closer to the road and be ready.
But no, I hear a racing engine and, looking back to my right, I can see the Porsche headlights slanting across the highway toward the parking lot as Ponytail downshifts, revving his engine. I duck. He comes to a skidding stop near the Chrysler and jumps out. Once again, I notice that he is wearing no socks on his feet, only those loafers. He’s really odd.
The ladies are moving slowly out through the door, still talking. They don’t seem to notice that Ponytail is stepping toward them. He raises the palm of his right hand, like he’s telling them to stop. They turn toward him and I can see he’s talking. His right hand is gesturing north and south toward the road. I can’t hear his voice, but I can see the ladies listening and then, the biggest one – she’s holding the pizza boxes – shakes her head and tries to move toward the Chrysler.
Ponytail wants to talk some more, and the big lady looks back at him, still walking toward her car, still shaking her head. The three ladies pile into their car, but they don’t go right away. Instead, they watch Ponytail walk toward my end of the building then pick up his pace to a trot. He circles in front of me, maybe 50 feet away, but I’ve scrunched down in the corn stalks trying to be silent, and sweat is breaking out on my forehead and my scalp is itching.
Now I hear Ponytail’s steps moving to my left, toward the rear of the building and the shadows. I don’t move at first but then slowly raise my head so that I’m looking through a stalk of dry Queen Anne’s Lace.
It is a minute later when Ponytail comes out from behind the far end of the building, next to the liquor store, and trots to the Porsche. He sinks down into its driver’s seat, closes the door and starts his engine. The ladies are all looking at him, the one in the passenger seat now holding the pizza boxes, the big one in the driver’s seat and the third one in back.
Ponytail looks in his rear view mirror. If he looked carefully, he would see the top of my head and my eyes peering over the berm. He puts the Porsche into reverse and backs slowly toward my side of the parking lot, actually behind the Chrysler, and then slowly pulls out onto the highway, driving north.
Is this the last I’ll see of him?