Chapter 5

Shaking the Tail



As the tail lights of the Porsche disappear in the darkness, the big lady driving the Chrysler starts her engine. Now is my chance. I scurry, still crouched, behind the berm up to the highway. Then I stand up, brush off my clothes and try to act as though I’ve been waiting there all along. Behind me, to the south on the highway shoulder, is a sign – Speed Limit 50. I am still within the glow of the fluorescent parking lot lights and so is the sign, but we’re just at the edge of darkness. I wait and hope: Please turn my way!
My plea is answered. The Chrysler’s lights sweep across the lot as the car backs away from the building to point south. Suddenly, I’m staring into high beams, blinded. I swing my right arm out, thumb raised.
And the Chrysler, moving slowly, passes me by! My heart thumps. I’ve felt this way before – not often, but once or twice is enough. The list is posted on a Harwich wall – members of the honor roll; captains of the eighth grade ski team; officers of the ninth grade class. I expected to be selected for all and I made none of the lists. My chest caved in just as it’s caving now. Except this time, I’ll be alone here on the side of the road. Somehow, I trusted these older ladies to get me beyond the Porsche and the Ponytail. And now . . .
I turn to watch the Chrysler disappear down the highway. Suddenly, I see brake lights. The car is pulling over to the shoulder, not 200 feet past me. And now, in the darkness above which the sky, cloudless and moonless, is beginning to reveal the pin pricks of starlight, I see backup lights. The big lady is coming toward me with her friends.
My backpack was at my feet. Now I swing it up on my right shoulder, hoping my guess is right. Just then, a semi-trailer that I hadn’t noticed heading south rushes past me and then the Chrysler. It rocks the air, a shock wave that knocks me sideways and probably shakes the Chrysler. But the car continues in reverse and stops directly in front of me. The rear window rolls down and a woman – middle aged as I had guessed; maybe thirty-five – looks at me with a scowl on her forehead. Her hair is brown with short bangs. Her cheeks are fat bunches, her mouth is small and round and her teeth at first glance appear to be oval.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“Rutland,” I say. I don’t move toward the car. I don’t want to jinx the ride that I’m not certain will be offered. I hear a voice from the front seat say: “Ask him!”
“Are you the boy who was riding in that sports car that just left here?” she says, her eyebrows increasing the seriousness of her scowl. She could be asking whether it was I who just tracked the mud in the living room or just ate all the cookies in the jar. She could be Mom.
“Yes,” I say. I’m not going to offer more until she asks. I don’t know where this is going and I have a long night ahead of me if I don’t get a ride right now.
The window on the front door rolls down, and I glance inside. The woman nearest me is a bit younger than the woman in the back seat but looks like she could be her sister. The driver – the big woman, short blond hair, also a fat face – leans forward to look around her passenger at me. She is scowling, too.
“Why did you get out of the Porsche?” she asks.
I’m accustomed to telling the truth, so it comes out naturally. “The man driving the car wanted to buy beer and drink it with me,” I say. “I didn’t want to.”
“Get in the back seat,” the big woman says. “We need to talk about this.”
I unsling my pack and pull the rear door open. The lady in the back seat is sliding across to the far side, so there’s room for me. When I close the door, the Chrysler starts to move. I can smell the pizza as we head south in the darkness. The lady in front of me is holding the two boxes on her lap.
“Doris, hand that top box back to Fran,” the big woman says. “Fran, give our guest a slice, will you? You do eat pizza?” she says, turning her head toward me but still looking at the road.
“Yes, Ma’am,” I say. “But I’m not too hungry.”
“Nonsense!” the big lady says. “Give him a slice, Fran.”
Fran tries to open the box in the dark back seat but she’s holding it backward so the top opens against her. There is an explosion of hot pizza smells and I feel the saliva flowing in my mouth. When she finally gets the box turned round, she extracts a slice, puts it in a napkin and hands it to me. It is hot and smells very good.
In the front seat, Doris has handed a slice to the big woman, who looks like she could eat an entire large pizza herself. Then Doris takes a slice and begins eating.
The big woman has eaten half of her slice when she says: “My name is Betty. Betty Thornton. What is yours, young fella?”
“Michael Benoit,” I say between bites.
“That’s a good Vermont name,” Betty says. I can hear in the way she says Vermont – VahMONT, she pronounces it – that she is local. “Where you from?”
“Northeast Kingdom,” I say, not wanting to get too specific if I can help it. The Kingdom is the whole quarter of Vermont north of St. Johnsbury. It’s mostly farms and forests and very small towns, too small for anyone to know their names. Harwich is on the edge of the Kingdom, not quite an honest part of it. Most people who know Vermont will have heard about Harwich, I’ve found. But I’m not from there, only go to school there – or, I should say, went to school there until tonight – so I’m not lying when I say Northeast Kingdom.
Betty won’t settle without getting more information, though. “You go to school there?” she asks. “Let me guess. Tenth grade,” she says.
“I quit school,” I say in all honesty, because as of tonight, I have.
“You don’t look like a dropout,” Fran says. She has turned in her seat belt half way toward me. The pizza box is now resting on top of a big blanket folded into a square between us. She’s just nibbling on her pizza. “You look like one of them kids from the prep schools.”
“You’re right, Fran,” Betty says. “He looks like he’s from Boston or maybe New York.”
“No he doesn’t,” says Doris. “He’s too cute to be a city boy. He’s from VuhMONT, all right, aren’t you, Mikey?” Fran gives Doris a hard look but then smiles at me.
“We were wondering, Honey, about that man in the sports car,” she says. “D’you know him?”
My mouth is full of pizza, so I just shake my head. “Just hitchhikin’,” I say, dropping the “g” so I’ll sound more like the Vermonter that I am. I hadn’t realized I’d lost my local accent already. But when you live twenty-four hours a day with foreigners, you begin to speak their language.
“Why you going to Rutland if you come from the Kingdom?” Betty asks, reaching into the box beside her for another slice of pizza.
I have the answer ready. I practiced it all afternoon while I was sitting in the library at the University of Vermont in Burlington. “Actually,” I say, “I’m just going through Rutland. “I have a job lined up in New York, working in a restaurant.”
“How did a hick from VuhMONT get a job in New York?” Betty laughs.
“We sell our milk – part of it – to the organic cooperative,” I tell her. This is true Vermont farms do a good business catering to the organic restaurants in New York. “My folks thought it would be good experience for me rubbing shoulders with the city folks for a while,” I add. This is only partly not true. They sure thought it would be good for me to live with city folks at Harwich. But I’m not comfortable straying too far from the truth. Lies will catch up with you, always, Mom says. And she always knows when I am fibbing. I never get away with it. These ladies could be Mom’s sisters, the way they talk and think. So I know I’d better keep close to honest.
“So you’re a farm boy,” Betty says. “Well, then, you should know enough not to take a ride in a fancy sports car. Do you know the man told us you stole something from him?”
“Why would he say that?” I ask, stunned by this news.
“He wanted us to help him find you,” says Betty. “He asked if we saw you on the highway or around the liquor store.”
“What did he say I stole,” I ask.
“A gun,” Betty says, her voice growing stern, like Mrs. Hurley, our grade school principal back home when she was angry with you.
Instantly I’m getting a sick feeling in my stomach, and it’s not the pizza. I’m wondering if Ponytail actually has a gun in the Porsche.
“We had to get a look at you before we offered you a ride,” Fran says, serious as can be. “We didn’t like the sports car man. Didn’t trust him. But we also were worried if you really might have a gun. Do you?”
I arch up against the seat belt and reach in the pocket of my blue jeans, and Fran rears back, like a dog that thinks a man is going to hit him. I pull out the jack knife.
“I was told I should carry this while I’m hitchhiking,” I say. “But to tell you the truth, I’d be afraid to use it, even in an emergency. I wonder why that man said I had taken a gun.”
“He was angry, I can tell you that,” says Doris. “We didn’t trust him, so we thought maybe you were in danger.” She finishes her slice of pizza and takes another from the box. “That’s why we backed up after we passed you. You looked okay.”
“Thanks,” I say.