Peter Abrahams - Bullet Point

He returned to the squirrel, lying in a small but growing red pool. That one paw was still trying to do things, more feebly now. And that soft brown eye: on him for sure. Wyatt bent down, laid the towel over the body, at the same time hearing the car door open. He rose, took a deep breath, raised his bat, and brought it down on the lump under the towel, just as hard as he thought necessary, and no harder.

He felt Greer beside him. She gripped his upper arm, squeezed so hard it hurt, even made him gasp out loud. Nothing moved under the towel. Greer let go, squatted down, carefully rolled up the towel so no part of the body showed, and took it to the ditch that ran beside the road. Greer placed the bundle in the ditch.

She turned and approached Wyatt. He realized she wasn’t as tall as he’d thought, a good half foot shorter than him. Without a word or any preliminaries, she took his head in her hands, pulled it down to hers, and kissed him on the mouth, hard at first and then softer. Not the first girl he’d kissed, but this was on another level, so much more knowledgeable. Wyatt felt the power of the person behind the kiss.

He heard a car coming and backed away. The car-a black-and-white cop car-pulled out of a side street and drove up the hill, slowing down and then stopping beside Wyatt and Greer. The window slid down and a cop peered out, a gray-haired cop with baggy eyes and a fleshy pink face.

“Some problem?” he said.

“Uh,” said Wyatt.

“Ran over a squirrel,” Greer said. The cop’s gaze went to her. “Put it in the ditch.”

The cop nodded. A moment or two of silence went by. “You Bert Torrance’s daughter?”

“Yeah,” Greer said, more grunt than verbal reply.

“Recognize you from the lanes.” Greer looked him in the eye, said nothing. The cop looked right back. “Drive safe,” he said. The window slid back up and he drove off.

Wyatt and Greer stood together by the roadside. “Isn’t small-town living grand?” Greer said. “That’s enough adventure for one day.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take me home.”

He looked at her. Her face was flushed, her eyes a little blurry. “You’re mad about the squirrel?”

“What would I be mad about? It was an accident.”

“But, you know, what I did after.”

“What you did after?” Greer said. “That couldn’t have been better, you blockhead.” She laughed. “So damn good it got me hot.”

Wyatt’s mouth went dry; his knees got weak. He found those weren’t mere figures of speech.

Greer’s one-bedroom apartment was on the top floor of the building with the strange stone head over the door. Wyatt didn’t get to see much of the living room-just barely taking in some musical instruments-electric guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin-before Greer took him by the belt buckle and drew him into the bedroom.

“First time?” she said, now on the bed.

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say-”

“No problem,” Greer said, working on that buckle. “Just relax.”

“Don’t think I can.”

She laughed.

Some time later, Wyatt felt more relaxed than he ever had in his life, and not just relaxed but something far greater than that, like the world was all right after all, and so was his place in it.

“So,” Greer said. They lay side by side, her head on his shoulder, in a slightly awkward position, in fact, even hurting a bit, but Wyatt felt no hurry to make any changes whatsoever. “Where were we when we were interrupted?”

“Your stepfather,” Wyatt said.

“Right,” said Greer. “The biggest asshole in the world.”

“Not so sure about that.”

“There’s competition?”

“Yeah.” And Wyatt told her about Rusty, and a story or two about his home life back in East Canton, and how he’d come to Silver City.

“Wow,” Greer said. “We got parallels here, sports fans. Where’s your real father?”

“That’s the most amazing part,” Wyatt said.

The next day, Sunday, rain slanting by in sheets outside the window, Wyatt back at Greer’s, the two of them in her bed.

“Normally I hate the rain,” Greer said. “But today I can’t think straight.”

“How come?”

“How come? If you don’t know, who does?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s your fault, you blockhead. You’re making me spacey.”

Then came a period of relative quiet, interrupted by the ring of Wyatt’s cell phone. He reached down to the floor, groped the phone out of the pocket of his jeans, checked the number on the screen: his mom. “Have to take this,” he said.

“Why?” said Greer.

He held his finger over his lips, pressed the answer button. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, Wyatt. How are you doing?”

“Great. Uh, fine. I’m all right.”

“Well, good. You sound happy.”

“Yeah, you know.”

Greer got a mischievous look on her face and reached for him under the covers. Wyatt left the bed, stood by the window.

“Where are you?” his mom said.

“In Silver City, Mom-you know that.”

“I meant now-are you at ho-at Dub’s aunt’s?”

“On my way.”

“In the car?”

“No.” Wyatt didn’t like lying to his mom, or to anyone, really. “At a friend’s.”

“So you’re making friends?”

“Uh-huh.” Wyatt felt Greer’s eyes on his back. He turned. She was sitting up in bed, making no attempt to hold up the sheets. Her finger made a quick pattern in the air: QA? He almost laughed.

“That’s great, Wyatt. And school?”

“Fine, Mom, everything’s fine. How’s Cammy?”

“She misses you.”

“I miss her, too.” Greer’s face changed; he saw a new expression on it, new to him, at least-eyes narrowed, two vertical grooves on her forehead, just above the nose. She came close to looking ugly, surely impossible for such a beautiful girl. Had he mentioned Cammy to her? No. Wyatt held his hand down, palm to the floor, at about Cammy’s height level. Greer’s face returned to normal. “And how are you doing, Mom?”

“No complaints, except for…” She went silent for a moment or two, maybe choked up. Then she cleared her throat and went on. “Except for you being away, and all. How are you doing for money, by the way?”

“Fine.”

“You sure? I could send you a money order.”

“Don’t need it, Mom. I can always get a job.”

“Schoolwork comes first.”

“I know.”

“But, uh, speaking of jobs-there may be some news about that.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Too early to say, so maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up at all.”

“Come on, Mom.”

His mother took a deep breath; such a close-up sound-she might have been right there in the room. Wyatt moved nearer to the window. Outside, it was raining even harder, water spewing out of the drainpipes on the houses across the street. “Promise to keep it under your hat,” his mom said, “but Rusty may have a job lined up.”

“Yeah?” That had to be good. “What kind of job?”

“A good-paying job. Not like at the foundry, and no benefits, but good-paying for times likes these. Rusty’ll be-if he gets it-driving a truck for Secondary Metals Services.”

“What’s that?”

“They’re out of Fort Collins, but the route’s all over the place.”

Wyatt didn’t get it. Fort Collins was three or four hundred miles from East Canton. “You’re-we’re moving to Colorado?”

“Oh, no, certainly not now. I’d have a hard time getting a better job than what I’ve got now, and this is the worst possible time to sell the house. For now-this is if it all comes through-Rusty will be back home every second weekend, maybe a bit more often after they see him settling in. So, uh…”