Jim Shepard - Kiss of the Wolf

“Bruno, don’t start,” she said.

He was looking at her. “Hey, when I start, you’ll know it,” he said. He looked in on Todd, who hadn’t moved. He cupped his hand around the back of her neck. He left.

She got in the car and started it. She turned on the headlights. The objects down the driveway were flooded with illumination. They promised her something. In the rearview mirror, Bruno’s taillights winked red at the end of the street and disappeared. She left the radio alone. She had, while she sat there, what she thought of as a little religious spasm, like she’d been confronted by objects ready to help her take part in the transformation of her world.

Todd revived on the way home. Joanie was speeding. She was charged up. She didn’t know why. He shifted around on his seat and retied his sneakers.

She was heading up 110 to the Merritt Parkway. One-ten ran along the river, with a state park on the other side. It felt like the country. The road was twisty and had no streetlights and she liked it; it never had cops on it this time of night, and she knew it well enough to go fast. Her high beams were on. Even the Buick was leaning on the curves. Presents slid across the backseat.

When she drove, she set speed contests for herself: Could she make this part of the trip in under ten minutes? Could she make all three of these lights? It was a way of getting from place to place. Her driving had gotten better since Gary left. Todd had taken to riding with his feet up on the dash, bracing himself.

They jounced along, swooping across curves and lanes. They flashed past something small and dead, with a little foot in the air, near a storm drain. Possum? Raccoon? She caught only a glimpse of it. Todd sighed. She considered various questions — Did you have a good time? Like your presents? What’d your father say? — but didn’t ask any of them.

“I wonder if Audrey came back,” he said.

“I’m sure she did,” Joanie said.

“This’s the longest she stayed away,” he said.

She didn’t have anything to say to that, so she kept quiet.

He sat up straight and turned to the backseat and rooted around in his presents. “Looking for your jacket?” she asked ironically.

He pulled out Nancy’s book. He was peering at it in the dark.

She turned on the overhead light. She steadied the wheel. “Read me something,” she said.

“Play the radio,” Todd said.

“C’mon. Read me something,” she said.

“Ma.”

“What is it, just a collection of stories?”

“It’s all different tales.”

“What’re they called? Give me some titles,” she said. They went over a bump and the car almost bottomed out. She overcorrected for a curve. Todd gave her a look.

He flipped around and found the contents page. “‘The Man Wreathed in Seaweed,’” he read. “‘The Man Who Came Out Only at Night.’ ‘Body-without-Soul.’ ‘The Little Girl Sold with the Pears.’”

“Read me that one,” she said.

“ Ma ,” he said.

“Just a lit tle.”

He sighed. He rubbed his nose industriously and scratched so she could hear it. He sighed again. “‘Once a man had a pear tree that used to bear four baskets of pears a year. One year, though, it only bore three baskets and a half, while he was supposed to carry four to the king. Seeing no other way out, he put his youngest daughter into the fourth basket and covered her up with pears and leaves.’”

They passed a pull-off with some parked cars. Teenagers, Joanie thought.

“Yeah?” she said. Her eyes were on the yellow lines ribboning out and dipping and reappearing in the distance. “Go on.”

“We shouldn’t drive with the light on like this,” Todd said.

Joanie made a face at the road ahead and snapped off the overhead light. They were quiet for a few miles.

As usual, what she wanted to say would make her sound like someone she didn’t want to sound like. So she kept her mouth shut. This was the way she usually felt when he was acting up: reasonable and trampled.

She turned on the radio and cranked it. “Everybody awake, pal, let’s go,” she said. She felt reckless, the irresponsible mother.

It was a “classic rock” station. They were halfway through The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Roger Daltrey screamed.

It charged her up further. She’d been a big Who fan.

“Aw, jeez,” Todd said, sinking in his seat.

Lately, up-tempo rock acted on her accelerator, she noticed. “Won’t Get Fooled Again” segued into The Yardbirds’ “Train Kept a-Rollin’,” another all-time favorite. She touched the dial out of reflex, in appreciation, but didn’t take the volume any higher. The rhythm line galloped her into the song.

She could see the bridge up ahead and the entrance to the parkway, black water, power lines, little yellow lights doubled off docks on the Milford side.

A man, a face showing teeth, was there in front of her and took her breath. Wide eyes, a black jacket. She felt an electric spasm of shock. Todd screamed.

The body seemed to hurl itself out, lunged at her and thudded. The bumper turned him, and he cart-wheeled and hit the roof of the car. She felt the sound in her heart. She heard him carried down the length of the roof, like someone running in heavy boots, and then he was off. Their car careened right and then left and skidded into bushes that splintered and snapped along one side, like gunfire. Todd was bounced into her and she was slung across Todd. The hood flew up. They stopped.

She was aware that the noise of their shrieks and the braking had died away. The Yardbirds were louder, and into the next chorus. She turned the radio off. There was a whimpering, like someone else was in the car. She turned the engine off, but it continued, shaking and then ticking.

“Ma, what’d we do?” Todd whispered. She could see his eyes in the darkness. She checked to see if he was all right. She checked to see if she was. They both shook. The car’s ticking wound down.

She tried to get the courage to open her door. She looked back. The body was off the side of the road. One leg was crossed over the other, like someone had flopped down for a nap near the white line.

She had to get out. Someone else could come along. The guy could still be alive. She had to help. She had the feeling her life was a movie that just tore — a whole set of concerns, a world, cut away and flapping. She was looking at the whiteness of the screen.

She had to get up. She had to function. She held the wheel and could feel herself trying to shudder the fear out. It worked a little. She opened the door. Her movements occurred without her full cooperation.

She crossed the pavement to the body. “Stay there,” she called hoarsely back to the car. Todd hadn’t moved.

They’d skidded a hundred feet past it. She could see the long helixes of skid marks. She got closer and stopped ten feet or so away. This was cowardice, she knew. She willed him up. If she gave him another second, he’d stir, shake his head like someone surfacing from a dive in the pool. He’d turn to her with a look that would let her know he appreciated what a tight squeak that’d been.

There was a finger-sized area of blood, discreet, near his head.

This broke her paralysis. She crossed to him and crouched.

He was facedown. A hand and at least a leg were broken; she could see that much already. She didn’t want to turn him over. She placed a palm on his back. This seemed to her the best moment for the miracle.

“Is he all right?” Todd called from the car in a small, terrified voice.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. She moved her hand from the back and put it along the side of the neck, below an ear. She didn’t know how to tell if someone was alive. She didn’t feel anything. She couldn’t hear anything. He didn’t look that hurt, but there was the blood from his head. It was very dark. She couldn’t see where the blood was coming from.