Defiant Heart (3 page)

Judy turned to him. “That’s not what I mean. We’re going to be seniors. We’ll be graduating in less than a year. Shouldn’t we start making plans?”

“Plans for what?”

“You know. I think it’s time we ought to, maybe, think about,” she hesitated a second, then concluded, “getting married.”

“Married!” Vernon exclaimed, and Judy flinched. “Are you crazy?”

She looked at him, but said nothing.

“You’re serious.”

She nodded, but still said nothing.

“Well, I’m not. There’s no way I’m tying myself down.”

She looked away, her arms still folded. There was a long silence. Then, without turning, she said quietly, “In that case, I think we should stop seeing each other.”

That surprised Vernon. Sure, he’d been thinking about breaking it off with Judy anyway. In fact, he’d figured today’s liaison would probably be their last. But it was supposed to be his decision. He was, after all, the King. And, in any event, he’d been looking forward to a little action this afternoon. He considered her for a long moment, resentment beginning to build.

“All right,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it.” He grabbed the handle and yanked open the door. He stepped out, turned and looked back, fully expecting that she would say something to stop him. She continued to stare out the other side of the car and said nothing.

That was the last straw. He slammed the door and stalked to the truck. Gunning the engine, he threw the vehicle in reverse and backed up a few feet, the tires skidding in the dirt. Then he put the truck into gear, and, with the rear wheels kicking up dust, pulled out of the clearing and shot down the narrow lane, headed for the highway.

Angry thoughts roiled in Vernon’s mind. Who the hell did Judy Swisher think she was anyway? She wasn’t even that pretty. Sure, she was blond and had an ok body. But, really, Vernon was so much better looking than her. He knew it. She knew it. Everyone knew it.

Driving much faster than the lane was ever intended to be traveled, he flew down the narrow path, the truck bouncing over the rutted surface. When he reached the highway, he didn’t even look to see if there was oncoming traffic. He slewed the pickup onto the paved surface, mashed down on the accelerator, and began the long ride back to town. His thoughts were black. He was mad, and he was ready to take it out on somebody.

#

Jon discovered that, up around the bend from the intersection where he’d had the conversation with the service station attendant, the town pretty much petered out, giving way to large homes set back from the road. Soon, he found himself walking past fields planted in crops he didn’t recognize. Beyond a long thicket of trees that pressed in on either side of the road, he emerged to find the two schools exactly as the old man had indicated. With students out on summer break, the structures sat quiet, with no activity in the adjacent parking lots.

As he stood looking at what would be his new school, he felt drops of moisture on the back of his neck. Glancing up, he saw that, though he was still standing in sunlight, a large, solid block of dark clouds was rolling in, bringing the promise of quite a storm. The shadow crossed over him, and then the rain came in earnest.

Breaking into an awkward gait, he ran with a limp across the lot in front of the high school, dodging puddles already forming in the uneven surface. He found a spot against the building under an overhang. Standing with his back pressed against the wall, he was able to stay just out of the downpour.

Growing up, he and his brother, Sandy, had loved to play in the rain, the heavier, the better.

“Bet you can’t jump over this one!” Sandy’s face, glistening with moisture, had grinned back at him. “Bet I can,” Jon had exclaimed, and, pumping his five-year-old legs as hard as he could, Jon had taken a mad dash at the large puddle and flung himself across, landing well short of the far edge, the galoshes on his feet sending up a mighty splash in all directions. Laughing, Sandy had jumped in next to him, and the two of them had stomped madly at the water, shrieking hysterically. Then Sandy had turned to him, his face alive with excitement. But now Sandy’s face began to fade, and, as it did, it became serious, somber, and, just before it was gone, there was an overwhelming sadness.

Jon shuddered, and the familiar nausea rose in him, just as it had ever since the accident, the sound of rain and the sight of drops landing in puddles turning his stomach and giving him chills. He huddled forlornly against the brick wall and tried to ignore the hissing made by the water as it struck the loose gravel covering the parking lot.

After a few minutes, he began to detect another sound, this one higher pitched, faint, as if a great distance away. One moment, it was there. Then it faded into the noise of the rain. Then it returned. As he strained to identify the source, the sound grew much louder, deepened, and morphed into a roar.

Emerging from the shroud of rain, a Model A pickup truck came barreling down the highway, water jetting out to either side and a plume of mist rising behind it as it raced by. Suddenly, there was a squeal of rubber skidding along wet pavement. Fishtailing back and forth across the highway, the truck gradually came to a stop a hundred yards beyond the school. The driver threw the truck into reverse, and, incomprehensibly, backed the vehicle up to a point opposite the place where Jon stood, heedless of the possibility that another vehicle might be traveling down the road in the direction it had come.

The driver turned the truck into the high school parking lot and drove it to a spot about thirty yards from Jon, where it sat facing him, engine idling and rain dancing on the hood. Jon could tell there was one person in the cab. At that distance, however, with the rain as heavy as it was, he could not make out the features of the driver.

Just as Jon had resolved to push himself off the wall and walk to the truck, the driver put the vehicle into gear, swung the wheel to the left and, as Jon watched, drove slowly to the far end of the parking area. He then turned, drove across the highway into the lot in front of the elementary school, turned left again and began retracing his route, picking up speed as he did.

When he pulled even with Jon’s position, he made a hard left and gunned the engine.

The truck lurched and jumped across the highway. Engine roaring, it came flying directly at Jon, who stood frozen, too shocked to move. At the last possible moment, the driver yanked the steering wheel and slammed on the brakes, causing the tail end of the truck to swing around and come to rest just a few feet from Jon. The driver then hit the accelerator, the rear wheels bit into the soft, wet ground, and Jon was showered with a wave of mud and gravel.

Jon instinctively threw his hands up in front of his face, and bits of gravel dug into his open palms and forearms. Then the deluge from the truck subsided as it pulled away across the lot and veered back out onto the highway, speeding off toward town.

#

The long walk back to his grandmother’s house was painful. Though the rain had let up, it was heavy enough that most of the town was still indoors. The few people Jon passed on the street stared, but he kept his head down and avoided eye contact. He had wiped off much of the blood from his hands and arms, but the wounds continued to ooze, and his clothes were covered in mud.

When he stepped through the front door, his grandmother was sitting at the piano next to a boy of nine or ten. They both looked up and froze. The boy’s eyes widened to the size of small saucers, but his grandmother’s narrowed, and her lips pursed. She slowly took in the sight of him, then sighed.

“Please go clean yourself up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” was all he could say, and, with as much dignity as he could muster, he walked quickly down the hall, not wanting her to see the tears that suddenly filled his eyes.

2

“You’re going to Hell, and you don’t even know it.”

Amused, Mary Dahlgren lowered the book she was reading and looked at the dark-haired girl who had just made the statement. Typical Sam.

Samantha Parker was stretched out on a wicker chaise lounge, concentrating intently on the right foot of Gwendolyn Barnes. Gwenda, in turn, had Sam’s right foot in her lap and was carefully brushing nail polish onto Sam’s large toenail. The polish was a vivid red.

As Mary watched, Sam delicately dipped a brush into a bottle of the polish and, with exaggerated care, touched the tip of the brush to Gwenda’s smallest toenail. Then she held the brush away and lightly blew on Gwenda’s foot, slowly turning her head side to side. Everything Sam did had to be theatrical.

“Hell seems pretty dire,” Mary observed.

“Oh, I don’t mean Hell in the religious sense,” Sam said, without breaking her concentration. “You know what I’m talking about. You’re losing sight of the really important stuff. You sit around all day reading things that nobody else cares about. In the meantime, life is passing you by. One day, you’re going to wake up, and you’ll be an old maid. And then you’ll say, ‘Hey, why didn’t I listen to Sam when I had the chance?’”

Mary suppressed a smile. This was one of Sam’s favorite topics. Sam was bound and determined to mold Mary into her image of the modern woman. The fact that Mary would have none of it was a constant source of distraction for Sam.

“Is this about my not painting my nails?” she asked innocently.

“It’s not just about that, but it’ll do for starts.”

Mary, Sam and Gwenda had been friends for as long as Mary could remember. They had just always been together. For Mary, an only child, the two girls had filled the void left after her mother had passed away when Mary was six years old, leaving her alone with a father to whom she had never been very close. The two girls were, for all intents and purposes, her family.

It wasn’t that Mary didn’t love her father. She did, after a fashion. And she certainly admired and respected him. But, in the ten years since his wife’s death, Jim Dahlgren had never been able to allow himself to show real affection. To anyone. He’d dated a few women, but none had stuck around for long. There had never been one that Mary could get close to. Without Sam and Gwenda, Mary’s would have been a very lonely existence.

Mary, however, was as different from her two friends as night was from day.

Sam, the extrovert, was obsessed with her appearance. Her hair was always coiffed in the latest style. She would spend hours on her makeup. With subscriptions to several fashion magazines, she was invariably up on all the hot trends. To Sam, being the perfect young woman took second place to only one thing: Finding the perfect man.

Gwenda was much more low-keyed, but no less anxious to present the picture of the well-put-together young woman. In Gwenda, Sam had found the ideal acolyte. Ironically, it was Gwenda who’d had the greater success with boys. For the past several months, she had been going steady with Billy Hamilton, one of their classmates and a stand-out on the Jackson High School basketball team.

To Sam’s mortification, Mary had no interest in fashion. As the daughter of one of the town’s most successful merchants, Mary could easily afford fine clothing. However, she preferred simple outfits. She eschewed fashionable curls and wore her honey blond hair in a simple, tousled style. Lipstick, mascara and the current object of the girls’ attention, nail polish, were items Mary rarely used.

“Look at yourself,” Sam was saying, the nail polish temporarily forgotten. “You are, by a mile, the prettiest one of us. Yet you do nothing to call attention to your assets.”

“My assets? Like what?”

“Like your
ass
-et,” blurted Gwenda, and she and Sam dissolved into a fit of giggling.

“Fine,” Mary said, with feigned indignation, “I’ll just leave you kids alone,” and she made a show of returning to her book.

“No, seriously. And here’s why it’s so important now,” Sam said, lowering her voice and looking suddenly conspiratorial. “I have it on good authority that Vernon and Judy are on the outs.”

“Really?” asked Gwenda.

“Finished,” Sam said.

She and Gwenda turned and looked expectantly at Mary.

“What?” Mary asked, after a moment.

“What to you mean, what?” said Gwenda. “We’re talking about King Vernon, here. The hottest thing in three counties.”

“And he’s
available
,” added Sam.

“Then you go after him.”

“I would if I could,” Sam replied, “but I’m not a blond. Everybody knows the King only likes blonds.”

“Oh, applesauce,” said Mary, “And, in any event, I don’t give a hoot about Vernon King. Never have.”

#

In the weeks following his arrival in Jackson, Jon and his grandmother had settled into an uneasy routine. She was rarely around when he awoke, returning to the house only in the early afternoon. On most days, she would then give piano lessons.

Mondays were the exception. On those days, his grandmother brought out a pair of folding card tables from her bedroom, carefully arranged chairs around them, and set out refreshments. A group of women descended on the house, and they spent hours playing bridge.

His grandmother made it clear to Jon that he was not welcome during these activities. Jon would have to go for a walk or retire to his room and read. Despite his vow not to dwell on his situation, there was no avoiding the bitter sting of this rejection.

Jon and his grandmother ate one meal together, always at 5:00 sharp. They were uncomfortable affairs, his grandmother making no attempt to initiate conversations, her replies to his comments or questions typically short, inviting no follow up. The only time he got any kind of rise from her was the one time he mentioned the work shed.

“You stay away from that place,” she snapped, her eyes flashing. After a moment, she asked, “You haven’t tried to go in there, have you?”

Jon shook his head quickly.

“Good. It’s not a place for you. Just leave it alone.”

After that, they retreated to their usual awkward silence.

#

On the Fourth of July, there was to be a parade down Main Street, followed by a barbeque hosted by the chamber of commerce. Jon had seen flyers advertising the celebration posted about town. On the day of the event, he waited until his grandmother left, then followed a few minutes later.