came to him, the thought that maybe Arnie was only half-lying, trying to lay a groundwork of plausibility for . . . for what? A case of spontaneous regeneration? That was pretty crazy, wasn't it?
Wasn't it?
It was indeed, Dennis thought, unless you had happened to see a mass of cracks in a windscreen seem to shrink between one viewing and the next.
Just a trick of the light. That's what you thought then, and you were right.
But a trick of the light didn't explain the haphazard way Arnie had gone about rebuilding Christine, the hopscotch of old and new parts. It didn't explain that weird feeling Dennis had gotten sitting behind the wheel of Christine in LeBay's garage, or the sense, after the new tyre had been put on en route to Darnell's, that he was looking at an old-car picture with a new-car picture directly underlying it, and that a hole had been cut out of the old-car picture at the spot where one of the old-car tyres had been.
And nothing explained Arnie's lie now . . . or the narrow, thoughtful way he was watching Dennis to see if his lie was going to be accepted. So he smiled . . . a big, easy, relieved grin. 'Well, that's great,' he said.
Arnie's narrow, evaluating expression held for a moment longer; then he smiled an aw-shucks grin and shrugged. 'Luck,' he said. 'When I think of the things they could have done sugar in the gas tank, molasses in the carb - they were stupid. Lucky for me.'
'Repperton and his merry crew?' Dennis asked quietly.
The suspicious look, so dark and unlike Arnie, appeared again and then sank from sight. Arnie looked grim now. Grim and morose. He seemed to speak, then sighed instead. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Who else?'
'But you didn't report it.'
'My dad did.'
'That's what Leigh said.'
'What else did she tell you?' Arnie asked sharply.
'Nothing, and I didn't ask,' Dennis said, holding his hand out. 'Your business, Arnie. Peace.'
'Sure.' He laughed a little and then passed a hand over his face. 'I'm still not over it. Fuck. I don't think I'm ever going to be over it, Dennis. Coming into that parking lot with Leigh, feeling like I was on top of the world, and seeing - '
'Won't they just do it again if you fix her up again?' Arnie's face went dead-cold, set. 'They won't do it again,' he said. His grey eyes were like March ice, and Dennis found himself suddenly very glad he wasn't Buddy Repperton.
'What do you mean?'
'I'll be parking it at home, that's what I mean,' he said, and once more his face broke into that large, cheerful, unnatural grin. 'What did you think I meant?'
'Nothing,' Dennis said. The image of ice remained. Now it was a feeling of thin ice, creaking uneasily under his feet. Beneath that, black, cold water. 'But I don't know, Arnie. You seem awful sure that Buddy wants to let this go.'
'I'm hoping he'll see it as a standoff,' Arnie said quietly. 'We got him expelled from school
'He got himself expelled!' Dennis said hotly. 'He pulled a knife - hell, it wasn't even a knife, it was a goddam pigsticker!'
I'm just telling it the way he'll see it,' Arnie said, then held out his hand and laughed. 'Peace.'
'Yeah, okay.'
'We got him expelled - or more accurately, I did - and he and his buddies beat hell out of Christine. Evens. The end.'
'Yeah, if he sees it that way.'
'I think he will,' Arnie said. 'The cops questioned him and Moochie Welch and Richie Trelawney. Scared them. And almost got Sandy Galton to confess, I guess.' Arnie's lip curled. 'Fucking crybaby.'
This was so unlike Arnie - the old Arnie - that Dennis sat up in bed without thinking and then winced at the pain in his back and lay down again quickly. 'Jesus, man, you sound like you want him to stonewall it!'
'I don't care what he or any of those shitters do,' Arnie said, and then, in a strangely offhand voice he added, 'It doesn't matter anymore anyhow.'
Dennis said, 'Arnie, are you all right?'
And for a moment a look of desperate sadness passed over Arnie's face - more than sadness. He looked harried and haunted. It was the face, Dennis thought later (it is so easy to see these things later; too much later) of someone so bewildered and entangled and weary of struggling that he hardly knows anymore what it is he is doing.