ghosts and their own baleful memories as powdery snow swirled across the ripped and tattered seats, their balding floor carpets.
Her engine ticked slowly, cooling.
PART III: CHRISTINE - TEENAGE DEATH-SONGS Chapter 43 LEIGH COMES TO VISIT
James Dean in that Mercury '49,
Junior Johnson Bonner through the woods o' Caroline
Even Burt Reynolds in that black Trans-Am,
All gonna meet down at the Cadillac Ranch.
- Bruce Springsteen
About fifteen minutes before Leigh was due, I got my crutches under me and worked my way to the chair closest the door, so she'd be sure to hear me when I hollered for her to come in. Then I picked up my copy of Esquire again and turned back to an article reading 'The Next Vietnam,' which was part of a school assignment. I still had no success reading it. I was nervous and scared, and part of it - a lot of it, I guess - was simple eagerness. I wanted to see her again.
The house was empty. Not too long after Leigh called that stormy Christmas Eve afternoon, I got my dad aside and asked him if he could maybe take Mom and Elaine someplace the afternoon of the twenty-sixth.
'Why not?' he agreed amiably enough.
'Thanks, Dad.'
'Sure. But you owe me one, Dennis.'
'Dad!'
He winked solemnly. 'I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine.'
'Nice guy,' I said.
'A real prince,' he agreed.
My dad, who is no slouch, asked me if it had to do with Arnie. 'She's his girl, isn't she?'
'Well,' I said, not sure just what the situation was, and uncomfortable for reasons of my own, 'she has been. I don't know about now.'
'Problems?'
'I didn't do such a hot job being his eyes, did I?'
'It's hard to see from a hospital bed, Dennis. I'll see you mother and Ellie are out Tuesday afternoon. Just be careful, okay?'
Since then, I've pondered exactly what he might have meant by that; he surely couldn't have been worried about me trying to jump Leigh's bones, with one upper leg still in plaster and a half-cast on my back. I think maybe he was just afraid that something had gotten terribly out of whack, with my old childhood friend suddenly a stranger, and a stranger who was out on bail at that.
I sure thought something was out of whack, and it scared the piss out of me. The Keystone doesn't publish on Christmas, but all three Pittsburgh network-TV affiliates and both the independent channels had the story of what had happened to Will Darnell, along with bizarre and frightening pictures of his house. The side facing the road had been demolished. It was the only word which fit. That side of the house looked as if some mad Nazi had driven a Panzer tank through it. The story had been headlined this morning - FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED IN BIZARRE DEATH OF SUSPECTED CRIME FIGURE. That was bad enough, even without another picture of Will Darnell's house with that big hole punched in the side. But you had to check page three to get the rest of it. The other item was smaller because Will Darnell had been a 'suspected crime figure', and Don Vandenberg had only been a dipshit dropout gas-jockey.
SERVICE STATION ATTENDANT KILLED IN CHRISTMAS EVE HIT-AND-RUN, this headline read. A single column followed. The story ended with the Libertyville Chief of Police theorizing that the driver had probably been drunk or stoned. Neither he nor the Keystone made any attempt to connect the deaths, which had been separated by almost ten miles on the night of a screaming blizzard which had stopped all traffic in Ohio and western Pennsylvania. But I could make connections. I didn't want to, but I couldn't help it. And hadn't my father been looking at me strangely several times during the morning? Yes. Once or twice it had seemed he would say something - I had no idea what I would say if he did; Will Darnell's death, bizarre as it had been, was nowhere nearly as bizarre as my suspicions. Then he had closed his mouth without speaking. That, to be up front about it, was something of a relief.
The doorbell chimed at two past two.
'Come on in!' I yelled, getting up on my crutches again anyway.
The door opened and Leigh poked her head in. 'Dennis?'
'Yeah. Come on in.'
She did, looking very pretty in a bright red ski parka and dark blue pants. She pushed the parka's fur-edged hood back.
'Sit down, she said, unzipping her parka. 'Go on, right now, that's an order. You look