'You mean he can talk?' Arnie said with a scorn that wasn't like him. 'What a shitter.'
I started. That word again. I thought about it, told myself what the fuck, and asked him where he had gotten that particular term.
He looked at me thoughtfully. The second bell rang suddenly, braying out from the side of the building. We were going to be late to class, but right then I didn't care at all.
'You remember that day I bought the car?' he said. 'Not the day I put the deposit on it, but the day I actually bought it?'
'Sure.'
'I went in with LeBay while you stayed outside. He had this tiny kitchen with a red-checked tablecloth on the table. We sat down and he offered me a beer. I figured I better take it. I really wanted the car, and I didn't want to, you know, offend him somehow. So we each had a beer and he got off, on this long, rambling . . . what would you call it? Rant, I guess. This rant about how all the shitters were against him. It was his word, Dennis. The shitters. He said it was the shitters that were making him sell his car.'
'What did he mean.
'I guess he meant that he was too old to drive, but he wouldn't put it that way. It was all their fault. The shitters. The shitters wanted him to take a driver's road-test every two years and an eye exam every year. It was the eye exam that bothered him. And he said they didn't like him on the street - no one did. So someone threw a stone at the car.
'I understand all that. But I don't understand why . . .' Arnie paused in the doorway, oblivious of the fact that we were late for class. His hands were shoved into the back pockets of his jeans and he was frowning. 'I don't understand why he let Christine go to rack and ruin like that, Dennis. Like she was when I bought her. Mostly he talked about her like he really loved her - I know you thought it was just part of his sales-pitch but it wasn't - and then near the end, when he was counting the money, he sort of growled, "That shitting car, I'll be fucked if I know why you want it, boy. It's the ace of spades." And I said something like I thought I could fix it up really nice. And he said, "All that and more. If the shitters will let you."'
We went inside. Mr Leheureux, the French teacher, was going someplace fast, his bald head gleaming under the fluorescent lights. 'You boys are late,' he said in a harried voice that reminded me of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. We hurried up until he was out of sight and then we slowed down again.
Arnie said, 'When Buddy Repperton got after me like that, I was really scared.' He lowered his voice, smiling but serious 'I almost pissed my pants, if you want to know the truth. Anyway, I guess I used L6Bay's word without even thinking about it. In Repperton's case it fits, wouldn't you say?'
'Yes.'
'I gotta go,' Arnie said. 'Calculus, then Auto Shop III. I think I've learned the whole course on Christine the last two months anyway.'
He hurried off and I just stood there in the hall for a minute, watching him go. I had a study-hall with Miss Rat-Pack period six on Mondays, and I thought I could slip in the back unnoticed . . . I had done it before. Besides, seniors get away with murder, as I was rapidly learning.
I stood there, trying to shake a feeling of fright that would never be so amorphous or un-concrete again. Something was wrong, something was out of place, out of joint. There was a chill, and not all the bright October sunshine spilling through all the high school windows in the world would dispel it. Things were as they always had been, but they were getting ready to change - I felt it.
I stood there trying to get myself in gear, trying to tell myself that the chill was no more than my fears about my own future, and that it was the change coming that I was uneasy about. Maybe that was part of it. But it wasn't all. That shitting car, I'll be fucked if I know