green straw hat standing at the side of the road, holding a suitcase in one hand. As the car rushes by her, she lifts her head and shows him a wide, toothy grin, the smile of someone who’s been poisoned by the Joker. She stands in profile to him. It is like looking at the face on a dollar bill.
He whisks by her but lifts his foot from the gas, begins to slow, steers himself onto the gravel margin of the road. It occurs to him that he is still unconscious, never came fully awake after he was flattened by the explosion that took the barn, and this is one of his waking dreams, no different from those half-recalled fantasies of talking plants. His great-great-great-grandmother is older than TV, too old to have traveled all this way. And yet he thinks this might be the very woman herself and believes she’s been waiting all morning for him to finish his business at the farm and come get her. She walks toward the car, smiling to herself as she approaches. Whatever she is—a figment of madness or his own true blood—he welcomes the company. Better, he believes, than traveling alone.
In the Tall Grass
with Stephen King
⟵ ⟶
He wanted quiet for a while instead of the radio, so you could say what happened was his fault. She wanted fresh air instead of the A/C for a while, so you could say it was hers. But since they never would have heard the kid without both of those things, you’d really have to say it was a combination, which made it perfect Cal-and-Becky, because they had run in tandem all their lives. Cal and Becky DeMuth, born nineteen months apart. Their parents called them the Irish Twins.
“Becky picks up the phone and Cal says hello,” Mr. DeMuth liked to say.
“Cal thinks party and Becky’s already written out the guest list,” Mrs. DeMuth liked to say.
Never a cross word between them, even when Becky, at the time a dorm-dwelling freshman, showed up at Cal’s off-campus apartment one day to announce she was pregnant. Cal took it well. Their folks? Not quite so sanguine.
The off-campus apartment was in Durham, because Cal chose UNH. When Becky (at that point unpregnant, if not necessarily a virgin) made the same college choice two years later, you could have cut the lack of surprise and spread it on bread.
“At least he won’t have to come home every damn weekend to hang out with her,” Mrs. DeMuth said.
“Maybe we’ll get some peace around here,” Mr. DeMuth said. “After twenty years, give or take, all that togetherness gets a little tiresome.”
Of course they didn’t do everything together, because Cal sure as hell wasn’t responsible for the bun in his sister’s oven. And it had been solely Becky’s idea to ask Uncle Jim and Aunt Anne if she could live with them for a while—just until the baby came. To the senior DeMuths, who were stunned and bemused by this turn of events, it seemed as reasonable a course as any. And when Cal suggested he also take the spring semester off so they could make the cross-country drive together, their folks didn’t put up much of a fuss. They even agreed that Cal could stay with Becky in San Diego until the baby was born. Calvin might be able to find a little job and chip in on expenses.
“Pregnant at nineteen,” Mrs. DeMuth said.
“You were pregnant at nineteen,” Mr. DeMuth said.
“Yes, but I was married,” Mrs. DeMuth pointed out.
“And to a damned nice fellow,” Mr. DeMuth felt compelled to add.
Mrs. DeMuth sighed. “Becky will pick the first name and Cal will pick the second.”
“Or vicey versa,” Mr. DeMuth said—also with a sigh. (Sometimes married couples are also Irish Twins.)
Becky’s mother took Becky out for lunch one day not long before the kids left for the West Coast. “Are you sure you want to give the baby up for adoption?” she asked. “I know I don’t have a right to ask—I’m only your mother—but your father is curious.”
“I haven’t entirely made up my mind,” Becky said. “Cal will help me decide.”
“What about the father, dear?”
Becky looked surprised. “Oh, he gets no say. He turned out to be a fool.”
Mrs. DeMuth sighed.
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So there they were in Kansas, on a warm spring day in April, riding in an eight-year-old Mazda with New Hampshire plates and a ghost of New England road salt still splashed on the rocker panels. Quiet instead of the radio, open windows