Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,14
again. And again after that. But today—ah, today was glorious, as if a seine net had been dragged across the sky, catching all the dark particles, separating them out, leaving only the clarity, the sparkle.
In the distance, the mountains were silver-black triangles. The peaks looked as if they had been dusted with confectioner’s sugar.
Three boys: Vic, Harm, and Alvie.
Vic was short for Victor. Harmon was commonly known as Harm. Alvie, though, was always Alvie. Some people thought it was a nickname—a diminutive for Albert, say, or Alfred or Alvin—but it was not. The name on his birth certificate was Alvie Sherrill. No middle name. The Sherrills did not believe in middle names. Middle names were too fancy. Too showy. Too sissified. Alvie’s father, Leonard Sherrill, was a Baptist minister, and he knew the devil could smell pride on a person, and use it to get his red hooks into that person’s soul, the way a wild animal is instantly aware of a garbage can with the lid left off, even if it’s miles away.
Vic had already gotten his birthday present from his father: a two-year-old Ford pickup. Vic had been driving since he was nine years old. His father would put a Charleston phone book on the seat so that Vic could see over the dashboard of the family Packard. Frank Plumley rode along, too, on those initial journeys, sitting sideways in the passenger seat so that he could watch his boy at the wheel. Frank kept his right arm thrust straight out, bracing himself against the dash. Just in case. He had a lot of faith in Vic’s abilities—the kid had great reflexes and crack eyesight—but still. Nine years old.
Now Vic was twelve, and there would be no stopping him. First thing that morning, as he had just related to his two best friends, his father had come downstairs and sort of burst into the kitchen. He threw something at him. Vic did not know what it was, and so he turned his head, not wanting to get beaned, and the keys landed in his corn flakes. The milk splashed all over the tablecloth.
“You’re kidding,” Alvie said. He laughed through his nose, in and out, like a snorting horse rejecting his feed. “What’d your mom say?”
“She was damned upset, tell you that,” Vic replied. The cursing he had always done in private had recently made its debut in public. Harm and Alvie were deeply admiring; they, too, often said damn or hell or shit or cock or fuck or even the most taboo of all—goddamn, notorious for its blasphemy—in conversation with each other, but they still lacked the courage to utter a curse word out in the wide world. At school, for instance. It was an especially high hurdle for Alvie, the preacher’s son.
But Vic had done it. He had started a few weeks ago, and now every other sentence was spiced with a damn or a hell. He didn’t care who was listening. His foul mouth just added to his legend.
“And then what?” Harm said.
“My old man said, ‘Whaddaya think those keys go to, son?’”
“And what did you say?” The question came from Alvie.
Alvie squirmed a little in his place on the stoop, half in pleasure, half in apprehension. He knew what would have happened if he had ever talked that way to his own father, and he could not help but picture it. The Reverend Sherrill would have unloaded on him. No question. Alvie had been warned to keep a civil tongue in his head. To speak with respect to his elders. Something as fresh as “Why don’t you tell me, Pop?” would have netted him a fist-sized welt on the side of his face, a face so gray and narrow that Alvie had been told more than once that he looked like a rat. And he did, too, but not just because of the color and shape of his face. His front teeth protruded brashly, and he had small eyes and a pointy nose.
“And what did your father say to that?” Harm said. He, too, was enthralled.
Vic leaned back. He was on the second step from the top, and he arched his back against the front edge of the top step and spread his elbows, balancing himself. He stretched out his legs and kicked the back of his sneakers against the wood of the third step down. First one shoe, and then the other shoe. Harm