Sorrow Road (Bell Elkins #5) - Julia Keller Page 0,15

and Alvie sat on the top step, on either side of Vic. They scooted over, to give him room to sprawl. Vic liked to sprawl.

“Pop said, ‘Well sir, I heard a rumor it was somebody’s birthday. That true?’”

“And what did you say to that?” Harm asked.

“Lemme guess,” Alvie said, breaking in eagerly before Vic could answer. He was giddy with certainty. “I bet you said, ‘Hell, yes, it’s somebody’s birthday. It’s my fucking birthday.’ Right? Ain’t that what you said?”

Alvie had overstepped. He had gotten caught up in the story and forgotten himself. He knew it right away. Vic did not say anything for a long time. It was probably no more than a minute, but it felt like forever to Alvie. He could swear he felt his life leaking away, like a glass of milk he’d accidentally knocked over. He’d have to make it up to Vic somehow. He was a fool.

“No,” Vic said. His voice was no longer lazy and no longer amused. It was cold. “That’s not what I said. What I said was, ‘You know whose birthday it is, you fat old man, and if those keys belong to a car, it damned well better have gas in the tank.’ That’s what I said.”

Neither Harm nor Alvie believed for a second that Vic Plumley had talked that way to his father. Vic was just showing off. But you could not challenge him.

“And then,” Vic said, and once again his voice had that smug, lazy sound to it, “he took me outside and he showed me what was parked in the driveway.” Vic sat up straight. “He’d parked it right over there. So’s I could see it, first thing.”

They all looked. They were awestruck, just as they’d been when they arrived here today and Vic came out the back door, slamming the door behind him, and they saw what was sitting in the Plumley driveway, the widest driveway on the whole block: a cream-colored 1936 Ford pickup with red trim. It was a beaut. That was the word Harm used when he first spotted it, and Alvie started to make fun of the word but then Vic said, “I like that word, Harm. A beaut. That’s just what it is,” and so Alvie had to say that he liked the word, too. It was the perfect word: beaut. Vic’s birthday present was a beaut.

The pickup had a flathead V8 with a three-speed transmission and a 12-volt electrical system. Its top speed was just over 80 mph. It was not brand new, but it was only two years old, and that was fine. That was plenty close enough to new.

Harm and Alvie were agog. They had not even ridden in it yet, and they were almost speechless with admiration.

There were only two rules, Vic told them: He had to let his father know when he was going to drive it. And he couldn’t take it past the Norbitt city limits unless his father was with him.

The legalities of a twelve-year-old driving a car were not a concern. The state of West Virginia had been issuing driver’s licenses since 1917, but only began testing drivers—the test was a formality, nothing more—in 1931. You were supposed to be sixteen to get a license, but driving without one was a ho-hum offense. The deputies didn’t care. They had other things on their minds. Besides, if you were wealthy enough to have a car, then you—and your family—were the kind of people whom the deputies went out of their way to please.

Suddenly Vic’s mother was there. She startled them, opening the screen door and initiating the drawn-out creak of its tired hinges. They had been gazing at the Ford and were ignorant of her presence until they heard that creak. Then they turned and looked up, taking in the shape of her, the way she held her arm out straight to prop open the door. Her other hand was curled and perched on her hip. Her hair was long and thick and blond. Harm felt his heart jump in his chest like a fish.

“You boys have your breakfast yet?” she said. She had a low, soft voice, a voice with a purr in it. That voice had a peculiar effect on Harm. He felt, along with the flopping heart, the heat rising in his cheeks and a flush moving across the back of his neck. And that was not the only thing that happened to his body when he was in the