line, when she said the wrong thing to him at the wrong time. He had even done it in public: once in the bleachers at a ball game, and a few times at the Double-D Diner. Frank occasionally shoved and punched Vic, too, and he did not care who saw him do it, but that was different: Adults could always smack kids around. That was expected. That was fine. But most of the men in town held back when it came to their wives. Sure, they hit them—but only at home, when the drapes were closed. So how did you know it happened? You knew because the next day, the woman would wear sunglasses when she did her shopping, even though it was not a sunny day, or she’d have a slight limp, which meant he had kicked her on that side.
But as Harm’s dad always pointed out to him: No man ever hit a woman unless she deserved it. Unless she had asked for it. And if you thought about it, Joe Strayer would add, the blow was really an act of love. A compliment. It meant the husband cared. He thought the wife could learn from her mistakes. There was hope.
Vic did not want to go against his father. Harm could see it in his face, feel it in the way Vic rammed the back of his shoe on the edge of the step, with extra vigor. Vic knew he ought to follow the rule, and wait until his old man came home that afternoon before he took the Ford out for a ride. Ask permission. He knew his dad would say yes. It was a formality, nothing more.
But Alvie’s “So?” had gotten under his skin. He could not look weak. The thought of that was unbearable. Truly, truly unbearable. Thus a brief, fierce battle raged in Vic’s soul. Harm knew it was raging in there, even though only seconds passed, and even though Vic did not say a word. And even though nothing moved in Vic’s face.
Which was worse: defying his father or looking like a chump in front of Alvie Sherrill?
It wasn’t even a contest.
“Wait ’til you see me open her up,” Vic said. Decision made, he bolted from his lounging position on the back steps. Halfway to the driveway, he turned. His friends were still sitting there. “You coming?”
They wedged themselves into the Ford with a sort of manic, pushing gusto. Vic was at the wheel, of course, and Harm was beside him. Alvie was smushed against the door. Alvie was laughing; his laughter had a faintly hysterical edge to it, like a girl’s laugh. Harm would long remember the sound of that laugh. He did not like it then, and he would grow to like the memory of it even less.
Vic was a fine driver. He had a sure hand on the wheel. He did not do what Harm’s mother did, which was to lurch forward and then come to a stomach-jiggling stop at the end of every block. The lurch-stop method favored by Sylvia Strayer had sometimes made Harm throw up, when he was younger. But Vic’s driving was smooth. He had a sense of the vehicle, and a sense of himself. The two elements—two-year-old machine and twelve-year-old boy—lined up neatly, a truly swell synchronicity.
They kept to the back roads, theorizing that there would be less chance of somebody spotting them and reporting back to Frank Plumley. Everybody wanted to please Frank Plumley. And it worked. Vic drove them from Norbitt to Redville and then back around through Caneytown, and they did not see anybody they knew. Vic stayed completely away from major roads. They passed farms, and they shouted at cows; the freedom made them feel goofy and almost airborne with delight. They yelled greetings at a dumpy old man in suspenders in a bean field. Harm did not recall what they said, but the old man lifted his straw hat in tribute to the Ford. A vehicle as fine as this one was a rare spectacle along the back roads of Barr County, West Virginia.
They were nearly home when it happened.
Vic downshifted. He checked his side mirror as he rounded a curve, having just left the city limits of Caneytown; he wanted to watch the yellow clouds of road dust boiling up behind him. Now he shifted again, and accelerated. Was he going just a touch too fast? Did he, for just the briefest moment, lose control of the vehicle, and