Earthly Possessions by Anne Tyler Read Free Book Online

“Well. My goodness,” I said. “I never knew a life of crime could be so easy.”
    He looked at me sideways. He said, “A what? Life of what?”
    I didn’t answer (not wanting to get in any trouble). We rode along a ways. Turned right. Passed a line of people in front of a restaurant. Then, “Ha,” he said. “Bet you think I’m some kind of a criminal, don’t you.”
    “Um …”
    “Think I’m a crook or something.”
    I decided it was best not to mention the bank robbery. I smoothed my skirt down and settled my purse on my lap. We turned left. Buildings grew sparser.
    “That what you think?” he asked me.
    “I don’t know what you are and I don’t care,” I said.
    He stopped for a traffic light. He was chewing on his lower lip; no wonder it got so chapped. When the light turned green the car started off with a jerk, as if suddenly reminded of something. The tires screamed, the dominoes bounced. “Fact is, I ride demolition derbies,” said Jake.
    I thought he was making a joke about his driving, but his face stayed serious. “I do a lot of them out roundabout,” he said. “Hagerstown, Potomac … Maryland’s just full of them.”
    “Full of … demolition derbies?”
    “Last year, I won three. But generally I do a whole lot better.”
    “Well, I thought that was just a weekend thing, demolition derbies. You make your
living
doing that?”
    “What I make is my affair,” he said.
    “I mean—”
    “If I have to I’ll hire on a few days in a body shop or something, but I don’t really like doing nothing but them derbies.I am a demolition fool, I tell you. I like that better than eating. I never could go for that
soft
life, sitting around in some house, no way out, wife, kids, goldfish … I like to get my hands on, say, a good solid Ford, sixty-two or three or long about there, and just mow all them others flat. Run that thing into the ground. Finest feeling I know of.”
    He swerved for an animal carcass, not braking at all.
    “Bet
you
thought I was some type of criminal,” he told me.
    “Well …”
    “Want to know the truth?”
    I waited. He shot his eyes over at me, shot them back. In the dark his face was hard to read. “Whole trouble is this: I’m a victim of impulse,” he said.
    “Of—?”
    “Impulse.”
    “Oh.”
    “Buddy of mine told me that,” he said. “Guy name of Oliver. Oliver Jamison. This real smart character I hooked up with in the training school when him and me was teenagers. See,
he
didn’t care. If they was to lock him up, why, he’d just pull out a book and commence to reading, that was the type of a guy he was. Me, I like to go crazy if I am locked up. I mean it. I like to go crazy. I’ll do anything I must to get away. You take that training school, I busted an ankle jumping out the chaplain’s bathroom window there. I ran clear to the woods on a busted ankle. Only had a month left to go, too. That’s when this Oliver says what he says. When they brung me back he says, ‘Jake,’ he says, ‘you’re a victim of impulse.’ Thing stuck in my mind. ‘You’re a victim of impulse,’ he says to me.”
    He turned onto a highway, some little two-lane thing leaving the city. The engine made a snarling sound. “People who hold the power are the ones that don’t mind locks,” Jake said. “Now, Oliver, he was pretty cool. I liked that Oliver. I wouldcall him O.J. He had this interest in blowing things up. I mean kid stuff—bombs in mailboxes. He would make the bombs by hand. He sure was smart. After they taken a look at the damage this chemical company offered him a scholarship, but he turned it down. Well, I get his point. See, mailboxes, there’s a real satisfaction to a mailbox. But you don’t want to go to work for no chemical company.”
    A driver heading toward us flashed his lights, no doubt so Jake would lower his beams, but Jake didn’t seem to notice.
    “What I told him was, ‘It’s circumstances somewhat too. It ain’t entirely