In Reach by Pamela Carter Joern Read Free Book Online Page B

double gloves when she drew blood from hospital patients. On her days off, he didn’t want her going down in the basement if he wasn’t home. What if an electrical wire came loose, and she dangled her fingers in the laundry tub?
    Helen held out her hand. He let her lead him to their room, up the stairs. He slid in bed beside her and feigned sleep. He waited until Helen’s breathing deepened, then opened his eyes. Nightly now, his parents’ accident invaded his dreams. He’d been away in college at the time, but lately he watches by the side of the road or floats above the car. He hears his mother scream, but he can do nothing, and then he wakes more wrung out than when he went to bed. Not my fault, not my fault, Tom muttered now, as he propped himself up with two pillows, cocked his ear to listen for intruders, and waited for dawn.
    Three weeks after the fire he drove past the remains of the shack. The concrete foundation lay exposed, littered with blackened wood and debris. Particles of ash drifted through the air whenever the breeze stirred.
    He stopped his car, covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief. He rolled down the window to get a clearer view but saw no one. Not that he expected to. The mother and two younger children were long gone. The itinerant husband, too.
    He noticed a car he’d not seen before parked at the neighboring shack. A maroon hatchback Focus. Nice car, for drifters. He studied the front door, the jagged tear in the screen. Through the window he caught the blue light of a television.
    The front door opened and a boy stepped out, a kid about Trent’s age, red hair, skinny, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. He carried a baseball bat. The kid started swinging the bat wildly, not like he was lining up for a pitch, just flailing away at the air. He took a swipe at the car parked in the drive. Whack. Then straightened up and looked furtively toward the house. When no one came running out the door, he took another swing at the fender. Whack. Even from his seat in the car, Tom could tell he’d left a couple good dents. The kid swung and then wiped his nose. Christ. These people.
    Over pancakes, he warned them. “Stay away from that new kid at school.” Helen looked up from the lunches she was packing. She slathered minced ham with mayonnaise, a spawning ground for bacteria.
    “He’s in my class,” Trent said.
    “See,” Tom said, not at all sure what he meant.
    “What’s wrong with him?” Trent said.
    Tom stopped to consider, swirled sludgy coffee around his mouth to buy some time. “He could be dangerous.”
    “Tom!” Helen, up on her high horse again.
    “Look, I know some things.”
    “What things?” She pointed her loaded paring knife at him.
    “What’s his name?” Alex asked.
    “Manson,” Trent said.
    “You mean, that’s his last name?” Tom wiped at his coffee mustache with the back of his hand.
    “First. He said he was named after Charles somebody.”
    “Jesus H,” Tom muttered. That look again from Helen.
    “Jesus H,” Alex echoed. Tom reached behind Trent and bopped Alex on the back of the head. At the same time he raised his eyebrows and nodded toward Helen, and Alex grinned. Tom put his hand over the sharp pain in his chest.
    The call came from Margaret Seward, the principal over at the school. Later he wouldn’t remember what she’d said. He heard Trent’s name, the alarm in her voice, and he bolted. In the tiny parking lot behind the drug store, his car was wedged in by Dr. Feldman’s monstrous Buick. Tom crashed his fist down on a rear fender, yelped in pain, and took off running. For eight blocks he carried an image of Trent bloody and gasping. All it takes is a baseball in the throat. A science experiment gone amok. They should have homeschooled the boys.
    He rounded the corner, saw a police car in front of the school, and plunged into the building. Ellen met him in the foyer, her face pasty above her white uniform like a mask on a Halloween nurse. She