Whippoorwill by Joseph Monninger Read Free Book Online Page A

mountain, right?”
    â€œI guess not,” I said, watching him eat three fries.
    â€œSo then you can figure out patterns. If you simply drive along in a car and don’t pay any attention, then it’s just roads going around and around and back and forth. But someone plans those roads, and that sort of interests me. I talked to my vo-tech teacher, Mr. Allan, and he said that’s all surveying and engineering, and he said, when you think about it, roads are parts of a motor, and if you could step back and see, then the entire U.S. is one big car of roads and airports and railroads. Do you see what I mean? You’re not eating.”
    I took another bite and then ate some fries.
    â€œI see what you mean, I think,” I said.
    â€œProbably a strange way to look at the world.”
    â€œNot really,” I said. “It sounds like you think like an engineer.”
    â€œMaybe. I like taking things apart. Anyway, that’s what I do. I drive around and see things, try to figure out how they work. And I stop for food now and then and I had always heard about Smitty’s, so that’s that.”
    â€œWhy the sideburns?” I asked, and the question was out of my mouth before I could pull it back.
    He touched his finger to his left sideburn and smiled. It was a funny smile, a smile that made you realize he was in on the joke and didn’t take it too seriously.
    â€œWhy not?” he asked. “You don’t like them?”
    â€œI do like them. I guess I do. I hadn’t noticed them before.”
    â€œThey’re supposed to match the side vents of my car,” he said. “Like tail fins. I like the 1950s.”
    â€œYou’re weird, Danny.”
    â€œYou’re just getting that now?”
    Â 
    He was sweet on the way back, not hard-charging the way he was on the drive up, and he put his arm out the window and drove with one hand and he played the blues for me. He said the blues reminded him of rivers, that’s the way it was, and the blues players understood about pain and loss, but they made something out of it. He said they spun gold from straw, which was a bit much, was like a line he practiced, but I listened anyway. And the music played over the good sound system, and it squealed and squawked, and cried at its own pain, accepting it for what it was, and I liked that Danny’s hand beat with it on the side of the car sometimes, as if he couldn’t get enough of it, as if it entered his body and had to come out somewhere, and it did come out through his fingers and he discharged it toward the ground outside like electricity, like tiny lightning bolts that passed through him.
    Â 
    I kept thinking,
Is this a date, is this
really
a date, and is he going to try to kiss me?
I thought yes, and I thought no, and I thought about how Danny reminded me of Wally, both of them left to their own devices, and how maybe I was like a Daily Growler that Danny had wanted but couldn’t reach, not sexually, not like that, but like proof of another person in the world, proof that someone else paid attention to him.
    Â 
    â€œYou want to walk Wally?” Danny asked when we pulled back in his driveway.
    â€œI do,” I said, glad to have the distraction, glad not to have to think about kissing him one way or the other. “But I should tell my dad where I am.”
    â€œOkay, I’ll meet you out at Wally’s post.”
    â€œThanks for the hamburger.”
    â€œMy pleasure,” he said, although he said it
plais-ir,
like French, like it should rhyme with brassiere.
    I hurried through the Stewarts’ yard and then hustled up the stairs to our kitchen. Dad wasn’t there, but he had left a note where I had left mine.
Gone to Jebby’s for a part. Back soon. Hamburger? Smitty’s? Danny Stewart?
    He had underlined “Danny Stewart” about five times. I couldn’t blame him.

Seven
    W HAT WE FIND in a dog is what we bring to a