Taming the Star Runner

Joe munched along on his hot dog, obviously rewinding his story in his mind, trying to decide where "start" was.

"We've been working for Orson," he said--he meant himself and the twins, he wasn't used to the fact that they were past tense yet. "I wrote you that, or told you, right?"

Travis nodded.

"It wasn't dope," Joe said. He didn't seem to know what to say next. "We were doing houses..."

Doing houses? thought Travis. Painting or something? He couldn't imagine Orson organizing house painting, or why it would cause him to kill someone. But he just let Joe work on his second bourbon, because he was remembering vividly how it felt to be scared like that.

"Robbing houses. Orson would scout neighborhoods and me and the twins would break into the houses he picked, you know how good they are with tools and stuff, it wasn't too hard, a lot of times I just stood lookout because they could get in small windows, we just took easy stuff, you know, Orson fenced it, he said people's insurance covered it, nobody was really getting hurt, and he paid us, you know, like for each job. If we got a lot of stuff it was more. He knew how to get rid of the stuff, so we just took whatever he gave us."

Joe closed his eyes and sighed. Travis was sick with cold apprehension. Joe was in big, big trouble. And even in the middle of his terror for his friend came the selfish, unbidden thought: Thank God it's not me!

"I quit," Joe said. "You think they'll believe me when I tell 'em I quit?"

His sad olive-brown eyes fixed on Travis, desperate for hope, but Travis couldn't even nod.

"We did this one house, we thought it was empty, but just as we were packing up the silver this old lady came in and started screeching--Billy shoved her and she fell, we ran out of there, she wasn't hurt because it was in the papers, but I got to thinkin' about Grandma, what if somebody shoved her, old ladies break bones real easy, you know. And I didn't want to do this anymore and I quit. The twins said they quit too." He sighed. "But they didn't. They did one more job and didn't tell Orson."

Travis's mind raced around and around. Ken could help him, he knew the law, he could ... And at the same time he told himself over and over, it couldn't have happened to him. Oh, no. Suppose he had stayed at home, had been hanging out with them, he'd never have done anything so dumb. Robbing houses and ... He'd never have been so dumb.

He stared at Joe and thought of all the reasons why it wouldn't have happened to him.

"Orson came by and got me. He said he'd heard the twins pulled a job without cutting him in. I think they found a different fence, I don't know, I quit and I thought they did too. Orson said he was going to kick ass. That's all I thought he was going to do, honest, he said he was going to do a little ass kickin' and teach them a lesson. He'd been drinkin' and smoking grass and coke too. I was scared to get out of the van--he wasn't mad at me and I was trying to keep it like that. The twins were hanging out in the parking lot by the park and Orson got out and got them and they just climbed in; we've been doing more grass since you left, Travis, it's easier to get than booze. They were pretty stoned. And all the way up the mountain, he was driving up the mountain road, toward the reservoir, we kept drinking and smoking and it was like a foggy bad dream, like you can't wake up from, Orson ranting on and on about how they double-crossed him, how he was going to fix them. It was scaring me, man, but it was like it wasn't happening either. It just wasn't real. You ever have something happen, and it just didn't seem real?"

Travis nodded. He knew Orson's van. He could picture everything, the black night out the windows, the heavy smell of the grass, the glare of the dashboard lights on Orson's mad face. Crazy mad, drunk and stoned.

He pictured the silent twins, passing a bottle back and forth. It wouldn't seem real to them either.

"Anyway, Orson drove down one of those side roads, a dirt one, it was too bouncy to drink. Then he stopped and got out and rolled the side door open and made them get out. And me too. They ended up sitting on a log, Orson was still yelling and I was too scared to sit down with them. And he was waving a gun around. I thought it was just to scare them. I thought that right up to when he shot Billy in the head and he went over backward. Mike just sat there, staring at the ground. Orson said to me, 'You do this one,' but I wouldn't. I didn't say anything but I wouldn't. Then he was yelling, 'Look at me, damn you,' at Mike, but he kept staring at the ground, shaking his head. Orson shot him too. I thought I was next, but he drove me back to town, saying I knew better than to tell anyone.

"I got a bus to St. Louis and then hitched the rest of the way--the last guy got a little weird with me and I jumped out of the car...

"You know what I keep thinking about? Leaving them up there on the mountain, it was a real cold night and they didn't have jackets..."

Joe started shaking so his ice cubes rattled.

Travis finally said, "You sure they were dead?"

Joe nodded.

"When did this happen?"

"I think it was two nights ago, I ain't sure anymore."

Travis found himself shaking. But it wouldn't happen to me, he kept thinking. I'd have jumped out of the van, grabbed the gun, knocked Orson out ... He kept running it over in his mind, changing the story, fixing it.

Fixing everything.

Chapter 13

It crossed Travis's mind to try to hide all this from Ken, but he soon realized that wouldn't work. For one thing, Joe sacked out into a sleep that resembled a coma, and Travis would have to take Christopher's bed; but mostly Travis wanted somebody else to lay this on--he wanted help.

What was going to happen to Joe? He tried to keep that question at the top of his mind, but if he let down his guard for a second, he found himself dwelling on how close he had come to being in the same mess.

If he had hit Stan just a little bit harder...

Ken took it a lot more calmly than Travis had expected. They stayed up till two o'clock talking about it--at least they ended up talking. At first Travis tried to persuade him to get Joe on a plane out of the country. When Ken refused even to discuss that option Travis got a little wild, but by midnight he was worn out and facing facts. Ken was going to call the authorities first thing in the morning; he was going to do all that was legally possible; he was going to help find a good lawyer. Joe was going back.

It was settled and Travis had known all along this was how it was going to be settled and he didn't think Joe was going to be too surprised.

He wasn't. Travis finally had to go shake him awake the next morning; he ate his toast and drank his coffee and listened to the plans with dull indifference. Travis remembered when he'd worked for the vet: a couple of times people brought in dogs that had been hit by a car--they had the same look.

And Joe was tired. He was too tired to think of showering, but Travis made him, and ran his clothes through the washer and dryer. It might be his last private shower for a while.

For some reason that thought made Travis cry. He leaned on the washer and cried. The machine was noisy, nobody could hear him.

Joe was ready at last. He seemed to be walking in his sleep. Travis couldn't help remembering the bouncing bravado he'd managed himself, when the cops came for him, but then Stan hadn't been a friend, or really dead. He let Joe sit up front, even though he hated being scrunched up in the back.

"What's that?" Joe sat up and looked around, like someone trying to wake up.

"Thunder," Travis said.

"We're under a severe thunderstorm watch," Ken said. It seemed like a last-ditch effort for a normal conversation; they were reduced to talking about the weather.

"Does that mean like

tornadoes and stuff?"

"Naw." Travis reassured him with the line he'd heard: "Not this time of year."

"I don't know," Ken said absentmindedly. "A few years ago we had one on Christmas."

Now he tells me, Travis thought. Actually, he hadn't really noticed the dark gray sky, it seemed such a natural extension of how everything was going--he would have been shocked and depressed by blazing sunshine this morning. The distant zigzag flashes through the blacker clouds to the west were like his thoughts, racing across his mind, the growing thunder like the march of doom.

Nobody tried to talk again. It was over quickly. They were in some building. It didn't seem like a police station, but there were policemen waiting to take Joe, men in suits to talk to Ken--Travis tried to take notes in his mind but everything blurred. Everything but the quick hug he gave Joe.

He was shaking.

"So what's going to happen?" he asked, finally breaking silence on the way home. The lightning was closer now, crackling like skeleton fingers across the sky, the thunder booming and rolling (giants bowling, he remembered from when he was little, he'd thought thunder was giants bowling--had he thought that up or had he seen it in a cartoon a long time ago?). But it wasn't raining yet. The hairs on his arms, on the back of his neck, stood and wiggled.

"Do I look like God?" Ken said. "How should I know?"

Not much, Travis thought, not with those bags under your eyes.

"I mean legally."

"Sorry. Legally. Well, it depends on whether or not they catch this other guy. How much of his story is corroborated by the evidence. And a big factor is whether he's tried as a juvenile or an adult. How old is he?"

"Sixteen," Travis said, then remembered, with a sinking feeling, that Joe's mom had held him back a year, before grade school. Joe was the only person he knew who'd flunked kindergarten. "Seventeen."

"It could go either way."

Travis stared out at the trees dancing in the wind.

"It wouldn't have happened if I'd been there," he burst out. "I never liked that scuzz-ball Orson. I'd never have let them get suckered into working for him--if I'd stayed home this wouldn't have happened."

"Maybe something else would've happened," Ken said. Maybe it would have been you and your stepdad murdering each other. Fate and will--it's baffled better minds than mine." In a minute he added, "Fate's what happens to you, and will is what you make happen to you."