From a Buick 8(117)

I remembered that night at The Country Way, nipping the pages of the dead jukebox back and forth, trying to isolate the most important question, which was the one Ned had decided not to ask. It had almost come, then had slipped shyly away again. When that happened, it was no good to chase. I'd thought that then and still did now.

So instead of continuing to give the 8 my cop stare, I unfocused my eyes and let my mind drift away. What it drifted to were song-titles, of course, titles of the ones they never seem to play, even on the oldies stations, once their brief season of popularity has gone. 'Society's Child' and 'Pictures of Matchstick Men' and 'Quick Joey Small' and ?

? and bingo, there it was. Like he'd said, it was right in front of me. For a moment I couldn't breathe.

There was a crack in the windshield.

A thin silver lightning-bolt jigjagging top to bottom on the driver's side.

Ned clapped me on the shoulder. 'There you go, Sherlock, I knew you'd get there. After all, it's only right there in front of you.'

I turned to him, started to talk, then turned back to make sure I'd seen what I thought I'd seen. I had. The crack looked like a frozen stroke of quicksilver.

'When did it happen?' I asked him. 'Do you know?'

'I take a fresh Polaroid of it every forty-eight hours or so,' he said. 'I'll check to make sure, but I'll bet you a dead cat and a string to swing it with that the last picture I took doesn't show a crack. So this happened between Wednesday evening and Friday afternoon at . . .' He checked his watch, then gave me a big smile. 'At four-fifteen.'

'Might even have happened while we were at Eddie's funeral,' I said.

'Possible, yeah.'

We looked in again for a little while, neither of us talking. Then Ned said, 'I read the poem you told me about. "The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay."'

'Did you?'

'Uh-huh. It's pretty good. Pretty funny.'

I stepped back from the window and looked at him.

'It'll happen fast now, like in the poem,' he said. 'Next thing a tire'll blow . . . or the muffler will fall off. . . or a piece of the chrome. You know how you can stand on a frozen lake in January and listen to the ice creak and thunk?'

I nodded.

'This is going to be like that.' His eyes were alight, and a curious idea came to me: I was seeing Ned Wilcox really, genuinely happy for the first time since his father had died.

'You think?'

'Yes. Only instead of ice creaking, the sound will be snapping bolts and cracking glass. Cops will line up at these windows like they did in the old days . . . only now it'll be to watch things break and come loose and fall off. Until, finally, the -whole thing goes. They'll wonder if there isn't going to be one more flash of light at the very end, like the final Chinese Flower at the end of the fireworks display on the Fourth of July.'

'Will there be, do you think?'

'I think the fireworks are over. I think we're going to hear one last big steel clank and then you can take the pieces to the crusher.'

'Are you sure?'

'Nah,' he said, and smiled. 'You can't be sure. I learned that from you and Shirley and Phil and Arky and Huddie.' He paused. 'And Eddie J. But I'll watch. And sooner or later . . .' He raised one hand, looked at it, then closed it into a fist and turned back to his window. 'Sooner or later.'

I turned back to my own window, cupping my hands to the sides of my face to cut the glare. I peered in at the thing that looked like a Buick Roadmaster 8. The kid was

absolutely right.

Sooner or later.

Bangor, Maine

Boston, Massachusetts

Naples, Florida

Lovell, Maine

3 April, 1999 May, 2001