Chapter 10
TEN
The drive back to the market parking lot isn’t the most awkward car ride of Will’s life.
It is, however, second only to a van ride back from some field trip or another when Will was in ninth grade, during which he had been taking an innocent nap and woken up to the realization that Missy Pruitt and Kyle Jackson were hooking up in the seat next to him.
He has to give it to those two: That was a worse situation than this one.
However, in that unfortunate instance, Will had decided his best course of action was simply to continue to pretend to be asleep.
That option is decidedly not available to him here, and to be honest, Will thinks it would be an improvement if it was.
They’re sitting three across in the cab of Casey’s pickup, Will in the middle because it felt rude to make a traumatized teenager suffer another indignity; Todd’s dripping underneath the blanket Casey hauled out from beneath the passenger seat, not that it matters.
It’s not as though Will isn’t basically soaked again himself, the brand-new, pristine sweatsuit transformed into a mud-streaked, rain-weighted horror.
He’s achingly aware that there is nothing between him and Casey but a few scant inches of space and some soaking wet fabric, but he’s trying his best not to be.
Instead, he’s watching the water slip and slide in little droplets across the worn brown leather seats for something to do, since Casey’s doing most of the talking.
The conversation…ranges. Sometimes Casey’s stern, even harsh: What was Todd thinking, going out on that bridge with those kids, even if they were joking? Didn’t he know better? Hadn’t Casey taught Todd better himself, taught him to respect the power and danger of the natural world?
But then at other moments, Casey’s softer.
Gruffer. He’s so glad Todd’s okay; he doesn’t mean to yell, it’s just that it was such a scary thing; he hopes Todd will still come to him for help and guidance.
His voice breaks once or twice, and Will has to look out the window and think, If you pretend to be asleep, William, it will make you look even weirder than if you just don’t make eye contact with anyone.
No one wants to make eye contact with you, anyway!
It’s a moving car! Be normal! Be neutral!
But Todd, somewhat understandably in Will’s opinion, is surly and sharp and irritable and embarrassed, more prickly than Will thinks he would be usually.
It’s not really like Will has such a sense of him—some of the awkwardness of the car ride is the fact that, halfway to the car, Todd had turned to him and demanded, “Okay, seriously, lunch guy , why are you here , what is happening ,” which, while fair, had been demoralizing.
Todd and Casey, on the other hand, obviously have quite a close relationship, and one Will clearly doesn’t know the half of.
There’s not much he can think of to say that wouldn’t sound, at best, overly familiar and, at worst, incredibly stupid, so he mostly sits quietly and tries not to flinch too dramatically when Todd, unhappy and lashing out, snaps something like, “I mean, it’s not like I’ve seen you around so much,” or, “What else are we supposed to do with our free time, then, huh? You got any thoughts, Case?” It’s obvious that these jabs land for Casey, for all Will doesn’t have the context to understand why; it’s clear in his face, the way his breath hisses in.
Do you imagine it’s a sign of how normal and neutral you’re feeling that you think you can tell how this man feels based on the quality of his inhales?
The voice sounds like Selma’s; the stupid voice always sounds like Selma’s.
Some days Will half suspects her of having installed a chip inside his head.
Here’s a normal, neutral question: How are you feeling about how he looks in that wet flannel?
The second wet flannel of the day? I mean, how many flannels can one guy own, first of all, but I don’t want you to think I’m complaining, because me personally, my feelings on the wet flannels are ?—
Will strangles this thought back with some effort before it can share those feelings, but, grimly, he doubts they would surprise him.
He’s distracted, anyway, when they get the car back to the private access road they illegally came in on.
Will had half expected there to be security guards or police there, to yell at Casey for driving through before; he can see now that that was stupid.
Nobody cares about this silly little access road.
Also, no one is going to get across this silly little access road, because a large branch has fallen across it since they were last here, completely blocking it off.
“Only way back is the long way,” Will observes, with a slightly nervous glance at Casey.
It’s not that he thinks Todd is going to die in here or anything, but he’d rather not drag this on for the poor kid any longer than necessary.
“In this weather, working around the damage, it’ll be fifteen minutes back to the main roads at least.”
Casey drums his fingers against the steering wheel. Then an idea seems to occur to him, and he slants a look at Todd. “Hey, kid—you remember last summer when you helped me and Noel dress up the scarecrows for Halloween? And we?—”
“Took the shortcut back?” Suddenly Todd is bright and alert, his sullenness dropping away for excitement.
Will, who remembers all too well being a teenager, doubts this is going anywhere he will like.
“ Of course I remember, I’ve only been begging you to take me again, you had to do it the one week my phone was too smashed to record! ”
“Now, see, I was going to ask if you felt up for it, but I guess that’s a yes,” Casey says with a grin, throws the car into reverse, and turns it around, repositioning it so it’s facing?—
“Oh, God,” Will says, as he notices anticipation start to change Casey’s face, “Casey, please don’t tell me you’re planning on?—”
Will doesn’t bother finishing the sentence, because Casey has already spun the wheel to the right as far as it’ll go, punched hard on the gas, and pitched the whole truck directly into the cornfield.
“I HAVE NEVER WANTED TO DO THIS!” Will has to scream to be heard over the sudden cacophony of corn leaves wicking by.
Todd, now cackling next to him, seems to be recording out the window, not paying them any attention at all.
“PEOPLE DO IT IN MOVIES AND I THINK ‘STUPID. I’M NOT GOING TO DIE LIKE THAT. NOT ME!’”
“WE’RE NOT GOING TO DIE,” Casey howls back, sounding, in spite of the circumstances, a little entertained. “IT’S THE FASTEST WAY.”
Will grips the door handle as tightly as he can, fighting the urge to screw his eyes shut. “TO THE OPERATING TABLE, MAYBE.”
“WOULD YOU JUST SHUT UP AND HAVE SOME FUN?” Casey somehow manages to sound oddly calm in spite of the circumstances and his volume.
“ENJOY SOMETHING, FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE?” Then he cuts a quick, hard-to-parse look at Will—a look that he should, be instead, keeping on the road , or, in this case, the corn—and adds, almost daring, “OR ARE YOU TOO MUCH OF A CONTROL FREAK FOR THAT? LIKE YOUR DAD?”
Will opens his mouth and then, not wanting to prove Casey right, snaps it shut.
He folds his arms over his chest and glares out the windshield, prepared to experience, in fact, a number of things.
Rage, for one, and terror, for another, and then possibly death by way of inconveniently placed scarecrow, although in Will’s opinion that would be an indignity too far.
Even his life has to have some sense of the mercy rule.
But he finds, to his surprise, that it’s…
pretty cool, to roll through the sodden cornfield as though it really is the sort of glossy, waving sea it sometimes appears to be in the wind, from a distance.
It’s a similar mechanic, now that Will thinks about it—the empty stalks, still green but stripped of their golden fruit, seem to become something else for being too close, just as they do for being very far away.
Briefly, watching the now-fading leaves and left-behind strings of pale yellow corn silk brush endlessly over the windshield, sticking damply before being dragged away by the laws of physics, Will wonders if this is what it would be like to be an ant at the very bottom of a huge jungle, looking up through the layers of unbroken canopy above.
Abruptly, the windshield clears, and they’re barreling towards the road and, oh, God , an oncoming car, which beeps furiously at them. Will grips the armrest again and does close his eyes this time, braces his body for impact, and?—
“We didn’t hit them, you know,” Casey says, sounding quite grim and a little amused, as Will feels the car juddering towards a stop. “If you wanted to open your eyes or whatever.”
Will opens his eyes; the truck is still moving, but it’s on the nice, normal road now, no sign of its misadventure except the various corn leaves that rain has stuck fast against the windshield.
Also, Todd appears to be filming him, snickering; when Will pushes the camera down, annoyed, Todd just shrugs and says, “Be like that, then,” and starts tapping at the screen, ignoring Will entirely.
“I want you to know,” Will says shakily to Casey, as they cruise down the road at a speed that still, to Will, seems somewhat excessive, “that I’ve decided that I hate you.
I hate you! Who drives into a cornfield ?
Don’t you have any sense of—of—your own mortality, first of all, but also quite critically, my mortality , and?—”
“Are you dead?” Casey seems quite amused to be asking, which makes Will hate him all the more. “You don’t look dead to me, but I guess you’d know better than I would. Pretty sure I’m not dead, though?—”
“You might be in ten minutes,” Will mutters, no longer able to keep even the slightest bit of a grip on his tongue. “If you keep driving me so insane .”
This makes Casey laugh, brief and choked off, and Todd mutter something under his breath that sounds like, “God, get a room.” Casey doesn’t appear to hear that, but Will certainly does, and it’s mortifying enough to shut him up for the remainder of the drive.
As they near the farm, Will sees the access road in is still blocked, but as they’re approaching from the north, Mere is driving up from the south.
She pulls over to the side of the road when she sees their car and throws herself out of the driver’s side, running over.
Will gets out of the way as fast as possible and then it’s all a blur: her hugging Todd, and yelling at him, and thanking them, and hugging them, and yelling at Todd, and hugging him again, and making him get into her station wagon.
There’s a brief, strange moment that Will can’t totally parse, a half conversation between Meredith and Casey that’s cut off when they notice Will looking.
Meredith says something like, “Look, that Town Council meeting—everything that happened, I know I could have been a better friend to—” and then Casey’s waving her off before she can finish, muttering something about how she should forget it, and it doesn’t matter now.
Then she’s driving off, and Will and Casey are alone in the middle of the road, rain still pelting down.
A large tree remains between them and the parking lot; there’s not, Will is coming to realize, anyone but Casey to move it.
It’s always possible he has a larger staff running around than it appears, but Will’s starting to get the sense that Casey handles most of the work here himself.
He stares, grimly, at the downed red oak, and for a second, it sways in front of him, like the one in the river. Will really, deeply, enormously doesn’t want to deal with it right now; he can’t imagine Casey does, either.
As if reading his mind, Casey says: “Christ. Look, I don’t care what you do, but I don’t have it in me to handle that right now.
I’ve had enough close encounters of the wooden kind for one day.
You can walk back from here, or you can ride into town with me; I’m going to see whether the whole bridge really blew out.
Because, if it did…” Casey shrugs, and then looks at Will with a curiously youthful expression, like a kid lit up with excitement about something as simple as a piece of candy, or an interesting rock. “I think I want to see that, is all.”
There’s a beat, and then Will starts to grin. “You know what? Me too. Let’s go.”
This drive is mostly silent but, somehow, not awkward.
Maybe it’s the relief—of Todd being safe, of Todd being out of the car, of not having any barbs left to throw at one another—but whatever it is, it’s nice.
Will feels his muscles relax a little as Casey turns on the radio and twists the dial to classic rock, and then a little more when Casey starts humming along, under his breath, with the music.
When they get to the river, in spite of the rain, they both get out of the car. They’re not the only ones to stand there, staring: Half the town seems to be with them, eyes wide, mouths slightly agape, staring at rushing, angry river water where the one bridge into and out of this town used to sit.
And on the other side of the river, standing in a row next to their line of temporarily abandoned cars, are all the citizens of Glenriver who happened to be on the other side when the bridge went.
Will can see, on their faces, an echo of the realization that must be passing over his right now: Without that bridge, nobody here in Glenriver will be going anywhere , no matter how urgently they might want to.
“Well,” Casey says, after a second, with a sidelong glance at Will. He sounds—something. Not quite resigned, but…something. “Looks like you’ll be staying a while.”