Skeleton Crew

The trees and houses raced by them, vague blurs in the graveyard of twelve-fifteen. They blew by a stop sign and flew over a large bump, leaving the road for a moment afterwards. When they came down, the low-hung muffler struck a spark on the asphalt. In the back, cans clinked and rattled. The faces of Pittsburgh Steeler players rolled back and forth, sometimes in the light, sometimes in shadow.

"I was fooling!" Leo said wildly. "There ain't no truck!"

"It's him and he kills people!" Rocky screamed. "I seen his bug back in the garage! God damn!" They roared up Southern Hill on the wrong side of the road. A station wagon coming in the other direction skidded crazily over the gravel shoulder and down into the ditch getting out of their way. Leo looked behind him.

The road was empty.

"Rocky—"

"Come and get me, Spike!" Rocky screamed. "You just come on and get me!" The Chrysler had reached eighty, a speed which Rocky in a more sober frame of mind would not have believed possible. They came around the turn, which leads onto the Johnson Flat Road, smoke spurting up from Rocky's bald tires. The Chrysler screamed into the night like a ghost, lights searching the empty road ahead.

Suddenly a 1959 Mercury roared at them out of the dark, straddling the centerline. Rocky screamed and threw his hands up in front of his face. Leo had just time to see the Mercury was missing its hood ornament before the crash came. pulled out and began to move toward the pillar of flame and the twisted blackening hulks in the center of the road. It moved at a sedate speed. The transistor dangling by its strap from the meathook played rhythm and blues.

"That's it," Spike said. "Now we're going over to Bob Driscoll's house. He thinks he's got gasoline out in his garage, but I'm not sure he does. This has been one very long day, wouldn't you agree?" But when he turned around, the back of the truck was empty. Even the bug was gone.

Half a mile behind, lights flickered on at a side crossing, and a milk truck with CRAMER'S DAIRY written on the side.

Gramma

George's mother went to the door, hesitated there, came back, and tousled George's hair.

"I don't want you to worry," she said. "You'll be all right. Gramma, too."

"Sure. I'll be okay. Tell Buddy to lay chilly."

"Pardon me?" George smiled. "To stay cool."

"Oh. Very funny." She smiled back at him, a distracted, going-in-six-directions-at-once smile. "George, are you sure—"

"I'll be fine." Are you sure what? Are you sure you're not scared to be alone with Gramma? Was that what she was going to ask?

If it was, the answer is no. After all, it wasn't like he was six anymore, when they had first come here to Maine to take care of Gramma, and he had cried with terror whenever Gramma held out her heavy arms toward him from her white vinyl chair that always srnelled of the poached eggs she ate and the sweet bland powder George's mom rubbed into her flabby, wrinkled skin; she held out her white-elephant arms, wanting him to come to her and be hugged to that huge and heavy old white-elephant body. Buddy had gone to her, had been enfolded in Gramma's blind embrace, and Buddy had come out alive... but Buddy was two years older.

Now Buddy had broken his leg and was at the CMG Hospital in Lewiston.

"You've got the doctor's number if something should go wrong. Which it won't. Right?"

"Sure," he said, and swallowed something dry in his throat. He smiled. Did the smile look okay? Sure. Sure it did. He wasn't scared of Gramma anymore. After all, he wasn't six anymore.

Mom was going up to the hospital to see Buddy and he was just going to stay here and lay chilly.

Hang out with Gramma awhile. No problem.

Mom went to the door again, hesitated again, and came back again, smiling that distracted, going-six-ways-at-once smile. "If she wakes up and calls for her tea—"

"1 know," George said, seeing how scared and worried she was underneath that distracted smile. She was worried about Buddy, Buddy and his dumb Pony League, the coach had called and said Buddy had been hurt in a play at the plate, and the first George had known of it (he was just home from school and sitting at the table eating some cookies and having a glass of Nestle's Quik) was when his mother gave a funny little gasp and said, Hurt? Buddy? How bad?

"I know all that stuff, Mom. I got it knocked. Negative perspiration. Go on, now."

"You're a good boy, George. Don't be scared. You're not scared of Gramma anymore, are you?"