Read Online After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones - Free Book Online
Authors: Stephen Graham Jones
Ads: Link
the wheel.
“Dark green,” Lucas says, and then, after telling Lucas about car surfing and high school, proves it by spidering out his window without even checking the traffic. He lays bellydown on the roof, lowers his hand.
Jonathan touches it with his lips, holds it there, then slides the flashlight into it. The highway patrol’s just going to love them, right?
But still.
They are who they are. What else could they be doing? And anyway, if this won’t make a good story in a month or two, then Jonathan doesn’t know what would. Who needs a campsite when you can be as stupid as this right on the highway.
Every third or fourth truck blasts its air horn, too. Jonathan can only wince, thinking what Lucas must be doing to elicit this.
At this rate, it’s going to be midnight by the time they make the rest stop again. Jonathan wonders if his paper towel is still folded on the top of the trashcan in the bathroom, and then, more tactile memory than anything, remembers the jelly he had maybe sat in on the picnic table.
He sets his feet against the floorboard—the car’s only idling forward—thrusts his hips out, and, yep, he was stuck. The jelly drying against the seat.
That’ll be another part of the story. The part where everybody feels sorry for him but empathizes too, has sat in jelly themselves at some point, of course.
“Hold, hold!” Lucas calls from outside and Jonathan finds the brake pedal, finds it isn’t the brake pedal. Surges ahead instead, clumping over something.
And then he stops.
“It’s right under us, isn’t it?” Jonathan says. Just out loud.
The dog, the deer, the whatever it is the truckers caught with their tall chrome bumpers, slung out to the side, for the birds to feast on.
Lucas doesn’t answer, or, the smell coming in through the open window, it’s all the answer he needs.
Jonathan dry heaves, his first instinct to thumb the window shut, but then, because it’s part of a deal—all it would have taken is one wrong trucker to have seen Lucas’s ruler tat, and let his rig drift over two, three feet, play some fag tag out on the interstate—he makes himself breathe the decay in.
His eyes water, his hands tighter than tight on the thin steering wheel, and he clumps the car ahead, over whatever it was, the left tire even spinning a time or two in the—the—
Jonathan’s mouth fills with vomit, hot and burning, and he’s only just able to slam the car into park before diving from his door, losing it in the tall grass, completely emptying himself out, the kind that comes out his nose too so that his eyes are crying, his lungs contracting, trying to breathe—is that brains? am I throwing up brains?—and the grass is so tall that it catches whatever he had in his stomach, paints his face back with it.
This starts it all over again, Jonathan pushing away, getting his hands in it now, suddenly sure beyond a doubt that what really happened was Lucas tipped over the front of the car, under the wheels, had been asking Jonathan to stop, stop, please.
Blurry, blinding headlights streaming by, Jonathan looks to the car to be sure he’s wrong.
Like the boy in his camper at the rest stop, though, Lucas, he’s not there. Gone. Not rolled onto the hood laughing like Jonathan half-expected, not still on the roof, his ass to the truckers, his shorts nothing his father ever would have stuffed a wallet into, and not squatted there by Jonathan with a towel from the backseat, to help.
Just gone.
Jonathan wipes his mouth and nose with the back of his arm, wipes his arm on his shorts.
No, he’s telling himself. No. No no no, that wasn’t Lucas under the car, it wasn’t—
And then he hears him, Lucas. Beside, ahead, the woods. Isn’t going to smile but can’t help it either.
“Lucas!” he calls out, standing.
Just that sound: feet on leaf litter. Moving away.
The perfect time for games, yes. The most appropriate place.
“Lucas,” he says again, this time mostly just to
“Dark green,” Lucas says, and then, after telling Lucas about car surfing and high school, proves it by spidering out his window without even checking the traffic. He lays bellydown on the roof, lowers his hand.
Jonathan touches it with his lips, holds it there, then slides the flashlight into it. The highway patrol’s just going to love them, right?
But still.
They are who they are. What else could they be doing? And anyway, if this won’t make a good story in a month or two, then Jonathan doesn’t know what would. Who needs a campsite when you can be as stupid as this right on the highway.
Every third or fourth truck blasts its air horn, too. Jonathan can only wince, thinking what Lucas must be doing to elicit this.
At this rate, it’s going to be midnight by the time they make the rest stop again. Jonathan wonders if his paper towel is still folded on the top of the trashcan in the bathroom, and then, more tactile memory than anything, remembers the jelly he had maybe sat in on the picnic table.
He sets his feet against the floorboard—the car’s only idling forward—thrusts his hips out, and, yep, he was stuck. The jelly drying against the seat.
That’ll be another part of the story. The part where everybody feels sorry for him but empathizes too, has sat in jelly themselves at some point, of course.
“Hold, hold!” Lucas calls from outside and Jonathan finds the brake pedal, finds it isn’t the brake pedal. Surges ahead instead, clumping over something.
And then he stops.
“It’s right under us, isn’t it?” Jonathan says. Just out loud.
The dog, the deer, the whatever it is the truckers caught with their tall chrome bumpers, slung out to the side, for the birds to feast on.
Lucas doesn’t answer, or, the smell coming in through the open window, it’s all the answer he needs.
Jonathan dry heaves, his first instinct to thumb the window shut, but then, because it’s part of a deal—all it would have taken is one wrong trucker to have seen Lucas’s ruler tat, and let his rig drift over two, three feet, play some fag tag out on the interstate—he makes himself breathe the decay in.
His eyes water, his hands tighter than tight on the thin steering wheel, and he clumps the car ahead, over whatever it was, the left tire even spinning a time or two in the—the—
Jonathan’s mouth fills with vomit, hot and burning, and he’s only just able to slam the car into park before diving from his door, losing it in the tall grass, completely emptying himself out, the kind that comes out his nose too so that his eyes are crying, his lungs contracting, trying to breathe—is that brains? am I throwing up brains?—and the grass is so tall that it catches whatever he had in his stomach, paints his face back with it.
This starts it all over again, Jonathan pushing away, getting his hands in it now, suddenly sure beyond a doubt that what really happened was Lucas tipped over the front of the car, under the wheels, had been asking Jonathan to stop, stop, please.
Blurry, blinding headlights streaming by, Jonathan looks to the car to be sure he’s wrong.
Like the boy in his camper at the rest stop, though, Lucas, he’s not there. Gone. Not rolled onto the hood laughing like Jonathan half-expected, not still on the roof, his ass to the truckers, his shorts nothing his father ever would have stuffed a wallet into, and not squatted there by Jonathan with a towel from the backseat, to help.
Just gone.
Jonathan wipes his mouth and nose with the back of his arm, wipes his arm on his shorts.
No, he’s telling himself. No. No no no, that wasn’t Lucas under the car, it wasn’t—
And then he hears him, Lucas. Beside, ahead, the woods. Isn’t going to smile but can’t help it either.
“Lucas!” he calls out, standing.
Just that sound: feet on leaf litter. Moving away.
The perfect time for games, yes. The most appropriate place.
“Lucas,” he says again, this time mostly just to
Similar Books
