Read Online After the People Lights Have Gone Off by Stephen Graham Jones - Free Book Online Page A

himself, in explanation.
    One last look to the road, the car, the dome light still on because the door’s open, the car in park, some unmentionable lump of gore just behind the rear bumper. The trunk packed with two days of perfect camping. Those thick socks.
    And, on the other side of the ditch, in the trees, Lucas’s flashlight, bobbing dimly.
    What Jonathan’s trying to pace out is whether this can be part of the story they’re going to tell. Does trudging back up the interstate at dawn, their clothes sodden from various riverside frolics, trudging up to a car stripped to nothing, probably vandalized, can that be the punchline? Or, what if the battery’s just dead? What if there’s just a tow-me pink sticker on the windshield?
    Or—or what if Lucas panics out there alone, falls into one of the old mining shafts or whatever it is that’s always making the news out here?
    An easy decision, really.
    Jonathan steps out into the ditch, the bottom soggy down under all that grass, and follows.
    If this is like he imagines Lucas wants it to be, then, a hundred feet into the cover, he’ll find Lucas’s shirt draped across a lower limb, then a sock, then those stupid shorts.
    It makes him try harder to keep up, to keep that dim light in view, make a line for it.
    Instead of shorts, what he finds, cocked open in the mud, the white license flashing, is Lucas’s dad’s wallet. Dark green, practically black.
    Jonathan eases it up to keep it from spilling. Studies it—just what it is—wipes the dirty side on a tree, then the leg of his shorts, and pockets it. Front pocket, thank you.
    But—does this mean Lucas had it all along?
    Jonathan looks ahead, for the light. Makes a less patient line for it, only realizing once he’s committed that it’s not a flashlight at all, but one of the tall parking lot lights of the rest stop.
    Already?
    Behind him, though, there’s no longer any interstate sound. No still-open door, inviting him back in, to make the right decision.
    Well then.
    The way it had been in his head, Lucas had been on a grand trek, just lucking up onto the blacktop. How it is, though, is Lucas just walked through a couple hundred yards of trees, only out of the light for maybe thirty seconds, all told. The rest of the time he was, what? Sitting in the ditch? Or, no: a rig with a sleeper, parked on the side of the road?
    Lucas wouldn’t, though.
    Not even mad like he was, he wouldn’t have crawled up into that cab for the afternoon.
    Never. Never never never.
    But then why didn’t he even answer the voice mails last weekend? Why did he blow up instead of answer that one question?
    Jonathan shakes his head no, no, closes his eyes, taps both his fingers against both his thumbs, a furious, desperate rhythm.
    It could explain the diversion of the lost wallet, though. After an afternoon like that, Lucas wouldn’t be ready for any make-up fun, would at least need a shower first, or a swim. A staged fall into the river.
    You can’t jump to conclusions like that, though.
    Jonathan tells himself this. That there’s an explanation. That the place where he just walked into the woods, it doesn’t have to be the place where Lucas walked out. That the interstate for miles back, it’s a long curve, no place any trucker would stop to sleep, especially when he knew—don’t truckers always know where the rest stops with the big parking lots are?—there was a good place just a minute or two ahead. With a river, restrooms. Lights.
    You’re being stupid again, Jonathan tells himself. Thinking the bad instead of the good, defaulting to disaster instead of joy, letting the world infect you. And you know better. That’s no way to live.
    Jonathan flips the wallet open again, studies Lucas’s face. Forgives him.
    For nothing, but still.
    Thick socks, thick socks.
    Jonathan smiles, steps ahead, having to duck around trees to get to the light, the wallet still in his hand like a prize, like a talisman, a charm. And that’s