Read Online Reservation Road by John Burnham Schwartz - Free Book Online

herself,
That world is
gone.
There were no boundaries any more. Everything was broken. Things were simply done to you.
    She sat on one of the chairs.
    Across from her, Ethan had his glasses off and was rubbing deep into his eyes. “Stop it,” she wanted to scream at him. He was practically blind. Without his glasses, he looked too young, all the scholarly wisdom and self-assurance gone; she wanted to shake him, and looked away.
    “How’s Emma?” he said.
    His voice had no strength; it was the voice of a victim. She looked at him. His glasses were back on. Behind clear round lenses his eyes were shot through with red. A stunned, beaten expression on his face, his lips parted as though he were having trouble breathing. And now, with pathetic heroic effort, he reached across the table for her hand—yet she did not feel touched, or better.
    “How’s Emma?” he asked again.
    Emma
. “Asleep. She woke up and . . .” She could not finish.
    Ethan nodded dully, as if she’d actually said something. He swallowed half his drink and said nothing more.
    She made herself ask the question. “Do they know anything?”
    She had meant to say “the police,” but found suddenly that she didn’t want to use the word; language was a minefield now.
    Ethan took back his hand. He opened his mouth but no words came out. He shook his head.
    “Ethan?” she said.
    He wouldn’t look at her.
    “I need to know what happened. What you saw. Because I just . . . I don’t understand. He was there alive. And then . . . I just don’t understand.”
    She stared at him; she waited. But he had no answer, or would not give her the one that he had. Nor did he have the courage even to look at her. He got to his feet and left the room.
    He was gone only a minute. She watched the clock on the wall because it was not life. And then it was over, and he was back, walking slowly, unsteadily, carrying the bottle of Scotch. He put this on the table in front of her but did not sit down.
    “I can’t really talk about this now. He was . . . he was standing by the road. It was dark. I left him there.” He stopped talking. He turned his face away from her. She could see his throat contracting, over and over, as though he were trying to swallow something that would not go down. Then he turned back to her and his voice came again and it was a small, lifeless thing, pushed as far from the pain of his heart as he could manage. “I turned my back on him. When I saw him again, it was too late. I saw the car. I saw him get hit. But I don’t seem to know anything. And because of me the police don’t know anything, either.”
    There were tears in his eyes, trying to get out. The fact that he wouldn’t let them out made her feel as if she were suffocating. She closed her eyes and saw Josh standing in the dark road— alone, afraid, without protection or care. A groan of pain escaped her, like an animal in a trap.
    Then she felt Ethan’s head touch her lap, and heard him sobbing: “It’s my fault. Oh my God, it’s my fault.”

Dwight
    Something woke me. Maybe it was the birds. I was sitting on the gray leather sofa with my legs propped on the glass-topped coffee table. Predawn light. Green empties standing all around—I counted five—and the ashtray overflowing with butts and gray matter. I tried to sit up but my knees felt as if someone had taken hammer and chisel to them. The TV screen was fuzzy gray with a violet stripe down the middle. It almost looked pretty.
    The light came through the den windows and struck me in the face, dragging with it a new day. I wanted to run somewhere, and keep running. I got myself on my feet and went to the window. My car was sitting in the driveway. The dew had formed a kind of caul over it, and the sunless light was starting to shimmer over the dark wet skin. It seemed alive. Around it on the lawn a couple of mourning doves were poking for worms, their cooing the only sound at this hour. Everything else was still.
    Why