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For a moment Frank Brown only sits with his hands at ten and two on the Buick’s steering wheel, staring over the Buick’s long hood. They knew how to make ’em back in the old days, his father sometimes likes to opine. Those, of course, being the same old days when a self-respecting woman wouldn’t go shopping without first cinching on a girdle and hooking up her stockings to a garter belt, the days when gay people went in fear of their lives and there was a penny candy called niggerbabies available at every five-and-dime. Nothing like the old days, yessir!
“Well fuck your fucking shortcut,” he says. “You see where it’s gotten us.”
“Frank,” Corinne starts, but he gets out before she can finish and stands staring at the place where the road has cracked open.
Billy leans over Granpop’s lap to whisper in his sister’s ear: “Fuck your fucking shortcut.” She puts her hands over her mouth and snickers. That’s good. Granpop chuckles, which is even better. There are reasons why they love him.
Corinne gets out and joins her husband in front of the Buick’s sneery grille. She looks into the deep crack in the road and sees nothing good. “What do you think we should do?”
The kids join them, Mary on her mother’s side and Billy on his father’s. Then Granpop comes shuffling along in his big black shoes, looking cheerful.
“I don’t know,” Frank says, “but we’re sure not going this way.”
“Got to back up,” Granpop says. “Back all the way down to the good old Slide Inn. You can turn around in the driveway. No chain.”
“Jesus,” Frank says, and runs his hands through his thinning hair. “All right. When we get to the main road, we can decide whether to keep going to Derry or just head home.”
Granpop looks outraged at the idea of retreat, but after scanning his son’s face—especially the red spots on his cheeks and the red line dashed across his forehead—he keeps his trap shut.
“Everybody back in,” Frank says, “but this time you sit on one side or the other, Dad. So I can see where I’m going without your head in the way.”
If we had the Volvo, he thinks, I could use the backup camera. Instead we’ve got this oversized piece of stupidity.
“I’ll walk,” Granpop says. “It’s not but two hundred yards.”
“Me too,” Mary says, and Billy seconds that.
“Fine,” Frank says. “Try not to fall down and break your leg, Dad. That would be the final touch to an absolutely wonderful day.”
Granpop and the kids start back down the hill to the burned-out inn’s driveway, Mary and Billy holding the old man’s hands. Frank thinks it could be a Norman Rockwell painting: And a Stinky Old Bastard Shall Lead Them.
He gets behind the Buick’s steering wheel. Corinne gets in the passenger seat. She puts a hand on his arm and gives him her sweetest smile, the one that says I love you, you big strong man. Frank isn’t big, he’s not particularly strong, and there’s not much bloom left on the rose of their marriage (a bit wilted, that rose, petals going brown at the edges), but she needs to soothe him out of the red zone, and long experience has taught her how to do it.
He sighs and puts the Buick in reverse.
“Try not to run them down,” she says, looking back over her shoulder.
“Don’t tempt me,” Frank says, and begins to creep the Buick backward. The ditches are deep on either side of this narrow track, and if he drops the rear end into one of them, it will be Katie bar the door.
Granpop and the kids reach the driveway before Frank is even halfway down the hill. The old man can see tracks pressed into the weeds. That panel truck looks like it’s been there for years, but Granpop guesses that’s not the case. Maybe someone decided to camp for a few days. It’s the only thing he can think of. There sure can’t be anything up there left to scavenge, any fool could see that.
Donald Brown loves his son, and there are many things Frankie can do well (although Granpop can’t think of any right off the top of his head), but when it comes to backing up that Buick Estate Wagon, he isn’t worth a dry popcorn fart. The rear end is wagging from side to side like the tail of an old tired dog. He almost dumps it in the left ditch, overcorrects, almost dumps it in the right one, and overcorrects again.
“Boy, he’s not doing that very good,” Billy says.
“Hush up,” Granpop says. “He’s doing fine.”
“Can me and Mary go up and look at the old Slip Inn?”
“Slide Inn,” Granpop says. “Sure, go on up for a minute. Run, and be ready to come back down. Your dad’s not in a very good temper.”
The kids run up the overgrown drive.
“Don’t fall in the cellar hole!” Granpop bawls after them, and is about to add that they should stay in sight, but before he can do it there’s a crunch, an abbreviated honk of the horn, and then his son cursing a blue streak. There. That’s one of the things he’s good at.
Granpop turns from the scampering kids to see that, after managing to back all the way down the hill without going off the road, Frank’s ditched the wagon while trying to make a three-point turn.
“Shut up, Frankie!” Granpop shouts. “Quit that cussing and turn off the motor before you stall it out!” He’s probably torn off half the tailpipe anyway, but there’s no point telling him that.
