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Frank shuts off the motor and gets out. Corinne gets out too, but it’s a struggle. She tears an arc of weeds ahead of the door and finally manages. The car’s rear end is bumper-deep on the right side and the front is angled upward on the left.
Frank walks to his father. “The ground gave way while I was turning!”
“You cut it too tight,” the old man says. “That’s why only your rightside back wheel went in.”
“The ground gave way, I’m telling you!”
“Cut it too tight.”
“It gave way, goddammit!”
Standing side by side as they are, Corinne sees how much they look alike, and although she’s seen the resemblance many times before, on this beshitted summer morning it comes as a revelation. She realizes that her husband is on time’s conveyor belt, and before it dumps him off into the boneyard, he will actually become his father, only without Granpop’s sour but occasionally engaging sense of humor. Sometimes she gets so tired. Of Frank, yes, but also of herself. Because is she any better? She’d like to think so but really doesn’t believe it.
She looks around where Billy and Mary were, then at Granpop. “Donald? Where are the kids?”
The kids are inspecting the panel truck at the top of the hill, close to where the Slide Inn once stood. The tire on the driver’s side is flat. While Mary goes around the front to look at the license plate (she’s always on the lookout for new ones, a game Granpop taught her), Billy walks to the edge of the long hole in the ground where the inn once stood. He looks down and sees it’s full of dark water. Charred beams stick up. And a woman’s leg. The foot is clad in a bright blue sneaker. He stares, at first frozen, then backs away.
“Billy!” Mary calls. “It’s a Delaware! My first Delaware!”
“That’s right, sweetie,” someone says. “Delaware it is.”
Billy looks up. Two men are walking around the far end of the foundation hole. They are young. One is tall, with red hair that’s all oily and clumpy. He has a lot of pimples. The other one is short and fat. He’s got a bag in one hand that looks like Granpop’s old bowling bag, the one with ROLLING THUNDER on the side in fading blue letters. This one has no writing on it. Both men are smiling.
Billy tries to smile back. He doesn’t know if it really looks like a smile or more like a kid trying not to scream, but he hopes it’s a smile. He doesn’t want these two men to know he was looking into the cellar hole.
Mary comes around the side of the little white truck with its flat shoe. Her smile looks completely natural. Sure, why not? She’s a little girl, and as far as she knows, everybody likes little girls.
“Hi,” she says. “I’m Mary. That’s my brother Billy. Our car went in the ditch.” She points down the hill, at where her father and Granpop are looking at the back end of the Buick and her mother is looking up at them.
“Well hi there, Mary,” says the redhead. “Good to meet you.”
“You too, Billy.” The fat young man drops a hand on Billy’s shoulder. The touch is startling, but Billy is too scared to jump. He holds onto his smile with all his might.
“Yup, yup, little problem there,” the fat young man says, peering down, and when Corinne raises one hand—tentatively—the fat one raises his in return. “Think we could help, Galen?”
“I bet we could,” says the redhead. “We’ve got our own problem, as you see.” And he points to the flat tire. “No spare.” He bends down to Billy. His eyes are bright blue. There doesn’t seem to be anything in them. “Did you check out that hole, Billy? Mighty big one.”
“No,” Billy says. He’s trying to sound natural, unconcerned by the question, but doesn’t know if he’s getting that in his voice or not. He thinks he might faint. He wishes, God he wishes that he’d never looked down there. Blue sneaker. “I was afraid I might fall in.”
“Smart kid,” Galen says. “Isn’t he, Pete?”
“Smart,” the fat one agrees, and tosses Corinne another wave. Granpop is now looking up the hill, too. Frank is still staring at the Buick’s ditched rear end, shoulders slumped.
“That skinny one your dad?” redheaded Galen asks Mary.
“Yup, and that’s our granpop. He’s old.”
“No shit Sherlock,” Pete says. His hand is still on Billy’s shoulder. Billy looks down at it and sees what might be blood under the nail of Pete’s second finger.
“Well, you know what?” Galen says—he’s leaning down, speaking to Mary, who’s smiling up at him. “I bet we could push that big old sumbitch right out of there. Then maybe your dad could give us a ride to someplace where there’s a garage. Get a new tire for our little truck.”
“Are you from Delaware?” Mary asks.
“Well, we been through there,” Pete says. Then he and Galen exchange a look and they laugh.
“Let’s take a look at that car of yours,” Galen says. “Want me to carry you down, sweetie?”
“No, that’s okay,” Mary says, her smile growing slightly tentative. “I can walk.”
