Chapter 20

May went by quickly, with the weather warming up and turning nice. The broadleaf trees began to green up, and most importantly for Bree, the airstrip behind the house dried out. Along toward the middle of the month she had a track meet on Saturday that ate up most of the day, but on Sunday morning she and Mark got into Rocinante and flew around for a bit. They shot some landings with each of them flying, and satisfied themselves that neither had gotten too rusty in the six months they’d been stuck on the ground.

Not long afterwards, as the sky started to fill with cumulus, Bree and Becca laid out the launch rope. Bree’s first glider launch of the year was soon under way. It was a nice afternoon with good lift; she was up for close to three hours just messing around locally and flying down to Albany River and back.

For whatever reason, a couple days later there was no track practice after school. The weather was nice, although it was too late in the day to do any soaring. Still, over lunch it had been decided that it would be a good chance for Bree to do some up and downs, and to break in Autumn, Howie and Jared on being her ground crew, under Jackie and Bree’s instruction. It was the first time the guys had seen a ground tow launch with the steeply climbing sailplane, and they thought it was pretty cool.

Over the course of the winter, Bree had explained that she planned on doing some longer cross-country flights over the summer, as well as doing the contest down at Mt. Vernon in July. In either case outlandings seemed likely. It would be helpful if someone could follow along on the ground with the sailplane trailer to facilitate getting back home. Just to make life interesting they practiced taking the wings off the 1-26 and putting them on the trailer, then putting everything back together again.

There was a price to pay for that, of course, not that she minded doing it: helping Jared practice kicking. It took the four of them to practice field goal and extra point kicks efficiently, and they did quite a bit of it, sometimes at the football field and sometimes at the airstrip.

Graduation came at the end of May; Bree, Jared, Autumn, and Howie were all present when Becca, Jack, Vixen, Alan, and Summer graduated. The big day was two years off for Bree and her friends, and they knew they had a lot to do before they got there. Still, it was nice to know they were that much closer, even though life at home promised to be a lot different for Bree, Howie, and Autumn with Becca, Jack, and Summer off at college.

Matt Wadsworth was glad school was out for the summer. It got damn boring sitting in classes, not that he did very well with them. He’d struggled through, but at least he had managed good enough grades that he’d be eligible for football. It was only a little over two months till practice started, and this year, as a junior he figured he’d be playing a little more than he had the previous year.

Still, practice was two and a half months in the future, which was a long ways away. Great summer days stretched out in front of him; he could hang out with his friends and have a good time. The problem was that he didn’t have wheels; it sucked big time to have a driver’s license and not be able to use it. Oh, he could drive his mom’s old car once in a while when she wasn’t at work, but it wasn’t going to be much good for hanging out with friends. What was more, he’d had it on good authority that there was a guy over on the Three Pines Reservation who would sell beer to kids, no ID necessary. It would be great to be able to sit back and sip a few with his buddies, but he had to have wheels to go over and get it, and he didn’t think he wanted to try to use his mom’s car to do that.

It would really be nice to have wheels of his own. A big four-wheel-drive pickup would be neat; several of the cool kids around school had them. He had a few hundred stuck back for getting wheels – not enough, and for sure not enough to get the pickup he dreamed of. Right at the moment he was willing to settle for almost any old clunker, so long as it ran well enough and wasn’t going to cost more in repairs than it cost in the first place. But even with his part-time job of gassing up boats and cleaning stuff up around the marina, he wasn’t going to have enough money for wheels before fall and time to go back to school. There were some perks to the job, mostly checking out girls in bikinis as they came in on the boats, even if there wasn’t much chance he was going to get anywhere with any of those rich summer bitches. Even with that it was clear that his summer was going to be pretty bleak.

The summer would have gone a lot better, he thought, if Misty hadn’t gotten her panties in a wad and dumped him. She might even think it was better than hanging around with a louse like Walt Lethbridge, but she’d done it and well hell, there went that.

Without wheels, he even had to hoof it to his job at the marina. It really wasn’t all that bad a deal on a nice day, even though it was a couple miles, but he could see that on a rainy day it wasn’t going to be all that nice. Shit, he thought as he trudged down the road from his day’s work at the marina, it sure would be nice to have wheels when that happened. It sure wasn’t going to be nice to show up for work looking like a drowned rat.

He didn’t really pay any attention to the approaching pickup truck; it was just another lucky bastard who got to drive, rather than walk. He also didn’t really notice it coming up behind him, until the brakes squealed as it came to a stop. “Hey, Matt!” he heard someone call. “Want a lift?”

He glanced up to see Rusty Frankovich, Misty’s brother, driving the pickup. It was an old beater, but riding beat the living hell out of walking. Rusty was, well, had been a football player last fall, and Matt knew he was a pretty decent guy in spite of his sister. “Yeah, sure,” he said, relieved at the fact he wouldn’t have to walk the rest of the way home. He climbed into the pickup and said, “Thanks, man. My feet were killing me already.”

“Yeah, shit, I know how that works,” Rusty said. “How’ve you been doing?”

“Not bad considering,” Matt replied. “How does it feel to be out of high school?”

“Damn glad to be out of that place,” Rusty replied, dropping the pickup into gear and letting up on the clutch. “You know how good it feels after you’ve taken a good healthy dump? Sort of like that.”

“Yeah, shit, and I’ve got two more years of it. I’ll be damn glad to have it behind me so I can get out of here.”

“No shit,” Rusty agreed. “I’m not going to be sorry to see this place behind me either, and at least I don’t have to wait no two more years. That sort of has something to do with why I was looking for you.”

“What’s this?” Matt replied, hoping it wasn’t some shit about Misty.

“Well, the word is out you’re looking for some cheap wheels.”

“I’m looking for wheels, that’s for sure. Cheap would be nice, but I want something that stands a chance of running for a while without costing me an arm and a leg.”

“It so happens I might be able to help you,” Rusty said. “I’ve got to get rid of this in the next few days. I drove down to one of those cash-for-cars places in Camden, and they won’t give me shit for it. I know it looks like shit, but it hasn’t given me any trouble to speak of. I can’t make any guarantees, but it might do you for a while.”

“How much do you have to have?” Matt said, more out of curiosity than anything else. Whatever figure Rusty named was going to be well out of his range.

“It’s probably worth two grand if I could wait for someone to give it to me, but I can’t do that just now. Seven and a half is what one of those crooks offered me down in Camden,” Rusty smiled. “I’ll let you have it for that if you can do me a couple favors.”

“This doesn’t involve killing someone, does it?”

“Naw, nothing like that,” Rusty laughed. “I need a ride someplace Monday, and there’ll be some stuff I’ll want you to stash, and maybe ship to me sometime in the future.”

That didn’t sound like an impossible deal, and with some scratching around and some begging Matt could come up with the money, at least after he got his paycheck on Friday. “What kind of stuff?” he asked a little suspiciously.

“Just clothes and stuff,” Rusty told him. “I can’t take them with me just yet. I’ll want them in the fall maybe, or maybe not. I can’t trust anyone in my family to do it if I want them sent. Look, you got a few minutes? I can stop off at the Frostee Freeze and buy you a Coke or something so we can talk about this a little.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Matt replied, wondering what this was all about. “What’s this ride all about?”

“Just down to Camden,” Rusty said. “Look, can you keep a secret for a few days? That’s the other part of the deal.”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, again, so long as it doesn’t involve killing someone or anything like that.”

“Nothing like that,” Rusty smiled. “I gotta catch a bus down in Camden so I can go to the Marines induction station in Milwaukee. I don’t want my family to know about it till it’s a done deal, and I don’t want them to know where I’ve gone.”

“Yeah, shit, I can help you with that. So you’re joining the Marines, huh?”

Rusty shook his head. “It’s not really what I want to do,” he explained, “but want to do and have to do are two different things, and it’s the best way I can think of to be gone to a place where my mother can’t get at me.”

“I met your mother back when I was going with Misty,” Matt nodded. “It doesn’t seem like she’d be much fun to live with.”

“Shit, you don’t know the half of it,” Rusty snarled as he pulled into the Frostee Freeze. Amazingly enough, one of the drive-up spots was available; he pulled into it as he explained, “I bought and paid for this truck by mowing lawns, humping furniture, and shit like that. Dad slipped me a few bucks when the queen was looking the other way, and then signed the paperwork on the truck when I got it. She got into a shit fit about that, said I didn’t deserve to have wheels, and thought the money I’d earned ought to go to her so she could spend it on the fucking princess. Of course, the fucking princess is driving around in a fucking new Toyota Corolla that she didn’t have to lift a finger for.”

“Shit,” Matt said. “That’s got to piss you off.”

“No shit it pisses me off,” Matt said. “I’m losing money on selling this truck to you this way, but at least what I get won’t go to her.”

“Shit,” Matt shook his head as a voice came over the speaker; Rusty ordered a couple Cokes as Matt went on. “I had no idea it was that bad.”

“Let me tell you buddy, you’re so goddamn lucky Misty decided she wanted to hang around that Lethbridge asshole it ain’t funny. When you were going with the princess, did you ever notice how everything had to be her way, when she wanted it, where she wanted it, and how hard, no matter what you wanted?”

“Well, yeah,” Matt sighed, “I guess it was that way, now that you mention it. But most of the time it was pretty fun.”

“As far as I know she was just playing with you,” Rusty said. “She really wants to get back with Howie Erikson, mostly because he caught her at it and blew her off in the process. She wants to get him out on a limb and cut it off just because he’d figured out what she was up to and didn’t want any part of it. The princess and the queen don’t like it when they don’t get their way, and they didn’t with him. Of course, they have to take it out on me since I’m a guy. It wasn’t long after Howie dumped her that I decided I was heading to the Marines just as soon as I graduated, and I’ve done my best to stay out of the house since then.”

“I know you’ve been hanging out with Mike Kovacs and Steve Sarmeinto a lot,” Matt observed as a carhop came out carrying a tray with a couple of Cokes. She attached it to the open window of the pickup, and Rusty gave her a couple ones as Matt went on, “As much as they hang around church and stuff it struck me as a little surprising.”

“I’ll tell you what, I’d rather be hanging around church or Bible study or something with Mike and Steve than hanging around the house with the princess and the queen,” Rusty said. “It may have been about all that kept me from going off my rocker. I mean, it was a good reason to be out of the house without it looking like all I really wanted was to be out of the house. They, uh, they sort of knew that and helped me out with it. They’re good guys, I owe them for that. I offered to give them this truck, but they’re going to a Bible college, they don’t need it. They can’t stash my stuff either, since they’ll be gone. You, at least, are going to be around another couple years. If I don’t need it by then, I probably will never need it.”

“God, that’s got to suck,” Matt shook his head. “I mean, with your family and all.”

“Oh, it’s sucked for years,” Rusty said. “Dad’s just about as much under the queen’s thumb as anyone else, and I don’t know why he puts up with it. He’s cut me a little slack from time to time, and that’s helped me get through, but I’m getting the hell out of there, and I hope he gets his act together enough to do it himself sometime. Like I said, you’re goddamn lucky Misty dumped you when she did. At least she’s getting a little of her own back from Lethbridge. He’s about as bad a controlling asshole as she is. She’s not doing too well at controlling him, and she doesn’t like it one damn bit. The only thing is that she knows if she dumps him she’s likely to get her ass kicked in the process.”

“He’d do it, too,” Matt nodded. “Maybe worse than what you said. I mean, Misty is a hell of a tease and I’ll bet he wouldn’t put up with much of that shit.”

“Yeah, well, too bad for the princess if she gets what’s coming to her,” Rusty shook his head. “I mean, you play with fire, sometimes you get burned. She thinks she’s going to get away with it and leave him with egg on his face, and I’ll bet she doesn’t. At least, in another few days I won’t have to be around to watch it and put up with all the goddamn drama when she comes home with a black eye, or worse. Maybe lots worse. Fuck, I’ve had to put up with more of that shit than I wanted to this spring anyway.”

“What’s this?”

“Oh, my older sister Bethany is the same kind of drama queen, with the queen telling her what to do, of course. She strung Shay Archer along for a couple years before she dumped him for some rich bastard downstate. Then this rich bastard’s mother figured out what Bethany was up to and made him dump her. It got pretty bad around the house for a while. The queen was pissed as hell with everyone, especially everyone who had a dick, I mean, like it was my fault this Derrick guy wriggled out of the trap. I’ll tell you what, next Monday can’t come soon enough. So you want to deal on this truck?”

“I think so,” Matt said. “I’ll have to scratch around and find some extra bucks for the license and shit, but I ought to be able to do that. Hauling you to Camden on Monday isn’t a problem.”

“Good,” Rusty replied. “I’ll have to get a little cute about getting the stuff I want you to keep over to you, but it’ll only be a few boxes and I’ll manage that.”

Matt thought for a moment. “Hey,” he said finally, “would you mind if I were to, uh, pass the word about what Misty and her mother are up to? I mean, if she gets herself shed of Lethbridge, it might be nice if some other guy gets warned before he gets in too deep with her.”

“Shit, tell Lethbridge if you want, not that he’ll believe you,” Rusty snorted. “He’s that kind of asshole and deserves the shit she has to be handing him, just like she deserves the shit she’ll get from him if she isn’t already. Just let me get out of town first so the queen doesn’t get all over my ass any worse than she already is. After that, the more shit that comes rolling downhill, the better.”

It took Matt a little more messing around than he’d hoped to come up with the money for the truck, but not excessively so; Rusty was even able to point him at a few lawn mowing jobs that would become available once he left for the Marines. It would eat up some of Matt’s free time, but it was worth it to have wheels of his own; the summer was beginning to look better and better.

Four times over the next few days Rusty dropped by Matt’s house, bringing two or three boxes at a time, until there were a total of eleven stashed in the corner of Matt’s room. “I’ll tell you what,” Rusty told him once, “while I may not want any of that stuff in the end, it’s more than I ever figured I’d make it out of the house with.”

On Monday morning – Matt didn’t have to work – Rusty drove the pickup over to Matt’s house, and the two of them took off for Camden.

“Well, goodbye to this dump,” Rusty snorted as they turned south on the State Road. “I’m not going to miss it one damn bit. It’d be nice to see how high the queen flies when she realizes I’m not coming home tonight.”

“It might get a little interesting,” Matt said from the driver’s seat of the pickup; the paperwork had already been signed.

“Well, yeah, if I could watch it on TV and not have to be there,” Rusty agreed. “That’s the nice thing about TVs, they have an off switch. Look, I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but you might want to keep this truck out of sight for a couple days, because when she spots you driving it she’s going to be all over your ass wanting to know what happened to me. Don’t for Christ’s sakes tell her I’m off to the Marines.”

“Hadn’t thought about that angle,” Matt said.

“It’s part of the reason I gave you a deal on the truck,” Rusty said. “I mean, to somewhat make up for the hassle. I’d say to just tell her I had you leave me at the bus station and that I never told you where I was going.”

“I can do that,” Matt agreed. “Hell, I don’t know much more than that anyway.”

“That’s why I didn’t tell you more than I did. Even if she gets really bitchy, you can’t tell her something you don’t know.”

It was an hour’s drive down to Camden. Most of the way Rusty bitched about the queen and her princesses, and some of the atrocities they’d pulled on him over the years. Matt wasn’t all that happy with his own family, but the hassles he had with them were nothing on what Rusty had put up with. In fact, they looked pretty good by comparison.

Finally they made it to the bus station in Camden. Rusty got out, carrying a small barrel bag. “Hey, Rusty,” Matt said, “good luck to you. Catch you around sometime.”

“Yeah, catch you around, and thanks,” Rusty said, “although I have no idea when I’ll be back in Spearfish Lake, if ever. Take care of the truck for me will you?”

“Sure will, Rusty, and thanks.”

Rusty stood at the entrance to the bus station and watched Matt drive off. That part of his life was behind him now, and whatever the future brought, it wouldn’t be run by the queen and the princesses.

Matt was going to face some hassles, but at the price he’d paid for the truck he’d be well paid for them. Besides, there wasn’t much he could tell the queen anyway. Rusty really felt a little bad about lying to him a little, but he didn’t feel like living in the mud and putting up with the bullshit a Marine had to go through, which was why he was actually off to the Air Force.

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