The Regulators

Chapter One

POPLAR STREET/3:45 P.M./JULY 15, 1996

Summer’s here.

Not just summer, either, not this year, but the apotheosis of summer, the avatar of summer, high green perfect central Ohio summer dead-smash in the middle of July, white sun glaring out of that fabled faded Levi’s sky, the sound of kids hollering back and forth through the Bear Street Woods at the top of the hill, the tink! of Little League bats from the ballfield on the other side of the woods, the sound of power mowers, the sound of muscle-cars out on Highway 19, the sound of rollerblades on the cement sidewalks and smooth macadam of Poplar Street, the sound of radios-Cleveland Indians baseball (the rare day game) competing with Tina Turner belting out “Nutbush City Limits”, the one that goes Twenty-five is the speed limit, motorcycles not allowed in it-and surrounding everything like an auditory edging of lace, the soothing, silky hiss of lawn sprinklers.

Summer in Wentworth, Ohio, oh boy, can you dig it. Summer here on Poplar Street, which runs straight through the middle of that fabled faded American dream with the smell of hotdogs in the air and a few burst paper remains of Fourth of July firecrackers still lying here and there in the gutters. It’s been a hot July, a perfect good old by God blue-ribbon jeezer of a July, no doubt about it, but if you want to know the truth, it’s also been a dry July, with no water but the occasional flipped spray of a hose to stir those last shreds of Chinese paper from where they lie. That may change today; there’s an occasional rumble of thunder from the west, and those watching The Weather Channel (there’s plenty of cable TV on Poplar Street, you bet) know that thunderstorms are expected later on. Maybe even a tornado, although that’s unlikely.

Meantime, though, it’s all watermelon and Kool-Aid and foul tips off the end of the bat; it’s all the summer you ever wanted and more here in the center of the United States of America, life as good as you ever dreamed it could be, with Chevrolets parked in driveways and steaks in refrigerator meat-drawers waiting to be slapped on the barbecue in the backyard come evening. (And will there be apple pie to follow? What do you think?) This is the land of green lawns and carefully tended flowerbeds; this is the Kingdom of Ohio where the kids wear their hats turned around backward and their strappy tank-tops hang down over their baggy shorts and their great big galooty sneakers all seem to bear the Nike swoosh.

On the block of Poplar which runs between Bear Street at the top of the hill and Hyacinth at the bottom, there are eleven houses and one store. The store, which stands on the corner of Poplar and Hyacinth, is the ever-popular, all-American convenience mart, where you can get your cigarettes, your Blatz or Rolling Rock, your penny candy (although these days most of it costs a dime), your BBQ supplies (paper plates plastic forks taco chips ice cream ketchup mustard relish), your Popsicles, and your wide variety of Snapple, made from the best stuff on earth. You can even get a copy of Penthouse at the E-Z Stop 24 if you want one, but you have to ask the clerk; in the Kingdom of Ohio, they mostly keep the skin magazines under the counter. And hey, that’s perfectly all right. The important thing is that you should know where to get one if you need one.

The clerk today is new, less than a week on the job, and right now, at 3.45 in the afternoon, she’s waiting on a little boy and girl. The girl looks to be about eleven and is already on her way to being a beauty. The boy, clearly her little brother, is maybe six and is (in the new clerk’s opinion, at least) already on his way to being a first-class boogersnot.

“I want two candybars!” Brother Boogersnot exclaims.

“There’s only money enough for one, if we each have a soda,” Pretty Sis tells him with what the clerk thinks is admirable patience. If this were her little brother, she would be very tempted to kick his ass so high up he could get a job playing the Hunchback of Notre Dame in the school play.

“Mom gave you five bucks this morning, I saw it,” the boogersnot says. “Where’s the rest of it, Marrrrr-grit?”

“Don’t call me that, I hate that,” the girl says. She has long honey-blond hair which the clerk thinks is absolutely gorgeous. The new clerk’s own hair is short and kinky, dyed orange on the right and green on the left. She has a pretty good idea she wouldn’t have gotten this job without washing the dye out of it if the manager hadn’t been absolutely strapped for someone to work eleven-to-seven-her good luck, his bad. He had extracted a promise from her that she’d wear a kerchief or a baseball cap over the dye-job, but promises were made to be broken. Now, she sees, Pretty Sister is looking at her hair with some fascination.

“Margrit-Margrit-Margrit!” the little brother crows with the cheerfully energetic viciousness which only little brothers can muster.

“My name’s really Ellen,” the girl says, speaking with the air of one imparting a great confidence. “Margaret’s my middle name. He calls me that because he knows I hate it.”

“Nice to meet you, Ellen,” the clerk says, and begins totting up the girl’s purchases.

“Nice to meet you, Marrrrr-grit!” the boogersnot brother mimics, screwing his face into an expression so strenuously awful that it is funny. His nose is wrinkled, his eyes crossed. “Nice to meet you, Margrit the Maggot!”

Ignoring him, Ellen says: “I love your hair.”

“Thanks,” the new clerk says, smiling. “It’s not as nice as yours, but it’ll do. That’s a dollar forty-six.”

The girl takes a little plastic change-purse from the pocket of her jeans. It’s the kind you squeeze open. Inside are two crumpled dollar bills and a few pennies.

“Ask Margrit the Maggot where the other three bucks went!” the boogersnot trumpets. He’s a regular little public address system. “She used it to buy a maga zine with Eeeeeeethan Hawwwwke on the cover!”

Ellen goes on ignoring him, although her cheeks are starting to get a little red. As she hands over the two dollars she says, “I haven’t seen you before, have I?” “Probably not-I just started in here last Wednesday. They wanted somebody who’d work eleven-to-seven and stay over a few hours if the night guy turns up late.”

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you. I’m Ellie Carver. And this is my little brother, Ralph.”

Ralph Carver sticks out his tongue and makes a sound like a wasp caught in a mayonnaise jar. What a polite little animal it is, the young woman with the tu-tone hair thinks.

“I’m Cynthia Smith,” she says, extending her hand over the counter to the girl. “Always a Cynthia and never a Cindy. Can you remember that?”

The girl nods, smiling. “And I’m always an Ellie, never a Margaret.”

“Margrit the Maggot!” Ralph cries in crazed six-year-old triumph. He raises his hands in the air and bumps his hips from side to side in the pure poison joy of living. “Margrit the Maggot loves Eeeeethan Hawwwwwke!”

Ellen gives Cynthia a look much older than her years, an expression of world-weary resignation that says You see what I have to put up with. Cynthia, who had a little brother herself and knows exactly what pretty Ellie has to put up with, wants to crack up but manages to keep a straight face. And that’s good. This girl’s a prisoner of her time and her age, the same as anyone else, which means that all of this is perfectly serious to her. Ellie hands her brother a can of Pepsi. “We’ll split the candybar outside,” she says.

“You’re gonna pull me in Buster,” Ralph says as they start toward the door, walking into the brilliant oblong of sun that falls through the window like fire. “Gonna pull me in Buster all the way back home.”

“Like hell I am,” Ellie says, but as she opens the door, Brother Boogersnot turns and gives Cynthia a smug look which says Wait and see who wins this one. You just wait and see. Then they go out.

Summer yes, but not just summer; we are talking July 15th, the very rooftree of summer, in an Ohio town where most kids go to Vacation Bible School and participate in the Summer Reading Program at the Public Library, and where one kid has just got to have a little red wagon which he has named (for reasons only he will ever know) Buster. Eleven houses and one convenience store simmering in that bright bald midwestern July glare, ninety degrees in the shade, ninety-six in the sun, hot enough that the air shimmers above the pavement as if over an open incinerator.

The block runs north-south, odd-numbered houses on the Los Angeles side of the street, even-numbered ones on the New York side. At the top, on the western corner of Poplar and Bear Street, is 251 Poplar. Brad Josephson is out front, using the hose to water the flowerbeds beside the front path. He is forty-six, with gorgeous chocolate skin and a long, sloping gut. Ellie Carver thinks he looks like Bill Cosby… a little bit, anyway. Brad and Belinda Josephson are the only black people on the block, and the block is damned proud to have them. They look just the way people in suburban Ohio like their black people to look, and it makes things just right to see them out and about. They’re nice folks. Everyone likes the Josephsons.

Gary Ripton, who delivers the Wentworth Shopper on Monday afternoons, comes pedaling around the corner and tosses Brad a rolled-up paper. Brad catches it deftly with the hand that isn’t holding the hose. Never even moves. Just up with the hand and whoomp, there it is.

“Good one, Mr Josephson!” Gary calls, and pedals on down the hill with his canvas sack of papers bouncing on his hip. He is wearing an oversized Orlando Magic jersey with Shaq’s number, 32, on it.

“Yep, I ain’t lost it yet,” Brad says, and tucks the nozzle of the hose under his arm so he can open the weekly handout and see what’s on the front page. It’ll be the same old crap, of course-yard sales and community puffery-but he wants to get a look, anyway. Just human nature, he supposes. Across the street, at 250, Johnny Marinville is sitting on his front step, playing his guitar and singing along. One of the world’s dumber folk-songs, but Marinville plays well, and although no one will ever mistake him for Marvin Gaye (or Perry Como, for that matter), he can carry a tune and stay in key. Brad has always found this slightly offensive; a man who’s good at one thing should be content with that and let the rest of it go, Brad feels.

Gary Ripton, fourteen, crewcut, plays backup shortstop for the Wentworth American Legion team (the Hawks, currently 14-4 with two games left to play), tosses the next Shopper on to the porch of 249, the Soderson place. The Josephsons are the Poplar Street Black Couple; the Sodersons, Gary and Marielle, are the Poplar Street Bohemians. On the scales of public opinion, the Sodersons pretty much balance each other. Gary is, by and large, a helpout kind of guy, and liked by his neighbours in spite of the fact that he’s at least half-lit nearly all of the time. Marielle, however… well, as Pie Carver has been known to say, “There’s a word for women like Marielle; it rhymes with the one for how you kick a football.”

Gary’s throw is a perfect bank shot, bouncing the Shopper off the Soderson front door and landing it spang on the Soderson welcome mat, but no one comes out to get it; Marielle is inside taking a shower (her second of the day; she hates it when the weather gets sticky like this), and Gary is out back, absent-mindedly fueling the backyard barbecue, eventually loading it with enough briquets to flash-fry a water buffalo. He is wearing an apron with the words YOU MAY KISS THE COOK on the front. It’s too early to start the steaks, but it’s never too early to get ready. There is an umbrella-shaded picnic table in the middle of the Soderson backyard, and standing on it is Gary’s portable bar: a bottle of olives, a bottle of gin, and a bottle of vermouth. The bottle of vermouth has not been opened. A double martini stands in front of it. Gary finishes overloading the barbecue, goes to the table, and swallows what’s left in the glass. He is very partial to martinis, and tends to be in the bag by four o’clock or so on most days when he doesn’t have to teach. Today is no exception.

“All right,” Gary says, “next case.” He then proceeds to make another Soderson Martini. He does this by a) filling his martini glass to the three-quarters point with Bombay gin; b) popping in an Amati olive; c) tipping the rim of the glass against the unopened bottle of vermouth for good luck.

He tastes; closes his eyes; tastes again. His eyes, already quite red, open. He smiles. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen!” he tells his simmering backyard. “We have a winner!”

Faintly, over all the other sounds of summer-kids, mowers, muscle-cars, sprinklers, singing bugs in the baked grass of his back yard-Gary can hear the writer’s guitar, a sweet and easy sound. He picks out the tune almost at once and dances around the circle of shade thrown by the umbrella with his glass in his hand, singing along: “So kiss me and smile for me… Tell me that you’ll wait for me… Hold me like you’ll never let me go…”

A good tune, one he remembers from before the Reed twins two houses down were even thought of, let alone born. For just a moment he is struck by the reality of time’s passage, how stark it is, and unappealable. It passes the ear with a sound like iron. He takes another big sip of his martini and wonders what to do now that the barbecue is ready for liftoff. Along with the other sounds he can hear the shower upstairs, and he thinks of Marielle naked in there-the bitch of the western world, but she’s kept her body in good shape. He thinks of her soaping her breasts, maybe caressing her nipples with the tips of her fingers in a circular motion, making them hard. Of course she’s doing nothing of the damned kind, but it’s the sort of image that just won’t go away unless you do something to pop it. He decides to be a twentieth-century version of St George; he will fuck the dragon instead of slaying it. He puts his martini glass down on the picnic table and starts for the house.

Oh gosh, it’s summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime, and on Poplar Street the living is easy.

Gary Ripton checks his rearview mirror for traffic, sees none, and swerves easterly across the street to the Carver house. He hasn’t bothered with Mr Marinville because, at the start of the summer, Mr Marinville gave him five dollars not to deliver the Shopper. “Please, Gary,” he said, his eyes solemn and earnest. “I can’t read about another supermarket opening or drugstore jamboree. It’ll kill me if I do.” Gary doesn’t understand Mr Marinville in the slightest, but he is a nice enough man, and five bucks is five bucks.

Mrs Carver opens the front door of 248 Poplar and waves as Gary easy-tosses her the Shopper. She grabs for it, misses completely, and laughs. Gary laughs with her. She doesn’t have Brad Josephson’s hands, or reflexes, but she’s pretty and a hell of a good sport. Her husband is beside the house, wearing his bathing suit and flipflops, washing the car. He catches a glimpse of Gary out of the corner of his eye, turns, points a finger. Gary points one right back, and they pretend to shoot each other. This is Mr Carver’s crippled but game effort to be cool, and Gary respects that. David Carver works for the post office, and Gary figures he must be on vacation this week. The boy makes a vow to himself: if he has to settle for a regular nine-to-five job when he grows up (he knows that, like diabetes and kidney failure, this does happen to some people), he will never spend his vacation at home, washing his car in the driveway.

I’m not going to have a car, anyway, he thinks. Going to have a motorcycle. No Japanese bike, either. Big damn old Harley-Davidson like the one Mr Marinville keeps in his garage. American steel.

He checks the rearview again and catches sight of something bright red up on Bear Street beyond the Josephson place-a van, it looks like, parked just beyond the southwestern corner of the intersection-and then swoops his Schwinn back across the street again, this time to 247, the Wyler place.

Of the occupied houses on the street (242, the old Hobart place, is vacant), the Wyler place is the only one which even approaches seedy-it’s a small ranch-style home that could use a fresh coat of paint, and a fresh coat of seal on the driveway. There’s a sprinkler twirling on the lawn, but the grass is still showing the effects of the hot, dry weather in a way the other lawns on the street (including the lawn of the vacant Hobart house, actually) are not. There are yellow patches, small right now but spreading.

She doesn’t know that water isn’t enough, Gary thinks, reaching into his canvas bag for another rolled-up Shopper. Her husband might've, but-

He suddenly realizes that Mrs Wyler (he guesses that widows are still called Mrs) is standing inside the screen door, and something about seeing her there, hardly more than a silhouette, startles him badly. He wobbles on his bike for a moment, and when he throws the rolled-up paper his usually accurate aim is way off. The Shopper lands atop one of the shrubs flanking the front steps. He hates doing that, hates it, it’s like some stupid comedy show where the paperboy is always throwing the Daily Bugle on to the roof or into the rosebushes-har-har, paperboys with bad aim, wotta scream-and on a different day (or at a different house) he might have gone back to rectify the error… maybe even put the paper in the lady’s hand himself with a smile and a nod and a have a nice day. Not today, though. There’s something here he doesn’t like. Something about the way she’s standing inside the screen door, shoulders slumped and hands dangling, like a kid’s toy with the batteries pulled. And that’s maybe not all that’s out of kilter, either. He can’t see her well enough to be sure, but he thinks maybe Mrs Wyler is naked from the waist up, that she’s standing there in her front hall wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Standing there and staring at him.

If so, it’s not sexy. It’s creepy.

The kid that stays with her, her nephew, that little weasel’s creepy, too. Seth Garland or Garin or something like that. He never talks, not even if you talk to him-hey, how you doin, you like it around here, you think the Indians’ll make it to the Series again-just looks at you with his mud-colored eyes. Looks at you the way Gary feels Mrs Wyler, who is usually nice, is looking at him now. Like step into my parlor said the spider to the fly, like that. Her husband died last year (right around the time the Hobarts had that trouble and moved away, now that he thinks of it), and people say it wasn’t an accident. People say that Herb Wyler, who collected stamps and had once given Gary an old air rifle, committed suicide.

Gooseflesh-somehow twice as scary on a day as hot as this one-ripples up his back and he banks back across the street after another cursory look into the rearview mirror. The red van is still up there near the corner of Bear and Poplar (some spiffy rig, the boy thinks), and this time there is a vehicle coming down the street, as well, a blue Acura Gary recognizes at once. It’s Mr Jackson, the block’s other teacher. Not high school in his case, however; Mr Jackson is actually Professor Jackson, or maybe it’s just Assistant Professor Jackson. He teaches at Ohio State, go you Buckeyes. The Jacksons live at 244, one up from the old Hobart place. It’s the nicest house on the block, a roomy Cape Cod with a high hedge on the downhill side and a high cedar stake fence on the uphill side, between them and the old veterinarian’s place.

“Yo, Gary!” Peter Jackson says, pulling up beside him. He’s wearing faded jeans and a tee-shirt with a big yellow smile-face on it. HAVE A NICE DAY! Mr Smiley-Smile is saying. “How’s it going, bad boy?”

“Great, Mr Jackson,” Gary says, smiling. He thinks of adding Except that I think Mrs Wyler’s standing in her door back there with her shirt off and then doesn’t. “Everything’s super-cool.”

“Are you starting any games yet?”

“Only two so far, but that’s okay. I got a couple of innings last night, and I’ll probably get a couple more tonight. It’s really all I hoped for. But it’s Frankie Albertini’s last year in Legion, you know.” He holds out a rolled copy of the Shopper.

“That’s right,” Peter says, taking it. “And next year it’s Monsieur Gary Rip ton’s turn to howl at shortstop.”

The boy laughs, tickled at the idea of standing out there at short in his Legion uniform and howling like a werewolf. “You teaching summer school again this year?”

“Yep. Two classes. Historical Plays of Shakespeare, plus James Dickey and the New Southern Gothic. Either sound interesting to you?”

“I think I’ll pass.”

Peter nods seriously. “Pass and you’ll never have to go to summer school, bad boy.” He taps the smile-face on his shirt. “They loosen up on the teacher dress-code a little come June, but summer school’s still a drag. Same as it ever was.” He drops the rolled-up Shopper on to the seat and pulls the Acura’s transmission lever down into drive. “Don’t give yourself a heatstroke pedaling around the neighbourhood with those papers.”

“Nah. I think it’s gonna rain later, anyway. I keep hearing thunder off and on.”

“That’s what they say on the-watch out!”

A large furry shape bullets by, chasing a red disc. Gary leans his bike over toward Mr Jackson’s car and is just feathered by Hannibal’s tail as the German Shepherd chases after the Frisbee.

“He’s the one you ought to warn about heatstroke,” Gary says.

“Maybe you’re right,” Peter says, and drives slowly on.

Gary watches Hannibal snatch the Frisbee off the sidewalk on the far side of the street and turn with it in his mouth. He has a jaunty bandanna tied around his neck and appears to be wearing a big old doggy grin.

“Bring it back, Hannibal!” Jim Reed calls, and his twin brother, Dave, joins in: “Come on, Hannibal! Don’t be a dork! Fetch! Bring!”

Hannibal stands in front of 246, across from the Wyler house, with the Frisbee in his mouth and his tail waving back and forth slowly. His grin appears to widen.

The Reed twins live at 245, a house down from Mrs Wyler. They are standing at the edge of their lawn (one dark, one light, both tall and handsome in cut-off tee-shirts and identical Eddie Bauer shorts), staring across the street at Hannibal. Behind them are a couple of girls. One is Susi Geller from next door. Pretty but not, you know, kabam. The other, a redhead with long cheerleader legs, is a different story. Her picture could be next to kabam in the dictionary. Gary doesn’t know her, but he would like to know her, her hopes and dreams and plans and fantasies. Especially the fantasies. Not in this life, he thinks. That’s mature pussy. She’s seventeen if she’s a day.

“Aw, sugar!” Jim Reed says, then turns to his dark-haired sib. “You go get it this time.”

“No way, it’ll be all spitty,” Dave Reed says. “Hannibal, be a good dog and bring that back here!”

Hannibal stands on the sidewalk in front of Doc’s house, still grinning. Nyah-nyah, he says without having to say anything; it’s all in the grin and the regally serene sweep of the tail. Nyah-nyah, you’ve got girls and Eddie Bauer shorts, but I got your Frisbee and I’m leaking canine spit all over it, and in my opinion that makes me the Grand Wazoo.

Gary reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bag of sunflower seeds-if you have to ride the bench, he has discovered, sunflower seeds help to pass the time. He has become quite adept at cracking them with his teeth and chewing the tasty centers even as he spits the hulls on to the cracked cement of the dugout floor with the machine-gun speed of a major leaguer.

“I gotcha covered,” he calls back to the Reed twins, hoping the sweet little redhead will be impressed by his animal-taming prowess, knowing this is a dream so foolish only a kid between his freshman and sophomore years in high school could possibly entertain it, but she looks so wonderful in those cuffed white shorts she’s wearing, oh great gosh a'mighty, and when did a little fantasy ever hurt a kid?

He drops the bag of sunflower seeds down to dog level and crackles the cellophane. Hannibal comes at once, still with the red Frisbee caught in the center of his grin. Gary pours a few seeds into his palm. “Good, Hannibal,” he says. These’re good. Sunflower seeds, loved by dogs all over the world. Try em. You’ll buy em.”

Hannibal studies the seeds a moment longer, nostrils quivering delicately, then drops the Frisbee on to Poplar Street and vacuums them out of Gary’s palm. Quick as a flash, the boy bends, grabs the Frisbee (it is sorta spitty around the edges), and scales it back at Jim Reed. It’s a perfect, floating toss, one Jim is able to grab without moving a single step. And, oh God, oh Jesus, the redhead is applauding him, bouncing up and down next to Susi Geller, her boobs (small but delectable) kind of jiggling inside the halter she’s wearing. Oh thank you Lord, thank you so much, we now have enough jackoff material in our memory banks to last at least a week.

Grinning, unaware that he will die both a virgin and a backup shortstop, Gary throws a Shopper on to the stoop of Tom Billingsley’s house (he can hear Doc’s mower yowling out back), and swoops across the street again towards the Reed house. Dave tosses the Frisbee to Susi Geller and then takes the Shopper when Gary flips it to him.

“Thanks for getting the Frisbee back,” Dave says.

“No problem.” He nods toward the redhead. “Who’s she?”

Dave laughs, not unkindly. “Never mind, little man. Don’t even bother to ask.”

Gary thinks of chasing it a little, then decides it would probably be better to quit while he’s ahead-he got the Frisbee, after all, and she applauded him, and the sight of her bouncing around in that little halter would have gotten an overcooked noodle hard. Surely that is enough for a summer afternoon as hot as this one.

Above and behind them, at the top of the hill, the red van begins to move, creeping slowly up on the corner.

“You coming to the game tonight?” Gary asks Dave Reed. “We got the Columbus Rebels.

Should be good.”

“You gonna play?”

“I should get a couple of innings in the field and at least one ay-bee.”

“Probably not, then,” Dave says, and yodels a laugh which makes Gary wince. The Reed twins look like young gods in their cut-off tees, he thinks, but when they open their mouths they bear a suspicious resemblance to the Hager Twins of Hee Haw.

Gary glances down toward the house on the corner of Poplar and Hyacinth, across from the store. The last house on the left, as in the horror movie of the same name. There is no car in the driveway, but that means nothing; it could be in the garage.

“He home?” he asks Dave, lifting his chin at 240.

“Dunno,” Jim says, coming over. “But you hardly ever do, do you? That’s what makes him so weird. Half the time he leaves his damn car in the garage and cuts through the woods to Hyacinth. Probably takes the bus to wherever it is he goes.”

“You scared of him?” Dave asks Gary. He’s not exactly taunting, but it’s close.

“Shit, no,” Gary says, cool, looking at the redhead, wondering about how it would feel to have a package like her in his arms, all sleek and springy, maybe slipping him a little tongue as she snuggled up to his boner. Not in this life, Bub, he thinks again.

He tosses the redhead a wave, is outwardly non-committal and inwardly overjoyed when she returns it, then sails diagonally down the street toward 240 Poplar. He’ll deliver the Shopper on to the porch with his usual hard flip, and then-if the crazy ex-cop doesn’t come charging out the front door, foaming at the mouth and glaring at him with stoned PCP eyes, maybe waving his service pistol or a machete or something-Gary will go across to the E-Z Stop for a soda to celebrate another successful negotiation of his route: Anderson Avenue to Columbus Broad, Columbus Broad to Bear Street, Bear Street to Poplar Street. Then home to change into his uniform and off to the baseball wars.

First, however, there is 240 Poplar to get behind him, home of the ex-cop who reputedly lost his job for beating a couple of innocent North Side kids to death because he thought they raped a little girl. Gary has no idea if there’s any truth to the story-he has never seen anything about it in the papers, certainly-but he has seen the ex-cop’s eyes, and there is something in them that he’s never seen in another pair of eyes, a vacancy that makes you want to look away just as soon as you can without appearing uncool.

At the top of the hill, the red van-if that’s what it is, it’s so gaudy and customized it’s hard to tell-turns on to Poplar. It begins to pick up speed. The sound of its engine is a cadenced, silky whisper. And what, pray tell, is that chrome gadget on the roof?

Johnny Marinville stops playing his guitar to watch the van slide past. He can’t see inside because the windows are polarized, but the thing on the roof looks like a chrome-plated radar dish, goddamned if it doesn’t. Has the CIA landed on Poplar Street? Across from him, Johnny sees Brad Josephson standing on his lawn, still holding his hose in one hand and his Shopper in the other. Brad is also gaping after the slow-moving van (Is it a van, though? Is it?), his expression a mixture of wonder and perplexity.

Arrows of sun glint off the bright red paint and the chrome below the dark windows, arrows so bright they make Johnny wince.

Next door to Johnny, David Carver is still washing his car. He’s enthusiastic, you have to give him that; he’s got that Chevy of his buried in soapsuds all the way to the wiper-blades.

The red van rolls past him, humming and glinting.

On the other side of the street, the Reed twins and their gal pals stop their front-lawn Frisbee game to look at the slow-rolling van. The kids make a rectangle; in the center of it sits Hannibal, panting happily and awaiting his next chance to snatch the Frisbee.

Things are happening fast now, although no one on Poplar Street realizes it yet.

In the distance, thunder rumbles.

Gary Ripton barely notices the van in his rearview mirror, or the bright yellow Ryder truck which turns left from Hyacinth on to Poplar, pulling on to the tarmac of the E-Z Stop, where the Carver kids are still standing by Buster the red wagon and squabbling over whether Ralph will be pulled up the hill by his sister or not. Ralph has agreed to walk and keep silent about the magazine with Ethan Hawke on the cover, but only if his dear sister Margrit the Maggot gives him all of the candybar instead of just half.

The kids break off their argument, noticing the white steam hissing out of the Ryder truck’s grille like dragon’s breath, but Gary Ripton pays zero attention to the Ryder truck’s problems. His attention is focused on one thing and one thing only: delivering the crazy ex-copper’s Shopper and then getting away unscathed. The ex-copper’s name is Collier Entragian, and he is the only person on the block with a NO TRESPASSING sign on his lawn. It’s small, it’s discreet, but it’s there.

If he killed a couple of kids, how come he’s not in jail? Gary wonders, and not for the first time. He decides he doesn’t care. The ex-cop’s continued freedom isn’t his business on this sultry afternoon; survival is his busine ss.

With all this on his mind, it’s no wonder Gary doesn’t notice the Ryder truck with the steam pouring out of the grille, or the two kids who have momentarily ceased their complicated negotiations concerning the magazine, the 3 Musketeers bar, and the red wagon, or the van coming down the hill. He is concentrating on not becoming a psycho cop’s next victim, and this is ironic, since his fate is actually approaching from behind him.

One of the van’s side windows begins to slide down.

A shotgun barrel pokes out. It is an odd colour, not quite silver, not quite gray. The twin muzzles look like the symbol for infinity colored black.

Somewhere beyond the blazing sky, afternoon thunder rumbles again.

From the Columbus Dispatch, July 31st, 1994:

MEMBERS OF TOLEDO FAMILY SLAIN IN SAN JOSE

Four Killed in Suspected Gang Drive-by; Six-Year-Old Survives