Empire Falls

of them, out at the Lamplighter Motor Court for a little taste of the road not taken, only to discover that it was pretty much the same shabby, two-lane blacktop they’d been traveling all along, just an unfamiliar stretch of it that nonetheless led to pretty much the same destination anyhow.
    Janine was sitting next to her own destiny, of course, and that destiny was itself perched on a damn hemorrhoid cushion. “Oh, leave the child alone, Walt,” she heard her mother say, and she then saw through her tears that her husband-to-be had returned, no doubt sneaking down the row behind her just as Tick had done. Apparently he’d given his stepdaughter a kiss on top of the head and been handed his usual rebuff by way of thanks.
    “What makes you think a pretty fifteen-year-old girl wants to be kissed in public by an old goat like you?” Bea asked him.
    “ ’Cause I’m a good-looking old goat,” said Walt, whose sense of himself as a desirable male was not easily tilted. After a minute, though, he sensed trouble and came sideways down the row and settled onto the end of the bench next to the somebody whose whole damn world had just gotten tilted, but good. Unless he was mistaken, those were tears in her eyes, tears that she was trying to conceal by pulling her sweatshirt on over her head. The only thing to do was cheer her up, so he began crooning an apropos lyric of Perry Como’s.
    “The way that we cheered / Whenever our team / Was scoring a touchdown,” he warbled, nudging her, in the idiotic hope of getting her to sing along.
    Perfect, Janine thought. At last she finally understood her husband-to-be’s infatuation with Perry Como, which had nothing to do with the singer’s good looks, charm, or silvery foxiness. The fucker was simply Walt’s contemporary.
    “You know what I wish?” she said without even looking at him. “I wish all of you would just leave me alone.”
    “Time can’t erase / The memory of,” Walt continued, not taking her warning seriously, the dumb SOB. “These magic moments / Filled with love.”
    That was the saddest part of all, Janine thought, now thoroughly awash in self-pity. She couldn’t think of a single magic moment filled with love in her whole sorry life, and here she was, trying as hard as she could to deny it, closing in on over-the-hill.
    She glanced down when Fairhaven kicked off to Empire Falls, whose kick returner received the ball cleanly and sprinted upfield. When he successfully negotiated the first wave of would-be tacklers and the field began to open up before him, everyone in the stands stood to see if he would go the distance, everyone except for Janine, who knew without looking that he wouldn’t, and who, still seated, felt the crush of all the excited people stamping their feet and hollering in the rows above her. Janine understood about her mother’s aching feet and why she hadn’t wanted to climb all the way to the top as Janine had begged her. But damn, she’d hoped to get farther up than this.

CHAPTER 17
    J IMMY M INTY parked the cruiser right across the street from the Empire Grill, where Miles couldn’t help but see it when he returned. He’d been sitting there for a while now, pondering the whole Miles Roby situation, but for some reason his mind had wandered onto Billy Barnes, whom he hadn’t seen in years. Why Billy should pop into his head, today of all fucking days, he had no idea, since it was Roby he felt like pounding to a bloody pulp. For all Jimmy knew, Billy Barnes could be dead. He wasn’t playing pro hockey, that was for sure. Jimmy still followed the NHL closely, and knew his old buddy had never made it, though everybody in Dexter County swore that he would. Of course, even if he had , Billy would be washed up by now. Why was it, then, that Jimmy still half expected to see him turn up on the ice some night during a Bruins game?
    So what had the kid who couldn’t miss ended up doing? Jimmy Minty couldn’t help wondering. What did you do when you were good at just one thing, after it turned out you weren’t as good as you thought? Well, if you were smart, you probably did what Billy Barnes had done. You disappeared. Why hang around a place where all anybody remembered was that you hadn’t made it? So how come? is what everybody would want to know, and who could blame them? Jimmy wouldn’t have minded asking Billy Barnes that himself. Sure, there were people who wouldn’t ask, but you’d see the question on their faces