Empire Falls

later. How quickly “later” had arrived.

CHAPTER 30
    T HE B LUE TABLE has the blues. Is it even remotely possible, Tick wonders, that this is somehow due to the continued absence of John Voss, who’d been more absent than present back when he was still sitting there? Even Candace, who usually could be counted on to talk from one bell to the next, is quiet today. What Tick’s trying to fathom is not the girl’s silence, which she understands, but how things work: more specifically whether they happen fast or slow. She knows from recent experience that the whole world can change in what feels like an instant, but she suspects that the swiftness is really just an illusion.
    Take Candace, for instance. Did they become friends yesterday, or has their friendship been growing since September? Clearly it’s caught both of them off guard. The expression on Candace’s face yesterday afternoon, a mixture of gratitude and disbelief, was vivid testimony to how surprised she was to see a swollen-eyed Tick on her doorstep. For the last month she’d been suggesting that Tick stop by some afternoon after school so they could take a walk along the river, but her offhanded manner implied that she didn’t really expect this to happen.
    Tick had no trouble finding where Candace lived with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend of the moment—a three-story building on Front Street. Front ran parallel to the river, below the falls, the worst neighborhood of Empire Falls, settled by the poorest of the French Canadian immigrants back when it was a company town. Houses had been built only on the north side of the street, and for good reason. In the glory days of Empire Textile, the solvents and dyes used on the fabrics were dumped directly into the river, staining the banks below the falls red and green and yellow, according to day of the week and size of the batch. The sloping banks contained rings, like those in a tree trunk, except these were in rainbow colors; they recorded not years but the rise and fall of the river. Even now, fifty years later, only the hardiest weeds and scrub trees grew south of the pavement on Front Street, and when the brush was periodically cleared, surprising patches of fading chartreuse and magenta were revealed.
    The apartment was on the second floor, its entryway at the top of a rickety exterior staircase. The woman who answered Tick’s knock was big and braless and dirty-haired, and didn’t look old enough to have a sixteen-year-old daughter. When she pulled the door open, Tick felt a blast of unhealthy heat and saw a man who looked about her father’s age, wearing a fishnet tank top and seated at a dinette, concentrating grimly on the flyer from the Fairhaven Wal-Mart. “Hey, Moron!” the woman called over her shoulder, without bothering to say hello to Tick, “Candy! You got company!” Then she walked away from the open door, leaving Tick to either come in or not, as suited her. To remain outside suited her best. The sight of this awful woman had the effect of putting Tick’s recent argument with her own mother into a whole different perspective.
    When Candace saw her from the kitchen doorway, her face lit up and then darkened with perplexed embarrassment at the presence of a girl like Christina Roby in their shabby neighborhood. The last time she’d been this surprised was back in September, when the same girl took up residence in art class with herself and the other Boners.
    “Hi?” she offered, apologetically.
    “Could we maybe take that walk?” Tick said.
    “Sure.” Candace’s face quickly brightened again, as if at the opportunity of a lifetime.
    “A NYWAY,” C ANDACE SAID after they’d climbed down the bank, “I’m in love with Justin now.”
    At the end of a dry October, the river was running low and they were able to leap from rock to rock pretty far out into the current. From shore it had seemed like they might be able to hopscotch all the way to the opposite bank, but Tick now saw that the farther out into the river they got, the farther apart the rocks actually were. The wind was also more bitter away from the sheltered bank, so they changed direction and headed downstream toward the bend. There the indented shoreline would provide a windbreak.
    “Justin,” Tick repeated when they found a couple big rocks to rest on. She couldn’t help smiling at the idea of Candace and Justin Dibble, who’d spent most of the term tormenting her by describing the monster