Mad Boys by Ernest Hebert

Author:Ernest Hebert [Hebert, Ernest]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: University Press of New England
Published: 1993-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

RUN RABBIT DIE

Author Jack Kerouac didn’t live a life; he wrote a life. It’s logical to call fiction that derives from such a sensibility Virtual Realism. It’s the Virtual Realism captured in On the Road that accounts for Kerouac’s continuing appeal to young people, who themselves live virtual lives in which movies and television play as big a role in their lives as their experiences.

—From the Journal of Henri Scratch.

Sally sat me down in a chair that was too big for King Kong, let alone a skinny kid like me. Soon I learned more details of why the Autodidact had kidnapped me. After I’d run away from him, he’d called the town constable back in New Hampshire to report me as a runaway. The constable had told the Autodidact that he himself was wanted for questioning in the murder of Joe Webster and that he should turn himself in. The Autodidact hung up the phone and immediately called lawyer Sally. She made a few phone calls and got the story. A bill collector had found Father dead, his head bashed in. A couple of local people had seen me hanging around the Autodidact’s trailer. They remembered the vanity plate—“FREE.” Sally advised the Autodidact to turn himself in. But he didn’t do it. His criminal mind, dormant for all those years of book learning, came to life and took over his personality. He’d ditched his pickup truck, stolen the Cadillac from a long-term airport parking lot, and repainted the trailer. He’d tracked me down after reading my A-Y-G doodle on his notepad.

“Now, Web, I want you to tell me everything that happened leading up to the moment that you ran away from your father,” Sally said. Her lawyer’s way of talking, right at me, got my attention.

I explained everything just the way I remembered it.

“You believe that this Xiphi person murdered your father?” Sally said.

“He’s not a person, he’s my demon,” I said.

“It may have been an accident,” Sally said to the Autodidact.

The Autodidact pulled at the hair he didn’t have, and said, “Web doesn’t know for sure what happened. He can’t testify on my behalf. If he tells the police that Xiphi story, they’ll reason that he flipped out. They’ll still think I did it.”

Sally wanted to call the police, but the Autodidact convinced her to wait until he could come up with a plan. Sally said okay—for the time being.

She showed us around her house. The mansion reminded me of some of the New England places where Father and I delivered firewood, old and fancy, but the windows were bigger and more light poured through, and it was dirtier than big northern houses, so the place felt a little friendlier. Most of the house was closed off, because (as I found out later) Sally had no kin and because she didn’t normally live in the house but in a city, where her law office was located. She had inherited the farm and put it up for sale. So far, no takers.

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