Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson

Author:Eleanor Henderson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US
Published: 2011-06-07T10:00:00+00:00

Part II

The Householders

Eleven

At the Texaco station on Grammer Street, the only gas station in Lintonburg open in the middle of the night, two cars sat in the parking lot, and one of them was a shit-colored Camaro with a Black Flag bumper sticker and a Pizza Hut dome on the roof. Inside the gas station, Kram had one arm lost deep in the beer case. He was wearing a Pizza Hut shirt and a Pizza Hut hat and khaki pants that matched his khaki hair. When he saw Jude and Johnny file in, he whistled. “Jeezum Crow! What are you guys doing here?”

He furnished them both with quick, back-pounding hugs, wrestling Jude in half and sawing his knuckles over his skull. “I didn’t recognize this little shit without the hair! What’d you do with your devil lock?”

“The demon has been exorcised,” Johnny said. “He’s an angel now.”

“Yeah, right!” Kram let Jude go and grabbed a fistful of Johnny’s white wedding robe. “You’re the angel! Look at this. What is this, Halloween?”

“You look the same,” Johnny said. “Still got your gut.”

“That’s all muscle, McDickless. The ladies love it.”

“Pizza Slut, huh?” Jude asked.

Kram stood up straight, hitching up his khakis. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t getting any hours at the Record Room. You know Delph made assistant manager over there?”

“Oh yeah?”

“I’m the one got him the job there. And I’ve got a hell of a lot better taste in music.”

“That’s debatable,” said Johnny.

“Shit, you grew up, Judy. You’re taller than me.”

Jude did feel older, but maybe that was just because Lintonburg felt the same. Following route 7 north past the twinkling vistas of Middlebury and Vergennes and Charlotte, past the shuttered flea market grounds and the round sheep barn and the shore of the thawing lake, past the snake’s tongue where route 7 forked into Grammer and Champlain, and then two rise-and-falls until they reached the Day-Glo torch of the gas station, Jude had felt that he could drive that road with his eyes closed, even if it was his first time actually driving it.

Nothing had changed.

“Fucking bullshit is what it is.” Kram was telling them about the P.E. credit that would keep him from graduating next month. A starting linebacker for four years, and they were talking about a P.E. credit. He didn’t want to go to college anyway; he wanted to get back into music. “This is perfect. You still got my old drum kit in your basement, Judy? You guys still got guitars? We could revive the Bastards! The Bastards live!”

Johnny put his hands on Kram’s shoulders. “You high, man?”

“No, man, I haven’t done that shit in weeks. Delph doesn’t sell no more.”

“Really?”

“He’s a working man now. More money, more hours, more responsibilities, blah blah.”

Johnny now offered Jude a look. Jude knew he was wondering the same thing he was—whether, during the time Jude had spent in New York, despite Kram’s late-night beer run, he and Delph had taken their own steps, however blind, toward sobriety. Whether they might not be so hard to recruit to their team.

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