Read Online Downers Grove by Michael Hornburg - Free Book Online Page B

replacement and I needed the bread, so I volunteered.”
    â€œIs it dangerous?”
    â€œDriving that shitbox is like square-dancing with a chain saw.” Bobby stared forward with the determination of a mailman pushing a cart of letters, sucking down one cigarette after another, riding a nicotine wire. From time to time he would space out, and you could tell he was watching his own movie, that he had a multiplex in his mind with never-ending showtimes. My brother was the same way. What is it with men and their glamorous brooding monster within? Bobby’s face launched a thousand words but it was still Scrabble as far as I was concerned. Staring, waiting, I wallowed in his silences.
    â€œYour family, they live around here?” I asked. “They all crazy as you?”
    â€œYou think I’m crazy?” He turned the music down a hair.
    â€œI think you’re unusual. Tell me about your grandfather. My mom says men are always like their grandfathers.”
    â€œMy grandfather?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWell, his name was Charley and he lived right near the Kentucky border. Neighbors used to call him Batman because bats would fly around his house at sunset. The big walnut tree in back was full of them.” He turned and looked over at me in a kinda boyish excitable way. “He was an ambulance driverand a bootlegger, made most of his money running moonshine into East St. Louis and up north through college towns.”
    â€œNo way. Your grandfather?”
    â€œYeah, sure.”
    â€œWas he in the Mafia?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWas he a good guy or a bad guy?”
    â€œDepends on whose side you’re on.”
    â€œDid he ever kill anybody?”
    â€œJust himself.” Bobby shifted, and the car sped faster. “He was racing in a cow field at some county fair. I guess that’s all there was in those days. His brakes failed and he kissed the wall. The car went airborne and flipped upside down. The fuel tank burst.” He stared out the window. “That car had the aerodynamics of a yellow pig.”
    â€œOh my God, that’s horrible.”
    Bobby lit a cigarette. I leaned against the door and watched him smoke, wondering if he was aware of his own mythology. His body language said he’d visited that novel a million times before.
    â€œDon’t you ever get scared?” I asked.
    â€œDriving makes me feel like what’s behind me is always getting farther and farther away.”
    I wanted to ask him what he was driving away from but was intimidated by the thought of old girlfriends, so I avoided the issue. “Does your dad race cars too?” I asked.
    â€œMy dad disappeared over in Vietnam.” He looked out the window, as if Vietnam was just beyond the next patch of trees. “He’s MIA. They never found him.”
    My endless questioning had just driven the wrong way downa one-way street. I stared at my fingers, kept crossing and uncrossing them, rubbed my palms together, traced the heart line with my finger. “Do you think he’s still alive?”
    â€œSometimes I like to think he just drifted off from the war and made himself invisible, but I doubt it. I don’t have much to go on, just some photographs really.”
    I didn’t know what to say. Bobby was suddenly distracted by a rush of memories. I could tell by his blank stare that they were pouring in. “My dad was in the army too,” I said. “He came back, but then he left again.”
    â€œWhere’d he go?” Bobby looked over at me again.
    â€œI don’t know. He said he was leaving. Mom said okay, and that was that.”
    Bobby’s head tilted back and forth, as though he disagreed with what I just said. More silence chased our flowering friendship, but at least we finally had something slightly in common. I wanted to ask him about his mom, but I was worried I was asking too many questions, but then went on asking anyway.