CHAPTER 18

.....Below the sea of stars, the monster truck perched on the butte overlooking the town, which sparkled below starlike in its own right. Scot T stood at the edge pissing into the darkness.
.....He took a final swig from his Coors Lightning and hurled the dead soldier off into the night.
.....In the bed of the truck with a sleeping bag rolled up behind their backs, Debbie shifted under Pierce’s arm. It was a perfect night, but even those have to end at some point. Preferably before the perfect night got ruined. Pierce had already tossed back a couple more than the amount of beers that she trusted him on. After one too many, he could turn into someone she could barely recognize.
.....The trick was catching him in that gray area in between just right and the evil one.
.....“Pierce, we gotta be heading back soon,” she prodded. “The first day of summer school is tomorrow.”
.....There was the faint sound of shattering glass as the beer bottle finally hit the rocks below.
.....From the darkness came a whistle. “Damn...that’s a ways,” Scot T’s voice observed.
.....Pierce remained silent. Eyes closed and breathing steady, he could have been asleep. She knew better. Pierce never slept easy.
.....“Pierce?”
.....Without opening his eyes, he finally answered her. “I don’t need...”
.....“You need the class if you wanna get your diploma.”
.....“Don’t need it.” He finally looked at her, eyes bright. “In six months I’ll be over in Baghdad capping towelheads.”
.....“You need to graduate an’ get your diploma to get into Basic Training...”
.....Pierce shook his head. “I’ve been talking to that recruiter, an’ he says he can fix it for me. For my ol’ man he can do it, he says.”
.....“Then I need to get back.” Her mind made up, she drew out from beneath his arm. “I’ll get kicked off the squad if I don’t pass.”
.....Arm finally free, Pierce lit himself a cigarette. Debbie waved the smoke out of her face and rose up, calling out to Scot T:
.....“Hey, asshole... you almost done?”
.....“Just a minute,” came his voice from the night. “I must have pissed half a case already, got another sixer to go...”

.....Gilmore’s only carried three flavors of ice cream at night: vanilla, chocolate, and the Flavor of the Day.
.....Today’s flavor was pistachio.
.....With a pistachio ice cream cone in hand, Wolfe opened the door as a fortyish woman moved to step inside.
.....She might have been attractive once and Wolfe could almost recognize her, but twenty years of being an adult had obviously done this woman wrong: harsh lines dragged her features into her mouth, and her eyes smoldered with spite ready to be spat in any direction. Every ounce of what could have been used for body fat seemed instead to be held in reserve for vitriol.
.....She drew up at the sight of Tanya, then glanced coldly at Wolfe. With an abrupt snap of her chin, she apparently changed her mind and continued on down the sidewalk.
.....“Wow,” Wolfe said. “Is it the ice cream, or did the temperature in here just suddenly drop?”
.....Tanya brushed past him and stepped into the night, then hung a turn in the opposite direction. They headed back towards Tanya’s house.
.....Wolfe picked up his pace to catch up. “Say, wasn’t that...uh, Nancy Shelton?”
.....“Prescott, now,” Tanya corrected absently. “Remember Joey Prescott?”
.....“That dork.” Wolfe laughed. Even among the bottom feeders, Joey Prescott had been a crawdad. “Yeah, that guy was a complete and total...”
.....“We call him Mayor Prescott these days.”
.....“Big whoo,” he shrugged, then remembered: “Didn’t you and her used to be best friends?”
.....She threw him a laughing look from beneath her locks. “Been a long time since high school, you know.”
.....“So what’s up with her?”
.....“She’s bitter.”
.....“No? I didn’t really get that.” They both laughed. “Towards you?”
.....“Some. Mostly about everything. She’s one of those folks that never got what she wanted, lost what she had.”
.....“Like what?”
.....“Well, a couple of years ago, her son,” she offered. “He got caught up by one of those car bombs.”
.....“Iraq?”
.....“No,” she countered, straightfaced. “Detroit.”
.....Wolfe blinked at her and she shook her head.
.....“Yeah, Iraq... one of those cities no one knows the name of yet.”
.....“That sucks.”
.....“Sucks would be a word for it, I suppose,” she replied. “It didn’t kill him right away, though. You remember that book they had us read back in English, Johnny Got His Gun?”
.....“Yeah, Dalton Trumbo.”
.....“It was sorta like the kid in that book, all fucked up. No arms, legs, I-have-no-mouth-and-I-must-scream shit. It took him a few weeks before...”
.....“Damn.”
.....“What sucks for Nancy is that he didn’t die immediately.”
.....“What?”
.....“Did you know that if you don’t die in-country, they don’t count you as killed in action? Even if you die right after, you’re only counted as a casualty.”
.....“I didn’t know that. But dead is dead, right?”
.....“Wives and mothers don’t get a Gold Star for a casualty.” Tanya noted. “Also, there’s the difference between what kind of stipend a survivor gets. Now she gets chump change that doesn’t even begin to cover the medical expenses he left behind. That, and now they want a refund on his signing bonus.”
.....“I don't believe...”
.....“Believe it.”
.....She slipped her arm through Wolfe’s and he put his free hand over hers, casually as he could. At least it felt casual.
.....“Not many people can get real ice cream like this anymore,” she noted, considering her ice cream cone seriously, more seriously than one should consider an ice cream cone. “Now it’s all those factory chains like Baskin Robbins and the like.”
.....Wolfe wasn’t sure whether it was the chill of the ice cream or the abrupt change in the topic of conversation that was causing the sudden sharp pain behind his eye.
.....“I definitely missed it,” he finally responded. “We’ve got Ben n’ Jerry’s back where I’m from, but it’s still all that corporate bullshit.”
.....She nodded. “Nobody even knows what real food tastes like anymore...and the ones that do remember are dying off. The Greatest Generation.”
.....Wolfe laughed.
.....“You think that’s funny?” Tanya eyed him curiously. “They lasted longer than these folks eating breakfast everyday at McDonald's will.”
.....“Anyone who eats breakfast at McDonald’s gets what they deserve.”
.....“My old man ate steak and eggs for breakfast till the day he...”
.....Wolfe filled in her pause with a nod. “At what age?”
.....“Sixty-eight.” She caught his look. “But it was a full sixty-eight.”
.....“Your point?”
.....“Tra la la la la, live for today.”
.....She paused at the gateway of the house. It took Wolfe a moment to realize that it was her house, and not just another well-maintained cottage that Harding seemed to collect and display like Hummel figurines.
.....“How’s your ice cream?” she asked.
.....“Pretty damned tasty.”
.....Somewhere along the walk she had finished her cone off. She eyed what was left of his.
.....“You mind?”
.....“It’s pistachio...”
.....“I like pistachio.”
.....“Well then, not at all.”
.....He offered the cone... and she took his wrist and pulled the cone to her, licked it. Her eyes not leaving his.
.....He indicated her lip. “You’ve got some on...”
.....Using his wrist as leverage, she pulled herself to him, her other arm circling his neck to pull his face down. They kissed.
.....The ice cream cone hit the pavement. It’s work was done.
.....It was a long kiss, building without breaths being taken, but exchanged.
.....She pulled back and shivered.
.....“It is chilly tonight.”
.....Still holding his wrist and eyes wide, she led him gently up her walkway.
.....Two houses down, the Humvee blended with the night. Inside, a face was lit by the flare of a Zippo as a cigarette was lit. The driver leaned back and watched as the couple entered and the lights went on. Before he was done with the cigarette the lights went off.
.....Sheriff Crawford flicked the half-smoked Marlboro away and gave the house one last glance. He fired up the engine and dropped the beast into gear. They rumbled off into the night together, taillights covering their retreat.
.....As the Humvee moved on, the end theme for Jay Leno spilled from the cathode-drenched windows. The lights blinked off one-by-one as televisions were turned off.
.....The electronic clock outside American Security Bank creaked as it turned.
.....THREAT LEVEL: YELLOW it flashed as it turned.
.....And turned: 12:30 PM.
.....And turned...
.....Across the town, locks were clicked, deadbolts were slid shut, and chains were secured.
.....A police helicopter continued to prowl, spotlight probing the dark niches of sleepy-eyed Harding, Wyoming.
.....The Humvees patrolled.
.....Crickets chirped. In the distance, a dog howled.