Free Drowning of Stephan Jones by Bette Greene

and girls, school is dismissed.”
    Andy, with a book-filled backpack slung jauntily over one shoulder, raced for Rachetville High’s front door as though it had been years and years since he had tasted that delicious morsel called freedom. Following close behind were his two best buddies, Doug “the Ironman” Crawford and Mike “the Spider” Horten. They were chanting in unison: ‘Pizza and beer! Pizza and beer! Pizza and beer!”
    Since you couldn’t buy a bottle of beer in Rachetville if your very life depended upon it, it was clear to every student, as well as to every faculty member who heard their chant, that these guys were going to be heading to that livelier, albeit more sinful, place seven miles down the highway.
    Ten minutes later, the three crowded together on the front seat of the Harrises’ Oldsmobile and drove down Parson Springs’s Main Street. Ahead on the right was the venerable Queen Anne Hotel, and five doors farther up was the newest business in town—The Forgotten Treasures Antique Shop.
    Once inside the shop a person found herself in the center of a virtual symphony of memorabilia, collectibles, and pure whimsy. A Victorian bird cage held a clay pot with cascading English ivy. In a corner stood a brass lamp with a leaded-glass shade—a grandfather clock with brass finials—a folding teakdeck chair with a brass plate on its back reading “Ile de France.” An old-style manikin with a painted mustache wearing a gray tunic with heavy gold epaulets, once proudly worn by a long-forgotten Confederate captain during the War between the States.
    Frank Montgomery shook his head emphatically at his customer, a young woman with enough carats in her wedding ring to buy an affordable house or two. “Oh, no, you don’t want to do that! The Canton vase is too ... too ordinary for your elegant living room, Karen. Go with the Omari. Definitely, the Omari!”
    But as soon as the sale had been made and the customer left the shop happily carrying her nineteenth-century Japanese vase safely encased in Styrofoam peanuts, Frank underwent a radical change, a change from quietly dignified to noisily exuberant. He walked briskly around a Chippendale table set with silver candlesticks and antique Waterford to swing open the door to the rear workshop. Inside, his partner was a study in concentration as he painstakingly replaced the worn, torn, and brittle leather writing surface of a nineteenth-century English writing box.
    Waving the white sales slip high in the air, Frank bellowed, “Guess what!?” But before Stephan had even looked up, Frank was already answering his own question. “Know that Omari vase that everybody turned their nose up at when we were on Beacon Hill? Well, let’s hear a big round of applause for genial Frank Montgomery ’cause it’s been sold at long last. We’re rich ... or at the very least we’re bucks and bucks ahead of the bill collector.”
    “Good show, partner. What did you do, charm the socks off some rich old biddy?”
    “Hell no!” replied Frank, sounding as though he were filling up with righteous indignation. “Only thing I did was to charm the socks off some rich young biddy!” To celebrate their victory,they decided to eat a good meal, drink a little wine, and make merry over lunch right in the shop.
    Stephan asked what he wanted to eat, and Frank answered, “Surprise me.” When Stephan asked what he wanted to drink, Frank again responded, “Surprise me.” With only these admittedly wide parameters, Stephan slipped his down jacket over his varnish-stained plaid shirt and sprinted all the way down Main Street to Wayno’s Liquor Store, where he bought a bottle of cheap wine imported from Portugal.
    Then he headed toward Jimmy Joe’s Bar-B-Que Restaurant, where the pork was smoked in pits and anyone who took even one bite understood that here at last was barbecued food that tasted exactly the way God intended it to taste.
    When Stephan lived in Boston he was under