Free Heathern by Jack Womack

let them do to you?" he asked.
    "That too." Hudson Street looked so much more of our
time than had Staple Street that you could almost imagine
people still using it. Cars two to twenty years old lined the
curbs. Traffic restrictions ended a block below Canal Street,
and as we drew closer the streets began filling with traffic.
On the city entrance of the Holland Tunnel, at the end of
Canal, the Army ran a haphazard checkpoint, stopping and
searching vehicles for improprieties that might be seized
and resold. The line of cars awaiting entrance into the city ran, at all hours, five miles deep into Jersey; Dryco and
Army cars had their own lane, and so passed more easily.
The rumor was that the soldiers, to cut costs, reused their
testing needles on their successive suspects.

    "We cross north?" Lester asked. No taxis grazed our
flanks as we raced across Canal; no tanks flattened us,
rolling down their center lane. One of several doublelength semis almost blew us over with its wind, careening
past. On the trailer was the Kraft logo; superimposed upon
that, the Dryco smile.
    "You were right, what you said. I'd trust a stranger before
I'll trust a friend."
    "For the right reasons?" Lester asked.
    "Friends always expect you to behave in a certain way.
When you don't, sometimes, they're disappointed, sometimes they hate you. Sometimes I think people have friends
only to make sure they can always be hurt."
    "So you behave differently around strangers," he said.
    "I'm looser," I said. "Thatcher likes everyone highstrung. And the people I've known the longest and have
been the closest to are also the biggest liars I know, so-"
    "How much do you think has rubbed off on you?"
    On the far corner an enormous office building had been
torn down years before for luxury apartments never built.
Hundreds of smaller residences were scattered across the
lot in its stead: boxes and crates, ill-pitched tents, tin-walled
huts, clusters of cardboard. At the neighborhood's center
stood a small frame shack, surely the home of that community's Thatcher.
    "Enough, I'm afraid," I said. "I used to have so many
more friends."
    "What happened to them?"
    "Bankrupt between breakfast and lunch," I said. "Lost
their jobs. Their apartments. If I saw them I wouldn't know
them now."
    "You would," said Lester.

    "It was just luck it didn't happen to me," I said. "Bernard
moved to Dryco just before. I moved as well. The right
place, the right time. I couldn't help it."
    "It's all right-"
    "It'd never happen again," I said. "Everything hinges on
his behavior. My life depends on how crazy he gets. I don't
like it."
    Along these blocks the remnant of a more traditional
neighborhood remained: a diner, a deli, a row of shops
partially rented. In the deli window was a sign written in
Korean and English, reading Japs Keep Out, looking so old as
to refer to Axis-allied Japan. The doors of stores were open
to catch cool evening breezes. Two young girls thrashed
about on the sidewalk, arguing and cursing, pinning one
another with pipestem legs; they looked Jake's age, or
younger. A gang of boys hooted; several older men
watched, keeping their hands in their pockets. The girls
screamed, oblivious to sideshow eyes.
    "You said that older man killed three Presidents," Lester
said. Three teenagers, their shaved heads making them
resemble mad insects, shoved by us as they made for the
brawl. "Who was the third?"
    "Gus was on the grassy knoll," I said. The crowd's
scream faded to a whisper, the farther we drew from it.
Lester took so long to respond that I wondered if he'd heard
me.
    "You're serious?"
    "That's what Thatcher told me. As I understand it Gus
didn't know Oswald was there until they started shooting. I
suppose they were as shocked as anyone."
    "Who fired the shot that killed him?"
    "Gus isn't sure," I said.
    One last small shop sold mineral specimens, petals of
stone, roses plucked from the rock. I doubted the doctors
had a