Free Breakheart Hill by Thomas H. Cook Page B

and turned toward him. “Yeah.”
    “Ben Wade,” Gates said with a short, self-congratulatory laugh. “I never forget a name. You and Luke Duchamp were at Cuffy’s a few weeks back.” A cigarette dangled easily from the corner of his mouth. “So, you been gettin’ any?” he asked.
    I didn’t answer, which was an answer in itself.
    Lyle grinned. “Oh, don’t worry about it. You’ll getmarried one day, and then you’ll be getting way too much. More than you want. Wearing it out.”
    The other boys laughed. One of them blew a smoke ring into the clear late-afternoon air.
    “I don’t think I could ever get enough,” Eddie Smathers squealed.
    Lyle paid no attention to him. His gaze drifted up toward the school. “Old Man Avery will be looking down here pretty soon,” he said. “He’ll spot me and think, ‘Well, there’s Lyle Gates. What’s that troublemaking asshole up to?’ ”
    Eddie laughed. “Hell, that’s better than him thinking you’re a pussy, right?”
    Lyle shrugged. His eyes swept up toward the front of the school, the line of buses parked in front of it. “Well, seems like nothing much has changed around good old Choctaw High,” he said, his voice weary, bored, but glancing about nervously nonetheless, as if he were unable to settle on a fixed point.
    “Well, we got a new girl,” Eddie chimed in quickly. “From up north.”
    Lyle tossed his cigarette out into the lot, then lit another. “From up north, you said?”
    Eddie nodded. “That’s right. She’s good-looking, too.”
    Lyle grinned. “Shit, Eddie, you know I wouldn’t fuck a Yankee,” he said with a quick boyish wink.
    Eddie’s eyes sparkled lustily. “You would
this
one.” He made an hourglass motion with his arms, then wiped his brow. “Whooee, she’s nice!”
    Lyle drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. His shoulders fell slightly, as if a heavy weight had suddenly been lowered upon them. I could see a small purple tattoo on his upper arm, the figure of a woman, and underneath it, the name of the wife who’d already cast him off.
    “Got to go,” he said. Then he walked away, a curlof white smoke trailing behind him, and disappeared into his car.
    “I didn’t know you hung out with Lyle,” I said to Eddie.
    Eddie shrugged. “Shit, I don’t hang out with him. We just shoot a game down at the pool hall once in a while.”
    I glanced back toward Lyle. He sat silently in his car, his eyes lingering on the school with a forlorn wistfulness that seemed odd in one so young.
    “What’s he doing here, anyway?” I asked.
    “Just checking things out, I guess.” Eddie took a final draw on his cigarette, then tossed it to the ground. “You seen Todd?”
    “No.”
    He lifted himself from the hood of the car, his feet sinking into the gravel with a soft crunch. “I hope he didn’t leave without me,” he said worriedly. He glanced around for a moment, as if trying to formulate a plan. Then he darted quickly out of the lot and up the cement walkway that led to the entrance of the school.
    Watching him go, I could not have imagined that much would ever become of him, but Eddie is a successful local mill owner now, and there is talk that he will run for mayor. Each time we meet at the hospital or at a football game or sometimes while shopping at the new mall, he stops to pump my hand vigorously, in politician style, though with him it seems less false. He flashes his customary smile. “Remember when we were kids at Choctaw High?” he always asks. He shakes his head playfully, remembering a time of life that no doubt always returns to him with an air of uncomplicated joy. “Remember all the fun we had?”
    “I remember,” I tell him.
    The smile broadens until it seems to cover his entire face, and a great cheerfulness sparkles in his eyes. “Boy, those were great days, weren’t they, Ben?” he says.
    And as he says it, I see him as he was that night, a boy of seventeen again, his reddish hair glowing