Free The Night In Question by Tobias Wolff Page A

asthma. Not long after I ran away from his house he suffered a severe attack and went into the hospital. Our teacher told the class about it. She had everyone write get-well notes, and handed out mimeographed sheets with the address of the hospital and the visiting hours. It was an easy walk. I knew I should go, and I thought about it so much that whatever else I did that week seemed mainly to be
not going
, but I couldn’t make myself do it. When Freddy came back to school I was unable to speak to him or even face him. I went straight home after the bell rang, using the main entrance instead of the side door where we used to meet. And then I saw that he was avoiding me, too. He ate at the opposite end of the cafeteria; when we passed in the hallway he blushed and stared at the floor. He acted as if he had done me some wrong, and the shame I felt at this made me even more skittish. I was very lonely for a time, then Clark and I became friends. This was my first visit to Freddy’s since the day I bolted.
    Clark worked his way through the Oreos as Freddy told his gruesome tale, and when he came to the end I started one of my own from a book my brother had given me about Quantrill’s Raiders. It was a truly terrible story, a cruel, mortifying story—the star sociopath was a man named “Bloody Bill.” I was aware of Freddy watching me with something like rapture. Freddy’s mother shook her head when the going got rough and made exclamations of shock and dismay—“No! He never!”—just like she used to do back when the three of us watched “Queen for a Day” every afternoon, drooling shamelessly over the weird, woeful narratives sobbed out by the competing wretches. Clarkwatched me without joy. He was impatient for business, and too sane for all this ghoulish stuff. I knew that he was seeing me in a different way, a way he probably didn’t like, but I kept piling it on. I couldn’t let go of the old pleasure, almost forgotten, of having Freddy on my hook, and feeling his own pleasure thrumming through the line.
    And then the back door swung open and Ivan leaned his head into the kitchen. His face was even bigger and whiter than I remembered, and as if to confirm my memory he wore a red hunting cap that was too small and sat his head like a party hat. Black mud encased his pant legs almost to his knees. He looked at me and said, “Hey, by gum! Long time no see!” One of the lenses of his spectacles had a daub of mud in the middle, like an eyeball on a pair of joke glasses. He looked at Clark, then at Freddy’s mother. “Hon, you aren’t gonna believe this—that darn truck got stuck again.”
    A damp wind was blowing. Freddy and Clark and I stood with shoulders hunched, hands in our pockets, and looked on as Ivan circled Tanker’s old pickup and explained why it wasn’t his fault the tires were mired almost to the axle. “The truth is, the old gal just can’t pull her weight anymore.” He gave the fender a rub. “Past her prime—has been for years.”
    “Yessir,” Freddy said. “She’s long in the tooth and that’s a fact.”
    “There you go,” Ivan said.
    “Ready for the pasture,” I said.
    “Over the hill,” Freddy said.
    “That’s it exactly,” Ivan said. “I just can’t bring myself to sell her.” And then his jaw started quaking and I thought with horror that he was about to cry. But he didn’t. Hecaught his lower lip under his teeth, sucked it musingly, and pushed it out again. His lips were full and expressive. I tended to watch them for signs of mood rather than his eyes, which he kept buried in a cunning squint.
    “So. Gotta get the wood out. You fellows ready to use some of those muscles?”
    Freddy and I looked at each other.
    Clark was staring at the truck. “You want us to unload all of that?”
    “Won’t take an hour, strapping boys like you,” Ivan said. “Maybe an hour by the time you load her up again,” he added.
    The truck bed was filled with logs, stacked as