What Hearts Read online

  FIVE

  On the way out of town they had a flat tire. Asa helped Dave jack the car up, and he took the lug nuts Dave handed him and placed them in the hubcap of the afflicted wheel. But when they had secured the spare and jacked the car down, they discovered that the spare was flat too. Dave cursed. Asa volunteered to hitchhike to a service station they had passed a couple of miles back. Strangely enough, he was allowed to do this. The first car that came along stopped for him. In it were three people, two men and a woman, who hastily and urgently asked him about his religion while spitting politely into Dixie cups every sentence or so. He said he loved Jesus just fine, and asked them why they spit so much. They told him they “took snuff,” adding that it was godlier than smoking cigarettes. At the filling station he thanked them and got out.

  He waited in the station while the tow truck went and fetched Dave and his mother and the car. The three of them waited for a while, to find out that a tire would have to be ordered from a station across town; the car would not be ready for another two hours. Asa, drinking Dr Pepper and studying random maps of the U.S. pulled from a dispenser, was content. But his mother and Dave seemed restless, and began to exchange odd looks.

  “You know—” said his mom.

  “Yeah—”said Dave.

  “It’s already so late—”

  “Wasting time—”

  “So close to home—”

  “Movers aren’t coming ’til tomorrow afternoon—”

  “Make better time—”

  “The boy’s exhausted—”

  Asa watched this dialogue pass between them, looking up from the highways of Colorado. He could see them collaborating on an idea, showing more and more with each comment that they thought the same thing; he could see, too, that they both knew the idea was bogus. But safe, somehow: in the artificiality of this sudden free time, seemingly forced upon them, they could trick themselves and not get into trouble.

  They decided, face to face, with a last long look. Then Dave went to ask the station owner to run them back to town, and Asa’s mother came over to him. He looked up. Her eyes were gleaming.

  “Honey,” she said. “Guess what! We’re going home, for one more night.”

  They piled into an old Mercury that sagged badly to the passenger side. Asa rode in front. On the seat between him and the driver was a fuel pump; at his feet were two parts of a clutch assembly. As soon as they arrived home, Dave and his mother went out into the yard to sit on the long beach chair together. Asa watched them sit, then went to the telephone.

  He had memorized Jean’s number long before, not because he had ever come close to calling her, but merely because it was one more thing about her that could be committed to the sum inside him. As he dialed, he realized he had designed a speech in the back of his mind while he looked over those maps. He was ready for her anger, ready to rediscover his strength, to rely on the undeniable goodness of his feelings. Nothing could go wrong if he stuck to them, if he stuck to love.

  She answered. He hesitated: her voice sounded quite chirpy. This was not what he had expected, but he spoke anyway: “Jean. This is Asa.”

  She said, “Oh! Hi!” He filtered every iota of the two syllables through his finest scrutiny, but he could not find the slightest tone of anger, regret, frustration. There was only good cheer, nice and shallow, open and free.

  “I wanted to talk about today,” he began.

  She laughed. “What a crazy day!” she said. Something about the way she said it—something about that crazy—warned him off. With a shiver he knew she wasn’t referring to his part of the day, but to something that had happened later, after he left. He forced himself to remember that he had left halfway. Hey, there was a whole afternoon remaining, for crazy stuff to happen!

  She seemed eager to talk, so he simply said, “Oh, yes?”

  “Well,” she said, laughing again, “it was pretty weird. I certainly never expected it—I mean, I wasn’t even paying attention much or anything. But—well, do you know Robert Pontiac?” He did, slightly; Robert Pontiac was the only kid in school as small as Asa, and nearly as shrewd. Somehow Robert capitalized on his smallness in a way that made him cute to the girls and appealingly funky to the boys. He could talk dirty with a certain daring that passed for funniness, he got C’s and D’s, he had the perfect careless walk; he carried off much more of a rough-and-tumble swagger than could be expected from a runt. His older brothers were famous athletes in the school’s history. His nickname, an honor strictly among the boys, was Booger. Asa said, “Yes, I know Robert.”

  “Well—” And off Jean went in a narrative romp. It seemed she was eating her lunch, and a friend of Robert’s called Brenda over, and then the friend took Brenda to where Robert was sitting, and then Brenda came back, alone, and sat down breathless. And then, amazing as it was, Brenda told her that Robert liked her.

  “Can you imagine that?” Jean said, with an incredulous laugh.

  “Can I imagine liking you?” Asa said, incredulous in his turn. But she breezed on: Robert Pontiac! What in the world did he like about her? She knew he was a pretty bad student, and he hung around with all those athlete types. Whereas she—she was just this brainy type, always buried in a book. How in the world had he come upon her?

  Asa knew, of course. He knew what had been released from Jean in all its radiance, and how the wind picked it up and spread it like light and scent and sound. He had not taken it in, so out it went, and Robert Pontiac was just the sort of keenly alert weasel to snatch the signs from the air and zero in.

  But Asa said nothing. The funny thing was—Jean was really asking. She really didn’t know. He could tell she wasn’t even sure he did, either, but just in case, she was checking. And certainly he could explain. He almost did, too, with a resigned goodwill, out of habit. But it was too much to ask; he flared at the cruelty of her lightness, her fleet forgetting. Then he thought: who was he to get angry? What rights remained that he had not refused? So he said nothing; he let her run on with her query until she trailed off. Then it was obvious to both of them that the conversation was over.

  “Well,” she said, “guess I’ve got to go.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Me too.” But he could not just drop away. Some sense of honor compelled him to a last task: to acknowledge with gratitude, at least, the first declaration of love he had ever received from a woman. Whatever hopes he had tricked up for this phone call had been foolish. He had to accept that. But before he moved on, a grace was called for.

  “Jean,” he said, sounding formal even to himself, but so what? This was, after all, a kind of formality: “Jean, I just want you to know—that the hearts will always mean everything to me.”

  And an instant after speaking, he knew with a pierce of insight exactly what Jean was going to say. It gave him an extra heartbeat to get ready—to understand that grace is given, not always received; to clench his honor closed before her words slipped in and undid it. He moved, gently but quickly, to hang up the phone, just as she asked, with all the simplicity of a memory wiped clean by new ardor, “What hearts?”

  A moment later, sitting in the darkening living room, he felt better. Why not? He had the hearts, after all; he had the words, I love you I love you, printed clean. He had gotten them in what was suddenly his past, but they needn’t stay there. He pulled out the candies. In the twilight he could just read them, pale on his palm. I love you I love you. He had the words. There was a good thing about words: they could rise away from circumstances, they could take their meaning with them, they could move right along with you. And if a fellow had these words, these above all, then surely, something was in store in the future. Somewhere down the road, surely, these words would be made good.

  About the Author

  BRUCE BROOKS is a graduate of the University of North Carolina and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has twice received a Newbery Honor: in 1993 for WHAT HEARTS and in 1985 for THE MOVES MAKE THE MAN, which also won the 1985 Boston Globe-Horn Book
Award for fiction. He has also written a number of other novels, including: EVERYWHERE, an ALA Notable Children’s Book; MIDNIGHT HOUR ENCORES, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults; NO KIDDING, an ALA and School Library Journal Best Book; ASYLUM FOR NIGHTFACE; VANISHING; and the WOLFBAY WINGS hockey series.

  He is the father of two sons and lives in Maryland.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Also by Bruce Brooks

  The Moves Make the Man

  No Kidding

  Everywhere

  Midnight Hour Encores

  Asylum for Nightface

  Vanishing

  The Wolfbay Wings Series

  Credits

  Cover art/design © 1999 by Hilary Zarycky

  Cover © 1999 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  Copyright

  WHAT HEARTS. Copyright © 1992 by Bruce Brooks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Adobe Digital Edition June 2009 ISBN: 9780061920417

  Version 07272012

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