And so winter turned into spring.
Clay’s times were still much slower, and it happened, a Sunday morning.
Since Rory got his job as a panel beater, he worked hard at the trade of drinking. He started taking up and breaking up with girls. There were names and observations; one I remember was Pam, and Pam was blond hair and bad breath.
“Shit,” said Henry, “did you tell her that?”
“Yeah,” said Rory, “she slapped me. Then dumped me and asked for a mint. Not necessarily in that order.”
He would stumble back home in the mornings—and the Sunday was mid-October. As Clay and I headed for Bernborough, Rory was staggering in.
“Jesus, look at the state of you.”
“Yeah, good one, Matthew, thanks. Where are you two bastards going?”
Typical Rory:
In jeans and a beer-soaked jacket, he had no problems staying with us—and Bernborough was typical, too.
The sunrise looted the grandstand.
We did the first 400 together.
I told Clay, “Eric Liddell.”
Rory grinned.
It was more like a dirty smirk.
On the second lap he entered the jungle.
He had to take a leak.
By the fourth he’d gone to sleep.
Before the last 400, though, Rory seemed nearer to sober. He looked at Clay, he looked at me. He shook his head in contempt.
On the fiery hue of the track, I said, “What’s the matter with you?”
Again, that smirky smile.
“You’re wrong,” he said, and he glanced at Clay, but the assault was aimed at me. “Matthew,” he said, “you’re kidding, aren’t you? You must know why it’s not happening.” He looked ready to come and shake me. “Come on, Matthew, think. All that nice romantic shit. He won State—so fucking what? He couldn’t care any less.”
But how could this be happening?
How could Rory be knowing such perfect things, and altering Dunbar history?
“Look at him!” he said.
I looked.
“He doesn’t want this—this…goodness.” To Clay now. “Do you want it, kid?”
And Clay had shaken his head.
And Rory didn’t relent.
He shoved a hand right into my heart. “He needs to feel it here.” There was suddenly such gravity, such pain in him, and it came like the force of a piano. The quietest words were the worst. “He needs to hurt nearly enough to kill him,” he said, “because that’s how we Goddamn live.”