It was a big warehouse kind of room, the set was just a desk in front of a wall, a lot smaller than he'd thought it would be. There were cables lying around all over the floor. He tripped on two.
"Let's get you miked," Steve was saying. He'd introduced them to the newscaster, a young black woman who looked like a model, and the camera crew.
He sat behind the desk while they clipped a mike onto his collar, hiding the black wire under his jacket.
"Nervous?" asked Steve. He probably didn't leave his office for everybody they had on the noon news. He was taking the time because he was friends with Ken.
"Naw. If I goof up you can just shoot it again."
"What?"
"That's what we did in mass communications class. In sixth grade we taped a news show." Travis was growing uneasy, because this seemed to be a big joke to everyone.
"This is live," Steve said.
Travis felt his tongue starting to swell. It was a very weird sensation. It swelled until it felt as big as a dinner plate.
This was live.
"You were okay," Ken said. "You look good on camera."
Travis stared out the window. He hadn't been okay. He'd been god-awful. He must have looked like a moron. He'd been so nervous he'd actually gotten tears in his eyes--Ken said you couldn't tell, but Travis knew he'd still looked like a moron. A good-looking moron, maybe.
"You just have to learn to speak in sentences, you know, answer questions with more than yeah and naw. Get glib."
Get glib.
"On TV, you don't have time for a lot of pauses. Every second seems like a minute, a minute seems like an hour. You've got to remember your medium."
"So who made you a director?" Travis muttered. Who the hell cared? His medium was writing, not talking.
He wanted to do this, interviews and stuff. For the first time he realized how bad he wanted to do this.
I can learn it, he thought. Next time'll be different. In his mind he started writing answers to the questions she'd asked him. Writing answers in sentences. Getting glib.
He'd hoped maybe one of the teachers would ask him where he'd been that morning; he would be casual as hell while replying, "Oh, I was on the news," or maybe, "Doing a television show." He was getting a little antsy to let them know they were dealing with a real writer here.
But nobody asked him anything. Everyone had left him alone and now they thought he wanted it that way. They had made him into a loner and then acted like it was his idea. Travis had never before realized how much your status depended on other people. He'd thought you got to choose your group. Well, you didn't. But he tried to pull off the loner role with as much dignity as possible: When the guys in the smoke hole talked about going to the river to do some longneckin' (he had picked up on some of the local jargon: longneckin' meant drinking beer) he didn't beg to go too. Bunch of hicks in a four-wheel drive, sitting in the sand chugging Coors--how cool could that be?
He walked off to spend his lunch hour in the library. If they got the impression he was some kind of psycho who'd come to school with a gun someday, well, that was their impression.
He wanted out of this school so bad. Even if it meant not seeing Casey every day. He had to get out of here before he broke down and begged to go longneckin' with hicks.
When he answered the phone that afternoon he wasn't too surprised that it was Joe. He'd been thinking about the guys so strong, he'd even had a feeling that it was Joe when the phone rang. Sometimes he was kind of psychic about phone calls and stuff like that.
"Travis?"
"Yeah. Joe?"
"Yeah. Can you come and get me?"
"I can't hear you, man. This is a lousy connection.
"I'm at the Quik Trip over on Highway Fifty-one. Can you come and get me? I can't walk, man, I jumped outta the car and messed up my leg..."
Travis could hardly understand him, his voice had no air behind it, he was surprised now he'd recognized it--what the hell was going on?
"How'd you get here?"
"I hitched, man, and I had to jump outta the last car, the guy was getting weird with me, I guess I better get used to that..."
It sounded like Joe was sobbing. Or maybe just too tired to even talk. Something was really wrong.
"What's up?"
"It's bad, Travis. Really bad. Can you come and get me?"
"I don't have any wheels, man. My uncle won't be home for hours."
"Oh, don't tell your uncle. Don't tell anybody, man."
"Hold on."
Travis ran to the kitchen window. Casey's Jeep was parked by the barn.
"Listen, I think I can get there." He paused. "How bad?"
"The twins are dead." Joe's voice sounded flat. Flat and old.
"Orson killed them. And I helped him."
Travis felt so spacey. For a second he thought he was going to drop the phone. He didn't ask if this was some kind of sick joke.
"Stay there. I'll get a ride."
"Okay," Joe said, and hung up.
"I need to borrow your Jeep."
Casey looked up from her record books. "I don't think--what's wrong?"
"Just for a couple of minutes--to go to the Quik Trip."
"Hey, this is some nicotine fit."
Travis wanted to smack her across the room, but she said quickly, "What is it?"
"I need to pick up a guy at the Quik Trip, he hitched this far, it's real important--you drive if you want, but let's go, okay?"
She got to her feet, looking at her watch. "I've got a lesson ... what the hell, they've been late for me--"
She drove even fast enough to suit him, raced down to the highway like she did across the fields, chasing the Star Runner. Travis gripped his seat, too scared to think. He could think later, when Joe told him what had happened--the twins dead?
He could remember the last time he'd seen them, the night before his big fight with Stan, they were working on the Trans Am, he was sitting on the washing machine in their garage watching them, drinking Pepsi because their mom was home. He remembered how pale they looked under garage light, skinny, Mike under the hood and Billy laughing at whatever Travis was saying. He'd been lying extravagantly about something, he couldn't remember what, they wouldn't allow smoking in the garage, they thought they were such hotshot mechanics...
Joe was sitting on the curb in front of the Quik Trip. He almost fell as he got up, and limped to the Jeep. To Travis he seemed like someone stumbling in his sleep, exhausted by a nightmare he couldn't awake from. Travis was stunned. Joe was thinner, dirtier, and older. And he knew these changes were recent--for the first time he could believe stories he'd heard about people turning gray overnight.
He jumped out of the Jeep to help him. Joe yelped when he grabbed his arm.
"Sorry, man," he muttered, heaving himself into the front seat. "I think I tore some muscles or somethin'."
He gazed at Casey.
"She's cool," Travis said, hopping in back, and Casey proved it by not asking any questions, just speeding back to the barn.
In Travis's room Joe stretched out on the bed, not even taking his shoes off, staring straight up at the ceiling. Travis couldn't figure out what to do. In a little while Joe started shaking, and tears ran down his face, but he didn't even seem to notice, like this had happened so much he was used to it.
Travis went to the kitchen and poured out a couple of good shots of bourbon and dropped a handful of ice cubes in it. He'd worry about Ken later.
Joe pulled himself up into a half-sitting position, leaning back against the headboard. He gulped the bourbon like it was water--Travis realized he should have brought water to begin with, but Joe did quit shaking so much.
"Got anything to eat?"
Travis doubted it--he came up with a couple of cold weenies in stale buns, but Joe ate them without complaint, slowly, not bothering to wipe the streaking tears off his face.
"So what happened?" Travis asked finally. He dreaded knowing.
"The twins are
dead."
"Yeah. So how?"
"Orson killed them. Took a twenty-two, oh, God--"
Joe finished off his bourbon.
"He tried to make me shoot Mike, but I wouldn't. You think that might help, at my trial, that I didn't pull the trigger? I thought he was ready to kill me, too, and he still couldn't make me--"
"Start from the start," Travis said.