Reservation Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

go.
    “Sir.”
    “I just told you something important.”
    Sergeant Burke’s expression was impassive; he might have been a statue. “Important, sir?” He gave his head an apologetic shake. “No, sir. Sorry.”
    “I just told you something important and I want you to write it down.”
    “No, sir. Sorry.”
    “Yes, goddamnit. Yes!”
    I was breathing hard, starting to shout, pointing my finger at him.
    “Easy now,” Sergeant Burke said.
    “We’re not done here. We’re not even close to done.”
    “My partner and I are going to take you home now,” he said. “We can talk some more in the a.m.”
    “You listen to me. There was a man driving that car. There was a man smoking a fucking cigarette and he looked right at me before he ran my son into the ground. I
saw
him.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And why don’t you guys cut the ‘sir’ crap? Why don’t you talk like human beings?”
    Sergeant Burke took a small step back from me, as if he didn’t trust what he might do. “I’m going to let that pass. You’re upset.”
    “You’re fucking right I’m upset.”
    I found I was trembling uncontrollably. And I fell again into that crouch, that ungainly squat from which I could place my palms flat on the ground to steady myself. Anything to touch the world as it had been before. But it would not go back. I kept trembling. Thinking now about my Emma, the waves of grief and fear rolling through her, and no end in sight.

Dwight
    Black land rushed by. Finally the woods opened as if they’d been split by an ax, and this car with us in it ran out under the moonless night past stone-walled fields still and dark. We passed a farm, or its shadow, the silo rising like a prison guardtower.
    Leaving that boy behind.
    Eight more miles to Bow Mills. I kept my speed, cornering with white-knuckled hands. Now and then the tires squealed out, but lightly, nothing like before. I was sweating as if a fever had just broken.
    “It hurts,” Sam whimpered. “It hurts.”
    He was pressed against me, curled up, still crying, holding a hand over his right eye. I couldn’t stand it. “Is it your eye?”
    “I hit it,” he whimpered. He seemed five years old again.
    “Here, let me see it.” I took a hand off the wheel and tried to pull his hand from his eye, but his crying climbed an octave, so I quit. “Let me,” I said.
    He took his hand away. It was too dark to see anything. I leaned over him. Before I knew it the car was drifting to the left again and my heart kicked. But it went no further than that; I cut the wheel and we were back on the right side of the line. “I can’t look at it right this second, Sam,” I said.
    With my eyes on the road, I groped in the dark for the top of his head, put my hand on his soft hair. Then with my fingers I trailed down his smooth brow and lightly touched the eye where he was hurt. I felt the wet trace of his tears and the swollen flesh and bone all around his right eye. He cried out and tried to hit my arm. “Stop it,” I said, and he stopped. “I needed to know. You’re not bleeding but you’re going to have a bad shiner. We’ll get you some ice as soon as we get to your mother’s.”
    There was a silence; he’d stopped crying. “What’s a shiner?”
    “Black eye.”
    “Black?” he said, quizzical.
    I almost smiled.
    Suddenly, Sam sat up. “Dad?” His voice was nasal from crying. It was strange. He seemed twice as old as the boy who had spoken just before.
    The question was on the way. And it came down to this: What did he know? What had he seen? I had to get there first. “Sam,” I said. “Listen to me.”
    In the dark of the car my son looked at me. Whatever he’d been about to ask, he let go.
    “We hit something back there on the road,” I said.
    “I know.”
    “Do you know what we hit?”
    He didn’t answer.
    “Do you?”
    “No.”
    I breathed out. “We hit a dog.”
    Sam was quiet.
    “Was it big?” he said finally.
    “Yes.”
    “Did we kill