Sidecar Read Online Free PDF Page A

botched abortion.
    God should have done something, and he didn’t. God let Jeannie stumble home, bleeding, to die of a fever as Joe sat at her bedside and their mother cried. God let that happen when Jeannie had only ever sung his praises and taught Joe to do the same. At six, even before Josiah understood everything about what had happened to Jeannie Daniels, Joe was ’bout done with God. Besides, it seemed like serving the rest of the world was a better option—if that worked well, Joe shouldn’t have to worry about God. Joe could take care of people just fine.
    So that was what he grew up to do. But the growing up grew complicated.
    Josiah was nine years old when Woodstock shook his little corner of the world. His parents’ small town north of Bear Mountain was really nowhere near Bethel, New York, but everybody heard about it. Josiah was entranced by the idea. People gathered together to listen to music. Josiah adored music—“Simple Gifts” was his favorite song when he was nine. And even though those people weren’t listening to “Simple Gifts,” those people who gathered took care of each other and didn’t listen to what God or teachers told them about rules? Right away, no matter what the music, Josiah was a fan!
    When he was nineteen, the world was a more cynical place. The music, for one thing, was not as good. Josiah liked Bad Company, Journey, Bruce Springsteen, and Kansas just fine, but he was not a fan of disco. In fact, that entire five years of the music scene had been incredibly painful for him. For one thing, he had no rhythm. He moved too slowly for any of that music. But power rock? That moved just right for him.
    Joe graduated from high school and moved to California the year Darkness on the Edge of Town was released. He’d always loved that the album had been recorded not too far from where he lived. The pretext for moving to California was that he had a scholarship at a nursing school. This was true, but there were plenty of nursing schools in New York or New Jersey or Vermont. The truth was that he wanted to be somewhere nobody knew him.
    Upstate New York was incredibly beautiful. National parks, Bear Mountain, acres of rural farmland. Josiah loved it; it was a part of his heart and bones. But after Jeannie’s death, he looked at it and somehow saw only lines. County lines, township lines, lines that surrounded what a person should be. Maybe it was because he’d spent twelve years thinking about Jeannie and how ashamed she must have been about crossing lines, about being someone besides the good girl she’d tried so hard to be.
    Maybe it was because he played percussion for the symphonic band, and one summer night, as he walked home from band practice, the lead trumpet player had taken him behind a stand of trees and kissed him on the mouth. Joe had returned the kiss—surprised, because it had been his first and he’d always assumed it would be with a girl—and then Tim had tilted Joe’s head back and told him to look at the stars. Joe had, and Tim had proceeded to kiss down his throat, under his rucked-up shirt, and to the soft swell of his stomach. He’d bitten there, and suckled the flesh into his mouth, and before Joe could do more than groan in sudden want, Tim had unzipped his cut-off jeans and taken Joe’s cock into his mouth.
    Suddenly the stars were behind Joe’s eyes as well as in front of them, and Tim pulled back and stroked Joe until he’d finished spurting into the leaf mold Tim was kneeling on. When Tim stood up, he’d kissed Joe again and said next time Joe could return the favor. Joe had. For an entire summer, they’d stopped in that stand of trees and simply explored each other, unhurriedly, without talking about a relationship or what they were doing or how it was wrong. When the summer was over, Tim told Joe he was going to ask out Kathy, a flute player, and Joe was okay with that.
    Joe had dated her friend, Susan, for most of their junior year.
    But when