The Third Hill North of Town Read Online Free PDF

last half hour. The blue Plymouth Fury didn’t even slow down, though, and as its taillights vanished over a nearby hill, Jon raised his hand high above his head and exchanged his thumb for his middle finger. He stood this way for a long moment, feeling like an obscene parody of the Statue of Liberty, before at last allowing his arm to drop to his side again.
    His blue T-shirt and khaki shorts were soaked through and clinging to his skin; his canvas sneakers were also waterlogged. He was carrying a plastic bag with his only remaining possessions in it: a toothbrush, a razor, three paperback books, his wallet, two pairs of clean boxer shorts, one pair of clean socks, and three hundred seventy-two dollars in stolen cash.
    Jon had been on the road since five o’clock that morning, when he’d caught a ride with a southbound trucker on the outskirts of Tipton, Maine. The trucker’s name was Clive Upton, from Montreal, and to Jon’s immense relief, Clive had asked no questions. He’d taken Jon out of Maine and into New Hampshire, but when they’d stopped to get breakfast, a radio had been playing in the diner and Jon grew agitated as the news came on. Clive was taking far too long to suit him, so Jon thanked him for the ride and lit out on foot, forsaking the Interstate in favor of an older highway where he thought he’d feel less exposed while hitchhiking.
    He was no longer happy with this choice. Two hours had passed since he’d left the diner and no one had stopped to pick him up.
    Jon was five foot nine and weighed 160 pounds. He was built like a wrestler, but he had never wrestled a day in his life; his broad shoulders and wiry frame came from good genes rather than disciplined exercise. He had deep-set gray eyes that always made him look tired, and a square, stubborn jaw. The rain plastered his short black hair to his scalp and streamed down his face, mingling with tears he could no longer suppress. He was frustrated and exhausted, and he couldn’t believe he was standing where he was, doing what he was doing.
    “I am so stupid,” he whispered. “I am just so fucking stupid.”
    Jon had lived in Tipton, Maine, all nineteen years of his life and had never intended to live anyplace else. His family was there, and all his friends, and he had a good job at Toby’s Pizza Shack, working in the kitchen. He didn’t make a lot of money at Toby’s, but he was able to pay the rent for his apartment above the town Laundromat, and he even had enough left over each month to keep his home well stocked with his two favorite things in the world: books and beer.
    When Jon had been in high school, his teachers described him as “smart as a whip” and “good-natured.” They also described him—usually in the same breath—as “lazy, apathetic, and disappointing.” All of these were reasonable characterizations, and Jon took no offense at any of them. He loved to read and he loved to drink, and felt that almost everything else was a waste of time. And since his graduation the previous year, he had done little else, either, aside from the necessary evil of working part-time at Toby’s. His parents had long since given up trying to get him to attend college, but after he moved out they began to speak about him to his two younger brothers in hushed, disapproving tones. They used him as a sort of cautionary tale, hoping that Billy and Evan, his siblings, would understand that unambitious people like Jon were little more than dead weight, dragging society down.
    Jon wasn’t troubled by this assessment, either, and only laughed when his brothers told him about it. Books were piling up around him, mixed with a fair share of beer bottles and cans, and he didn’t bother to explain why this was all he required from his life. He knew his parents would never understand the joy that came to him when he was sitting under a lamp in the evenings with a book in his lap. They’d never know how much pleasure it gave him when the only sound