Keepers Read Online Free Page B

that he’d just donned and activated a pair of night-vision goggles. I wondered if they were Starlight technology like the scopes soldiers used in Vietnam. I wondered how expensive they were and how Cedar Hill Animal Control could afford such high-tech gear.
    An SUV came around the corner, its headlights shining on high, enabling me to read the name on the side of the truck.
    It wasn’t Animal Control, and it sure as hell wasn’t the pound.
    But I recognized the name, nevertheless.
    My legs began to buckle, my chest felt tight, and my heart once again tried to squirt through my ribs; my breath came up short, and I knocked over the mug of hot chocolate, burning the hell out of my foot as I pressed my back against the wall and slid to the floor, a hand over my mouth.
    But there was nothing wrong, I knew this.
    It had just been One of Those Days, that was all.
    The old man, the dog, the package from Beth.
    Just One of Those Days.
    Had nothing to do with what was written on the side of the truck—though whatever was trying to find the light switch in my brain did let fly with a wary “ Huh ?”
    Maybe it was the hot chocolate. Maybe the old stomach wasn’t up for that tonight—a practical joke courtesy of Johnny W.
    It couldn’t have anything to do with the way the driver had acted, or his night-vision goggles, or anything at all with the way he’d been dressed: Steed from The Avengers , an enigmatic dapper fellow from a Magritte, or an old man dying on the highway. Suit, shoes, tie, right down to the derby.
    I scratched behind my ear. My left shoulder began to throb—a thoughtful souvenir from an old mishap—so I rubbed it, my index finger lingering on the flat round knot of puckered scar tissue.
    I held my breath, listening to his footsteps as Magritte-Man made his way up the walk to one side of the front porch before turning around and going back to his truck. I continued holding it until the sound of his engine faded into cricket-song and streetlight buzz. When I finally allowed myself to exhale, everything inside me became miasmal and dissipated into the twilight. My eyes closed of their own volition as my finger brushed the scar again, and I remember thinking that I should always remember to treasure this scar, because if it hadn’t been for this, I never would have met Beth....
     

 
Chapter 2
    The Words With Which To Name
    “... This is where they keep the dead people .”
     
     
    Two months before my tenth birthday, my aunt Amy, who was then eighteen, invited me to go with her to visit one of her friends who was away at college. Aunt Amy usually took me out at least once every two weeks—a movie and pizza, then shopping at the seemingly endless supply of record stores in Columbus (usually near or on the OSU campus). Even then, people twice my age were aware that when it came to contemporary music—be it rock, folk, progressive (“prog,” to those of us in the know), even crossover jazz like John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, this little geek from Cedar Hill was The Kid to Ask. Whenever Amy was going to have a party and wanted the music to be perfect, she’d come to me to help her record tapes. The deejays at Stereo Rock 92 had nothing on me when it came to instant recall of who played in what band and on what label and when.
    The excursion that day promised to be a good one; the new Steppenwolf album was just out and I’d been saving my allowance to buy it. No place in Cedar Hill carried it yet, but I knew I’d find at the first record store I walked into in Columbus. Amy told me that she needed me to settle a bet with some of her friends about the last couple of Grand Funk Railroad albums, and if I’d come along with her and “put those know-it-alls in their place,” she’d buy the Steppenwolf album for me. (Amy made it a point to never tell me ahead of time what the “bet” was specifically about, because she knew I enjoyed being put on the spot when it came to rock trivia. I’d