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But Kelly smiled. “If things ever get back to normal, yes.” She headed off toward the cars.
Joh
As Dad filled him up with a tray of Cokes, popcorn, Snickers and Milky Way bars, ice cream and hot dogs, Joh
A little before three a.m., Joh
• • • •
“
Holy shit. This is unbelievable
,” Joh
If his mind had been clearer, he might have noticed they were the same vehicles, in the same spots as the previous three nights. “
Another
full house!” He patted Joh
Kelly was already there, stirring huge pots of “kitchen-sink soup” over open fires, a waist-high pile of discarded soup and vegetable cans behind her. It had taken them six hours to gather the cans from people’s cupboards, another to open them all.
An hour into the night’s feeding and watering, Joh
“What are we going to do tomorrow?” Joh
“Did you try the Red Cross?” Kelly said.
“Yeah. They aren’t allowed into the quarantined areas.” Calls to the authorities had resulted in awkward explanations about limited emergency response resources, and shock and consternation when Joh
“I guess it’s whatever we have left, then.”
Joh
On the drive home, Joh
It’s a Mad, Mad World
. Joh
• • • •
“Dad,
look
—another sellout crowd.” Joh
“What?” Dad looked around as if waking from a dream. “A what? Oh. Right.” He laughed. “That’s good. What are we showing?”
“
Spaceballs
.”
“Oh yeah? Is it any good?”
“It’s hilarious,” Kelly said from the back seat. Her nose was plugged from crying, but she kept her tone bright.
There was nothing for his dad to do—not a crust of frozen pizza left in the snack bar. They sat him in a lawn chair in the front row. It was a perfect drive-in night: just a nip of crisp fall in the air, the leaves on the trees beyond the screen whispering on a light breeze.
As soon as the movie started playing, Joh
They both carried several cut hoses and a roll of masking tape, heading toward the back row, arm in arm and crying. They would have to start in the back and work their way forward. They didn’t want people to see what they were doing.
He set the hose on the trunk of the first car in the row, went to the driver’s side door. Wiping his eyes, Joh
“How are you folks doing? Enjoying the movie?” One of the people in the back was Mr. Liebert, who’d taught him algebra in the tenth grade, all those years ago. Joh
Choking back sobs, he pulled the hose off the trunk, pushed one end over the car’s exhaust pipe and taped it into place. He slid the other end through the crack in the back window, and moved on.
Kelly was crumpled over the back of the next car, her face in her hands, her shoulders bobbing. She’d already set the hose in place. When Joh
“This is the right thing to do, isn’t it?”
“I think so. Not the easy thing, but the right thing,” Joh
Kelly nodded, eased out of his embrace. “It is.”
Joh
They sat on the picnic table and let the cars in the back row idle for half an hour, then moved on to the next row. Joh
It got easier by the third row. Not easy, but Joh
They took a water break at the picnic table as the vehicles in the fourth row idled. Two more to go.
“Could we go to jail for this?” Kelly asked.
“I dare them to try. There should be doctors and nurses here with IV bags and truckloads of food.”
Kelly nodded.
The bodies would be in his drive-in. When the authorities investigated—and Joh
“If I have any say in it, they’ll build a statue of you in front of Town Hall,” he went on. “What you’ve done over the past week…” Joh
Kelly went on nodding.
“Kelly, cut that out. You’re scaring the hell out of me.”
“Cut what—” And then she realized what she was doing, and Joh
But her head kept nodding,
yes
.
Between ragged, terrified breaths, she said, “Don’t you dare chicken out, Joh
• • • •
Crying silently, Joh
When he’d leaned in to turn on the ignition, Kelly beat him to it, lifting her quavering hand and, on the third try, started the car. A tear was working its way down her quivering cheek as her head went on nodding, nodding.