From Avalon he races onto Camelot, crossing the intersection without looking for traffic, going much faster than usual, almost sprinting instead of jogging. He is remembering something that happened about a month after they started going out.
It was the Chocolate Watchband they had gone to, as usual, only this time during the afternoon, to listen to a jazz quartet that had actually been pretty good. Not that they had listened very much, as Fred now recalls it; mostly he had talked to Judy about how little he liked being in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (Moo U, the Letters and Science snooties called it), and how little he liked the unspoken family assumption that when he graduated he would come on back home and help Phil run the family farm in French Landing. The idea of spending his life in harness with Phil gave Fred a severe case of the glooms.
What do you want, then? Judy had asked. Holding his hand on the table, a candle burning inside a jelly glass, the combo onstage working a sweet little number called "I'll Be There for You."
I don't know, he'd said, but I tell you what, Jude, I should be in Business Admin, not Moo U. I'm a hell of a lot better at selling than at planting.
Then why don't you switch?
Because my family thinks —
Your family isn't going to have to live your life, Fred — you are.
Talk is cheap, he remembers thinking, but then something had happened on the way back to campus, something so amazing and out of his understanding of how life was supposed to work that it fills him with wonder even now, some thirteen years later.
Still talking about his future and their future together (I could be a farm wife, Judy had said, but only if my husband really wants to be a farmer). Deep into that. Letting their feet carry them along without much interest in exactly where they were. And then, at the intersection of State Street and Gorham, a scream of brakes and a hearty metallic bang had interrupted the conversation. Fred and Judy had looked around and seen a Dodge pickup that had just tangled bumpers with an elderly Ford station wagon.
Getting out of the wagon, which had pretty clearly run the stop sign at the end of Gorham Street, was a middle-aged man in a middle-aged brown suit. He looked scared as well as shaken up, and Fred thought there was good reason for that; the man advancing toward him from the pickup truck was young, heavyset (Fred particularly remembered the belly bulging over the waist of his jeans), and carrying a tire iron. You goddamn careless ass**le! Young and Heavyset cried. Look what you done to my truck! This my dad's truck, you goddamn ass**le!
Middle-Aged Suit backing up, eyes wide, hands raised, Fred watching fascinated from in front of Rickman's Hardware, thinking Oh no, mister, bad idea. You don't back away from a guy like this, you go toward him, even as mad as he is. You're provoking him — can't you see that you're provoking him? So fascinated he didn't realize that Judy's hand was no longer in his, listening with a kind of sick foreknowledge as Mr. Middle-Aged Suit, still backing up, blathered about how he was sorry . . . entirely his fault, wasn't looking, wasn't thinking . . . insurance papers . . . State Farm . . . draw a diagram . . . get a policeman to take statements . . .
And all the time Young and Heavyset was advancing, thwocking the end of the tire iron into the palm of his hand, not listening. This wasn't about insurance or compensation; this was about how Mr. Middle-Aged Suit had scared the shit out of him while he was just driving along and minding his own business and listening to Johnny Paycheck sing "Take This Job and Shove It." Young and Heavyset intended to take a little payback paycheck of his own for getting the shit scared out of him and all jounced around behind the wheel . . . had to take a little, because the other man's smell was inciting him, that piss-yellow smell of fear and innate defenselessness. It was a case of rabbit and farmyard dog, and all at once the rabbit was clean out of backing room; Mr. Middle-Aged Suit was pressed against the side of his station wagon, and in a moment the tire iron was going to start swinging and the blood was going to start flying.
Except there was no blood and not a single swing, because all at once Judy DeLois was there, no bigger than a minute but standing between them, looking fearlessly up into Young and Heavyset's burning face.
Fred blinked, wondering how in the name of God she'd gotten there so damned fast. (Much later he would feel the same way when he followed her into the kitchen, only to hear the steady thump of her feet descending the front stairs.) And then? Then Judy slapped Young and Heavyset's arm! Whack, right on the meaty bicep she slapped him, leaving a white palm print on the sunburned freckled flesh below the sleeve of the guy's torn blue T-shirt. Fred saw it but couldn't believe it.