“I don’t want to get ahead at the mine.There are lots of other guys who want Simon’s job, and they’ve been working for Eugene a lot longer than me.”
“But Daddy likes you.”
Cutter knew that.Still, it didn’t change certain things.
“If you don’t want to be a foreman, what do you want to be?”
He rested his weight back on the heels of his hands and looked out across the street.“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to leave here and get a job in the city?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to work in the mine all your life?”
“I don’t know.”
“But don’t you dream things?”
“Not much,” he said.He didn’t dream of being rich or famous.He didn’t dream of being a boss and ordering people around.His life now was so much better than it had been before that he was pretty satisfied.Sometimes he dreamed of little things—a little more money, a little bigger house, maybe a car, maybe even a car with a stereo.He figured he’d have those things one day.
"I think you ought to come to work in Boston.That’s what Hillary’s doing.She just got a job working for the paper.It’s interesting, she says.”
Cutter knew Hillary Cox, just as he knew almost everyonein Timiny Cove.She’d been gone awhile, but word had a way of filtering back.“Hillary’s a writer.I’m not.”
“You could be.You read all the time.”
“Reading has nothing to do with writing.”
“We readLord of the Fliesin English class, by the way.I don’t think I liked it.It was pretty depressing.”
“It was supposed to be.It was supposed to be an example of what might happen if there wasn’t any order to things.”With deliberate nonchalance he asked, “What did your teacher say about it?”He liked it when Pam told him things, like that.It made him think.Sometimes he even went back and reread a particular book after they had talked.
“Kind of what you did,” Pam said, “about order and rules and laws.She said the author was making a statement that there’s evil deep down inside us, but I’d never have done what Jack and Roger did.”
He nearly smiled at the appalled look on her face.But evil wasn’t a smiling matter.More than once he had wondered what he’d have done on that deserted island: “Are you sure?Not even if you were in the situation they were?Not even if you were lost and frightened and started imagining all sorts of things?”
She shook her head.“I wouldn’t have.I couldn’t have.”
Cutter wasn’t so sure he could say the same.He’d have done almost anything to feel safer when he was younger.“Maybe that’s because you’re a girl,” he said a little distractedly.
“No.”She was about to elaborate when John drove upin his Thunderbird.Pam’s features immediately darkened.“What does he want?”
Cutter grew alert.He allowed himself to admire the car, a shiny blue convertible with the top up.As soon as John climbed out, though, looking perfect in cuffed khaki pants and a shirt with a little alligator on the front, his admiration died.
“I’m going inside,” Pam murmured.Very slowly she rose from the step where she’d been seated.She looked at John for an impertinent minute, then, with incredible dignity, Cutter thought, turned and walked into Leroy’s store.
“Did I disturb something?”John asked in a voice that was nearly as cold as his eyes.
Cutter was determined to be just as cool.“Why would you think that?”
“Because you two were sitting pretty close.What are you doing with my sister, Cutter?”
“Talking.Right here on Main Street where everyone can see.”
“You see her more than that.I know she goes to your place sometimes.Is that by invitation?”
Cutter didn’t bother to answer.