Excerpt of Over His Head by Carolyn McSparren

"I LOVED WILLIAMSTON when I was a kid. So will you."

Tim Wainwright turned his Suburban from the highway onto a narrow county road. A small sign said, Williamston, Tennessee, Population 123. He accelerated past it and hoped the kids hadn't noticed that number.

Sometime in the ten years since his grandfather's funeral cortege had wound along this road to the cemetery, the county had paved it. Thank God. After the horrors of the drive from Chicago, even in an air-conditioned Surburban, Tim didn't think he could have faced the last leg of his trip on rutted gravel in a cloud of hot July dust.

His children would mount a full-scale rebellion at the thought of living down a gravel road. He took a deep breath and willed his shoulders to relax. He glanced over at Jason, who stared mulishly out the side window. He'd refused to say a word since they crossed the bridge over the Mississippi River, driving straight through Memphis and out the other side.

Jason's buzz cut would have time to grow so that he wouldn't start school totally bald. He'd fight losing the two earrings in his right ear, but they'd have to go as well. Maybree Academy had a strict dress code. That meant buying him clothes sized for a teenager rather than an African bull elephant.

From what he'd seen of the student body when he came down to interview, Maybree students preferred the preppy look. He prayed Jason would knuckle under to peer pressure and go preppy as well.

He could see Eddy in his rearview mirror, slumped against the armrest, either sleeping or pretending to. As glad as Tim was that Jason had stopped complaining, he wished Eddy would say something, anything more than to ask for orange juice at breakfast. If only he'd cry. Just once. Stoicism might be okay for Marcus Aurelius, but it was damned unhealthy for a seven-year-old kid.

At least he was no problem to dress. Tim could probably drape a tarpaulin over him without his noticing. He hadn't even played his Game Boy on the drive down. Just sat and stared.

Angie's black hair bounced in and out of his field of vision in the mirror. Usually he forbade headphones. He'd prefer that his children not go deaf before they reached twenty. Today, however, the headphones and portable CD player had been a blessing. She had zoned out on her latest techno-rock band.

"You must admit," Tim said to Jason, the only one who'd be able to hear him, "This is beautiful country. Look at all the trees, the fields, the open space."

"Yeah," Jason said with a wave of his hand. "Look at all the malls, the pizza places, the movie theaters. Yeah, we're gonna love it."

"Look, Jason, I realize this is culture shock, but once you get used to the freedom..."

Tim saw his son actually turn his head to look — no, sneer — at him.

"Freedom. Right. Freedom is not riding to school in the morning with my father, spending all day with him spying on me and riding home with him in the afternoon. Freedom is a new Mustang."

"In your dreams. We'll be lucky if we can afford a thirdhand VW for you. Besides, the legal age for a license is sixteen in Tennessee, not fifteen, and then it's restricted."

"It would be," Jason whispered. "Goddamn prison."

"Watch your language."

"Sure, like you watch yours."

Tim let that pass. There was a certain amount of truth in it.

Since Solange's death he didn't watch his language as much when the kids were around.

This was what she had wanted. Maybe not to move to the middle of nowhere in West Tennessee, but to move out of Chicago, find someplace to live with open spaces, a bigger house in a small town. No crime. Kids free to ride their bicycles or skateboards without fear.

Away from Solange's mother.

He hadn't listened. And so she'd died. Now he was taking control of his family's destiny. Time to haul on the reins and stop the runaway stagecoach before it turned over and killed everybody. He grinned. Even his clichés were turning country. "I've told you how great my summers were down here when I was a kid. You used to think they sounded pretty cool."

"I used to think storks brought babies," Jason said.

"You mean they don't? Okay, I promise you there will be occasional access to malls and movies and maybe even pizza. But you'll have to earn your privileges. Get an after-school job. Earn that VW. Pay for your own gas once you get it. Money's going to be tight. And no more running wild because your grandmother can't keep up with you."

Jason held out his wrists. "Yeah. Freedom, just like you said. Just put the cuffs on now, Mr. Policeman, sir."

"Jason, I'm tired, you're tired, we're all tired. It's hot, we've driven all the way from Chicago, and I've had enough of the sarcasm."

"Shouldn't you call that creative interaction, Mr. Vice Principal, sir?"

"I'm just a lowly English teacher now, Jason." He longed to stop the car, lean across the console separating them and slap the kid silly. He'd always believed in nonviolent alternatives to physical punishment for children and had never raised a hand to his three. He knew their grandmother did from time to time, and he suspected Solange had swatted a behind or two.

Every day Tim worked with abusive parents and abused children. He knew the damage abuse caused both.

Today, however, he was discovering how kids could drive a seemingly rational adult crazy. He took a deep breath. He needed to calm down and chill out before he started yelling. That never did any good and left him feeling guilty afterward.

He took another deep breath, then several more before he said, "Granddad taught me to fish for crappie and catfish in the creek that runs through the farm, and during the summer we took picnics down to the pond and swam. He taught me to paddle a canoe. We can rebuild the dock, buy a new canoe —"

"Skinny-dip with the local milkmaids."

Tim could hear the leer in Jason's voice. Doggedly he kept going. "I had a great bag swing by the pond.You could swing way out over the water and drop. Can't do that in a swimming pool."

"Who'd want to?"

"I have to pee." Angie had taken off the earphones and was leaning against the back of his seat. "Stop at a gas station."

"No gas stations between here and Williamston," Tim said. He didn't remember a gas station within twenty miles of Williamston. Better not tell Angie that. "If you're in real trouble, we'll pull off to the side of the road and you can go behind a tree."

"Eeeew! No way! Gross."

"Then hold on. We're nearly there." He checked her face in the mirror. It was powdered dead-white, made even more dramatic by her hair, dyed so black it looked like a wig. Unfortunately it wasn't. She had bought the dye one afternoon after school, and greeted him looking like an underaged vampire when he got home from school.

"Dad was just telling us about how great it's going to be to swim in some scummy old pond," Jason said. "Water moccasins love little girls. One bite and you swell up and turn green and die."

"Jason!" It was a wail. "Daddy, make him stop. I hate snakes. Are there really snakes?"

Sure there were, but he wasn't about to tell Angie about them right this minute. "Most snakes are harmless. They're more afraid of you than you are of them."

"Want to bet?" Jason breathed.

"Don't think about snakes. Think about how big the house is. After Chicago, it's going to seem like a palace. You'll have a big room all to yourself. And some of the people in the area have horses."

Magic word. Before she had been taken over by the Children of the Night, Angie's one great desire had been for a horse of her own. Not possible in Chicago. Rich people who lived in the suburbs owned horses. Overworked vice principals of inner-city schools did not.

In his new job as an English teacher in a small private school, Tim still wouldn't be able to afford a horse for Angie, but he might be able to give her riding lessons. Maybe he'd offer her a trade. She could have riding lessons if she took off the clown makeup and went back to brown hair.

In any case, the black hair and kohl eyeliner wouldn't be any more acceptable at Maybree than Jason's bald head. He'd have to find out how to remove the dye.

Solange would have known all about that kind of thing. But then if his wife were still alive, Angie probably wouldn't have turned Goth on him.

The only one of his kids who looked halfway normal was Eddy, and he was the most screwed up of the bunch, at least to hear the psychologist tell it.

How could Tim ever teach his children to love Williamston the way he did? He'd regaled them time after time with stories of the wonderful summers he'd spent there. Maybe now that they were here, the stories would take on new meaning for them. They'd never paid much attention before.

The important thing was that he wouldn't be working eighty hours a week as he had in Chicago. He could devote himself to their needs. He'd sacrificed his career, the potential of a principalship — all the additional money and prestige — for them. He owed them for the years he'd let Solange raise them practically on her own.

He swung the SUV off the highway and onto a narrow lane lined with big old trees that transformed the road into a sundappled tunnel.

He drove past the small rectangular common in the center of the village. The Bermuda grass lawn had turned brown in the heat, and the white fence needed a coat of paint.

The only place to eat in Williamston was a log cabin on the corner of the green. Today a big sign outside read Closed. Tim hoped that meant for dinner and not for good.

One more left, up a hill and past the big moving van. He pulled onto the grass verge at the far side of his grandfather's house and cut the engine.

"Home at last."

"No way," said Jason.

"Way."

"There's supposed to be a town. Where is it?"

"You just drove through it."

"A field and a log cabin?"

"Yuck, some palace," whined Angie, who leaned across Eddy to stare out the window. "No one could possibly expect a human being to live in that — that hovel." She frequently vacillated between teenage colloquial andVictorian supercilious in the same sentence.

Eddy had woken up and was rubbing his eyes. "Well, Eddy? Care to add your comments?"

Eddy ignored him. "Gross, gross, gross!" Angie's hands fluttered. "I'll bet you can't even buy a CD for a hundred miles."

"CD, huh! Try a loaf of bread. You said it was a town."

"Williamston is a town. Just a very small one. More like a village."

"More like a big fat nothing."

"Looks like an old barn," Jason said as he stared up at the house.

"At least I won't have to share a room with Ratso any longer."

"Don't call your brother names," Tim said. Now that he had done this insane thing, had committed his whole family to this change, he was scared to get out of the car. "The house has five bedrooms. One downstairs for me, one for each of you, and one left over for guests."

"For Gran'mere," Eddy whispered from the back seat.

"Yes, Eddy. Your grandmother will come to visit as soon as we get settled."

"No, she won't," Jason said with finality. "Not after we tell her what this place is like." He leered over his shoulder at his brother. "We'll never, ever see her again."

"We will, too!"

"Jason, stop teasing your brother. Eddy, your grandmother will come to visit. She just can't move down here with us. I've explained all that." His voice said he'd explained it until he was blue in the face and wasn't about to try again.

"If she loved us, she'd move."

"Eddy, it's okay, she does love us," Angie said. "Jason, stop being a butthole."

"Angie," her father said, but without much heat. He was too tired of driving and refereeing to be upset by much less than ax murder.

"It's a prison."

"I want to go back to Chicago."

"I'm hungry."

"I want a soda."

"Can't we stay in a motel?"

"I hate this place."

"I have to pee."

He'd decided to feed them a catfish dinner at the Log Cabin. Now he'd have to find someplace else nearby, assuming there was another restaurant this side of Memphis, fifty miles away.

They'd be a captive audience. He'd tell them some more stories of his wonderful summers. Tomorrow maybe they'd all go for a long walk. He really wanted his children to love this place, too.

But he was willing to have them hate it if it kept them safe from crime and gangs and drugs and alcohol and drive- by shootings.

He would even fight his own children to get them to twenty- one sound of mind and body.