Excerpt from The Webster Chronicle by Daniel Akst, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Why," Terry continued, "does Vanatee County need a child sex-abuse expert? I-I mean, with all due respect."

But by that time, she was headed for the door.

"W-W-What kind of response is that?" he called after her back. "I mean, what kind of message is that sending? H-H-How can you change anyone’s mind by walking away?"

She kept walking, and he was left to figure out by looking around how embarrassed he needed to be. Not terribly, he assured himself, closing his pad, but just then an older woman brushed past, shaking her head.

"Such a cynic," she tutted.

I’m an idealist, he wanted to say. A frustrated idealist. But he couldn’t get the words out fast enough to stop her, and so he moved off to take care of business, pretending to be the hearty, loud-laugh sort of fellow the mayor and several others seemed to want him to be, until finally the place was all but empty and he drifted toward the exit.

In the deserted parking lot, he noticed a faded red Saab going nowhere with the engine running. Terry Mathers was a man who believed deep down that the gods looked out for him, and tonight the world again confirmed his grace, having sent him not only Diana but her car troubles. My cup runneth over, he thought.

"It’s your parking brake," he told her. "They get all slushy and then freeze up as the temperature drops. Better not to use ’em, if you can avoid it. Park in first, cramp your wheels, whatever." He would sound manly, telegraphic. "Here, lemme try something."

He flicked the lighter he carried with him for medicinal purposes (he had used it that very night to light a joint) and slid under the car. He was freezing, but it was hard not to smile. His lighter was much too small to melt what was no doubt under there, in his experience, but it was a marvelous chance to be heroic. And in truth, Terry would have done this for anybody; he loved helping people, even if they always proved insufficiently grateful, and he was glad to have lust in this case to mask the impulse to martyrdom that usually motivated him.

"Can you knock it off with a screwdriver or something?"

No, he wanted to lie, but instead he said, "Do you have one?"

She opened the rear hatch and pointed to a compartment containing a little tool kit complete with a pair of pristine white gloves. He noticed that she also had a large first-aid kit kicking around in back, as well as a beat-up picnic cooler, a snorkel and some flippers, a tangle of bungee cords, a bicycle helmet, a flattened roll of paper towels, and a can of stuff that would supposedly inflate your tire if you had a flat.

"I’m sorry about before," he said emphatically. Sometimes it helped to blurt. "I really wasn’t trying to give you a hard time."

"Well, you’re doing a good job making up for it."

The heaviest thing available was a kind of wrench in the tool kit, and he used it to knock off the frozen slush and free her emergency brake. He took his time about it, though, wanting it to seem a bigger favor than it was, and in fact it was hard without enough space for a clear swing at the thing.

"God, thanks so much," she said as he climbed stiffly out from under the vehicle. "You must be just frozen under there. You’re not even wearing gloves!"

"No big deal," he said. His hands were numb. "Start it up, see if the brake light goes off."

"It worked! Get in and get warm at least," she said, seeming not at all nervous now, and as she cleared the papers and cassette tapes off the seat of her car, its flanks whitened by the snow and salt of the country roads in winter, he felt a little sheepish again, which made him worry about his speech.

"Where’s your car?" she said, looking around the lot. "Can I give you a ride somewhere? Or let met buy you some coffee---you look like you need it."

Reprinted from The Webster Chronicle by Daniel Akst by permission of BlueHen Books, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. Copyright © 2001 by Daniel Akst. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.