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Boy Wonder (Cont.)


	Pause, then play: from left, Dave, Roger, and Terrie Carver, with Black Jack, Longtail, Bubba, and Wilma (James Smolka)

THERE'S A GAME Roger likes to play in the car called Name That Song. You hit the seek button and see who can name the artist first. If you do, you get a point.

"It's a good game," he says. "You'll like it."

Driving with Roger is fun and a little tiring. It's fun because he's always looking out the window and noticing things you might not. It's tiring because, at the same time, he's fiddling with the air vents and the fan, turning on the hazard lights, leaning over to check the speedometer.

"Britney," he says, and hits the button.

"Train." Click.

"Destiny's Child."

To this soundtrack, you move along the roads, tracing in and out of canyons, up and down steep hills under a dome of California sky. You drive through tunnels of trees, past sprawling vineyards and rusting mansions of corrugated metal. You see streets: Glory, Magic, Paydirt, Serendipity. You see people: An elderly jogger. A couple pushing a double stroller. A man walking a black dog.

"I want to get off my pills someday," Roger says. "I think if I stay around regular people a lot, maybe that will help me. I met a guy one time who used to take pills, and now he doesn't. He controls it with his mind—you know, just by thinking about it real hard. I guess that's what I want to do in the future. But it's really hard to know what's going to happen. You know, who knows, really?"

When you ask them about the future, Roger's parents express a similar feeling.

"We'll probably do snowboarding again next year," Terrie says. "Then, nationals are in Maine, at Sunday River. That would make a fun trip."

What about further down the line?

"Too soon to say," Dave says. "Way too soon."

"We don't think about it," Terrie says firmly. "I'm not saying Roger couldn't go pro or do the Olympics. I'm just saying that if he doesn't, or if he decides to quit tomorrow, it will be fine with me."

"He could, too." Dave says. "He could walk in the door and announce that he's done. He did it with soccer and trick-or-treating. Just came home one day and said, ÔI'm not doing that anymore.' And he didn't."

Roger clicks to a Tom Petty song. It's a good one, so he takes his finger off the button and lets the song play out. His hands tap the dashboard and his body rocks back and forth in the seat, and when the chorus comes he can't hold it in anymore. He sucks in a deep breath and just belts it out in that chipmunky voice—Yeah, I'm free, I'm free fallin'!

When it's over, he's quiet for a while. Then Roger notices something.

"There," he says, tapping on the glass. "There's a mountain over there with a cool story."

Let's hear it.

"It's an Indian place and it's really old. The story is that if an Indian brave was sad because something bad happened—like they couldn't get married or if their wife died or something—they would climb up to the top by themselves and just jump off, and on the way down they would magically change into some animal before they hit the ground—you know, a hawk or a bear or something that was their true spirit."

Roger thinks about this. He futzes with the air vent some more, looks at the green world speeding past, punches the seek button.

"That's a good story," he says.

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