Strong Coffee

Don’t dare turn up the volume, so I lay my head next to the radio as it spreads the news. “. . . No new developments in the disappearance last Saturday night of a student from the East Wind School for Boys. Authorities are not ruling out the possibility of a kidnapping, although no demands for a ransom have–”

So my buddies haven’t pinned the blame on me, and if I know Steve and Jerry, they’ll deny everything till doom’s day. The Suit in the coffee shop, the one I call Reporter, didn’t learn their secrets. How did he even know to ask?

The newsbit ends with “. . . an anonymous tip.” I bet Collins freaked when he did bed check and found me gone. He’d never come forward, with either his name or mine. O’Leary would fire his ass so quick he wouldn’t have time to pack. Bad enough that the news got leaked. But who leaked it?

I go into the dark living room to tell Ernie, but he isn’t there. Faint moonlight slants through the kitchen window and panes in the top of the door. He’s at the table, which he’s dragged to block that entrance, since Jordan broke the lock to get in. He doesn’t hear my footsteps on the linoleum, but he’s not asleep on his watch.

There’s a short-wave radio in front of him. He feels my presence before I join him. Turning, he whispers, “Listen to this.” I sit down and he puts the earphones on me.

“. . . at large. The suspect is armed and believed to be dangerous. Anyone answering his description should be reported to local law enforcement officers immediately.”

I don’t have to ask whose description. He is armed, but dangerous only to Jordan. And himself. His gun’s on the table beside the short-wave. “You know how to use that thing?”

Ernie says, “Yeah.” I wait for more, but he takes back the headset and turns off the radio. “I’m on the news, too,” I tell him, “but they don’t have a clue.”

“Lucky.”

That’s his total reaction to my fifteen seconds of fame. Is he thinking instead of Francine’s face on the “missing child” poster we saw in town? Talk about being in the public eye. Guess I shouldn’t ask what he and his dad said to each other on the phone earlier.

We listen to the silence of a summer night on a lonely road. A few hot weather insects are gearing up for their concert. The ancient central air unit has shut off. Maybe for good. Would we hear Jordan sneaking up on us? I wonder how badly he’s wounded. Glass still litters the shag carpet under the broken living room window, and I file a mental note not to walk there barefoot.

“I thought you were going to sleep.” Ernie’s prowling, peering out windows. Either he watches too many movies or too much tv, or he’s a natural at this.

“I thought so, too. What time is it?”

“Nowhere near time to wake John. If he’s sleeping.”

“If I’d just sent somebody to an emergency room, I’d be having nightmares.” Sending an enemy to the hospital, I figure, is the least of John’s nightmares. “Didn’t he tell you anything else about Margie?” I can still see her blue-blotched body and red shoe, but only when I’m awake.

“He never said as much, but he loved her. She didn’t love him. Not enough, anyway. They’d had a few problems, mostly over money. She met Jordan in a safe singles club, cried on his shoulder. He made her think she wanted a divorce.”

“John’s divorced?”

“No. That’s what they couldn’t stand. He wouldn’t let her go.”

Considering that, if it’s all true, I can see how John might be the one to kill her. Chills dart along my spine as I realize what I’ve just thought.

“Go back to bed, Vinnie. I’m in charge. For a change.” He holds up the gun in his hand, and plants himself in one of the easy chairs. Its vantage point covers both porches.

Doubtful about access to the bedrooms, not to mention the bathroom and–worse–the basement, I check the former for myself. The high window is too small for even my butt to wiggle through, and I sense a drop off on this side of the house. Jordan would need to be rail-thin and have a ladder to get in that way.

“Ernie. This cellar door doesn’t have a lock.”

“The outside one does. And the steps creak.”

Satisfied, I say good night and am asleep moments after my head hits the pillow.

* * * * *

They don’t wake me for my turn at watching. Is it because they think a kid like me can’t do the job? It’s not light yet, but will be in half an hour. Ernie’s dead to the world on the other twin bed. Through the open door I can hear shower water hitting the old-fashioned enameled tub. I put on my sneakers and go into the kitchen.

In the fridge I find a carton with six eggs, half a loaf of bread, and an opened package of bacon. Yum! There’s also a couple of six-packs and a wilty head of lettuce. A bar of cheddar cheese. Several closed containers that remind me of Francine. I wonder where she and Hoodoo are now, and whether he’s discovered his gun is missing. Bet he can’t imagine Ernie sneaking into the SUV and stealing it.

Rummaging in the freezer I find a package of coffee and on the counter there’s a coffee maker with a glass pot. I’ve never made coffee before, only lately discovered how much I like it. Each of us will probably want a couple cups, so I measure six cups of water into the pot. So far so good. Now, what to do with it?

I’m back in that last foster home, and strain my brain to remember what she-of-the-forgotten-name used to do. But her pot was different. A tall chrome thing that had some kind of insides that I washed a million times. She made sure I understood I was NEVER to wash the pot in the sink because of the electric cord plug-in. There was a long stem on a flat stand, and a little basket that fit down over it.

“Basket . . . Basket.” The coffee has to go somewhere. It’s pretty clear where the water goes, so I do that. I examine the maker. This must be where it comes out, so I try to get into the part I think should come off. It doesn’t budge. I lift and pull and push, until by accident there’s a click and a different part swings to the side. It holds an old soggy paper like the ones cupcakes are baked in, only bigger. Full of grounds. I trash that and look for a clean one. Finally find a box labeled “filters” in an overhead cabinet.

“Doin’ good,” I tell myself. Fill the filter and swing the basket into place. Press the switch and it turns red. I hear the water begin to bubble. Turn to the stove, find a nonstick pan in the drawer beneath. Find butter in a compartment in the fridge door. Locate the bowls and plates and cups.

I could live like this forever. Then John emerges in clean clothes, shaved, his face slack with weariness, and I remember Jordan might get out of the hospital today, and the cops are heating up their search.

“You can cook?” He gives me a one-sided grin.

“Just getting it ready for you. I made coffee.”

“Thank God,” he says, and peels off slices of bacon.

He’s sizzling up a pan of food that makes my mouth water when Ernie staggers through, on his way toward the bathroom. “Coffee, black and plenty of it.”

“Me, too.” John flips the food, reaches for a plate. Bread pops up in the toaster. He takes out the browned slices, puts in four more.

I fill cups that his mother must have bought. They’re not the he-man mugs I picture him drinking from.

He sets stuff on the bare table. The short-wave’s on the other counter. Bet there was a table cloth with checks or flowers, when he was growing up here. “John, you told me you don’t have a brother.” The question’s in my tone, not the words. He hears it.

“I don’t. I had a sister, but she was lots older and left home when I was starting high school.”

Wanting to trust him once and for all, I pursue this line of thought. “Remember when we met at the gas station, and all of a sudden we decided to jump in your car?”

He cuts me a sharp glance. “Yeah.”

“Well, it wasn’t to please Ernie, exactly.”

“What exactly was it?”

We sit down opposite each other. Ernie joins us, taking the chair at the end of the table.

“We were in a coffee house and I overheard two guys talking. One of them said your brother paid him to find you.”

Ernie adds, “He was the one cruising behind us in the rest area, wasn’t he? You knew him.”

“He’s Jordan’s cousin. Thinks he’s a damned detective.”

“That’s not good,” Ernie mumbles, chewing bread and eggs and bacon.

John takes a long swallow from his cup. Sets it down so hard he spills some coffee on the table. “Good God, what did you put in this?”

Hair on the back of my neck stiffens. “Why? What’s the matter?”

Ernie tentatively sips. “Strong enough to float an iron wedge.”

I look at mine. It’s black, all right. What Ernie said he wanted.

“Tastes like that stuff the fancy places serve in a thimble,” John sneers.

Ernie whirls up from the table, picks up the pot. Starts toward the sink. When he tips the spout toward the drain, John grabs his arm. “Don’t waste it!”

Ernie’s rigid stance conveys something but I don’t know what. Then he says, “You can afford it now.”

My jaw drops. Here I’ve been keeping my lip zipped about the money, and Ernie spits it out in a tone I’ve heard him use only for Hoodoo.

John lets go of his arm like it’s burned him. Takes hold of the bright silvery chain and hauls Ernie’s medallion from inside his shirt collar. “Last night I got to thinking. Want to know what I thought?”

Ernie’s mouth stays shut. Mine flies open. “I do.”

John smiles, but it isn’t friendly. “I thought, this guy’s got enough dough to buy whatever he wants. What’s he doing on my tail? All I have is the car. Does he want it? He can turn me in, and the spoils of war can be his.”

That necklace again. The way the floozy blonde and the greedy cab driver kept fawning over it, I know it’s valuable. The upscale shirt, running shoes. Ernie’s embarrassment over Francine’s slutty behavior. The SUV, the credit card, the lack of real work skills. Stuff I knew, but all it took for John to wise up was that necklace. It screams ‘rich boy’ and this galls John.

Looking around me, it isn’t hard to figure. Everything’s old, worn, falling apart, out-dated. A mother who probably worked and worried herself to death, a dad who never let that stop him from owning the most expensive thing in his world. Damn the torpedoes.

“Just chill, both of you.” I don’t want to lose our wheels or meals, and I can understand the effects of poverty on John’s early years. But if our trio splits up, I’ll have to choose Ernie. Whether he’s rich or even mega-rich, he’s real. John’s in no shape to see that, only the signs of something he’s always envied.

He lets go of Ernie’s necklace. Freed, Ernie fills the pot with hot tap water. “This should solve your problem.”

“Only one of them,” John answers, but with less resentment. He accepts a cup of watered-down coffee. Seems to have forgotten Ernie’s comment that turned attention from my lack of coffee-making skills onto darker ground, as he doesn’t mention the money in the trunk.

We eat in silence. I’m wondering if he counts me as a problem. Or am I really a kidnapped kid, a necessary hostage? Then, like he reads my mind, he says, “I would have taken you both back into town the way I promised, if I hadn’t seen Cuz looking for me.”

“Good thing he doesn’t know about the car.” Ernie pushes his plate aside. “You ought to at least paint her, John. Black, maybe.”

I’m about to remember something, but coffee explodes out of John’s nose. Hot words explode out of his mouth. “Paint her! I’d as soon–”

Whatever the finish, he leaves it unsaid. My brain fills in: ‘. . . kill my own mother.” Jerry says that whenever anyone makes a stupid suggestion to him.

Ernie persists. “Sooner or later, someone you know will see you before you see him.”

“One little detail I have to take care of, and I’m out of the country.”

With Jordan’s money. Or maybe it isn’t Jordan’s. John’s friend stole it from him, but where’d the cash come from? I’m gearing up to spring a few questions, now that he’s calmer. If John leaves the country, how hard would it be to leave with him? Would Ernie go? Depends on what he and his dad said on the phone last night. They haven’t found Fran, or his mood wouldn’t be so crabby. I think about his mom. Don’t recall a single word about her.

“That little detail could get you killed.” Ernie’s sounding like an old man again.

John finishes his coffee, scoots his chair away from the table, lights a cigarette. He never smokes in the Caddy. Ernie refills his own cup and mine. I hope there’s a dishwasher, other than me.

“If you’re thinking it’s insurance money, it’s not.”

“I never said that.”

“How’d you get in the trunk?”

Ernie shows John his pocket knife. “How’d you know?”

“When I went out this morning to bring in the suitcase, the bag was turned wrong.”

“Vinnie, we gotta be more careful next time.”

It’s nice, the way he doesn’t point at me as the chief culprit, but I don’t believe the bag was turned wrong. John picked up on Ernie’s foot-in-the-mouth comment about being able to afford a fresh pot of coffee.

“If it’s not her insurance, where did the money come from?” Ernie reaches for a cigarette and John offers him the pack and matches.

Death wish, I think, the boy’s got a death wish.

Surprisingly, John doesn’t take offense, just fields the question. “Out of Jordan’s credit union account.” He sends a smoke ring into the air over the table.

Ernie tries, but blowing smoke rings is not one of his skills. They both laugh.

Their return to easy banter makes me relax so I leave them alone long enough to go pee. On my way, movement along the paved road catches my eye, but it’s just a car. Heading to a factory job that pays by piecework, like the one John’s mom stuck with for twenty-five years.

He’s itchy to complete his mission and get out of Dodge. Ernie’s words ‘Some missions fail’ ring in my ears again. Whatever John’s mission is, it’s bound to be dangerous. I picture him marching into Jordan’s hospital room– or going to his house, if he’s out by now– and finishing the job. If he does, we’ll be accomplices, before and after the fact. D-hall will seem like a picnic next to juvie.

And what will Ernie’s dad think, say, do? Bad enough to have a daughter like Fran burning up the roads with a maniac like Hoodoo. Worse, to have a son who’s meant to be in college and ends up in prison.

Once we leave here, we’re never coming back. It’s a neglected farmhouse now, but in spite of the family being poor they did the best they could with it. Those framed photos in the bedroom show people who loved each other. John’s ditty bag is open on the counter. He hasn’t used the safety razor because it’s not wet. I open the mirrored medicine cabinet over the sink and see an ancient shaving mug with a brush and razor beside it. A bit of foam. The damp soap in the bottom.

It’s his dad’s. A wave of sadness sweeps over me, and I shake it off. Didn’t know his dad. Didn’t know his mom. And half of what I know about John could be false.

I brush my teeth and say good bye to the tiny green-tiled bathroom where I wish there was time to shower. Maybe cut my hair.

Through the busted pane I hear stealthy feet creak the boards on the wooden porch. I race down the hallway to the kitchen. “We’ve got company!”

TO BE CONTINUED!

“It is him! Here’s Jordan’s money.” Stacks of bills, twenties, fifties, and hundreds, with little paper bands holding them.

Ernie’s not watching the leafy shadows to make sure John doesn’t catch us pawing through his suitcase. He’s gathered sticks for a campfire, like he really thinks this is what we’re doing here. “You want one or two?”

“Gimme two. I already got the million dollars I wished for.”

He adds twigs to his fire and comes to look in the grocery bag. “Nah. Half, maybe.”

I roll the top tight, the way it was, and stow the loot with the clothes and ditty bag. Slide the suitcase to its spot in the trunk. Lower the lid and am relieved when the catch works. “Good thing you didn’t break the latch. He’d shoot you for sure, if you messed up his sweetheart.” I meant the Caddy, but I’m reminded : somebody he called Jordan did mess up his sweetheart. Loaded for bear–not the ‘cozy’ campground kind–John must believe he’s close by.

Ernie lays burgers on the grate. “So does the money convince you there is a guy named Jordan and John’s not the villain?”

I’m not sure what to think. There’s a gory story here, and I’d feel better if we heard it from John’s mouth. “He might be–” Pistol shots. Three of them, pop pop pop. Not far away. Our eyes meet over the smoky fire. Can’t say either of us is surprised, more like I-told-you-so fear.

A rifle answers, just like on tv. Now we’re startled. Did he know someone was out there, and where to find him? More pistol shots, so John’s still in the game.

We wait, twitching with nerves. I want to go see what’s happening but have better sense than to show myself where people are shooting at each other. Ernie flips the burgers with a butcher knife he’s found in John’s gear. He lays buns out on the cooler lid, drinks from his beer can.

“You’re awful calm.” I resist the urge to bounce from foot to foot, or take off running toward the paved road we came in on. “Can’t bullets travel, like from there to here? I’m not ready to die.”

“What do you suggest we do? Hide in the car? Whoever’s shooting that rifle would like nothing better than filling it full of holes. Except maybe to off John.”

Grabbing Ernie’s arm, I pull him down beside me in the dust behind the Caddy. “At least quit skylining yourself.”

“Damn, you made me spill half the beer.” He rolls onto his back. Still calm, even thoughtful.

“Give me a swig. I need it.” Not easy, without a straw. The can’s frosty from the ice in the cooler, and the cold liquid splashes my chin. We listen, but no more shots are fired from either weapon. The burgers are burning.

Ernie crawls to them like a commando and a laugh escapes me. He glances over his shoulder and grins. “You got a death wish, bro,” I say, joking. Then my gut tells me there’s too much truth in the words for it to be funny. ‘Some missions fail’ he’d said, and the humiliation of going home a failure is as unthinkable to him as it is to me. I wonder who he’s unwilling to face. Rather die, than face.

“Smells like supper’s ready.”

I peer underneath the Caddy and see John’s feet in their penny loafers coming back from the fight. As I sit up, my hand clenches the empty beer can, crushing it. Hunkered next to the fire, Ernie uses the butcher knife to pick charred burgers off the grate and lay them on the open buns.

“Fish biting?” Ernie asks.

John leans against his car. “Yeah. Didn’t catch anything, though.”

My mouth opens but what was trying to come out is stupid. Can’t catch fish if you forget the bait. My two companions seem to be on the same wave length, while ol’ Mouse lags a couple of beats behind, as usual.

John takes a can from the cooler and gulps a long swallow, as if he thinks we didn’t hear anything unusual, like guns in the woods. If Ernie’s dying to ask for details, he doesn’t show it. I am, and I do, even if the vibes coming off me are invisible. John cuts his glance at me. “After we eat, I want to show you guys something.”

All I want to see is us on the road out of here. I wonder if he’ll show us the bag of money, and whether I can fake enough surprise so he doesn’t catch on that it’s no surprise. Or will he guide us through the woods to a dead body and make us bury it? Seen enough dead bodies to last me awhile, like forever.

I help myself to another frosty can. There’s only one left. I toss it to Ernie, since it was my fault most of his got spilled. In the burger-chewing silence, I figure out this much: John hasn’t killed anybody. . . Yet.

“Leaving her here?” Ernie gathers up the empties, stuffs them into the cardboard rack. Cleans the butcher knife in the sand.

“Not on your life.”

We’re leaving the tent. Ernie scatters the embers and heaps dirt on them. Two beers must have tipped my wicket, since I hear myself saying, “How’re you going to get this big car through that little path?”

John grinds a half-smoked cigarette under his heel and grins. “Magic.”

They get in. My mouth keeps talking. “If I follow the trail, will I end up where you’re going?”

John swivels his head to look at me, a mixture of amusement and irritation on his face. “Try it and see.” He nudges Ernie to close the back door and guides the car down the narrow passage. The motor runs so smooth I can’t hear it past the first bend. Did John stop to wait for me to come to my senses and catch up to them? Or is he still threading the Caddy toward a turn-off I didn’t notice on the way in, which will land him where this faint track ends?

Curiosity overrides any doubt. I want to know where he went, and guess he’s going there now. I’m jogging through forest with little undergrowth, damp pine needles and leaf mold underfoot, a light summer sky above, the faint rush of a small river off to my left. Pause to take a pee. A few birds flit among branches, and it’s a peaceful moment. I plan to remember it for the rest of my life.

The path’s shorter than I expect. At the wood’s edge, wary as an animal sniffing for danger in the open space ahead, I’m stunned to find a place I know.

A one-story farmhouse, sitting forlorn in a ragged yard surrounded by fallow fields. An unpainted garage. The same shed where Ernie and I took refuge our first night together, and heard John and his mysterious friend exchange words, blows, and a sack full of money.

We’ve been going in circles.

And I still have no idea where I am.

Hunkering behind a bush I can see through, I wait. Nothing moves. What if they don’t come back? My duffel bag is in the Caddy. Everything’s in the Caddy.

No traffic on this road. Ernie and I walked for miles along it, evening and morning, and not a single car passed the whole time. There’s a screened-in back porch on the run-down farm house. The outside spigot where I drank the rusty water. A closed door at the back of the garage, and I hope the front bay is open, in case I have to sleep there again.

Something moves.

About a quarter mile away, where woods and field meet, the bold nose of the Caddy inches forward. Stops. He waits, too, watching before showing himself. “What an optimist,” I say aloud. If I can spot him, so can anyone lying concealed with a rifle. My mouth goes dry and my heartbeat quickens. Curtains covering the windows I can see, don’t move. Evidently the ones on the other side give no alarm either.

The car emerges and quickly crosses the field. Grateful that I’m not alone and will probably sleep in a house tonight, I race to meet them.

John pulls close behind the shed. Ernie gets out and unlocks the overhead door, which creaks up slowly. All safe inside, he rescues our bed roll and duffel. John unfolds a custom cover and they place it over the car.

“You don’t think he’ll come back tonight?”

“He’s tied up with paperwork in the hospital emergency.”

Skid marks in the gravel show he left in a hurry. We climb three wooden steps to the screened porch. The lock’s been broken. I bite my tongue to keep quiet about Ernie’s lock-picking skills. Best if John doesn’t know. He leads us through a kitchen and down a short hall to a living room. “No lights,” he cautions. “Ever.”

For now, there’s enough daylight that I can see this place hasn’t been updated for forty years. Like the last foster home I stayed in, except there are no crying babies or toys scattered everywhere.

Fresh spots stagger across the brown and gold shag rug, a blood trail through the house. Glass litters the carpet beneath a broken front window. Inexpensive brown and gold sofa and two matching chairs, a few side tables with lamps, a console tv, and a wall phone.

Bedrooms on either side, a bathroom next to what’s probably a door to the cellar. Whoever built this place never gave a thought to how dangerous it is to put a bathroom next to cellar steps. That’s how Jerry’s grandmother met her end. A tumble headfirst in the night, when she expected a solid floor under her reaching foot. At least, that’s what he told us.

“Why didn’t she have a night light?” Steve had asked. “Why didn’t she count the doors? She must have gone to the potty a zillion times. She should have known which was which.”

It’s the only time I ever saw Jerry’s eyes fill with tears. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, so just shut up.”

Months later we decided his grandmother had been too sick to remember to switch on the night light before she went to bed. Or medication had clouded her mind. Or maybe the house where she died wasn’t the one she’d been used to. I never told Jerry I finally understood. If the phone works, maybe I’ll do that tonight.

Those glass shards will be the devil to vacuum up. Slouched in one of the easy chairs, I hear long-ago voices. His is soft, hers isn’t. What was her name? She used to wear a loose ‘house dress’ and bedroom slippers all day. I was the oldest, eight or close to nine. It’s where I learned about carpets and windows. She hated those jobs. So did I. Heavy vacuum cleaner, lots of broken glass. When he lost his job, I was sent back to East Wind. This is the first real house I’ve been inside since then.

John brings a large photo album from a cabinet under some built-in bookshelves (empty), and motions Ernie to the sofa beside him. Gotta be the car. Ernie asks questions, makes appreciative noises. John’s wound up, giving the history. I start to realize the Caddy’s more special than I’d thought.

“Even with employee discount, he had to mortgage the house to make payments. Mother nearly left him over it, more than once. When she got that dinky watch as severance for twenty-five years of service in the textile mill, she wanted him to sell the car, but he had only a few installments left. He took another job as a security guard. Kept her scared all the time.”

“What did she cost new, John?” He looks around as if he’s forgotten I’m there, or is surprised that I’m finally showing some interest.

“With the trimmings, tax, and shipping, close to fourteen thousand dollars.”

It doesn’t sound like much. Collins keeps telling me if my grades stay high, I’ll write my own ticket to college, end up earning ninety thousand a year. He never says at what, but I have to hope he’s right.

Ernie stares into space, thoughtful. I can tell it sounds like peanuts to him, too.

“Dad had a passion for that Caddy from the day he first laid eyes on her. Said she was a better investment than money in the bank. And he was right.”

“What’s she worth now?” I join them for a look at the photos, thinking again about the stacks of money locked in her trunk.

Ernie comes out of his trance. “Vinnie, this car’s a legend on the Internet. Rare even in restored condition, and John’s is as near mint as it can be.”

“So that’s what you and Jordan are fighting about?” Again the wrong thing.

John slaps the album shut. “No. I told you, nobody alive can connect me to the car. It’s my only chance to stay a ghost long enough to do what I’m going to do.”

Remembering that wild ghostly wailing that spooked me the other night, I shiver. Now the ghost is sitting here in his old home, calm with rage.

“He charmed Margie but he’ll never get anything else away from me.” John replaces the album in the cabinet. “I’m not through with him.”

Mouse clamps down on the need to blurt out about seeing Margie dragged up from a well naked except for one red shoe, but can’t help asking. “Why would he kill her?”

“Because she married me.”

It goes unsaid that Jordan broke into John’s–or his parents’ house–to search for his getaway cash, which John’s nameless ex-friend had stolen and gave to him in the middle of a night not a week ago. Nice move, John.

Ernie’s voice is reasonable. “You need to tell your side. Let the authorities deal with Jordan.”

“And pay some sleaze lawyer to lose the case? I’d have to sell the car, and I’ll never do that. She’s all I have left.”

Mouse clamps down again to keep from mentioning the loot in the grocery bag. I know John hasn’t forgotten it for a second. So he’s still lying about that. Keeping it secret, anyway. Would he have an explanation if I told him we’d found it? Or would he whip out that pistol and shoot us dead?

I want to trust him. I like him, in fact. Riding in the Caddy is more fun than walking, and wondering where this adventure will take me next keeps me on an exciting edge. Dusk is fast closing in, storm clouds gathering. “Who’s on first watch?”

They look at each other. “I will,” Ernie volunteers. “The kid needs his beauty sleep and you probably could use a snooze.”

John hands him the pistol. “Wake me before you need to use it, if you can.”
He goes into the front bedroom and closes the door.

Ernie makes sure the safety’s on, and lays the gun on a table. I pick up the phone to see if it works, and it does. I could call East Wind. “What did he tell you?”

“Not much. After Margie left him, he sold their home and came here to lick his wounds. That’s why the power’s still on. She’d been gone almost a year when she called him one night and said she was afraid of Jordan.” Ernie wipes his forehead with the tail of his shirt. “Called again two weeks ago. Wanted him to meet her, take her back. He hung up on her.”

Ernie’s thinking of Francine. There’s nothing I can do to help him, or John. We both start for the wall phone.

“You first,” I say, partly to hear who he’s ready to spill to, mostly because I’m not. Any contact with East Wind might send me in a direction I don’t want to go. He lifts the phone, dials a long-distance number, hunkers with his back to me. It rings awhile before he says into the mouthpiece, “Dad?”

While I’m antsy to stay and eavesdrop, his body tells me he wants privacy. I go into the other bedroom.

Twin beds, a single window overlooking the back yard. Two dressers, cheap pictures on the walls, framed 8 x 10 studio portraits of a middle-aged couple on both dressers. It’s too dimly lit to gather much from their faces. Was this always the parents’ room, or did John and his maybe-brother share growing-up secrets? There’s no evidence left of a childhood, if they did.

An ancient central air unit kicks on. That broken front window will make it run all night, easy for a lurker to sneak up on us. I try to raise mine but it’s painted shut. At least no one will get in that way.

An old fashioned radio sits next to a lamp on the stand between the beds. So it doesn’t blare its message to the rest of the house, I turn the volume knob to the left before clicking it on, then adjust so it’s talking only to me.

Tuned to a station playing soft music. I stretch out on one of the beds and close my eyes. Seems a lifetime since Ernie and I broke into the Haw Creek Elementary School, longer since those other nights on the road. This must be number five. By far the most comfortable. My mind starts to relax. Then two things happen.

The first is an idea that comes just as I’m drifting over the edge of sleep. John said, ‘No one alive knows about the Caddy.’ But Margie must have. What if she told Jordan?

I’m off the bed, intending to wake him with this when there’s a newsbreak. A man’s radio voice says “. . . reporting on the twelve-year-old missing from East Wind.”

TO BE CONTINUED!

Ernie’s halfway down a long grassy slope, galloping like he’s chasing a runaway dog or something. Low-hanging branches block some of my view of the street beyond, but I can see drivers on the tarmac and businesses across it. I don’t see any pink car, and I figure he’ll be back in a few minutes, but he isn’t.

Well, I have the bedroll with his change of clothes and Hoodoo’s gun strapped inside. But he has any leftover money, so I pick up my duffel and off I go to find him. If he catches up to the Caddy (doubtful), I wonder whether he’ll just gaze at it from afar, wheedle his way into a ride, or steal the damn thing. Make that ‘try to.’

I’m betting on the wheedling, so when I leap off the rock wall bordering the park and spot John gassing up at a small filling station, I’m not surprised that Ernie’s jawing with him like they’re old friends.

The traffic light changes and I saunter over to where they’re opening doors and popping the hood and John’s bragging on the finer points. I want a better look at him, since the glimpses I’ve had so far have left me without a clue what kind of guy he really is. He still looks like an actor, dressed now in jeans and penny loafers, and a pink shirt that’s vaguely country style. Sunglasses hide his eyes. That sends a shiver over me. “Shades of Al.”

I don’t realize I’ve said it out loud until John turns to me. Ernie’s busy stroking the leather seats. I’m not big on cars, like most of my dorm mates, but if I did own one with the power to turn Ernie into a marshmallow, I’d probably tell him to wash his hands before touching it. John looks like he might want to do that, too, and I wonder what’s stopping him.

“Did you ever see anything so sweet?” Ernie finally notices me.

“No,” I answer honestly. Pastel pink with a black top and lower panels, dark gray interior. Not my style, but show room clean. Expensive when somebody drove it home and more expensive fifty years later.

Its owner holds out his hand. I’m floored when he says, “I’m John Collier. You fellows want to take a ride in her?”

His voice is the one I heard only a couple of nights ago when Ernie and I holed up in the shed, I’d swear to it. How coincidental could it be that the Suits in the coffee shop are looking for a John Burand? Are they the one and same, and is this smiling man shaking my hand a murderer?

Ernie’s eyes light up at the offer. Then he shakes his head. “Dad would ground us forever if he found out we got into a car with someone we don’t know.”

“You won’t tell, will you?” John asks me, and I choke up. I wish I had somebody to tell. The friendly smile leaves, but his voice is calm. “Think about it. Not every day you see a lady like this one.”

John goes inside to pay for the gas, and when Ernie doesn’t move, I pluck at his shirt sleeve. “Come on, bro.” I haven’t told him about Al, so he can’t understand the panic I’m feeling.

“He’s right. We’ll never see another, much less ride in it.”

“What’s with you and this car? Sure, it’s neat, but I think he’s lying about his name. Ernie, I saw them bring a body up out of a well near Hackett last week. She was blond, and you heard that man talking to John about the cops thinking he did it. Don’t you recognize his voice?”

John’s coming back. He’ll get in the car and drive away. That’s what Ernie’s dreading, I can tell by his glance toward me, eyebrows questioning, wanting me to agree to climb into the car and take a joy ride with a man who might have bashed his wife’s head in with an axe handle.

“Just around the block,” Ernie wheedles, but I’m not falling for it. Once inside and moving, we’re hostages. Kidnapped and tortured. Never heard from again. I see my face on a Missing Child poster.

“Omigosh.” I DO see a face on a Missing Child poster. Francine’s copied photo, pinned in the middle of a flyer kiosk next to the newspaper boxes and propane gas bottle bin. Ernie’s eyes follow and he goes pale and starts to shake. He walks over to the picture and studies it like he’s never seen her before.

“What?” John sees nothing that scares him. He opens the driver’s door, pauses to give us one last chance.

I have a clear view of the coffee shop two blocks up the hill. The Suits come out and stand on the sidewalk. My heart starts thumping hard. One of them is after John Burand, the other could be after me. If they spot the car, we’re toast. “Mister Collier,” I say, making conversation, “do you have a brother?”

“No,” he answers, “why do you ask?”

One of the Suits lights a cigarette. The other heads down the hill toward his parked car.

“Call me John. Make up your minds. I’m on vacation and don’t want to waste another minute of it.”

The second Suit halts in his tracks, then calls out and motions to his buddy, and I make up my mind. “Ernie! Let’s go!” I toss our gear into the back seat, tumble in after it, and close the door. Ernie doesn’t hesitate. He and John give each other a grin and we’re off. I keep looking for a pursuer until we turn a corner, but we’re not pursued.

John pulls the Caddy smoothly onto an Interstate and we’re heading east. I’m thinking about the Missing Child poster, when a sign stuns me. Dentonville, 50 miles.

“John, you got a road map?”

“Afraid not. I know where I’m going.”

He has the advantage. Don’t know where I’m going, or where I’ve been. “Where are you going? I thought it was ‘just around the block.’” Out of the frying pan, into the fire, I think, already regretting what might be the most dangerous thing I’ve done so far.

“Can’t feel her wings going twenty miles an hour and stopping every few feet for a light.”

The speedometer creeps past fifty, sixty, hovers around seventy. The straightaway reaches to the horizon, and there’s light traffic. When he does have to pass another car, the smooth moves of driver and car impress even me. I’m relieved when a speed limit sign whizzes by. 70 is okay here. He’s careful not to exceed it.

“Just had her at a car show in Taylor,” he’s telling Ernie. “Took first place.” He nods toward the glove compartment, and Ernie takes out a gaudy blue ribbon. There’s no date on it. Why do I suspect he’s lying? Maybe he is who he says he is. The Suits didn’t seem to get exercised over seeing the car. If they did see it. Maybe all the guy wanted was to bum a cigarette off his pal. I relax. A little bit. After all, Dentonville is where I was supposed to go.

But we turn off long before we make that 50 miles.

It’s a rest area, for which I’m thankful since the latte was a large one. We all go inside, and when I come out they’ve gotten into the Caddy, parked as usual in the most sheltered spot away from other vehicles. It dawns on me that he’s not hiding it, but protecting the paint from dings and the doors from dents.

I’m filling up at the water fountain when I notice a blue SUV at the other end of the roadway. Fran jumps out, slams the door, and Hoodoo hangs out his window and yells, “You’re crazy, you know that?”

She yells back, “Somebody might have turned it in. There are good people in the world, asshole.”

Whatever she’s lost, it’s important to her. I hope it isn’t Ernie’s credit card. Running to the Caddy, I argue with myself about whether to tell him they’re here. He’s not going to win any fights with Hoodoo, and I doubt Fran would climb into the car with us even if she and her sweetie do talk trash to each other.

John checks the rear-view for traffic, mutters, “Crap.” Ducks down, jostling Ernie against the door. “Drive.” Ernie says “What?” and John answers, “You want to drive, or not?”

The second Ernie’s out of the way, John’s in the passenger seat, crouched out of sight. I watch Ernie walk around the rear of the car, and my breath stops. One of the Suits cruises by, craning his neck, and he’s not looking for a parking space.

All my fears flood over me. I can’t be sure he’s not after me. He could be the one paid by John’s brother–the one he claims not to have. Why doesn’t he want to be found, unless his name really is Burand and he’s wanted for murder?

Giving me a shrug, not caring why his dream is coming true, Ernie slides into the driver’s seat. He backs into the roadway, smiling. Makes it halfway to the exit when he brakes, throwing me forward into John’s seat. “What the hell?” He’s annoyed.

Ernie’s gaze is locked on Francine, getting into the SUV. I can feel the whirling of his brain, considering and rejecting courses of action. John’s cold voice says, “Drive, damn you.”

Ernie glances down, and I see John’s hand pressing a gun barrel into his ribs. It must have been under the seat, within easy reach. Trembling, I feel inside the blanket bedroll and find Hoodoo’s pistol. My arm has a life of its own. My weapon nudges John’s shoulder and I tell him, “Two can play this game.”

“Put it away, Vinnie.” Ernie accelerates slightly and we pass the SUV without being noticed. We pass the Suit’s car but it’s empty. The Interstate is just ahead, and once we’re rocketing into the unknown there’ll be no turning back.

I poke John’s shoulder gently. “Blink.”

He laughs. Sits up. Smiling, he tucks his gun in the glove compartment. “Gutsy little devil, aren’t you?”

Ernie lets out a sigh. He’s not smiling now, checks the rear view from time to time. There’s no blue SUV in sight.

“Where are we going?”

“I’m on vacation, remember? Thought we might pitch a tent, do some fishing.”

Either he’s crazy, or I am. Tent? Fishing? He acts like we’ve been friends and neighbors for years, that nobody will be looking for us or be concerned when we don’t go home tonight. That much is true, but how can he know?

“The Suit didn’t recognize the car,” I say, puzzled. “But he would know you.”

“Yeah, nobody can connect me to this baby. She’s been laying low.”

“In case of an emergency.”

“You might say that.”

I put Hoodoo’s gun in its blanket nest. My hand’s still shaking.

We pass a sign that says ‘Dentonville - 30 miles.’ What would I be doing now, if I’d managed to go there? Never tried to help Al, or made friends with a crew of ‘hipsies.’ Could I have lied my way into a job, forged parental signatures on work papers? Signed into a motel, or convinced some lady to give me a room in her boarding house? I’ll never know. Wherever that road would have led, it had to be less interesting than what I’m doing now.

Half an hour passes. Scenery remains pretty much the same, concrete stretching to an ever-changing horizon, with glimpses of houses or car lots or restaurant strips dotting the picture. We must be near Dentonville when John speaks.

“Take the next exit.”

Ernie obeys. There’s a campground sign announcing ‘Cozy Bear - 10 miles’ but we turn in the opposite direction.

“I know a back door to the place,” John explains, reading my mind.

We’re out in the sticks now, off a two-lane and into the forest. The road’s paved though barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other. Ernie’s tense, not enjoying the ride as much as he’d thought he would. He’s finally convinced that everything John’s claimed to be is a lie. Didn’t take a gun in my ribs, but then I’m fast learning that you can’t trust anyone.

Well. Almost anyone. Ernie’s on my trust list, for now anyway.

The asphalt ends and we’re winding along a narrow dirt road. John flinches as underbrush rakes the sides of the car, but Ernie’s doing his best and they’re both silent. We come to a gate. John takes a key from his shirt pocket and gives it to me. I push through the brambles to unlock it. Once the Caddy’s through, I secure the gate behind us. The click sounds like the cocking of an old West gun.

John motions me to return the key. Deeper into the forest. So deep I can’t help asking, “Where’s the campground?”

“Around the next curve. Nice little clearing, not far from the best trout stream you’ll ever meet.”

Little clearing is right. Only big enough for the tent John hauls out of the trunk, and a fire ring that’s already there. A shaft of sunlight slants down, coming from the west. Low enough to be suppertime, with night not far behind. There’s fishing gear, too, like he said. Fly rods, bamboo rods, tackle. A cooler. A cardboard box. An old suitcase.

I reach for the suitcase. John waves me aside and closes the trunk lid. “Help your brother set up the tent. Get a fire going. There’s burgers and drinks in the cooler. Buns and stuff in the box. I’ll check out the stream.”

John disappears into the dappled woods. There’s maybe a faint trace of path, the kind you could lose your way on in a hurry.

“Come on, Vinnie, help me figure this mess out.”

“I thought you were good at a lot of things.” My taunt is joking and he takes it that way. We lay out the stakes and poles and ropes, and finally have the tent standing. It’s crisp and new and hard to handle. The fishing stuff looks just-bought, too, so I know this trip isn’t to catch trout or bass or whatever’s in the stream. If there is a stream.

John’s taken the key with him, so we can’t drive the car away. I’m curious about that suitcase he didn’t want me touching. “Okay, bro, time to put your real skills to work.”

Ernie’s lifting a six-pack out of the cooler. “Want a drink?”

“I don’t want to get drunk again. Bring your knife and let’s see what’s in the bag.”

He hunkers at the trunk. Works at the latch. I watch the leafy shadows, hoping John won’t catch us. “Weren’t you scared when he pointed that gun at you?”

“Hoodoo pointing a gun at me would be scary.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Hoodoo’s crazy enough to pull the trigger.”

“And John isn’t?”

“He’s under pressure, but he’s clear-headed. It’s to his advantage not to kill the prisoners.”

I hear the unspoken ending to that thought: until he has to.

“Wish I had Fran’s nail file.”

There’s nothing in my duffel that’s sharper than the pocket knife’s smaller blade. I check the glove compartment but come up empty. I feel under the seat. John’s gun is gone.

“He took it with him,” I tell Ernie. “Gonna shoot somebody, I bet.”

“We’ll hear him if he does. There’s no silencer on that gun.”

Ah! That explains Ernie’s cool. He knew John wouldn’t fire in a public place. But we’re not in a public place now.

The trunk lid slowly rises. “Watch for him.”

“You watch. I want to open it.” I haul the suitcase toward me and snap the old-fashioned fasteners.

Neatly-folded clothing. A plastic bag for shaving stuff. And a brown paper grocery bag, the top rolled tightly down a couple of inches. I pick it up. Not too heavy, not light, packed full of something that gives when I squeeze. Peeking inside, I can’t believe my eyes.
TO BE CONTINUED!

No sound, except our breathing. The space reeks of industrial strength disinfectant. Behind me, Ernie stuffs our blanket under the doorway and I imagine us suffocating in our sleep. A faint grayness fills a wide doorway, so there must be another room with a window. I start forward to open it. Stumbling into a desk, I bang my already bruised knee.

Then light shoots into my eyes and bounces around inside my head. “Ow! That’s bright.”

“Keep your voice down.” Ernie goes to the open shelves where boxes of bandages and other medical stuff sit alongside a clutter of lost and found items.

Limping, I pass a sink and a rest room stall in a cubbyhole between the dispensary and the infirmary. This room is like a barracks, three army cots with sheets and pillows without cases. The window opens easily, and I draw in long breaths of rain-cool air. There’s an old metal screen. No bars.

When I return to Ernie he’s prying at the lock on an upper cabinet. I tell him what I’ve found. He warns me, “If you use the toilet, don’t flush.” Sounds like he’s had a taste of community living, too, with plumbing that talks. I try to guess whether it’s boarding or military prep. He looks too young for college.

“If there’s any pain killer, I could use some of that.”

“I thought you never felt better.”

“I lied.” Almost every part of me aches or stings for one reason or another.

“You’ll feel worse in the morning.” The lock snaps and the cabinet doors swing open. He picks a small bottle of children’s aspirin and tosses it to me.

“This stuff is dangerous,” I say, and pop half a dozen into my mouth. The orange flavor brings memories of being sick and helpless. Chewing them would make me gag, so I head for the sink.

“Want a cup?” He holds up a plastic tumbler.

And risk every kiddy germ known to man? “Unnn-unnn.” When I lean over to catch the water in my mouth, it washes the tablets right down the drain. I stagger toward him, giggling.

Ernie’s reaching for something at the back of the second cabinet, which he’s just broken into. He gives me a one-sided smile. “You’re still drunk.”

“Yeah, I must be.” I wheel out the desk chair and make myself comfortable.

As he liberates a thin stack of comic books, a small white sandal falls on his foot. He bends, picks it up, turns it this way and that. It looks slightly familiar to me but I don’t have any reason to recognize a single shoe belonging to a fourth grade girl. That doesn’t stop my mouth. “I bet I know where that came from. A one-legged midget lost it on the playground when she was running to catch her bus, and a teacher found it and put it there in nineteen-forty-nine.” That’s the date carved into the front of this building. “The bus wrecked and everyone was killed and nobody thought about the shoe ever again.”

He lays it on the cabinet shelf. “Francine had a pair like this when she was nine. She used to carry around a story book called ‘Dependable Fran’ and try to make me read it to her.”

His voice breaks on the last few words, and I’m sorry for making a crummy joke. The shoe is familiar : Fran was wearing white sandals in that picnic park, when I first saw her. “Give me some more aspirin.”

“You’ve had enough.”

The giggles bubble up and I clamp my hand over my mouth, though I’m pretty sure these walls are thicker than those at East Wind and that night watchman’s halfway down the hall from here.

“What’s funny now?”

I don’t tell him, but empty out another half dozen tablets. Toss them one by one like popcorn, trying to catch them in my mouth. They’re heavier than popcorn, and my timing is way off. Ernie laughs and shakes his head as they roll across the floor like little live things. Then I catch one and chew it just enough to swallow. Somehow the aspirin bottle gets away from me and crashes into a tin wastebasket.

Ernie leaps a foot in the air. “Help me move the desk,” he says. We place it against the door. He’s carrying Hoodoo’s gun in his waistband again, since the bed roll is doing duty as a light blocker. He hits the switch anyway and we lean on the desk in the darkness, straining to hear footsteps. I don’t believe he’ll shoot even if the old man manages to push into the room. Nobody tries, so he turns the light on and we relax.

After changing into dry clothes, we sit around reading the boring assortment of comic books. “Prairie Home Companion” must have finished its time slot. What follows? Maybe the watchman has changed the station, or gone to bed. I feel like I’m back at East Wind, with a new roommate.

“Wish I had a library book.”

“Doesn’t take much to make you happy, does it?”

“And a million dollars.”

“I’ll settle for a good night’s sleep.”

We take turns at the sink to brush our teeth. In the dimly lit mirror I can see the skinned place on my chin, another on my elbow. Ernie peers at my reflection. He lifts my other arm and inspects it. “Both of them.”

He rummages in the dispensary cabinet and returns with a tin of pink ointment that smells sweet and old-fashioned. He smears it on the scrapes, and I can tell he’s had experience doing this for Fran before they grew up.

“You’re a great brother, Ernie,” I say. “Wish I could come live with you when you go home.”

He tenses. Hands me the salve tin. “Who says I’m ever going home?” Halfway into the barracks, he calls, “Switch off the light, will you?”

I drop my jeans and put ointment on my skinned knees. I can’t remember what day tomorrow will be, but I ought to call Jerry or Steve, even if that sends me to D-hall for the rest of my life. Not knowing what’s going on there is worse than not knowing where I’ll be tomorrow night after dark.

He’s lying on the farthest cot, arms over his face like a shield. I’m exhausted, too keyed-up to sleep. A strong cool breeze spatters light rain against the screen. Ernie’s restless, and I want to try to smooth over the stupid things I keep saying. “You’re like me.”

“Oh, yeah? How?” There’s interest in his voice, like if he was mad earlier, he’s not now.

“You always want to do the right thing.”

“Like running away and carrying a concealed weapon and breaking into a kiddy school,” he says, and I can feel him smiling.

“And letting that trashy girl get me drunk.”

He laughs, so I know he knows I’m teasing. Thunder in the distance grows fainter. The storm is passing, only an occasional lightning flash to remind us. That, and the lingering wet-dust smell that follows.

* * * * *

Ernie’s working the screen off the window when I wake. Summer heat’s coming in, promising a scorcher, and it’s barely June. Or is it August? I’ve lost all sense of time and reality’s rapidly leaving. The lumpy blanket and my duffel bag wait on his cot.

‘My bags are packed and I’m ready to go’ runs through my aching head, and the effort to come up with the next line threatens to split it in two. I wish I’d chewed those damned aspirin last night. If wine does this to me, I’ll never drink anything stronger.

“What’s the plan?” I suspect there isn’t any, but I’m curious about what he’ll say.

“Be long gone before the security guard starts patrolling.”

Considering that we’ve breached most of the security here without getting caught, and that night watchman likely has gone home to breakfast, I leisurely perform as much of my morning ritual as these limited circumstances allow. Are the guys back in the dorm hovering near that pay phone in the lobby? Being grilled by old Collie — or worse, thrown in chains by O’Leary himself?

“Aghhh!” The screen twists out of Ernie’s grasp and falls with a clatter to the ground below.

We freeze, him kneeling at the window sill, me just leaving the stall. By tonight, the smell in here is more likely to alert the old man than any noise.

“Let’s go!” Ernie throws our gear out the window and straddles the window ledge.

The last thing I see is his hands gripping the weathered wood, and then he drops. I reach in and flush the john. As I’m ducking under the window frame, I hear the door knob rattle and a hoarse voice yells, “Come out of there, you little bastards. I’ve called the cops.”

Fearful he has a gun and might shoot through the door, I let go . . .

. . . and land in an ankle-wrenching bed of pea gravel. Ernie shoves the duffel into my arms and I run after him, surprised to find myself on a sidewalk, hedged on the side, a canopy of old trees shaking hands over the roadway. It’s a residential section, but I’m fleeing and can’t pay attention to the houses except to sense they’re middle-class or better, with gates and flowers and big trees. The kind of place I’d like to live one day.

The kind of place the counselor at East Wind once dangled like a candy bar in front of me so I’d eat my carrots and not cry at night. Well, I ate them and cried only in my nightmares. I decide not to call my brainless friends. Let them get what’s coming to them.

Then I change my mind again. So what if Jerry wanted a good laugh? He did me a favor. The least I can do is return it. I’ll call Collins and tell him the prank was all my idea. That I’ve found a good home and not to expect me back or try to find me. It’s a nice thought, anyway.

Ernie has slowed to a walk. Good thing we’re not still running, because in another minute a Public Safety car with two guys in it sirens by at twice the speed limit.

I figure we’re about 8 blocks away from Haw Creek Elementary, safely minding our own business and in sight of civilization, when ahead the coughing of a lawnmower gives Ernie an idea. He jogs half a block and stops in a driveway.

“Need help?”

The man raises his head, peers at us. His face is blotched and sweat rolls down his red cheeks. “Damn thing won’t start.” He kicks a front tire. Tosses Ernie the pull cord. Stands back.

Instead of wearing himself out, Ernie tinkers with levers and switches, or whatever those things are that adjust stuff. Jerry would know. And cuss when nothing he did worked. Whatever Ernie does, works. One pull and the engine lets out a blast and starts to roar.

The man’s face smooths into an almost-smile. I can’t hear any words, but with their lips moving and gestures, Ernie settles some kind of deal. The man goes into his house, wiping his forehead and neck with a large dirty handkerchief. Ernie starts mowing the modest front lawn.

He’s on the last lap when the man comes back out, swigging from a tall frosty glass. I expect money to exchange hands. Maybe I’ll have an omelette with my orange juice.

Ernie shuts off the engine and the scene turns ugly. The man’s face is red again, this time with anger. “You said you’d cut the lawn. You’ll get the price we agreed on when you’re finished.” He goes to a high wooden fence attached to his house and opens a gate. There’s a back yard, a big one, enclosed in the same style.

For a moment I think Ernie might slug him, but he just stands there hands on his hips, thinking. Then he nods me to follow, and pushes the silent mower forward. I pick up our bedroll and duffel. Once we’re in, the man closes the gate behind us.

“Did he lock it?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care.” Ernie cranks the mower and walks it across the grass, cutting a wavy path. He kicks a back gate open, and we race through a dozen yards, stopping only when we no longer hear the engine.

So we’re in another unfamiliar town, with no money. Back on a sidewalk, we pass a shady park bench. Squirrels are busy finding bits of food thrown down for them by nice people. “Stay here,” I tell him. His words “Where are you go–” trail after me.

I turn a corner and am in front of a jeweler’s store. A dozen other businesses line this side, and across the street are their twins. Bonanza.

Leaving on my sunglasses, I hold my hat in front of me and enter a clean and brightly lit place where thick carpet mutes my steps. A bell tinkles my presence, but I’m at the counter a long minute before a young woman looks up from a stapled bunch of papers. “Can I help you?” she asks doubtfully.

“Yes, Ma’am, I think you can.” I abandoned my Boy Scout-on-a-Hike story on the way in, so fly by my shirt tail. Holding out my hat to receive money, I tell her, “I’m collecting donations to help pay hospital expenses for my older brother. He needs — he gave a — kidney — to his best friend, and the insurance has run out.” It sounds okay, considering I have no idea whether hospitals make live kidney donors pay, or if insurance policies cover that kind of thing.

Evidently she doesn’t know, either. She picks up a little brown purse and takes out a five dollar bill. “I hope he has a speedy recovery.”

“Thank you,” I say, and mean it. Then I crumble under guilt and blurt out, “I’m sorry, that’s all a fib, but we don’t have any money for breakfast and if you want it back, I’ll understand.”

She stares at me, startled and uncertain. Then she laughs. “Well, I get paid tomorrow, so take it. You look like you could use a hearty breakfast. And a pair of shoes.”

My little toe sticks out of the right sneaker, my great toe out of the left. That landing in the gravel pit. “You’re on the money there.” I grin and salute her.

“Don’t go next door,” she cautions me. “Hit the computer people farther along.”

“Thanks!” I take her advice and after telling the computer people mostly the truth, I have another five. Should I keep going while I’m on a roll, or take a break and feed Ernie before he faints?

From the relieved look on his face when he sees me, I’m glad I cut my begging short. “The lady in the computer store said there’s a coffee shop just across from the old court house. Best pastries in town, and a latte to die for.”

“Not sure I want to be near a court house.”

“It’s a museum now. The real one’s across town.”

“What are we waiting for?”

We’re in a booth, eating a sensible breakfast of eggs and whole wheat toast, when two men in suits enter and sit right behind me. I don’t pay much attention until the near one says, “How’d you do at East Wind?”

I choke and miss part of the other man’s answer, but it ends, “–escape with my life.”

“And not much else, I bet,” says the near man.

“Nobody’s talking. If word gets out, they lose their funding.”

“And you lose your reputation.”

“Yours isn’t too secure. Find Burand yet?”

The last is a dig, from his tone. I wonder who Burand is. But I wonder more who the speaker is, who’s been nosing around East Wind. Looking for me?

“Vin–”

I make hushing motions, and Ernie blinks. He’s ready to pay the bill, and I don’t know whether to stay and try to hear more, or run out the back exit as fast as I can. One of those men probably knows my name, and might be carrying my photo.

He says, “If he doesn’t turn up by Monday, I’m going to write that story just the way I told you.”

“And get yourself shot out of the saddle.”

Since what I’ve heard doesn’t make sense, especially the part about losing their funding, I listen harder.

“Poor bastard’s probably on a fishing trip, doesn’t even know his wife’s been murdered.”

“Why do you care?”

“His brother is paying me to find him. Break it gently.”

“If he doesn’t break your skull with an axe handle. That’s what he used, wasn’t it?”

He can’t be talking about me. They’re after Burand, my ghostly Actor, better known as John, who bashed his wife with an axe and threw her down the abandoned well. That’s why he was asking questions at East Wind.

I motion Ernie to pay the bill, and drink the last of my latte. It’s delicious.

To be on the safe side, I steer my adopted older brother out the back door of the coffee house and into the alley. Across a parking lot and into a green shady park. Leaves overhead rustle in a sweet breeze. We eat the pastries there, with a regular coffee to-go, and life is fine. I’m still puzzled about the funding, but figure it doesn’t matter.

Ernie sits up from a snooze on the grass and stops mid-stretch. “Oh-my-God.”

“What?” I’m lying on my back, dreaming of watermelon. Make a mental note to find a farmers’ market before our money runs out.

“There’s that pink Caddy.”

TO BE CONTINUED!

Well, not a sports car, but a sporty one, a convertible. And the top’s down. Daddy’s girl with her first wheels, the kind Jerry’s always talking about. As if he’d ever been near either one.

Ernie doesn’t show a lot of interest until she finishes checking her hair and lipstick in the rear view mirror and swings long tanned legs out of the car. Her white dress is too small, not because she’s fat but because she bought it that way, and the heeled sandals make her teeter towards us.

“Hello.” She takes off oversized sun glasses. She’s speaking to him, acts like she doesn’t see me right beside him.

“Hello,” Ernie answers, and I can’t tell anything from his tone. He does sit up, though, crossing his ankles and resting his arms on his knees.

“Is this a private party, or can anybody play?”

“It’s a public place. Pull up a chair.”

“Cute kid,” she says, still watching him.

Ernie answers, “Not mine!”

She laughs and points at me. Then I remember that’s what my thrift store tee-shirt says on the chest. Cute kid. It should say Mouse.

A toss of her head flips her long hair back and forth. “I’ve never seen either of you cuties around here before. You guys brothers?”

Together we answer. I say “Yes” he says “No” and she gives us an amused look.

“Which one of you is clueless?”

We point at each other. “He is.”

She laughs again. “You could take this act on the road.” There’s about two seconds of silence before she adds, “Wanna ride?”

“Sure,” Ernie says and I nearly fall off the picnic table.

“Back in a sec.” She goes toward the Ladies’ side of the building.

Ernie starts folding our dry clothes. I help, and we pack our bags.

When we’re in her car–me in the back with the duffel and blanket–I want to ask where we’re going but she floors the gas pedal and I’m jerked breathless. Her hair flies in the wind, and she’s talking to Ernie and he’s answering but I can’t catch the words. His hand clenches the console as if he might be regretting this decision already.

We fly along the Interstate until we pass a speed limit sign and she slows down. I start to breathe again. By the time I’m relaxed enough to enjoy the ride, we’re many exits from the rest area and she signals a turn. At the top of the ramp there’s signs for everything, including food. I like her better now.

We end up at some little Italian restaurant that promises a meal anytime, day or night. I’m ready for spaghetti and garlic bread. The smells filling the place remind me of Friday nights when Collins would take a bus load of us to Nikky’s Ristorante in Hackett. It had to be somebody’s birthday, and Nikky would come to the table and sing a sappy song in Italian to the Happy Birthday tune.

She puts the car top up and we go inside. Fancier than anything I’m used to, with table cloths and a space for a dance floor. There are booths and we have our choice of seating. Nobody else is eating pasta at five in the afternoon, and the waiter must have gone home or is in the back washing dishes. We munch on breadsticks for what feels like an hour. The blonde is older than I first thought, twenty-five or more, and she’s sitting so close to Ernie, what she’s saying reaches his ears but not mine.

Her hand keeps straying to his necklace. Strokes it like a pet pooch. If she’s laying on the lovey-dovey talk, I don’t really care to listen. Can’t tell how Ernie’s taking it. She probably can’t, either.

Finally a waiter writes up our order. He brings a large green bottle of some pale wine. She studies the label, tips the guy with a smile, and he fills a glass each for her and Ernie. They sniff and sip like they know what they’re doing.

It’s another long time before the waiter brings a tray loaded with small salads and dishes of pasta. The meatballs are tender and tasty, so I leave off wondering what’s going on in my dorm, or what will happen later tonight. Somewhere soft music plays, and Ernie and his new friend leave stuff on their plates and go off to dance.

The salt and spices make me thirsty, so I finish my soft drink and fill the glass from the wine bottle. Steve used to have an uncle who got drunk every Friday night, to dull his pain. Right now, with a belly stuffed with spaghetti, garlic bread, and cola, I don’t have any pain, just curiosity. I sniff and sip, and it’s not bad. Grape juice with a bite.

Before the music stops and the dancing comes to a halt, I’ve drunk half a bottle and am feeling fine.

They come back to cold food. She sends Ernie to find the waiter, who takes the plates away, returns them steaming from a microwave. “Any dessert?” he asks me.

“Go ahead,” she urges. “They have a coconut pie to die for.”

Coconut pie, who can resist that? It’s one of my favorites, and she’s paying. At least, I hope she is.

The pie’s fresh and the slice is huge. The first few bites are delicious but I find myself forcing the rest on top of everything else in my stomach. Their quiet voices pick up where they left off, and her laughter tells me she’s enjoying Ernie’s company more than the warmed-over lasagne. An afternoon rainstorm blows in, darkening the place.

The waiter lights some candles and places them on the next table. The distant yearning music starts again, their desserts are on the way, and suddenly I’m so sleepy I can’t keep my eyes open.

I’m jostled awake just enough to realize Ernie’s picking me up off the booth seat. The woman says, “Your bro’s okay. It’s a quality wine.”

“He’s underage,” Ernie answers, sounding pissed.

“Shhhhhhh!” She giggles. “How was I to know he’d guzzle it down like a little wino?”

“Give me the keys. I’ll carry him out.”

“I can walk,” I say, the words leaving my mouth on little bird wings and flying ahead of me. I’m flying too, in the candlelit music, right out the door and into the storm.

Ernie lays me on the back seat and I think I’m asleep and dreaming. Like that night at the Morningbird. I wonder what a morning bird is. Does it cry and moan? Maybe it’s a mourning bird, and that’s the sound I heard. Not John at all. But birds don’t drive big bulky antique cars. Or sleek red sporty cars.

“Think he’ll tell your father?”

There’s a pause. “No. But he won’t feel too good when he wakes up.”

“That won’t be for a while.”

*****

Lightning flashes in the rain-dark sky. Or is it night? The car has stopped. The world keeps going around and I figure I’d better not try to sit up. I can see them in the front. She’s got Ernie scrunched against the passenger door, but he’s not making any moves.

“I bought the meal.” She sounds peevish.

“Thank you.” Ernie answers like he doesn’t know she’s mad, but I’m not fooled. He knows, doesn’t care.

“Did you think I wouldn’t want anything in return? I pay, you pay.”

“Not like that.”

“Why not? Afraid I’ll give you a disease?”

Mouse lies still, hoping they don’t realize I’m awake and listening. But when Ernie tells her, “I’ve made a rule not to have sex with anybody I haven’t known at least a month,” I snicker.

She thinks he’s joking, since she says in a sweeter tone, “I can’t wait that long. Can you?” She leans into him, and in a panicked voice he yells, “Vinnie! Unlock the door!”

Swaying like the drunken kid that I am, I leap up and pop the master door lock on the driver’s side. She screams, “Get out then! Get out of my car and take the little bastard with you!”

Ernie’s feet are on the ground before she finishes ranting. Opens my door, hauls me out. Shoves my duffel bag into my arms and snatches up the blanket bed roll. My head spins and my knees buckle but I manage not to collapse. She starts the engine, guns it, and the car leaps away so powerfully that the open doors slam shut.

We watch her tail lights disappear down a lonely back road. Summer lightning still plays about the evening sky. I’m standing in a rain-filled pot hole. “Where are we?”

Now Ernie sounds peevish. “About ten miles from the restaurant. At least twenty from that rest area. And a helluva long way from the last town.”

“Ten miles. Piece of cake.” I stagger toward the side of the road, and am grateful when Ernie steers me back onto the asphalt. Thunder in the distance. Lightning. Dark clouds roll across the moonlit sky towards us. Feels later than it could possibly be.

Far down the straightaway we see car lights coming back. “Think that’s her?”

He shoves me across the ditch and into waist-high weeds, where we crouch until the car zooms by. “Guess it was.”

“Sorry we didn’t let her pick us up again?”

We walk along the dark road for maybe a hundred yards before he answers. “No.”

Another hundred yards. “You heard me snicker, didn’t you.”

“I’m glad you were alert enough to pop that lock.”

Another hundred yards. “Um. If you didn’t want to bonk her, what did you two do for the last three hours?”

“Told each other lies.”

“Tell them to me.”

“Like a bedtime story?” Humor has crept back into his voice.

“Yeah, I –” Another pot hole. Except this one throws me. Knees and arms catch the impact, my face hits as an afterthought.

Ernie picks me up. “Are you all right?”

Now I do have a pain, like my brain’s two sizes too big and the world’s spinning again. I want to sit down but that would be wimpy. “Never felt better.”

“I bet.”

A mile or so ahead, a security light guards a construction site. Thunder’s closer now, and I smell rain coming. Near the chain link fence, sections of a huge drainage system wait to be installed. It reminds me of the fence at East Wind and right now I’d trade my comic book collection to be safe inside those familiar brick walls. Or at least inside one of these giant pipes, shelter from the storm. Ernie reads my mind, because he asks, “How good are you at climbing?”

“Drunk or sober?”

“How drunk are you?”

“Not enough to try climbing over that fence. I did that at East Wind, and see where it got me.”

“I thought you loved the life of the open road.”

“Sometimes I guess I do. Not when I’m about to be struck by lightning.”

Wind rolls in tree-shaking gusts over us, bringing the downpour. “We’re more likely to drown if we stand here.” Ernie starts running down a side road. With no other plan, I stumble along after him, dizzy, wet, cold, and queasy from undigested stuff like a rock in my gut.

We leave the construction site behind. Soon I don’t see its light anymore. We pass through a blind space, trusting the asphalt beneath our feet to keep us moving. Presently, little lights mark a utility outpost, a roadside stand locked up for the night, and a small used car lot. Ernie halts in front of me so suddenly that I bang into him.

“Sanctuary,” he tells me.

“You’ve found a church?” Shivering, my teeth chattering, I long for quiet, dry, candlelit. Peering into the darkness ahead of us and see a large old brick building. Tall windows glisten from a flickering flood light shines on a sign that reads ‘Haw Creek Elementary School.’

I groan. “Not another school.”

Ernie searches in the weeds, finds a bottle, draws back to throw. I grab his arm, screeching, “East Wind has a burglar–”

It’s the wrong arm and he completes the throw. The bottle crashes through a bottom window, breaking out several panes and the thin rotten wood strips that held them in place. “–alarm.” If I weren’t so sick and tired, I’d flee the scene before the cops arrive, but I am sick, and tired, and my head’s throbbing. My nose, knees, and arms burn from the fall on the asphalt earlier.

Nothing happens. No one comes. No sirens, twirling lights, uniforms or handcuffs.

Ernie takes Hoodoo’s gun from the bed roll and knocks off the shards of glass with the barrel. Half expecting the gun to fire and give us both a heart attack, I’m actually relieved when Ernie says, “Come on. I’ll boost you up.”

We land in a classroom dimly lit by a distant street lamp. Fourth grade artwork is taped around the walls. We move between rows of desks toward an open hall door. We’re nearly there when Ernie rushes me into a closet where we cower. I’m glad there are no wire hangers to clatter. Something squishy is underfoot but I’m more worried by the heavy footsteps coming into the room. A flashlight darts around but doesn’t spot us behind the louvers.

As the night watchman moves down the aisle toward the broken window, I hear him mutter, “Damn vandals.” He picks up the bottle and tosses it into a metal waste basket. The loud bang zings through my head like a bullet and almost makes me throw up.

He goes out and shuts the door. I listen hard to see if he locks it, but the drumming between my ears is too loud. We wait in the closet until I think I’ll smother. Then we wait in the classroom, standing ready to hide again in case he comes back.

I’m dozing against Ernie’s shoulder when he whispers, “Think he holes up in the infirmary?”

“Nah, it’s probably locked to keep the drugs from escaping.”

“You’re a witty dude, you know that?” Ernie cautiously opens the door and we wait some more. I’m not cold now, and the draft from the broken window feels good on my face.

“Then, if we break in there, he’s not likely to find us.”

“You looking for a fix?”

“Yeah, but not that kind. A cot and maybe another blanket.”

“I could go for that.”

The long hallway is backlit through a row of rain-patterned windows. I wonder if there’s a town nearby, and the prospect of breakfast without strings attached is appealing. I wonder what kept Ernie from having a fling with that blonde. Her age? The excuse he gave her? Me?

We pass a closed door that has a brass sign bolted on. TEACHERS LOUNGE. Light shows beneath it, and inside a radio plays low. Sounds like ‘A Prairie Home Companion’ and I’d like to stop and listen but Ernie keeps going until there’s another brass sign. INFIRMARY.

He lays down the bed roll, limp because he’s carrying Hoodoo’s gun in his waistband. Tries the door. Uses his pocket knife to jimmy the lock.

“You’re good at this, you know. Breaking and entering.”

“I’m good at a lot of things,” he tells me, and then we’re inside the windowless room. Before he closes the door behind us, I get a glimpse of shelves, cabinets, and a desk.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Ernie charges toward the SUV like he thinks he’s going to catch it. I shoulder my duffel bag and chase after him, but the light changes and the SUV moves on into the next block. I stop. Ernie doesn’t.

If the next light turns in our favor, there’s a chance he might make it to the door in time to– Do what? Jump in? Haul Franny out? I take off running again, to be there when whatever’s going to happen, happens.

Morning traffic is heavier now, but it’s a small town, few people on the sidewalks. One of the storefronts I pass proves to be a Laundromat. At the end of the block the light is still green and the SUV skims through it and away down a long hill toward an Interstate ramp.

Catching up to Ernie, I want to say ‘Give it up, pal.’ Head back to Main Street and bum enough coins to do our laundry. Brush my teeth at the sink while the machines are churning. He has other ideas. “Come on!” He’s spotted a cab stand.

A middle-aged driver sits in his cab, reading a newspaper. Looks up when Ernie snatches open the back door and we pile in. His eyes in the rearview don’t come across as friendly. “Where to?”

“See that blue SUV going up the ramp? Follow it.”

The cab motor doesn’t start on the first try, and Ernie’s impatience shows in every tense line of his body. When we’re moving, he sags in relief. We’re two cars behind the SUV on the Interstate. I wonder where they’re going. What we’ll do when they get there. How we’ll pay the driver.

Ahead, Hoodoo pulls off only a few exits later, at a rest area.

“There is a God,” Ernie says softly.

Our cabbie signals a lane change and takes us to the edge of the parking lot, where cars go one way and trucks veer off to a larger space. Ernie’s door is open before the brakes finish, and the cab driver yells, “Hold on, bub! You gotta pay.”

“Wait–”

“Pay now or I call the cops.”

Ernie rips a silvery necklace over his head. “Here!” The clasp is one of those magnet types, and he slides off a small medallion before dropping the chain on the front seat. He’s gone, but the cabbie holds up the chain with a greedy surprised look that prompts me to grab it out of his hand. “Not that.” Fumbling in haste, I eject the cartridge from my camera and toss the camera over to him. “Three exits’ worth.” I slam the cab door. His tires screech angrily half way across the trucker’s lot.

It’s an old rest area and the untrimmed bushes lining the walk make good cover. As soon as I join Ernie behind one, he says, “Watch the doors and whistle when one of them comes out.”

About 5 spaces farther on, the SUV stands head and shoulders above lesser cars. Curtains are open and I glimpse Ernie inside. Either he has a key, or one of them left it unlocked. Then I concentrate on watching the rest room doors. Some traveler puts coins in a drink machine and the can clunks into the tray. A car pulls out. Birds twitter in a tree nearby.

The men’s side is nearer me. I wish Ernie would come back but since I don’t know if he’s coming back, my palms start to sweat and spit dries up in my mouth. Then Hoodoo steps into view in the lobby area and I try to whistle. Useless.

Dodging along the row of cars, I reach the back door of the SUV just as Ernie jumps out almost on top of me. He’s carrying a gray blanket wadded into a bundle and sweat has made spikes of hair stick to his forehead. Hunkered, we hurry away from the scene of the crime and crouch down on the far side of a silver Lexus. I pop up for an instant and see Hoodoo outside the lobby, kicking at an acorn on the walkway, smoking.

“What’d you find?” I nod toward the gray bundle.

Ernie doesn’t answer. He’s looking up at a sturdy white haired lady who’s come up to the car and stands motionless like she’s about to step on two snakes.

“Harold.”

Her voice holds a quiet but stricken warning.

From the driver’s side of the Lexus, Harold answers, “What?”

“Don’t unlock the car. There might be a b–”

His key clicks, he opens the door, there’s the clack of her door unlocking and the power window rolls down. His tone is peevish. “What’s the matter with you?”

At that moment something small escapes Ernie’s wadded blanket and hits the asphalt like a pigmy bomb. The woman leaps a foot into the air and squeals. Harold’s voice demands, “What the hell’s the matter? Get in.”

Ernie’s hand shoots out and retrieves a brown pill bottle. The woman cries, “Lock the door Harold!”

She can’t get in because we’re blocking her door. She’s still standing, barely, knees trembling. It’s too pathetic to be funny, yet laughter bubbles up and when I glance at Ernie he’s holding it in, too, like when Steve got the giggles in chapel and we all ended up in D-hall for three days. Snickering like fools, Ernie and I scoot away from her car and stagger across the road into the safety of another bush and collapse.

We’re heaving deep breaths when the Lexus rolls by us and down the slope toward the Interstate. The woman’s putting on her seat belt. I can almost hear Harold cussing. I feel sorry we gave her such a fright. Then the whole thing flashes like a double-time commercial and it’s funny again. The way she couldn’t move. The way he not only unlocked the door but put the key in the ignition and unlocked hers. And rolled down her window and yelled at her like everything was her fault.

Then it isn’t funny. She will forever believe we’re druggies. Car thieves. Terrorists. And clueless Harold who didn’t see us will never believe she did. I keep snickering. Nerves I guess.

“Shhh!” Ernie draws his legs in, backing into the bush, and I do the same.

Doors slam, and the SUV zooms past toward the Interstate.

They’ve been gone at least two minutes before Ernie crawls out of the bush with the bundle and squats on the grass. His hands are shaking when he unfolds part of the blanket. A plastic grocery bag full of prescription pill bottles spills over. “No wonder he’s crazy,” I say.

“Oh, he doesn’t take them all. Just maybe half.”

“And sells the rest.”

“You got it.”

“We won’t do that, will we?”

Ernie’s glance is sharp enough to cut. “Of course not.” He wrestles with the loose ends of the blanket, picks it up. We go toward the Men’s.

“Why didn’t we take the wheels? You have a key.”

“I have a duplicate door key. Hoodoo has the ignition.”

“Oh.” Too bad. Riding in luxury for a change would be nice.

In the rest room Ernie goes into a stall and I hear bottles rattling against each other and pills dropping into the commode. Flush. More pills. Flush. He comes out, the bag looks full but half are empty containers. Goes into another stall. Repeats. When he comes out this time with the gray blanket, it’s a neat sausage shape, a cowboy’s bedroll. There’s still something inside, bulging the middle like an egg in a snake. That makes me laugh again, imagining the woman in the parking lot telling her friends about the two drug dealers who almost stole their Lexus.

Ernie’s face stops me mid-chuckle. “Let me have your belt.”

I unbuckle it and he uses it to strap the ends of the bedroll so whatever’s in there won’t fall out. “What is that?”

“Hoodoo’s gun.”

“Hoodoo had a gun?” A mixture of fear and awe tips my stomach but doesn’t turn it over. I feel lucky he didn’t at some point shoot one of us, and pride in Ernie for stealing it out of the SUV without getting caught.

“You didn’t find your credit card?”

“No. I’d have to pick Hoodoo’s pocket.”

We’re too far away now to go back to that Laundromat, but I can hear old Collie’s voice prodding me, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” I’ve discovered that three days of sweat is my limit, not to mention that little accident when Hoodoo decked Ernie. And to keep the dentist away from my teeth, I’m determined to clean up while the means are available.

“Watch the door,” I say, and Ernie meanders to the entrance while I strip down and fill a sink with hand soap and hot water. In go the whites. I let them soak while the next sink fills with warm rinse water.

When I’m finished, jeans teeth hair and all, and wearing the thrift store outfit, I’m stuck with wet clothes and don’t know what to do with them. The hot air hand dryer would take all day, even if it worked.

“Your turn,” I tell Ernie. He gets up from the doorway like he’s a hundred years old. I take his place beside the bedroll, and wave away a twenty-something who looks like he needs to go right now. He moves on to another Men’s farther along. Ernie says behind me, “What are these?”

I know what he means but glance around to see his expression. He’s holding up the clothes I bought for him. “Yours. Think they’ll fit?”

“Yeah,” he answers and goes off to take his bath and change. I hear him filling sinks and sloshing his dirty clothes, and when he gets to the shampoo part he actually whistles a tuneless tune.

I envy him his expensive running shoes. My sneaker soles feel as thin as a mouse pad. “Mouse,” I say softly, missing the computer in the library, even if it does have a zillion kid controls imposed by old Collie.

“Mouse?”

Ernie’s wet hair is slicked back off his face, like he’s just climbed out of the East Wind swimming pool. Even in faded jeans and tee-shirt he still has the slumming executive look that I’ve come to know. I realize he’ll never be one of us. ‘Us’ meaning the under-dog waiting-for-a-break with a mandatory sentence of three-to-five ahead of him. I don’t know where I’m going from here, but it’s sure not back there.

“Ready to roll?” I stand up. “Man, I’m hungry!”

Ernie laughs. “You sound like Fran.”

Then he holds up his dripping upscale shirt. “I hate to throw this away, but the tag says ‘Dry Clean Only’ and wringing it out will finish ruining it.”

“You wrung out the pants. Go ahead. Make them match.”

A pained frown before he laughs again. “What the hell.” He twists the shirt tail and a pint of water flows out into a floor drain. Holding it by the shoulders, he snaps it a few times, then lays it over his arm on top of the pants.

I remember his chain and take it from my pocket. “Here. This might make you feel better.”

He picks the double-linked necklace off my palm as if it’s treasure from the Atocha. “How’d you get this?”

“Trade,” I answer, watching him replace the medallion and anchor the magnets around his neck. He picks up the bulky bedroll.

“Traded what?”

I pick up my backpack. “My camera.” His mouth flies open to protest but I show him the film cartridge and we step out into the summer sunshine as happy as if we had good sense. That’s what Steve claims his grandma used to say, before she died and his parents split up and put him in custodial care. I wonder if my parents are alive or dead, remarried with new families or pushing up daisies.

Collins had made it clear he couldn’t–or wouldn’t–answer questions like that. Clear too that I was NEVER to ask anybody in the couple of foster homes I’d been in when I was little. I try hard, not for the first time, to remember a grandma or other relatives, but the blurry faces I used to think I remembered have gone the way of the voices, which I can’t hear anymore.

I check the drink machines and find enough coins to buy one can. Ernie and I spread our wet clothes on a picnic table, then sit on the shaded bench and share the drink. We watch rest stop patrons come and go. After a while, the parking spaces are empty. Birds have gone deeper into the woods in the noon heat and travelers are sitting in air-conditioned cafes chowing down on salads and burgers. “What day is it?”

“Damned if I know. Thursday?”

No school, no tv, no schedule, no plan. What day it is no longer matters. I stretch my legs out in front of me and lean back against the picnic table. Aluminum snap crackle pops as Ernie squashes the empty can. He lobs it into the wire bin ten feet away.

Then a blonde girl about Ernie’s age drives up in a screaming red sports car.

TO BE CONTINUED!

My fingers tense into a fist, and Ernie’s grip on my arm tightens. ‘They’re after you,’ hits close to home, reminds me I need to check my back trail more often. The voices in the dark outside the doorway continue and I listen.

First man. “I thought he’d miss a bundle like this.”

Second man. “Not him. The police. They think you did it.”

A silence. I can feel the stunning blow those words gave somebody, and I wonder who he is. Somehow his voice sounds familiar and I listen harder. But the second voice keeps talking.

“I already took my share. It’s the last you’ll see of me. You best clear out too.”

Wow, a bank robbery. A thrill of excitement and fear makes me shiver.

“How do you know? You didn’t happen to leave anything for them to find, did you?”

That has a threatening edge, but the voice is still familiar. I punch my brain in an effort to remember who I’ve heard in the last few days besides Ernie’s hipsie friends. A live person, not on tv. Not Al. Not the cafe lady. Not the bus driver. Who else?

Second man. “I never leave evidence. If I meant to hang you, would I be warning you?”

“Sorry. I’m just on edge. Helluva way to learn a thing like that.”

“You know they always suspect the husband, John.”

John goes on like he’s telling himself the story. “Jordan must have thought she took the money. He lost his temper and she ended up dead.” His anger spills over into the words. “He’s the bastard who ought to pay. And he will.”

Finally it hits me. In the cafe. Yesterday morning. The Actor. “Turn that up,” he’d said, glued to the tv report on the mystery woman pulled from the well in Hackett. I remember thinking he knew who she was and would call the number on the screen. I must have heard him order breakfast earlier, but paid no attention, my mind being on how to get to Dentonville. My only goal, until I discovered I’d lost my traveling money. Now I have no goal except to stay away from East Wind as long as I can.

The other man says, “You need a good alibi. What will you p–” The pop of a fist hitting flesh, just like when Hoodoo hit Ernie, and a scuffle on the ground outside. “Stop John I didn’t mean–” Another blow. John says, “Keep your damn mouth shut.”

Footsteps walk down the gravel drive. In a minute, a second set follows. A car engine sounds. Then another. Lights flash around as the cars depart, in different directions.

Ernie lets out a long breath, like he’s been holding it. “Inside was safer.” He lights up his watch dial. “Four o’clock.”

“I don’t think I can sleep any more,” I tell him. “Maybe we should walk while it’s cool.” Hunger drives me. I remember the ten dollars the cafe lady gave me and can hardly wait to find a diner or cafe or town.

By dawn we’ve come to the end of the farm road and to a small bit of civilization pretty much like the one we left behind. A neon sign promises breakfast 24 hours and cheap prices. Ernie’s eyes rove over a few cars parked under the streetlights. “Guess they’re long gone.”

“Franny and Hoodoo, or the bank robbers?”

“Those guys didn’t rob a bank. Unless Jordan robbed it first.”

We go inside, sit on stools at the counter. I have a moment of deja-vu before the waitress comes over. But there’s no Actor/John. The only other customers are some blue-collar types, and one single mother with two little kids.

Ernie looks at the menu like he’s never seen one before. He finally orders the ham and cheese omelette and hot tea. I’m surprised they have tea, and that he wants it. I leave off the bacon and coffee. Two fried eggs and a large orange juice, with a side of home fries. She brings enough for an army, so I’m looking at lunch too.

“Omigod,” Ernie says, half standing up.

“What?!” I look everywhere, not knowing who he sees or what to expect.

“We can’t pay for this.”

“Relax. I can.”

He gazes at me like I’ve grown another head.

“And have maybe a couple bucks left over.” I give him a smile, then gulp half the orange juice. He sits down slowly, doubtful, and eats everything on his plate without another comment.

While he’s thinking, so am I. Do I dare risk taking a ‘bird bath’ in the rest room, or should I just wash out my clothes? They’ll dry on me soon enough under the June sun. Losing my toothbrush, toothpaste, and comb in the backpack Hoodoo drove away with means we have to hit a drug store next.

“Let’s see if we can work off the breakfast,” I suggest. “That way, we can spend my money on other stuff.” I need sunglasses and a hat, too, but a couple bucks won’t stretch to cover those luxuries. At least I don’t need the jacket. I’m already sweating.

Ernie looks at me. “How much do you have?”

“Ten dollars.”

He smiles like an indulgent uncle. I can see why Franny called him an ‘old man.’

“What’s funny?”

“You,” he says. Drains his tea. Then, “Work,” he muses softly, like it’s an unusual idea.

The waitress gives us the same look before she says, “Sure. The guy who sweeps is out sick with pink eye, and the window washer quit last week.” She shows us where the cleaners and carpet sweeper are kept, and I hand a pail and squeegee to Ernie. He stands holding them, looking helpless. For a moment it’s like I’m seeing Al, blindly calling his dog, but the flash of fear and resentment comes and goes like summer lightning. “If you want to run the sweeper, I’ll tackle the windows.”

Ernie trades the tools and we work for almost an hour. The breakfast crowd has left and the lunch crowd hasn’t started yet. If you could call the morning customers a crowd. I’m swiping down the last plate glass corner when something outside catches my eye. “Omigod.” I sound like Ernie, only this time the stab of surprise has hit me.

He’s on the other side of the room, trying to pick up biscuit crumbs with a sweeper chock full of trash. I run to him and point to a stocky broad-shouldered man on the pavement. Reading the menu. Bound to come in. “It’s him!”

“Who?”

“John!”

He leans away, makes a skeptical face like he thinks I’m playing a joke on him. “You never saw him. What makes you so sure?”

“I did see him. Not last night. The morning before. In a cafe. The report on the tv shook him up. I heard his voice, and it’s him. What’ll we do?”

Ernie stares through the sparkling clean glass at the man I called Actor, whose voice belongs to John. “You’re right about one thing. He is coming in.”

The door opens and the waitress looks up. From her manner, all business-like, she’s never seen him before. He sits on the end stool, just like in the other eatery, and she offers him the day’s lunch special menu. He ignores it.

“Just coffee. Got any donuts?”

She lifts a dome lid off a pastry tray and sets the tray in front of him. He points to a couple and she uses tongs to lay them on a dessert plate. Goes to get the coffee.

“All done,” Ernie tells her on the way to the back, and she nods. We stow the cleaning stuff and he hurries me through the exit into the alley. Full of food, smelly from cleaners, and without a clue what comes next.

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” It’s all I can do not to dance around like a nervous girl.

“Why? From what we heard, Jordan is the guilty guy.”

“Husbands are almost always the killer.”

“You watch too much television.” Ernie follows the alley, not to the street but to the back parking lot.

Following Ernie, I’m about to mention my disappointment at not getting to wash myself or my clothes, when a parked car knocks me for a loop.

He lets out a low, long whistle of pure appreciation. It’s parked between two large ornamental bushes, off the pavement and on the scraggly grass, like it’s hiding.

Ernie trots over to a pale pink Cadillac that’s older than both of us put together. The bottom panel is black. Chrome so shiny it’s a good thing the sun doesn’t hit it or I’d be blinded without those sunglasses. “Let’s find a drug store,” I say. It’s the first time in my life my teeth haven’t been brushed for three days straight. “And then a thrift store.” If I can’t wash my clothes, I can buy clean second hand jeans and a couple of tee-shirts.

“Take my picture,” Ernie says, leaning against the car and smiling.

“What?”

“Take my picture. Or doesn’t your camera work?”

“It works.” Sliding the camera from my hip pocket, where it kept out of the way while I washed the windows, I hope it does. Ernie’s face is so eager and happy, I snap a couple.

He tries the door. Locked of course. The interior is show room clean. I can tell he yearns to sit behind the wheel. “That waitress can’t afford this antique.”

He shakes his head. “No. It belongs to John.”

Terror rips through me. The car is hiding, all right. Just like it was in the back lot of the Morningbird Hotel the night of the storm, when I woke and fled from that ghostly, inhuman wailing. Was it a grief so deep I’d never felt anything like it, or an anger so violent that I dreaded imagining its source?

Grabbing Ernie’s arm, I pull him along. We race over the curb and across the grass to the next street. He doesn’t ask me what’s wrong. I guess he can figure that out.

Luck on my side, there’s a drug store. We go in and I load a small plastic basket with the stuff I need. He stands with his hands braced on his hipbones, staring back towards the diner, seeing that Caddy only in his dreams.

When we’re back on the sidewalk, my disguise hat and dark glasses in place, I glance about for a secondhand shop that doesn’t have all dresses displayed in the window. Two blocks over, we find one. I buy a duffel bag for fifty cents, and pack two dollars’ worth of traveling clothes inside. Ernie’s content to travel in his expensive duds even if they are starting to smell. I pick up a used deodorant for a dime and toss it to him. “Thanks,” he says.

Using my last dollar, I pick out a nice striped shirt and a pair of jeans that I think will fit him. Stuff them into my duffel bag. He’ll be glad to wear them before long.

“What next, boss?” I ask, feeling light as air and ready for anything.

“You’re not tired of all this? Don’t want to go home?”

“Do you?” Wherever his home is, it’s probably a nice brick with a big yard and maybe a white fence to keep out neighbor dogs. But he’s on a mission, and I’m curious about how he plans to carry it out. Chasing Hoodoo and Franny is okay but catching them seems as unlikely as stealing John’s car and taking a joy ride.

He sits down on a shaded bench in front of the thrift store. “You forgot the take out carton with the leftover fries.”

Yeah, I did.

“We could go back, see if she’s thrown them out.”

“I’m not going back there.”

“He’s probably finished eating and is on his way to Canada.”

“Sure he is. If that’s where Jordan went. You heard him. He’s gonna make Jordan pay. Maybe he did kill her, and wants to pin the murder on Jordan.”

“And maybe he’s just out for revenge.” Ernie shifts restlessly on the bench. His teeth are too clean for him to be a smoker, but I bet he’d like to have a pack and lighter right now, something to distract his thoughts and calm his nerves.

“Root beer does it for me,” I say.

“What?”

“Distracts my thoughts and calms my nerves.”

Ernie laughs shortly. “You’re a funny kid.”

When we walk back to the parking lot, the Caddy is gone. Tire tracks lead into the grove of trees behind the diner and out on a side street. Ernie heaves a sigh. “At least I’ll have a picture.”

Ernie uses the cafe phone to cancel the credit card. I ask the waitress about the fries. She takes a little white bag out of a cooler. Tosses in a couple of cans of cola. I almost ask for root beer instead but thank her and carry my duffel bag out to where Ernie’s sitting on another bench, watching squirrels in the trees across the street. We share the fries, washing them down with the drinks. “You haven’t asked me a single question.”

“Yes I did. I asked if you wanted some grape juice. Then I asked why you can’t go home. If you have a deadline. And if you’re happy. You said you were. Past tense. And when I asked what happened, you didn’t answer. But I can see that you are. The rest doesn’t matter.”

“Phenomenal.” I’m impressed that he remembers all this. I hadn’t realized I was being questioned, or that I’d answered. “You’re one sharp dude.”

This time he laughs so hard he loses his breath. “Then what the hell am I doing out here?”

“You’re on a mission. You want to save Francine from Hoodoo. And I’m here to help you.”

“Some missions fail, no matter who helps.”

I gather up our trash and stuff it into a bin. Feel guilty that the aluminum cans should be recycled. I wonder where we’ll spend tonight, and what we’ll do with the hours in between, besides work for food and use public rest rooms. If I hadn’t spent all my money, we could find a Laundromat and have a clean change for later. If I were at East Wind, I’d be in the library, draped in my favorite wing chair, reading the end of that bookshop mystery. In warm weather, tall windows are open to let in cool breezes that carry whiffs from the cafeteria, hinting of lunch. If….

“They’re here!”

Ernie’s excitement startles me, but not as much as his hands roughly pushing me around the corner of the building. “Who?”

He flattens himself against the bricks, one arm shielding me beside him like a mama protecting her kid, and I freak. Collins has somehow managed to trail me and the cops are coming with billy sticks and handcuffs.

Some missions fail. The humiliation of being that failure propels me down the alley. Ernie races after and catches me by the wrist. “What’re you doing? I don’t want to lose them again.”

He drags me back toward the street, where the SUV has stopped for a red light.

TO BE CONTINUED!

I try for a balance between eager and pathetic. “I’m meeting friends in Dentonville. Any chance you’re headed there?”

Hoodoo laughs. “I’m headed to Hollywood. Going to be in a movie.”

“Yeah,” Ernie says, “a horror movie.”

Franny grabs Hoodoo’s arm before he can land a blow. “Come on, babe, help me look for money.” Hoodoo slaps his thigh and does a little rain dance. “Now that’s a hoot!” They walk off down a path hugged up so tight they can hardly walk.

“Want some juice? One hundred per cent all natural.” Ernie offers the quart container. The glass is warm from being under the seat. “Watch those cups. Hoodoo likes to chew his.”

I examine the Styrofoam cups he brought from the SUV. “They’re all chewed.” I pick the one that has a clean side and Ernie fills it. The juice reminds me how hungry I still am, but if I break out those candy bars Hoodoo would probably take them away from me.

“You ought to go home.” Ernie stares after his sister. She and Hoodoo have turned a corner and we can’t see them for the bushes.

“Can’t.” I drink from the cup.

“Why not?’

“A matter of honor.”

He turns his head, smiling a little. “Really?”

“Are you guys going toward Dentonville?”

“With Hoodoo, you never know. Why, you got a deadline?”

“Actually, I have.”

He smiles at me again, like he’s thinking something pleasant for a change. I decide I like Ernie, but to be on the safe side, I add, “Those friends are expecting me.”

Franny and Hoodoo come back, hand in hand. He says, “Take a walk, you two.”

Ernie stands up from the picnic table seat. “Fran, don’t you think–”

Hoodoo thumbs us away and walks to the SUV. Franny says to us, “Go on. There’s a duck pond just around that curve. With ducks.” She follows him into the back and shuts the door. I notice there are curtains over every window, and they plaster a sun guard over the windshield.

Ernie’s pleasant mood has passed but he’s more sad than mad. “Come on, kid, let’s walk off some calories.”

“Call me Vinnie,” I tell him. I may be a kid but I don’t like being reminded of it. “Grape juice has calories?”

We follow the path to the curve before he stops and looks back at the SUV. He picks up a golf-ball-sized rock and flings it in a high arc. Of course it falls short, but the effort seems to make him feel better.

“You guys don’t get along very well, do you.”

“The day we start getting along, I’ll kill myself.”

We round the curve and can’t see the SUV or the picnic table. I realize I left my backpack there and my heart thumps a time or two before settling back into its pace.

“Guess we’ve gone far enough,” Ernie says.

“I don’t see any pond. Or ducks.”

He ruffles my hair the way he would do a little brother. “Don’t believe everything Fran says.”

We keep walking, though, round another curve and there’s the pond. Three brown ducks paddle about, scooping up something, probably insects or floating weeds.
I make a mental note to read up on ducks the first chance I get.

“Well, maybe half of what she says,” Ernie tells me with a wry grin.

We sit on the grass and watch the ducks. I worry again about the backpack. Then I laugh because there’s nothing in it but a change of clothes and a few battered chocolate bars. I wonder again what happened to Jerry’s money.

Ernie gives me that sideways look again. “Vinnie, are you a happy person?”

I ponder that. “I was.”

“What happened?”

Again I counter his question with one of my own. “Who is Hoodoo?”

Ernie stares out across the pond to the fringe of houses beyond. “He’s the bastard Fran thinks she’s in love with.”

The words didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t guessed, but the way he said it opened up all kinds of lines of inquiry. “You’re on a mission, too.”

“A matter of honor,” he says, and stands up. “We can go back now.”

The picnic table and SUV come into view. Hoodoo’s sitting on it and Fran’s stuffing more things into the trash can. I pick up my backpack, and remember that there is something valuable inside other than my jacket. At the last minute before leaving East Wind, I had packed my camera. An old-fashioned one, uses a cartridge, but it takes good pictures.

Hoodoo gets into the driver’s seat, Fran beside him. Ernie’s in the back, holding the door open. “You with us or not?”

I am.

Dentonville, here I come. What I’ll do when I get there, I haven’t a clue. Beg, I suppose. Beg for a job, beg for a room, beg for food. Pawn my camera? One thing I can’t do is use my real name or break down and cry and sob out the whole sordid story.

Trying to sort out a better lie than the one about being a hiking Boy Scout, I take the camera from the pack and hold it in my lap. I think about the worn photo in my cashless wallet. It’s my mother, taken before I was born. I don’t know anything about her family, or my dad or his family. Even my memories are featureless now, like the picture. I wonder if I was happy once, with them. Funny. I was happy at East Wind.

While my attention wandered, I missed seeing what road Hoodoo took in leaving the park, and watch unsuccessfully for any road sign that might tell me how far we are from where I’m going, or even where we are. Fields and woods take turns bordering the two-lane, with farm houses scattered along the route, most set in a grove of old trees, with dirt roads leading to them. “Wake me up when we get to Dentonville,” I tell Ernie, but he’s in his own little world.

Fran says something that almost pulls me out of my stupor, and I hear Hoodoo’s answer. “I’m waiting for rich boy to say he’ll treat us.”

Ernie’s voice carries a warning note. “I’m keeping track of all this freeloading.” And Hoodoo fires back, “Nobody asked you along, crudball.”

***

Don’t know how long I’ve been asleep, but I’m thrown against Fran’s seat as the SUV makes a sharp swerve and a sudden stop. Next time I’ll use the seat belt. Shadows are long but the sky is still light. Well, it would be, in June. Summer’s here. Steve and Jerry must be trying to out-do each other swimming laps in the pool at East Wind. My stomach thinks it’s close to suppertime.

Fran’s peevish voice finishes dragging me to full consciousness. “I didn’t mean for you to give us all whiplash.”

“You wanted to stop. I stopped. Quit bitching.”

Hoodoo’s at the end of some rope. That makes me uneasy. Ernie rouses up as if he’s been sleeping too. “What are we supposed to eat in a place like this?”

‘Like this’ turns out to be a gravel space in front of a long-abandoned service station. Three decades ago, at least. At a crossroads with no signs, and not a thing visible in any direction except fields bordered by woods, or woods close to the road.

Fran opens her door. “I didn’t want to eat, I want to pee.”

I do, too, but not here. The building is falling apart, unstable enough to collapse on unwary visitors. Watching Fran pick her way to the back, I ask, “What time is it?” Ernie doesn’t have to look at his watch to tell me, “After seven o’clock.”

Seven o’clock! We’ve been driving over five hour