“I won’t.”
“All right, then.” Jerry extended his hand. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Kenneth.”
He felt a little bit like crying and kept his head down when they shook hands and then walked right on the bus, taking another seat by the window. Jerry stood watching by the pillar until they pulled away.
He was so tired his eyes felt scratchy and he nodded asleep on the short stretches between stops in Longmont and Greeley and Fort Collins, and then they were in Cheyenne, with the bus driver staring in the rearview mirror and calling, “Twenty minutes.”
He used the bathroom on the bus, and when he came out he could see the driver through the window talking to another man dressed in a Greyhound uniform. He took his backpack and basketball with him when he got off. Having read the pamphlet in the seat about unaccompanied children, he knew he wouldn’t be allowed to ride up to Wheatland, to Douglas, to Casper, to anywhere, and he could see it in their faces. He smiled at them, hooking up his backpack and walking out into the street. He’d already planned what to do next.
He stood at the pop machine on the sidewalk until the driver looked away, then ducked around the corner into the parking lot. He found a two-gallon gas can in the bed of the second pickup he looked in and climbed over the tailgate, dropping the can out by the side of the truck, counting out five one-dollar bills and pulling the head of a sledgehammer on top of them so they wouldn’t blow away.
He walked quickly along Deming with the empty can, squatting up under the overpass to check his Google maps. When he got to Central he turned north for four blocks to the Sinclair on the corner, just where it was supposed to be. He filled the can and went in and bought a small bag of chips and a Dr Pepper, then sat around the corner from the station eating the other half of his sandwich and all of the chips, washing it down with the Dr Pepper.
The food made him so tired that his legs felt rubbery, but he kept north on Central until the street ended at a black-and-yellow barrier. He ducked under and crossed several railroad tracks, crawling under the couplings of the parked boxcars and watching to make sure none of them were going to move away and cut him in half. Then he was out in a huge dirt workyard, where there were maintenance buildings and cars and trucks and a man yelling what the hell did he think he was doing here. He dropped the basketball when he started to run and didn’t dare go back for it, and the gas can had gotten so heavy that he ran holding it up against his chest. When he crossed over more tracks he stopped to catch his breath, the guard behind him still standing there with his ball but too far away for Kenneth to hear his screams.
He crossed three more sets of tracks and found a regular street again, walking backwards with his arm out and his thumb sticking up like he’d seen in old movies. He’d only gone two blocks when a woman pulled to the curb, waving him forward and rolling the window down on the passenger side.
It was hot and he set the gas can down, pulling up the front of his T-shirt to wipe his face.
The woman was leaning across the seat. “Are you lost?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. My mom just sent me for gas.” He brought the can up to window-level for her to see. “We ran out, and she was afraid to leave me with the car.” The woman tilted her head like dogs do when they hear a noise they don’t understand, so he added: “She hurt her leg real bad and couldn’t come with me.”
The woman pushed the door open. “Get in here right now.” She sounded mad.
He slid his backpack onto the backseat, setting the gas can on the floor there, and got in the front.
“How come you’re all sweaty?”
“A man was chasing me.”
The woman looked in the rearview mirror. “Where was he chasing you?”
“By the railroad cars.”
She was pulling away from the curb, glancing in the side mirror. She still looked mad.
“A man gave me a ride to the gas station, but then I couldn’t get a ride back, so I was walking.”
“Where’d you say your mom ran out of gas?”
“ Iron Mountain Road.”
She looked at him like he’d cussed, and he thought maybe he’d remembered it wrong from the map.
“That’s clear north of the city.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then how come you’re all the way down here for gas?” She looked at the gas can again, checking her wristwatch.
“This is where the man dropped me off. He said he didn’t want to stop before he got home.”
“What man?”
“The man who picked me up.”
“I wish that son of a bitch had told you his name,” she said. “I’m sorry I cussed, but I’m upset about this.”
“He never did.”
“Of course he didn’t.” She was settling now, starting to forget about being late for whatever else she had to do. “He wouldn’t dare, running you down here and dropping you off like he did.” She was watching the side mirror as she merged with the northbound traffic on I-25. She looked at the gas can again. “You don’t think that’s going to explode, do you?”
“No, ma’am. I’m sure we’re all right if we leave the windows down.”
She looked at him, studying him. “You’re a cute one. I’ll give you that,” she said.
“My mom thinks I am.”
“I’ll bet she does. You have a crush on somebody?”
He felt like it was going to be okay. She was just being a lady now. “On two girls,” he said.
When they got to Iron Mountain Road and couldn’t find where his mother’s car had run out of gas, she drove back to the interstate, and parked and took her cell phone out of her purse.
“I can just get out here,” he said.
He watched her dialing 911 and stepped out of the car. He felt dizzy and then he was sitting on the pavement.
He heard her say “I’m at Iron Mountain and 25” and thought he should get up and run. It was like he was just waking up and didn’t know if it was a school day or the weekend. He heard her coming around the car. “I’ve got a lost boy here,” she said. She was standing with the phone to her ear, looking down at him. She looked mad again.
Twenty-three
THEY CAME UP from the toolshed with their tongues thick in their mouths, the blood throbbing in their temples. McEban stopped twice, bending over with his hands braced against his knees, hacking up a yellowish slime. They drank from the garden hose at the side of the house, dousing their heads before stepping up on the porch to heel their boots off. Paul went in and mixed a pitcher of iced tea, stirring in three tablespoons of sugar. He brought the glasses out, set them on the edge of the porchboards and waded down into the overgrowth of mint that skirted the porch, picking a handful of leaves and rubbing them between his palms until they were just a damp, green pulp. He cupped his hands over his nose, inhaling, then pinched some mint for their tea. They sprawled on the steps sipping from their glasses, satisfied to be still at the end of the day.
All summer they’d pulled the noxious weeds from around the buildings and along the creek, piling the stalks with their blossoms in the workyard to dry. This morning they burned the pile, spending the rest of the day out spraying an herbicide on the patches of spurge and thistle, the hound’s-tongue and bindweed, idling along on the ATV, a portable, thirty-four-gallon tank mounted on the rack behind the seat. Paul’s joints ached like he had the flu, and he felt uneasy about spreading this poison, but there weren’t enough hours in the summer to kill it all by hand. When they heard the phone ringing McEban went in for it.
“I’m driving down right now,” he said, stepping back out on the porch with the cordless. “I know what time of day it is,” he said, then tossed the phone onto a chair and stripped his shirt over his head.