She made a visor with her hand and looked across the empty grass and around behind the house to a single section of standing rail fence.
“That’s where they tie up the ghost horses at night,” he told her.
“Is this what your cabin is like?”
“I’ve told you what it’s like.”
“Will we have horses?”
“Look, Tom. I know I’m a handsome guy and all, but you’re not invited to stay that long.”
“I was just pretending.”
“Long as we’re both clear on that.” He turned over his wrist and read his watch. “Five days from now we’ll be driving back the other way, delivering you to your loving mother, and—”
“—none of this ever happened.” She rolled her eyes. “I know.”
He dropped his hand and gaped at her. “That’s not what I was going to say. Never happened! Tommie. Of course it will have happened. It’s happening now. Isn’t it?”
“Duh.”
“That’s right. And eventually—maybe not right away, but eventually—you’ll tell everyone about it. Right?”
She snorted. “Yeah, right. I’d be dead meat.”
“So you wait till you’re eighteen. Or twenty-six. Right now you’re just eleven.”
“Don’t remind me.”
He lifted her chin with his hand. “Eleven is the most perfect age to be a girl. And you’ll know it the minute you turn twelve.”
He took her arm and they circled the falling house, stepping carefully through the high grass, lifting their knees as though walking through deep snow.
They came to the ragged edge of dry weeds and he opened the fence and she stepped through.
The truck was straight ahead, tilted on the shoulder. He nodded at it. “Race you back?”
He beat her to the highway by twenty yards and stood at the truck with his hands on his thighs, watching her come as if she hadn’t already lost, her little white fists pumping high at the sides of her flat, narrow chest.
“That’s a sign of a real athlete,” he said when she reached him. “That’s what you call running through the line.”
She leaned on her knees, breathing hard. “It’s hard to run.”
“We’re higher up. Even though it looks flat here,” he said, “there’s less oxygen. It makes it harder for your body to maintain itself.”
“Like you can hardly run?”
“Like you can hardly run.”
He ran his sleeve across his forehead and leaned on his thighs, looking at her. “When you’re a mom you can tell your kids the story about passing through Cheyenne when it was a ghost town of rotted wood and wind, a fox den taken hostage by lonely teenagers, and they’ll think you’re ancient and wise, and you know what?”
“What.”
“They’ll be right.”
That got him a big gap-toothed smile. He loved to see it.
“You ready?”
“Ready.”
“You awake now?”
“Yep.”
But in ten minutes and even with the windows down and the radio up she was asleep again, so Lamb pulled off the side of the road to wake her and stepped into the weeds to piss and back in the truck told her far to the north along the same line of longitude was a palace made of corn.
“I thought we already passed that.”
“You’re kind of a dreamy kid, aren’t you?”
He made up a story about barrel racing in the town of Gillette when he was a boy and he told her he was a great ballplayer, second base, and a track star.
“Hurdles,” he told her. “I won all the medals.”
“I bet you were one of the cool kids.” She had her head leaned back against the long strap of the seat belt.
“Ever heard the term road weary?”
“No.”
“Well. That’s what you are. Or no. I’ll tell you what it is. The gods getting back at you for being such a pig last night. Stealing both pillows and keeping me up with your snoring.”
“I do not snore.”
“How do you know? Ever share a room with someone before?”
“No.”
“Well then.”
“Last night was like a thousand years ago.”
“Well we’ve entered mountain time. Happened in Nebraska.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll tell you what it is. It’s mysterious.”
They reached the next filling station by early afternoon, a mile north of the highway at the edge of a small town encroached upon in all directions by a shimmering flood of weeds. It was an old 76. The concrete foundation was tilted ten degrees, and once bright letters on a placard for soft-serve ice cream were drained of color. Inside he bought the girl a coffee and told her she was grown up enough for a full cup. Told her that the dire circumstances of her weak brain and laziness required it. They both laughed and she filled the cup with sugar and half a dozen little plastic cups of vanilla creamer.
Lamb went into the men’s room to order a round-trip plane ticket from Chicago to Denver—for Linnie—and when he came outside he found the girl crying quietly beside a greasy trash can spotted with rust. Snot glistening on her upper lip. On the far side of the parking lot a woman was helping a tiny girl into a bright blue windbreaker. Lamb stood beside Tommie and together they watched the mother buckle the child into the backseat of a white minivan. In a moment they were gone, a speck disappearing up the frontage road and turning onto the eastbound highway.
He put his arm around her shoulders and when she turned to look up at him he stooped beside the trash can and took her face in his hands and brushed the tears from her freckled cheeks with the edge of his sleeve, wiped the snot from her lip with his thumb and wiped it on his jeans. “Do you want to go home, Tommie? Shall I take you home to your mother?”
“Yes.” Her chest broke open now and she snorted and inhaled stuttering breath. “No.” She looked to him for help.
“Come,” he said. “Come get in the truck. Let’s talk.” He took her hand and walked her there. In the Ford he put the cell phone in the glove compartment and closed it. “We’ll turn around. We’ll drive straight through the night, okay? You can walk home from that pretty white hotel where we stayed, or I’ll give you taxi money. You can go back to the apartment and all your friends. Tell your mom you wandered off into the woods and fell asleep for days. Like a pretty little girl in a fable.”
She sat nodding and sniffling in the passenger seat.
“I’m sorry, Tom. This was a bad idea. I should have known better. People don’t do this, do they? This isn’t the way people behave. I’m older and I should have known better.”
The girl held her head in her hands. “I’ll get in so much trouble.”
“No you won’t. You won’t. Everyone will be so happy to see you. You need to just let me steer this now. I’m going to feed you really well and we’ll set you up in back so you can sleep and before you know it you’ll be waking up in your old neighborhood.”
“Okay.”
“And I’ll leave town so you have all the room you need to get over this. Nine hundred days and the whole city to yourself. Maybe I’ll drive back through Chicago in a few years, and you can sneak away from your boyfriends and girlfriends to give your poor old horse a little company. Come steal him away from his tall metal hotel downtown, right? Have a run through the open grass before we sneak you back in time for algebra. Right?”
“I want to stay. I want to stay.” She waved her hand at the windshield. “Go,” she said. “Drive.”
Our guy picked up her hand. “We’re just going to sit here a minute.” He waited until she stopped crying, then pulled away from the gas pump and parked beside a derelict pay phone. “We are not going to do anything unless I am absolutely certain it’s what you want to do.” She nodded and wiped her nose across her skinny bare forearm. “Oh no,” he said, “don’t do that.” He opened the glove compartment and withdrew a handkerchief. “Here,” he said. He dabbed her tears and held it to her nose. “Blow,” he said. “Go on.” She looked at him, red-eyed and ugly. “Harder,” he said. “Yes. Now that’s a nose-blow. That’s a girl with a little strength!” He dropped his hand into her lap. “My God,” he said, looking at her, “that’s the most extraordinary sound I’ve ever heard. You sound exactly like a goose, or a loon. Do it again.” He lifted the handkerchief, and they both laughed.