"Flash forward. Both Mom and Dad are dead and buried—she didn't come to the either funeral, by the way, she had a little touch of the flu both times. She decides to move down to Kansas to be near her sisters and sets about looking up my sister, who's living down there with her husband, and trying to 'make amends.' My sister, by the way, made the drive all the way to Ohio and back for both funerals, and she was sicker than hell both times.
"Okay, so Grandma tries to make all nicey-nice with Gayle, and Gayle's too polite to tell her to go to hell—we both knew she was just an old woman trying to get into Heaven any way she could. Grandma would call me sometimes to see how I was doing and reminisce about Mom and Dad like she ever gave a shit for either one of them. I tell her that I got nothing to say to her and hang up. So she sets about making Gayle her new, last best friend.
"When Grandma died, she left a lot of money—well, what I consider to be a lot. It was divided up among her sisters and living children and grandchildren—but Gayle and me, she left us a real nice chunk of change, over ten thousand dollars. I didn't want her goddamn money, not after the way she'd treated Dad, and I told her lawyer as much. Well, Grandma must have suspected I was going to say that, because she left a codicil in her will that if I refused my inheritance, it was all to go to Gayle—provided that I signed all the necessary papers. By this time my sister has divorced her redneck hubby and wants to get the hell out of Dodge—or, rather, Topeka—as soon as possible, so she calls and asks me if I'd drive down to Kansas and sign the papers because if I did the money would be released to her that day. How the hell could I say no? I took the time off work, drove down, signed the papers, loaded up what Gayle wanted me to bring back, put her and the kids on a plane, and then had car trouble just outside Jefferson City. You were around for everything else, so now I think we're up to date."
Christopher mimed unzipping his mouth. "You really loved your folks a lot, didn't you?'
"Yes, I did—screw that past tense—I do. Just because they're not here any longer doesn't mean I don't still love and miss them."
"I hope my folks have missed me half that much."
"I'm sure they have."
"Yeah…?"
"Count on it."
He looked at me and smiled. "I realize this is going to sound incredibly stupid, all things considered, but man am I glad we grabbed you and not that other guy."
It took a second for that to fully register. "What other guy?"
"Huh? Oh—there was a dude about four miles behind you at a rest stop with a couple of flat tires. I don't know what he ran over but it chewed the hell of them. We were doubling back to get him when Denise spotted you. She thought you looked nicer."
"Oh."
"I didn't mention that before?"
"Must have slipped your mind."
"Oh."
I imagined this guy now all safe and sound at home, kissing his wife, hugging his kids, petting the dog, bitching about the bills, and said: "I hope the son-of-a-bitch is still stuck there."
We looked at one another, then burst out laughing.
The road dipped slightly, we went over another steel bridge—this one more stable than the last—and emerged onto a smooth and seemingly freshly-paved stretch of asphalt. The trees thinned out near the road but were just as thick in the distance, and the sheer rock face on either side of us had obviously been blasted and smoothed by human hands.
"It'll be coming up on the right in a couple of miles," said Christopher. "You need to make yourself presentable—there's a light jacket in the black duffel bag back there. You should put it on to cover the blood on your shirt."
I moved to the back, grabbed the duffel bag, pulled it open, and immediately shrieked as the skulls grinned up at me.
"I said the black duffel bag."
"Yeah… uh… sorry." I knelt there for a few moments, shaking, eyes closed, my heart pounding against my ribs, then took a deep breath, opened my eyes, and closed up the bag of bones. "Sorry, Randy," I whispered to the top skull. They'd be home soon, as well, to weeping families and waiting graves.
I found the lightweight camouflage green jacket—it was a little tight across the chest and the sleeves were a bit short, but I'd deal with it.
"Looks good on you," said Christopher as I climbed back into the passenger seat.
"It covers up the blood."
"Yeah, I know, but it looks good is what I'm saying. Looks like something a real U.S. Marshal might wear."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
I took a deep breath, released it. "So how do you want to work this?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean am I going inside, are you going to stay out in the bus and listen with the magic dish, am I using the phone first, what?"
He signaled for a semi to pass us, which it did with all the grace and subtlety of an elephant on a tightwire, then rubbed his eyes and said: "You go inside and do your voodoo like with Thomas's folks; I'll wait out here until you signal me." He shook his head. "I won't listen in on you this time." He looked at me. "No need."
"I'll take that as a vote of confidence. What am I supposed to do to signal you?"
"What do you think? Step outside and holler for me."
"That'll work."
We dragged along behind the semi for another three-quarters of a mile, until it pulled off into the large and surprisingly crowded parking lot of a truck stop complete with a small motel, three gas islands, a showering facility, car wash, and restaurant.
"You never told me that your folks' place was so big," I said as Christopher maneuvered toward a parking space in an area designated MOBILE HOMES AND TRAILERS ONLY.
"It wasn't," he said, the surprise evident in his voice. He killed the engine and looked out on the scene, open-mouthed. "Good God—Dad had talked about trying to expand the place, but I never thought… wow."
The restaurant was one of those Mom-and-Pop establishments you pass on the road every trip; front porch, screen doors, neon beer signs hanging in the windows, a sandwich board with "Today's Specials" written in erasable marker, and an old-fashioned soda pop cooler out front—the kind with a lifting lid where you have to guide the ice-cold bottle through a series of metal tracks like a maze until it slides through a mini-turnstile at the end. All that was missing from the front porch to make it something right out of a Normal Rockwell painting was a wooden rocking chair and floppy-eared hound dog lying across the top of the steps.
"The restaurant's a lot bigger than it looks on the outside," said Christopher. "At least, that's how I remember it." He looked at me and shrugged. "I have no idea how many changes they might have made. It's been… a while since I was here, you know?" He was trembling all over. "Hey, look over there." He was pointing to an area behind the restaurant, just visible between it and the motel; a green patch of field, where there sat, up on concrete blocks, the remains of a gray 1968 VW Microbus. "I can't believe they still have that thing."
"Except for the no-wheels part, it still looks in fairly good condition to me."
He laughed. "Maybe they'll sell it to you."