Stick (25 page)

It didn't matter.

I could tell by how still he was that Willie wasn't going anywhere, either.

I picked up my suitcase and left.

*   *   *

Outside, the air was wet and inescapably cold.

Willie's truck was gone.

The houseboat and the river were perfectly quiet, perfectly dark.

I followed the mud tracks back toward the highway, careful to keep my feet in the grass. I didn't want to leave any footprints.

Whoever did that must not have known I was in Willie's room.

Or maybe they knew it was just a little kid in there.

That's the only way I could explain why I was still breathing.

Before I got to the highway, I hid beneath the pines and waited for a while. I thought, maybe the ones who did this were going to come back. As quietly as I could, I opened my suitcase. There was no way I'd be able to carry it all the way back to the gas station, but I knew there were ten dollars inside it. Ten dollars the old man didn't steal from me. I took the money out and shoved it down into my front pocket. It made me think about Emily.

I believed I would never be able to see her or Bosten again.

Still, I couldn't leave my suitcase behind. Someone would find it, and I'd get caught. I decided to carry it as far as I could, and then I'd come back for it after I got my Toyota from Willie's gas station.

I thought anyone in the world who knew I was staying there would think I had something to do with killing those men. Or Bosten did.

All I knew for sure was that I never wanted to set eyes on that houseboat again.

*   *   *

By the time the sun came up
and I'd turned off the headlights, I was passing through a place called Sutherlin. I was too tired to keep driving, and too scared to sleep. I scripted out with certainty the nightmares I'd have, even if I knew I was making them worse in my own mind: Willie, Brock, waiting in that room after the gunshots went off—another Saint Fillan's room—and wondering if my brother was out here, anywhere; if he was even alive.

When I'd gotten behind the wheel of my stolen car and started the engine, that's when I felt like I was no longer Bosten. But I didn't know who I was anymore, because everything about Stark McClellan was changed now.

I reasoned that Willie saved my life. He may not have intended to, but if I hadn't gotten as mad at him as I did, and then slammed myself inside that room, I most likely would have been out there with them when the shooting started. I guess, sometimes, things that seem like such a big deal take on a whole new shape when you turn around and look at them from a couple hundred miles away.

Sutherlin was about a hundred and forty miles.

There was still gas in the car, and California was getting closer.

But I had to rest.

I stopped at a small grocery store and bought one loaf of white bread and a jar of peanut butter. That was all I could live on for now, I decided. I had to use every cent of what was left to buy gas. I knew the money would not get me anywhere near where I wanted to be.

Sitting in the parking lot, eating a sandwich the morning after I'd been on a boat where people were murdered, I tried to imagine where it was going to be that I would finally have to abandon the car and start walking.

I climbed into the back of the Toyota and kicked off my shoes. I stretched my legs out over the front passenger seat.

When I went to sleep, I didn't have any dreams at all.

*   *   *

It happened just south of Fresno,
California, the following morning.

For maybe the last fifty miles, I kept my eyes more on the gas gauge than the road ahead of me. I knew it was coming.

I had one dime in my pocket. It was my last safety net, I figured. I knew the Lohmans or Aunt Dahlia would accept a collect phone call from me if I ever gave in and decided to let that dime drop.

But I was too scared to talk to them, too.

After running out of gas up in Scappoose, I knew what would happen once the motor started to hiccup. I pushed in the clutch and let the car coast as far as it could. It made it into a gravel parking lot at a roadside rest stop that was divided into separate areas: one for cars and, across a grass median with restrooms and some sick-looking trees, another for long-haul trucks.

That was it.

Just like that.

I can't say that I was too disappointed. In some ways, I was relieved. Since I left Point No Point, running out of gas was the first thing I truly
expected
to happen to me that actually
did
happen. And looking back at things now, I think I was numb, or maybe in shock, after what I'd seen two nights before on the river outside of Scappoose. Every time my mind flashed back on images of the old man and Willie, lying in their own blood, I would shake my head quickly. I had been doing that so much the last two days, I was beginning to think I was going to develop an involuntary twitch.

There was just one other car, parked nearer to the restrooms, with a family that stood outside and watched while their cocker spaniel made shit in the grass. Across the way was an idling black Kenworth eighteen-wheeler, hooked up to a trailer, painted all over with bouncing, smiling vegetables, that said
TEIXIERA FARMS
down the side.

By Washington standards, it was ungodly hot here. I rolled down both windows and sat in the car, just thinking about things, watching the little stub-tailed dog spin in a tight circle while he dropped off his turds.

Maybe five minutes later, the family packed up their cocker spaniel and pulled back out onto the highway. I watched them without making it look like I was watching them. Then I got out of the car and took my suitcase out from the trunk. I changed into the shorts and Sex Wax T-shirt Aunt Dahlia bought for me. I wore the cap Emily gave me. I emptied just about everything I had out of the suitcase, leaving only enough room to take one complete change of clothes for me, one for Bosten, my peanut butter and white bread, and our wetsuits.

I thought, maybe I was the only guy in the entire state of California who packed a wetsuit in his suitcase.

I put the case down next to the bumper, then I sat behind the wheel and penciled a note on the paper grocery sack my food came in.

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Stark McClellan. I am from Point No Point in Kitsap County, Washington. I have run away from home and am traveling using my brother's identification. His name is Bosten McClellan. Two days ago, I was in a houseboat on the bay in Scappoose, Oregon, when two men were murdered. One of them was named Willie Purcell, and the other I only knew by his first name, which was Brock. I was hiding in a room when it happened, and I did not see who did the shooting. But when I came out, Willie's truck had been stolen, too. My brother, Bosten, didn't have anything to do with it.

Stark McClellan

I folded the sack carefully and put it inside the glove box. Then I took a deep breath, pulled the note back out, balled it up, and walked over to a garbage can. I dropped the wadded sack into the trash.

I went back to the Toyota for the last time. I rolled up the windows and locked the doors. Then I grabbed my suitcase and started walking.

Everything seems bigger, farther away, slowed down, when you walk alongside a road. It felt like it took me fifteen minutes just to get halfway down the ramp onto the main highway. By then, the big truck was leaving the rest stop, too. It shuddered as it rolled over the gravel ramp.

The truck stopped. The driver dangled his arm from the window and leaned his face out.

“Is that your car    back there?”

I looked up at him, squinting. He was black. There were only two black kids at my school in Washington. I don't think that I'd ever talked to a black grown-up in my life.

“Not anymore.”

He hitched a thumb at my suitcase. “Plan on catching a bus       or something?”

I didn't have a plan at all.

“I am out of gas and out of money.”

“Not going to        win any girlfriends like that,” he said. The driver looked down the road, checked his mirrors. I watched him. He had perfectly rounded black hair and a mustache that curled down toward his chin. “So. Where         are you going?”

“Cal—” I caught myself being stupid again. “I'm trying to get to a place called Oxnard.”

“That's a good      walk. I'm heading to Long Beach. If you want, you can ride with me to        Los Angeles. It's maybe another four or five hours. Maybe your folks from Oxnard can      come pick you up in L.A.”

I looked down the road.

Then I glanced up at the driver one more time.

I walked around the nose of his truck and he pushed open the passenger-side door.

I had a hard time fitting my legs into the truck. The floor in front of the passenger seat was cluttered with cans of soda, some extra shoes, and sacks of food and magazines. I noticed there wasn't a
Penthouse
, though.

Well, at least not one I could see.

When I climbed up into the cab, the driver began grabbing what he could reach from where he sat, throwing it back into the small room behind the seats. There was a cot back there and even a television set strapped against the wall.

I had never seen the inside of a truck before. I thought you could probably live here forever if you needed to.

“Here.” He grabbed my suitcase and slid it inside an open plastic locker in back of my seat.

I sat down.

The man revved the motor and slammed the gear shifter upward.

“You       want a Coke or something? Just help    yourself.”

“Thanks.”

I opened a can of Coke. It was warm, but I didn't mind at all. At least it didn't stick to the roof of my mouth, unlike the only other nourishment I'd had since the day before.

The truck driver's name was Sutton Broussard. He told me all about how he came west from Louisiana; and now he drove artichokes to Southern California for a living. I'd never seen an artichoke in my life, but I guessed by the size of Sutton's truck that people in Southern California liked them.

I told him my real name and how I'd just turned fourteen three days before; but not much beyond that. I didn't want to chance making any more trouble for Bosten by pretending to be him, and I wasn't going to be driving again, anyway. So it didn't matter.

“Fourteen and driving    your own car?”

“I'm pretty tall.”

“I can      see that.     I can see that,” Sutton said. “And Washington      tags on it, too. You got yourself a hell of a ways from home, I'd say.”

Maybe, I thought, he'd been paying a little too much attention to things. Maybe everyone just naturally noticed things that I didn't think were obvious enough to care about.

“You're not going to do anything weird or anything, are you?”

Sutton's brow creased. “I was just about      to ask you the same thing.”

I took a gulp from the can, and Sutton said, “Why         would you say something like that, anyway? Do you think a guy's going to do something weird just because he offered you help?”

He sounded a little defensive, maybe annoyed, too.

But, yes, I guess I did think that.

“I'm sorry.”

We were on the highway now, moving fast. I felt like a giant. Sitting in the cab of that truck was like riding on the nose of a whale.

“Where       do         you live,      anyway?”

“Nowhere. That car, until just now. But I'm on my way to my aunt's house.”

“I see. Oxnard, right?”

“Do you live in this truck?”

Sutton laughed. He pointed to a pair of small, discolored photographs taped to the underside of the shelf above his head. “That's      my wife and daughter. We have a house in Salinas.”

I tried to think if I'd driven through Salinas.

I couldn't remember.

Sutton cleared his throat. “Can       you get me a Coke, please?”

“Sure.”

He popped the can open, still keeping his hands rocking on the wheel, and he said, “So, what          happened     up there?”

At first, it shocked me, like he knew something about Willie and Brock, but then I noticed he began drawing a circle in the air around his ear. I made sure my Steelers cap was still on my head.

“People usually don't notice when I have the hat on.”

“I notice      things,” he said. “I knew something was wrong the minute I saw you pull into the rest stop. I saw how you               watched those people with their dog. I could tell you were in some kind of    trouble. Then, when I saw you start walking, I said to myself,   ‘Yep, that kid needs someone to give him a little                help.'     I notice things.”

“Oh.” I took off the cap. It was so hot, anyway, and the wind in my sweaty hair felt good. I ran my hand over my head, surprised at how I could actually pull hair.

Dad would never tolerate hair this long.

“I was born this way.”

Sutton's head mechanically jerked, back and forth, from looking at me, to watching the road ahead.

“Well,” he said. “I never      seen anything like that before.”

I am ugly.

“I bet.”

“Can you      hear nothing there?”

“Nothing's the only thing I hear there.”

Sutton laughed. “That's fortunate, then.    Must be nice to miss out on half the nonsense the rest of us have to endure listening to.”

I had to think about that.

“I don't know.”

“I       believe     so,” he said. “But I'm not going to           ask you                                 one more thing.           So you don't have to tell me nothing about that car back there, Stark, or where you came from. I don't want to know.”