You Don't Know About Me (11 page)

I took the bags to a picnic table and opened the one with the pages. I turned the first one over. On the flip side was a new poem my father had scribbled.

That was why he'd picked Hunter, Kansas. It was at the center of the huge circle where he thought I might live. He'd only been off by one state and a few hundred miles.

I started flipping through the new
Huck Finn
pages. The first highlighted words were “St. Petersburg.” After that
came four highlighted words and syllables: “call,” “oar,” “add,” and “o.” I put them together. “Call-oar-add-o.” Colorado. Maybe that's where my father had lived, and where my treasure was. St. Petersburg, Colorado.

I had to keep going west. But how far? I went through more pages and noted all the highlighted letters and numbers. They added up to
N 40° 33.183 lat, W 102° 49.146 long.
I held down the GPS's thumb stick to set a new waypoint. I entered the coordinates and clicked on Goto. The distance to St. Petersburg, Colorado, flashed up:
241 MILES.

I walked back through town. I figured I'd hitch back to the interstate, get something to eat, and then hitch as far as I could that day. I also decided to spend some of the five twenties I'd found in the ziplock bag on supplies, starting with a sleeping bag.

I walked out of Hunter and tried to thumb a ride. After a half hour, in which two vehicles blew by me, I spotted a white puffy thing in the distance. It was either a camper exactly like Sloan's or the same one.

One of the cool things about wide-open spaces is that when you see someone you know coming your way, you have plenty of time to make up a story about why you are where you are and not where you said you'd be.

Sloan pulled to a stop and stared at me with a curious expression. “What are you doing here?”

“What are
you
doing here?” I asked back.

“Alright, I'll go first,” he said. “When I was looking for the geodetic center of the U.S.—”

“Did you find it?”

“No, it's on someone's ranch, and you can't go there unless you do a song and dance to get permission. Anyway, something kept bugging me. The magazine on the top of the mail in your dad's mailbox was
Glamour
. I didn't picture your dad as a
Glamour
man, so I thought maybe he wasn't there anymore and that was someone else's mail piling up.”

“You're right,” I said. “He wasn't there anymore.”

“Did he go to the hospital?”

“No. I asked one of his neighbors and they said my uncle came and got him. He took my dad to his house in Colorado.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

After a pause, he asked, “Are you going to Colorado or back to Columbia?”

“I'm not sure. First I wanna get back to the interstate and get something to eat.”

He offered me a lift and I gladly took it. As we drove south he must've caught me sucking up the peanut butter smell coming from the back of the camper because he suggested I make a sandwich. I didn't hesitate. It was fun trying to keep the peanut butter and jam jars from sliding off the counter as we drove. I took my sandwich up front; it was the best PB&J I'd ever eaten.

When I was done, I told him I'd made up my mind. I was going to Colorado.

He glanced at his cell phone on the console. “If you're going that far, don't you think you should let your mom know?”

“Last time I tried she still hadn't gotten a phone.”

“That was a few hours ago.” He pushed the phone toward me. “I'm sure she wants to know you're safe.”

“What makes you sure I'm safe?” I asked, trying to change the subject. “Colorado's a long ways. Anything could happen.”

“True,” he said. “But you're safe for now, 'cause I'm packin'.”

The hairs on my neck prickled. “You have a gun?”

“Of course.” He slipped off his shades and gave me a sketchy look. “Doesn't every black dude? Wanna see it?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

He waved a hand at the glove compartment. “Go ahead. It's in there.”

My fingers were sweaty as I pulled the compartment handle and it dropped open. There was no flash of silver or black steel. There was just a worn book. “It's a Bible.”

He laughed at his twisted joke. “That's right. You're packin' and I'm packin'. It's the only weapon I'll ever need.”

I shut the glove compartment harder than I meant to. “Why'd you do that?”

“You mean freak you out?”

“Yeah.”

He slid his sunglasses back on. “I was checkin' you for coolant.”

“Coolant?”

“Yeah. You gotta check a radiator to make sure it's got enough coolant. You gotta check a person to see if he's got cool.” He smiled. “You got it.”

“Thanks. But why do you care if I'm cool?”

“ 'Cause if I'm gonna drive someone west the rest of the day, they gotta be cool.”

“You'd do that?”

“Like I said before, right now I'm just going where the road leads.”

I didn't exactly know
who
I was riding with, but the way I looked at it, it didn't matter. If there was one thing I'd learned in those past few days it was this: you can ride with someone all your life and not really know who they are.

I borrowed the road atlas Sloan had in his door pocket and looked in the index for St. Petersburg, Colorado. It wasn't listed. St. Petersburg had to be so tiny, it wasn't on the map. I noticed the latitude and longitude on the edge of the Colorado map and matched them up with what I could remember of the numbers I'd found in the new set of
Huck Finn
chapters. St. Petersburg was somewhere in the northeast corner of the state.

After we got back on I-70, the rumpled quilt of field and rangeland began to smooth out. We were almost to the town of Hays when we stopped for gas. Pulling into a big truck stop, Sloan stopped at the pump farthest from the mini-mart and restaurant. He handed me some cash and asked me to go pay for the gas. I wondered why he didn't use a credit card, and why he wanted me to go inside, but I didn't ask. I had other things to worry about.

I looked up through the windshield. A security camera pointed down at the camper. I didn't know how hard the police and Mom might be looking for me. I pulled my baseball cap out of my backpack and slipped it on. Heading for the mini-mart, I walked toward a woman gassing up her pickup. She stared at the camper. I looked back. Sloan had put on a cowboy hat.

When I passed her, she checked me out, too. For a second I worried she might've seen my picture on the news. But I was three hundred miles west of Independence. TV stations wouldn't be showing my picture that far away. Then I realized she was checking us out because we made a weird pair. In western Kansas, a black dude and a white kid traveling together probably wasn't an everyday event.

I gave the cashier the money. When I got back outside, I was glad to see that the lady was gone. But her pickup still stood at the pumps.

While the camper guzzled octane, Sloan gave me a handful of change. “My cell's not getting a signal. Go find a pay phone and see if you can get through to your mother.” I didn't want to call her, but it seemed like he wasn't giving
up till I did. “Don't forget my change on the gas,” he shouted as I went back inside.

I found a pay phone and dialed 411. Luckily, there was still no listing for Mom. But it was beginning to seem weird. I mean, Sloan had a point. If she was worried about me, why didn't she have a phone yet? I'd been a runaway for over a day.

I heard a TV in the walkway to the restaurant. I went over to make sure they weren't showing me on it.

The TV was turned to a sports report. It showed baseball highlights as a sportscaster rattled off scores. Then a picture of a ballplayer flashed up on the screen. The sportscaster called him “Ruah Branch” and said that he'd been put on the “fifteen-day DL,” whatever that was. The player's weird name caught my attention, but it was his picture that froze my blood. It wasn't the red cap with a big
C
on his head. It wasn't the long dreadlocks spilling out from under the cap. It was the smile splitting his face. I'd been seeing that smile all day.

The TV cut to a commercial.

I jumped as a hand hit my shoulder. It belonged to the woman with the pickup. Her leathery skin was bunched up around a tight smile. “Havin' a nice vacation, sonny?”

“Yes, ma'am.” I stepped back, pulling away from her hand. I figured she'd scoped the Pennsylvania plate on the camper.

“That's a smart RV you boys got.” She hitched a thumb behind her. “Is that your big brother drivin' it?”

“No, ma'am,” I answered with a half laugh. She wasn't
going to catch me on that one. “We're not exactly the same color.”

Her smile bent tighter. “You don't say. If he's not kin”—her head cocked—“who is he?”

It was creepy how she kept asking questions. I swallowed to buy time. “He's my coach, my baseball coach,” I tried to keep my voice calm and cool. “He's taking me to Bible baseball camp.”

Her eyes ratcheted open. “Bible baseball camp? What'll they think of next?”

“I dunno, ma'am. I gotta go.”

Her hand shot forward onto my shoulder again. Her grip was as tight as her smile. “What position do you play?”

I was no baseball expert, so I didn't take her bait. “A little of everything.”

“You pitch, too?”

“A little of everything,” I repeated, wiggling out of her grip.

She eyeballed my long arms. “With those arms, I bet your fastball hits forty miles an hour.”

I forced a smile. “On my best days, yeah.”

Her look told me I'd fallen for the bait anyway. Her eyes gleamed with excitement. “You're no ballplayer, and he's no coach. I
know
who he is.”

I was done being nice. I dodged around her, pushed open the door, and jogged to the camper. “Sloan” was behind the wheel with the motor running. I jumped in. “I know who you are,” I blurted, “and so does someone else!”

His reaction blew away any chance he really was Sloan. He threw the RV in gear and took off.

I looked back and saw the lady come outside. She was dialing a cell phone. I didn't know if she was calling the police about me, or some friend to say she'd just gassed up next to a star baseball player.

“Jump in the back,” he ordered. “See if anyone follows.”

Watching out the back window, no pickup or flashing police car came after us. The camper swerved, and the inter state slid away as we took an exit.

I went back up front. “Where are you going?”

“A little evasive action,” he said. “Neither of us wants to get caught, right?”

“Who wants to catch you?”

“Fans. They can be brutal.”

“You really are Ruah Branch?”

“Unfortunately, yeah.”

At the top of the exit ramp he took a left, heading south. It wasn't the direction I wanted to go, but I wasn't about to argue. When your getaway driver goes off trail, you go with him till you're in the clear.

He must've sensed what I was thinking. “Don't worry,” he said, “I'll take the first decent road going west we come to.”

I got out the road atlas and checked the map. In a few miles we'd come to a road that would get us to Route 4, which headed straight west, toward Colorado.

I looked at Ruah and decided I'd been cool long enough. “So who are you?”

Ruah chuckled. “You're not a baseball fan, are you?”

“Not really,” I said. “I just know you play for a team that's C-something. I don't even know what the C stands for.”

“Good.”

“I thought famous people wanted all the fans they could get.”

“Not me. I don't want people thinking I hung the moon 'cause I can hit a baseball a long way. And it's nice hangin' with someone who isn't pushing stuff at me to sign. To you, I'm just a weird brother in an RV, and I wanna keep it that way. So what happened back there?”

I told him about the sports report on the TV and how it said he was on the DL. He told me “DL” was short for “disabled list.” I told him about the woman who grilled me about traveling with him and how I blew my story about being a pitcher going to Bible baseball camp.

“Helluvan effort,” he chuckled.

I wanted to change the subject. “Are you really injured?”

“Yeah.” He tapped his forehead. “Up here.”

“Did you get hit with a baseball?”

He laughed. “
That
I could deal with. Let's just say I've got some screws loose.” He must've sensed how that might sound scary to a runaway in his camper because he added,
“Don't worry, kid. My screws are loose in a good way, not a bad way.”

“Did the loose screws make you shave your head?” I asked.

“The dreadlocks go with my image. I'm taking a break from my baseball card.”

“So you didn't lie.”

“What do you mean?”

“You
are
on vacation. And you
do
juggle bats.”

He laughed. “Sure, I juggle bats, and your fastball rips along at a wicked forty miles per.”

“Hey,” I protested, “it sounded fast to me.”

“In case you try that one again, at your age you should be throwing it seventy to eighty. Most big leaguers hurl it over ninety.”