As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth Page 6

  Aha! He found one. The phone lit up. He turned to go back outside, but the phone called him back. It said there were messages. He would just check.

  From Nina: You’re in Montana. Right?

  From Connor: I don’t know. So, you wanna play b-ball? Oh, wait—you moved. Duh.

  Ry gave his phone raspberries. He didn’t text back. And when no one answered—grandpa, mother, father—he didn’t leave a message. He stood in the dim kitchen, thinking. He had relatives, aunts and uncles. They were far away, and he didn’t have their numbers with him, but they existed. He guessed that was the next thing he should do. He was starting to work it out when he heard Del’s voice outside the window.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” Del said. “I think I should just give him a ride home.”

  “What?” said Beth.

  Ry drew closer. Beth was tossing Del chunks of wood from the bed of Pete’s pickup. Del was stacking them next to the house. Their conversation was punctuated by wood falling on wood.

  “I could loan him the money for a train ticket,” said Del. “But it just doesn’t feel right to put him on a train when we don’t know for sure that someone’s going to be there at the other end. I would feel responsible if something happened.”

  “That must be why you had him shinny out on a dead tree limb,” said Beth.

  “He was wearing a harness,” said Del. “It was completely safe.” Ka-thunk.

  “I guess,” said Beth.

  “And besides, it’s fun,” said Del.

  “Uh-huh,” said Beth. “He looked like he was having a great time.

  “Doesn’t he live, like, a thousand miles from here?” she asked. “That’s a bit of a hike.”

  “I was thinking of heading in that direction anyhow,” said Del. “I have some errands to run out there.” Thunk.

  “Right,” said Beth. “Errands. In Wisconsin.” Clunk. Chunk.

  “On the way there,” said Del. “More likely on the way back. People I haven’t seen for a while. It’ll only take a couple of days. Three or four, round trip.”

  Ry stepped quietly backward into the shadowy house. He went out the backdoor, to where Pete and Arvin were ka-thunking their own pile of wood alongside the garage. He helped them stack, but his thoughts blurred out their conversation. They spoke to him a few times, and laughed when he didn’t answer.

  “He’s somewhere else right now,” said Arvin. Pete moved his hand in front of Ry’s face. “Come back,” he said. “Anybody there?”

  Ry came back into focus. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry. I was thinking about something.”

  “What’s on your mind?” asked Arvin. “Hey…you all right?”

  Ry needed to talk it around. So he told them about the conversation he overheard between Del and Beth.

  “In a way,” he said, “It would be easier for me than anything else. Otherwise, it’s finding my relatives and them buying me plane tickets and flying me wherever when probably my grandpa just isn’t answering the phone. I hope. But what kind of person does that? Isn’t it kind of…extreme?”

  Arvin answered first. “Only compared to most people,” he said. “But that’s not saying much. Delwyn is a man who likes to—how should I say it—he likes to rise to the occasion.

  “Like driving you home all the way to Wisconsin. Nothing could make him happier. Unless maybe it’s picking up three hitchhikers, getting a cat down out of a burning building, and rebuilding someone’s transmission with nothing but a fingernail clipper along the way. Mainly I think he just wants to make sure everything’s okay.”

  Del called to Arvin to give him a hand, and Arvin started to head over. Then, turning and smiling his big smile, he said, “Oh, yeah. Watch out for damsels in distress, or you might never get home.”

  Pete had something he wanted to say, too.

  “It’s true that Del is an unusual person,” he said. “He has his own rules. You know how Thoreau talks about the guy who marches to the beat of a different drum? Well, Del marches to the beat of, like, I don’t know, a harmonica or something.

  “What I’m saying is, sometimes it might seem like he’s out of his mind. Maybe he is, in a way. I mean, who isn’t, right? But don’t worry. You’ll be okay.”

  Then he said, “Hey, I better go help those guys.” And off he went.

  But Beth materialized beside Ry like the third visitation, the Ghost of Christmas Future.

  “Do you think Del is nuts?” Ry asked her.

  “Who said that?” asked Beth.

  “Pete,” said Ry.

  Beth snorted. “I guess he should know, right?”

  “Not exactly,” said Ry. “He said that Del marches to the beat of a harmonica.”

  Beth tilted her head back and let out a “Ha!”

  “Okay,” she said. “That I’ll buy. That’s actually pretty good.”

  Ry told her how he had heard Del’s idea through the kitchen window. And how he didn’t know what to think about it.

  “Are you worried?” she asked. “Because you don’t need to be.” She seemed about to go on, to say something more, when Del approached and said, “Worried? What are you worried about?”

  Flustered, Ry said, “I’m worried about my grandpa. How he’s not answering the phone.”

  “Let’s go find out what’s going on,” said Del.

  “I already told him about your idea,” said Beth. Just to keep things simple.

  “What if something happened to him?” said Ry. “What if—?”

  “Then we would have to go find your parents,” said Del.

  Ry looked at him. Trying to tell if Del was serious. He couldn’t tell.

  “I don’t even know exactly where they are,” he said. “There are, like, a thousand islands down there. And I don’t have any money. It would be impossible.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Beth. “Those are magic words to Del. But I don’t think even you can drive to a Caribbean island, Del.”

  “We’d have to get to San Juan,” said Del. “Then we’d have to borrow a boat.”

  “San Juan,” said Beth. “Hmm…isn’t that where Yulia lives?”

  “It’s just a hypothetical situation,” said Del. “It’s pretty unlikely that it would ever actually come up.”

  Maybe that piece of the conversation made driving to Wisconsin seem completely reasonable. Because then the talk went from whether they should go, to which vehicle they should take. Not the double-decker; there were only two of them. Del decided on a Willys. He had two. They were really old Jeep station wagons. He had modified them in a number of ways, one being that he made them longer in the back, so that two sleeping bags could fit there, stretched out full length. And he decided that, if they were going, they might as well get started. Before Ry knew it, Del had thrown the sleeping bags in and they were saying good-bye.

  Beth took Ry’s head between her hands and kissed him on each cheek. She was that kind of person. She also gave him a little peck on his bruised eyebrow.

  “Makes you look like a tough customer,” she said. Then she took his right hand in both of hers and shook it.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, still holding on. “I’m betting everyone is fine. I bet it’s just a bunch of mix-ups.”

  “Watch out for those damsels,” said Arvin. “If you see one, make sure Del is looking the other way.”

  “What damsels?” asked Del.

  “Just joking,” said Arvin. He winked at Ry.

  “Well, I guess we better go then,” said Del.

  And then they were going, backing out of the driveway, waving good-bye, rolling down the street. Houses, streets, minutes, and miles came and went, all ordinary enough. Ry could not identify the odd sensation he had as they rolled along. Maybe it was what a lobster feels when it finds itself in a pot of water that started out cold enough but seems to be starting to boil. Or what a snake feels as it warms on a rock, having shed the skin it has outgrown. Or maybe it was just the truck’s heater in the cool of the evening. But it seemed to si
gnal the beginning of something, a change. A sea change. Or, in this landlocked place, a shifting of the ground beneath.

  Lights were appearing: headlights, dashboard lights, lights in houses. It was the hour when lights start to matter. They were exiting New Pêche almost exactly twenty-four hours after Ry had entered it. One day.

  Back out into the uninhabited veldt they went. From the inside of the Willys, though, with a half-eaten Skilletburger wrapped in paper in one hand and the other half working its charms within him, the friendly thrum of the engine, another human being nearby, even scratchy music fighting its way through the airwaves and out of the old radio, the darkling world outside them seemed large and lonely in a more homey, though still mysterious way. The oncoming night blurred and swallowed up most of the vastness, leaving Ry and Del a more manageable, headlight-sized portion to deal with. Two lit cones merging into one, gray road, white and yellow traces of paint, the shoulder of gravel, dirt, and weeds. Occasionally the headlights of an oncoming car or truck appeared in the distance, grew closer, then swept by with a Doppler-ating groan.

  When the burger and the cola were long gone, the darkness around the headlights was all enveloping, and focusing on the lit patch of asphalt always moving under them was like watching a scene in a movie where nothing happens, where nothing ever will happen. As if the camera was left on accidentally, pointed at nothing, and you wait for the scene to change. It was then that a picture formed itself in Ry’s mind. The clutter on Del’s countertop. Including his phone, plugged into the kitchen wall. Four hours behind them. He reached into his pocket.

  Crap.

  Is it any different to have a phone when no one you call answers, than not to have a phone at all? It did seem different. If you had the phone, there was the possibility that someone would answer, eventually. The night outside seemed blacker without it. Bleaker.

  But at least they were on their way to his house.

  The engine balked and stuttered, then stopped. They rolled for a short distance in silence before Del guided the truck off the road, where it came to a standstill, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere.

  “Damn,” he said.

  But he sounded happy.

  PART TWO

  IN WHICH OUR HEROES WALK DOWN THE LONELY HIGHWAY, AT LEAST ONE OF THEM HOPING FOR A RIDE

  Ry opened his eyes. He pulled the warm cocoon of his sleeping bag up to his chin. The other sleeping bag was rolled up. A dream had evaporated, but not before leaving stray scraps of unease in odd places in his brain. His gaze fell, unseeing, on the faded red-and-blue flowery curtains ruched across the windows. Faint reddish light through the curtains illuminated his private capsule to the dimness of a cave or the inside of a tavern. Footfalls crunched purposefully outside, then a sound that must have been the hood of the truck being raised on unwilling hinges. Tinkering sounds—tapping, frictional, scraping, loosening, and tightening sounds.

  Ry sat up, pushed open a crack between the two sides of the curtain, and peeked out. Maybe the morning light would reveal that the truck had died not far from a farmhouse or a gas station or a Burger King. But, no. He checked in three directions, the front being obscured by the raised hood. On the bright side, it looked like they were parked in a very low-crime zone. And it looked like another sunny day.

  He tried to recall how they had gotten inside so he could get back out. Oh, yeah, he had to crawl up to the front seat. And there were his new old shoes. He rolled up his bag, put on the shoes and his sweatshirt, crawled over, and let himself out into the cool morning air. His own footfalls crunched purposefully away toward a stand of brush, in case a car went by, he supposed, then back to where Del stood looking at something he held in his hand.

  Del reached up and pulled the hood down with a heavy thunk.

  “I guess we better start walking,” he said. “I think we’re closer to something ahead than back. Maybe we’ll pick up a ride.”

  Ry looked up and down the empty highway.

  “It is a highway,” Del said. “People do drive on it.

  “Anyway,” he said, a minute or two later, “I don’t think we’re too far from the next little town. I don’t think it can be more than five miles or so.”

  “Five miles?” said Ry.

  “That’s only a couple hours’ walk,” said Del. “I doubt it’s even that far.”

  Ry glanced back at the truck as they headed down the shoulder of the road. It seemed at home there in the timeless earthy expanse. It blended right in. It looked like it was planning to stay. Marry a local rock and put down roots. By the time they got back, there would probably be young tumbleweeds nesting and mating in the cab.

  Del showed him the automotive object he was carrying. He had extricated it from under the hood and taken it apart. It was a generator. He explained what it did and showed Ry where the wire that wrapped around it had broken. It would have to be soldered back together. It would just wrap around one less time.

  “Couldn’t we sort of twist it together, like a twisty thing on a bread bag?” asked Ry.

  “No,” said Del, “it wouldn’t be a good-enough contact. And it would be lumpy. And besides that, it would be shoddy.”

  He said the word “shoddy” as if it tasted bad to have it in his mouth. As if Ry had suggested taking food meant for a hungry child.

  “Sorr-ree,” said Ry wryly. “It was just an idea.”

  Del’s eyes were hidden by the shadow of his sunglasses and his cap from the morning brightness that doused them from the east, but his cheeks and what Ry could see of his mouth seemed to be in the shape of being amused.

  Ry didn’t have sunglasses or a cap to shade his eyes, so he looked down or off to the side a lot, to avoid the glare. To the left, the north, he saw the strand of trees that meant water, a stream or a river. He thought of his lost boot. What if it was floating along right beside them? That would be kind of ironic. Maybe they should go look. Although now he didn’t have the other one. He had chucked it into a trash can outside the thrift shop.

  Another river thought popped into his mind, and he reached down into the corner of the cargo pocket on his shorts and fished out the little skull. He had forgotten about it. It weighed almost nothing. It was kind of amazing that he had slept in his shorts for two nights without crushing it, or feeling it.

  “What kind of animal do you think this was?” he asked, handing it to Del. Del took it and looked it over with interest, but without breaking his stride.

  “Where did you find it?” he asked.

  Ry told him, and said, “First I wondered what happened to him, then I wondered, why aren’t there little skulls all over; why is this the only one?”

  “I think nature is more efficient than we are at garbage disposal,” said Del. “But it does seem like there would be more of them, like they would take a while to go away, when you think of the really old ones that they find.”

  Handing it back to Ry, he said, “It’s not my area of expertise, but it must have been some kind of a rodent. I couldn’t say what kind.”

  “Probably the predators chomp them right up, even their skulls,” said Ry. “Probably fifty percent of what we’re walking around on is undigested skull bits.”

  Del grinned. “You might be right about that,” he said. “Though I’d prefer to think about it a little less graphically.”

  A spattering of cars and trucks had zipped past in one direction or the other as they walked down the road, but no one had stopped. Finally the rasp of a dragging muffler approached from behind and slowed to keep pace alongside them. The muffler trailed from the underside of a road boat, a slab on wheels, an Oldsmobile. The car rolled to a stop. It was white, with a spray of rust speckled thick across the hood where blowing sand had blasted away the paint. The window lowered and the driver leaned over and said, “You fellas need a lift?”

  Del stepped up, rested his hands on top of the door, and peered in.

  “Just to the next town, if you’re going that far,” he said. “
We’re having a little car trouble.”

  “Hop in,” said the man. “You’ll both have to ride up front; the backseat seems to be full.”

  They could see that was true; the back was piled high with cardboard cartons.

  Ry slid to the middle and Del sat down beside him and pulled the door slab shut. Ry fished surreptitiously behind himself, searching for a seat belt in the crevice, but with no luck. The driver wore no seat belt and Del didn’t seem to have found one either, and Ry guessed that no seat belts had been worn in this car for a long, long time.

  They lurched forward and slammed to a halt to let another car fly by, then peeled out onto the highway. In no time they reached their cruising speed of Mach one. Ry was just guessing at this; the speedometer needle lay lifeless at zero. The landscape rattled by. The air-freshening cardboard pine tree jiggled a few inches in front of his nose, intertwined with a Saint Christopher’s medal.

  Ry slipped his hands between his knees to take up less space and to conceal his crossed fingers.

  RIDING WITH CARL

  Their host was Carl. Wooly coils of silvery-white hair forested the back and sides of his head, thinning to a zone of barren scrub at the tree line of the shiny dome of his head. His mustache was waxed into handlebars. He was comfortably rounded, like a small planet, with an atmosphere made up of warmth and good humor and aftershave.

  “So,” he asked, “are you from around here, or just passing through?”

  He wanted to hear all about their car trouble and where they were headed and where they were from. When they told him, he said, “Is that right.” Or, “Isn’t that something.” As if it was the most interesting thing he had come across yet.

  The sediment of dirt deposited evenly across the windshield, punctuated by the dried fluids of unfortunate insects, glowed incandescent in the sunlight. It was like trying to see through dandelion fluff.