As Easy As Falling Off The Face Of The Earth Part 6

Ry was worried, a little, about "nice." Maybe more than a little. Like five-eighths. But he didn't say so.

His inner voice issued warnings. He climbed up into the cab anyway. Why did he? Because sometimes it's hard to tell if your inner voice is wise, or if it's made out of your fears and your mother's fears and too many psycho-killer movies all balled up and clamoring. So he went along with the crowd outside of himself-Del and the sunny day and the s.h.i.+ny truck. It could have gone wrong, it could have been bad, but it turned out okay. The guy was just a guy. He knew how to drive. Before long they said, "Thanks" and climbed back down.

The w.i.l.l.ys looked like home, though.

When they got there, they made the fire. Del soldered the wire and put the generator back into its place. They climbed in, the w.i.l.l.ys started up, and off they went.

They had not been traveling long when, in the distance, a dot appeared. A dot with its headlights on, wavering from side to side, growing larger. Coming at them in their lane, skipping back over to the other. Boxy now, and whitish, way bigger than a bread box. A head, silvery, hanging out the window; a hand, too, reaching to adjust the outside mirror. Maybe for a better look at the other dot growing into a box behind it. That one had a flas.h.i.+ng red light on top. It was catching up.

As soon as they knew the first car was Carl, Del eased off the road out into the dirt where it was safe. No sooner done than Carl whizzed by, close enough that they could see his eyes, and the delight and terror in them. He saw them, too, and maybe it was trying to recall who they were that made him lose what grasp he had of what he was doing. The big old car went zigzagging; it tipped up onto two tires, the two on the right. For a long half second, it could have come back down on four or tipped right over, either one. It went over. And over again. And lifted slightly once more, but fell back down with a whomp.

Light wisps of smoke rose from the folded hood as the cop car pulled off, a distance behind. Wisps thickened to plumes as the cop doors flew open. Del had backed up, turning, as if to head down there, too. But the cops jumped from their car and ran, and it was plain that they were the ones in a position to do anything.

The plumes of smoke inflated to clouds as the policemen tried to open the door but couldn't. One of them reached inside, lifted Carl from under his armpits, hauled him mightily through the open window. Carl's arms wrapped around the cop's shoulders in an embrace, like a child with his mother. The cop set him down on the ground, but when his legs crumpled and he started to sink so rapidly, both men were there, lifting him back up. Hurrying him away, they looked back over their shoulders. The thick smoke grew thicker and blacker; a dark geyser poured up into the clear air.

And then, like the striking of a match, there was flame that exploded into fire. The car was a torch. It was impossible to look away from a fire like that. Del and Ry and Carl and the policemen all watched it, transfixed.

When the flames gave way to smoke again and another flas.h.i.+ng lighttopped vehicle could be seen, the two burly cops led subdued, small Carl to their car. Del pulled quietly back on to the road. There was nothing he could tell the police that they wouldn't see for themselves immediately. The w.i.l.l.ys headed east. They moved on. Everyone moved on, to whatever happened next.

Everyone thought about the fire, though, about what had happened and what could have happened. Del and Ry didn't say much for a while. Ry thought about Carl, all small and round and frightened. He thought about how he himself had been in that car, with Carl driving.

But there was a limit to how long he could think about all that. It got too deep. He had to rise to the surface.

"So," he said to Del brightly, "are you from around here, or are you just pa.s.sing through?"

NORTH DAKOTA.

They stopped in a town in North Dakota for lunch and to get gas. It was late for lunch. The place was almost empty.

Ry was going to have a burger, but then he thought he should eat some vegetables, so he ordered a BLT. And a milkshake.

"At least he didn't get killed," he said. Meaning Carl, and Del got that. He had been thinking of Carl, too. And something else.

"How old is your grandfather?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Ry. "Seventy, something like that."

"Is he pretty healthy?" asked Del.

"He plays tennis," said Ry. "He skis. And water-skis."

"How about mentally?" asked Del. "Do you think he would ever wander off? Is he like Carl?"

"No," said Ry. "He's not like that. He's still all there. He's probably the smartest person in our family."

So, if he wasn't answering the phone, or returning Ry's calls, why wasn't he? It had to be something just weird and simple. As weird and as simple as how just saying the words "our family" made Ry wonder if he still had one. Where was everyone?

He was glad there was Del. Otherwise, he might be living under that bridge in New Peche. In a cardboard box.

"You can imagine fifty million things," said Del, as if he had heard Ry's thoughts. "But only one thing happened. And most of the time, it's just a mix-up, not something bad. So you might as well not worry. Just go find out."

"I don't think I can help wondering," said Ry.

"That's why we're going there," said Del.

The waitress arrived with their food. It looked great. Like food for the G.o.ds.

"I didn't order a pickle," Del said to the waitress.

"Oh, we always put a pickle on," she said pleasantly.

"I don't like pickles," said Del. "I really don't even want it on the same plate as my food."

"Jeez," said Ry. "It's just a pickle. Here, I'll take it."

The waitress lifted her eyebrows and moved on.

"I can still smell it," said Del. "I really dislike the smell of vinegar." He said "vinegar" the same way he had said "shoddy." The same way you might say "cannibal." Ry thought he was overreacting a little.

Still, there was a stack of clean plates on a counter nearby, so he went and got one and brought it back. He transferred Del's sandwich and fries to the clean plate, saying, "My hands are clean. I just washed them." He set the used plate on the counter. Sitting back down, he said, "What about my pickle? Will it ruin your lunch if I have a pickle?"

"I don't know why you would want to," Del said. "But it's your life."

Ry ate both pickle spears. They were tart and crisp and succulent. The soft white bread was homemade. The bacon melted and crunched in his mouth. The tomato was ripe and tasty. The lettuce was just lettuce, but it did what it was supposed to do; it was green. The milkshake, chocolate, was cold and thick, yet not completely impossible to suck up through the straw. And there were fries. Fresh, warm, tender-crisp, and salty.

Ry was suffused with a sense of well-being.

Del said, "Let's just drive straight through."

"What?" said Ry. Because he had been immersed in eating. By the time he finished saying it, he knew what Del had said; it had registered. Del opened the road atlas he had brought in with him. He flipped back and forth between pages marked with forefingers and thumbs. He had pulled out reading gla.s.ses, and they slipped down his beakish nose, making him appear older. Almost old. Or maybe that was because his cap was off, and with his head tilted down his scalp shone from beneath thinning hair.

"Might as well," he said. "See how far we can get, anyway. I think we can make it by morning. Then you can yell at your grandfather for not answering the phone."

He looked up at Ry. His grin was impish. Now he seemed younger again.

"Wasn't there stuff you wanted to do on the way?" asked Ry. "Errands?"

"Nothing that can't wait," said Del. "I can do it on my way back. Let's just go."

So they headed out across the rest of North Dakota. There was a lot of that left.

Not to mention all that Minnesota.

Not to mention all that Wisconsin.

DOGS.

ROAD TALK.

With lightning flas.h.i.+ng in the distance, Ry said how he wanted to go home but that it wasn't exactly like home, just a house with their stuff in it.

"The dogs will make it feel better," he said. "And my grandfather. a.s.suming he's there."

After riding along for another half hour, he said, "I have my learner's permit. I could help drive if you want. I think."

For a while, their conversation was instructional. Del telling Ry what to do. For a while, Ry forgot about his predicament. He was absorbed in operating the w.i.l.l.ys. It was a little different than a Focus wagon, though he had already started to learn how to drive with a stick. This stick came out of the dashboard. It was called Three on a Tree.

Del didn't like the kind of steering where you only had to turn the steering wheel a little, so he had changed the gear ratio and exchanged the original steering wheel for one from some other old kind of car. It was huge. It was like steering a s.h.i.+p down the road. The road itself was straight. Once he got used to the driving, Ry's mind was able to meander around other topics at the same time.

"So, do you really have errands between Montana and Wisconsin?" he asked Del. Because looking around, he couldn't think what anyone would do here. No offense to North Dakota, but it was pretty subtle so far. There were a lot of green fields, with ponds and waterfowl, sometimes a bright yellow field. There were wide-open s.p.a.ces and a lonely kind of green monotonous peacefulness that he knew his mother would really get off on. If she could go for a hike with the dogs, and if she could find a good cup of coffee. But he was still young and preferred some stimulation. Other human beings, for example. Other young human beings. Maybe groups of them, though even one or two would be a start.

"Not errands, exactly," said Del. "Just people I like to visit when I can."

"Where do they live?" asked Ry.

"I have a couple of friends in St. Paul," said Del. "And a friend down in San Juan that I might drop in on."

"San Juan?" said Ry. "In Puerto Rico? I wouldn't call that 'on the way.'"

"Just depends on how you look at it," said Del. "Once you leave home, anything can be on the way."

He told Ry about how, a long time ago, after he got out of the army, he decided to go around the world. He hitchhiked a lot, and washed dishes. Bought or found old bicycles, fixed them up, rode them around, and then left them behind for someone else. He bought a car once. An army surplus ambulance. In Australia. And then he decided to drive around the perimeter. Of Australia.

Del was not a talkative guy. Ry had to keep saying, "And then what happened?" and "Where did you go after that?"

"How did you decide where to go next?" asked Ry. "Did you have a sort of a plan?"

"My plan was to go from east to west," said Del. "But we would hear about someplace that sounded interesting, and we would go there."

"So you weren't by yourself?" asked Ry.

"Sometimes I was," said Del. "But you meet people."

Somewhere in the Australia part of the story, Del and Ry traded back and Del was driving again. It turned into a bedtime story in India, while some guy was trying to sell fake emeralds to Del and a friend he had met up with. Ry woke up in his sleeping bag in the back of the Jeep. He didn't remember how he had gotten there.

The vibration of the truck bed, the m.u.f.fled rumble of the engine, the feel of the road b.u.mping beneath told him they were still moving. Through the night. Somewhere in Minnesota or Wisconsin. Getting closer to the mystery he was trying to think of as home.

Del was talking, up in the front. As if he were talking to someone. And it came to Ry that this had happened before. He remembered, then, half waking on Del's couch, peering through barely parted eyelids as Del argued with himself, and how unsettled it made him feel. He tried to pay attention now, because he wasn't quite as tired this time. It was hard to hear. Rain pelted the roof, and the wipers were working.

"I've never been there," he heard Del say. "But I've heard it's pretty."

Maybe he was just talking to stay awake.

"Do you do much rafting?" Del asked.

Ry waited to hear how he would answer himself. Then was startled to hear a different voice, right behind his head, saying, "Oh, yeah, now and then."

"I'm more into biking," the voice said. It was a different person. Del must have picked up a hitchhiker. Ry lay still, listening. He hoped the guy wasn't going to stay with them for the whole trip, like the ones Del picked up in Australia. He wanted to ride in the front. Although, theoretically, Ry's part in the trip was supposed to be done by morning anyway.

I guess it doesn't really matter, he said to himself as his eyes closed. He rose almost to consciousness again when he felt the brakes grabbing hold, heard the door open, the hitchhiker saying, "Thanks," Del saying, "Good luck." The door banged shut, then they were moving again. The rain was still pelting.

"It's not just a pickle," Del said into the rainy night. "It's the principle. I didn't order a pickle. I didn't want a pickle. So why do they bring me a pickle?"

Half an hour later, he added, "I shouldn't have to list all the things I don't want them to bring me."

Ry didn't hear him. He was dreaming about climbing the face of a cliff wearing flip-flops. Sometimes the flip-flops changed into Pumas. Or waterlogged hiking boots. When he had almost reached the top, he lost his footing (and his hand-ing) and went falling through the air. The funny thing was, he fell slowly. He could see everything on the cliffside with clarity. It all seemed very beautiful: A bird watching him from its hollow. A stubborn flower growing out of a minute fissure. The rock itself, in layers of changing color.

He couldn't grab onto anything, but he didn't seem to be worried. He was pretty sure his dad was waiting at the bottom with the car.

"Was it fun?" his dad would say, looking up from his magazine.

"In a way," Ry would answer. "I mean, it wasn't life threatening."

Everything was still, except for the light, peaceful snoring. The snoring emanated from the sleeping lump of Del, curling away into a question mark. Ry sat up and pushed the sleeping bag from his sweaty legs. It was already warm in their sauna, and stuffy. He pushed the flowered curtains apart a few inches and looked outside to see where they were.

He saw a parking lot. Empty, except for them, so it was still early. Beyond the parking lot was a small wasteland, and then what looked like a dealers.h.i.+p for manufactured homes. Remnants of clouds hung low, but offered no clues about what location they overhung.

Trying to be quiet, Ry crawled over into the front seat and let himself out. As muggy as it was, the air felt fresher than it had inside. It felt a lot fresher than he felt himself. Just checking on that, he took a whiff. Holy c.r.a.p. To put it politely.

The parking lot had an abandoned aspect. Weeds grew up verdantly through ruptures in the asphalt, where frost heaves had lifted it then let it collapse. Broken gla.s.s, gravel, and litter lay undisturbed on the rolling, buckled surface. A fallen light pole rested diagonally over the weathered paint lines marking out parking spots.

In the middle of it all was a shopping plaza. Or at least that's what it had been, once. It looked as if it might be a dead plaza now. Not completely dead-a couple of storefronts seemed to be toughing it out. There were lights on in the Laundromat, and the Something-or-other Diner. Ry squinted. It was the Good Deal Diner.

A small flock of cars huddled up close to it. Ry watched another car come in off the road, cross the parking lot, and join the flock. The car doors opened wide, people spilled out, the car doors banged shut, the people milled over and inside. Their chatter reached Ry as a cheerful murmur. He turned and looked the other way and up and down the road to see what else there was. Traffic was light. It was one of those roads at the edge of a town where fast food places and quick-lubes and discount furniture stores sprout up in the margins of the farm fields. A homey old farmhouse nestled in a clump of trees a ways back, pretending it was still in the countryside. Across the road was a Home Depot. It could be anywhere. Meaning, so could they.

Del was still snoring. He had driven most of the night. Ry decided to go to the diner and use the restroom and get some breakfast. He rolled down the window for ventilation, then gently clinked the door shut.

He tried to wash up a little in the restroom. He could only go so far; there was just one sink and people kept coming in and out. The bruise on his brow was fading nicely, going yellow like a leaf in autumn, but not beautiful like that. The swelling was way down, the shape of his eye opening was almost normal. He checked his wallet, went out into the restaurant, and sat on a stool at the counter.

Breakfast and lunch menus were up on the wall, on black signs with white plastic letters and numbers that could be moved around by pus.h.i.+ng them into horizontal grooves. Everything sounded great. Ry glanced at the breakfasts of his nearby fellow diners to see what looked good. It all looked good.

He ordered waffles. And an omelet. And sausage. As he waited, he let his thoughts wander. His gaze wandered, too, bouncing here and there. It bounced on a sticky circle on the counter where the syrup dispenser had been and stuck there for a few seconds. Followed the fly that also got stuck there, then licked his way free, like shoveling snow from around the tires of a car, and flew off in that drunk-driver fly way.

He half-listened to a loud conversation in a booth behind him about someone named Bob, who was a b.u.m. Or not. There were two opinions. The people had that Wisconsin way of talking: "Baahhb" for "Bob," "waahh-ter" for "water."

He looked up at the lunch part of the menu on the wall. It listed everything you would expect. At the bottom, in quotation marks, the sign said, BEST BURGERS IN WAUPATONEKA. His eyes reached "Waupatoneka" and stopped dead in their tracks. Then looked out the window. Nothing looked familiar. But, then- The waitress brought his food. She had noticed the funny-looking car out in the parking lot when she came in to work. She had seen Ry crawl out of it. She even happened to be looking out the window when he sniffed his armpit, and smiled to herself. She was aware of the amount of time he spent in the little restroom, and could tell by the wetness of Ry's hair around his face that he had been doing a little cleaning up. He was cute, even with the nasty-looking bruise on his eyebrow. He looked temporarily scruffy, but you could tell by his manner that he was a nice kid.

"Are you from around here?" she asked.

"Yeah," said Ry. "I live here." He was going to add, "I think," but that would have required explaining. It was way too long a story to tell to a waitress bringing you breakfast. Though she seemed kind, and he wouldn't have minded.

She was unconvinced anyway. Reflexively, they both looked out the window at the w.i.l.l.ys. Or where it had been. It wasn't there now. The waitress looked back at Ry. His face had changed.

The parking lot was empty everywhere Ry could see, except for the cars parked right out front. So, what was happening; did Del just leave? Wake up and drive away? Here's your town; you're on your own.

It seemed weird that he would go without saying good-bye, without saying anything at all. Although Ry himself had done that. He had crawled out of the Jeep and left without a word while Del was sleeping. But he thought Del would be sleeping for a long time. Del had driven all night.

So here he was in Waupatoneka, on his own. Okay. It wasn't a part of Waupatoneka he had seen before, that he could recall, but it couldn't be too far from his house. The town wasn't that huge.