Jeremiah Press

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Chapter One

I didn't know anything special was going on when Nana Maralyn asked me to go walking with her in the orchard that day.

It was late one evening after supper was over, and we walked on tiptoes so we could listen to the crickets.  Nana always used to tell me they were like people, and sang their prettiest songs whenever they were saddest, when they knew that winter was coming.  She used to say stuff like that all the time.  It was  late October in East Tennessee, so I guess they didn't have much time left.

Nana kept quiet, but I could feel the soft crease in her palm where she rested her hand on my bare shoulder.  Her claws were really sharp that night, digging into my skin like tacks, and I shifted my weight uncomfortably.

"Be still, Zach," she commanded.  I quit squirming; Nana had a way of pinching the very blood out of you when you didn't mind her.

There was a scrabbly sound in the weeds and we both froze.  Nana smiled a tight little smile and dug her claws into my shoulder a  bit deeper with anticipation. 

We didn't have long to wait.  In a minute a brown rabbit poked his head up from the tangled honeysuckle and hopped out beside the path.  He sniffed the air with his wrinkled little nose, and then crouched down to nibble on the dry grass.

I felt Nana's muscles bunching, and then she moved like greased lightning.  The rabbit had time to give a high-pitched squeal before Nana sank her teeth into him and ripped his throat out.  A bunch of hot steamy blood gushed down all over her chin and neck and soaked the front of her dress.  She licked her lips and used her claws to tear open the rabbit's belly and scoop out a handful of wormy guts. 

I turned away, not particularly interested.  Sometimes it was pretty cool to watch her eat stuff like that, but it was gross, too.  Besides, it stank.  I couldn't imagine why anybody liked it, but I guessed it was one of those nasty things like spinach or hot mustard that nobody liked until they grew up.

When she was done, Nana tossed the gristle and bones back into the honeysuckle and carefully wiped her mouth and hands on the napkin in her pocket.  She saved a little bit of the blood in a sparkly old perfume bottle she had.  I wondered why, but before I could ask her she took my hand and led me on down the path.  She seemed to feel better, and didn't  lean on my shoulder anymore after that.  Much to my relief, I might add; I could still feel the prickle of her claws.

I was only twelve then, and I remember  I went barefooted, knowing it might be for the last time that year.  I liked the feel of the grass tickling between my toes, and felt sorry for Nana Maralyn in her big black boots.

By and by we came to a little clearing with a flat rock sticking up out of the ground.  Nana smiled, and went ahead of me so she could go sit on the rock.  She closed her eyes at first and took a deep breath, then opened them and looked at me.

"Come here, Zach," she said, holding  out her arms to me.  I went to her and sat down, wondering what she was thinking.  She took a little flute from her purse and began to play a song I thought I might have heard before, but I wasn't sure.  It made me sleepy, and when Nana Maralyn got up and nudged me down flat on my back on the rock, I didn't resist her very much. 

I could hardly keep my eyes open. 

She went on playing that tune for a long time, and I wasn't exactly sure when it finished.  I think I might have gone to sleep, because the next thing I remember was Nana painting something cool and wet on my chest.  It felt kind of nice, but when she tried to put something in my mouth I opened my eyes to see what she was doing. 

Moonlight flooded down all around us from the fat full moon.  Nana had the sparkly perfume bottle in her hand, and held my mouth open while she shook a few drops of blood on my tongue.

"Oh, yuck, Nana, you know I hate blood," I murmured feebly, trying to spit and sputter.  Nana wouldn't let me, and finally I swallowed it just to get rid of the nasty taste.  She started playing her flute again after that and I drifted back to sleep.

The next time I woke up it was morning, and I was still lying cold and stiff on that darned rock.  Nana Maralyn was nowhere to  be seen.  I couldn't believe she’d left me to sleep in the woods all night. 

I sat up and looked at my bare chest, which was covered with symbols painted on with some kind of gritty white paint.  It flaked off when I touched it and smelled like old cough drops or Mentholatum.  I scraped it off me and stood up, shivering a little.  I knew what had happened, then.  Nana Maralyn had done the Ceremony on me.

I was suddenly furious at her for tricking me like that, and I walked back to the house fuming.

They were all waiting for me, of course, happy and pleased as punch.  They always were, the morning after going hunting under a full moon, but today they seemed extra specially jolly.  Mama had baked a cake like it was my birthday or something, and Nana Maralyn smiled and kissed me.  Daddy picked me up with a huge bear-hug and said, "My boy's all grown up today!" like it was the proudest day of his life.  Even my little sister Lola was grinning at me with that gap-toothed grille of hers.

I'd been getting into a blacker mood with every passing second, and finally I couldn't hold back any longer.

"I don't want to be a monster!" I screamed, about to cry and even more furious at them because of that.

The smile faded from Nana Maralyn's lips, and Daddy looked like somebody had suddenly stuck a lemon in his mouth.  There was dead silence in the kitchen.

"Yes, well, I guess we all felt that way at first, Zach," Daddy finally said, with a forced laugh.  He clearly had never felt that way, but his comment broke the ice and let everybody go back to joking and bustling around.  He put me down and I stalked off to the corner, pretending I was headed for the cookie jar back there, but really I just wanted to be left alone.  I was still madder than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.  But of course I couldn't get away that easy. 

"Once you get used to it I know you'll change your mind, Zach.  It's not nice to be so nasty and make everybody unhappy, is it?" Mama whispered to me.  I couldn't help feeling guilty when she put it like that,  so I tried to smile and let on like I was convinced.  I wasn't happy though, and I think they could tell.  I slipped away as soon as I could and went up to my room.

It was Saturday, but since there was nothing else to do I tried to work on my math homework.  It was easy stuff, so that didn't last too long.  I cupped my chin in my hands and wondered how long it would be before my claws would start growing, and what rabbit guts really tasted like.  Would I like them better with salt, or ketchup, or maybe cheese?  I laughed, even though it wasn't all that funny.  I pushed my tongue around my canine teeth, imagining that they already felt sharper.

Maybe I ought to explain a few things.  Everybody in my family except me and Lola is a monster.  They get mad at me when I use that word, but it's the truth, isn't it?  Daddy says the right name for what we are is loup-garou, but I don't care; as far as I'm concerned a monster is a monster.  Lola's not old enough to be one yet, cause she's only six.  It's not that you have to be any certain age; it's just that they couldn't trust her to behave herself. 

But anyway, whenever they decide she's old enough, they'll take her out to a flat rock somewhere, and put her to sleep, and paint the right symbols on her chest with peppermint and henbane, and put a little blood in her mouth, and leave her to sleep all night under the hunter's moon.  I never used to know that every full moon in the year has its own special name, but they do, and none of the others will work except that one.  I don't know why, but that's what Nana Maralyn told me.

I had known for a long time that I would probably have to be a monster when I grew up.  I was never very happy about it, and they all knew how I felt.  I’m not sure why I hated the idea so much.  I just never could get excited over the thought of  killing something and tearing it to pieces with my bare hands just for the fun of it; not even a rabbit or a deer.  It didn’t seem right, somehow, and the older I  got the less I liked it. 

They always used to tell me I'd grow out of feeling that way.  I never did, though, and the fact that all of them had gotten in cahoots together to trick me into it anyway, whether I liked it or not. . .  I was pretty steamed, let me tell you.  That was the last straw, as far as I was concerned.  They could go out and eat rabbits  and toads and rats all day long if they felt like it, but I wasn't having any part of it. 

If I could only think how.

Almost a month went by and I never felt any different, so I started to get curious.  I wolfed down my lunch at school and spent every second I could spare in the library, reading books about monsters and werewolves and things like that.  The other kids started to notice it after a while, but I said I was doing a special report for the young authors' fair.  That got me off the hook; everybody knows how much I like to write. 

Most of the books were stupid, but I finally hit paydirt with a book about monsters that mentioned loup-garous on one page, even though it only had a little blurb about them that didn’t tell me much.  It said they were produced by a special kind of curse on ordinary people, and that silver was poisonous to a loup-garou, but only if they got scratched with it or it got in their blood some kind of way.  I didn't see how that part could really help me much, though.  I didn’t want to fight one, I just wanted to keep from having to become one myself.

On the other hand, the idea that you had to be cursed before you could become a loup-garou gave me an awful lot to think about.  Nobody ever told me about that part of it before.  I knew what a curse was, and when I found out that’s what was really happening it kinda scared me, to tell the truth.  It made me wonder what all else I didn’t know. 

So then I started looking up stuff about curses and ways to cure them.  They only mentioned one cure in the loup-garou book, and I didn't like it.  It said that you had to take the cursed person and strip him naked, and then have twelve girls beat  him with switches from an alder tree by the light of a full moon until he passed out.  I decided to pass that one up unless I absolutely had no other choice.  I wasn't sure what alder was, anyway, and how would I ever live such a thing down?  I’d never be able to show my face at school again for the rest of my life.

I got my act together at home, too.  I convinced everybody that I was thrilled about becoming a loup-garou, and I got them to tell me stories and answer questions.  Daddy seemed especially pleased with all this interest, so he was the one I worked on the hardest.  Oh, I  laid it on thick. 

Me and my dad had never really talked much or been close, but this was something he cared about.  We had several long discussions, and one day I mentioned, like it didn't interest me much, that I'd read somewhere that it was possible to "cure" a loup-garou and turn him back into a regular person.  He looked instantly suspicious for a minute.

"What have you been reading, Zach?"   he demanded, scowling.

"It was only a story," I said smoothly, and told him about the ceremony with the switches and the twelve girls.  He laughed until his face turned red and tears squeezed from  the corners of his eyes.

"I'd give my eyeteeth to see it, Zach, but I'm afraid when it was over you'd simply have a very sore young loup-garou the next day," he said.  I tried to show how relieved I was to hear that, and I think it must have encouraged him to trust me.

"No, Zach, you don't have to worry about anybody trying to cure you.  It can’t be done.  The only way to cure a loup-garou is not to ever become one at all.  After next week you've got nothing to worry about," he promised me.

I pounced on that.

"Really? What's next week?" I asked innocently, already plotting how I might avoid it.

"Well, next week's the full moon again, and of course you can't really be a full-fledged loup-garou until you make your first kill that night,” he said. 

That was a very interesting little tidbit  of information, and I filed it away for more thought later.  In the meantime, I put on my best worried look.

“But what if I’m sick that night or something?” I asked anxiously.  Daddy thought about that awhile.

“Hmm. . . well, now, that’s a good question, Zach.  I can’t remember a time when it ever happened before, but if it did then I guess it would mean you’d have to wait another year and redo everything next October,” he said.   He paused a few seconds, and looked at me with his brow wrinkled up, like he was trying to guess what I was thinking.

“I wouldn’t worry about it though; I’m sure everything will be fine,” he finally said.  He smiled a toothy grin because he knew it would make me laugh, and that was all we said about it.

I laid in bed that night with my eyes open for a long time, just thinking about stuff.   I had my answer now about how to keep from becoming a monster (or loup-garou, or werewolf, or whatever the heck you wanted to call it), but the problem was, I didn’t like the answer much.  I would have rather just stripped naked and let the girls beat me with switches than what I was going to have to do instead.  That would have been over in one night, but this was forever.  I was going to have to run away.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking.  It was a crazy idea, and surely there must have been an easier way if I’d only thought about it awhile longer.  But see, I didn’t have the time  to think very long, and I knew my family real well.  This was a really big deal to them. 

I could maybe do something to botch  up this year’s hunt and make them have to wait and curse me again next fall, but even that wasn’t  a sure thing.  Even if I pretended to be deathly sick, they could probably still bring a mouse in my room and make me kill it, and after that it would all be over.  But suppose I did manage to mess it up?  What then? 

They’d be suspicious then, that’s what.  They’d keep me locked up in the attic all year  if they had to, and then I really wouldn’t have any way to escape.  There wouldn’t be any talking about it and they wouldn’t take no for an answer, ever.  They were so convinced that being a monster was the best thing since sliced bread, it was hopeless to try to change their minds.  If I wanted to stay myself and not be cursed, then the only choice I had was to leave.  It was that simple.  I knew that just as sure as God made little green apples. 

Knowing all that, it didn’t take much thought before I decided I had to get away  now, while they still thought I loved the idea   of being a monster. 

The really hard part was, I knew I could never come back.  Some people talk like making choices is easy as long as you know what you want, but that’s just something stupid people say.  I know better.

I looked over at my window, where the moon was pouring in through the curtains, bright and big and almost full.  There wasn’t much time left.

Chapter Two

I slipped out of bed like a cat, not making the least bit of noise.  Nana especially had very good ears, and she wasn’t far down the hall.  I didn’t turn on the light or anything because I didn’t want to attract attention, and the moon was bright enough to see by anyway.

Once I made up my mind, there were some things I needed to do right away to get ready.  I wasn’t sure exactly when the next full moon would be, but it couldn’t be more than three or four days off at the most.  Tomorrow was Friday, and I was afraid it might come before I had another school day.  Daddy had said “next week”, but that could mean Sunday for all I knew.  My best bet was to get away while everybody thought I was at school, because then I’d have almost a whole day before anybody thought to look for me.  That meant I needed to leave tomorrow, because Monday might be too late.  

I tiptoed across the room and got my backpack from the floor beside my desk.  Then I very quietly and carefully emptied all the books out, making sure to slide them ‘way far on the top shelf of the closet where maybe nobody would see them or think to look.  I  kept Robinson Crusoe with me though, so I’d have something to read.  I bought it at the book fair at school a week ago and I was only about halfway finished with it. 

For clothes, I gathered some jeans and t-shirts and other things and put them in the bottom of the backpack, making sure to roll them up as tight as I could so they wouldn’t take up as much room.  I didn’t dare take all my clothes, you know; somebody might notice that.  So I just took an extra pair of everything.  That way I could wear one set while I washed the other. 

I took my Swiss Army knife too, just in case.  Whenever Robinson Crusoe got in a pickle, he always had to have tools and weapons and things, so I figured I’d better have something too.  You never knew what you might run into.  I didn’t think I’d get captured by cannibals or anything, but if I did then I wanted to be ready.

I also took my little radio and headphones that I got for Christmas last year, just for something to do.  I couldn’t use it too much because it ate batteries like candy, but I thought it would be good to have it just in case.

Money would have helped a lot, but all  I had was twenty-four dollars and ten cents.  I’d been saving it up in a sock stuffed back behind everything in the top drawer of my desk, but I knew it wasn’t much.  Mama and Daddy were too stingy to give me an allowance or anything, so I had to pick up cash whenever I got the chance, running errands and stuff like that. 

If it had been just two weeks ago I would have had almost a hundred bucks from raking yards and stuff, but I spent most of that at the book fair.  I wished I had it back, now.  But Mama always said there’s no use crying over spilt milk, so I’d just have to make what I had last for as long as I could.  Maybe I could rake some more leaves or mow grass or something like that if I had to.

There was also food to think about, and that was a tough one.  There wasn’t much I could carry with me because it was so darned bulky.  I didn’t mind drinking water all the time, but food was different.  I knew a little bit about what you could eat and what was poisonous out in the woods, but I couldn’t live on acorn soup and dandelion salad all the time.  I could catch fish, maybe, but that would get darned old after awhile. 

I was smart enough to know there might come a point when I’d be glad to have a fish, no matter how tired I was of them, so I took a box of hooks and a roll of fishing line from my tackle box and stuffed them in the backpack with my clothes.  You don’t really need anything else in a pinch, cause you can always dig up worms and cut a cane pole most anywhere.  You don’t even have to have a bobber, but if I wanted one I could use a little piece of dry wood.

That was about all I had in my own room that was worth taking, but there were  still some other things I needed from the rest of the house. 

For one thing, I needed some way to light a fire.  I knew there was a box of lighters downstairs in the drawer next to the refrigerator, and I decided to take all of those.   Lighting fires is a lot easier that way than if  you try to do all that stuff with sparks and dry wood shavings.  They taught us how to do that at Cub Scouts, and I thought it was silly even  back then.  I might be a country boy, but I wasn’t an idiot.

I slipped downstairs quiet as a mouse and got myself a glass of chocolate milk from the refrigerator.  That way if anybody heard  me and came to see what I was doing, I had a good excuse for being up. 

I rummaged around in the drawer until  I found the lighters.  There were three of them left, and I stuck them in my pocket.  I found some extra double-A batteries for my radio in there and I took those too.  Then I collected all the food I thought I could carry that wouldn’t be missed and wouldn’t spoil.  There was beef jerky, candy bars, some string cheese, a couple of little cans of Beanie Weenies, and three apples.  That should get me by for a little while at least. 

I was pretty satisfied that I had all the basics covered at that point.

You might be thinking I forgot about  the main thing in all this, like where I was gonna go after I left.  You’d be wrong though.   I knew I was in a tight spot and didn’t have too many choices right then, and that’s really what scared me the most.  It would be worse than doing nothing at all if I ran away and then got caught in a day or two, cause I knew I’d never get a second chance.  Let alone how embarrassing it would be. 

My friend Jonathan ran away last year, for a little while.  He ended up back home the very next day, as soon as he got hungry.  I didn’t think I’d have that to worry about, anyway, but the problem of where to go was a tough nut to crack. 

My first idea was to go out into the wild country behind the house and hide out for a couple of weeks until people stopped looking for me so hard.  I could camp out in the woods for that long, if I had to, and while I was there I could think about what to do next.  But the more I thought about it, the less I liked that idea.  People went in there to go hiking and fishing and stuff all the time, and even worse than that, Daddy and Mama and Nana hunted there whenever there was a full moon.  I was willing to bet my beard they’d look around out there first before they did anything else. 

Oh, I don’t really have a beard, you know.   But Mama always said I shouldn’t gamble and so I couldn’t bet something real, could I?  Anyway, I didn’t dare go somewhere like that, even for a little while.  It was too risky. 

So what other choices did I have?

Well, I could have asked one of my friends to hide me out for a while.  Jonathan probably would, if I asked him.  Or if he couldn’t, then there were a couple of others.  The only problem with that was, I wasn’t sure   I trusted any of them not to spill the beans and get me caught sooner or later.  Probably sooner. 

No, definitely not, come to think of it.  A secret like that was just too juicy not to tell somebody, and then that person has to tell somebody else, and then before you know it everybody knows.  And even if they could   keep their mouth shut, I knew they couldn’t hide me out forever.  It would only be putting off the problem, not solving it.

I sat there racking my brain trying to come up with a solution till I thought I might start to see smoke coming out of my ears.  I started to wonder if there even was a solution.

Then I hit on a good one, I thought; my uncle Justin.  I’m not sure what made me think of him right then.  I’d never met him, and I wasn’t sure if he even knew I existed.  Nobody had talked to him since before I was even born, as far as I knew. 

All I knew about him was a picture I’d seen in the back of Mama’s photo album.  He was her younger brother and (I gathered) not a monster.  I was never really clear on why not; Mama wouldn’t say much about him.  I just knew he wasn’t one and that because of that nobody would have anything to do with him. 

The only other thing I knew was that he lived somewhere in Texas, or at least he did the last time anybody heard anything.  That’s where Mama and Daddy were both from, so there was a good chance Justin might still live there. 

I knew Daddy grew up on Stonewall Street in Sulphur Springs, because I remembered hearing him and Nana mention it before.  I wasn’t totally sure about  Mama, but  I figured she couldn’t have lived too awful far from there.  

She wasn’t a monster till she met Daddy while they were in college, but then they moved to Tennessee and that was that.  I guess there were more rabbits here or something.  .  .  I really don’t know.

I’d never thought much about uncle Justin before, but now I started to wonder if he might help me.  He was the only family I had who wasn’t a monster, and surely that meant something, didn’t it?  Of course he didn’t know me from Adam and who could tell what he might think if I just showed up on his doorstep.  I didn’t know what kind of man he was, if he was rich or poor, nasty or kind, or anything at all really.  I might never even find him.  If you think finding a man named Justin Wilder who (maybe) lives somewhere in Texas is an easy thing to do, just try it sometime. 

The only thing I had to go on for sure was that picture in Mama’s album, and it must have been at least ten years old.  Could I even still recognize him after all that time?  Could anybody?  In the picture he was about sixteen, a thin and wiry sort of guy with a blond goatee and a smile that reminded me a little bit of the way Mama smiled sometimes.

I quit thinking about how hopeless it was, so it wouldn’t get me down.  I’m not sure exactly when I decided for sure I’d try to find Justin, but the more I thought about it the less   I could think of any better idea.

I wasn’t even really sure how to go about it, except to head for Sulphur Springs and see what I found when I got there.  I know it sounds like a hare-brained scheme, but like I said I really didn’t have much time to think.  I had to get out of town before I lost my only chance.  I figured I could decide what to do next after I got to Texas.

But if that was the plan, then I needed one more thing.  I catfooted into the living room and pulled Mama’s picture album off   the bookshelf.  I took the whole thing, partly because I didn’t want them to guess where I was going (which they might do if only the picture of Justin was missing), but mostly because there were pictures of everyone else   in there too, and I didn’t want to forget them. 

I didn’t think anybody would notice the album was missing.  Mama digitized all her photos a long time ago and stores them on CD now, mostly; she likes computers.  If anybody did notice the album was gone, it was a thousand to one they’d ever connect it with me.  And even if they did, they wouldn’t guess why.

I slipped back upstairs and put the food and the batteries and the picture album in my backpack along with the other stuff, then I zipped it up tight and went back to bed. 

In the morning I acted like it was a normal day.  I got ready for school just like always and ate a couple of extra pancakes for breakfast. I surprised Mama by giving her a kiss before I left.  I hadn’t done that in a while, and I didn’t know if I’d ever have the chance again.

“What was that for?” she asked me, laughing a little and putting her hand up to her cheek.

“Just because,” I told her, with an innocent look.  She smiled again and smoothed my hair down a bit, like she did every morning, and then she sent me down to the end of the lane to wait for the school bus.  She usually took Lola to school herself a little later on, and with a little luck nobody would know I was missing until sometime late this afternoon.

When I didn’t come home after school, they’d probably start calling around to see where I was, and then it wouldn’t take long  for them to find out I hadn’t been at school that day.  That’s when things would start to get hairy, and I knew I’d better be long gone  before then.  I figured I had about eight hours to make my getaway, maybe nine if I was really lucky.

I slipped into the edge of the woods on the far side of the highway, making sure I was far enough into the trees that nobody could possibly see me from the road.  Before long the bus came along and stopped at our lane, just   in case I was a little late getting out this morning.  Then when I didn’t come out, it went on again.  You couldn’t see the highway from the house, so I didn’t have to worry about anybody noticing that I didn’t get on the bus. 

I waited till it was completely out of sight before I came out of the woods again.  I had maybe thirty minutes before Mama came by with Lola, and during that time I had to do something quick.

I headed south along the highway, since that was the direction I needed to be going anyway.  It was a good thing Mama would be going the other way with Lola, but I knew I couldn’t count on that to last.  She might decide to visit one of her friends that lived down this way or go grocery shopping or something like that. 

I should have taken my bike, but I didn’t dare go back home for it now.  Nana Maralyn would be at home all day and she would be full of questions about why I wasn’t at school.  So I walked.

There weren’t any houses close to ours.  I’m not sure if my mom and dad planned it that way or not, but it meant there wasn’t anybody much to see me walking down the highway.  Of course, it also meant there wasn’t much traffic and nobody who might give me a ride.  I walked almost till noon before I came to the edge of town, and I knew that wouldn’t do.  I had to make better time than that. 

I was beginning to worry that I wouldn’t be able to get far enough away from home by the end of the day to keep them from finding me.  It wasn’t looking good, unless I found a way to get somewhere that was faster than my own two feet.

I thought about getting a bus ticket, but  I wasn’t sure if I had enough money for that, and besides, I was afraid the girl at the ticket counter would remember me later if people asked.  If she did, she might tell them where I went and get me caught as soon as I stepped off the bus. 

What I really needed was to get as far away as I could, as quick as I could, with nobody noticing.  That was shaping up to be harder than I thought.

There’s a big truck stop close to the interstate in our town, and I finally decided I’d go down there and see if I could scrounge a ride somewhere.  I really didn’t even care where it was at that point, as long as it was far away from home.  I could figure out how to get to Texas later, when the wolves weren’t so hot on my heels.

I got to the truck stop about two o’clock, I guess.  I knew my time was running out, so I started nosing around the parked trucks.  The best thing would be if I could stow away in one of them, because then even the driver wouldn’t know I was there, but that’s not as easy as it sounds.  Most of the trucks are locked up tight until they get to wherever they’re going, so you can’t get inside.  But if you’re smart and if you have just a smidgen of luck, you can still find ways.

I had to be careful out in that parking lot.  Drivers don’t like it when they see people hanging around their trucks.  They always think you’re trying to steal something or slash their tires or just that you’re generally up to no good.  I didn’t want that.  So I pretended I was looking for pocket change.  You can almost always find some in a big parking lot, if you look for awhile.  If somebody saw me staring  at the pavement instead of the trucks, they might just possibly not bother.

I finally found a flat-bed truck that was carrying a load of septic tanks, and that suited me just fine.  I could open up one of the tanks and crawl down inside where nobody would ever think to look for me, and there was plenty of room in one of them.  Go ahead and laugh at me if you want to; I bet you couldn’t have found anything better in such a tight spot.

I glanced around to make sure nobody was looking.  The flatbed was screened off from the store and the gas pumps by two other tall trucks parked on each side of it, so I was ninety-nine percent sure nobody could see me. 

I grabbed the edge of the bed and hoisted myself up, using one of the tires for a stepping stone.  The tanks were sitting upright on the bed, tied down with steel hawsers to keep them from falling over.  I wasn’t sure I’d be able to climb up one of them until I found a way of scrunching myself in between two  tanks and working my way up like I was climbing a tree.  They were made of concrete, so that helped a lot because of the friction.  Plastic ones would have been much harder to deal with. 

Anyway, I finally got to the top of the first one in line and unfastened the lid.  It was just clear plastic, so I popped it off without too much trouble and eeled my way down inside the tank.  It was dark in there at first until my eyes adjusted. 

The tank was about three feet across  and maybe six feet high.  Not big enough to be really comfortable, but not as bad as it could have been.  I was able to reach up and pull myself out when I needed to, and that was important.  I didn’t even want to imagine how embarrassing it would be to get stuck inside a sewage tank and be discovered there whenever the truck got to wherever it was going.

I fixed the lid back in place so nobody would have any reason to come looking at the tank I was in.  Then I sat down on the concrete floor and rested my back against the wall.  It curved out just a little bit, so that made it pretty comfortable.

Then I waited.

And waited, and waited some more.  I started to think that dude would never leave.  Even the extra large all-you-can-eat catfish plate and a really hot shower doesn’t take that long to finish. 

It must have been almost two hours before I finally heard somebody messing around making sure the tie-down lines were tight, and then I knew we’d be on our way soon.  A good thing too, because I should have been home thirty minutes ago.  It wouldn’t be long before the hunt was up, if it wasn’t already. 

I heard the door of the truck slam and felt the vibration when the engine started up, and finally we started to move.

I felt the truck bounce through a pothole as it pulled out onto the highway, rattling my tank and making me hit my head against the wall.  The driver stopped again after a minute, I guessed at the red light.  Not long after that I felt us get on the interstate, but I couldn’t have told you which way he was headed to save my life.  It does funny things to your sense of direction when you can’t see where you’re going.  The truck settled down to a steady speed, and that was that. 

I let out a sigh of relief.  The odds were a thousand to one that anybody would ever  find me now.

Chapter Three

Like I said, I had no idea which way we were headed.  I knew the interstate ran east-west through our town, but that didn’t help me much.  The truck might be bound for almost anywhere.  All I could do was hope it took me somewhere far from home but not too far from Texas. 

I was afraid to poke my head up out of the lid and see the signs, because either the lid might blow away in the wind or else the driver (or somebody else) might see me and tell somebody.  So I had to be content with not knowing for a while.  I figured I’d find out soon enough, if I was patient.   

It gets darned boring, just sitting around for hours inside a concrete tank with nothing to do and nobody to talk to.  If you don’t believe me, try it sometime.  There was nothing to see and not even anything to hear except the muffled traffic noises.  I didn’t want to use the radio batteries unless I absolutely had to.  I didn’t know when I might need them.  

Enough light filtered down through the lid for me to read if I wanted to, so I laid down on the floor of the tank and stuffed my backpack behind my head for a pillow and  read Robinson Crusoe for awhile till it started to get dark outside.  It wasn’t real cold, not yet anyway.  The

concrete held in my body heat and kept it pretty warm inside.

I started to get hungry, so I ate an apple and a can of Beanie Weenies and some string cheese.  I used the spoon on my Swiss Army knife to eat the beans, telling myself the whole time how smart I was that I remembered to bring it along.  It would have been nice to have something to drink, but I survived without it.

After that, since I couldn’t read anymore, I gave in and turned on the radio for awhile.  I thought maybe I’d hear one of the dj’s mention where his station was, and then  maybe I’d know which way the truck was going. 

After awhile I heard a station in Memphis, so I knew I was headed west.  At least for now I was.   That was a big relief, even though I knew the truck might turn some other way at any time.

I was getting drowsy by then, so I turned off the radio and tried to sleep.

It got darned cold inside that tank  before morning came, let me tell you.  I woke up shivering my toes off a long time before the sun came up.  It was so cold I could see my breath in the air, even in the weak light. 

I pulled out my extra clothes and tried to cover up with them the best I could, but it didn’t do much good.  I laid there miserable and freezing for the rest of the night, sometimes dozing a little bit but mostly not.  I think that was one of the most horrible nights I ever spent in my whole entire life.

The driver ended up dropping his load sometime early the next morning.  It was still dark when I noticed him get off the interstate.  He did some stop and start driving through town for a while, and then he parked the truck.  I heard him disconnecting the trailer and felt the jerk when he pulled loose from it.  The sound of the truck gradually moved away, and then everything was quiet again.  Nobody had ever noticed I was there.

I waited just a little while, until I was sure the truck was out of sight, and then I  stood up.  I felt colder than a pair of brass underwear.  I stuffed all my gear back inside my backpack, and then popped the lid off the tank with my fist and poked my head out to see what kind of place I was in. 

The trailer was parked next to a bunch  of others in a big lot by a warehouse.  Or something like that; I couldn’t tell for sure what it was from the outside.  It was just a huge gray building that looked like it was big enough to hold a football stadium.  I didn’t see any people or machines moving around.

It was a frosty morning, with just a little bit of ice around the rim of some mud puddles on the parking lot.  The sun was just barely up, and it was real quiet and still, like it usually is at that time of day.  I shivered again and put on the other t-shirt from my backpack on top of the one I was already wearing.  It wasn’t enough to keep out all the cold, but it helped a lot.  I wished I’d brought a jacket.  You always end up needing the stuff you forgot at the worst possible times, don’t you?

I let the tank lid slide down and hit the dirt, then scrambled out onto the flatbed.  I jumped the last few feet to the ground, being careful not to twist an ankle.  The parking lot was deserted, but I knew that probably wouldn’t last.  People would be coming to work sooner or later and I needed to be well gone by then.  It was Saturday, but that was no guarantee the place would be closed.

There was a tall chain link fence around the property, with no gate that I could see.  I wouldn’t have minded climbing over it, except it was topped with barbed wire and that stuff hurts.  I guess it was supposed to keep people out, but it did a real good job of keeping me inside too.

So I explored a little bit.  That parking lot must have been big enough to land a plane in.  It probably took me fifteen minutes to walk to the end of it, and I still couldn’t find any gate.  I’m sure it must have had one, of course.  The truck that brought me there must have got in somewhere, but I was blessed if I could find it.  The only break in the fence I found was where the corner post met the edge of the building, and that wasn’t wide enough for me to squeeze through.   

I was starting to worry.  I could hear sounds now from the other side of the building, muffled booms and growls like somebody was  running heavy equipment over there a long way off, and there was getting to be more traffic on the street.  Somebody was gonna find me inside the fence if I didn’t hurry up and bust out of there. 

I stood there for a minute not sure what to do, then I remembered my trusty Swiss Army knife.  It had a little pair of wire cutters on it.  I didn’t know if they would be strong enough to cut chain link, but it might be worth a try.

I fished out my knife and opened it up.  Those little cutters looked pitiful, I tell you.  I didn’t think they were gonna work, but I  shook my head and tried it anyway.  I figured I didn’t have anything to lose. 

And you know, they did work, finally.  I bet it took me five minutes to cut just one link in that fence, and my hand was hurting by the time it broke in two.

I threw my knife down in disgust and took a few steps to let the building block the wind from hitting me.  There wasn’t much of  it, but even that little bit was too cold for comfort.  I stood there breathing warm air on my hurt hand and sticking it under my arm pit to make it feel better.  Finally it did.

Maybe I could have cut my way out with those clippers, if I’d had a week to work on it.  But I didn’t have that much time, so  I needed to think of something else. 

After awhile I got to looking at the fence a little closer, and I noticed there really wasn’t anything holding those links together.  They were just long strands of twisted metal braided together and stretched tight.  I guess I always knew that, sort of, but I never paid attention before.  I never needed to pay attention before.

I took hold of the cut end of the link I’d snipped in two and moved it back and forth to make sure.  It definitely wasn’t attached to anything.  I pushed the tip of it down real hard and discovered that I could undo the weave of the fence if I was careful.  It was sorta like braiding my sister’s hair, or unbraiding it I guess, except her hair feels a little nicer than chain link.

It still hurt my fingers and it wasn’t easy, and I still had to take the wire cutters to it one more time before I was done, but after about thirty minutes I opened up a hole I thought would be big enough for me to worm through.

I put my backpack outside first, then I stuck my head through the fence.  So far so good.  I had to push hard to get my shoulders through, but once that was done I thought I was home free.

Didn’t turn out that way, naturally.  I was squirming my way through and the dadgummed fence snagged on my belt  buckle.  I don’t know how it happened, but I couldn’t move either direction.  I struggled and kicked and got scratched and sweaty in spite of the cold, and by the time I finally broke free I ended up ripping a big hole in the front of my pants right next to the zipper.  That made me mad, so I turned around and kicked that fence as hard as I could.

Probably not the smartest thing I ever did, cause the fence didn’t feel it, but you can bet your sweet cream I did.  It hurt!

So there I was with a sweaty face and a sore foot and holey pants, looking like I just came out of a fight with a bobcat.  I was glad nobody was around to see me like that.

I patched the fence up a little so maybe nobody would notice it had been cut, and started walking south along the street.  Nobody yelled anything while I was walking away. 

The sun was up by then, and it was beginning to get just a little bit warmer.  That was good, because the hole in my pants was freezing me to death.  I held my backpack in front of me, partly to block the wind and partly to keep from showing off my boxers to the whole wide world.  Mama still thought it was so cute to get me Spiderman underwear, and there was no way I wanted anybody to see  that.

After I got far enough down the road to be out of sight of the warehouse,  I started noticing  cross streets now and then.  I looked at the street signs, and that’s how I found out  I was on Zero Street.  I thought it was a strange name.  It made me think of candy bars, but maybe that’s just because I was hungry.

I sat down on the curb and rummaged  in my backpack to see what I could find for breakfast.  I’ve got to tell you, the pickings looked mighty thin.  I ate some beef jerky and a piece of chocolate, and spent fifty cents at a Coke machine to get a Mello Yello.  It wasn’t a very good breakfast, I’m afraid.  I sat there the whole time thinking about sausage and scrambled eggs.

There seemed to be a lot of industrial-type buildings around me; warehouses and factories and stuff like that, with a convenience store sprinkled in there now and then just to spice things up.

I walked into one of the stores, and the first thing I did was go in the bathroom and change my pants.  I threw the old ones in the trash, because there was no way they could be fixed and I didn’t see any reason to lug them around for nothing. 

As soon as that was done, I went up to the counter and asked to see the phone book.  It was fabulously, deliciously warm inside that store, and I was in no hurry to leave.  I sat down at one of the booths by the front window and opened the book.  That’s how I found out I was in Fort Smith, Arkansas. 

I wasn’t sure where that was, but there was also a map in the front of the directory.  I was on the western border of Arkansas, kinda up toward the north.

That was a pretty cool thing to know, and it encouraged me.  I was a lot closer to Texas than when I started out.  But on the other hand, it was still an awful long way off.  Getting the rest of the way down there was the problem now. 

I wasn’t nearly in the rush I was when I was just trying to get as far from home as I could without getting caught, and I could afford to take some time to think about what I needed to do. 

I didn’t think it would be a good idea to try to hitch a ride on another truck, for the simple reason that I could never be sure which way it was headed or where I might end up. What if next time I wound up in California or Yukon or something?  It might turn out to be awful hard to get back from some of those places.  It just wasn’t worth the risk.  I was lucky to be as close as I was. 

After a lot of thinking, I decided it  might be worthwhile to buy a bus ticket this time.  That way I could be sure where I was going and it wouldn’t take that long for me to get there.  Nobody knew me here, and they hopefully wouldn’t have any reason to remember me unless I did something dumb. 

I leafed my way through the phone  book until I found the Greyhound station,   then I went to one of the pay phones outside and called them. 

The woman who answered the phone thought I was a girl at first and that aggravated me, but I kept my mouth shut and let her go ahead thinking so.  I wanted information more than I wanted respect right then.  She told me a ticket to Sulphur Springs would cost me about forty-five dollars, more  or less.   

That was bad news.  I only had about half that much, and I wasn’t sure how I could get the rest, unless maybe I raked leaves or something.  I couldn’t help noticing there were plenty of them to be raked.

I was fairly warm by then, so I gave the phone book back to the man at the counter   and decided I better get started.

I hotfooted it down the street until I    got to what seemed to be a residential type area with some nice houses.  Most of them were already raked, but there are always a few places where people just don’t have the   energy or the time to get it done. 

I went up to one of those places and knocked on the door.  It had a big brass knocker in the shape of a lion’s head, which was cool.  I like unusual things like that. 

At first nobody came to the door and I started to think maybe nobody was home.  Finally I heard the door unlatch and creak open.  There was a little old woman with blue hair standing in the doorway.  She had on thick glasses with gold rims and didn’t seem to know why I was there.

“Would you like your leaves raked today, ma’am?” I asked politely.  She looked me over and seemed to think about it a  minute, like she was trying to decide if I was a bloodthirsty criminal or not.

“I’ll give you ten dollars,” she finally said.  That was highway robbery, but I had to smile and say “Sure!”  I needed the money too much to haggle about it.

It took me three hours to rake that darned yard.  It was a big one, and it turned out to be a breezy day.  The leaves kept blowing back across the places I’d already cleared up, which made it take ten times as long as it should have.  When I was finally done, hot and sweaty and tired, I collected my ten dollars and moved on.

The rest of the day I only found two other yards that needed raking, and they were little ones.  They still paid me more than that stingy old skinflint with the blue hair, though.  I got fifteen dollars for each yard, which meant I had about sixty-three bucks in my pocket by the end of the day.  That ought to be  enough to buy the bus ticket I needed, with a little bit left over.

Chapter Four

I was tired and dirty from raking leaves all day, and I didn’t feel like walking to the Greyhound station.  I took a city bus instead, which was something I’d never done before.  I had to ask another kid at the bus stop how much it cost and how you could tell where the bus was going and all that good stuff.  It’s always embarrassing when you have to admit you don’t know things everybody else takes  for granted.

When I finally got to the bus station there was a long line of people waiting at the counter to buy tickets.  Things were moving slower than granny’s molasses, but since I had no choice I just stood there and waited my turn.  After a while my mind started wandering, and I got to thinking about what I might do after I made it to Sulphur Springs.

The simplest thing would be to open a phone book and see if Justin was listed, but I knew that was a long shot.  I might do better if I got on the Internet and used one of those online phone directories.  That way I could include a bigger area than what was in the  local book.  Then if I did find him I could  either call him or go over to his house.

I decided I’d try that plan first, and if it didn’t pan out then I’d think of another approach.  Like Jonathan used to tell me, there’s always more than one way to tackle a cat.  He was such a goofball. 

“May I help you, sir?” the ticket woman asked me.  The line had moved up while my mind was drifting, and the question startled me.  I don’t remember anybody ever calling  me “sir” before.  I guess she was just   mouthing words she had to say to everybody, but it still felt weird.

“Oh, yeah.  I need a ticket to Sulphur Springs, Texas, please,” I told her.  She fiddled around and typed something on her computer, not paying me any more mind.

“One way or round trip?” she asked.

“Just one way please,” I said.  She typed a little more. 

“That will be forty-six dollars and fifty cents.  How will you be paying today, sir?” she asked.  I reached into my pocket and pulled out four tens and two fives and laid them on the counter.  They were a little crumpled from being in my pocket.

“Oh, I’m sorry sir, we can’t accept cash at this location. Do you have a credit or debit card?” she asked.  This was a problem I    hadn’t thought of.

“Uh, no.  .  .  isn’t there any way you could take cash just this once?” I asked.

“No, I’m afraid there’s no way we can do that, sir.  We can only accept credit or debit cards at this location,” she said.  I swear that woman must have been a robot.  It sure was a lot like talking to one.  I might as well have been arguing with a fence post. 

I went and sat down on one of the benches in the terminal to think, and I guess  I must have looked lost.  I wouldn’t have been surprised if I did.

“Is something wrong?” the lady beside me asked.  She was a middle-aged woman in a long flowery dress who looked like she needed to lose a few pounds.  You know the type.  The ones who read romance novels and eat chocolate all the time, and always want to pinch your cheeks. 

“I need to buy a ticket to get home, and the girl at the counter won’t take cash,” I said, truthfully enough.

“Your mom doesn’t have a credit card?” she asked. 

That was a dangerous question,   because I certainly didn’t want to get into an explanation of why I was trying to buy a ticket with cash.  At least not a true one.  I thought fast.

“I’m going home from my dad’s house.  He gave me the money for the ticket and dropped me off cause he was in a hurry, and I can’t get ahold of him or my mom either one, and now I don’t know what to do,” I said smoothly.  I was also lying through my teeth, and I felt pretty cruddy about that.  The woman looked disgusted.

“That’s just like a man, to not think of something like that,” she declared,  “Where do you live, honey?” 

I almost laughed, but it would have blown everything if I had, so I bit my tongue   to keep from it.

“Sulphur Springs, Texas,” I told her meekly, trying to look as pitiful and helpless as I could.  It must have worked, too.

“Well I think we can take care of that.  I tell you what I’ll do.  I’ll buy your ticket for  you with my credit card, and then you can just pay me back with cash.  How would that work?” she offered. 

That was exactly what I was hoping she’d say, and I gave her the sweetest smile I knew how to make.  Mama always used to say  I could look like an angel when I was up to no good, and for once I really hoped she was   right about that.

“Would you?  I’d really appreciate that, ma’am,” I told her, oozing with gratitude.

“Why of course I will, baby,” she said, and she walked right up to the ticket counter and bought it for me with her MasterCard.

I gave her the cash, and I let her pat my head and kiss my cheek and buy me a Coke and do all those other things middle-aged ladies like to do to you for some reason.  I  knew it was coming, but I figured I owed her that much.  She left pink lipstick on my cheek and that really grossed me out, but I resisted the urge to wipe the kiss away until after she was out of sight.

There are some good people in the world like that.  I don’t know how I would have got that ticket without her.  I never did know that lady’s name, but wherever she is today I wish her well.

After she disappeared I looked down at my ticket and noticed that I was gonna have to wait till eleven o’clock that night before the bus left.  It was barely five-thirty at the time,   so I sat on a bench in the terminal and killed a few hours reading my book.  It’s one of the  best ways to keep people from talking to you.  I’m not shy or unfriendly or anything, but I knew better than to talk to any more people than I had to.  The more I talked, the more chance I had of slipping up and saying something wrong to somebody who didn’t need to hear it, and the more people there would be who might remember me later if somebody came nosing around asking about me.  That kind of thing was exactly what  would get me caught and sent home if I wasn’t careful.  I had to be smoke, invisible as a fly on the wall.  

So I drank my Coke the lady bought me and ate a couple of Twix bars from my food stash and waited till it was time for the bus to leave.

Sitting around twiddling your thumbs  is no fun.  There wasn’t even a TV in that danged bus terminal.  I spent about thirty minutes in the lavatory and did my best to wash a little bit of the grime and dirt off my body.  I got a wad of paper towels and wetted them down and washed my face and my hands and my neck, and also behind my ears and under my arms.  Then I rinsed my hair under the faucet and shook it as dry as I could, like a dog scattering water everywhere after it gets its fur wet.  I tried drying it with the paper towels, but they just fell to pieces and left little bits of paper all in my hair.  It wasn’t much of a bath, but it was a whole lot better than nothing.  I felt much better when I was done.

Then I went back outside and waited some more.  My hair kept dripping down the back of my neck for the longest time, till it finally dried.  I thought eleven o’clock would never come.

There was just one more little thing that happened while I was in Fort Smith.  I barely paid attention at the time, but since it turned out to be important later on I guess I better tell you about it.

It was maybe ten o’clock, and I was half dead with boredom by that time.  There was a boy across the aisle from me, signed into Yahoo Messenger on his cell phone.  I knew that’s what it was because he had the volume turned up real loud and I recognized the little beeps and sounds it made, cause Mama is addicted  to Messenger.  She talks to people on there all the time.  Usually it’s late at night, after Lola goes to bed, but I’d heard those sounds more times than I could remember.  She even signed me up for an account here awhile back, but I  hadn’t thought about it in months.

After a while the boy got up and walked away, still wrapped up in his messaging, and  at the time I thought no more about it.  But  later I was glad he reminded me.

When I got on the bus I sat by myself and asked for a blanket and a pillow.  The bus was a lot more comfortable than the septic  tank, and a whole lot warmer.  Honestly though, I was so tired from raking yards all  day that I probably could have slept on a park bench and thought it was heaven.

I did stay awake for a little while, looking out the window.  You couldn’t see much except the dark silvery outlines of tree-covered mountains against the sky, and some little farms and things scattered on the valley floors.  It reminded me of Tennessee.  After about an hour or so I got tired of looking at scenery, and I laid my head back and closed  my eyes.

I drifted off to sleep, and not long after that I had a horrible nightmare.

I dreamed I was out in the woods by myself, and there were wolves chasing me to tear me to pieces.  It had that fuzzy, unreal kind of flavor that dreams sometimes have, but that only made it worse.  I ran and ran, but they were always coming closer, and I finally felt myself knocked down from behind by a snarling monster.

I guess he ate me.  I’m not really sure, because I snapped awake right then, breathing hard and with my heart beating fast.  I used to have nightmares like that when I was really little, but it had been years since it happened.   It was weird to be having one again now.

“Bad dream?” the kid sitting next to me asked.  He hadn’t been there when I went to sleep, so I guess he either got on the bus later  or else changed seats.  He was about my age I guess, but taller and thinner.  One of those  bean pole types that  looks almost like he could walk through a picket fence without opening the gate.

“Yeah, I was dreaming about monsters chasing me,” I told him.  I realized how stupid that sounded even while I was saying it, but it was too late to take it back.  The other kid smiled a little, but at least he didn’t laugh at me.

“Musta been a bad one then, cause you thrashed around an awful lot,” he said. 

Dreams are awful hard to remember, and I’d already almost forgotten most of what happened.  When he said that, it reminded me how bad it had really been, and I wished he hadn’t.

I wonder sometimes if dreams mean anything.  I’ve always heard you could dream about stuff that hasn’t happened yet, and that’s always what scared me more than anything about  nightmares.  Especially that one I had on the bus.  Because I knew there were really such things as monsters in the world, even if this other kid didn’t.

All that ran through my head in just a second or two, but I didn’t say anything  about what I was thinking.  He didn’t need to know all that.

“Yeah, I guess it was,” I finally said.

“Well hey, my name is Jonathan.  Nice  to meet you,” he told me.

“I’m Zach.  I used to have a friend named Jonathan,” I said, realizing all of a sudden that I’d probably never see him again.  

I guess I hadn’t thought about it till then, but it wasn’t just my family I gave up when I ran away, it was my friends and my home and a hundred other things too. 

That stung more than I liked to admit, cause me and Jonathan had been best buds for as long as I could remember, and I hadn’t   even told him good-bye.  

“Where you from, Zach?” the new Jonathan asked.  We were getting onto territory I didn’t want to talk about if I could help it,   but I’d already told one brazen lie this evening and I didn’t want to do it again.

“Aw I’m from Tennessee.  What about you?” I asked him, trying to turn the conversation away from me.

“I’m from Gillham, just down the road a little bit.  I won’t be on the bus much longer.  I’m just comin’ back home from visiting my sister,” he said.  He probably expected me to tell him where I’d been and what I was doing, but I didn’t take the bait.

He didn’t seem to notice, though.  He started telling me a long, drawn-out story about his cousin riding a horse to school last winter when the roads were icy and how he tied it up to a tree in the parking lot.  It sounded like something I would do. . .  if I had a horse, that is.  I’d been wanting one for  a long time, but Daddy always said maybe someday.

I smiled and nodded and let Jonathan talk as long as he wanted to, which seemed to be a lot.  He talked almost nonstop until the  bus stopped in Gillham to let him off. 

He wanted to trade addresses and  phone numbers and stuff like that, and maybe  I would have any other time.  But as it was, I honestly didn’t know what to tell him for  either of those things.  I told him I was moving and didn’t know my address or phone number yet, but I’m not sure he believed me.  He did give me his information.  I think I’ve still got it in my billfold somewhere, maybe.

I liked the boy, but truthfully I was glad when he left.  He was a chatterbox and I was ready to go back to sleep if I could.  Maybe we could have been friends if we’d met some  other place and time, but not right then.

I’ve never seen him again since.  

Before long I went back to sleep, and  as far as I know I didn’t have any more bad dreams that night.  Or if I did, then I don’t remember them.

I was sound asleep when we crossed into Texas, so I missed my first glimpse of it.  That kinda disappointed me.  I woke up when we were about forty miles from the border,   just about to cross the Sulphur River.

We passed through three or four more little towns I don’t remember, and maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long if we hadn’t had to stop in every last single one of them.  We stopped for nearly an hour in Mount Pleasant just for breakfast.  I do remember that one, because the first thing I saw when we came  into town was a billboard of a cowgirl holding up a big plate of cheesecake and saying “Welcome, Y’all!”  I was hungry at the time  and cheesecake sounded pretty darned good right then. 

I knew I better save my cash though, so  I ate a candy bar and an apple sitting outside on a bench in front of the restaurant, cause the driver wouldn’t let us stay on the bus while he wasn’t there.

It was still early, and I could see dew glistening like diamond dust on the leaves of the oak trees that bordered the parking lot.   The sun was really bright that morning, and I had to shade my eyes with my hand to keep from squinting.  I try never to squint because Nana told me your eyes can get stuck that way and never come loose.  I’m pretty sure that’s not true, but why take any chances?

Not long after breakfast the bus pulled into Sulphur Springs.

Chapter Five

It was about mid-morning when we got to the bus station, and that suited me just fine.  It was a bright, coolish kind of day, with showers of yellow leaves coming down off the sweet gum trees whenever the wind blew.  A good day for walking, and that was a fine thing.  I found out you had to do a lot of walking in Sulphur Springs if you wanted to get anywhere.  Everything is so sprawled out and far-flung it takes forever to get around if you don’t have a car.

They had some of those free city maps that the Chamber of Commerce puts out, so I took one before I left the bus station. 

I made my way to the public library, intending to follow my plan of getting on the Internet and seeing what I could find out.  I’d come as far as I could with what I already knew, and now I needed some more information.  I was in Daddy’s home town, and I was hoping and praying Justin wasn’t too far away.  If he was, I didn’t know what I might do.

But you know what?  When I got there the dadgummed place was closed.  I should have remembered it was Sunday.  So many things had been going on the past couple of days that I just didn’t think about it, I guess.

That left me out of luck as far as using the Internet.  I wouldn’t be able to do that until the library opened back up tomorrow morning, and in the meantime I had a whole day with nothing to do.

I don’t know why I did it, but for some reason I walked over to Stonewall Street and looked at the houses.  Curiosity, I guess.  I didn’t actually know which one Daddy and Nana Maralyn used to live in.  They never mentioned any address that  I could remember, and I’m sure I must have walked right past their old house that afternoon without knowing it.  It gave me a weird feeling, to think about my dad growing up on that street and maybe playing in one of those very yards I was looking at when he was a kid.

It had always been a sort of unwritten rule in our family that nobody talked about  the time before they became monsters or discussed any family members who weren’t one.  It was almost like it was taboo or something.  I’d never paid attention  or cared much before, but now, standing on that street,  I decided I did care. 

There were so many things nobody   ever told me.  I didn’t know my grandparents (well, except for Nana Maralyn), or whether I had any aunts and uncles or cousins, or anything at all like that.  Justin was the only family member I’d ever even heard of,  and pretty much all I knew about him was a name and a face.  Everybody else in the world knew all that stuff about where they came from, and  I wanted to know too.   

Maybe it seems like it was a strange time for me to want to get all balled up in family history when I was in such a tight spot in so many other ways.  You’d think I’d have more practical things on my mind right then, like how I was gonna eat and where I was gonna sleep that night.  I dunno why it came over me all of a sudden like that, all this wondering about things I never thought about before.

A little kid was playing t-ball in one of the yards, and I watched him for a little while.  Daddy used to be a fast pitch all-star in high school, and he could still throw pretty good when he wanted to. 

When I was little, he used to play ball with me in the back yard sometimes, and I remember I always used to wish I could pitch as well as he could.  So I practiced and I practiced till I learned how, and I’m not half bad these days if I do say so myself.  Baseball used to be one of those things he and I could always talk about, till he decided it wasn’t something he cared about anymore.  I’m not sure exactly when that was, but for the past several years we hadn’t done much together at all.  He wanted to talk about money and monster stuff and I wanted to talk about baseball and books, and so we ended up barely talking at all.

When I thought about it, Mama was the same way, though.  She just had different reasons.  Lola was her whole world, and even though she did make an effort to hide it and be fair, everybody always knew who her favorite was.  After my sister was born, she wasn’t much interested in me anymore. 

Neither of them were.  Not really.  They looked forward to me joining them in all their monster stuff, but that was only because that was what they cared about.  I got the feeling they didn’t really value anything I thought was important and didn’t much care how I felt about things.  It was almost like any other boy in the world would have done just as well to fill my place.  That bites, you know.

I stood there feeling sorry for myself and wallowing in my unlovability for a while until I decided I was being stupid about the whole thing.  I’d known all this stuff for years, so why was it all of a sudden upsetting me now?  It wasn’t like me to get all bummed out like that, and I don’t know what put me in such a bad mood that day.  Maybe it was just the place I was in, and all that broody thinking I was doing. 

I decided to put it out of my mind.

I didn’t stay on Stonewall Street much longer.  It was too depressing and made me think too much.  If I’d known it would do all that to me I never would have gone there in  the first place.  It was a headache I didn’t need right then.

I eased my way back downtown, walking slowly with my thumbs hooked in the corners of my pockets.  I went to a Taco Bell not far from the interstate and had a bean burrito for a dollar.  It was nasty, but at least it was cheap.

I wandered around aimlessly the rest of that day.  I looked in store windows, and fed the pigeons with some popcorn I bought.  Yeah, I know it was probably a waste of money, but I did eat some of it myself.  I  was still in that funky mood from earlier, and sharing with the birds cheered me up a little.

Lots of places had their Christmas decorations up already, and when it started to get dark I enjoyed looking at lights and things for a while.  But in a way that was depressing too, because it only reminded me I wasn’t home.

It was the full moon that night, too.  I could tell before it even got quite over the treetops.  Mama and Daddy and Nana would all be out hunting tonight, cause you could bet your beefcakes they wouldn’t miss that for all the cows in Texas.  And if I’d been home, then  I would have been right out there with them, and that would have been my last night not a monster.  I shivered. 

I was careful not even to step on a bug  or swat a fly that whole night.  I wasn’t sure what was big enough to count as making a kill, and I wasn’t taking any chances.  I had no intention of getting turned into a monster now, just because I was careless.

Later on I had to think of a place to spend the night again.  You know, one of the most annoying things about running away is that you can never find a good place to sleep.  I went back to the bus station and slept on a bench that particular night.  At least it stays open twenty-four hours and nobody thinks it’s very strange if you’re sleeping there.  It’s also noisy, bright, and full of people all the time, and I swear the bus company must have tried every kind of bench in America before they found the very hardest and most uncomfortable kind possible.  It was worse than gym bleachers.  

When I woke up Monday morning the first thing I did was look at my fingernails.  Mama and Daddy and Nana all have really hard, sharp nails even on ordinary days, almost like claws, and Nana had told me once that  that was a good way to recognize a loup-garou when you saw one.  You can bet I looked real close that morning, and except for a little dirt my fingernails looked just the same as they always had.  That was a huge relief.  Now at least I knew I’d be safe till next fall, even if I  did get caught.  For a little while, I was sky-high with excitement.

I jumped up and went back to the library not long after it opened, eager to get started.  I guess I was still pumped up over dodging the bullet on getting turned into a loup-garou, but it didn’t take long to bring me back down to reality.

All the public computers were busy when I got there (of course!), so I had to cool my heels in the lobby and wait for one.  I finished reading Robinson Crusoe while I waited.  I was almost done anyway, and when  I finished I put it back in my pack.  I really didn’t like the ending much.

I still had to wait a while even after that, so I read the newspaper.  Finally there was a vacant computer, and I sat down and got to work.

Like I said before, I had no idea where  to find Justin except somewhere in Texas, and hopefully somewhere near Sulphur Springs.  I knew it was probably too much to hope for that he was still there, but you never can tell about things like that.  I was fairly close to Dallas, and there are lots of people there. 

To tell the truth, I kind of hoped he didn’t live in a big city.  I like the wild places too much for that.  But at the time I cared more about finding him at all than I did about what kind of place he lived in.  I wouldn’t have cared if he lived in a pup tent on a vacant lot.  Well, maybe I would have cared about that, but you know what I mean.

I went to a website that had all the phone book listings in the country on it and tried to see what I could find.  Even limiting the search to Texas, there were twenty-two Justin Wilders or JJ Wilders and so forth.  I didn’t know Justin’s middle initial, so I couldn’t cross out all the JR’s and JB’s and JT’s and all that crud.   

For a while I got discouraged, but then  I took a piece of scratch paper and a pencil and started writing them all down.  It would have cost me ten cents a page to print that stuff, and I couldn’t afford it.  

I had a horrible thought while I was writing down those names and phone numbers.  What if Justin was married and the phone was listed under his wife’s name?  What if he only had a cell phone, or no phone at all?  Worst of all, what if he moved away ten years ago and was living nine hundred gazillion miles from here? 

I finally decided there was nothing I could do about any of that, so I’d better work on what I had before I started worrying about what to do if none of those people turned out to be the right one.  You can’t always be worrying about what might happen.  The stuff you already have to deal with is hard enough.

It would have been easiest if I could have just called all those guys and asked them  a few questions.  But I didn’t have a phone, and it would have cost way too much to try to do all that on a payphone.  So I had to tackle that cat a little bit different kind of way  if I wanted to get anything done. 

I used Google and came up with some personal websites for several Justin Wilders.  I was able to cross out three of the people on my phone number list that way because I found out things about them that meant they couldn’t be the one I was looking for.  Two of them were too old, and one of them had posted a picture of himself that looked nothing like Justin at all. 

It might sound like I was making progress in whittling down the number of people I had to check out, but even though I was able to cross out a few, I also had to add five more people I found on Google that I hadn’t seen on the phone book site.  It was enough to drive me crazy.  It also made me wonder how many others I might be missing because I didn’t know where to look for them.

It would be dull to tell you about everything I looked at that afternoon, cause I was there till they closed that night at ten.  In the end I wound up with a list of people that had twelve names on it of people that might possibly be Justin.  One in Amarillo, two in Dallas, one in Tyler, three in Houston, one in Lufkin, one in Daingerfield, one in Mineral Wells, one in New Boston, and the last one in Wolfe City. 

I didn’t know where any of those places were except Dallas and Houston, so I had to haul out a Texas road map and fiddle around until I found them all. 

I sort of wondered about the Wolfe City one, and if maybe Justin had a sense of humor.  It sounded like the kind of place a werewolf might want to live. 

Except Justin wasn’t one, of course.  I guess for a minute I sorta forgot that was the whole reason for finding him in the first place. 

I noticed that most of those towns were in the eastern or northeastern part of the state, and that was a good thing.  None of them were what you might call close.  But it was a heck of a lot better than having them scattered everywhere.  Wolfe City was the closest, and it was about thirty-five miles away.  None of the others were closer than sixty miles.

After the library closed, I spent one  more night at the bus station.  I knew if I spent too many nights in there somebody would start to notice after awhile, so I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible.  I slept in a corner away from the ticket counter where it was hard to see me and not too many people had any reason to come.

I used up the last of my food that night.  I ate my last piece of beef jerky and the last can of Beenie Weenies.  I still had a little money, but precious little, and I knew it wouldn’t last long at all if I started buying food with it.

Tuesday morning I went back to the library and tried to see if I could find out any more about the people I was looking at, any little clues that might help me.  No such luck, though, and I didn’t know any other websites to check.

I finally decided I was just gonna have to bite the bullet and use a payphone to check out the rest of them, in spite of the cost.  It was a dollar apiece for every call, and that was gonna eat up the rest of my money real fast. 

I decided it was probably wise to check out the closest ones first, but what could I ask these people when  I called?  I was afraid if I just came right out and told them who I was and what I was looking for, they wouldn’t believe me.  The only proof I had was that picture I got from Mama’s album, and I couldn’t show them that over the phone.  Mama hated talking about Justin so much, what if he was the same way?  He might not admit he even had a sister, even if I asked about her by name.

Maybe it sounds like I was being a worry-wart, but things start not being very funny when you’re completely alone and almost a thousand miles from home, in a place where you don’t know anybody.  I never realized how scary and lonely it could be.

I started feeling sorry for myself again,  and I almost decided to give up and go home, tell everybody I was sorry and start eating bloody rabbits once in a while. 

It’s bad when you get so sick at heart that you start thinking about stuff like that.  I’m not sure what kept me from doing it.  All I know is, I felt like somewhere deep down, somebody was reminding me to have courage. 

So after a while I did, and I decided not to give up at least until I didn’t have any choice.  One of my teachers used to talk about guardian angels sometimes.  Maybe it was something like that.

Anyway, I went outside to a payphone and started calling those numbers.   I’d decided there was really nothing else I could say except the honest truth, and hope things worked out.

Wolfe City was first on the list, but as it turned out, when I called that number all I got was message telling me it was disconnected.  That was good in a way since I didn’t get charged for the call, but it didn’t give me much information either.  So I moved on to the next one. 

Neither of the Dallas guys were the  right person.  One of them was nice enough; he just told me he wasn’t who I was looking for and wished me good luck.  The other one was ruder about it but he said basically the same thing. 

Out of the other nine, I got five answering machines, two more disconnected numbers, and two more people who turned  out not to be the right one.  Those two were the ones in Tyler and Mineral Wells.

It’s awfully hard to tell much about a person just from hearing his voice on an answering machine.  Some people don’t even bother to say anything themselves, and others seem to want to talk your ear off before they’ll even let you leave your message.  But sometimes you can tell a little bit.  I figured out that two of the people in Houston were black, the one in Lufkin was older than dirt, and the one in Amarillo was a foreigner, so that eliminated four more possibilities. 

One of the disconnected numbers was  in Houston, and  the other was in Daingerfield.  The number in New Boston just rang and rang, so I bet he probably didn’t have an answering machine at all.  Most everybody does nowadays, so it made me think maybe that one was a really old guy too. 

I drummed my fingers on the phone and thought some more.  The one number that I knew was working was in New Boston, which was maybe eighty miles away.  Two of the disconnected ones were pretty close too, even though they were in opposite directions. 

I knew I couldn’t automatically cross  out a number just because it was disconnected.  Not unless I knew what the reason was.  They might just have forgot to pay their bill last month or something.  I didn’t dare eliminate the numbers unless I knew for sure.  So that left me with four numbers to check on: Wolfe City, Daingerfield, New Boston, and Houston. 

When all the water was boiled out of the pot, the real question at that point was how to get to any of these places.  I’d found out everything I could without actually going to the address itself to see it with my own eyes. 

The hardest would be that one in Houston because it was so far away, so I decided to put that one off till last.  The other three were not too awful far. 

The problem was, I’d spent almost all the rest of my money making those phone calls.  I had not quite three dollars left, and that won’t get you too far.

Chapter Six

As it turned out, I had to spend more than two weeks in Sulphur Springs.  The rest of that Tuesday and most of the rest of the time I was there I spent working my tail off to make some money.  There weren’t nearly so many yards that needed raking as there had been in Fort Smith, but I mowed some grass, and picked up trash, and swept parking lots, and did some other odd jobs like that. 

People will usually let a kid do something for them, if you ask them the right way.  I learned that from my dog.  He wasn’t supposed to eat food off the table, but he could look at you with such pitiful eyes that you’d give in sooner or later and let him have a little bit.  I figured if it worked on me, then it ought to work on other people.  So I made sure to look extra pitiful whenever I went up to anybody’s house.  It wasn’t such a hard thing to do, under the circumstances. 

I had to be careful not to look too pathetic, though, because then people start asking questions about where you live and stuff like that.  Things I definitely didn’t want to answer.

I did have one little piece of luck early on, though.  Some people paid me thirty bucks on Tuesday afternoon to clean out their garage, and they told me I could keep anything I found in there that I wanted.  There was a bunch of things I might have wanted if I’d had anywhere to put the stuff, but the only things I ended up taking were some clothes that fit me, a little box of assorted tools, a few books, and an old BMX bicycle.  

The bike was the real prize.  It had two flat tires and a rusty chain, and it was beat up and scratched and ugly as sin.  Somebody had tried to paint it black with a spray can, and then they’d painted the words “The Beast” on the crossbar with what looked like red fingernail polish.  They even put little drippy things under the letters to make them look like blood.  I thought that was sorta cool. 

It didn’t look like much, to be sure, but everything worked okay.  The berings were tight and except for the chain it didn’t have much rust on it.  I had to get new tubes for the tires and a new chain, but that stuff didn’t cost much.  I had the old beast fixed up in less than an hour, and then I had a lot faster way to get around town than walking.  You’d be amazed how much difference it made.  The little tool kit had everything in it that I needed.

I found two pairs of jeans and three black t-shirts that were a little too big for me.  They looked like concert t-shirts, because they had Poison and Metallica and Def Leppard on them.  They were old and musty and a little holey, but not so much that I couldn’t still get some use out of them for a while.  There was a black jacket so big it hung down almost to my knees, but I took that too.  Those people really liked black stuff, as much as they had of it.

I didn’t dare keep sleeping in the bus station anymore, so I bought me a sleeping   bag at Wal-Mart for ten bucks at the same time I got the tubes and chain for The Beast, and then I started sleeping in that.  It was warm enough  to keep me from freezing outside. 

That night I slept under a little bridge where the highway crossed a dry creek bed at the edge of town.  But I didn’t like that very much.  It didn’t stop the wind from blowing right in my face, and the sound of cars passing by over your head isn’t a very nice thing to listen to all night long.  Worst of all, anybody who looked very close could see that I was there.  I decided after just one night that that would never do, and Wednesday morning I started out to look for something better if I could find anything.

I was riding The Beast over on the north side of town when I passed a big vacant lot, all grown up in trees and thickets and heavy grass.  I looked it over a bit and thought it might have some thick bushes I could crawl up under that would probably be a better place to sleep than under the bridge.   It would at least block the wind and be a lot more private.

I wormed my way in there and found the remains of an old burnt down house.  That didn’t interest me too much, but when I elbowed my way into the back yard I struck pure gold.  There was a big home-made dog house back there, almost hidden amongst the weeds.  It was maybe eight foot square and four feet high, with a wooden floor up off the ground and a shingled roof.  I’m betting it was for a Rottweiler or a Mastiff or some other bigger kinda dog like that.  Whatever it used to be for, it suited me just fine. 

It had been empty for a long time, so it wasn’t nasty or anything.  I could still smell dog a little bit when I crawled inside, and there was some old musty dirty straw that I had to throw out.  But once I did that, I had a place to sleep that was warm and dry where nobody would ever think to find me, and at that point that’s all I cared about.

I took to leaving my sleeping bag and my backpack inside the dog house every day, so I wouldn’t have to carry them while I was raking leaves and working. 

I fixed the place up pretty nice as time went by.  One of the first things I did was to get a piece of plywood for a door.  I went to the lumber yard and got them to give me a piece of scrap wood for that, and they even cut it the right size for me.  They weren’t too busy on a Wednesday afternoon and I guess they probably thought I was building a tree house  or something like that, so they were willing to be nice about it.  They didn’t even charge me for it. 

I rummaged around in the burnt out house till I found some screws and hinges, and I bought a cheap hasp and padlock set so I could keep the place locked up.  I put it on with the screwdriver from my tool kit, and then I had a door.  I got a little thing of cherry air freshener to kill the musty dog smell, and I hauled some fresh hay in there to make me a softer place to sleep.  I even found a little oil lamp for fifty cents at a yard sale so I had lights after dark if I wanted to read.  It wasn’t half bad.  

It sounds weird, I guess, but I was really proud of myself for having my own little house, if you want to call it that.  It wasn’t much, but at least it was mine and it was more than some people had.  It was much nicer than a tent, and I’d never minded living in one of those for a week or two when I went camping in the summer. 

Maybe that just shows how poor and pitiful I really was by then, but like I said, I don’t think it was that terrible.  I came home every evening about dark, lit my lamp for a little while and read one of my books till I got sleepy, then I blew out the light and got up again in the morning and went roaming on  The Beast looking for another odd job to do.  Sometimes I found one and sometimes I didn’t.

I  brought water home from the car wash down the street in an empty milk jug I snatched from a trash can, and I tried to at least wash the parts of me that showed, if not every night then at least every other night.  I would have dearly loved a shower, but you do what you have to do.

It rained on Friday, so I had to stay inside all day long that day.  There wasn’t much to do besides read my books and listen to the sound of rain hitting the roof.  It didn’t leak, and the walls shut off the wind.  Other than being a little cold I really couldn’t complain, and I just wrapped up in my sleeping bag and snuggled a little deeper into the hay.  I was reading A Wrinkle in Time, which was one of  the books I found in that garage I cleaned out.  

I listened to my radio for a little bit at lunch time, mostly to hear the weather.  I had a box of crackers and a spray can of Easy Cheese there in the dog house that I kept for emergencies like that, so I didn’t have to go out in the rain to find anything to eat.  I wouldn’t have wanted to leave fresh tracks in the mud anyway.

I had to be careful that I didn’t beat a trail through the weeds even on dry days, so I always went in a different way each time to keep from leaving any signs I was there.  I might be fairly comfortable now, but I didn’t dare forget I was still hiding. 

Things were fairly tolerable for the time being, but when I stopped to think about it I knew I was just frittering away time and not getting much done except just barely surviving.  It’s easy to forget that, when you’re so busy trying to live from day to day, but when I laid awake at night on my straw tick, I had plenty of time to think. 

I was having to spend almost all the money I made just to buy food.  I ate greasy fried chicken and corn dogs and tater logs out of those hot boxes at convenience stores.  I had a lot of those nasty bean burritos at Taco Bell, and whatever I could find on the dollar menu anywhere else.  You can survive on ten bucks a day if you really have to, but sometimes I didn’t make that much.  Leaf raking season was pretty much over and done with, and jobs were starting to get scarce. 

Worse than that, I knew sooner or later somebody would notice that I wasn’t in school when I was supposed to be, or they’d see me slipping in and out of the thicket where my shed was.  It was only a matter of time before something like that happened. 

I wasn’t too much afraid of anybody trying to hurt me, cause I think I can hold my own in a fight if I had to.  I was more afraid of  busybodies.  There are all kinds of people out there who think they’re doing you a favor by meddling in your business.  People like that wouldn’t see how much I’d done.  They’d see a twelve year old boy in dirty clothes living in a dog house all alone in the winter and raking yards so he could have money to eat, and they’d feel like it was their duty to “help” me by sending me home.  They wouldn’t care a bit that they might be sending me back to something worse than where I was at, and they wouldn’t believe me if I told them why.  Those were the kind of people I had to stay away from no matter what happened.

I was having a hard time deciding which of those places I found on the Internet that I should check first, because I knew a wrong choice could put me in a really bad situation.  I’d just now managed to arrange things so I was barely getting along by the skin of my teeth.  What if I got to New Boston, or Daingerfield, or Wolfe City, and it turned out that wasn’t where the right Justin lived?  How would I get the money or have the time to check the other ones?  Or even to get back to Sulphur Springs? 

To make things worse, winter was coming on fast, and I promise you it can get bitter cold at night, even in Texas.  Right now    I was at least sheltered and safe to sleep at night, I had a locked door and a home of some kind, and if I left Sulphur Springs I’d be right back to being homeless and on the mercy of the world.  I didn’t like that feeling at all, and in a lot of ways it just seemed safer to sit tight where I was, even though I knew I couldn’t do that forever, or even for much longer.  Pretty soon there wouldn’t be any more yards to rake, and then what would I do? 

If you want the honest truth, I was afraid, and I had pretty good reason to be.  I was afraid to leave and I was afraid not to.

Nobody ever taught me how to pray.  It wasn’t something we ever did at home.  But  I’d always heard there was a God, and I thought   it couldn’t hurt to ask Him to show me the right way to go.  I sure didn’t have anybody else to ask at the time.  So that’s what I did, right there in  my little shed in Sulphur  Springs, on Sunday night two weeks after I  first rolled into town.  I didn’t know if He heard me or not.

When I woke up the next morning, I decided to head for Wolfe City.  Partly because it was closest, and partly because, oh, I dunno, it just seemed like the right choice to make.  Maybe it was God answering my prayer, or maybe it was something else.  Sometimes you do things without really knowing why.

I locked up the shed and kept my key, just in case I ever needed to come back, and I hid The Beast under some burnt wood and trash from the old house.  Then I walked down to the carwash and started chatting with anybody that looked friendly.  It’s the best way to get a ride.  People don’t always like to stop for you on the side of the road, but if they’re washing their car they don’t have any choice but to listen to you.  If you seem friendly enough then sometimes they’ll do you a favor. 

I ended up hitching a ride with a high school kid who took me as far as Cumby.  It wasn’t that many miles, but it was the closest I could get.  I had to pay him ten bucks to take me, but other than that he was nice enough.  I didn’t gripe about it, even though my cash was running really low again.  There are times when you just don’t have a choice, and I probably stank enough that he deserved ten bucks for putting up with me. 

You never notice things like that yourself, but it had been two and a half weeks since I had a real shower and it wouldn’t have surprised me that I was getting pretty ripe.

He dropped me off at a convenience store downtown, if you could call it that.  Cumby was too small to have much of a downtown.

Anyway, I had a map, and since I didn’t have any other way to get where I was going, I decided I’d just have to walk the rest of the way unless somebody was nice enough to pick me up.  If it took me two or three days, it wouldn’t matter much.  I was used to sleeping in uncomfortable places by now, and I had my sleeping bag to keep me warm. 

Mama used to say the job you never  start is the one that takes the longest to finish, so I took a deep breath and got started.  I walked north up the main street for a little while, then turned left by a big house for a few blocks and then right again at the First Baptist Church.  After that it wasn’t long till I was out of town.  Like I said, Cumby isn’t a very big place.

It was the first time I’d actually been out in the country since I left home, because you couldn’t count while I was inside the septic tank or on the bus.  There wasn’t really much to say about the countryside as I went along, just a bunch of rolling pasture land with some clumps of little trees here and there and along the fence rows.  It wasn’t like Tennessee, but  it was pretty in its own way. 

Just being back out in the country cheered me up a lot, and for the first time in days I wished I had somebody to talk to.  It was just me and bunches of cows, though, and they don’t talk much.  Oh, and lots of big round hay bales, too, but they talk even less than the cows.

I walked all day to get to Commerce, and my good mood gradually wore off.  I was a little disgusted that nobody stopped to give  me a ride.  It was eleven miles from Cumby to Commerce, and I was bone tired by the time I made it into town late that afternoon.  My feet were numb from walking, and where they weren’t numb they ached.  I wasn’t used to doing that much leg work in such a short space of time. 

I wished I could have brought The Beast with me.  It would have made things a whole lot easier.  But I hadn’t, and eleven miles on foot is a lot farther than you think it is, I promise you.  So I wasn’t in the best mood  I’ve ever been in, to say the least.

I saw a gas station coming up not far down the road, and when I got there I turned into the parking lot and went inside.  I paid for a coke and sat down on one of the benches in the front of the store by the sliding glass doors.  I closed my eyes and laid my head back  against the cinder block wall, too tired to even move.  It felt so good to get off my feet.

I think I must have dozed off for a while, because when I opened my eyes it was getting to be dusky outside.  I was mad at myself for wasting time like that, but I was just so, so tired.  I hadn’t even opened my coke from earlier, so I twisted off the cap now and drank about half of it in several big gulps.  I was still tired even after sleeping, and my muscles were stiff and sore, but I thought I could move on now for at least a little while.  I was gonna  have to find somewhere to spend the night before long.  I missed my shed, just like I knew I would.

I trudged a little farther down the street, and before long I came in sight of some  buildings that looked like a college campus.  I figured that sounded like a promising place to go, cause there are always lots of kids in places like that and there tends to be people around pretty much all the time.  After a little hunting  I found the library, and it was a monster; five stories tall. 

I breezed in like I owned the place and didn’t even glance at the girl behind the circulation desk, just headed right on past her down the hall to the left.  There were stairs that led to the upper levels, but I was hoping to find an elevator.  I’d had about as much as my legs could take for a day.

I found the elevators before long and went all the way up to the fifth floor.  It was quiet up there, with no students in sight.  Just a lot of shelves of dusty books and some plastic couches and coffee tables.  I always wondered why they put those in libraries, since I’m sure you’re not supposed to drink anything in there.  It seems like tables and chairs would work better for studying.

The only other features were a computerized card catalog  station, and a water fountain that hummed quietly to itself by the elevators.

Almost the entire fifth floor was one big room, and there were these huge windows all around where you could look outside.  I walked up to the closest one and looked out to the east, and it seemed like you could see forever.  Texas looks dadgummed flat from  that high up.  I didn’t see a single hill, and for a second I was homesick for Tennessee.  But I knew if I thought about that too much I’d drive myself batty. 

Instead, I went over to the other  bank of windows that looked west, to see if I could figure out where Wolfe City might be.  I still had my map, so I knew about where it should be.  I knew it was somewhere off to the northwest.  I just wanted to see it with my own two eyes.

I looked down and found the main highway that ran through Commerce, and followed it with my eyes till it joined another big highway next to a McDonald’s and a football stadium.  The stadium was marked on my map, so I knew I had the right place.  I followed the highway northwest for a while, as far as I could. 

It got all hazy and blurry from the distance before long, and I couldn’t have said for sure whether I was looking at Wolfe City or not.  I knew it wasn’t a very big town, and there were houses and things scattered pretty evenly all over the place.  It was hard to tell if they were clumped up a little thicker in one place.   I thought so, but I couldn’t be sure.  But then again it was fourteen miles away, so I might have been imagining things.

I turned away from the window, disappointed.  I guess I hadn’t realized how bad I wanted to see the place.  You might think I was putting way too much hope in this one spot when Justin might not even live there.  And maybe I was.  But I’d been running for what felt like forever, even though I knew it wasn’t even three weeks yet, and I’d already decided I didn’t like it at all.  I was ready to have it all be over.

Chapter Seven

That night I stayed in the library.  It was a little bit risky, but I thought it was worth it   to be able to stay someplace warm. 

I waited until right before closing time, and then I went out onto the fire stairs and climbed up the steps that led to the roof.  The roof door was locked, of course, but I hid up there as high as I could for about thirty minutes, like a bat in a cave.  If anybody had come down the fire stairs and looked up there they probably couldn’t have kept from seeing me, but luckily nobody did.

I waited until I was sure everybody   was gone, and then I slipped back down the steps and through the door.  The lights were off, but it wasn’t hard to see because of all the windows. 

A library looks really spooky in the  dark, I have to say.  If I had let myself think about it,  I would have been imagining I saw  all kinds of ghosts and bogies out of the corners of my eyes.  I decided real quick that I better think about something else besides that. 

I crossed the room and laid down on  one of the plastic couches.  It was already almost midnight, and I wasn’t used to staying up that late.  The whole time I’d been in my shed in Sulphur Springs, I hadn’t stayed up more than two or three hours after dark, and this time of year that meant I’d been going to bed about eight thirty.  So I was yawning my head off already.   

I set the alarm on my watch to wake me up at six thirty in the morning so I could go hide again before they came to turn the lights on upstairs, and then I laid there for awhile with my hands behind my head and looked  out through the windows and thought about things. 

You couldn’t see very many stars because of all the light from the town, and for some reason I missed that.  In my room at home there was a window that looked out to the west, and sometimes on dark nights I used to leave my curtains open so I could pick out the stars I knew.  I went through a phase where I was all into astronomy and stuff.  I knew how to find a bunch of them.  Aldebaran and Achernar, Antares and Canopus, Regulus and Vega, I knew all those and more.  I thought it was so cool they all had their own names like that.  It made them seem like people.  

I think  Sirius is my favorite star, though, because it’s so bright and blue  and because it’s supposed to be called the Dog Star.  I thought that was awesome, even though I didn’t know why it had that name.  I asked Nana one time, and she used to tell me it was because it was high in the sky in the hot summertime and it caused all the dogs to slobber in the water that time of year. 

I don’t know if that was true or not or where she heard such a thing, but I do remember being grossed out every time I saw  a little bit of foam on the water at the swimming hole after that, cause I thought it was dog slobber and I didn’t want to get any   of it on me.  It’s funny what you remember sometimes, isn’t it?

I couldn’t see Sirius through the big window, though, so after awhile I gave up trying.  I did find Achernar, still  twinkling  blue like he always had. 

Watching the stars made me forget about spooks, and after a little while I closed my eyes.   It was good to feel like I was back on the right track again, making some progress toward trying to find Justin and getting things settled for once and all. 

That’s the last thought I remember having before my alarm woke me up.  It was still dark, and it seemed like the whole night had gone by in an eyeblink. 

I was still nine tenths asleep and had  this fuzzy idea I was in my own bed at home.  I groaned a little bit and rolled over cause I didn’t want to wake up that early. 

I guess I probably would have gone right back to sleep again in spite of the alarm, cause I was just that dead beat, and if I had then I would have got caught red handed when the librarians came to turn the lights on.  

Lucky for me though (well sort of) the couch was narrow and when I turned over I rolled right off and hit the concrete floor.  My head and my right knee clipped the sharp edge of that darned coffee table on the way down, and you can bet your aunt’s girdle that woke me up for sure.

I sat there on the floor rubbing my ear and my knee and wanting to kick that danged table.  I’d bit my tongue too when I hit my head.  You’d think they’d keep dangerous things like that away from public places, wouldn’t you?  I would, if it was up to me.

Anyway I didn’t kick it cause I didn’t want to make any noise.  I just gave it a black look and hoped somebody chopped it up for firewood someday soon.  Then I hobbled over to the east windows to see outside.

I say it was dark, but not completely.  You could see the first streaks of light down low in the sky, even though it was too dark to read or anything yet.  I was still groggy and  not thinking too clearly, so I stood there in  front of the window like an idiot for several minutes and didn’t move.  I was probably in plain view of anybody who happened to be outside on the lawn at such an uncivilized hour, if they happened to look up in just the right place. 

As soon as it dawned on me what I was doing, I backed away from the window real quick and melted into the shadows amongst the books.  You never just “go” into a shadow, you know, you always “melt” into one.  I like that.  It made me feel all sneaky and invisible, like nobody could possibly find me, and that’s exactly the way I wanted it right then.

I shook the cobwebs out of my head and decided I was gonna have to get smarter than that, no matter how worn out I was.  It scared me that I’d been so careless.  It wasn’t like me. 

At least I hoped it wasn’t.

Before long the lights came on, and I  was extra specially careful to be completely quiet and still for a little while.  I heard the door shut when the librarian left the room, but that didn’t mean I was safe just yet.  I had to wait for the library to actually open so nobody would wonder how I got in there. 

I couldn’t leave immediately even after that, because for a little while I knew they might remember who they’d seen walk through the doors that morning.  I had to give them time to forget.

It wasn’t hard though.  As soon as the building was officially open, I walked right out in the open and sat down on the couch to read a book for a little while.  I don’t remember what it was; just something I picked off the shelf at random to make it look like I was doing something in case anybody came by and wondered why a kid was at the library on a Tuesday morning instead of in school. 

Nobody did, so I guess it didn’t much matter one way or the other.  In fact nobody even came up to the top floor the whole time I was there.  It was so quiet you could have heard a pencil hit the carpet, if anybody had dropped one.

When about an hour had gone by, I decided that was enough time.  I got up and went downstairs to the first floor, and walked right past the circulation desk just as bold as brass.  The lady was looking at her computer and didn’t even glance at me when I walked out the door.  So much for that!

It was a little frosty outside that  morning in the patches where the sun hadn’t managed to shine just yet, and the air was chilly.  I stopped to put on my jacket before I went anywhere else, and when I pulled it out  of my backpack even I noticed that it didn’t smell too good in there.  My clothes were starting to get pretty grubby and dirty, cause I hadn’t had a chance to wash them all week.  I couldn’t afford it.  I had to eat.  The clothes I got from that garage  in Sulphur Springs were never too clean to start with.  

I hate being dirty.  It makes people  think you don’t ever wash.  Even when that’s the truth, you still don’t want people thinking it,  do you? 

There was no wind that morning, and nothing much to hear except a few birds in the trees and some traffic noise.  The campus was deserted.  I guess most of the students were in class right then, but for whatever reason I didn’t see anybody. 

It looked like it was gonna be a really pretty day, and I might have enjoyed it more    if my feet hadn’t been so sore and I hadn’t still been so tired and hungry.  I nibbled on a  devil’s food cupcake that I got from a vending machine, but that was about all I could afford right then. 

If you had asked me a month ago how I’d like it if I got to eat candy and cokes and junk food for every meal, I probably would have thought it was a great idea.  But now it seemed a lot less appetizing.  I would have given a lot for some real food right then.  I wondered what Justin was having for  breakfast that morning.

By and by I passed a pond with a fountain in the middle, and crossed over a  busy street with four lanes of traffic.  I spotted the football stadium, so I knew I was at the right intersection.  I dreaded the idea of walking another fourteen miles, but at least I knew that was the last of it.  You can put up with a lot of things, if you know they’ll be over soon.

I can’t really say much about the walk, except that it seemed to take forever.  By the time I dragged myself into Wolfe City it was maybe an hour or so before dark, and my feet and legs were  hurting so much I didn’t think I could take even one more step.  My whole body hurt.  If you’ve ever been totally and completely exhausted then you know how I felt right   then.  I’d had as much walking as I ever  wanted to do ever again in my life.  I’d only thought yesterday was bad, but it was nothing compared to that  second day of hiking.

I didn’t let it knock me back, though.  I told myself I was almost there and soon everything would be alright.  I wanted to believe Justin was there in Wolfe City so bad  I guess I convinced myself.

Because if he wasn’t.  .  .

My only choice then would be to walk that whole thirty-five weary miles back to Sulphur Springs, and when I got there I’d be too sore and exhausted to do yard work for a few days at least.  Then I’d have a choice between starving or rummaging in trash cans, and I couldn’t decide which one would be worse.

I came to a little convenience store and mustered enough energy to go up to the counter and ask to borrow their phone book.  Phone books are wonderful things, when you stop to think about it.  Where else could you find so much information so fast?

I sat down and flipped my way through it, and sure enough, there was Justin Wilder listed.  It gave his address as 392 Wild Buck Lane, wherever that was. 

There was a big blown-up map of  Hunt County on the wall by the door, so I went over to it and picked out Wolfe City first.  Then I started combing through the surrounding area looking for that street name.  I looked and looked until I was blue in the face, but I could not find the darned thing.

I finally gave up and decided to ask the clerk.  She was a red-faced girl with orange  hair who looked like she was bored, but I hoped maybe she might know where the dadgummed road was.

“Excuse me miss, do you know where Wild Buck Lane is?” I asked her.

“Is that in Wolfe City, sugar?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s in the phone book but I can’t find it on the map,” I told her.  She chewed her gum and thought about it.

“Naw, seems like I mighta heard of it before, but I don’t remember where it’s at,” she finally said, “But that map on the wall is not too good.  There are some better ones on the rack over there next to the Icee machine.”

“Uh, thanks,” I told her, and wandered over there to see what she was talking about. 

I found the map stand, and it did indeed have some new county maps.  They were that annoying kind that have the plastic wrap around them so you can’t look at them   without buying one.  I swear, whoever   thought of that idea ought to be shot first and then fed to the hogs. 

The map cost two dollars, and that meant it was gonna be a choice between  buying the map or buying something to eat  that night.  I had two dollars and thirty cents left in my pocket, and that was the last drop.  Paying that kid for the ride to Cumby yesterday almost broke me. 

The girl at the counter wasn’t paying any attention, and for a second I was tempted to just take one of the maps and slip it up  under my shirt and leave.  When your back is up against a wall you start thinking about stuff like that.  I don’t remember ever stealing anything in my life and I really didn’t want to try it now.  I could imagine what Justin would say if the first time he ever saw me was when he had to come get me at the police station for shoplifting.  What a great first impression that would make.

On the other hand, I was so hungry my head hurt.  I hadn’t had anything to eat all day except those two chocolate cupcakes early that morning.  So I dithered and dawdled and couldn’t make up my mind what to do.

In the end I decided not to take the map, since I know you’re probably all on pins and needles wondering what happened.  I know, I know, it sounds like a lot of build up for nothing, but it mattered a whole lot at the time. 

I was reading a story once about a boy who got thrown out on the street in London or someplace like that, and I remember  something an old man told him, that you  never did wrong by doing right, no matter  how hard it was at the time.  I sure hoped he was right about that.

What I did do was buy myself a roasted hot dog smothered with so much mustard and chili and nacho cheese that it was dripping over the edge of the plastic container.  It cost me ninety-nine cents, and I intended to get every penny worth.  It was a self-serve kind of thing where you got your own bun and reached into the wiener-roaster with some tongs to get the one you wanted, then you got your own chili and cheese from a dispenser, however much or little you wanted. 

I still had a little over a dollar left, so I got me an extra large Coke to go with it.  I had no idea when my next meal might be, so I wanted this one to count.

I sat at a booth and attacked the food  like I hadn’t seen any in days.  I got cheese and chili all over my chin and my fingers, but I didn’t care.  I licked them clean, and when I was done I licked the container clean.  Laugh if you want to, but you’ve probably never been that hungry before.  And if you have,  then you know how it feels.

I killed the Coke with one last gulp, then sat there for a little bit resting my feet and relishing the feeling of being full.  Then I went and got a free refill on my Coke and refilled  my hot dog container with chili and cheese.  I didn’t have the money to get another dog, but  a bowl of chili and cheese would suit me just fine, and there was a sign over the dispenser that said extra chili was just twenty-five cents.  I could afford that.  Barely.

I went in the bathroom and washed my hands and my face to get the cheese off, then  I went back out to the map stand.  I looked at those maps with a hangdog look on my face, I’m sure, because after a minute the orange haired girl came up behind me.

“You find the one you need?” she asked.

“Yeah, I think so, but it costs too much,”  I admitted, pointing to the map of Hunt County.  She reached past me and picked one up.

“Well I don’t guess it matters if you just look at it for a minute,” she said.  She tore the plastic off and handed me the map like it  didn’t matter a bit.

“Thanks,” I told her.  I wasn’t sure what else to say, so I unfolded the new map and looked at the list of street names down in the bottom corner.  Sure enough, there it was:  Wild Buck Lane.  I ran my fingers across the map to where it said the street should be, and found it.  It wasn’t long, just a little spike off  the highway maybe a half mile west of town. 

The thought of walking another half a mile was depressing, but I was so excited I finally knew where to find the place that I didn’t care.

I folded the map back up and handed it to the girl, and she put it back on the rack without bothering to slip it inside the plastic jacket.  I grabbed my Coke and my chili cheese and headed out the door with a smile on my face, sure that everything was almost over.

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