by Pete Hautman
He crosses his arms. I consider the problem. Throw something at them? Find a really long stick? Call the fire department? I’ve heard they save kittens from trees. Maybe they save shoes, too.
None of those ideas seems workable.
“I guess I owe you a pair of shoes,” I say.
He hits me. I never saw it coming, and if someone had told me it was coming, I would not have believed it. Not from Garf. His bony fist lands right on the tip of my nose, and I fall back on my butt. I’m more startled than hurt, but my nose immediately starts bleeding. I pinch it shut. Garf is standing over me. His fists are bunched at his sides, and his whole body is shaking.
“Give me your shoes,” he says. His voice is shaking too. I know I could take him, but I also know I won’t try. I almost wish he would hit me again.
I kick off my Walmart specials. Garf grabs them. I watch him walk off down the leaf-littered street. He stops half a block away and ties my sneakers together by the laces and throws them up at a utility wire. It takes him a few tries, but he finally gets it, and now my shoes are where they will stay until the laces rot.
I wait until he is out of sight before I let go of my nose and wipe it on the sleeve of Bran’s hoodie. It’s not that bad. It wasn’t much of a punch.
“Damn, Garf.” I’m sort of proud of him.
I stand up. The asphalt radiates cold up through my socks. Leaves tumble and hiss down the street. Chill autumn wind cuts up under the hoodie. The streetlight above me flickers. A few yards away a whirlwind lifts a pile of leaves from the gutter and sucks them up and scatters them. There is a reason why these things keep happening to me—I can feel it swirling around me like the leaves, trying to make a shape but collapsing into chaos before it can form an answer.
I pull my hood up and head off in the opposite direction from Garf, even though it takes me farther away from my car. I walk past leafy lawns and winterized homes, past driveways staked with reedy orange curb markers waiting for snow, past a row of stores—florist, insurance, barber—all closed for the night. I stop and peer in the window of a watch repair shop. A dark, hooded creature stares back at me.
“There you are,” I say.
No reply.
I turn away, unzip the hoodie, shrug it off, let it fall to the sidewalk, and walk into the chill wind toward home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CONFESSIONS
Stiggy Gabel, under many an alias, lived inside me for half a century. For a decade I had been trying to coax him out.
“You could be a star,” I told him. “I’ll write a book about you!”
“Buzz off,” he said—or less polite words to that effect.
In the fall of 2016, I ran into Geoff Herbach, the author of Stupid Fast, Hooper, and several other excellent YA novels. I mentioned Stiggy and a germ of an idea I had about sending him on a solo road trip down the Mississippi River. Geoff, it turned out, was writing a not dissimilar story—not a road trip novel, but a story with characters, settings, and situations that echoed mine. Some of his story would be set in Prairie du Chien, a small Wisconsin town on the Mississippi River. Since Stiggy would be heading in that direction, I suggested that we do a crossover with a few of our characters.*
I went home that day thinking about road trips. I imagined myself getting behind the wheel of a car and leaving everything behind with no destination, just an open road and no regrets. I pitched the idea to Stiggy. He thought it didn’t completely suck.
Coincidentally, I had been invited to deliver a keynote address at the 2017 Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Airplane tickets had been purchased. As the date neared, it occurred to me that the unwritten road trip novel needed some hands-on-the-wheel research. I called Karen Rowell, the director of the festival. She was completely supportive. The airplane ticket they had paid for was canceled. I set out in my car from Minnesota and headed for Hattiesburg, trying to see the trip downriver through the eyes of Stiggy Gabel.
Meanwhile, in New York City, my editor, David Gale, was wondering why I had not delivered the novel I had promised him several months earlier. I told him I didn’t want to write that book anymore. I wanted to do something completely different. I told him about Stiggy. David, a patient, insightful, and above all flexible editor, said, “Okay, I like it, go.” Or words to that effect.
Without the encouragement and blessings of Geoff, Karen, and David, Road Tripped would never have happened. Thanks, guys!
Thank you also to my friend Jim Mitchell, who helped walk me through Kansas City’s suburban sociology. And to Steve Brezenoff for the gaming help. And to my oldest and still best friend, Rod Folland, whose memory is superior to mine, for helping me remember those limestone caves. We were there, and it was terrifying. And to my brother-in-law Rog Bates for sharing a certain youthful misadventure he had while trying to exchange an item at a Florida department store. I modified it and put it in the book. Rog might reveal more if you catch one of his stand-up acts.
Last, but never least, my thanks and love to Mary Logue—my partner, my first reader, and my first editor—for her wise words and understanding. The title was her idea.
*Which characters appear in both books? In the end, Geoff and I took our stories in unexpected directions—but we still have Prairie du Chien in common.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PETE HAUTMAN is the author of thirty novels for adult, teen, and middle-grade readers, including the National Book Award winner Godless, Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner The Big Crunch, and New York Times Notable Books Drawing Dead, The Mortal Nuts, and Rash. Pete divides his time between Golden Valley, Minnesota, and Stockholm, Wisconsin. When not writing he can often be found deep in the woods hunting for wild mushrooms. Learn more about Pete Hautman on his website petehautman.com and his blog petehautman.blogspot.com.
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Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Pete-Hautman
Simon & Schuster Book for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster, New York
Also by Pete Hautman
The Flinkwater Factor
The Forgetting Machine
Blank Confession
All-In
Rash
Invisible
Godless (Winner of the National Book Award)
Sweetblood
No Limit
Mr. Was
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 by Pete Hautman
Jacket illustration copyright © 2019 by Studio Muti / Folio Art
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hautman, Pete, 1952– author.
Title: Road tripped / Pete Hautman.
Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2019] | Summary: Seventeen-year-old Steven “Stiggy” Gabel tries to cope with his father’s suicide, his mother’s depression, and his girlfriend’s departure by taking off down the Great River Roa
d from Minnesota to Louisiana.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018030155| ISBN 9781534405905 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534405929 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Coming of age—Fiction. | Automobile travel—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations—Fiction. | Runaways—Fiction. | Mississippi River Region—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.H2887 Ro 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018030155