Max the Mighty

by Rod Philbrick

  And if they think the painted-up bus is strange, a funny old dude like the Dippy Hippie, with his long hair and his Hawaiian shirt, he really makes an impression in a town full of Indiana farmers.

  “Howdy doody,” he says to everybody when we stop to get gas or whatever, and people look at him like he just stepped out of an alien spacecraft. Mostly they nod hello and then hurry away.

  Dip, he could care less what people think. He says after thirty years as a schoolteacher he’s going to play hooky whenever he feels like it.

  “I’m free as a bird,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean I want to fly with the rest of the flock, if you know what I mean.”

  I don’t know what playing hooky has to do with a bunch of birds. I guess all it really means is Dip is kind of different, and he likes being that way.

  Anyhow, one time we come in off the highway to get gas at this place and the bus won’t start. That poor old motor keeps grinding and grinding and it coughs a little but it just won’t go. “Minor malfunction,” Dip says. “Nothing to it,” and he gets out his tool kit and opens the hood and starts messing around under there like there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing.

  Frank and Joanie get out of the bus and watch Dip for a while, but you can see they think it’s kind of boring, working on an old motor, and they’d rather be doing something important, like raising money for orphans or whatever.

  “Even a little one-horse town like this has opportunity,” Frank says. He’s squinting into the sun and studying the buildings on the main street like there’s something hidden there, if he can only find it.

  “Forget it,” Joanie says, looking around and yawning. “There’s nothing here for us. Just dirt and corn and farmers.”

  “Then I shall plant a seed,” he says. “Come along, children. Make yourselves useful.”

  The way he marches off, it’s hard not to follow.

  Worm nudges me and whispers, “You notice something? Mr. Wonderful isn’t limping anymore.”

  She’s right. Frank has gotten better all of a sudden. The ankle that got hurt so bad when he fought the robbers must have healed overnight, because he’s walking along like he hasn’t got a care in the world.

  “A mom-and-pop deal,” he says. “This should be perfect.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Joanie says, hanging back.

  What he calls a mom-and-pop deal is really a small store with a bunch of dusty cans on the shelf, and a little old bald guy behind the counter watching game shows on this portable TV.

  Frank, he marches right in and says, “How’s it going, Pops?” Then he takes a newspaper out of the rack and tucks it under his arm and goes, “Where’s the tuna fish?”

  The old guy points and Frank cuts down the aisle like he’s heading for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Me and Worm and Joanie can’t keep up with him, he’s moving so fast.

  We’re turning the corner of the aisle when we hear this tremendous crashing noise. Wham-bam-crash-bang-bing, as just about every can of food in the place goes smashing to the floor.

  “Hellllllp,” Frank groans out. “Helllllllp!”

  When we get there, he’s buried under all these cans and loaves of bread and stuff. You can tell right away he’s been hurt bad, from the way his eyes are rolling back and his mouth is hanging open like he can’t get enough air.

  “Slipped on something,” he groans. “Oh God, I think I busted my ankle.”

  The old guy from behind the counter is all flustered and apologizing and saying how he’ll have to call an ambulance, the nearest hospital is fifty miles away.

  But Frank groans some more and says a hospital won’t be necessary.

  “Maybe it ain’t really broke,” he says. “Probably I just sprained it bad. I’ll be fine.”

  The old guy is fussing over him and saying how sorry he is, and how maybe Frank should at least see a doctor and get the ankle checked out.

  “I’ll be okay, once I get my breath back,” Frank says, but when he tries to walk he almost falls down, it hurts so much. Joanie has to hold up one side of him while I grab the other. “Haven’t got time for broken ankles,” he says. “We have to be in California in three days, isn’t that right, kids?”

  He’s talking to me and the Worm like we’re his kids, but I don’t know what to say, so I just nod. The store guy looks pretty worried and you can tell he’s a nice enough dude, even if he is an old geezer.

  Joanie, she’s busy whispering to Frank, but loud enough so you can hear her. “How can we buy groceries if we have to pay for fixing your ankle?” she says.

  Frank shushes her. He’s acting brave and heroic, like he doesn’t want the old geezer to know how poor he is, or how he and Joanie got robbed of every earthly possession. “We’ll make it somehow,” he whispers real loud. “It’s only three days to California. We’ll eat when we get there.”

  The old guy hears that and gets a funny look on his face, like he’s thinking hard. I’m worried maybe he’s going to call the cops, but instead he fills a couple of bags with groceries. Not just cheap stuff, either, but lots of sliced meats and cheese from the cooler, and cans of tuna, and candy bars for me and Worm.

  “This’ll get you where you’re going,” he says, shoving the bags into my arms. “I hope your father has better luck in California. It can’t be easy for him, not having enough money to buy food. A man’ll do just about anything to put food on the table for his wife and kids, I reckon.”

  I’m about to tell the old guy that Frank isn’t my father and we’re not his children, and nobody is hungry, but he feels so good about giving us the groceries I decide to keep my trap shut.

  Out on the street Frank waits until we’re clear of the store, then he hands me and Worm a chocolate bar. “Good job,” he says. “You’ve got possibilities, both of you.”

  Worm won’t take the candy, but I figure a little chocolate won’t hurt me.

  You can tell Joanie isn’t too impressed with Frank. “That was just plain stupid,” she tells him. “You took a risk and for what? A few slices of bologna?”

  But Frank is strutting along like he’s the king of the world — that ankle healed really quick this time. When he hears Joanie complaining he just grins and shakes his head. “You’re missing the point, sweet buns.”

  “Yeah? What point is that?”

  “There’s a sucker born every minute. Right, Max?”

  Frank has this look, like he thinks I’m in on the joke. But really I’m thinking he’s right.

  There is a sucker born every minute, and I’m one of them.

  Good old Dip has got the Prairie Schooner running real smooth by the time we get back. “Dirt in the carburetor,” he says. “All those dusty roads. I see you folks have been shopping.”

  He’s eyeballing the paper sacks and you can tell he’s thinking this: If Frank got robbed of everything he owned, where’d he get the money to buy groceries?

  I could explain the whole deal, but instead I chicken out and keep my mouth shut.

  Worm won’t say anything either, except to me. “I’ve read about guys like him,” she whispers to me. “They lie so much they don’t know what the truth is.”

  Frank, he must have ears like a cat, because he picks up on it. “The truth is overrated,” he tells her, acting like it’s a big joke we’re all sharing. “What I do is improve upon reality, and people prefer it. They really do.”

  After that, Dip says we should hurry up and get back on the road because you never know what might be catching up.

  When we’re sailing free and clear down that highway again, I start to feel better. Like what we did in the store never really happened. Like it’s fading somehow, the farther away we get.

  The more we stay on the Prairie Schooner the more I like it. I don’t tell Worm, but inside I’m almost hoping we never get to Montana. As long as we’re on the bus we’re safe, and the rest of the world kind of goes away and doesn’t matter as much.

  Dip, he’s feeling good, too,
and he pops in a cassette and plays this golden oldie song about being on the road again. He punches up the volume and starts singing along like he doesn’t care how bad he sounds, it’s how loud that counts.

  “On the road again, de doot de do, nah nah nah nah,” he goes, making these electric guitar noises somewhere deep in his nose.

  Joanie picks up on it right away, tapping her feet and snapping her fingers. Before you know it, she’s standing up in the aisle, dancing to the music and going, “Come on! Come on!” to me and Worm.

  She wants us to dance.

  No way, I’d rather eat cement. You ever seen those dancing hippos on the Disney Channel? That’s me. But Joanie finally gets Worm out of her seat and makes her move to the beat, and you can tell Worm doesn’t mind too much, even if she won’t admit it.

  “On the road again, de doot de do, nah nah nah nah!” sings Dip.

  Okay, I like the song, too, even if it was old before I was born, and it’s pretty hard not to sing along, and clap your hands on the beat like Joanie shows us.

  Whenever we come to a good part, Dip lets loose a blast of that big old horn, wooonnnnnnkkkkk! and the birds fly up from the cornfields right on cue.

  Frank is the only one who doesn’t care about the on-the-road music. He’s stretched out, taking up all of one couch, and he’s got his newspaper tented over his face like he wishes we’d all shut up and let him sleep.

  The weird thing is, even when he’s napping he looks like he’s ready to sign autographs. Like he’s the star of his own personal movie and the cameras follow him everywhere. And all he has to do is look you straight in the eye and you want to be in his movie, too.

  After the song ends, Joanie and Worm flop down on the couch and they’re both giggling so hard they can barely breathe.

  When Joanie can talk again she goes, “I needed that. Thanks, girlfriend,” and pats Worm on the hand. “Who taught you to dance? Let me guess. Your brother?”

  Worm shakes her head.

  “Maybe it was your dad,” Joanie says. “A lot of girls learn to dance from their dads.”

  Worm shakes her head again. Joanie doesn’t seem to notice she’s stopped smiling. “Had to be your mom,” she says, sort of wheedling for an answer. “Did I guess right?”

  Worm gets this frozen look, and her face goes so pale that her freckles look like they hurt.

  “Something about your mom, huh?” Joanie says. “What happened, exactly?”

  Worm curls up on the couch and covers her face with a book.

  “Leave her alone,” I say.

  Joanie sees how Worm is hiding behind her book and she shrugs and says, “Fine. Okay. I was just making conversation. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

  I don’t say anything, but my brain is thinking, There is something wrong, only I don’t know what, exactly.

  Somewhere around Illinois, Frank sits up and starts reading the newspaper. “Look here,” he says. “There’s a man in Topeka who found a python in his toilet. Amazing, isn’t it? It says the python is native to the Amazon and somehow it got all the way to Kansas.”

  “Yeah,” Joanie says. “Amazing.”

  “I bet I could make money with that snake,” Frank says. “Take it on the road, sell tickets. People would pay to see a snake like that.”

  Joanie goes, “I’d pay more not to see it. Especially in the bathroom.”

  That shuts Frank up for a while, but he keeps rattling that newspaper just to remind us that he can see gold where everybody else just sees a python in the toilet bowl.

  Late in the afternoon we cross the Mississippi River, and Dip gets real excited. “There it is!” he shouts. “Greatest waterway on planet Earth! Runs from the Minnesota lakes to the Gulf of Mexico! Passes through ten states! Over two thousand miles long! Mississippi, that means ‘Big River’!”

  He’s talking like a geography lesson until he honks the horn and shouts, “Howdy doody, Big River!” and then he sounds like the Dippy Hippie and nobody else. “Take a look, Max. Drink it in. That’s not just a river, it’s liquid history. That’s your country. It keeps changing paths, making its own way, just like we do.”

  He’s so excited the Worm looks up from her book and smiles when she sees the river, which makes me think she’s feeling okay again, now that Joanie has stopped asking her questions.

  The Prairie Schooner sails along nice and easy until the sun goes down, and Dip says if we could go fast enough, the sun would never set because we’d chase it all the way around the world. Just thinking about that turns my brain to mush, because I know he’s right and I still can’t figure it out.

  “Tonight we’ll splurge on a real campsite,” Dip announces. “If I don’t get a hot shower soon, they’ll put me out with the garbage.”

  That’s how we come to stay at this KOA campground somewhere in Iowa, where they have all these Indian names but not too many Indians, not that I can see. Dip says they mostly live on reservations, but we don’t have one, so we’ll have to settle for the normal campground. I can tell he’s pulling my leg, but I don’t let on — why spoil his fun?

  When the bus is parked in the right spot, Frank tucks his newspaper under his arm and says to Joanie, “I need a word with you, sweet buns.”

  He’s acting mysterious, and he takes Joanie outside so they can talk private. I can see them under the streetlight and he’s slapping his hand on the newspaper and she’s listening and nodding, and I figure he’s got some new scheme to get something for nothing.

  Which he does, only I don’t know what he has in mind, or how it’s going to change everything for me and Worm and wreck our happy life in the Prairie Schooner.

  If I had known, I’d have flushed that python right down the toilet, you can bet the ranch on that.

  That night we’re sitting around under the stars with our stomachs full. Worm has put away her book for once, and she’s sitting there with her chin on her knees, staring at the little campfire Dip built. Every now and then she glances over at me like she wants to say something important, but she never does. I figure whatever it is can wait.

  Frank and Joanie have wandered off somewhere, and it’s just the three of us, and I’m thinking how much I want this to go on forever. Sailing that old Prairie Schooner across America, and camping by the side of the road every night, and eating hamburgers cooked over an open fire, and feeling like we’re in a place of our own. I’m thinking how my buddy Kevin would have loved this adventure, and I wish he was here, and Grim and Gram, too, but even that doesn’t hurt too much, I’m feeling so good.

  As long as we’re on the bus, the only thing that matters is where we go tomorrow. Yesterday doesn’t count, or the day before that. The only thing that matters is me and Worm are safe.

  I’m thinking how lucky we are right at this moment, and how no matter what happens next, I wouldn’t trade this night for anything.

  Dip, he’s staring up at the sky for a long time and then he goes, “Guess what I see up there?”

  Worm won’t guess, but you can tell she’s listening.

  “I see a girl about your age,” he says to her. “See that glow from the Milky Way? That’s her hair. Those other stars are her sword and shield. She’s fighting a battle. A really important battle. Life and death, I’ll bet.”

  Worm looks up at the sky to where he’s pointing. “What happens to her?” she asks.

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” Dips says. “But in the end she wins because her heart is true. That much I know.”

  Me, all I see is a bunch of stars, but I don’t mind. If Worm can see her dreams come true in the sky, that’s good enough. And it makes me think how cool an old dude like Dip really is, to figure it out, and show her where to look.

  When Worm starts nodding off, Dip says it’s time to turn in. “We have a long day tomorrow,” he says. “I expect we’ll see Wyoming before the sun goes down. We’ll check out the Bighorn Mountains, and Yellowstone, maybe go fishing on the Wind River, if we can find some bait. Sound okay with
you?”

  It all sounds cool to me.

  Worm is sound asleep with her backpack on, and when I pick her up to carry her inside the Prairie Schooner, she’s as light as a feather, like gravity doesn’t count when you’re not awake.

  That’s when Dip goes, “Oh my.”

  The way he says it makes the short hairs tingle on the back of my neck. Something is wrong, I can feel it all over.

  “Somebody let the air out of the tires,” Dip says. “Now why would they do that?”

  He’s crouched down in the dark, staring at how the Prairie Schooner is sitting low on her rims. I’ve got Worm asleep in my arms and I don’t know what to do. Flat tires are no big deal to fix, but like Dip says, why would somebody do that?

  I get this terrible empty feeling like they just let the air out of me, too.

  Dip gets up and says, “Wait here,” and he goes into the bus and turns on the lights.

  I can see him in there checking things out, and then he picks up Frank’s newspaper. You can tell something has got his attention. His big friendly face kind of shuts up and I don’t know what he’s thinking, but whatever he’s reading in the paper has made him different.

  Then he looks through the bus window out to where I’m standing in the dark, and suddenly I know what’s in that newspaper. Dip comes out real slow, and when his feet are on the ground he looks at how the Worm is sound asleep in my arms and he goes, “You’ve got ten thousand dollars on your head, Max. That’s the reward for information leading to your apprehension, and for the recovery of the girl.” Then he stops and gives out a big sigh, and when he speaks again his voice sounds small and old. “I knew you were in trouble. I didn’t know it was trouble that big or bad.”

  I don’t know what to do or say. It’s like my feet are sinking into the ground and the sky is pressing me down and the air feels thick and scratchy in my lungs.

  “I read what her stepfather had to say,” he says, tapping the newspaper. “You better tell me what really happened.”