He touched people’s arms, and pulled at their sleeves, and if they didn’t stop he followed them along. But no one would listen when he tried to explain. He never got farther than “Excuse me, mister.”
The crowd pushed him along to a wide, busy street. A big green sign hanging above it said SOUTHBOUND, with an arrow pointing at a lane. Danny followed it along, with Rocket at his heels. He followed it for seven blocks, then up a spiral and onto a highway. Huge trucks hurtled by in blasts of hot air, spraying water from the rain-wetted road. Like a flat, broad river, the highway seemed to flow and ripple in the moving of the headlights, the red flashings of the brakes.
Danny had gone a mile, maybe two, when he found a transport truck parked on the shoulder, its rows of taillights flashing. The driver was walking beside it, stopping at each wheel. He gave each one a kick, then a whack with a tire iron, before bending down to tighten the wheel nuts.
Danny stopped him near the back of the trailer. “Excuse me,” he said.
The driver was wearing a very battered cowboy hat. He had a cowboy’s mustache that hung down on each side of his mouth.
“Does this road go all the way to Florida?” asked Danny.
“It better,” said the driver. “I’m lost if it doesn’t.”
“Is that where you’re going?” said Danny.
“Yeah. Through Choo-choo Town and the Big M.” He bashed at the tire with his iron. “I’ll be in the Bikini State day after tomorrow.”
“Can I go with you?” said Danny.
The driver touched his mustache. “You running away from home?”
“Sorta,” said Danny. “I have to get to the Cape. I gotta save my dog.”
“Well, I can’t help you there. I’m sorry,” said the driver. “There’s a rule: no passengers.”
He tightened the bolts on the wheel, shoving down on the iron until they groaned. “You shouldn’t even be on the highway,” he said. “If Smokey comes along, you’ll be spending the night in the bear cave.”
“Couldn’t you take us just a little way?” asked Danny.
“And hang my ass in a sling?” The driver shook his head. “Just turn around and go home, kid. That’s what you’ll end up doing anyway.”
On the other side of the trailer, cars and trucks were racing by. The noise was loud and endless. Danny followed the driver to the very last wheel, right at the end of the trailer. He tried to follow him back along the side that faced the highway, where the traffic went by only inches away. But the driver chased him off. “Go on. Get going,” he said.
Danny plodded again along the shoulder, down the length of the trailer. As he reached the cab he heard the big diesel engine running. Smoke rose from the two chrome stacks, where flat lids chattered on their tops. The door was high above Danny. But a small window was set into its bottom corner, and he tried to peer through it, into a cab that seemed as big as a house. “Gee, I wish we could ride in there,” said Danny to Rocket. “Bet it’s got a bed and everything.”
Rocket put his forefeet on the step.
“Hey, the guy said no,” said Danny.
But Rocket kept pawing at the step. Danny watched for a moment, then suddenly bent down and looked between the wheels. The driver was halfway along the trailer. “Okay, come on,” said Danny.
He held Rocket in one arm, climbed up the step, and opened the door. The light came on in the cab, and he was sure that the driver would notice. There were two gearshift levers, and more gauges and dials than he’d ever seen in one place. Behind the seats was a bed that stretched across the cab, with a tartan-colored sleeping bag spread untidily across it. Danny climbed in and closed the door.
A wall divided the cab from the bed. It was solid behind the seats, and open in the middle, and Danny pulled Rocket into the corner behind the driver’s seat. He bundled him among a pile of clothes. There were socks that reeked, and trousers stained with oil. But Danny didn’t mind. He only worried that his own wetness—and the dog’s—was soaking the driver’s clothes.
“Don’t make a sound, now,” he said.
There was a clatter outside as the driver stowed his tire iron. Then the door opened and he came in behind the wheel. He tossed his wet cowboy hat onto the passenger’s seat, shook his arms, and groaned. “Getting too old for this,” he said.
With a hiss of air from the brakes and a roar from the engine, the big truck started moving. It went forward in surges as the driver worked his gears, then swayed as he pulled into the traffic. He changed to a higher gear, to another, and Danny felt the truck moving faster.
He heard a click, and the crackle of a radio, and the driver said, “Beantown Bob, you gone?”
A little voice answered. “Ten-four, Buffalo. I’m backing off the hammer here.”
“Roger,” said the driver. “We got twelves.”
There was a crackling burst that Danny couldn’t understand.
“Yeah, ten-twelve,” said the driver. “Look for me in your mirror.”
Danny liked the sound of the driver’s voice and was sorry when he stopped talking. Other people babbled away, but he couldn’t understand many of the words. It was like listening to people gargle. He leaned back and held Rocket as the truck went thundering south.
He found that he could lean against the back wall of the bed and see out through the small window at the bottom of the passenger’s door. There was nothing to look at but blackness, until the truck pulled into the passing lane and the taillights of cars went flashing past the window. The hum of the tires and the shaking of the truck put Danny to sleep very quickly.
forty-eight
Danny woke to find that the truck had stopped without him knowing. It was sitting in a fuzzy glow of red and yellow lights, with the traffic sounds all muffled and quiet. His neck felt stiff, and one of his legs was pricking with pins and needles.
Rocket was already awake, lying flat on the bed, looking out through the gap between the seats. It seemed to Danny that the driver was gone, but still he looked out very slowly and carefully. He noticed first that the cowboy hat was missing, then saw the empty seat behind the wheel.
They were parked at a diner, and another truck was parked nearby. In the big windows of the diner, two men were sitting at a booth with orange-colored benches. One was wearing a cowboy hat, and when he lifted his head Danny saw the big mustache.
He smelled french fries and coffee and bacon. He could nearly taste the odors, so strong that they made his stomach roll from hunger. Rocket’s nose was twitching like a living thing, and Danny felt more sorry for the dog than he did for himself. “I bet you can smell the gravy on the fries,” he said. “The mustard and the pickles. Even the little seeds in the hamburger buns.” He wished he could know what it was like to smell rocks and plastic, to pick out any smell among a hundred others. It would be like seeing, he thought, but through his nose instead of his eyes, seeing pictures of smells.
He leaned back in the corner of the bed, and when he heard footsteps in the gravel he pulled Rocket next to him. The driver came in, tossed his hat to the seat, and got the truck rolling. He pulled back on the highway. Into the radio he said, “Hey, Beantown, don’t go feeding bears now.”
The big truck was soon barreling along again, taking Danny River south toward the Cape. He started thinking about what he would say to Gus Grissom when he got there. He imagined himself and Mr. Grissom in a long conversation, and he imagined the astronaut saying, Of course I believe you. Who wouldn’t believe you, Danny?
The driver’s voice shocked him. “Hey, kid. You hungry back there?”
Danny didn’t move. The driver said, “You copy, kid?” He laughed. “Come on, I know you’re there. You’ve been snoring so loud you blew my doors off.”
Danny asked in a small voice, “Are you angry?”
“Just come on up, kid.”
The driver flicked his cowboy hat to the floor, and Danny moved into the seat. Rocket sat on his lap. From the floor, the driver brought up a paper bag. There was a san
dwich inside it, and the boy and the dog ate it together as they rode south toward Florida.
The other truck was right in front of them, lit like a ghost by the headlamps. In the corners it faded away, then reappeared in a bright glare as the road straightened. Danny saw little flares of fire and sparks flaming from the smokestacks.
“That’s Beantown Bob,” said the driver. “He keeps his toenails on the front bumper.”
“Where are we?” asked Danny.
“Three hundred miles from where you started. You’ve been catching Z’s five hours now.”
The voice of Beantown Bob came over the radio. “Your ten-twelves still asleep?”
The driver smiled at Danny. He took up the microphone and answered. “No, I got the rug rat here beside me now.”
Danny felt foolish. He remembered the driver talking about twelves when he first came into the truck. “You knew all along I was here,” he said.
“For sure,” said the driver. “I figured what the hell, you were safer with me than hiking down the super slab.”
In the darkness he looked like a nice man, with that big mustache and shaggy eyebrows. He said, “Nice dog. What’s his name?”
“Rocket,” said Danny.
“Heading for the Cape with a dog called Rocket.” The driver laughed. “You nuts about space, or something?”
“Not really,” said Danny. “I called him Rocket on account of my brother.”
“Yeah? So where’s your brother now?”
Danny wasn’t sure what to say. The cab was shaking and bouncing a bit. Yellow lines flashed toward them on the blackness of the road.
“Hey, never mind. The less I know, the better.” The driver held out his left. “I’m Cody. But they call me Buffalo.”
Danny shook hands.
“And you are…?” asked Cody.
Danny said the first name that came to his mind. “I’m Beau,” he said.
They drove through the night and through the dawn, hurtling past gray fields and sleeping towns. Danny held his dog and looked out through the windshield, or down to the small window by his feet, where a gravelly shoulder was whizzing by in an endless blur. He thought it was hotter here at sunrise than Hog’s Hollow had ever been at noon.
Beantown Bob kept them going at full speed. “Doing it to it,” said Cody. There was a pounding roar from the diesel, and they drove in the smoke and the dust of Beantown Bob.
To Danny, Cody was like a king of the highway, sitting there in his big throne. The cab made the Old Man’s pumper truck look puny. Cody could look out for miles, and seemed to own all he could see. He drove with his arm propped on the open window, and the air whistled round his mirrors. He had traveled like that so long and so far that his left arm was tanned to the same brown as the leather on his seats, while his right arm was pale. His mustache trembled in the shaking of the cab.
For miles they didn’t talk. Then Cody said, “So what’s the hurry to get to the Cape?”
“I have to see someone there,” said Danny.
“Who?”
“Gus Grissom.”
Cody looked across the cab. “Mercy sakes! The astronaut?”
Danny nodded.
“That’s bodacious. You know that guy?”
“No,” said Danny. Rocket had been dozing on his lap but now was awake. “But he said he’d help my brother, so that’s why I’m going to see him.”
The road turned and climbed uphill. Cody bore down on the bumper of Beantown Bob. The hill steepened, and both trucks slowed to a crawl. Cody crept up the hill so close to Beantown’s rig that the back of the trailer was all that Danny could see in the windshield.
“He’s got a fat load,” said Cody, shifting down through the gears, his hand moving from one lever to the other while his left foot pumped at the clutch. He grinned at Danny. “Hey, if I took you to the Cape, would I meet that Grissom guy?”
“I don’t know,” said Danny. “Maybe.”
“Well, let’s give it a shot.” Cody pulled on a chain hanging from the roof, and the air horn blasted. He looked in his mirror, swung the truck to the left, and went thundering ahead of Beantown Bob. With his left arm hooked through the steering wheel, he worked a gearshift lever in each hand, throwing them forward and back. The diesel thundered away.
“I won’t ask your business there,” he said. “It’s none of mine, and that’s for sure. Maybe you want to log some more Z’s, Beau.”
But Danny was too happy to sleep. He sat there in the wind and the heat, watching the highway roll past the truck, and the fields and the towns going by.
“We’ll be in Florida by midnight,” said Cody. “At the Cape before dawn.”
Danny River hugged his dog. “It’s going to be okay,” he whispered. “Everything’s working out.”
The sun crossed above them, then shone in through Danny’s window, and the big truck kept heading south. They passed a field of cotton, a row of billboards. Then Cody looked in his mirror and said, “He’s on our tail.”
“Beantown Bob?” asked Danny.
“No, it’s Porky Bear.”
Danny heard the siren, coming up behind them. He leaned forward and looked in his side mirror, and saw lights flashing blue and red on a car that was closing quickly.
Cody slowed the truck. “Guess we’ll be getting a Christmas card from Smokey,” he said.
He pulled onto the shoulder with the air brakes hissing. The police car stopped behind him.
“Sit tight now, Beau,” said Cody, opening his door. “It’s just a local yokel. He won’t even look in the cab.”
But he did. The sheriff gave Cody a ticket, then climbed onto the step and looked right in at Danny and Rocket. He asked Cody, “Who’s the kid?”
“Beats me,” said Cody. “Never seen him till this morning, Sheriff.” He winked secretly at Danny. “I picked him up just a few miles back. Maybe an hour ago. Says he’s going to the next town.”
“Is that true, boy?” asked the sheriff. He had a brown uniform with a silver star on the front.
Danny nodded. What he thought was a very clever lie came right to his lips. “Yes, sir, I live there,” he said.
The sheriff had a sunburned face and white eyebrows. The sun glinted on his badge. “So, what’s the name of this next town, boy?”
Of course Danny didn’t know; he didn’t have a clue. So he sat there with Rocket on his lap, and he scratched his head and told the sheriff, “Gee, I forget.”
“You forget where you live, boy?” The sheriff laughed. “Maybe I should drive you down there. See if it makes you recollect something.”
“I’m going right by,” said Cody.
“Then I’ll save you a stop, won’t I?” said the sheriff. “Come on down from there, boy.”
Danny’s legs were trembling as he got down from the high cab. He held Rocket in his arms and followed the sheriff toward the car.
“Hey, Beau, I’m sorry,” said Cody. “All the good numbers to you now, you hear? Looks like you’ll need them.”
The sheriff opened the back door of his car. “In you go. Beau.”
forty-nine
The sheriff kept Danny all day in the cell. The lady came down twice to see him, the first time with her donut and Orange Crush, and then with a basket full of fried chicken and crisp potato skins, a small bottle of milk, and a Donald Duck comic book.
She unlocked the door herself that second time. She came in but didn’t sit down; she was in a hurry, she said. “I have to be getting along home?” she told him, turning it into a question. “I ’spect you’ll be the spending the night, but you won’t be alone. The sheriff? He’ll be sleeping upstairs? On a cot in his office, you understand?”
“When can I go?” asked Danny.
“Just as soon as you tell us where your mom and dad are at,” she said. “We’ll get you back to them right away. You and your little dog.”
It seemed to Danny that she didn’t really want to leave him, but she did. She closed the door gently so
that it wouldn’t rattle and bang, then looked in at him through the bars. Danny had already opened the basket and was eating the chicken.
“You’re such a nice-looking boy,” she said. “I wish I knew how such a nice-looking boy could get himself into such a terrible fix.”
She clucked her tongue and shook her head and left him. Danny heard her walk up the stairs and talk with the sheriff for a moment. Then the door opened and closed, and she was gone.
Danny ate his chicken, sharing fifty-fifty with Rocket. He read his comic book aloud, and the dog lay down as though to see the pictures. Danny read every story, and he read the ads in the back, because Beau had always wanted to own the X-ray glasses and the Sea Monkeys. “You think they’re real?” Danny asked Rocket now. “There’s no little monkeys that swim around in the sea, is there?”
He was reading the stories for the second time when the sheriff came down.
“I can hear you up there, talking away to your dog,” said the sheriff. “Holy moley, boy, just tell me where you’ve come from.”
Danny didn’t even look up from the comic. He paused for a moment in his reading, but that was all.
“Why, you’re stubborn as a mule,” said the sheriff.
The office door opened and someone came in, calling, “Hello?”
“I’m down here,” said the sheriff. “Beating my brains out.”
Into the corridor between the cells came a woman who was small and pretty, with a canvas bag hanging from her shoulder. She was a grown-up, but not very old. To Danny, she didn’t look much different than the big kids at his high school. She had hair that was long and silky, like the mane of a unicorn.
“Not much going on today, Alice,” said the sheriff. “Car went in the ditch up by the Corners. Oh, and Neddy Brown fell off of his tractor again. That’s about it.”
“Who’s this?” asked the lady, looking in at Danny.
“Boy from up north,” said the sheriff. “Runaway. Hauled him out of a rig on the highway, him and his dog.”
The lady smiled at Danny. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” said Danny grudgingly.
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