by Brian Meehl
I pulled the GPS device out of my backpack and unwrapped it. I put the batteries in, fired it up, and held it in my armpit in case it beeped. It didn’t. While it searched for satellites, I read the manual and learned about entering a destination, or waypoint. I pulled out my Bible, opened it to the page I’d written the coordinates on, and entered the latitude and longitude into the GPS: N 39° 14.011, W 098° 23.679. I hit Goto. A screen flashed up telling me I was 312 miles from the spot as the crow flies. The electronic compass arrow pointed almost due west. The miles number clicked down. I was definitely going in the right direction and getting closer to where my father had stashed my inheritance.
As I watched the miles tick down, the vibrating drone and heat in the tiny room made me drowsy. I fought off sleep. My head bumped against the wall. In the end, I leaned into the black pillow of the z-bag.
My eyes twitched open. After a nanosecond of confusion, came recognition: the bathroom, my skin clammy with sweat. But the vibration and drone were gone. It was still and quiet. I heard footsteps. They came closer. There was no time to throw open the door and dive out the camper’s side door. I could only pray that the footsteps would stop, the side door would open, and the driver would step outside. But God had answered too many of my prayers for one day.
The handle turned. The door swung open. I stared up at a towering, twentysomething black guy. I screamed.
He screamed.
I jumped up. The door slammed shut.
“Shit!” he yelled.
The door opened again.
The door opening-shutting-opening had been like a fan hitting my sticky skin with cool air. But why did my lap feel like it was on fire? I looked down. My blue jeans darkened with a growing stain.
I looked up at the man’s shaved head, his stubble of a beard. His face was widening, flashing big white teeth. He burst out laughing. Between eruptions he shouted, “I’m glad to see—ha-ha!—that you’re more scared—ha-ha-ha!—than me!” In the middle of another booming laugh, he suddenly stopped and threw up a giant hand. With his fingers stretched wide, his hand almost spanned the width of the narrow doorway. “Don’t move!” he ordered. “Better to piss in one spot than spray the field.”
I didn’t budge. Not because he said so. The sight of his open hand pinned me there, same as if he’d slammed me against the wall. It wasn’t because it was big as a dinner plate; it was the calluses. I’d seen calluses before but they were mosquito bites compared to his. He had a mountain range of calluses.
He glanced down at the puddle around my sneaks. “Looks like you’re done. Go ahead, step outside.” He opened the side door, dipped his bald head, and jumped to the ground like a big cat. I realized why all the shaving cream: he was a head shaver.
I grabbed my backpack and jumped out. I hit the ground and didn’t look back. I moved down a gravel road in the middle of wide-open nowhere. I heard an eighteen-wheeler’s diesel stacks in the distance. Beyond a green cornfield, cars zipped along the interstate.
“Where you going?” the man called after me. “You can’t just piss in my RV and walk away.” I kept moving. “I’m not asking you to clean it up. I’m asking for an explanation.”
I turned, walking backward. “I needed a ride. Thanks.”
“Do you know where you are?”
He had a point. I stopped. I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep. I looked around. Except for some trees in a creek bed, there was nothing but fields of soybeans and corn, and low hills in the distance. “Where am I?”
“Kansas. Just past Topeka.”
“Really?” I couldn’t believe it. I’d been asleep for almost two hundred miles. Maybe there was a little Rip van Winkle in me after all.
“Where you trying to get to?”
I glanced toward the distant highway. “To my next ride.”
He took a step toward me.
I backed up, ready to run.
He stopped, holding up his hands again. “Look, you’re not gettin’ a ride with piss-stained jeans and smelling like a bum. Why don’t we clean up your mess, rinse out your clothes, and you can ride with me a ways? You can even sit in a seat instead of on the can.”
I stared at him. I was thinking that anyone who acted so nice after someone pissed in his camper must have something up his sleeve.
“Besides,” he added, “if you try to hitch on the interstate the state troopers will grab you.”
He kept making sense, but I still didn’t trust him.
He looked up and down the deserted road. A gust of wind rattled the corn. “And I don’t see a lot of prospects here.”
I didn’t move.
His long arms flapped at his sides. “Alright, here’s the thing. I pulled off the highway to take a piss, and I almost did before you beat me to it.”
I held back a smile.
“Now I can’t use my own bathroom.” He flapped his arms again. “So what I’m gonna do is step into the woods, then get back in my ride and keep heading west. If you want a lift, you’re more than welcome. If you don’t, then hit the interstate and see if you can do better than a brother in a wide ride.” He started toward the creek bed, then turned back. “Oh, and it was nice screaming with you.”
I couldn’t fight off smiling at that. Luckily, he’d turned and disappeared into the trees.
If it weren’t for reading the beginning of Huck Finn, I probably never would’ve gotten back in that camper. But standing there at another fork in my trail, I figured it wasn’t a coincidence. It was either the spirit of my father having a little fun with me, or it was God working in His weird way. Mark Twain had put Huck on a raft with a runaway slave; and God, for whatever reason, had put me in a camper with a black dude.
6
Cat and Mouse
As he mopped the bathroom, I got a better look at his “wide ride.” It was a little apartment on wheels. Opposite the bathroom was a closet, the rear side door, a kitchen with a mini-fridge, a stove, and a patch of countertop. In front of that was a booth like in a diner, with windows. Across the narrow aisle was a couch. Above the driver and passenger seats was a sleeping loft. Mom should’ve gotten one of these. It could’ve been the New J-Brigade’s home and getaway vehicle all in one.
The man gave me a pair of his long cargo shorts and left me inside to wash up and change. The shorts were too big, but I rolled them up till they fit. I used the chance to pull out my GPS device, and check how far I was from Hunter: 133 miles.
I bungee-corded my rinsed-out jeans to the bike on the back of the camper to dry. The license plate was a Pennsylvania one, but the real jaw-dropper was the bike. It was a roadie, a super-pricey Trek. He was either some rich poser, or he really spoiled himself when it came to his steed.
After getting back on the interstate, we kept it to small talk. Then he asked the question I knew he was going to pop sooner or later. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” I answered.
He chuckled. “If you’re eighteen, I’m thirty-five.”
He didn’t look thirty-five. More like twenty-five. He glanced over. His eyes were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses. I could see myself in the mirrored lenses. I was all distorted from the fish-eye effect. My head was so huge and my body so tiny, I looked like a baby.
He turned back front. “What’s your name?”
“Billy.”
“I’m Sloan.” He extended his hand.
I stared at his calluses for a sec, then shook his hand. He had the grip of a boa constrictor, or one of those animals like a hippo or a croc that grabs their prey and holds them underwater till they drown.
“Where you headed?” he asked.
“Hunter. It’s a little town in the middle of the state.”
“What’s there?”
“My father.”
He nodded. “So whenever you wanna visit him you get there by stowing away in somebody’s RV.”
I swallowed. “I usually take the bus.”
“Why didn’t you take it this time?”<
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I didn’t have an answer. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
He threw me a look. “Fair enough. Life would be a bust without secrets.” He dug in the pocket of his shorts. “If you wanna ride with me for a bit there’s one thing you gotta do.”
“What?”
He pulled out a cell phone and put it on the console between the seats. “Call your mother, or whoever you live with, and tell ’em you’re safe.”
“My mom doesn’t have a phone.” Even though I was finally telling the truth it sounded like a lie. “We just moved to In … into Columbia and we don’t have one yet.”
He studied me from behind his shades. “Right. There’s a town coming up at the next exit. If you don’t make the call I’m pulling off and taking you to the police station.”
I zipped open my backpack, pried out the Bible, and slapped my hand on it. “I swear to God she doesn’t have a phone yet.”
He gave me a weird smile.
My stomach gripped up as the exit approached. He sailed past it. “Thanks.” I felt like I owed him an explanation. “My mom hates my dad and hates me visiting him. I heard from my uncle that my dad’s dying.” The words were still riding the air as I flashed on my father turning the knob on the tube, ending his life. Feelings chunged up inside me, but I smooshed them down and went on. “Even with him dying, my mom wouldn’t buy me a ticket. That’s why I’m hitching.”
His eyebrows popped up. “Stowing away in an RV isn’t hitching.”
“I know, but I wasn’t getting a ride. I remembered how hobos used to ride freight trains. I figured I’d try it with a camper.”
“Okay, I’m buying,” he said. “But how’d you know I was headed west?”
“I didn’t. But when I saw your Pennsylvania plates, and that the bike on the back was a way expensive Trek, I figured whoever was driving it had to be rich people traveling west.” I was stunned how my lies kept flowing. I figured it was because I’d been reading Huck Finn, which is pretty much a how-to book on lying.
“But I could’ve just as easily been headed back east,” he said.
“If you were, then you never rode the bike once. It’s a total cleanie.”
He laughed. “Pretty good detective work.”
“Thanks.”
We drove without talking for a bit. A sign said we were in the Flint Hills. The highway rose and fell like a black inchworm crawling across Kansas. Tractors moved across dusty gold fields harvesting wheat. The silence felt weirder than not talking. “Can I ask you a question?”
He shrugged. “Long as I have the same right not to talk about some things.”
“Sure.” I pointed at his hands. “Why are your hands like that?”
He lifted one off the wheel and opened his plate-sized hand. “Melanin.”
I squinted with confusion. “Melanin?”
“It’s what makes me black and you white.” He said it as casual as saying what he’d had for breakfast. “My skin’s packed with melanin to stop the African sun from burning it up and giving me skin cancer. Yours is white so the weak northern sun can get to your skin and supply you with vitamin D and a bunch of other good stuff. The only reason my palms and the bottom of my feet aren’t black is because the sun doesn’t hit me there.”
I half smiled. “That’s not what I was asking about. I was asking about your calluses. I’ve never seen so many.”
“Oh, these,” he said, flexing his fingers. “I get ’em in my line of work.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m an entertainer. Mostly in casinos and on cruise ships. I’m a juggler.”
“What do you juggle to get calluses like that?”
“Big stuff. From baseball bats to chain saws. Sometimes I even juggle chairs.”
I looked back into the little apartment behind us. It was kind of messy, with some clothes thrown around, but I didn’t see anything you might juggle. “Where’s your juggling stuff?”
“I’m on vacation. Jugglers need vacations too.”
“Where are you going?”
“For now, as you deduced, detective, west.” He patted the dashboard. “That’s the great thing about an RV. You can just hop in and blow with the wind.”
For a while the only sound was the drone of the engine and wind-rush through the open windows. Purple clover spilled over stone outcropping on each side of the road. The hills were sparse and green, and the only trees had slid into the creek bottoms. We passed a barn with big white letters proclaiming NO GOD, NO PEACE. KNOW GOD, KNOW PEACE.
He chuckled. “I was wondering if we were in God’s country. Now it’s a fact.”
He said it kind of sarcastic, like he was a nonbeliever. He’d seen my Bible; he knew I was a Christian. If he wanted to start some religious debate, I wasn’t taking the bait.
“So, where is Hunter exactly?” he asked.
I was glad I’d studied my map earlier. If I didn’t know where Hunter was my story about my dad would’ve been a bust. “West of Salina,” I said. “Exit two-oh-nine.”
“On the interstate?”
“No, Hunter’s about twenty-five miles north.”
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll take you to your exit on one condition.”
I shrugged, trying not to look too excited about getting another hundred miles out of the ride. “What’s that?”
“When we get there you call four-one-one and see if your mom has a phone yet. If you’ve disappeared I’m sure she’s trying to get a phone.”
“Okay.”
We dropped into another silence.
Even though I’d lived in a lot of places, I was looking at new country. I’d never been this far west, or seen such open land. It wasn’t flat exactly. Pale green hills rolled to the horizon, like an endless ruffle of green quilt on a giant bed someone had forgotten to make. It took God six days to make the world. Maybe on one of those nights He had slept here.
7
Hunter
Sloan took Exit 209, turned at the bottom of the ramp, and pulled off the road near a historical marker. I tried to look cool, like I’d seen the road dozens of times. But the road to Hunter was nothing but a rail of blacktop cutting through a patchwork of green corn and tan wheat stubble. The only traffic was a turtle crossing the asphalt.
Sloan got out and unhooked my dried jeans from the bike. He left me inside to change and told me to use his cell phone to call 411. Luckily, there was still no listing for Tilda Allbright. I wasn’t ready to talk to her. I wanted to get to Hunter and find the bad book first. Calling her would be a lot easier if I were heading home.
When I got out, Sloan walked back from the historical marker and pointed northwest. “Twenty-seven miles that way is the geodetic center of North America.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s the starting point, the dead center of all the lines and boundaries in the U.S.”
“Right.” Shouldering my backpack I realized I probably should’ve known about something so close to Hunter. “I forgot the weird name for it.”
“I could run you up to Hunter and then go see it.”
I didn’t get why he was being so super nice. It made me suspicious. “You don’t have to. Some cars will come along soon.”
He looked at the turtle, now taking a break in the middle of the road. “That turtle doesn’t think so.”
I chuckled. “I know it doesn’t look it, but people do live around here.”
“I’m sure they do, but I came out here to see the country. And you can’t say you’ve seen Middle America until you’ve seen the true middle of America. C’mon, I’ll drop you in Hunter on the way.”
I looked at the turtle. It was back to inching across the blacktop. And not because a car was coming. “Alright.”
The road north was like a roller coaster for eighty-year-olds. We did whoop-de-doos over the rises. Coming up over some of them you felt like you were on top of the world. You could see fields and rangeland for miles and miles. And there was another
sign that the road was always empty. The mourning doves and other birds on the blacktop were so unused to traffic they waited till the last second to spring into flight.
Sloan asked me questions about my dad. I made up a story about how he used to have a farm, but lost it, then drove harvesting equipment for other farmers until he retired. I was totally Hucking-up.
As we got close to Hunter it was way past lunch and my stomach started growling. Stomach growling is like the yawning thing: you can pass it on. I heard Sloan’s stomach too.
“Is there any place to eat in Hunter?” he asked.
“Ah”—I fumbled for an answer—“I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean you don’t think so?”
“Last time I was there, there was a diner, but I think it was about to close.”
“Well, if you’re starved you can hop in the back and make a peanut butter and jelly.”
Even though my stomach sounded like the cat house at the zoo, I didn’t go for his offer. It didn’t fit my story. “Nah, I’ll wait and get something at my dad’s.”
We crossed railroad tracks and drove into Hunter. It looked like a ghost town. Main Street was a short stretch of run-down, empty buildings. My fib about the diner was almost true. The Hunter Café had an old sign saying it was moving across the street, but it hadn’t survived there, either. The only building with a car in front was a post office not much bigger than the stamps it sold. And there was a tiny museum called Yesterday House.
“Huh,” Sloan grunted, “looks like they should rename Hunter ‘Yesterday Town.’ ”
“Yeah,” I said, “it’s not much, but my dad has always liked it here.” It was hard acting sad about seeing my dying dad when all I wanted to do was snatch the GPS out of my backpack and follow its compass arrow to the treasure. I pointed to a street with run-down houses and trailers. “That’s his street.”