by Brian Meehl
How far he was driving west, I didn’t know. But I did ask if he planned to cut back north to the interstate. He said we were making good time on Route 4, and there were no speed traps because all the troopers were up on I-70, where the traffic was.
When we were west of Scott City, Ruah pulled out his cell phone. “I’ve got bars. Your mom’s gotta have a phone by now.”
I dialed 411. This time, there was a listing in Independence. As it dialed through I reminded myself of what I’d put in my note to her. I was going to New Orleans.
“Hello,” she answered.
I could hear the strain in her voice. “Hi, Mom.”
“Praise God! Are you alright?”
I was glad she didn’t start crying right off. “I’m fine, Mom. Did you get my note?”
“Why are you doing this?”
I guess that meant she got the note, or someone had read it to her. “Did the police come to see you?”
“Yes,” she said sternly. “I told them you got off the bus to come home.” I could see her, ramrod straight, telling the world how things should be. “I told them you’re not a runaway.”
“You’re right, Mom, I’m not.”
“So you’re coming home?” Her voice got billowy with hope.
I felt bad that I’d misled her. “No—I mean, yes, after I see where my father lived. I’m gonna find out about Richard Allbright.” As soon as I said it I realized that the truth didn’t fit the story I’d been giving Ruah. I glanced over. He was still staring straight ahead.
Mom’s voice, with the iron back in it, jumped in my ear. “I can tell you everything you need to know about him.”
“You had your chance, Mom. You gave me a bunch of lies.”
She fired scripture. “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. There is no truth in him.”
It pissed me off that she, the lying sinner, was throwing scripture at me. “There was enough truth in him to let your desires out,” I shot back. “That’s why I’m here!”
She went silent. I thought she’d hung up. I snuck another look at Ruah. He kept staring at the road. He was either trying to give me privacy or not wanting to listen. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to hear any of it either.
The sound of a muffled sob came through the phone. “God is punishing me.”
“I don’t wanna fight, Mom.”
“Neither do I. Please, come home, Billy.”
“I can’t.” I quickly added, “I mean, I can, but I’m not coming back yet.”
She sucked in another sob. “What if you don’t come back?”
“You’ve always trusted God to protect us. You gotta trust Him now.”
That broke the lock on her tears. Between sobs, I told her I loved her, said goodbye, and closed the phone.
We rode in silence until Ruah said, “So your father’s already dead.”
“Yeah.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
“Not really.”
We didn’t say anything after that. It was fine by me. I had thinking to do. Something Mom said kept bugging me. I couldn’t figure why she hadn’t told the police that I was a runaway. Maybe she’d really believed I’d gotten off the bus to come home. But now that she knew I wasn’t coming home, she would call the police and tell them I was headed to New Orleans. That was fine. They could look for me in New Orleans all they wanted.
To keep from worrying about stuff I counted cars on a coal train heading east. But it’s hard not to worry when the sun begins to set, you’re riding in a stranger’s camper, and you’re wondering where you’re going to spend the night.
When we got to the main intersection in Scott City, Ruah turned north. “There’s a campground up ahead in a state park,” he said. “I’m stopping there for the night. You’re welcome to camp with me if you want. My PB&J is decent, but my real specialty is barista burgers.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I felt like I was wearing out my welcome. Especially after he had to listen to me and Mom fight. “What’s a barista burger?”
He shrugged. “You’ll have to go camping to find out.”
“Alright,” I said. “A barista burger sounds good. Thank you.”
He chuckled. “Don’t thank me till you’ve tasted it.”
“I mean thanks for giving me a ride almost all the way across Kansas.”
He shot me a quick smile. “Just helpin’ a mountain biking missionary who’s lost his bike.”
Lake Scott State Park was filled with RVs and tents. We found a spot in a cottonwood grove. Ruah made dinner in the camper while I collected kindling for a fire. He gave me money to buy firewood at the park store. I used the money from the geocache to buy a sleeping bag and some cargo shorts. It also gave me the chance to check my GPS device. I was 171 miles from St. Petersburg, and the compass arrow was pointing northwest.
We ate inside the camper at the dinerlike table. Ruah’s barista burger wasn’t like any cheeseburger I’d ever had. It was spiced up with garlic, onion, soy sauce, ginger, and even honey. It was really good, especially dipped in ketchup.
During dinner, I asked him about one of my worries. “Is there any way my mom could find out where I called her from? Or that it was your phone?”
He wiped mustard off his mouth. “It’s not my phone. I borrowed it from a friend in Cincinnati. And it’s not easy tracing a mobile call to where it was made from, even for the police.”
I relaxed. Even if they traced the call to the phone number in Cincinnati, it was the wrong direction. “Why are you using a friend’s phone?”
“If I were to use my own cell, there’d be people with access to my call history. I’m trying to cover my tracks, just like you. I don’t want the Cincinnati Reds coming after me, and you don’t want your mom and the cops coming after you, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but I’m not sure she told anyone I ran away.” I explained how she’d told the police I was coming home and insisted I wasn’t a runaway.
He took a bite of salad. “From what I’ve heard about your mother, she might not want the cops digging into her past. It sounds like she might have unfinished business with a few judges. Has she ever decided not to show up in court?”
I chuckled around a bite of burger. “Oh, yeah.”
“Having outstanding warrants would make it risky filling out a missing person’s report. Which means you’re probably not officially missing.”
“So I won’t be showing up on any milk cartons.”
“Right.”
As I helped clean up, I thanked Ruah for the great burger and told him I’d start hitching for Colorado in the morning.
“You headed northwest or southwest?” he asked.
“Northwest.”
He didn’t say which way he would be going; I didn’t ask. He’d taken me halfway across Missouri and almost across Kansas. If God kept tossing me such good luck, I’d get to St. Petersburg the next day.
14
Giff
After dark, we hung out and watched the campfire shoot spark fireworks. A man strolled toward us. I didn’t know if there were rules about walking into people’s campsites. It was my first time camping.
The man was black, looked about sixty, and had a friendly face. He stopped near the fire. “Evening.”
Ruah nodded. “Yes, it is.”
I wasn’t sure if he was making a joke, or trying to be rude so the man would leave. As they talked about the weather, the man studied Ruah. Ruah wore his cowboy hat, but the fire lit up his face. I knew what was coming.
“You look familiar,” the man said. “I know you from somewhere. Or I’ve seen you on TV.”
“TV,” I said, speaking for the first time.
“Say what?” he said.
“You’ve seen him on TV.” Ruah shot me a dirty look. “He’s an assistant pastor at the Feast of Faith Church in Missouri. Our services are on TV and people see ’em all over the Midwest.”
“Is that right?” Th
e man seemed to buy it.
“Yes, sir.” Ruah nodded in my direction. “He’s exaggerating, but folks recognize me now and then.”
The man jabbed a thumb back toward the camper. “I see your plates are from Pennsylvania. That’s a long way from Missouri.”
“It’s a rental,” Ruah said. “I didn’t check the plates when I drove it off the lot. But thanks for letting me know.”
If he was hinting that the conversation was over, the man wasn’t taking it. “What brings you out this way?” he asked.
I jumped in again. “We’re going to Denver for a Bible bee. I made the nationals, and Pastor Sloan is taking me there.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ruah purse his lips. I didn’t know if he was going to spit or start laughing.
“What’s a Bible bee?” the man asked.
Him not knowing about Bible bees was good. Maybe I could scripture him to death till he left. “It’s like a spelling bee, but all the questions are based on one book in the Bible.”
“So you’re a Bible whiz kid?”
I gave him a big stupid grin. “If I win, yeah.”
“And he will,” Ruah added, getting in on the story. “I’m coaching him all the way to Denver. We even gave the RV a biblical name to let the Lord know we mean business.”
I had no clue where he was going.
“Really?” the man said. “What’d you name it?”
“Giff.”
I knew he’d gone too far. There’s no Giff in the Bible.
“Gift? I’ve never heard of Gift,” said the man. “Unless you mean the gift of the Magi.”
“No, that’s ‘gift.’ ” Ruah pointed at his camper. “This is Giff. It’s short for G.F.”
“What’s G.F.?”
“Even shorter for”—he raised his hands and air-quoted—“the great fish.”
I finally got where he was going. “You know,” I said, jumping in, “the great fish from the book of Jonah.”
The man rocked back with a laugh of recognition. “You mean the whale that swallowed Jonah.”
“Actually, there’s no whale in the Bible,” Ruah said with a sour face that even had me believing he was a pastor. “A whale swallowed Pinocchio. The Good Book never says anything about a whale. Jonah was swallowed by a great fish.”
The man raised a hand. “Alright, I ’preciate the catechism. But why name your RV after the fish that swallowed Jonah?”
Ruah flashed a quick smile. “Because we’re sailing along in its belly just like Jonah.”
“We even think it looks like a fish,” I added. And we could have. I mean, the camper kind of looked like a big albino catfish with one whisker, the antenna.
The man squinted at the RV. “If that’s the great fish”—he looked back at the two of us—“which one of you is Jonah?”
Ruah jabbed a finger at me. “God called him, just like God called Jonah to preach to the city of Nineveh. But this young man is gonna deliver the Word to the National Bible Bee in Denver.”
Firelight flickered on the man’s dissatisfied expression. “I’m no Bible expert, but wasn’t the great fish taking Jonah away from Nineveh, and away from his calling. Your great fish, Giff, is taking you to Denver, to your calling.”
“You’re right,” I told him. “At first the fish was taking Jonah away. But Jonah repents, gets right with God, and then the Bible says, And Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land. For all we know the fish hurled Jonah right next to Nineveh.” I got out of my camp chair. “I can get my King James and check it if you want.”
The man waved his hands. “No, I believe you.” His face eased into a smile as he turned to Ruah. “Reverend, looks like you got yourself a champ. Good luck, and good evening.”
“Evening,” Ruah said with a friendly nod.
As the man walked away, I sat down and stared at the fire. I didn’t dare look at Ruah. I would’ve cracked up.
When I did look up, he grinned, shaking his head in disbelief. “How in the hell did you know that verse?”
I shrugged. “When I was little I thought Jonah was the coolest book in the Bible. I memorized all four chapters.”
“What was so cool about it?”
“The fish. I had a pet goldfish, and I thought the great fish in Jonah was God’s pet. But God’s fish wasn’t any fish; it knew tricks. God had taught him ‘swallow the man’ and ‘hurl the man.’ For months I tried to train my fish to swallow things and boot ’em back up, but it never listened. It made me realize how powerful God was. When He talked, fish listened.”
Ruah laughed. “Man, you put the freak in Jesus freak.”
I slept on the couch. Ruah slept up in the loft.
Sometime in the night a sound woke me. It was the bathroom door shutting. I stared through the windows over the couch. At first I thought I was seeing a swarm of fireflies. But they were stars, thick as a bug cloud: the Milky Way. Mom once told me the Milky Way was a giant nest in heaven where the angels folded their wings and spent the night. Each morning the sun woke them up and they flew down to earth in a flock of blessings.
The toilet flushed, the bathroom door opened, and Ruah made his way down the aisle past me. His body caught the starlight. In nothing but his white boxers, he looked like a pillar of glistening coal. He climbed back into the sleeping loft.
I wondered if I’d ever have muscles like that, or if I’d be stuck with a corn-dog body all my life. I stared at the Milky Way. Maybe one day an angel would dive down and turn me from corn dog to beefcake. You know, give me a total hunk-over.
I was dreaming of high-pitched birds, like canaries, when I woke up. I thought I was hearing morning birdsong, but when I popped out of the z-bag, it was pitch black. The Milky Way was gone. The chirping was coming from the oven racks as the camper got buffeted by gusts of wind. A flash of lightning lit up the windows, followed by a rattling boom.
“Shut the windows!” Ruah yelled as he cranked a skylight shut. I slid the side windows shut. The rain slammed into us.
Maybe it was God letting us know He didn’t appreciate how we’d used His Word to fool the visitor at our campfire. Or maybe T.L. was joining the fun of turning the camper into a great fish. Whatever, there’s something about rain on a metal roof that tucks you in a drum of sound and comfort. I dove back into the z-bag deeper than ever.
15
The N-Word
In the morning it was still raining buckets. Water ran down the windows like liquid cellophane. I got up before Ruah and waited for it to let up. I would’ve walked to the highway and started hitching but I didn’t have rain gear. Everything would’ve gotten soaked, including my GPS and the Huck Finn pages.
I got out the new Huck chapters and started reading. Huck and Jim were floating down the river on the raft at night and hiding during the day so they wouldn’t be caught. They were a mini version of the Jonah story too. They had their great fish, the raft.
Ruah woke up and peered over the edge of the loft. “What are you reading?”
“An old book.”
He stroked his chin, in deep-thinker pose. “Hmm, I hear there’s a lot of those.”
“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” I told him.
He climbed down the ladder. In the daylight, his back muscles bunched and rippled like a bag of black snakes.
He pulled on a shirt. “What’s a nice Christian boy like you reading a book like that?”
“I found it,” I said, stuffing the pages back in the big pocket on my shorts. No way was I going to let him see the highlighted words and numbers. “I wanted to know why so many people hate it.”
“Have you found out yet?”
“I get why some people might not like it, but I haven’t gotten to the hate-it part. I mean, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.”
He moved to the kitchen area and started pulling out breakfast stuff. “How often does it say ‘nigger’?”
“A lot.”
He flipped a box of cereal in the air and it stuck
a perfect landing on the table. “Where I went to school, that was the hate-it part. And how the black dude, Jim, is a step-’n’-fetch-it, bow-to-the-man, stupid nigger out of a minstrel show.” He put two bowls on the table. “Now, just ’cause I’m serving you breakfast, Masser Billy, don’t get any ideas.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, and started to get up to help.
He chuckled and pushed me back down. “That was a joke. One breakfast ain’t gonna make me your nigger.”
I felt my face go hot. I’d heard black people call themselves the N-word, but not while they were fixing me breakfast. “Jim’s not exactly stupid,” I said.
“How so?”
“In the chapter I just read, Jim makes wise King Solomon look like an idiot for wanting to cut a kid in half.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Ruah slid into the opposite bench with a carton of milk. He filled his bowl with cereal and looked out at the pouring rain.
“Not exactly hitchhiking weather, is it?”
“It’ll let up,” I said. “If it doesn’t, I’ll go to the camp store, buy a garbage bag, and make a poncho.”
Ruah leaned back and looked at me like I had a morning booger the size of a walnut. “First you wanna hitch after you piss your pants, now you wanna hitch in a garbage bag. Are you sure you’ve earned your hitchhiking merit badge, scout?”
I started to feel hot again. “I know what I’m doing,” I muttered.
“Sure you do.” He took a spoonful of cereal, crunched, and swallowed. “Got a proposition for you, Billy.”
I shrugged. “What?”
“I’ll keep driving you west.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “On one condition.”
“If it’s calling my mom every ten minutes—”
He waved his spoon, cutting me off. “No, it’s not that. You ride with me, you read to me.” He flashed a smile and shoveled another bite of cereal. “Huckleberry Finn. I wanna know if it’s as badass ugly as everyone says.”