This was when the news finally sank in with Gee. “We can't go home!” he yelled. He unbuckled his seat belt and hurled himself at Pop. “Please! We haven't seen Cannonball Paul yet!”
Pop tightened his lips, like I'd seen him do a lot lately, unwrapped Gee's arms like they were tentacles, and marched him back to me with a look that told me this was my problem. After he left, I said, “Forget about Paul, okay? It's not going to happen.”
“It has to happen!”
I drummed my fingers on the table, trying to think how to distract him. “When we get home, I'll go to the library and look him up on the Internet. He's bound tohave a Web site with his schedule. So when he comes anywhere close to us, we'll go see him, I promise.”
“What's today?”
I counted up days on my fingers. “It's the thirteenth.”
“June thirteenth?”
“Duh. Of course.”
“He's in Hay tomorrow. I'll bet he's going there right now—where is it? Show me the map.”
I yanked the map out of the door pocket and showed him where we were in relation to Hays.
“It's only a inch” he protested.
“More like seventy miles—”
“Just one more day? Please?”
I wadded up the map and threw it into the sink. What was the point in trying to organize anything if your little brother always blew in like a Kansas tornado and tore your plans to shreds? “Get this through your thick brain—we are not going to Hays! We are going home, and it's all because of you, screwing up my life as usual!”
He balled up one fist, but didn't let fly—smart enough to know I'd pop him back if he did. So he stamped his foot and yelled, “I don't care! I'm going to Hay!” He ran to the door, threw it open, and jumped out.
Next minute, his red T-shirt disappeared behind a corner of the convenience store. Good riddance, was my first thought. Leo had jumped off the trailer, but with all the cars and trucks and noise he got no farther than the nearest pump island. There, he turned a few circles as though looking for a scent, then slinked back and crouched next tothe right back wheel, debating whether to crawl under or not.
I grabbed a piece of Melba's cheesecake from the fridge for something to chew on. Besides nails. Pop was still fueling, calm as a pond, and for all his face showed, he'd never even heard of such a thing as “grandchildren.” My heels slammed against the storage bin under my seat, harder and harder, as though trying to make a dent. Finally, Pop topped off the fuel tank, replaced the nozzle, and stuck his head inside. “You want anything?”
A nice, normal family, I thought. A real vacation—and how about some control over my life?
But he was talking about convenience stores. Sighing, I pulled myself up and went to fulfill my mission in life: managing my little brother.
Gee wasn't in the main building. I searched the convenience store, the taco stand, the pizza stop, even the fullservice sit-down restaurant, but no sign of him. The other side of the building was the truck port, a maze of roaring semis and towering trailers.
Circling around outside to the cars and minivans, I noticed that Pop had moved the RV to a parking lot beside the store and locked it. Leo whimpered at me from the trailer as though asking where Gee was. “Go find him yourself,” I snapped, but of course he wouldn't venture beyond the nearest curb.
By the time I'd scouted the store again, the worry weasel was starting to creep up on me. Pop was in the restroom—maybe Gee was there, too. Not knowing what else to do, I hung near the door marked GENTLEMEN,waiting for one or both of them to come out. The two restrooms faced each other, making a short passageway to the back entrance and the big glass doors leading to the truck port. A pay phone was nearby, plus a couple of newspaper stands and a rack with brochures about local attractions. Of course Cannonball Paul was there, next-to-last on the third row. I was reading headlines at the newsstand, when the reflection of a vehicle on the glass made me turn around.
For a couple of seconds, I couldn't believe it. Rolling by just outside the glass doors was a big white trailer with gold letters: BLAZING, AMAZING, and you know the rest.
The trailer was already past me. Hardly thinking, I pushed open the glass doors and shouted, “Hey!”
The driver didn't hear or see me, and the vehicle was already rolling so fast I couldn't catch up, even while running and shouting “Hey!” like a total maniac. And even if I could catch up, what would be the point—to ask for his autograph, or if he'd pretty-please stuff my brother into his cannon? It was only after I stopped, watching the truck hit the highway and head for the interstate ramp, that the thought hit me—
What if Gee had found that trailer and stuffed himself in the cannon? What if he was at this minute being carried away by none other than Cannonball Paul?
Four wheels don't make a friend, but they can sure help.
—Veronica Sparks
I ran back inside, hoping my crazy idea was wrong and Gee would be playing dodgeball with the ice dispenser or demolition derby with soup cans. Something normal, at least for him. But no—I checked down every aisle and behind every revolving book and CD rack without catching even a glimpse of him.
Then back out the front door. Leo had crept off the trailer and was sniffing around the tires. When he caught sight of me, he let loose with one of his strangled yelps. He swung in the direction of the highway and yelped again, then hopped up on the trailer and turned around to look at me. There was something on his mind, for sure. Could it be something like, My boy is in the big white rolling box and we need to go after him right now?
After a few seconds, he went through the whole pantomime again, and I was convinced. Rushing back through the store, I found Pop at the pay phone with calling card in hand, getting ready to punch in our home number. “Wait!” I gasped. “Don't do it yet!”
He lowered the card and stared at me.
“Gee's gone. I mean, really gone. Here's what I think—”
“What I think,” Pop said, “is that he's outside climbing a pole, or else he's hiding from us, for spite.”
I just shook my head. Gee didn't do anything from spite; that took too much thinking. But when I went on to tell Pop my suspicions, he refused to believe a seven-year-old boy would be bold enough to stow away in a stranger's vehicle.
I made a big effort to keep both feet on the floor and speak quietly, ticking points off my fingers the way Pop did. “Number one: Paul doesn't seem like a stranger after Gee's been obsessing over him all week and sleeping with that promotion card under his pillow. And number two, boldness doesn't have a thing to do with it. He just does stuff without thinking, or maybe he thinks by doing. I've never figured that out. Whatever—” This became point three: “It's like when he climbed up the side of Big Brutus. He wasn't being brave or showing off—he was just doing what was in his head right then. See?”
Pop moved the receiver toward the phone, then back toward his ear, then hung up. “Well, maybe.”
“Pop! He's getting farther away from us every second.”
“All right,” he said abruptly. “When was this guy supposed to be in Hays?”
“Tomorrow.”
“That means he'll be camping there tonight. I'll get the bike and go to Hays and check it out. You'd better stay here.”
“Stay here?!”
“In case Gee turns up. Don't get too far from the pay phone. I'll take this number along and call as soon as I know anything.”
That was the plan and he was sticking to it. I followed him out to the RV and suggested we ought to call thepolice, but he didn't think much of the idea. “And tell them what? That we think Gee sneaked into a cannon? We can handle this without the establishment, Ronnie.”
This was his contrariness showing, though I had to admit, as he roared off on the Yamaha, he looked up to handling anything. Still, if one Gee-seeker was good, five or six more would be that much better. I turned it over in my mind while searching the store and the restaurant and the parking lot twice—then
the question was taken out of my hands.
“Did you lose something, honey?” asked the store clerk while I stood near the magazine rack looking a little lost myself.
BECKI, read her name tag. She looked so sympathetic I couldn't hold back. “Yes, ma'am—my little brother.” As I explained the situation, her eyes got wider and wider, and when I got to the part about my grandfather not calling the police, they bugged right out.
“If that's not just like a man! I never heard of such a stubborn—of all the—don't you worry, honey, I'm calling the highway patrol this minute.”
Not only that, but after getting more details from me, she put out an Amber Alert right there in the store, just by raising her voice: “We have a missing child—a boy seven years old with light brown hair, wearing cutoffs and a red T-shirt. Please report if you have seen this child.” Then she turned on the outside speaker and repeated the announcement. Everybody was looking around as though they expected to see my brother behind the potato-chip bags or under their front axle. It was all pretty intense until aKansas Highway Patrol car arrived, then people started quietly paying for their gas and slipping away. The authorities would take care of it.
Within the hour, four troopers in three cars turned up, meaning I had to repeat the whole story to each one. All of them seemed skeptical that Gee would do what I was sure he did. Plain old kidnapping was more along their line, but if they knew my brother they'd understand that any kidnapper would think twice before nabbing him. At least Officer Hadley, the first one to appear, got on his radio with a fellow patrolman in Hays and asked him to track down Cannonball Paul.
While this was going on, I heard the pay phone ringing and almost knocked down a little girl while rushing to answer it.
Pop's voice sounded thin against the road noises in the background. “I'm right outside of Hays. Just got here— thought I'd call and make sure Gee hasn't turned up. I guess he hasn't.”
“No, but—”
“I'm going to head to the fairgrounds and see if that guy's checked in yet.”
“Pop, I—”
“There's too much noise here. I'll call back later. So long.”
The phone clicked in my ear before I could tell him to expect a patrol car or two. The troopers were discussing strategy outside, so that's where I went to share the latest news: “My grandfather is at Hays. He's going out to the fairgrounds.”
They told me they'd put out an Amber Alert for my brother so that every police officer, convenience-store clerk, and gas-station attendant in Kansas would be watching for the aforementioned seven-year-old with light brown hair, brown eyes, and a red T-shirt. Somehow this didn't make me feel one bit better.
Don't get me wrong—Amber Alerts are terrific and avert many a tragedy, I'm sure. But this was Gee. This was my brother. None of your ordinary kidnap scenarios seemed to apply.
I wandered back through the store, where Becki was telling every customer to be on the lookout for a seven-year-old boy with light brown hair, et cetera. In the back lobby I collapsed on a bench between the pay phone and the brochure racks, trying to remember what Kent Clark said about dealing with a crisis.
He wrote a whole chapter about Advantaging Your Anxiety, but “anxiety,” to him, seems to mean stuff like losing a pile of money from a bad investment or having the transmission in your Lexus fall out—not misplacing a family member who's accidentally almost killed himself lots of times. My Anxiety squatted like a big concrete garden toad on my chest, so heavy I could hardly breathe. Where was the advantage in that?
Not that I thought Cannonball Paul was dangerous— or was he? I pulled one of his cards from the brochure rack and stared hard at it, as if studying his face would give me a clue to his character.
The silver suit and golden helmet kind of screamed for your attention, so you didn't notice much about the face.But that might be because there wasn't much to notice. He was young, or at least not old, with blond hair combed straight back from a face that was not gorgeous but hardly ugly. The most striking thing about him was the pose: feet apart and chin up, one hand on his hip. Like, CAPTAIN AMERICA SAVES THE WORLD.
Just sitting here was going to drive me nuts. I took the phone book off its shelf under the pay phone and looked up “Hays, City of.” There were listings for the fire department, the collector, the police, the mayor … some of which might be useful. I reached in the pocket of my shorts for my ever-ready pencil stub and felt one of my business cards. It was the one with Howard's cell phone number on it.
My hands were shaking, but after a couple of tries on the pay phone I managed to punch in all the calling-card numbers, plus the cell-phone number. Then I listened for the ring with my heart pounding in my ears.
After five rings, and my heart almost giving up, I heard a click. Then a voice: “Hey.”
“Howard?” My own voice sounded like it was climbing a pole, but I got the squeak under control and spilled out the whole story: hasty departure from the campground, Chalk Pyramids, Cannonball trailer, highway patrolmen. The order was a little mixed up, but he seemed to get most of it. A few seconds passed before he asked, “Where did you say you were?”
I told him. After a few more seconds, he said, “You're not gonna believe this, but I'm only about forty minutes away. Had to deliver some hay to a ranch in Rush County.”
“Where's that?”
“Where I'm taking the hay? Over by the Barbed Wire Museum.”
Barbed Wire Museum? Only in Kansas. “Howard— can you come?”
He could have asked, What for? I wasn't sure how to answer in a way that made sense, but what I really wanted was to do something besides wrestle a stone toad—namely, go to Hays and look for Gee myself. Howard had the wheels. But did he have the will?
“Sure,” he said.
By now most of the patrolmen were gone, but Officer Hadley came in to say good-bye for now and to pat me on the shoulder. “Just stay put so we can reach you. And don't worry. Becki said she'd look after you, and we've got the whole state looking for your brother.” I just nodded, my mind about fifty miles away.
During the next half hour—the longest half hour of my life—the store manager brought me a Coke and a plate of nachos, and Becki sat with me during her break. I was too jumpy to appreciate it. Finally, I hinted around that I could use some quiet time, and they more or less left me alone.
When the blue-and-white pickup finally pulled up in front of the glass doors, it looked as beautiful as a limousine. I gave it a just a minute wave and dashed back to the counter.
Becki was checking out a customer, still giving her description of Gee like she knew the poor little boy. I snuck up on the opposite side of her and slipped one of my cards halfway under the register. It read: Left with a friend. Call 555—7890 [Howard's number] if you have info.
In the lobby I paused to make sure no one was looking, then darted out the doors and hopped in the truck. “Thanks,” I gasped. Howard nodded at me and gunned the accelerator. As we roared past the RV lot, I shouted, “Wait!”—almost hitting the windshield when Howard hit the brakes. “We'd better take Leo.”
“Right.” Howard pounded on the side of the truck cab. “Hey, Leo! Come on, boy!” With no hesitation, the dog leapt off the bike trailer and bounded over, clearing the tailgate with a mighty bound. When he was settled, thumping his tail so hard the back window rattled, Howard shifted gears and pulled out of the lot. “Which way?”
I pointed to the right and he turned the wheel, joining a line of vehicles waiting at the stoplight. Directly ahead, I-70 hummed with cars and semis. “Oh, man,” Howard said.
“What?”
“I forgot about the interstate. I'm not used to …”
“Used to what?” I practically shouted.
“Traffic,” he said as the light turned.
Stay calm, I told myself. “Howard? It's green.” He moved forward, but so slowly the driver in the SUV behind us gave a blast on the horn. “Look, no sweat. My dad was a truck driver. The interstat
e was his office. Seriously. He was always complaining about bad drivers on ramps and how it's supposed to be done. So I can talk you through it. Come on, let's do this. How about a right-turn signal… Good, but give it some gas.”
Biting his lip, he turned onto the entrance ramp and nervously tapped the accelerator. Up we went, slowly drawing level with the semis that roared by so fast they createdtheir own wind tunnels. I'll admit, trucks had never looked so big and mean before. “Don't look behind you!” I told Howard. “I'll watch back here, just keep your eyes on the road. Turn signal… No, left turn signal.”
“I knew that,” he said quickly.
“Don't slow down! Just keep steady. … You're doing good.” Whoosh! A cattle truck whizzed by so close the pickup wobbled. “Okay, now speed up—no, don't !” The SUV passed us with another angry honk. “Same to you, guy! Now it's clear. Step on it, Howard. STEP ON IT!”
He stomped the accelerator and nudged over into the right lane, wincing as another huge tractor rig buzzed his left. “You did it!” I squealed, bouncing on the seat. “Now we just go with the flow.”
His hands were still gripping the wheel too hard. “Wait'll I tell my folks. No, on second thought, maybe I'd better not.”
“What did you tell your folks?”
“The truth. Well, enough of it. Told 'em something came up and I had to give a ride to a friend.”
“They trust you to take off like that, without knowing who the friend is?”
“Sure.” The tone of his voice made the question sound kind of silly. If he ever screwed up really bad, like losing his little brother at a truck stop, his parents' attitude might change. But for now, I didn't mind him being Mr. Perfect.
Howard pushed the old truck up to sixty miles per hour before speaking again. “One time last spring? My little sister got lost in a Wal-Mart store in Scott City. Got away from my mom while Tyler and me were playingCarnivore's Castle in the electronics. We looked all over that store. Inside and out. Store manager made an announcement and all that. Somebody in the lawn and garden found her asleep. Behind the compost bags.”
The Middle of Somewhere Page 13