Gemini Summer (15 page)

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 sandwich 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.

“I’m Alice,” she said. “I work for the paper.”

“She’s a reporter,” said the sheriff, “so mind what you say.” He laughed. “Not that you’ll say much.” He told Alice, “Kid only talks to his damned dog.”

“Well, it’s a nice dog,” she said. “I’d talk to it, too. Looks like a terrier, is he?”

Danny shrugged. He imagined what she would say if he told her,
No, he’s my brother.

“What’s his name?”

“Rocket,” said Danny, caught off guard.

The sheriff grunted, and the lady came closer to the bars. “Hi, Rocket,” she said.

Rocket jumped off the bed and went to see her. He licked the hand that she held down, then whined and moaned in his bag-of-monkeys voice.

“What a little sweetheart,” said Alice. “He’s more than a terrier. I don’t know what all’s in him.”

“He’s part person,” said Danny with a sly look.

The dog kept talking. “You know, I believe it,” said Alice.

Danny River liked her then. He asked the sheriff if he could talk with her alone, and after the sheriff left he said, “Do you want to hear a story? But you can’t tell anyone else, okay? You gotta promise not to tell the sheriff. He’ll send me home.”

“I promise,” she said. “Cross my heart, and hope to die if I tell him.”

He started with the day when Old Man River had thrust his shovel into the garden, and went on from there. He even told her his real name. “It’s not really Beau,” he said. “That’s my brother. I’m Danny River.” Alice put her canvas bag on the floor and sat on the bed, and it was the first time that anyone had listened to the whole thing. She listened without interrupting, without telling him that he was crazy; she listened as though she
believed
him.

He told her nearly everything, leaving out just one thing—exactly where he’d come from. He told her about Hog’s Hollow, but not what city it was in. He told her about stowing away in a truck owned by Buffalo Cody, but not where it happened. She kept nodding and smiling, and that made him tell more.

When he finished, she just looked at him, and then at Rocket. She shook her head—not to show she doubted him, but from the shame that he was sitting in a jail cell.

“Why didn’t you tell your parents this?” asked Alice.

“I tried to,” said Danny. “But they wouldn’t listen. They said they would even take Rocket away.”

“Really?” she asked. “They must be horrible.”

“Oh, no,” said Danny. “They’re not horrible at all. You’d like them a lot. It’s just…They don’t understand stuff sometimes.”

“Will you tell me again?” said Alice. “The whole thing?”

“Sure,” said Danny.

“Can I record it? Do you mind?” She picked up her bag and took out a tape recorder. Danny marveled at the machine. He had never seen a tape recorder up close, and never one as small as this, no bigger than a good-sized box of chocolates. “I don’t want to forget it,” she said.

“Can I hear my voice?” asked Danny.

“Sure,” said Alice. “As soon as you finish.”

“I mean first,” said Danny.

“Well, it might be better if we wait,” she said.

So Danny began all over, and he thought he was as clever as Jim Hawkins in
Treasure Island
—that book his father had never finished—who had told the whole story, “keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island.”

But in the end, Alice tricked him.