The Middle of Somewhere (8 page)

This part of Kansas was what people mean when they say
flat
. Even the creeks and ponds were flat, in a way I'd never seen back home. Instead of flowing in ditches or
settling into dips, they just kind of lie there, right on the surface, like glass. We rolled past pale-yellow wheat fields so thick the tractor tracks looked like the squiggles you make with your finger on fur. Two cattle trucks passed us, each with a whiff of rolling feedlot:
whoosh, whoosh
.

“Yeah,” Pop said. “It might be fun to see ol' Front Street again. We could get there by two, spend a couple hours, and then look for a campsite. You see any on the map, Ronnie?”

I folded the map to a square with Dodge City in the middle, and was looking for the little triangle camp symbols, when Gee suddenly let out a yelp, unbuckled his seat belt, and threw himself at the windshield. “LOOK!”

Pop slammed on the brakes; we slewed to the right and stopped. “Look at that!” Gee yelled, pointing at the long white trailer that had just passed us. It was already too far away to make out the logo on it.

Pop, both hands on the wheel, was breathing deeply but seemed to be in control. Which was more than you could say for me. I grabbed my little brother by the neck and marched him back toward the dinette table. “If you do that again, I'll… lock you in the bathroom. All you have to do when you see something is stay put and—”

“But, Ronnie, didn't you see what was on the side of that trailer? It was the Human Cannonball!”

“I don't care if it was the president! What I'm saying is, stop with the yells and the jumping around while we're on the road. Save it for when we stop. You get my point?”

My real point was, if he cut short my RV odyssey, I would have a tough time turning a negative into a positive.
I tried to get this across by staring at him really hard as Pop restarted the RV. Instead of pulling back onto the highway, though, the vehicle rolled slowly forward and stopped again. After a minute, Pop said, “There's something you don't see every day.”

I crept forward and stared, trying to figure out what the heck we were looking at. At first glance, it was a long, skinny junkyard stretching for maybe a quarter-mile along the right side of the highway. But the junk was moving. In fact, the junk was shaped and bent and punched and welded into a chorus line of moving parts.

“Whirligigs,” Pop said. “Somebody's got a lot of time on his hands.”

Each figure was welded to a steel fence post and mounted about three feet from the ground. There were so many it was hard to concentrate on just one at a time, and they didn't seem to have any overall purpose or plan: chickens, tomatoes, rabbits, cornstalks, all kinds of human-like shapes, with only their busy-ness in common. The wind played them like an orchestra. I rolled the window down to listen:
Clank-clank. Whirrrrrr. Buzzzzz
.

“Cool!” Gee yelled, and jumped out the back door. I reached for my own door latch, ready to head him off. Pop caught my eye and shook his head.

Gee was running up to individual creations, where he'd pause for a second, half-crouched, then imitate whatever it was doing. His arms pumped, his feet stamped, his whole body twirled around.

There were a few he couldn't imitate even if he wanted to because—well, let me just say they were both politically
incorrect and anatomically incorrect. The guy who made them didn't seem to like anybody in government. Or out of it.

Pop slowly opened his door and slid out, taking his camera. I followed, and watched him get close to one of the whirligigs to take a picture. Then he lowered his camera and just looked at Gee. Here was a cutout of a skinny guy in running shorts, legs turning like a pinwheel, and there was Gee, pinwheeling. Here was a crazy chicken with its head bobbing up and down—and there was Gee, bobbing. Pop turned to me. “He
can't
stop, can he? Any more than they can.”

I was afraid this would happen. “He's getting better, really. He just got through second grade with no teacher crack-ups.”

That didn't come out right. I meant that no teachers had insisted Gee be transferred to other classes because they couldn't take it anymore. But Pop just said, “They never understand.” Then he raised his voice to call out, “Gee! Five minutes, and we're back on the road.”

Dodge City is still a cow town, by the smell of it. We had to crawl right through the middle to reach Historic Front Street, competing with cattle trucks and pickups. Pop was getting grouchy about stoplights and drivers who pulled out in front of him and then drove too slow. Gee was getting antsy and I was about to go back and sit on him when we finally pulled into a parking space. Just ahead of us was a high wooden fence, and between the slats of the fence I could see a row of buildings that looked like “the town” in
every Western movie ever made: General Outfitters. Livery Stable. Long Branch Saloon. “Is this for real?” I asked.

“The street is real,” Pop told me. “But the buildings come right out of
Gunsmoke
.”

Gee hit the sidewalk and went straight to the fence. Pop pulled him down. “No more climbing. Remember yesterday?” At the admission gate, he got grouchy again. “Eight bucks apiece?!” he exclaimed. “Just to walk around a fake TV set?”

My grandfather is maybe on the cheap side of thrifty.

“I'm free,” Gee said, pointing to the sign.

“No you're not,” I corrected him. “It says children under seven, not children seven and under. But there's a family rate, Pop—we're family.”

“Twenty-five,” he grumbled. “That won't save us anything.”

“Well, as long as we're here we could check out the gift shop. You said it was worth seeing.” Though I wasn't likely to find bedsheets, unless they had lassos and spurs on them.

It's not true that if you've seen one gift shop you've seen them all. I can personally testify that if you're into Western, Front Street is the place for you: hats, boots, sheriff's badges, guns and holsters, cattle skulls, and kid versions of all that. Plus cowhide rugs, rawhide whips, ranch and farm sets, furniture and picture frames made out of cattle horns, leather everything. Plus posters, books, videos, and DVDs of every Western your grandfather grew up with, and tapes and CDs of every song they played on
those shows. There was even a song about Wyatt Earp— seriously.

We were in luck at first, because Gee found another kid his age to play gunfight with, while I perused the postcards. There was one of the whirligigs—“wind sculptures,” according to the caption—and one of the gunfighters on Front Street. I snapped those up right away, but then something different caught my eye. It was a little girl standing before a field of sunflowers. If she were standing
in
the field, she would have been invisible, because their fat yellow faces towered over her. Monster flowers! They reminded me of the giant jackrabbit, except for being real.

Gee's friend went out the side door with his family to visit Front Street, leaving Gee to me until Pop was ready to go and I could ask to stop at Wal-Mart. “How about a hat? Here's one that'll fit you.” I took a black hat with a snakeskin band from the display and plopped it on his head: too big, but that just made him look cute.

He pouted under the wide brim. “I want a golden helmet. Like Cannonball Paul.”

“For you, that might be more useful,” I agreed.

“Why can't we go out on Front Street?”

“You know why. We don't have tickets. How about a vest? Look—real leather, with fringe and silver studs. I'll bet all the cool kids at school will be wearing these next fall.”

No use—he wasn't interested in clothes, unless they made him look like a gorilla or a superhero. For a while he amused himself by pressing his nose and lips against the
glass door and blowing his cheeks out until one of the store clerks said, “Little boy, please stop that.”

Meanwhile, some of those hats were starting to grow on me. I'm kind of an ordinary-looking person, with straight yellowish-brownish hair and blue eyes and “her father's nose,” as Mama says—which meant I could do with a little less nose. But a soft beige hat with a band of silver-and-turquoise medallions kind of puts a nose in perspective.

Kent Clark says to choose clothes that build your confidence. Much as I wanted a car, it would almost be worth buying a horse to go with a hat like that. Besides, you didn't need a license for a horse, right?

Suddenly, it occurred to me that I hadn't heard any of the store clerks say “Little boy please stop that” lately. I listened for falling merchandise or thumps on the floor, but what I heard, over the background of some guy singing “O bury me not on the lone pray-ree,” was Pop in conversation about the power source of the future.

He was in the book section, discussing his new business with a man holding a book about windmills—the old-fashioned kind of windmill that used to pump water on the lone prairie. The fellow Pop was talking to seemed interested—at least he wasn't making excuses to get away. When I ran over, both men looked up. “Where's Gee?” I asked.

My mother and I have this radar when we're all together: if either of us senses danger, we lift our heads like grazing deer and say together, “Where's Gee?” It's not a
real question—it's a signal. Pop hadn't learned that yet, so he answered, “How should I know?”

I started a quick search of the store, and after giving the other man his business card, Pop joined me. “I don't think he's in here,” I said.

“Not out there, either.” We paused beside the glass door leading to Historic Front Street. In the dusty road outside the livery stable, a couple of dudes in Old West outfits were shouting at each other as a crowd of spectators gathered. Evidently they were gearing up for a gunfight, just like on the billboards.

“He couldn't get out through this door,” Pop said. “It has an automatic lock.”

Back to the parking lot, then. I wasn't in full panic mode yet. Gee had the sense by now not to run out into traffic, or any of the usual little-kid tricks. The problem was with
un
usual kid tricks. We searched the parking area and the RV while people lined up on the sidewalk to watch the shoot-out. I was starting to feel just a little edgy when—

Pow! Pow!

The gunfire was so loud it made me jump. But what followed was a shriek, all too familiar: “You got me! I'm a goner!”

I ran to the fence, and sure enough Gee was staggering around, clutching his stomach and throwing in a few moves he'd picked up from the whirligigs. The gunman who was still standing looked clueless for a minute, then put one hand on his hip and shook his head. The dead man rolled over to find out who was stealing his scene. Then he sat up and said something that made the spectators laugh.

Unfortunately, Gee doesn't know when to quit. He flopped on his back in the dust and jerked his legs like a frog, then rolled on his stomach and gouged the dirt with his toes. Finally, the dead guy stood and hauled him up by the shoulder.

“Okay, folks—who's willin' to lay claim to this varmint?”

Pop and I looked at each other. So much time went by I got a little nervous. I jerked my head in Gee's direction, as though to remind Pop:
Hey! You're the adult here
!

Finally, he waved his hat over the fence and called, “That would be me.”

Laughter is a great thing, but being laughed
at
is hard to take. Especially for Pop, I found. When the gunman opened the gate to hand over the offender, Pop grabbed Gee by the collar and pulled him to the RV, opened the coach door, and threw him in. Then he stepped up into the cab and started the engine.

When we were on the highway again, I glanced back at Gee. He had buckled himself in and looked like a perfectly behaved seven-year-old who happened to be covered with a thick layer of road dust. And had a thumb stuck in his mouth. I turned back to Pop, who gripped the wheel with both hands like he was driving a tank. “I guess it was time to get out of Dodge, huh?” I remarked, trying to lighten the mood.

When he didn't answer, I knew we were in trouble.

It took a while to find a suitable campground not too close to town. Pop drove to it without saying a word, and Gee didn't say anything, either. Since I don't talk unless there's a good chance of getting an answer, it was a very quiet trip. And a very long one.

To tell the truth, I was a little disappointed in my grandfather. Not for getting mad at Gee, which was perfectly understandable. But however difficult Gee was, we were still Pop's flesh and blood, and he shouldn't have been tempted to disown us, the way I was pretty sure he'd been tempted back at Front Street. It made me feel cold.

On the upside, we were still headed west.

The campground we finally stopped at had a total of two dozen sites, most of them empty, gathered around a little playground with squeaky swings and a rusty merry-go-round. After Pop had signed in, paid the fee, and parked at the farthest campsite, I opened the RV door and Gee shot out, headed for the playground. Pop spoke, for the first time since leaving Dodge City: “I think we could all use a little break from each other. So for tonight you two can sleep in the tent. A real camping experience—how about that?”