You Don't Know About Me (9 page)

Then I spotted a second cop car coming from the other end of the lot. They were closing on me like a vise. I slid back into the store and looked for another exit. It was just a matter of time before the cops came inside. I slipped out a side entrance into another lot. It was for campers and big RVs.
I ran between RVs, using them for cover till I could get to the woods and hide. Reaching the end of the RV alley, I peeked around a camper. One of the cop cars was cruising toward me. He didn't see me, but I had to disappear, quick.

I backtracked and checked the doors on RVs. All locked. I came to a small camper that looked like a puffy white mail truck. I tried the side door. It opened. I slipped inside and shut the door. It was empty. I had no idea when the owners would be back: minutes or hours.

My heart almost locked up as the front of the cop car nosed into view through the windshield. I scrunched down in the narrow aisle. There was a door next to me. I waited a few seconds for the car to pass, then opened the door. Inside was a tiny bathroom. I scooted in, shut the door, and sat on the toilet.

Sitting in the closet-bathroom, it felt like time had stopped, like I was holding my breath. I tried to look at the upside. If I had to hide there all morning at least I had a pot to piss in.

Just when I was thinking it might be safe to slip out and sneak a look through the camper windows, an explosion made me jump. The driver's side door had opened. I listened for the other door, or kids coming in the rear side door. Nothing. The door thudded shut. The engine revved
to life, the transmission clunked into gear. The room lurched forward.

The bathroom had transformed into my second “raft” of the day. But I had no clue where it was going. I felt the camper drop down a hill. A few seconds later the room jerked to a stop. I grabbed the sink so I didn't slide off the toilet. Fear shot through me, like a wave of heat between my scalp and my skull. What if the driver had figured out that I was in the bathroom? The room jumped forward again. I looked through the only window: a small skylight over the tiny shower. A stoplight arced through it. I had to hold on again as we took a couple corners. It felt like we were driving in circles. Then we shot down a hill, up another, and started picking up speed. I heard a semi roar by. It seemed like the camper had gotten on I-70. But which direction: east or west? As the tiny room bounced along, sunlight beamed through the skylight. It hit the mirror at the front of the room. The sun, still climbing in the east, was behind us. I was heading west!

As the camper reached cruising speed, my escape pod settled into a vibrating drone. The sunlight also lit up a little shelf above the sink. Behind a rail keeping things from falling was a row of stuff: toothpaste, mouthwash, deodorant, hand cream, aftershave—okay, my driver was a guy. But the last items on the shelf, three cans of shaving cream, got me thinking. Great, I thought, the guy with his hairy knuckles on the wheel is a Neanderthal. Or someone trying to shave away the fact that he's a werewolf.

I was tempted to open the door, sneak a peek, and see if God was punishing me by putting me in a camper with a
werewolf who cruises around looking for boys to fatten up and scarf down when they're plump and juicy. I didn't touch the door. If he saw me and kicked me out, I'd be a sitting duck for the cops. I had to stick with hairy whoever for as long as I could, even if he was Bigfoot.

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.

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?”

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?”