“Thought I heard your stomach growl.”
“Not mine.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure there’s a McDonald’s around the next bend.”
Leigh doubted it. They were traveling along a two-lane road deep in the woods. The Big Bass Bait & Tackle Shop was the last business establishment Leigh had seen. That was ten minutes ago.
Mike steered around the bend. “Guess I was wrong. I remember I was wrong once before.”
“You can remember that far back?” Jenny asked. “Admirable.”
“You’d better break out the provisions, Tink.”
Jenny turned around. Kneeling, she reached down behind the seat. She handed back three cold bottles of Hamms to Leigh.
Mike started to sing the Hamms beer commercial about lakes and sunset breezes. Leigh pictured a cartoon bear playing a log like a tom-tom.
“We thought you might appreciate an authentic native snack,” Jenny said, twisting around and sitting down again. She had a box of Ritz crackers in one hand, a pottery crock in the other.
The crock contained smoked cheddar, which she spread on crackers while Leigh broke open the beers with a can opener from the glove compartment.
“Now, we know we’re corrupting you here,” Mike said, “but we rely on your good judgment to keep your folks ignorant about this.”
“Mum’s the word,” Leigh promised.
“Don’t tell your mum, either,” Jenny warned.
The beer was cold and good. Maybe it was her hunger, but Leigh thought she had never eaten cheese and crackers half as delicious as these. She drank, ate crackers, passed some from Jenny to Mike, and later took over the cheese-spreading chores when Jenny knelt on the seat again to get three more bottles of beer.
She already felt light-headed, a little numb behind her cheekbones. So she watched herself, being careful to hold her giddiness in check and pronounce her words correctly when she talked. It wouldn’t do at all for them to think that the beer was getting to her. During the second beer, the numbness spread to her cheeks. The cheese and crackers tasted better all the time.
“I’ve about had it,” Jenny finally said.
“More for the rest of us,” said Mike, clamping his beer between his legs and taking another cheese-mounded cracker from Leigh.
Soon, the knife was coming out of the pottery crock with no more than a thread of cheese along its edge.
“Better swoop up the rest of it with your finger,” Mike advised.
“That would be gross,” Leigh said.
“You’re among friends.”
So she cleaned out the remaining cheese, licking it off her finger.
When her beer was finished, she folded her hands on her lap, sighed, and settled down in the seat. “That really hit the spot,” she mumbled. Soon, her eyes drifted shut.
When she woke up, the car was passing a lake. A boy standing in a motorboat was handing a tackle box to a man reaching down from the dock.
“We’re not there yet,” Mike said.
“A couple more hours,” Jenny told her.
“You guys must really live far out.”
“Far from the madding crowd,” Mike said.
Later, they stopped for gas at a place called Jody’s with two pumps in front and neon beer signs in the windows. A thin, red-haired man in bib overalls stared down at them from a rocker on the porch. “Mary Jo,” he called in a flat voice.
The door swung open. A girl wandered out and squinted toward the car as if she couldn’t quite puzzle out where it might have come from. “Don’t just stand there collecting dust.”
With a shrug, she trotted down the porch steps. She didn’t look older than twelve. Leigh took an immediate dislike for the man—sitting on his butt and ordering the kid to do the work.
“Help you?” she asked at Mike’s window.
“Fill her up with ethyl.”
The girl went around to the rear. “I don’t know about you guys,” Mike said, “but I’m going to make a pit stop while I’ve got the chance.”
The man watched them in silence as they left the car and climbed the porch stairs. Leigh was glad to get inside, away from him.
“A real charmer,” Jenny whispered.
“His kid’s no prize, either,” Mike said.
They walked past a deserted lunch counter. At the far end were two doors, one marked “Pointers,” the other “Setters.”
“Well, I’ll be doggone,” Mike said. He smirked and opened the Pointers door.
Jenny motioned for Leigh to go first. Inside the rest room, Leigh bolted the door. The window was open. She looked through the screen to make sure the man wasn’t skulking around. Behind the building was a jumble of weeds, then the forest.
The toilet seat looked clean, but she didn’t sit on it. She braced herself above it until she was done. After washing her hands, she held on to a paper towel as she unbolted and opened the door. She didn’t want to touch anything in this place.
Jenny entered. Mike was already at the other end of the lunch counter, wandering among shelves at the other side. Leigh went to join him. This part of the room had groceries, souvenirs, and sporting goods. “Something for everyone,” Mike said.
The man came through the door and stared at them. Leigh stepped closer to Mike.
“Help you?”
“Just looking around, thanks.”
“Gas comes to eight-fifty,” he said, and stepped behind the small counter next to the door.
Leigh went to a wire book rack as Mike headed over to pay him. The paperbacks were mostly Westerns and mysteries. Some had bent covers and white lines down the spines as if they’d already been read.
“Where you folks headed?” she heard the man ask.
“Up to Lake Wahconda.”
Leigh wished Mike hadn’t told him. Then she felt foolish. What was she afraid of? Did she think the creep would pay them a visit?
After paying the man, Mike wandered over to a wall map near the door.
What was taking Jenny so long?
Leigh returned her gaze to the book carousel. The man stayed behind the counter. He seemed to be watching her, but she forced herself not to look at him. She would not look. Her eyes slipped sideways. He was staring at her, all right. Not at her eyes, though.
At the peace button?
She wished she had left it in her purse.
Hearing quiet footsteps, she turned her head. Jenny was striding between the lunch counter and tables. “All set?”
With a nod, Mike opened the door.
“Don’t be strangers,” the man said, a smile on his flushed face.
Leigh hurried to catch up. With Jenny on the porch and Mike outside holding the door, Leigh was alone as she passed the man.
“ ’Bye, now,” he said.
She looked at him as he stepped back from the counter. She tried to smile, and thought for an instant that he was missing an arm. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? She started to feel sorry for him. Then she realized that he wasn’t an amputee at all. His right arm, from the elbow down, was inside his bib overalls. The bulge of faded denim made by his arm angled down to his crotch. There, the jutting fabric stirred with the motions of his
