“How are Mom and Dad?”
“Perfect,” Da says with contempt.
“Tell them I miss them too.”
“You are going to screw up everything,” she says. “College and everything.”
Because Lucy is crying as she says that last bit, I think I feel something. Something small but sharp and electric zings through my chest.
My sister, my pal, cares whether I have a future, and I care that she cares.
What a chump. Pair of chumps, really.
“It’ll be okay, Luce. I can’t just-”
“He’s dangerous!” she shouts.
A highway crosswind or something suddenly blows Jarrod’s attention in our direction. “Hiya, Luce.”
Da reaches forward and grabs the phone from me.
“I think this is good enough,” he says.
He rolls down his window and, with Lucy’s little voice screaming DanDanDanDanDan like a tiny passing train, he takes his pick of the endless parade of pickup trucks passing us in the next lane, draws back that hellacious, accurate old right arm, and fires away.
The phone zips on a line and clatters around the bed of an old Dodge. And takes its GPS signal with it.
“I repeat,” Da says, “technology is for chumps.”
“I found that phone in a couch,” Jarrod says. “It was perfect.”
“Um, Da?” I venture with trepidation.
“Yes, Young Man.”
“Won’t they trace Jarrod’s car?”
He punches my headrest again. Not becoming my favorite mode of communication. I miss my phone.
“Glad you are catching on, my boy. I guess we are going to have to locate ourselves another car after Jarrod gets off the next exit to head us north.”
“I don’t think so,” Jarrod says.
I stiffen.
“Excuse me?” Da says calmly.
“It’s not my car, so it’s not registered to me. A student left it at the end of spring semester. Left it for the summer to go help stabilize things during the election in Haiti.”
“‘Stabilize,’” Da says, laughing. “I love that old chestnut.”
“Thanks,” Jarrod says, like he’s achieved something.
“Where would we be without ya, J?” I say.
“It doesn’t even bear thinking about,” he says, turning off and heading us north.
“This is your guy?” I say when we pull down the narrow lane.
“Yup,” Jarrod says.
“This is the same guy as the other guy.”
“He’s about the only guy I know. There is one other, but he’s not gonna want to know me anymore when he finds out I stole his car.”
“But why are we here, man?”
The combination of activities has conspired to leave my grandfather snoring in the backseat. I am jealous but there is no resting for me at the moment.
Jarrod points to an array of windows in a row above Matt’s shop. “He rents out rooms. Nobody will find you here. Then you can make a plan for what to do next. He’s good at plans, actually. He’ll help.”
I look up at the windows. There are little lacy curtains in each one, and a plastic flower in a milk glass. You can see the dust from the street. I have not the slightest doubt that Matt does all his decorating out of that dollar store where I got the baseball stuff.
It hits me now. Like hunger, like cramps, like the full burst in your belly when you drink an icy Coke after having nothing in your stomach during a whole scorching summer day.
I love baseball.
“Let’s go talk to him,” I say.
“Back for more already?” Matt says, laughing. He is closing up shop, no assistant helping him. “You guys are voracious.”
“Got any rooms free, Matt?” Jarrod says.
“A couple. What’s up, something wrong with
“We just need to move on now,” I say, cutting Jarrod off before he can be more helpful.
Matt looks back and forth from one of us to the other and back again with a sly, knowing lip curl. “I get a lot of that here. No problem. Where’s my pal?”
“He’s in the car.”
“He okay with stairs?”
“Why wouldn’t I be okay with stairs?” Da says, walking in, bleary but with us. He is limping noticeably.
“No reason, pal,” Matt says, though he is probably counting about five reasons in his head.
We follow him through the front door, then he lets us all in the entrance next door. We tromp up the dark and curved stairway that is no struggle even for Da because the stairs are uncommonly short. It’s almost like floating up to the next level.
“Most people here are singles, ha-ha,” he tells us quite unnecessarily, “but I do have one double room. You want three singles?”
“We’ll take a double,” I say quickly, not wanting even a hint of another ramble by Da to happen. I shudder at the thought of his taking off here like he did in the relative safety of the woodsy campus.
“One double, one single, then.”
“Oh, just the double,” Jarrod says. “I’m gonna drive back to my place.”
Da snaps right to attention. I gasp. “Jarrod, oh, no, you can’t.”
“Right,” Da says, “you can’t.”
“I have to be there,” Jarrod says. “I have to. There are things to do. Those guys will sure be gone when I get there, then we can just go back like it all never-”
“No-no,” Da says with finality. “Oh no, no, no. That cannot happen. You are a good boy, and have been wonderful to us, but you are going to have to be wonderful to us for at least a little while more.”
Jarrod, in his endearing way, takes this as an invitation. As appreciation.
“Oh, really, nice and all, but thanks. I honestly do need to, you know, physically be back there at night. It’s my job and everything so it’s the least-”
“Really, no,” Da says. In his special-serious voice.
“Jeez, even I got a chill off that one,” Matt says with a laugh. “The elder statesman can get quite the snarl on when he wants to, huh?”
Jarrod sees less of the humor. He looks like he wants to cry.
“Easy, Da,” I say, putting a hand on his hand.
He turns on me, eyes reddish. He pushes me away and approaches Jarrod to make his point a little clearer. Jarrod might just piss himself, and if the place didn’t already smell like this when we got here, I might have guessed he’d already commenced.
Before Da can snort in his face, I grab him.
Really hard, really meaning it, I grab my grandfather’s arm and yank him forcefully in my direction.
He is shocked as his piercing eyes rush up to mine.
“Oh no,” he says to me. “Oh, no, no, no.” He turns away again.
I yank him even harder. “Oh no yourself, Da. No, and no, and no. You leave him alone now.”
He bites his lower lip and wrinkles his nose in a most threatening snarly dog fashion.
I stare, scared witless, but keeping that to myself.
He holds ground.
I hold ground.
Then I make my move.
