Take Me With You Page 28

  August craned around and looked into the back. Henry was lying on his back on the couch awake, petting Woody, who sat on his chest. Seth was either in the bathroom or nowhere nearby.

  “Where are we?” August asked.

  “Haven’t the slightest,” Henry said.

  “Still in Kansas?”

  “Don’t even know that. Could be Missouri by now. No idea. We’re broken down.”

  “Oh,” August said. Then after a time, “Where’s Seth?”

  “He hitchhiked out for help.”

  “Oh. No cell reception out here? It’s so flat. I would think reception would be good.”

  “The cell reception is fine. He didn’t want to call for a tow because it’s so expensive. He wants to try to fix it some cheaper way. Are you up? You want coffee? Breakfast?”

  “Coffee would be nice. I have that service club, though. For RVers.”

  “Still costs money when you have to tow it lots and lots of miles. And then he’s afraid of getting towed into a shop that’ll take us to the cleaners. He wants to find somebody who’ll lend him tools. Or rent him tools. So he can fix it here. It’s nothing complicated. Just the water pump. Seth could do one of those in his sleep. Otherwise he’s worried the repair will eat up too much of our gas money. Well, gas credit. And we won’t be able to make the big goal.”

  He scooted Woody down and stood in the kitchen to start coffee.

  August laughed.

  “What’s funny?” Henry asked.

  “Nothing, really. I mean, ‘funny’ is not the right word. I just remember that bind so well. How do you think I met you guys?”

  “Oh,” Henry said. “Right.”

  They sat out on camp chairs in the dirt, fifty or so feet off the highway and their rig, watching the sun rise in the distance and drinking coffee. The sun was on such an angle, flat against the horizon, that August could almost look straight at it with his sunglasses on. But he didn’t anyway, on general principles.

  The sky was a color like blue-tinged steel, with a flat pattern of thin clouds that seemed to sail over their heads. It seemed strange to August, because the morning was perfectly windless at camp-chair level. But up above, the clouds rolled over as if on a conveyor belt as wide as the Earth.

  “It’s almost like looking at time-lapse photography,” August said.

  “I was just thinking that! I was just sitting here wondering if time was going by faster than I thought. Because it’s like we’re sitting here for a minute watching what clouds usually do in an hour. This must’ve been what you meant about just being.”

  “Yes,” August said. “This is what I meant.”

  “Except this is someplace we never meant to be.”

  “Doesn’t really matter,” August said. “Here we are.”

  They watched the sky in silence for a few minutes more.

  Then Henry said, “I’ve decided you’re right about my dad. I should at least try telling him the truth. Otherwise I think he’ll do something mean and jealous, but if I say it was mean and jealous he’ll say no, it was because I lied to him. He’ll use that to put it back on me. On my mistakes.”

  August wondered how much of Henry’s new decision hinged on the fact that rushing to their destination was no longer an option. He waited in case Henry wanted to say more.

  “You’re not saying anything, August.”

  “I never really know how to comment about that, because I feel like I don’t know the best thing, either. But if you’re having trouble deciding, it’s hard to imagine you could go far wrong with the truth. And even if it seems like you do . . . it’s still hard to imagine that whatever happens is far wrong.”

  Henry rose to his feet without a word and walked back to the rig. Vaulted up the back stairs and disappeared inside. A moment later he stuck his head back out, Woody wagging by his feet.

  “Seth has his cell phone with him.”

  “Mine is in the glove compartment.”

  Henry disappeared back inside again. August regretted not being able to hear at least one end of the conversation, but he could understand why Henry would want privacy. What seemed like only a minute or two later, Henry came back out and sat, this time carrying Woody, who he plunked onto his lap.

  “Didn’t get him?”

  “Oh, I got him all right.”

  “How was it?”

  “Not good.”

  “Think it made things better or worse?”

  “No idea,” Henry said. “He hung up on me before I could really figure that out. I just hope you’re right about that ‘not going too far wrong with the truth’ thing.”

  “Yeah,” August said, “I hope I am, too.”

  Seth arrived back what might have been an hour later, only August wasn’t wearing his watch or feeling any need to.

  Seth jumped out of the passenger seat of an ancient army-green pickup truck, looking miffed. He hauled a battered metal tool chest out of the bed of the truck. It was heavy enough that he had to carry it with both hands. August watched him wrestle it across the highway over to the front bumper of the rig and set it heavily in the dirt with a clanging noise. Then he trotted back to the truck and grabbed a cube-shaped cardboard carton, which he tucked under his arm. He nodded to the driver, who swung a U-turn on the highway, his truck shrinking into nothingness as he disappeared into the distance.

  August expected Seth to come say good morning or offer some progress report. Instead he just dropped the carton in the dirt and popped the hood from the inside.

  August heard Henry sigh. “Think we should go over there and find out why he’s not a happy camper? Or should we just sit here and continue to ‘be’?”

  “Hmm,” August said.

  Truthfully, he was enjoying the feeling of being Not In Charge. He had never been Not In Charge before. In the past it would always have been August hitchhiking out for help. Throwing stuff around. Muttering under his breath. But it struck him as an immature, unhelpful truth.

  “We should at least see if we can do anything to help him,” he said.

  “He’s probably hot and thirsty. I’ll get him some of that iced tea I made.”

  “Do me a favor. Move my chair over there while I’m walking over.”

  Seth didn’t seem to notice as August settled in his chair by the front bumper. He was on his back in the dirt, almost half under the engine. Doing what, August wasn’t sure. He had no tools out of the chest yet. Hadn’t taken the new water pump out of its box. Maybe just making a plan. Checking his access from underneath.

  Seth pulled out and sat up, still looking frowny and intense.

  “Oh. Hi, August.”

  “Everything okay now?”

  “Ah, I’m pissed at that guy. He gouged me, August. A hundred bucks to use this toolbox for the day. A hundred bucks. For what? Every single thing in here is something he tossed off his A-list for one reason or another. I mean, I can use the stuff, but . . . a hundred bucks? But he knew he had me over a barrel. And then, as if that’s not bad enough, he holds my driver’s license and my credit card, like I’m about to run off with these, like they’re so desirable, you know? So incredibly valuable. But first he checks my card to make sure he can authorize a thousand dollars in case I skip with them. I almost laughed in his face. A thousand dollars! But it was fifty miles farther into anything like a real city. Anyplace I might’ve had a couple of choices on who to ask. So he took me to the cleaners. I don’t like that. That bugs me.”

  “I can afford the hundred.”

  “So can I, August. We’re not that tight on gas money that I can’t absorb a hundred. It’s the principle of the thing.”

  He squatted in the dirt and opened the metal chest, picking through and finding a few wrenches in basic sizes, then laying them out in size order in the dirt. Henry showed up with a plastic glass of iced tea, and the intense look on Seth’s face broke for the first time.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I could use that right about now.”

  He accepted the
drink and drained it all in one giant tip of the glass, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. Then he handed the glass back to Henry. It was stained with greasy fingerprints from handling the dirty tools.

  “I’m taking Woody for a walk,” Henry said, and disappeared.

  August sat quietly for a long time, though he and Seth didn’t talk. He was hoping just sitting close by would provide Seth with a sense of companionship. Nobody likes to feel alone when they’re broken down far from home. Everybody likes a little moral support at a time like that.

  After a while August got into a rhythm of just being there, and it wasn’t much different from sitting under the scudding clouds. Not at the heart of the thing. He watched Seth reach into the open hood from above, a wrench in his hand. Saw the strain on his face and in his arm muscles as he coaxed a bolt to move. After five or six bolts, he pulled out the fan belt and set it in the dirt.

  Then he dropped down onto his back and slid under again. A split second later he slid back out and chose a different wrench. He pulled his cell phone out of his back jeans pocket, where it clearly bothered him, and set it on top of the open tool chest. Then his upper body was gone again.

  It startled August when he spoke, his voice drifting up from under the engine of the rig. Nobody had spoken for quite some time.

  “Say what you want about my dad. He never gouged anybody who got stuck in our shop.”

  “No, that’s true. He didn’t. I was over a barrel when I got there, and his prices were fair.”

  “He was honest that way.” A long silence. Then Seth’s detached voice said, “I guess that sounds strange.”

  “No. Why would it?”

  “Well, because he lies. How can you be honest and dishonest at the same time?”

  “I think people are mostly some combination of the two. Your dad doesn’t lie for profit. He doesn’t purposely lie to hurt people. He has a problem, and he lies to cover over the problem and protect it, because he can’t figure his way out of it. That doesn’t mean he wants to go out of his way to take advantage of anybody. It doesn’t mean he ever really meant to hurt anybody. I hope you don’t think I look at your dad like he’s all bad.”

  “No. You never said that. I’m more critical of him than you are.”

  “I never had to live with him.”

  “He does hurt people, though.”

  “I know.”

  “So you can not mean to hurt anybody and still hurt people as much as he does?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “It’s sort of like he’s a good person and a bad person at the same time. Which I think is . . . not possible.”

  “Seth. It’s not only possible, it pretty much describes every human being on the planet. Everybody is a good person and a bad person at the same time. The only real variation is in the balance. How much good to how much bad. When a person has a bigger good side, we call him a good person. But it’s never absolute.”

  Seth grabbed the bumper and slid out. Pulled to his feet and reached into the engine compartment from above. Drew out the fan. Set it carefully in the dirt, blades up.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Feels so much easier to be just plain mad at him. Like it’s absolute. When I think of things that are good about him, like not gouging people when it would be so easy to, it’s harder. It’s confusing. It would be easier if people were just good or bad and that was that.”

  He switched wrenches again, and his arm disappeared up to the armpit in the engine compartment.

  “I know,” August said. “I guess that’s why so many people try to treat the world like it is black and white. It’s easier. While you were gone, Henry called him and told him the truth.”

  “Oh. How’d that go?”

  “Apparently not too well.”

  “Is he going to try to pull him off the trip? Can he even?”

  “We’re not really sure.”

  “Did he say he would try?”

  “He hung up before going into that kind of detail.”

  “Yeah.” Seth shook his head. “That sounds about right.”

  August watched Seth work in silence for several minutes. Seth carefully laid bolts on the metal edge of the engine compartment as he extracted them. Then August heard a big splash and watched a pool of greenish coolant form under the rig. Trickle out under Seth’s feet. Seth stood upright and pulled the old water pump out, holding it up over his head like some kind of trophy.

  “Well done,” August said.

  “Looks like we really will get back on the road today. Maybe have half a chance to outrun him.” He pulled the new water pump out of the box and leaned into the engine compartment with it. “Sometimes I think about the fact that you were an alcoholic, too.”

  “I am an alcoholic.”

  “That you were a practicing alcoholic, too. And now you’re this.”

  “I was always this. Under that.”

  “Right. That’s what I think about. I wonder about the dad under that. Who he could be. If I’ll ever get to find out. Oh shit. Oh no. Do not even tell me. No. No, I have to be wrong. Please. Please tell me I’m wrong.”

  “What?”

  “I think the guy sold me the wrong water pump.”

  “Oh no. Are you sure?”

  Seth pulled the new pump out again and set it in the dirt next to the old one. August looked at them side by side.

  “They look the same.”

  “They’re close. But the bolt holes don’t line up.”

  He put the two pumps together, their flat mating surfaces against each other, and held them up for August to see. The bolt holes didn’t line up.

  “Shit,” Seth said, and dropped them both onto the dirt.

  He flopped over onto his back, one arm splayed across his face, and lay still for a long time. August didn’t speak, because he wasn’t sure if he should. If anything he could say would help.

  In time Seth said, “Sorry I cussed, August.”

  “I never really cared about cuss words. Never saw what the fuss was about. That was more a rule you made for yourself. It never mattered to me.”

  Seth lay still for quite a while longer. Three or four minutes, August guessed. Then he sighed and sat up. Wiped off the new water pump with a shop rag from the tool chest and packed it back in its box.

  “Well, off I go,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not like you didn’t warn me there would be some maintenance involved.”

  “Still sorry.”

  “I’m not sorry this good old rig needs a repair now and then. I’m just sorry that idiot charged me a hundred bucks to use his crappy tools and sold me the wrong part. But no matter how long I sit here and stew about it, I still have to hitch a ride back to his shop.”

  Henry got back nearly an hour later. Woody’s tongue lolled happily from one side of his widely grinning mouth.

  “Where’s Seth?”

  “He had to go back to exchange a part.”

  “Oh. That’s a pain. Shit. Just when you really want to hurry. Oh. Sorry about the language, August.”

  “I never really cared about language,” August said.

  August and Henry sat outside with Woody all day and practiced just being.

  Henry said, “If we can just sit here and be at a time like this, imagine how easy it will be when we’re in some really cool national park and everything is going fine.”

  August said, “Is that where we’re going? A national park?”

  Henry just smiled and said, “You know I can’t tell you that, August. It’s a surprise.”

  The sun went down, and still Seth was not back.

  Henry said, “Maybe nobody would give him a ride.”

  August said, “Maybe the guy didn’t have the right one in stock.”

  Then they firmly decided not to worry about it and moved inside because it was cold.

  At ten o’clock, with Seth still not back, they decided they’d have to go to bed and not worry about it.


  After an hour of lying awake worrying, August said, “Henry. You awake?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I was just thinking . . . can you haul those tools inside? If someone comes by and steals them in the night, the guy’ll charge Seth a thousand bucks.”

  “A thousand bucks? Holy crap! They’re worth that much?”

  “No. They’re not. But that’s what it’ll cost him to lose them, and that’s the problem.”

  Henry sat up and put on his shoes and slid out the driver’s door. A minute later he pushed the big, heavy toolbox onto the driver’s-side floor. He peered at it for a moment in the dome light.

  “I think I just figured out why he didn’t call.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m looking at his cell phone right here.”

  “Oh,” August said. “That would explain it all right.”

  Chapter Nine:

  FLASHING RED

  August blasted awake after what might have amounted to a forty-five-minute night’s sleep to the sound of a staticky two-way radio transmission. He opened his eyes to see the clear red of strobing emergency lights swirling around the inside of the cabin. Woody raced out from under the covers and barked in no particular direction. August sat up and looked over at Henry, who was also sitting up. Also looking freshly awakened.

  “Tow truck?” Henry asked.

  “Why would he bring back a tow truck if we just need another water pump?”

  Henry shrugged. But another thought flooded August’s mind. If Seth had come back with a tow truck, curious a move as that may have been, it meant Seth was back and okay.

  A sharp knock on the back door sent Woody into a massive attack of barking.

  “I’ll go,” Henry said. “I can move faster.”

  He ran the four steps to the back door in just his boxer shorts and T-shirt and swung the door wide. August blinked into the flashing red lights of what looked like some kind of state police patrol car. Two uniformed officers stood in the dirt a few feet from the base of their back stairs, each with one hand rather alarmingly poised on his holstered weapon.