Casket for Sale, Only Used Once (4 page)

I should also share that Samantha didn't know how I felt about her. At least Roger claimed never to have told her ("She doesn't need to know you're an idiot.") and she certainly didn't act like she knew.

The children returned and Samantha provided each of them with a candy bar as well. Nothing like sugared-up elementary school-age kids to add some excitement to a road trip, but hey, I wasn't sitting back there with them.

When Helen got back, we piled into the motor home and resumed our drive. It was uneventful until twenty minutes later, when Samantha walked up and leaned behind us.

"You can get off at this exit," she said.

"That's not what the map says," I told her.

"I know. This is a shortcut."

"No shortcuts."

"It'll save us about half an hour."

"I don't care. We're sticking with the map. I no longer accept money from strange women in coffee shops, and I certainly don't take surprise shortcuts."

"She's good with directions," Roger insisted.

I glared at him. "Do you remember being locked in a cage to be hunted for sport?"

"Yeah, but that was because we accepted money from a strange woman in a coffee shop, not because we took a shortcut."

"No shortcuts."

"That's fine," said Samantha. "No big deal."

"Thank you."

Samantha returned to the main part of the camper.

"That was pretty rude," said Roger.

"No shortcuts."

Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at the map-approved exit.

Fifteen minutes after that, we were driving down a narrow, creepy dirt road through the woods that sort of made me wish we'd taken the shortcut.

Chapter Four

A RUN-DOWN, BARELY standing store had a faded sign that read "Last Chance 4 Gas." (The word "chance" was barely visible, but identifiable through context clues.) Fortunately, our gas tank was seven-eighths full. There would be no running out of gas in sinister locations during this trip. No way.

"Joe needs to go potty," said Theresa.

"You just walked him at the rest area."

"He needs to go again. He's walking funny."

"Okay, fine." I pulled the camper into what passed for the parking lot. There were no other cars, not even one for whoever worked there. Maybe nobody did.

"I'm going inside," said Roger, getting out of the vehicle.

"Why? Do you have to go potty, too?"

"I want to check the expiration date on their beef jerky. I'm guessing late eighties."

"Doesn't it hurt to be such a geek?" I asked.

"You can't say you aren't curious. Samantha, Helen, you coming with us?"

"I think we're fine," said Helen.

"We'll send a search party in ten minutes," Samantha added.

Roger and I walked inside the store, careful not to slam the door and cause the entire structure to come crashing down to the ground. The aisles were narrow, the scent was interesting, and an elderly man sat behind the front counter, glowering at us as he paged through a tattered sports car magazine.

"Got any beef jerky?" Roger asked.

The old man coughed. "Yeah, but you don't
wanna
eat it."

"I'll trust you on that one," said Roger, looking through the candy rack for unusual and ancient selections. I noticed the magazines on the rack were at least a year old, unless a certain celebrity had gotten re-married and re-divorced without my hearing about it.

"Where're you headed?" asked the old man.

"
Wreitzer
Park
," I told him, looking uncomfortably at a doughnut that had cherry filling leaking from the side with an ant imbedded in it, like those fossilized bugs in amber.

"Not the safest place to be."

"Really?"

The old man nodded.
"Bad elements there."

"What kind of bad elements?"

"Dangerous ones."
He coughed.
"Deadly ones."
He coughed again. "You don't want to be anywhere near
Wreitzer
Park
, trust me on this."

I stared at him, trying to figure out if he possessed great wisdom or great senility.

"What kind of bad, dangerous, and deadly elements?" I asked.

"Just stay away from
Wreitzer
Park
." He returned his attention to the magazine.

"Got it."

"I bet these M&M's are worth something in the collector's market," said Roger, taking them off the rack. He bought the candy, along with a spooky pickle, and we left the store.

"I think we should camp someplace else," I told him.

"Why?"

"Because a creepy old man just told us there are deadly elements there. That, to me, is a good reason to find another place to camp."

"Aw, c'mon, Andrew.
He was a nutcase."

"Yes, but nutcases are often the best people to trust."

"Samantha said this park is an abandoned paradise. Nobody ever goes there! We'll probably have the entire place to ourselves!" Roger considered that.
"
Hmmmm
, maybe that's why the dangerous elements decided to go there."

"At the very least we're going to tell Helen and Samantha about it. If we
do
go to that park and something bad happens, I don't want them finding out later we didn't heed some creepy old man's warning."

Theresa and Kyle were helping Joe run in circles around a tree, so Roger and I approached the women.

"Slight problem," I said. "Apparently
Wreitzer
Park
has a bad element."

"Meaning?" asked Samantha.

"I don't know. It was a vague warning.
Something about it being deadly."

"I see."

"I'm not necessarily saying we
should
find another camping option, I just wanted to point out there's been a warning about our current plan of action, and if there
are
other options readily available, maybe we should consider them."

"What exactly did you hear?" asked Samantha.

"The old man is right inside. Go in there and tell him where we're going."

The women exchanged a confused look.

"So, you're saying we should go someplace else?" asked Helen.

"Yes."

"Roger?"

"I'm sticking with the 'Looney Old Man Babbling Nonsense' theory, myself."

"I'm not suggesting we cancel the whole trip," I insisted. "I'm just saying that if our choice of parks has been classified as deadly, that maybe we should pick another one that
hasn't
been classified as deadly, that's all. It's not like there aren't other parks.
It's,
what, one o'clock? We've got plenty of time to find another place. What do you say?"

"If you're really not comfortable going there, then yeah, we should find another place," said Samantha. "We've got the Georgia
guide,
I'll look through our options while we head back to the highway. What do you think, Helen?"

"I'm fine with it if everybody else is."

"I think it's
kinda
stupid," said Roger. "But I got my antique M&M's, so we can do whatever you want."

"Great," I said. "Let's get out of here."

We called the kids back to the camper, started the engine, and pulled out of the parking lot, heading back the way we came. Yeah, I felt like a total
wuss
, but total
wusses
tend to stay alive. I had my children and pregnant wife with me, and I wasn't going to take any chances whatsoever with their safety.

"He probably just wanted the best fishing spot for himself," said Roger.

"Probably."

"I have to wonder if perhaps you're taking this responsibility thing a bit too far. Maybe there's, you know, a middle ground."

"I
am
on the middle ground," I said. "I could have us all wearing life preservers."

"I guess you're right."

"
Wreitzer
Park
didn't sound all that great anyway. I hear it's overrun with earwigs."

Roger shrugged. "Yeah, but apparently Joe back there is a fearless earwig hunter."

I was silent for a long moment. "We have some dumb-ass conversations, don't we?"

"This was a conversation?"

We'd backtracked about two miles before Theresa and Kyle started to fight over the final chocolate square from one of their candy bars. Theresa claimed she'd been saving it for future consumption, while Kyle's counter-argument was that he, not Theresa, had been the one with the foresight to ration his chocolate, and the final square contained his personal tooth marks on the edge as evidence of his decision.

"One of you is lying, and they'd better fess up," Helen said, using the version of her don't-mess-with-me voice she directed at children, which was substantially less frightening than the version she directed at husbands.

"It's mine!" Kyle insisted.

"Should we pull over for DNA testing?" asked Samantha.

In the rear-view mirror, I saw Helen give Samantha her please-don't-encourage-my-easily-
encouragable
-children look.

"I think the store had a DNA test by the jar of pickled eggs," said Roger.

Helen gave the same look to Roger.

I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut.

"Give me the chocolate," Helen ordered, holding out her hand.

"But it's
mine
!" yelled Kyle.

"I don't care. If you're going to fight over it, nobody gets the chocolate."

"But then she gets her whole candy bar and I don't get all of mine because she's a liar!"

"I am not!"

"Are too!"

"Am not!"

"Are too, asshole!"

Whoa!
Kyle's first curse word.
I was glad to be there for a truly memorable parental moment. I stopped the camper and turned around in my seat, not wanting to miss this showdown.

"What did you say?" Helen demanded.

Kyle looked surprised and terrified, as if the word had escaped from his mouth without his consent. "Nothing," he said in a small voice.

"
What
did you say?" Helen demanded again. It seemed peculiar to want him to repeat a word he was in big trouble for saying in the first place, but I wasn't about to call her on that.

"He said the a-word," Theresa pointed out, helpfully.

"You
be
quiet," Helen told her.

"But he did!"

"I know what he said."

"Then why did you ask?"

"All right, I've had
enough
of this! I don't want to hear a
single
word out of
either
of you until we get to the campground. If I hear
one
word, even
one
, you will
both
be in more trouble than you can
imagine
!"

Theresa and Kyle sat back in their seats to glare at each other.

I resumed driving.

Vague threats like "more trouble than you can imagine" really weren't Helen's style. She was usually capable of describing potential punishments in such minute detail they seemed to be the work of weeks of preparation. I wondered if she was genuinely shaken up by this third pregnancy.

"See, Roger, all of this could be yours," I said.

Roger grinned. To be perfectly honest, though my children drove me absolutely bonkers on a regular basis, I really had gotten a good deal, considering what they'd been through. It had only been about two years since Kyle and Theresa were kidnapped and almost killed. It was my fault, the direct result of a horrific mess Roger and I had gotten
ourselves
into. Theresa recovered fine, but Kyle had spent a year going to a school for emotionally disturbed children.

That said, most of the time he was a perfectly happy little kid, and if the worst we had to deal with was him calling his sister an asshole, Helen and I were extremely fortunate.

We rounded a corner and I applied the brake. A large dark-green truck was stopped in the center of the road, about fifty feet ahead, blocking our path.

"What's he doing?" asked Roger.

"I don't know." The truck was filthy, the front grille covered with unidentifiable gook. Somebody was in the driver's seat, but he didn't appear to be moving.

We waited for about ten seconds.

"Honk at him," Roger said.

"I'll decide when to use the horn, thank you very much." I gave the horn a light tap.

The truck didn't budge. The driver didn't react.