Transcontinental (28 page)

“Okay, put it in neutral,” Ant called out.

Leroy hesitated, gazing at the plethora of controls in front of him.

“Press the brake pedal and put the gear selector next to the ‘N’ again.”

He did, and with the help of Ant and Chad, the car pulled onto the road.

“Go left,” Chad said.

“Oh, God.” Ant stopped pushing in the middle of the empty road.

The road inclined to the left, not quite a hill, but not flat, either.

“Is there not a gas station to the right?” Ant asked.

“There is, but it’s miles out. The uphill sucks, but it’s not far. Promise.”

“At least you do not own a truck,” Ant sighed, resuming his position.

* * *

Chad drove unlike anybody Leroy had seen before.

He sat scooted up as far as possible, legs spread wide, steering wheel just inches from his chest, both hands gripping it. Leroy’s first instinct was to laugh, but who was he to criticize a driving style? He had no experience driving. For all he knew, that could be the most efficient technique.

In the middle rear seat, Leroy prodded his ankle with a finger, hoping with each poke that the pain would grow less intense, but it didn’t. He cursed himself for making the trip that much harder. He knew it wasn’t his fault, but it also was.

Despite the lack of a radio, crappy techno music thumped from the blown-out speakers of a boombox beside Leroy, which he didn’t mind because it seemed to keep Chad muted, which kept Ant quiet, which meant he didn’t have to talk to anyone. He admired the passing landscape; bushy trees pillowed the ground for as far as he could see, a verdant mirror image of the billowy clouds overhead.

Lovely as the scenery was, Leroy hoped they were close to the next station. The ride had hit and past the hour mark; they’d already driven through Denver and were traveling east. He was irritable and increasingly hungry, and the thought of eating bread and peanut butter made his stomach gurgle. What he wouldn’t give for some macaroni.

It wasn’t long before the road widened into two lanes, and on the other side of a hill that the small car seemed to have trouble making it over, the city began to eat into the forest, little by little, until the forest was gone.

Chad drove through traffic light after traffic light, turned right, then left, then right again, past head shops and record stores and sports supply outlets, his long hair swaying as he nodded to the relentless beat of the music. Block after block, they passed through the town, until it was only visible through the rear windshield. The car zipped along a road much like the one on which they’d pushed it earlier, the tinny drone of the exhaust accompanying Chad’s music.

A deep horn caught Leroy by surprise, as it always did, and he turned his head to see a short freight train running along a set of tracks that traveled away from the road. Relief swept through him. He couldn’t wait to get out of the car. Looking ahead, He could see a moderate-sized station at the end of the street. He hoped security wouldn’t be an issue; the pain in his ankle flared up at the thought of having to run.

Before they reached it, though, Chad pulled into the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, parked behind the building, then killed the engine and the music. “Hey, you guys don’t think this place tows, do you?” he asked, taking off his seatbelt, then said “No, probably not,” in response to his own question.

“What’re you talking about? Why’d we stop here?” Leroy asked.

“I thought we could walk from here, so we don’t have to pay for parking.”

Ant sat back in his seat, his head turned slightly so he could see Leroy and Chad from the corner of his eye, watching with a subtle smirk.

“Like, you wanna come with us?”

“Well yeah,” Chad shrugged. “I drove you guys all the way out here and I don’t really feel like driving another hour back, so why not?”

Leroy didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t even wanted a ride in the first place, though he wasn’t sure what they would’ve done if Chad hadn’t driven them. In fact, Leroy couldn’t think of any reason Chad couldn’t go with, besides that he simply didn’t want him to. Then, one came to him. “I don’t think we have enough money for three people,” he managed. “Florida’s so far.”

“But if you’re hopping trains the whole way, all you need is money for food. I don’t eat much in the first place, brother,” he laughed.

“Right. Um…” Leroy furiously searched for a convincing reason.

“The truth is, Chad,” Ant said, turning to face the two of them, “Leroy is in the midst of a journey, of a sort. He set out from California to find a woman from his past, who lives in Tampa, Florida.”

“Why you always gotta tell people that?” Leroy questioned.

“He looks a little young to have a woman in his past,” Chad joked.

“It is a personal quest. I believe Leroy simply wants control of his destiny.”

“Thank you,” Leroy said, glad Ant was finally getting it.

Chad’s grin faded as the point sunk in. “Then, why are you here?”

Ant’s brow lowered, and after a moment he said “To watch over him.”

There was silence in the car.

“The trouble is,” Ant posed, “Leroy is a teenager, and thus his perspective is limited by rigid and underdeveloped ideologies and emotions.”

“The hell does that mean?”

“If you would like to help, then drive us,” Ant said, looking Chad in the eye. “Drive us as far as you can. We have eighty dollars—”

“Seventy-seven, and no,” Leroy said.

“Seventy-seven dollars, which amounts to two or three tanks of gas.”

“I’m not riding with anyone,” Leroy asserted.

“I could drive you guys, but how would I get back?” Chad asked.

“Exactly,” Leroy said, pouncing on his doubt. “No gas to get back.”

“A change of scenery might be a good thing, though.”

“Perhaps it would be,” Ant agreed.

“Anybody hearing me?” Leroy asked.

“What about my stuff back in Denver?”

“I’m not going!”

“Ah, I’ll figure it out. I have all the time in the world,” Chad said.

“It is not far. You could take a cab or a bus back,” Ant assured him.

“That’s true—good looking out, brother.”

“
Hey!
”

Ant and Chad turned to face him in the back seat.

“You two take your joyride if you want, but I’m
not
going.” He took a deep breath, and the reasons came flooding to him. “The train station’s right here!” cried Leroy. “This is my journey, I’m the captain, I make the decisions, and I refuse to blow all the money we got to get a little farther, a little quicker. What happens when we run out of the food we got now? We gonna survive on vitamins? Eat from dumpsters? Shoplift? We’re
great
at that.”

He gasped for air. It felt
incredible
to get all that out. The frustration, the anger, the anxiety, the uncertainty, stress, and
fear
—it’d been building up since he set out, but the instant he finished his rant, it had washed away. Slowly the uncertainty and anxiety seeped back into him, but it wasn’t overwhelming anymore. It was as if he’d found a reset button inside himself.

Quieter, he spoke. “Sorry, Chad. Appreciate the ride, seriously. But I don’t need a reason to navigate my own journey. That’s just how it is.”

Chad looked at Ant for a sign, but Ant remained solemn and silent, looking at the ground as he unbuckled his seatbelt.

Leroy grabbed his bag, then opened the door. “I’ma go to the station. Come if you want, Ant. If not, I get it.”

With that, he left.

* * *

Chad looked at Ant and said, “Damn.”

“My apologies. He is a man on a mission, most literally.” Ant checked the side mirror and saw Leroy hobbling through the parking lot, then reached for the door handle. “And for that reason, I must leave, too.”

“I know, brother, I know. It’s cool. It’s all just another adventure.”

Ant tilted his head, then smiled. He had been wrong about Chad. Even after all these years, all those faces and names, he could still misread a person. “Do you have enough gas to return to Denver?”

Glancing at his dashboard, Chad said, “Uh, yeah. Half tank. I should be good. I can always walk back if I
don’t
make it,” he laughed.

Ant’s smile glowed. “The wanderer’s spirit. I wish you the best.”

He stepped out of the car and opened the back door, grabbed his bag from the back seat, then looked up at Chad. “One last thing,” he said. “What type of peanut butter do you prefer, if I might ask?”
 

“Honey-roasted crunchy. Peter pan.”

Ant left Chad with a warm nod, then sauntered off. He had time. He’d be damned if he would seem desperate, and Leroy wasn’t exactly going to run off with his ankle hurt. Ant cut across a flower bed to lessen the gap, regardless.

Around the corner, he could see Leroy limping along in his newfound determination, and he couldn’t have been more proud. Sure, the boy had gone against his wishes directly, even aggressively, but that was part of the cause for his pride, not a detractor to it. In the face of injury and Ant’s potential departure, Leroy had stuck with his goal. Ant thought back to the shy, withdrawn child he had met in the boxcar in contrast to the boy he traveled with currently, and already there was a marked difference. He just needed to learn control.

Even if he had thought himself capable, Ant knew he couldn’t tell Leroy any of that at the moment; the boy was angry, and needed space, time to cool. Ant didn’t mind putting it off. There’d be plenty of time later for him to work on getting the words out. He hung back on the sidewalk.

Behind him, Chad beeped a goodbye as he pulled out of the lot.

Leroy turned and noticed Ant, and for a moment they just stared at each other. Then, Leroy spun around and limped away; not out of spite, Ant felt, but out of indifference, which was equally upsetting.

Ant followed. He could walk just fine, but emotionally he limped. Usually he could brush away the anger of others, even feed off it, but with the boy upset at him, anguish was an anchor.

The station was bigger than Ant had expected, unfortunately. A high fence surrounding the tracks was visible from a distance, and a trio of police cars loomed in front of the entrance, one parked in a handicapped spot.

Undeterred, Leroy marched on.

Ant sped up his stride as he formulated a plan. By the time Leroy reached the station, Ant was right alongside him. “I have an idea.”

“So do I,” Leroy said.

Stopping in front of the building, Ant said “Shall we exchange them?”

“You first.”

“Mine is very simple. We enter the station as if we have tickets to ride one of the passenger trains, then slip out through an exit to the yard.”

Leroy looked away. “You win.”

“I am not attempting to compete with you, Leroy,” Ant insisted. “You have a goal, and I want to help you reach it. Why the resistance?”

Adjusting his backpack on his shoulders, Leroy entered the lobby.Ant’s eyes swept the off-yellow room—front desk to the right, exits to the far left and back of the room, policeman on the pay phone in the rear right, a dozen patrons waiting in the scattered seats, and a few dozen more on the back platform. Perhaps the plan would require alteration.

“So we just walk right out, or what?” Leroy asked.

The door opened behind them. A suited man with a briefcase entered, glanced at each of them with a scowl, then stepped around them.

“Perhaps we should move,” Ant suggested, sliding away from the door. His mind shuffled through ideas, and he knew what to do. “Go stand by the exit,” he said, pointing to the left. He handed his bag to Leroy. “Take this, too.”

“Come on, I got enough to deal with.”

“I will need to move swiftly,” Ant said. “Now, when you get into the yard, you must first confirm there are no officers or guards, then casually hide behind the nearest train and wait for me. Do not run.”

“Does it look like I’ma run?”

“Wait for me to make eye contact, then go.”

They split up, and Ant inched his way over toward the closest row of seats, on the end of which sat an elderly woman. On second thought, Ant decided to use somebody else. The poor woman didn’t deserve it.

He sidled over next to dull woman, half-heartedly flipping through a magazine, and took a moment to steel himself before speaking. “Goodness, is that a mouse?” he said, and pointed ostentatiously at the woman’s feet, but she continued to flip through the pages, unfazed.

“Is it?” she asked, voice devoid of fear or concern, to Ant’s dismay.

Strike one. Two more and he was out, realistically. He moved down the line, looking for another target, and passed a little boy, legs dangling over the edge of his seat, a stern man with horn-rimmed glasses and a chiseled jaw, and a teenage girl who cowered at the sight of him. Finally, at the end of the row, he came to a lively woman squawking on a bulky cell phone. She was the one.

“Well hun, if you don’t defend yourself he’s just going to keep pestering you,” she said into the phone. “Let me talk to him.” She waited. “Okay then tell him when I get home he’s going to have to deal with me.” She checked her watch. “About forty-five minutes.”