“Okay,” she said, and opened the outside door. Lance winced as he waited for the sound of the old hinges to shriek in protest as they always did when someone entered or exited the little house. Instead, there was silence, and he noticed the bottle of WD-40 sitting on the floor near the closet.
The night was sharp with the cold bite of brisk wind and the clarity of the fall sky. The three-quarters moon shone down on them as they hurried across the rough gravel drive, which sloped away from the house, splitting the wide fields like a brown river, and out onto the paved county road a quarter mile away. Dead leaves danced and skittered across the drive, and Lance looked nervously over at his father’s 1970 Chevy pickup, the smashed right headlight black like a pierced eye that stared blankly ahead. He wondered if his mother had done something, before she woke him, to disable the vehicle to try to slow his father if he woke and tried to follow them.
Without any more thought about the strategy of their getaway, Lance did exactly as he had been told and went without pause to the driver’s-side door. He had never sat in the driver’s position, much less steered a vehicle. He opened the door and pulled himself into the seat. His mother placed the two suitcases behind him without a sound and leaned on the rear door until it latched. She then came to his side and reached across his slight form to place the keys in the ignition. After turning them only one click, she pulled the shift lever down so that the arrow on the dashboard pointed to the dark letter N.
“It’s going to be hard steering, okay? Just keep it in the middle of the driveway and we’ll be fine.” She stared deeply into her son’s frightened eyes, and tears welled up in her own. He was scared now. After all this time living in a nightmare and putting up with her cowardice, now was when his courage finally crumbled. She knelt there for a moment and hated herself all the more, before smiling tightly and pushing the door shut.
Lance turned his head over his shoulder and watched her walk to the back of the car. A moment later the vehicle started to move, slowly at first, and then quicker as it began to descend down the hill that led away from their house. Lance pulled the wheel back and forth as the car rolled, struggling to keep the nose of the vehicle in the middle of the driveway. Soon the car was traveling on its own volition, and he looked to the rear, expecting his mother to have fallen behind drastically. When the door was pulled open next to him, he started and the car swerved as it coasted.
His mother was there, jogging lightly as she held on to the frame of the car. “Move over, baby.”
Lance scooted over into the passenger seat as he tried to maintain a grip on the steering wheel. Molly jumped into the car and slammed the door shut.
“I’ve got it honey,” she said as she grasped the wheel and pushed Lance’s hand off, nearly having to peel his fingers away. She twisted the key in the ignition, and Lance heard the small engine hum to life. His mother pulled the lever down one more notch, and the transmission grabbed gears and propelled them forward. Molly kept the engine at a near idle, and they rolled gradually up to the line where their own dirt drive turned into the compacted tar of the county road.