Despite their reluctance to call 911, my guess is that the Logans won’t have the guts to leave their house until they get a police escort. When the cops do show up, I want them to find something important.
The side of the house has too many windows, so I sneak around to the back and find a detached garage. It is nice and white, but it’s also in the open. Wolfman’s out here. I feel him. But this is something I need to do. Fighting back my fear, I get down to business.
A rotting pinecone seems like a good thing to try, and it works the way I hoped it would. Using the garage door like a piece of paper, I scratch Ruth Carver taken by Jerry T. Balls, followed by his address. It takes a total of three pinecones to complete. I can’t pull up the zip code, but everything else remains in my memory.
I hear the sound of an engine and tires on gravel. It gives me hope. People live around here. This has to be close to civilization. Now all I need to do is fill up the truck and keep going.
Wary of Mr. Logan’s incompetence, I take the long way back to the truck.
At first I think I’ve become disoriented.
Because I can’t find it. I can’t find the truck.
But I’m not disoriented. The truck is gone.
It has been taken.
I try to delude myself into thinking Mr. Logan took it, but I look up at the brightly lit house and see both the Logans looking out into the night. They saw the truck drive away and probably didn’t have a good enough view to realize I wasn’t the driver.
The engine sound I heard earlier wasn’t a hopeful sound, after all. It was the sound of a noose tightening around my neck.
Five Years Ago
SHE IS TIRED AND SWEATY and covered with dust and mud when she sees him.
“Caleb!”
Always quiet, he answers with a grin.
She leaves her horse cross tied in the wash rack and runs toward him. He knows what she’s up to and turns tail, sprinting away from her. They make some rich people in a golf cart mad, but they don’t care. The chase lasts until the end of the barn aisle, where the girl snatches him up and makes sure she transfers as much filth onto the boy as she can.
Slapping his back in a fake hug, she says, “It’s so good to see you!”
He gives in and returns the hug. “It’s good to see you, too, Ruthie.”
And then the hug isn’t a friend’s method of good-humored torture. The hug is something else, something that makes the girl feel uncomfortable, and she lets go.
“C’mon,” she says. “I don’t want Tucker to freak out without me.”
“Tucker ain’t never freaked out a day in his life,” the boy rejoins.
The girl tenses at the use of “ain’t.” She looks over at him as they walk side by side. As usual, he’s wearing those damn Wranglers. The girl almost shakes her head. They’re going to a new middle school next year. It was barely acceptable to wear Wranglers at their old school in the country, and the new school is pure suburbia. She tried to talk to him about it once, but he wouldn’t listen. Insisted he was who he was and he wasn’t going to change for anybody. She feels bad about it, but if he wants to dig his own grave, it’s on him.
“What are you looking at?” the boy asks.
“Nothing,” she says. “Just glad you’re here.” Once she says it, it becomes true, and she forgets the Wranglers. No one important is here to see his cowboy jeans anyway. She throws an arm around his neck, back to the game of smearing dirt on him.
They walk out into the sunshine, and the boy pauses for a long look at the Jim Norick Arena. It looms over the grounds, its rounded contours smooth and polished. It’s a place for professionals.
“Damn, Ruthie. You’re here.”
“I know it.”
“Are you scared?”
“Oh, hell no.” She looks at him, reproachful. “I don’t do fear, Caleb. You know that.”
He smiles, impressed, and she forgives him the transgression.
CHAPTER NINE
I NEED TO THINK THROUGH my situation, but standing out here in the open is doing my nerves no favors. I retreat back to the Logans’ detached garage and sit on my haunches, knees to chest. It’s cold tonight. Colder than before. Or maybe my body is losing its ability to fight the elements.
Okay.
Number one. I’d come to hate that truck, but that was before I found the gas can, before I found this road with at least one house on it. They say you don’t appreciate something until it’s gone. The truth of this strikes me in a whole new way.
Number two. Wolfman has his truck back. He’s fully mobile again, but that’s not the worst of it.
Number three, the worst of it. He knows where I am.