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  “It ain’t gonna rain too hard,” Kee-lee says, looking up to the sky. “Is it?”

  I keep walking, acting like I don’t see black clouds moving round overhead.

  Chapter 26

  BOOM! BOOM!

  I close my eyes and try to act cool, but who wants to be in a tent when it’s storming. This isn’t even our tent. It’s an old army tent borrowed from a neighbor who hasn’t used it in ten years, so there aren’t any vents to look out and see what’s really going on.

  Boom!

  My fever is worse. I know that even without a thermometer. I’m hot, wet, and sweaty—shivering too.

  Boom! The ground shakes when thunder and lightning hits.

  “You okay, boy?” my father asks. He’s lying next to me right on the wet cold ground. Earlier, he put his sleeping bag over me. “To take away the chill.”

  “I’m fine.” I turn to Kee-lee. “You okay?”

  “When we going home?” he asks.

  Boom!

  We both jump. I close my eyes and listen to our jar fill up with water pouring from a hole in the top of the tent.

  Pow! Snap!

  Something got hit. A tree, most likely. My dad unzips the tent and sticks his head out.

  I crawl over to him and stare out too. It’s raining sideways. Branches as tall as my dad are lying across the road, or hanging from trees like broken arms.

  “Where they going?” I ask. A man is running with his wife and kids to the car. Other people run by us, slipping and falling in the mud. Dripping wet. Looking scared.

  Kee-lee elbows me in the back. “They getting outta here.”

  My dad tells us not to worry. They are just waiting the storm out in their cars. He puts on his shoes and sticks his wallet in his back pocket. He throws socks at me and a green plastic jacket Kee-lee’s way. “I’ll pull the truck in front of the tent and blow the horn for you two.” We’re not leaving, he tells us. We’ll just dry out in the truck.

  The truck is a few trees over. My dad says to give him a few minutes to warm it up and clear the leaves off. I change outta my wet socks and pants.

  Boom!

  “Don’t be gone long,” Kee-lee says, even though my dad’s already gone. He’s shaking, but I can’t tell if it’s from the cold rain or because he’s scared. He pulls his pants on over his pajamas and frowns when he puts his soggy sneakers on. “If your dad don’t know nothing about camping, why he bring us out here?”

  I’m listening for the horn. But all I hear is thunder and lightning, people yelling at each other, and every once in a while, girls screaming.

  “We’re by the forest, you know. Trees everywhere.” Kee-lee sticks a flashlight down his pants. It’s shining up in his face. “Lightning’s got a thing for trees. And trees don’t mind falling on people and killing them.”

  I wish he would shut up.

  After a long while, he unzips the tent. “Maybe the truck won’t start.” Rain blows inside.

  “Close it!”

  He steps outside. Me too.

  “I don’t see the truck.”

  Rain hits me like sticks. I open my mouth and it blows in. I look up and down the road, and it pours in my eyes so I can’t see. Kee-lee looks down at me. “He left us!”

  “No . . .”

  He points to tire tracks.

  I see ’em leading up the road. “He’ll be back.”

  Cars start up and headlights go on. People run, holding on to their kids. Me and Kee-lee stand stuck in the rain like totem poles and try to figure out what to do.

  Chapter 27

  HE LEFT US. He took the truck and left us in the pouring rain and mud with nothing to eat, no money, and no way home. Me and Kee-lee know it’s true because the truck was parked not far from the tent. Now it’s gone.

  My father’s been gone all night. Long enough for the rain to stop, my fever to end, and for people to come out their cars and tents and start picking up what the rain knocked down.

  “It’s a mess. But the sky’s always prettier after a good hard rain,” Sara says, looking up. She’s walking in the mud in her green granny boots, filling trash bags with leaves and dead animals that the rain washed in front of their camper. “Where’s your father?”

  Kee-lee looks at me. He lies. He says he’s up the road using his truck to pull somebody’s car out a ditch. I’m picking up rocks and dead frogs, birds with busted wings, and bugs I ain’t never seen before, and throwing them into a patch of trees behind our tent.

  Sara looks up and down the road. “You’ve got quite a mess to clean up here.” She presses her hand to my forehead. “Your fever’s gone, so you’d best go looking for your dad.”

  Kee-lee looks at me. “Yeah. We better.”

  Sara puts ham and sausage on the grill. “Your father won’t have time to cook up a decent meal.” She reminds me of Ma Dear when she takes my hand. “We have room if you want to take a nap right after you eat.”

  I follow Kee-lee up the road. Him and me spend a long time looking for my dad. It’s hard walking with mud sticking to your sneakers, and leaves and trees blocking every step you take. People are wringing water out of clothes and hanging them up on lines, across trees, and on top of running cars. Kids are sliding down mud hills and making mud pies and having mud fights. “He took off and left us,” Kee-lee says again.

  I’m standing in the middle of the road, trying to figure out what to do. We tell Sara or anyone else my father took off and they gonna call the state on us. We ask to use their phone to call my mom or Ma Dear and the state’s gonna show up before anyone else can come get to us. “We gotta act like we found him,” I tell Kee-lee. “Act like we found him and he was going to drive somebody off the campground to get something.”

  Kee-lee’s making mud balls and throwing ’em at kids he don’t know. “Tomorrow, when he’s still gone, they gonna know he left us.”

  He’s right. So we gotta be gone in the morning, before everybody else wakes up, I tell him. He wipes his runny nose with the back of his hand. Mud smears across his face. “We don’t know where we at though.”

  “So?”

  “And we don’t have no money.”

  “So?”

  “And . . .”

  “Shut up, Kee-lee.”

  When we get back to Sara’s place, we tell them the story we made up. She lets us eat in her camper. Man, she can cook. Cheese grits, sausages, scrambled eggs, pancakes, syrup, apple juice, and sticky buns. When we done, all we can do is sleep, right there on the floor. We play Tonk when we wake up. Come supper time, my dad’s still gone. Me and Kee-lee look for him again and come back with another lie. Sara and Ralph look at each other, but they don’t say nothing.

  “Glad for the company,” Ralph says, pulling back a kitchen chair so Sara can sit down.

  Kee-lee’s doing just like me, licking his lips and forgetting his manners. Reaching halfway across the table and picking up the hot fried chicken with his fingers. Dropping three pieces on his plate.

  “Can I have two biscuits?” I ask. “And . . .”

  Sara smiles. She reaches for my plate. When she’s done, I got mashed potatoes, fried fish, and okra piled on my plate. Sweet tea sits in a plastic pitcher in the middle of the table. It’s gone ten minutes later.

  After we eat, we try to find my dad again. The sun’s going down. Campfires are burning and families are all together. Kids laugh, holding marshmallow sticks over red-hot fires. Me and Kee-lee keep walking, even though we know my dad ain’t never coming back.

  Chapter 28

  RALPH FORCED US into letting him help us find my dad. He said something wasn’t right, and he was gonna get to the bottom of things. It was eleven at night. He said it wasn’t right for him to be gone all day long, not even to help out other folks. So he made us get in the truck with him. For the last hour we’ve been circling the campground. “I hate to say this,” Ralph says, scratching his bald head, “but do you think he took off?”

  We both say it together. “No
.”

  Kee-lee sticks half his body out the window and yells, “He’s here. But it’s dark. We can’t tell where we saw him last.”

  Ralph drives real slow, rolling over sticks and dead things and through mud so deep the car spins it all over the place. He turns the car around. “I guess he could still be out here, but he ought to be with you two.”

  When we get to the camper, Sara says for us to sleep over. But we go back to our tent. It smells like an old basement. “I’m sleeping in my clothes,” Kee-lee says.

  “Me too.”

  We put down the clean, dry blankets Sara gave us and lie on top of them. We keep the flashlights on, making shadow puppets on the ceiling. We’re leaving this place by sunup.

  Kee-lee says he’s ready to go home anyhow. I ask him how far he thinks we are from home. He don’t answer. When I ask again, I hear snoring. I come out from under the covers and start packing stuff. We can’t take everything. So I roll up my father’s sleeping blanket. Put two water jugs in my backpack. Dump Kee-lee’s stuff on the floor and pack up as much candy and food as I can, which ain’t much. I lie down. Cover up and turn over. “What the—” It’s one of Jason’s toy soldiers, lying on the ground.

  * * *

  “Let’s go.”

  The sun is almost up. Campfires are nothing but smoke. “I said, let’s go.”

  Kee-lee wipes his baggy eyes and feels around inside his pajamas. “I gotta go,” he says, opening the tent flap and whizzing. He wipes his fingers on his pajamas and lies back down.

  “I told you—shhh! Quiet.” I’m walking over to the tent door and looking out. It’s Ralph. He’s outside watching the sun come up, I guess. “See? You took too long.”

  Kee-lee wants to go back to sleep. I kick him. He turns over. He don’t care if they call the police. He figures the cops will just call our moms. “The police never call your parents first. They call the state. They put you someplace where your parents can’t find you. They ask you stuff you can’t answer. . . .”

  He sits up. “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  Ralph’s gone, so Kee-lee puts on his clothes and picks up his backpack and a roll of toilet tissue.

  “I said, let’s go!”

  “I ain’t using leaves like they do in the movies.” He steps out back and does his business. He comes back in and grabs the brown paper bag.

  I make him drop it. “No guns.”

  “We might need it,” he says, sitting the bag on the ground.

  I kick it to the side of the tent and tiptoe outside. I run up the hill, fast as I can. Kee-lee takes a while, but then he’s right beside me, shooting his mouth off, like usual.

  Chapter 29

  I BET IT’S A hundred degrees today. The sun is white as milk, and you can’t look into it without your eyes watering. There’s a ripped-up T-shirt covering Kee-lee’s big head. And he’s got his thumb sticking out, trying to hitch a ride. I keep walking, squeezing water out of a plastic bottle over my head and down my throat.

  By lunchtime, all our water’s gone. So are half a box of marshmallow crunch cereal and four apples. The sleeping bags are half a mile back. They got too heavy. Anyhow, we figure it won’t be a long time before somebody picks us up and we get home.

  Ain’t nothing out here to take your mind off things; just trees and a dusty road—South White Rock Road—that don’t nobody hardly drive up. I look back at the extra clothes I left in the middle of the road. “My father might still come for us.”

  Kee-lee gets mad. “Your dad’s gone. He left us, same as mine.”

  I remind Kee-lee that his dad got shot. He reminds me that he took off long before the bullet found him.

  Something musta happened to my dad. He wouldn’t just take off, I think.

  Kee-lee sits his backpack down in the middle of the road. “He planned it all along.”

  I drop my things too.

  “Figured he ain’t want no children at all. So he left you—and your mother too.”

  The road is hot. You can feel the heat up through your sneakers. “Take it back.” I’m talking to Kee-lee and looking around at signs. SOUTH JENSON COUNTY ROUTE 46 N. HOTELS 20 MILES.

  He swings at me and misses. “He dumped ya. That’s what they all do.”

  My first punch lands right where I want—upside Kee-lee’s big block head. His hands go up. I double punch him in the stomach, hoping his guts bust open and spill out all over the road like chitlins. When I’m done with the next punch, Kee-lee’s got a bloody nose and a headache too I bet. But he ain’t no quitter. So he wipes blood away with the rag on his head, holds his arms out straight as a row of corn and knocks his fists into the sides of my head. I fall to my knees.

  “What you gotta say now?”

  I’m down awhile. Opening and closing my eyes, trying to see straight. Grabbing him by the knees, bringing him down too. Rolling around, punching him. Ducking when he swings. Trying not to holler when he shoves my chin back so hard it feels like my head’s gonna pop off.

  “Ouch!”

  He flips me over. Sits on my back and holds my face down. The tar feels like scalding-hot coffee. My head comes up. He pushes it back down. “I’m gonna kill you!” Kee-lee flips me, then he stands with his big foot on my stomach and smiles right before he stomps me.

  Beep. Beep. Beeep.

  A truck’s coming. I don’t see it because it’s behind me. But I know it’s a truck because my uncle drives one and he lets me pull the horn when I want.

  “You gonna get run over,” Kee-lee says, holding me down with his foot.

  I twist his leg and try to take him down. His foot presses down on me. I’m kicking the air and punching the ground, listening to the truck roll closer. “Let me up!”

  He wants me to say I’m sorry. To say my father left me like his father left him. But boys round my way never say they sorry.

  Beeep! Beeep!

  I look over my shoulder. The truck is so close I can see the driver. He can see us too. But he ain’t slowing down.

  Beeep!

  Kee-lee screams. “Say it!”

  The truck’s an eighteen-wheeler. It’s red with a slamming silver grill and smoking pipes.

  Beeep!

  “Say it!”

  Stones on the ground jump like popcorn in a popper.

  I look at Kee-lee looking at the truck.

  “Just say it. Say . . .” He jumps off me and takes off running.

  “Kee-lee!”

  “Run, Mann! Run!”

  The side of the road seems like it’s ten blocks away. But we both get to it at the same time, jumping over the guardrail and into weeds tall as Jason.

  Beep! Beep! Beeeep! The driver gives us the finger when he flies by.

  We give it right back to him.

  Chapter 30

  “HE WAS GONNA kill us,” Keelee says. “Run us over.”

  I wipe my sweaty forehead with the back of my arm. “And I thought people in the country were supposed to be nice.” I climb over the guardrail behind Kee-lee and back on to the road.

  We’re trying to figure out where we’re at. The road is long and winding. There’s signs pointing the way to gas stations and restaurants, but we don’t see no houses or buildings nearby, just trees and grass.

  Kee-lee rips his T-shirt again and hands me a piece. We tie our heads up. “Maybe we should get off the road,” he says. “Walk in the woods for a while.”

  But we don’t do nothing different. We keep walking along the road. We throw rocks and figure we’ll be home by the time it’s dark. When it’s time to rest, we sit by a creek filled with pebbles and just enough water to cover our hot feet. It runs along the side of the road. Dry weeds and hundreds of purple flowers make it so you can’t hardly see it. We wet ourselves down, fill our water bottles, and sit for a while.

  We on our way again, sweating like usual, throwing stones at each other. Eating warm jelly sandwiches and licking the last of the melted chocolate M&M’s from the bags. Th
en a blond-haired girl in a red convertible stops and asks if we’re okay. She’s driving a Mercedes-Benz sports coupe, wearing diamond earrings and a thick gold necklace.

  “We all right,” I say, still walking.

  “No we ain’t.”

  The girl’s name is Amy. She’s a college student at Brown and her dad runs the bank in town. “I don’t live that far from here. You can get a bite to eat and call your folks.”

  Kee-lee’s in the car already, messing up her white rugs with his dirty sneakers.

  “No thanks, ma’am,” I say again. “But you got a cell phone we can use?”

  She pulls to the side of the road and hands me a phone. Kee-lee asks if she got a spare bedroom where we can sleep tonight. My father answers the phone. He says that Kee-lee and me ain’t that far from home. That we can make it back on foot in a couple of weeks. I hold out the phone and stare at it like it’s his face I’m seeing. “What?” I put it to my ear. “Y’all come and get us!”

  “Boy,” he says, “you’re all right. Kee-lee too.” He ain’t asking me if I’m okay, he’s telling me.

  “It’s steaming hot and we’re hungry. And it’s gonna be dark soon.”

  I tell my father to put my mother on the phone. He won’t. Can’t. “She’s gone, remember? To Kentucky.” He had it planned all along. He was gonna take us to the campground and leave us. Then we’d have to find our way back. “Like African boys do.”

  “Like Africans? We ain’t no Africans!”

  “Who African?” Kee-lee’s drinking Perrier water and rubbing suntan lotion on his arms.

  My father says he got the idea from a television show he saw on African boys. That’s when he asked Cousin to bring him books on the subject. “In some African villages, they leave boys alone in the forest for months so they will learn to be men.”

  “Months?”

  “Months. Years. Whatever it takes.”

  “You ain’t coming to get us? Never?”