Littlejohn by Howard Owen Read Free Book Online

backpack, took most of the money out of my account that Mom left there for my summer fun, wrote the Carlsons this spaced-out note about taking a little time to get my head together and left. Trey had been at a job interview or he’d have been in it as deep as Marcia and me.
    I’m dumb, but I’m not terminally stupid. There have been kids from here who went to New York and were never seen again. I just wanted to get away, not commit suicide. I wasn’t sure about the best way to thumb to Granddaddy’s, but he was the only one who came to mind for some reason, the only one I thought might take me in, no questions asked. I figured he’d be so out of it, he wouldn’t mind.
    I bought a road map at the Exxon station and sat down on the corner to read it. Route 35 would take me south almost to the state line, it looked like, and from there I’d have to take a bunch of dippy little state roads to get to East Geddie. But it was cheaper than taking the bus, and there wasn’t one going that way from Montclair for five hours, the guy at the station said. By then, they’d have my picture on the post-office wall.
    So, I walked the mile down to the bypass and stuck out my thumb. It went real well for a while. Two coeds going down to Sweet Briar picked me up and got me almost all theway to Lynchburg. Then a construction worker in a pickup, not as friendly as the college girls, but a ride nevertheless, drove me all the way past Danville.
    By this time, it was getting late, about seven, I guess, and I must have stood there, watching rednecks in white T-shirts drive by giving me the fish eye for like an hour and a half before this bubba stops, asks me where I’m going. I tell him East Geddie, North Carolina. It obviously does not compute. I mean, this guy’s probably never been out of the county. It’s a wonder they let him out of the house.
    “Don’t know that one,” he says, “but I’m goin’ down to Zion Springs.”
    I don’t know Zion Springs from bedsprings, but anything beats standing, so I get in this car you have to open from the inside. We go about twelve miles, just far enough to be away from everything, when he puts on his turn signal, and I see the sign, ZION SPRINGS 8, pointing to the left. I ask him to let me out there, and he gives me this snaggle-toothed grin as I get out, ’cause he knows there’s no way in hell anybody else is going to pick me up out here, especially now that it’s almost dark.
    I stand there for two hours. I’ve thumbed a lot around Montclair, and there’s a theory I’ve got about it. You have to believe you’re going to get a ride in order for a car to stop. If you believe you’re not going to get a ride, that you don’t deserve a ride, that you’re not worthy to ride in that fine Buick coming toward you, the driver gets the message sure as hell. When you get to that point, you might as well start walking.
    The trouble was, I was still more than a hundred miles from Port Campbell, which is like another six from EastGeddie, the best I could add up the little numbers between towns on the map. And the next town south of where I was standing was nine miles away.
    So I’m standing there, walking awhile, thumbing awhile, and it’s like eleven o’clock. I get to this white-trash store that’s just closed, but there’s a Coke machine outside, and somebody has thrown an apple, with only one bite out of it, in the trash can. It’s just sitting there on top. I must be pretty hungry, because I take it out, try to pull the skin and meat away from the part that’s been bitten and eat it. That’s supper, and breakfast looks like it might be a long way down the road. I’m kicking myself for not having the construction worker just let me out at a McDonald’s we passed back in Danville. I can taste a Big Mac.
    There’s not much left to do but climb the twenty-foot embankment on the side of the road and try to sleep. Even in June, it gets cold as a bitch outside late at night. I put the