Lot Lizards by Ray Garton Read Free Book Online

the trucks outside as Mom ordered coffee and hot chocolate for everyone. She dipped a napkin in her ice water and dabbed her cut lip, then asked, "Everybody sure you're okay? Nobody was hurt?"  
    Jon and the girls nodded wearily.
    There was a telephone at each table with a plastic card attached that read COLLECT AND CREDIT CARD CALLS ONLY and Mom placed a collect call to Aunt Janice in Grants Pass.  
    The waitress brought their drinks and menus, but Jon didn't open his. He'd been hungry earlier but had no appetite now. Being at the Sierra Gold Pan again made him miss his dad.  
    They'd come to the truck stop together six years ago. Jon was nine then and out of school for the summer so Dad had taken him along to run a load of sheetrock into Tacoma, Washington. Jon had ridden in the truck before—a dark blue and silver Kenworth that looked, to a nine year old, much bigger than it actually was—but he'd never gone on a whole run with Dad and he remembered having more fun on that trip than in Disneyland the year before. Probably because it had just been the two of them together inside that monstrous machine that sounded as if it were eating the road as they went. They could tell dirty jokes without a scolding from Mom; Cece, who was two at the time, wasn't bawling and getting car sick and Dana wasn't there to complain about everything. Just Jon, his dad and the truck.  
    And the stops they made! They ate at a restaurant that was inside an old train and stopped in Mt. Shasta where hundreds of people were gathered for a ceremony to worship the little men they believed were living inside the mountain; they visited a little town that looked like the set of a western movie and Jon got his first taste of beer; and best of all, they stayed a night at the Sierra Gold Pan Truck Stop on their way back.  
    It was probably the least interesting of their stops and it wasn't as big as some other truck stops they'd gone into, but something about it had captured Jon's imagination. It was full of people—even in the middle of the night!—and had an almost carnival atmosphere that Jon found exciting. The engines of trucks made the parking lot pavement vibrate and disembodied voices called out names and made announcements in the night; inside, music played and voices droned and cash registers chattered and, in the back, a room filled with video games and pinball machines rang and beeped and buzzed Jon's favorite sounds. Dad cashed a ten dollar bill and gave him forty quarters—not counting the ones in his pocket—and turned Jon loose in the arcade room while he took a shower; a few truckers had gathered behind him as he played and cheered him on to win three free games.  
    Now it was different. Without Dad, the truck stop seemed like just another truck stop full of weary travelers and overworked waitresses and cashiers. Everything was different without Dad.  
    "I told you," Mom snapped into the phone, "we'll get there as soon as—oh, don't start with me, Janice. The only reason for that is you live there. I'm a few hundred miles away and we've—because I can't afford to fly, that's why!"  
    Jon looked down at his hot chocolate and clenched his teeth. He hated his mother's voice when she was angry or defensive; it was bitter and sharp, seldom raised but always cutting. That voice, Jon was certain, was the reason his dad had simply disappeared a year ago...  
    He turned to the window again, pulling a blind down. The snow was still falling heavily, thrown to the ground diagonally by the harsh wind. The road in front stretched to the right away from the freeway, flanked by streetlamps that glowed in the night like small moons. Some distance away, the road curved around a patch of trees and disappeared. On the outside of the curve and off the road a bit stood a large two story house. A bright light shone in front of the house and a soft glow came from three of the windows: two below and one on top. In the top window, a small figure stood