The Patron Saint of Liars by Ann Patchett Read Free Book Online Page B

save one station wagon loaded up with kids. Someone must have left him there. I nodded.
    "I could use a ride," he said, "if that's the way you're going. I'd kick in for gas."
    Any other time in my life I would have said no, but I didn't see that there was anything left to lose that I hadn't already lost. "Sure," I said. "Come on."
    He looked so pleased, and when he smiled, seemed even younger, sixteen maybe. "You know how to drive?" I asked him.
    "You bet."
    "Good," I said, "you're driving." I threw the keys over the hood and he caught them. It was a stupid thing to do, but I figured if something bad was going to happen, it would happen if I was driving or not. It would happen if I was awake or not. He got in the front and I got in the back. I asked him his name.
    "Billy," he said.
    "Listen, Billy, keep an eye on the thermostat. Don't let it overheat. Stay on Forty the whole time, promise. I'm going to get some sleep."
    We got into the car and shut the doors. He asked if he could play the radio and I told him that would be fine. He looked carefully before pulling onto the interstate and then got quickly up to speed. If he played the radio at all, he waited until I was asleep. Asleep and driving at the same time. It was like a wonderful dream.
     
     
    When I woke up it was dark and we weren't going anywhere. I thought that I had just pulled over to go to sleep, but then I remembered I hadn't been driving. I remembered Billy and felt a wave of panic moving up from the soles of my feet to my throat. When I looked out the window I saw him standing in a bright light, talking to another man. We were at a gas station. Billy gave the man some money and got back into the car.
    "You're awake," he said. "I hope I didn't wake you up."
    "Where are we?" I pushed the hair out of my face. I wanted a bath.
    "Maybe a hundred miles west of Fort Smith. You've been asleep a long time."
    I got out of the car and told him to slide over and let me drive for a while. He made sandwiches and cut up apples and we drank water out of one of the jugs.
    "You didn't tell me your name," he said.
    "Mary."
    "It was nice of you to pick me up. I'd been waiting at that rest stop a couple of hours. I had a real good ride before that, almost six hours. Some trucker hauling oranges from California. But it wasn't as good as this ride, though." He stretched one arm out of the open window and let the wind blow it back. "I love to drive," he said. "Not everybody'd let you drive their car, but I've been driving since I was ten years old." He spoke quickly and his voice was anxious and high. "That's when my dad taught me. Soon as I was big enough to reach the pedals and see over the dashboard he had me driving a car. By the time I got my license it seemed almost funny, you know, 'cause I'd been driving for so long without one. That's what makes me so careful, all those years I drove without one. I had to make sure I never got pulled over 'cause then there'd really be hell to pay."
    He looked happy, all fresh-faced and young, like he could stay up all night. I kept thinking I wasn't that much older than he was, but I felt like I could have been his mother. "Where did you say you were coming from?" I asked him.
    He looked out at the road for a little while, trying to decide how much to tell me. "West," he said. "Just like your east."
    "I've been west," I said.
    "I'm going to see my folks," he said, still watching the road. "They're right before the Tennessee border, not too much off Forty, if you're going that far."
    "I'm going that far."
    "My father needs me at home. I got older sisters, but they're all married and gone. It's not like he's so old, my dad, but the place is too much for him and my mom to handle by themselves. I shouldn't have gone away in the first place. I'm all the help my dad's got now, nearly three hundred acres to work. It would be too much for anybody. Don't you think that's too much?"
    I nodded, then took my eyes away from the road for a minute to look