Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Saturday

            I woke up around 9 in the morning. Everyone else was asleep, so I got out of the trunk and walked around the barn until I was fully awake. Sitting down under a tree behind the barn I noticed, on a hill, a glint. Something that seemed unnatural. I got up and walked a little ways up the hill. There was a mound covered in moss and dirt. I knelt down and pulled away at the gravel and leaves uncovering a golden watch. It looked new, the hands were still moving and the gold hadn’t darkened. I quickly stuffed it into my pocket but then on second thought I put it back. It occurred to me that since the watch was new, someone might come looking for it. I didn’t feel too comfortable taking it, I put it back in the dirt and covered it up. Then I walked back down the hill and climbed back into the truck. But my attention was kept on the watch (more or less of the hill were I knew the gold was).

            From behind me someone yawned. I quickly got up and turned around, it was Kenneth coming out from inside the barn. I was surprised to see his hair was not mangled with hair like his.

“Hey kid” he said to me, I nodded back politely. Then he stretched and cracked his back and knuckles.

“So where are you heading?” he asked

“Where are you heading?” I countered

“Montana, that’s where we all live”

“Why are you coming through Georgia if you’re going there?”

“Why not? We’re all legally adults, they shouldn’t have to worry” He sat down and leaned against the barn, “So where are you guys really going?”

“I never told you in the first place, how would you know if I was lying?”

“Calm down kid, Christy told me that you said you were going to Louisiana. She also told me that she thought ya’ll were lying”

I huffed, “California”

“Let me check the map” Kenneth told me and he went to the glove department and pulled out a large map. I watched him move his finger across the map then he pulled out a small notepad and wrote something on it, it looked like math from where I was.

            Katie sat up and stretched then she took out a brush and combed through her messy hair, not acknowledging that I was even in her presence. When her brush went through her hair without it coming to a knot she put it back in her bag.

“Hi Brady, have a good sleep?” she mumbled as she rotated her shoulders.

“Okay for a person who just slept on a hard metal truck” I said

            She nodded and started to braid her long blonde hair, tying it up with a ribbon when she had finished. That was just about when Kenneth got out of the truck with his notebook still in hand.

“We can only get you as far as Texas, do you know anybody there?” he asked me

“I do!” Katie said, “I used to live in Texas I have a lot of friends there”

“Good, I wouldn’t want to leave you guys in the middle of nowhere, where did you live?”

“Dallas” Katie told him barley able to contain her excitement

“Good, that’s where I was planning to Drop you off”

“How long do you think it will take?” I asked him

“If we started right now” he looked at his watch, as did I 9:47,”and didn’t stop for a bathroom, or to look in any old barns or houses I could get you there buy about 12 midnight. But we need to stop for a bathroom, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and old barns. So that would put you in Dallas about noon tomorrow”

“That’s fine” I told him, he nodded and put the notepad in his pocket, “I’ll go get the others”

            Within an hour the truck was loaded and ready to move. At first nobody spoke, they were too tired to think of something smart to say, just recollecting their thoughts. Finally after what seemed like 30 minutes Christy spoke up.

“So” she said spreading out the word ‘so’, “Why do they call you Red?”

            I looked at him, his face had turned a little pinkish.

“You really want to know?” he asked

“Yeah, sort of” Marty said

“Tell us” Tiff said. The others chimed in saying things like ‘come on’ and ‘tell us’.

When they finally died down he said, “Rhonda, Edward, Donavan” the others sat with plastered smiles and looks of confusion.

“I don’t get it” Katie finally said

“Me either” Tiff added

“No, no, no I do. The first letter of each of the names stands for R-E-D, Red” Tony concluded

“Don’t be so smart, rich boy” Josh taunted

“Rhonda?” I asked

“My mom wanted a girl, my dad liked the name Donavan, and my great grandpa was named Edward. It was either Red or Der”

“I like the name Der” Marty joked, we all snickered at Red, he didn’t seem to mind, he just laughed along because he had probably herd that joke about a hundred times in his lifetime.

            Driving through a desolate part of the country gave me a since of freedom. The endless pine trees that reached to the sky covered us from the searing hot sun. Our red truck passed by many streams and rivers edged with thick green grass and, were filled with tadpoles and salmon. One minute we would be watching a deer look up in surprise by the low hum of the motor, and the next we would see a large squirrel scamper up a tee to its babies. I loved the smell of the trees and the tweet of a bird (as corny as that sounds).

            From inside the truck Julie tapped in the window, Marty helped her pull it back and she crawled through it and sat down in the back of the truck with the rest of us. Her penny colored hair fluttered against her darkly tanned skin. Her eyes were closed and she had a light smile as she enjoyed the wind against her cheeks. I found myself staring at her, she was fun to watch although no one else seemed to notice her or me. They were doing their own little thing.

            She opened her eyes and looked at me, “You want to know what the best part of being on the road is?”

“Finding things in abandoned barns” Tony told her, he wasn’t really listening though.

“No besides that”

“What” I asked

            She smiled and said, “All of this” and she spread her arms as an eagle would. I looked over her shoulders and head at everything she was gesturing to, Julie was right. I loved ‘all of this’ as she called it.

 “I like your French braid, Katie” Tiff told her, “I can’t do mine too well. They always turn out lopsided or messed up”

“French braid? The French finally invented something cheap?” Marty asked, Tony, Red, and I gave a little chuckle, but Tiff and Julie glared at us as if we had committed a crime. “Let me see the braid” Marty gestured for Katie to turn her head so he could examine it. She did, her hand ran down her head and her braid all the way down to her hip. It was kind of pretty.

“Hmm” Marty gave an approving nod and said, “Looks kind’a pretty”

            From inside the truck Scout tapped on the window and opened it, “were gonna be stopping in some shrinky dink little town for gas. You three-“ his voice was directed at us, “Just stay low while were there you need anything, tell Christy and pay her back later.”

“What if we need to use the-“ Katie started to say but Scout cut her off.

“Do it in the gas station” without another word he shut the little window and turned towards the road. He seemed to not trust us as much as the others seemed to. I could see his lips moving as he was talking to Kenneth, Kenneth spoke back calmly and Scout rubbed his fingers through his thick black hair every once in a while-it was most likely some strange habit he had when he was talking to somebody and wouldn’t get his way.

 The other person in the car was silent, Max. I hadn’t heard him speak at all. Max was by far one of the most secretive looking person I had seen in all my 17 years of life. His coffee colored hair was not full of hair grease like the other boys had. And his exotic grey-almost white colored eyes-had a sneakiness to them.

I looked to Christy, “So what’s the deal with Max?”

“It’s a complicated situation” she told me

“Compared to me, nothing is” I assured her

“Look we’re all outcasts, you know except rich bot over there” she said acknowledging Tony, “We used to stick around home and each other, then a family moved in and they seemed okay. But we could always, always hear them screaming at each other during the night time. We never even knew that they had a kid.” She stopped and looked at Max, “one night we heard two gunfire shots. And a few minutes later Max came to our door out of breath and he kept saying his parents had been murdered. My family took him in and now he rarely says anything, he’s so distrusting of everyone, outside of our little gang here. After that night we started seeing terrible things that we had never noticed, it was like that night, those gunfire’s had woken us up to see the real world” Christy shook her head and stared at her shoes, “they never even found the gun, the cops only care about the upper classes compared to us. So we decided that when we were all legally adults we would get out and go somewhere where we could live without garbage, one night it was really stormy and everyone in the back was soaked. Kenneth pulled into an old barn and we found a confederate flag that we sold to a buddy back home who owns an antique shop, so we decided to start going in old barns and few houses that had been abandoned years ago and sell what we find”

            They were silent so I quickly searched for something that might cheer them up, “this seems out of place” I said, “but do you think the moon is really made of cheese?” and I cocked an eyebrow, a trick I had picked up from Scott.

            They laughed, “You’re not so bad kid” Christy told me.