I was leaning against bookshelves, my neck free of Dad’s crushing grip, my body still braced to receive a blow. I looked around, gasping, my heart still racing. There was no sign of Dad, but this didn’t surprise me.
I was in the fiction section of the Stanville Public Library and, while I knew it as well as my own room, I didn’t think my father had ever been inside the building.
That was the first time.
The second time was like this.
The truck stop was new and busy, an island of glaring light and hard concrete in the night. I went in the glass doors to the restaurant and took a chair at the counter, near the section with the sign that said, DRIVERS ONLY. The clock on the wall read eleven-thirty. I put the rolled-up bundle of stuff on the floor under my feet and tried to look old.
The middle-aged waitress on the other side of the counter looked skeptical, but she put down a menu and a glass of water, then said, “Coffee?”
“Hot tea, please.”
She smiled mechanically and left.
The drivers’ section was half full, a thick haze of tobacco smoke over it. None of them looked like the kind of man who’d give me the time of day, much less a lift farther down the road.
The waitress returned with a cup, a tea bag, and one of those little metal pitchers filled with not very hot water. “What can I get you?” she asked.
“I’ll stick with this for a while.”
She looked at me steadily for a moment, then totaled the check and laid on the counter. “Cashier will take it when you’re ready. You want anything else, just let me know.”
I didn’t know to hold the lid open as I poured the water, so a third of it ended up on the counter. I mopped it up with napkins from the dispenser and tried not to cry.
“Been on the road long, kid?”
I jerked my head up. A man, sitting in the last seat of the drivers’ section, was looking at me. He was big, both tall and fat, with a roll of skin where his shirt neck opened. He was smiling and I could see his teeth were uneven and stained.
“What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “Your business. You don’t look like you’ve been running long.” His voice was higher-pitched than you’d expect for a man his size, but kind.
I looked past him, at the door. “About two weeks.”
He nodded. “Rough. You running from your parents?”
“My dad. My mom cut out long ago.”
He pushed his spoon around the countertop with his finger. The nails were long with grease crusted under them. “How old are you, kid?”
“Seventeen.”
He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t care what you think. It’s true. I turned seventeen lousy years old yesterday.” The tears started to come and I blinked hard, got them back under control.
“What you been doing since you left home?”
The tea had gotten as dark as it was going to. I pulled the tea bag and spooned sugar into the cup. “I’ve been hitching, panhandling a little, some odd jobs. Last two days I picked apples—twenty-five cents a bushel and all I could eat. I also got some clothes out of it.”
“Two weeks and you’re out of your own clothes already?”
I gulped down half the tea. “I only took what I was wearing.” All I was wearing when I walked out of the Stanville Public Library.
“Oh. Well, my name’s Topper. Topper Robbins. What’s yours?”
I stared at him. “Davy,” I said, finally.
“Davy …?”
“Just Davy.”
He smiled again. “I understand. Don’t have to beat me about the head and shoulders.” He picked up his spoon and stirred his coffee. “Well, Davy, I’m driving that PtetroChem tanker out there and I’m headed west in about forty-five minutes. If you’re going that way, I’ll be glad to give you a ride. You look like you could use some food, though. Why don’t you let me buy you a meal?”
The tears came again then. I was ready for cruelty but not kindness. I blinked hard and said, “Okay. I’d appreciate the meal and the ride.”
An hour later I was westbound in the right-hand seat of Topper’s rig, drowsing from the heat of the cab and the full stomach. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep, tired of talking. Topper tried to talk a little more after that, but stopped. I watched him out of narrowed eyes. He kept turning his head to look at me when the headlights from oncoming traffic lit the cab’s interior. I thought I should feel grateful, but he gave me the creeps.
After a while I fell asleep for real. I came awake with a start, unsure of where I was or even who. There was a tremor running through my mind, a reaction to a bad dream, barely remembered. I narrowed my eyes again and my identity and associated memories came back.
Topper was talking on the CB.
“I’ll meet you behind Sam’s,” he was saying. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Ten-four, Topper. We’re on our way.”
Topper signed off.
I yawned and sat up. “Jeeze. Did I sleep long?”
“About an hour, Davy.” He smiled like there’d been a joke. He turned off his CB then and turned the radio to a country and western station.
I hate country and western.
Ten minutes later he took an exit for a farm road far from anywhere.
“You can let me out here, Topper.”
“I’m going on kid, just have to meet a guy first. You don’t want to hitch in the dark. Nobody’ll stop. Besides, it looks like rain.”
He was right. The moon had vanished behind a thick overcast and the wind was whipping the trees around.
“Okay.”
He drove down the rural two-lane for a while, then pulled off the road at a country store with two gas pumps out front. The store was dark but there was a gravel lot out back where two pickups were parked. Topper pulled the rig up beside them.
“Come on, kid. Want you to meet some guys.”
I didn’t move. “That’s okay. I’ll wait for you here.”
“Sorry,” he said. “It’s against company policy to pick up riders, but my ass would really be grass if I left you in here and something happened. Be a sport.”
I nodded slowly. “Sure. Don’t mean to be any trouble.”
He grinned again, big. “No trouble.”
I shivered.
To climb down, I had to turn and face the cab, then feel with my feet for the step. A hand guided my foot to the step and I froze. I looked down. Three men were standing on my side of the truck. I could hear gravel crunching as Topper walked around the front of the rig. I looked at him. He was unbuckling his jeans and pulling down his zipper.
I yelled and scrambled back up to the cab, but strong hands gripped my ankles and knees, dragging me back down. I grabbed onto the chrome handle by the door with both hands as tight as I could, flailing my legs to try and break their grip. Somebody punched me in the stomach hard and I let go of the handle, the air in my lungs, and my supper all at once.
“Jesus fucking Christ. He puked all over me!” Somebody bit me