“You are safe.”
He wagged his head. “All I did was find a bigger place to hide.”
2
RUN
2002
The orange U-Haul truck chewed long miles along the endless highway, bound for California from Idaho. The vehicle was a fifteen footer, the biggest vehicle David had ever ridden in. After sitting half the day in the middle seat between Mom and Angela, however, the novelty had worn off, and he was carsick and bored and worried about the future.
Mom tapped the steering wheel, singing along to a Christian radio station. She wore a T-shirt and jeans. Sweat glistened on her forehead despite the air-conditioning. She’d tied her hair into an austere ponytail. She shook her head as she drove past an exit leading to a small town.
“Another dead end,” she said. “Dead and don’t know it yet.”
Mom talked a lot about the war that was coming. Eleven months earlier, terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center. The coming war would be the big one, she said, and the start of even bigger wars to come. Millions would die, heralding a dark age leading up to the end of the world.
“Who’s dead?” David said.
“Nobody, Davey.” Her mouth formed a grim smile. “Right now, they’re just sleeping. They’ll wake up soon, you can count on that. They’ll be wide awake when it all goes down.”
When she talked about the apocalypse, she sounded strangely happy.
For David’s nine-year-old brain, it was the stuff of nightmares. God loved him, and he was therefore safe, but he didn’t like the idea of God hating everyone else.
Mom had told him the next time God destroyed the world, he’d do it with fire.
She nudged him with her elbow. “You ready for it, Davey?”
He shrugged. “I guess so.”
“When Jesus comes, you have to be prepared.”
“I’m ready.” He liked this part. While God was scary, Jesus was kind. David prayed to him every night. No matter how much his parents fought, Jesus had kept him safe.
“Can I get an amen?”
David grinned. “Amen!”
“Praise God.”
Angela sighed as she gazed out the window. “I don’t see why we can’t get ready in Twin Falls, where I have friends and a life.”
“When are we going to see Dad again?” David said.
Mom’s face turned dark with alarming suddenness. “Don’t make me the bad guy for taking care of you the best way I can.”
“I was happy,” Angela said, leaving the rest unspoken. She believed Mom was taking care of herself. David had heard it all before.
Mom gripped the wheel hard enough to turn her knuckles white. “Your father’s starting a new life. It’s about time we did the same.”
This was news to David. “What new life is Dad starting?”
Mom turned up the radio and didn’t answer. In a gravelly voice, the radio preacher said the world’s sinners didn’t listen any better than Pharaoh did when Moses warned him, and for that they’d suffer, just as the Egyptians had.
Mom’s smile returned full force as she said, “Amen.”
Outside of Reno, the U-Haul pulled off the interstate. Mom drove toward a Chevron and maneuvered the truck next to the pumps. The hot, dry air reeked of gasoline fumes and desert dust.
She shoved her credit card into the slot and removed the pump handle. “They have restrooms here. Anybody who has to go, do it now, and don’t be long.”
Angela said, “Can I go in and buy a drink?”
Mom thrust her hand into the pocket of her jeans and handed over a few crumpled bills. “Nothing with caffeine. Get something for your brother too. And take the thermos and fill it up with water.”
David climbed out of the cab, happy to stretch his legs. He’d been holding his bladder in check since Winnemucca. His body broke out in sweat from the day’s scorching heat that waved above the asphalt. He followed Angela into the air-conditioned convenience store and stopped in front of the candy racks.
“You can’t have any of that,” his sister said.
“I can look.”
“I’ll buy you some peanuts.”
“Okay.” David walked off to find the restroom.
Inside, fluorescent lights glared across white tile. A man wearing a baseball cap and jeans stood shaving at the sink with the water running. The man’s eyes flickered in his reflection to gaze back at him. He winked, then went back to pulling a razor over his lathered jaw.
David put his head down and entered one of the stalls. He locked the door and raised the seat. Outside the stall, the water turned off. The bathroom became dead quiet except for the man humming while he shaved.
He couldn’t go. Peeing would make noise, which would call attention to himself. He waited for the man to either leave or turn the faucet on again, but neither happened. Pushing it out didn’t work. It was stuck.
“Niagara Falls,” he whispered.
Nothing.
He thought about what his best friend Ajay Patel might be doing back home. Ajay’s parents stayed together and didn’t fight. Nobody dragged him on a boring car ride to a whole other state to start a new life. He wondered if Ajay was one of the sinners who would be destroyed.
David wished he was Ajay.
Outside, the bathroom door cracked open. “Davey?”
Fear paralyzed him. The man could hear everything. A fierce heat blazed across David’s face and chest, leaving him miserable and nauseous. His bladder about to burst. If he stayed quiet, they’d all go away, the man and his mom both.
“Davey, answer me right now.”
“I’m peeing,” he managed.
“Come on out. I’m not asking twice.”
He zipped up and emerged weeping from the stall. The man turned toward him with a surprised expression, but the tears poured out in a flood, melting David’s vision to a hot blur.
Mom grabbed him by the hand and yanked him through the store and back into the sun.
“I have to pee,” he sobbed.
Angela chased after them. “What happened?”
Mom kept pulling. “You don’t have to go.”
“I do!”
“Then you’ll have to hold it until Sacramento.”
David wailed with fear and shame and self-pity. “I can’t! Please! I’m sorry!”
“Just let him go to the bathroom, Mom,” Angela said.
Mom stopped near the pumps and growled. “Lord, give me strength.”
She led him around the back of the gas station, where he did his business against the white cinder-block wall, moaning with relief.
When he came back, Mom was pacing out in the desert scrub, smoking a cigarette and muttering to herself. David’s shame deepened that he’d troubled her enough to smoke, something she shouldn’t do. She’d changed so much in the last year, when she and Dad started fighting all the time.
He didn’t want her to be upset. He didn’t want her to smoke. Mom had become God and Jesus rolled into one, angry and loving in equal measure. He crossed the dirt lot and said, “I’m sorry, Mom. I’ll be good.”
She quit her pacing and forced a smile. “I know you will, Davey. You’re a good boy in your heart.”