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Show Blue Run/86 "Which way's uphill?" he asked. "This way or that?" We faced a valley where I could see the State Pen, men walking on hard concrete behind fences inside of fences-a real prison like I'd never seen before. "Back that way," I said. I jerked my thumb back toward the sleeper where a pretty picture of Mama, one from before the fire, was scotch taped to the ceiling. "That way's up," I said and pointed behind us. "We're going downhill" "Back that-away, huh? Behind us is up, right?" "Yea, behind us is up."" He slipped the huge black gear shifter knob into neutral, halting all those gear boxes in their grease, took his polished black boots off the clutch and brakes, took both hands of the wheel. Air from the brakes hissed beneath us. It was May, hot as hades in Arkansas, but a freaky snow had fallen out here in Wyoming and we were in tee-shirts For about a hundred fifty miles since Cheyenne we'd trailed a Kenworth rig hauling a brand new Tilt-O-Whirl. Like I said, it was morning and the sun was rising up behind our backs, shining off the new snow and into all those mirrors on the Tilt-O-Whirl. This carney ride was a cousin or brother maybe to the one that had hurled me and Jimmy over the sawdust at the Lonoke County Fair while Mama watched us and talked to the one-armed barker at the Rifle Bullseye Shoot And now, out in the wild West-kidnapped, maybe, to blackmail my mother into taking him back-all the license plates had pictures of a cowboy riding a bucking horse. All this on the roadside with home behind my back, O.W. in neutral-life could go either way. The truck creaked, shivered on its wheels for a few seconds. Then it started to roll up hill, complaining like it hurt. Just a slight movement at first-the sensation of going backwards, the |
