Free Truants by Ron Carlson Page A

my roving hand with her own. Ah, now the perennial frontier push-pull, as her hand repelled mine, while my mind was in my heart, my heart in my stomach and my stomach beating in my throat. My hand was ejected a dozen times at least before my mind reascended to the sound of “Don’t!” which is a sobering contraction, and I sat up straight to find myself held at arm’s length.
    She looked in my face: “Don’t, you simple shit. Save it for your girlfriend. Leave me alone.” But as she said the final word she fell, limp, passed out or half asleep into my surprised arm, which just lay there and held her until sleep rose also into me.
    Oh, it was wayward behavior all right, inspired by the confused signals in this world. What kind of life is it which impels the glimpse of perfect breasts into the yes-no-backseat struggle? Which brings women out of light down to earth? We would run away the way others have gone swimming: with the buddy system, and my foul-mouthed, red-haired buddy would teach me a thing, or as they say, two . It wasn’t much of a version of running away either, it seemed, sleeping there, but it beat the next few hours by a million miles.
    So, I slept with a girl in The Death Car while Arizona turned toward the sun. It was, for me, a long way to go with a girl.

14
    **************
    Goodbye, Ring Holz
    In the first degree of flat dawnlight, Louisa lurched awake with such a start that I thought we’d had an accident.
    “Oh no!” she said looking around. “I’ve got to get out of here! ” She was almost screaming. She tried to crawl across me to get out of the door, an action that was seriously impeded by the fact that my arm and left side were completely asleep, minutes away from even the pins and needles of effervescent blood. She began hitting me, the way we hit our jailers, in antic distress, and she literally did not know which way to turn.
    “Come on, you bastard! Ring will be back. He’s crashed forty times and he knows! ”
    I clambered out and leaned against The Death Car, until I was sure of which way was up, and then I suggested Hector. If it was before six, he’d still be at work.
    I led her out to the shack at a run-walk, yawning to get air. It wasn’t hard to hurry now, because I realized I, too, was a fugitive. I liked the word: fugitive . It is much more attractive and affirmative than orphan .
    Hector was beached out on the old couch, his flowered shirt unbuttoned and spread open, his T-shirt rising and falling with each belly-felt snore. He was the most well-fed sleeping man I’d ever seen.
    “Hector,” I shook his arm. “ Hec- tor!”
    He opened his eyes placidly and said, “What?”
    “We need a ride! Hurry!”
    “Fine. My father said you might come by.” He scratched his stomach deeply as if to put it back into place.
    To hurry things along, I climbed in the cab of the pickup. Louisa was making little noises that indicated we should hurry, but I told her everything would soon be all right, that we’d be in California any minute, and my father would serve us breakfast. Hector sauntered out, started the old Dodge, and we were off.
    Unfortunately, Hector, not having spent a night in The Death Car, and not having the Louisa Holz runaway résumé, motored us directly over to Ring’s trailer where every door and window was open and ablaze with light. I could perceive the trailer vibrating.
    “ What are you doing? ” Louisa screamed.
    As the I-thought-I-was-taking-you-home confusion spread across Hector’s face, Ring Holz in person, his head taped like a skullcap, his left arm in a cast, leaped onto the trailer stairs.
    “ Go! ” Louisa screamed again, and I concurred by snapping the gearshift down a notch into second, sending the truck twenty feet ahead in a shudder.
    Holz ran after us hollering something in his native tongue which sounded a lot like the instructions for breaking necks, and I leaned to Hector and said, “Hector—No! Out!” And Hector wheeled through the