Free Truants by Ron Carlson Page B

square, under the grandstand, around a sharp turn by the concessions, and onto the raceway. The stands were empty. Halfway around, he swerved wide, dipping through the pits’ gate, motoring by all the burned-out wrecks, turning finally out onto Grand Avenue, the most misnamed street in the real world.
    I assured Louisa that everything was fine, but she was shaking her head with her eyes closed: “You bastards! He’ll kill me this time.”
    Hector was driving north on Grand, casting curious looks my way for an explanation.
    “It’s okay, Louisa,” I said. “We’re safe now.” It was a moment of stress, and that statement was a reflex; I have never said it since.
    She just shook her head, and after a minute, she nodded backwards while giving each of her fingers a serious bite. I looked back two lights and saw the unmistakable white cap of that vitriolic motorcyclist, Ring Holz. Louisa didn’t have to turn around; she had recognized the faint buzzing of his cycle.
    “How many motorcycles does that man have?”
    “Five.” She said the word the way Davey Crockett had said “Surrounded” at the Alamo.
    “Hector,” I said. “That man on the motorcycle must not catch us.”
    “I see,” he said. “But if I wreck this truck, my father is going to kill me.”
    It was now first sunlight, and there was not much traffic, but because Grand Avenue runs diagonally northwest out of Phoenix, the intersections are tangled six-spoke gambles, the semaphores flashing in nineteen directions, and only one of them was ours. The traffic was triply complicated that morning because of a freight train moving parallel to Grand Avenue at only twenty-five miles per hour, shutting off our left-turn escape.
    Against all odds, Hector made six intersections, dragging the wily, wind-bent Ring Holz like a waterskier. Holz, due to his myopic disregard for traffic regulations, ran the lights and was closing the gap. His bandaged head floated toward us like a disembodied skull. Also, he seemed mad. Angry and crazy. I took the expression on his face to be the logarithm of anger.
    When we were two hundred yards from Glendale Avenue, the lights registered against us. Red, red, red .
    “ Run it! ” Louisa said. And Hector downshifted cautiously, his head forward and swiveling in preparation. This is not the way to run away from home, I was thinking: this is not correct at all. This is simply reckless driving ahead of the relatives.
    Hector entered the intersection and stomped the brakes. We swerved up to—and nearly under—a semi-trailer carrying, by its own gigantic admission on the side: FOSTER’S CUPCAKES. I read each three-foot letter as it passed in front of our noses and then I turned in time to see Ring Holz clench his own brakes behind us, open his mouth, close his eyes, and skid under the rear-end of Hector’s pickup.
    The collision was signal enough for Louisa, who was over my lap again, exiting this Death Truck. Hector looked at me as if to ask if he should back up and extinguish the villain who had given us such chase. Before I could answer, I noted with stomach-affecting curiosity Louisa run across the front of the truck, through four lanes of traffic, and without missing a step, she leaped and grabbed the rung on the side of a coal car and boarded the railroad train. It was a desperate act.
    Louisa accomplished this as if she had done it before. Oh good, I thought: the next thing . My choices, I’ll say, were made.
    As Holz’s bandaged head rose over the rear of the truck like any creature from a black lagoon, I thanked Hector, who slapped me five back, and I ran on foot after a railroad train carrying new friends away.
    Using Holz’s bellowing as final inspiration, I was urged to leap up the gravel bed of the track and attach myself to the train, suddenly being too aware of why arm sockets are made to give. But when my feet cleared the ground, it was quite the feeling. Try it sometime, if your father invites you to