Free The House of Daniel by Harry Turtledove Page A

teeth. I knew we had it bad—you couldn’t very well not know that. But I knew other places had it bad, too. I hadn’t known we had it especially bad. Now I did. No wonder Pa headed out West.
    Now I was heading out, too. I wondered when I’d come back. I wondered if I would, too.
    Before I went out, though, I had to go back through. The sun was sinking when we passed through Enid one last time. Not that many people on the streets. A lot of the ones who were gawped at the House of Daniel bus. Well, that paint job is there to be gawped at. The House of Daniel wants people to know it’s coming to town.
    The House of Daniel does. I didn’t, not for beans, not in Enid. If Big Stu was walking out of his diner and saw me roll by … That would’ve been great, wouldn’t it? But he wasn’t, and he couldn’t have spotted me even if he was. I was sitting by the aisle, since the window seats were taken by the time I got in. No lights working inside the bus. I wouldn’t have been more than one dim shape amongst all the others.
    I can see that now. I could see it five minutes after we got out of Enid. Did I have palpitations while we were in town? Listen, I had palpitations and a half. And when I saw Ace McGinty staggering down the street like he was already toasted, I had palpitations and three-quarters.
    Ace didn’t see me, though. I don’t think Ace even saw the bus. And he was the last of the Enid Eagles I ever set eyes on. The bus kept on toward the western fringes of town.
    Eddie Lelivelt kept looking out the window. I don’t know if he would have unless he was sitting next to somebody from Enid. But he was, so he did. Sadly, he pointed and said, “Another one of those lost and damned places.”
    He was pointing right at my house, the house I’d left a few days before, the house I’d never go back to again. I looked at it, too, but not for long. “Well, you’re right,” I said as it disappeared behind us.

 
    (IV)
    We rolled on through the night. Harv drove and drove and drove. He liked it. We didn’t always roll any too fast. Not all the roads in western Oklahoma are paved. Sometimes we kicked up dust. Sometimes gravel rattled off the undercarriage. Sometimes the bus bounced and bucked like a bronco. We rolled on regardless.
    Beside me, Eddie closed his eyes and curled up against the iron wall and the window. I thought he was kidding, but pretty soon he started to snore. He wasn’t the only one, either. A lot of the time, if guys who played for the House of Daniel didn’t sleep on the bus, they went short.
    I still didn’t know where we were going. Truth to tell, I didn’t much care. We were heading away from Enid—now!—which was all that mattered. Almost all that mattered. Other thing was, Big Stu didn’t know where I was going, either, and he wouldn’t have an easy time finding out.
    If I leaned the way Eddie was leaning, I’d end up lying in the aisle. Or I’d snuggle against his shoulder and he’d think I was peculiar. So I tried to stretch out straight in the seat and doze off. I might have got a little shuteye that way, but I didn’t get a lot.
    We stopped at some little town or other to gas up. When the engine stopped, I heard coyotes howling in the distance. The moon was out, but it wasn’t full, so I knew they weren’t werewolves. They sure sounded like werewolves, though. Coyotes have some of Old Scratch in them regardless of the moon’s phase.
    Then we got going again. Hardly any cars came our way. Once we saw a carpet’s lanterns up above us. He didn’t drop anything on us, so that was fine.
    Little by little, light started spreading over the prairie from behind us. We were heading south and west, toward Texas. Hardly any place in Oklahoma west of Enid had a team good enough to give the House of Daniel a game or a ballpark that was worth their while to play a