Free As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth by Lynne Rae Perkins

the truck had died not far from afarmhouse or a gas station or a Burger King. But, no. He checked in three directions, the front being obscured by the raised hood. On the bright side, it looked like they were parked in a very low-crime zone. And it looked like another sunny day.
    He tried to recall how they had gotten inside so he could get back out. Oh, yeah, he had to crawl up to the front seat. And there were his new old shoes. He rolled up his bag, put on the shoes and his sweatshirt, crawled over, and let himself out into the cool morning air. His own footfalls crunched purposefully away toward a stand of brush, in case a car went by, he supposed, then back to where Del stood looking at something he held in his hand.
    Del reached up and pulled the hood down with a heavy thunk.
    “I guess we better start walking,” he said. “I think we’re closer to something ahead than back. Maybe we’ll pick up a ride.”
    Ry looked up and down the empty highway.
    “It is a highway,” Del said. “People do drive on it.
    “Anyway,” he said, a minute or two later, “I don’t think we’re too far from the next little town. I don’t think it can be more than five miles or so.”
    “Five miles?” said Ry.
    “That’s only a couple hours’ walk,” said Del. “I doubt it’s even that far.”
    Ry glanced back at the truck as they headed down the shoulder of the road. It seemed at home there in the timeless earthy expanse. It blended right in. It looked like it was planning to stay. Marry a local rock and put down roots. By the time they got back, there would probably be young tumbleweeds nesting and mating in the cab.
    Del showed him the automotive object he was carrying. He had extricated it from under the hood and taken it apart. It was a generator. He explained what it did and showed Ry where the wire that wrapped around it had broken. It would have to be soldered back together. It would just wrap around one less time.
    “Couldn’t we sort of twist it together, like a twisty thing on a bread bag?” asked Ry.
    “No,” said Del, “it wouldn’t be a good-enough contact. And it would be lumpy. And besides that, it would be shoddy.”
    He said the word “shoddy” as if it tasted bad to have it in his mouth. As if Ry had suggested taking food meant for a hungry child.
    “Sorr-ree,” said Ry wryly. “It was just an idea.”
    Del’s eyes were hidden by the shadow of his sunglasses and his cap from the morning brightness that doused them from the east, but his cheeks and what Ry could see of his mouth seemed to be in the shape of being amused.
    Ry didn’t have sunglasses or a cap to shade his eyes, so he looked down or off to the side a lot, to avoid the glare. To the left, the north, he saw the strand of trees that meant water, a stream or a river. He thought of his lost boot. What if it was floating along right beside them? That would be kind of ironic. Maybe they should go look. Although now he didn’t have the other one. He had chucked it into a trash can outside the thrift shop.
    Another river thought popped into his mind, and he reached down into the corner of the cargo pocket on his shorts and fished out the little skull. He had forgotten about it. It weighed almost nothing. It was kind of amazing that he had slept in his shorts for two nights without crushing it, or feeling it.
    “What kind of animal do you think this was?” he asked, handing it to Del. Del took it and looked it over with interest, but without breaking his stride.
    “Where did you find it?” he asked.
    Ry told him, and said, “First I wondered whathappened to him, then I wondered, why aren’t there little skulls all over; why is this the only one?”
    “I think nature is more efficient than we are at garbage disposal,” said Del. “But it does seem like there would be more of them, like they would take a while to go away, when you think of the really old ones that they find.”
    Handing it back to Ry, he said, “It’s not my