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

window, looking into the distance. Ry wonderedhow Carl had seen the two of them in the first place. He had to be able to see pretty decently for that, right?
    Carl leaned out his window, too, squinting into the brightness. The moving air lifted clumps of his hair so that he resembled an elderly sheep, face into the wind. Drawing his head back inside, he asked Ry again where they were from, and where they were going. When Ry mentioned the car trouble, his kindly features were gently shaded with concern.
    “Is that right,” he said. “Isn’t that something.”
    “You’re all clear to get back in the right-hand lane now,” said Del.
    They meandered into their own lane in time to dodge an oncoming tractor trailer. The driver blasted his horn as he brushed past.
    “That was a little close,” said Del.
    “I’ve had a lot of close calls.” Carl smiled. He seemed to be untroubled by their brush with disaster.
    “When you’re in the service, you never know what’s going to happen next,” he said. “You get used to it.”
    “What branch?” asked Del.
    “Marines,” said Carl. “Korea. The infamous winter of 1950. Below-zero temperatures for weeks, in leather shoes. We were on the front lines, so we couldn’t evenhave fires. To this day, I have no feeling from the knees down.”
    He looked at them, and Ry could tell Carl had just let them in on what had been an unimaginably grueling part of his life: a cold, cold fire that he had passed through, a crucible that had formed him. You had to respect that. At the same time, Ry wished mightily that he were not captive, maybe soon to be a casualty, in a car being hurled headlong down the road by a guy who couldn’t see much, who couldn’t remember what you said two minutes ago, and who had just told you that he had no feeling in the part of his body he was driving the car with.
    Ry’s mouth opened and he said, “Huh.”
    Carl had to be fibbing, or at least exaggerating. He had to have some feeling in his foot to keep it pressed down on the gas pedal. Especially at the speed they were going. Though maybe a lead foot and a dead-weight foot were about the same. He glanced down at Carl’s senseless foot. It was wearing a bedroom slipper. One of those corduroy ones designed to look like a loafer. Pajama pants peeked out from under his trouser legs.
    “So,” said Carl brightly, “are you from around here, or just passing through?”
    The car drifted into the westbound lane and continuedthere. Maybe it was easier for Carl to go straight if he could see the edge of the road. Up close.
    Del was still hanging out the window, peering down the road. Ry guessed that his plan was to be Carl’s eyes and nudge him out of the path of danger. It was a good plan. Except that the three large animals that went bounding majestically across the road materialized on Carl’s side of the car. They seemed to come out of nowhere. Carl saw them just in time to brake into a sideways skid, so Ry got to see them, too, through Del’s window, before the car spun completely backward and came to a halt. He turned and looked again through Carl’s window in time to see the lovely animals bound away, unfazed.
    Maybe they were fazed. Ry was fazed. Carl seemed unfazed as he turned the car again and drove on. He seemed to be aiming for the middle of the road now.
    He was a really nice old man. He might be somebody’s grandfather. Ry didn’t want to hurt his feelings or be rude. But he also didn’t want to die. He looked at Del. Del’s face was on heightened alert, but he also appeared to be sticking with his look-down-the-road plan.
    “What were they?” asked Ry.
    “What were who?” asked Carl.
    “Those animals that went across the road,” said Ry. “They looked like deer, but different.”
    “Could have been,” said Carl. “I can’t say I was really paying attention.”
    “They were antelope,” said Del. “Pronghorn antelope.”
    The car swerved abruptly back to the right and a