100 Sideways Miles (28 page)

“Tell me where you came from.”

I balled my hand into a fist.

What an idiot he was! He must have somehow put it all together: the epileptic boy with the two-colored eyes and the Lazarus Door mark along his spine. He probably thought if I hadn't blanked out, I would have eaten the little kid I pulled from the river.

Even in the state of Oklahoma—Indian Territory—the boy could not escape the prison of the book.

I pushed the doctor's hand away from me and cocked my fist back, but as angry as I was, I couldn't punch the guy.

“Leave me alone.”

I went outside, barefoot and naked inside a dog-hospital blanket. Everything was humid and damp, and whereas I'd been freezing cold inside the examination room, I felt sweat droplets trickling from my armpits by the time I made it to Cade's truck.

Nathan Pauley slowed and stood back, watching me outside the clinic's front door.

And I was only wishing to myself,
Please let the keys be in the truck; please remember how Cade Hernandez taught you to drive; please do not crash; please get the hell out of here
.

He must not have thought I'd actually try to drive off. Nathan Pauley must have assumed I was only going for my clothes, like I told him I was. I guess people in Oklahoma are more reliable and compliant than people from Southern California. But the veterinarian got a troubled and disappointed look on his face when I slid in behind the wheel of Cade's truck and started it up.

He stepped forward, waving, “Hey! Wait! You can't leave! Incomer Boy! Wait!”

Look: I'll admit I drive like a drunken twelve-year-old.

The truck rattled and jerked. I was so uncoordinated with the clutch; and the blanket wrapped around my legs didn't make driving any easier. So when I came to the exit of the parking lot at the dog hospital, I realized I had no idea where I should go.

Thisway
or
thatway
?

I turned right, not because I thought it was the direction that would take me back to the river, back to look for Cade. Although I hoped it was, I turned right because it was easier than pulling across the highway and turning left, and I was naked and wrapped in a flea-infested blanket and pissed off, and I wanted to get the hell away from Nathan Pauley, D.V.M., and the possible return appearance of Deputy Billy Gruber—both of whom probably believed I was a child-eating naked alien named Cade Hernandez.

As it turned out, the easier choice was the correct choice.

About a mile from the veterinarian's clinic, I saw flashing red and blue lights in the rearview mirror.

It was ridiculous.

And it was definitely not what I ever imagined would happen to Finn—the incomer boy, not me—when he found himself alone on the planet of humans and dogs at the end of my father's novel.

One thing that did not happen at the end of my father's book was this: Finn did not find himself naked and driving his best friend's pickup truck while being pursued by some type of emergency vehicle with agonizingly bright headlamps and a flashing red beacon that pulsed so vividly across the flat Oklahoma landscape, the spectacle nearly induced the smell of flowers and another epileptic seizure.

And it wasn't just one vehicle behind me; there were several. I pulled the truck onto the gravel of the shoulder and flipped the rearview mirror away so I wouldn't have to look at all those oncoming lights, which soon passed me and sped off down the highway.

The lights were attached to a fire truck, an ambulance, a wrecker tow truck, and in the rear of the urgency parade, a black-and-white county sheriff's patrol vehicle, which was most likely driven by someone named Billy Gruber.

It was a great relief they weren't pursuing me. I thought they likely were rushing to the place where Cade Hernandez and I had jumped into the Little Buffalo River, and how long ago was that, anyway?

Sitting there, the words and pictures came back to me.

I remembered seeing Cade on the upriver side of the sinking van as the kid and I drifted away in the current, how I'd tried to warn him not to go inside for the shadow person belted into the driver's seat. And I remembered how that little boy scratched
and kicked me, and that we ended up so far downriver before I could finally drag myself toward the shore.

Then
poof!
and thousands of miles later, my universe became the dog hospital.

I pulled back onto the road and sped after the parade of official vehicles. The flashing lights led me down the highway, toward the bridge.

I turned off the headlights and parked Cade's truck on the side of the road in what was probably the exact spot where we'd abandoned the vehicle hours—all those empty miles—before. Ahead of me, the bank around the bridge was all awash in hot white spotlights. Two men in coveralls stretched a thick steel cable with a hook from the back of the wrecker down toward the brush at the edge of the river.

Near the footing of the bridge, firefighters lifted a wheeled gurney to slide it inside the open doors on the ambulance. Someone was lying on it. But it wasn't Cade Hernandez on the stretcher; I could clearly see it was an old man.

And as I sat there watching it all, Cade Hernandez, wearing nothing but a pale blue disposable paper jumpsuit, came up around the driver's side of the truck from somewhere in the darkness behind me.

I nearly jumped completely out of my dog-hospital blanket when he slapped the door and said, “Dude. Why did you steal my truck? Are you
naked 
?”

“Uh.”

I didn't know what to say, but I was so relieved to have found my friend.

Or, he found me.

“Dude. That's ridiculous.”

“Cade?”

“What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Dude.”

“Let's get the fuck out of here.”

“I know.”

So, clutching my dog blanket around my hips, I stepped out of the truck and limped awkwardly to the passenger side while Cade slid in behind the wheel.

Then we drove off and left the Little Buffalo River behind us.

• • •

“You
are
naked, aren't you?” Cade said.

“I lost my clothes in the river,” I explained.

“That kind of gives me a boner, which is ridiculous when all you have on is a tissue-paper jumpsuit.”

So there we were, both of us driving through Oklahoma in the nighttime, and both of us essentially naked.

Cade said, “You could probably end up getting shot for driving around naked in Oklahoma.”

“Um, okay.”

“L-A-H-O-M-A!” Cade sang.

“Uh.”

After I explained what I remembered about pulling the boy and his dog from the van, and then waking up in Dr. Nathan Pauley's dog hospital, Cade Hernandez told me this story of what happened to him while we were separated.

“Diving was a big mistake,” he began. “Never dive off a thirty-foot-high fucking bridge wearing basketball shorts.”

I jumped from the bridge, feet first.

“Because as soon as I hit the water,” Cade said, “bam! I was stripped clean out of my shorts. Totally naked, too. They went one way, I went the other. It was ridiculous. Nobody wants to get saved by a naked guy. I'm, like, ‘Hello! I'm naked, and I'm here to save you, dude.' It was like popping through a Lazarus Door, only I didn't have wings, and I wasn't very horny.”

Cade Hernandez would not let go of that book.

“You pulled someone out?” I said.

Cade reached across me and grabbed a can of chewing tobacco from the glove compartment.

He inhaled with satisfaction after he packed a wad of tobacco behind his lip, then Cade spit into his water bottle.

“That grandpa dude who was strapped in the driver's seat,” he said. “It didn't look good. The van was tipping over, and I was pretty sure the guy was dead, but I pulled him out anyway and got him up in the weeds on the other side of the bridge. He wasn't breathing, so I did CPR on him. It was fucking ridiculous. There I was, naked and muddy, making out with some old man I pulled out of a minivan beside what looked like a parking lot at a truck stop. I'm lucky I didn't get arrested for being a naked fucking perv or something. I think half the state of Oklahoma saw me doing it there after I got him out of the water, and I was just, like, what the fuck happened to Finn? And why am I fucking naked and sucking on some old dude's face while a bunch of redneck truckers are standing there on the side of the road watching me? Dude. They took pictures with their cell phones. I'm probably naked on a million fucking websites by now.”

Cade spit.

“But you saved the guy's life.”

“So, yeah. We are both naked heroes, dude.”

“Maybe you should find a spot to pull off so we can get some clothes on.”

Cade spit again and said, “And the worst part was, just when the guy was ready to kick in and breathe on his own, the dude puked right into my mouth.”

I was horrified and repulsed.

And Cade Hernandez said, “I wanted to punch the fucker so bad after that. If this was California, my life would be ruined. Well, probably your life would. I told everyone my name was Finn Easton, from Burnt Mill Creek, California.”

Cade Hernandez had become me, and I had become Cade Hernandez.

“That kind of gives me a boner,” I said.

Cade spit. “Dude, you're a fucking idiot.”

“The guy at the dog hospital looked in your wallet and saw your license, so he thought I was
you
.”

“Hmmm. I bet he saw that I have a couple of those colored condoms in my wallet too. Or, should I say
you
do? I bet dudes in Oklahoma never seen colored condoms.”

I shook my head. In his wallet? I would never keep condoms in my wallet. Some guys never learn.

“What does someone else's throwup taste like?”

“It wasn't as bad as you'd think,” Cade said.

• • •

We put on dry clothes standing beside Cade's truck in an empty camping area at a place called Bernice State Park.

I was very happy to get rid of my dog blanket. It made me itch.

Cade Hernandez simply ripped his way out of his rescue outfit.

“Dude. Paper clothes are ridiculous. Why would anyone invent something as dumb as paper clothes? You can see right through them. The cop who gave me this thing said they use it whenever they arrest naked people, like it's something they do all the time in Oklahoma.”

“Someone ought to keep statistics on that,” I said.

“Dude. What do you think your dad will do if the cops track you down and tell him they found you naked on the side of a river in Oklahoma doing CPR on some old fucker who puked in your mouth?”

Look: To be honest, the thought had not occurred to me.

I stepped into some clean State of California underwear and pulled on another pair of Burnt Mill Creek Pioneers basketball shorts. Neither of us had brought along a very diverse wardrobe.

“I don't know,” I said. “I imagine your mom and dad will have something to say after they hear about how you passed out saving a little boy and woke up naked in a dog hospital too. I think this thing gave me fleas.”

I scratched myself.

Cade said, “I guess getting someone else's puke in your mouth is just as bad as getting a strange dog's fleas on your balls.”

• • •

We spent the night at Bernice State Park stretched out atop our sleeping bags in the mess of Cade's camper shell. There were no other humans visible in the campground; and we'd both had all the interaction with people from Oklahoma we could tolerate for one day.

For some reason, having sleeping bags unrolled and camping
out inside a truck bed—which was smaller than the king-size bed we'd shared at the E-Z Rest motel the night before—canceled out the instinct-driven construction of a Berlin Wall, which was kind of ridiculous, because Cade Hernandez and I were so cramped together inside his camper that we actually
touched
each other.

I suppose that adolescent sexual confusion—a gift from the greatest generation, the boys who beat the Nazis and grew up listening to radio drama—has a way of knackering into sexual certainty when guys are trying to get some sleep inside pickup trucks. And as Cade Hernandez and I lay there eating Oreo cookies in the quiet black nothingness of an Oklahoma midnight, our own blank-screen radio theater played out as something like this:

CADE: I need to tell you, Finn—we're about twenty miles past Dunston University.

FINN: That's one second at Earth speed. No big deal, I guess.

CADE: So. I was thinking about a lot of shit today. I'm not so sure I want to visit Dunston University tomorrow, I mean, after what happened to us today. I feel like it was kind of a sign, telling us that we should take a little detour. Or a big one.

FINN: I never really cared about visiting Dunston in the first place. I just wanted to hang out with you. And I wanted to get away from my house. I wanted to see if I could get out of the book.

CADE: Do you think you did it?

FINN: Well, for a little while today I was Cade Hernandez and you were Finn Easton.

CADE: I didn't feel like eating anyone, though. But I could go for some grits.

FINN: I'm hungry too.

CADE: Well, don't fucking look at me, incomer. Have another Oreo.

FINN: What do you think, then?

CADE: Think about what?
(There is a long pause when Finn does not answer.)
I'll tell you what I think: I've been thinking about this year, and next year too—all those miles, according to you. It was a damn good year—and that's not in any fucking book that was written out ahead of time. Monica Fassbinder. Playing baseball. Fucking with the BEST Test. Hanging out with you and Julia. Puking in Blake Grunwald's bed. Being here with my best friend eating Oreos for dinner, wherever the hell we are. Free underwear and shampoo from Governor Oldfucker.