I pulled the crumpled tree tag from my pocket and crammed it into the can it! box.

While Dad and Gordon Lightfoot and I rolled slowly past the all-too-familiar sights of Olyn, I planted myself in the desk chair and opened to a blank page in the Book of In-Betweens. On it, I fast-noodled a fitting tribute, a skull and crossbones made out of a leaf and two twigs. I was just fixing to wonder if a Castanea dentata tree was even capable of growing stately and strong at all, when my dad turned in to the gas station so dramatically, my pencils rolled right off the desk and onto the floor with all manner of The Roast’s loose doodads joining them there.

As he backed up and inched forward at least five times to line up with the gas pump, Dad said, “Cass, I have a feeling it’s time to establish some Rules of The Roast.”

When we finally squeaked to a stop, he said, “Ever hear of holding down the fort?”

Well, of course I had. All the times Mom had gone rescuing, it was the last thing she would say to me. All but this last time, that is. She’d say, “Be my little fort-holder, Castanea.”

“Here’s the thing,” said Dad. “Apparently The Roast, well, she likes to make some wide turns, which are more than a little unsettling to her innards. So we’ll call this Rule of The Roast Number One: A big turn is your concern.”

It was the first rhyme I’d ever heard him do, like he was trying to be all Toodi Bleu Part Two or something.

“From now on,” he said, “when we take us a swerve, you’ll have the ever-so-vital job of securing anything that you are long-armed and stretchy-legged enough to reach. The last thing I want is for you to be knocked silly by a flying book.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You willing and able?” he asked.

“Able,” I said.

“Care to practice?”

“Sure.”

“All right, let’s see here,” he said. “Our signal to activate wide-turn-stuff-securing mode will be as follows…

“Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!” My dad made such a holler, I chomped the edge of my tongue. And when I didn’t jump into action, he did it again. “Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig Leeeeeeeeeeeeft!”

If for no other reason than to avoid one more holler, I practiced my part of the plan, discovering that if I stretched hard enough, I could secure small desk items with one hand, keep the coffee table from tumping with my left foot, block the wagon from rolling out from under the desk with my other foot, and finally, with my right forearm, I could hold all but one encyclopedia volume on the shelf above. I decided that, in the event of a real flying encyclopedia emergency, X-Y-Z could be sacrificed. Xylophones, yo-yos, and zebras had nothing to do with storm rescue research anyway.

“Excellent first effort,” said Dad. “I’m going to fill ’er up and run inside for a few items. Want to come along?”

“No, thanks. I’ll just hang out.”

“Okay by me,” he said. “But sit up here in the passenger seat so I can have an eye on you.”

While Dad got the gas glugging into The Roast, I caught sight of our own little church, which was right across the street from the station. The sign in front said, Triumph is just UMPH added to TRY! Brother Edge was replacing the exclamation point that had fallen off. In my side mirror, I watched Dad hook the gas nozzle back on the pump. Then, all quick and nonchalant, he yanked a chunk of Castanea dentata tree from under the back bumper and stuffed it into the garbage can. Dad shouted a hello to Brother Edge and waved to him on the way into the store.

Next door to the gas station was the Best Yet Discount Foods, which Syd calls the Best Yet Disco, because Aunt Jo did a slippy dance on a smushed avocado there once while “Stayin’ Alive” played overhead. I noticed a nest wedged into the Y of the big Best Yet sign. In it, a bunch of baby birds bobbed their rubbery heads while their mother made trips back and forth to a packet of french fries spilled on the ground. I imagined a Toodi Bleu Bird flying off to another nest in Florida, with my little rubber baby bird butt stuck down in the letter Y.

Y us.

Y this.

Y now.

Sighing, I gave a little stir to the pile of things in the center console—various gum, ancient peppermints, ballpoint pens, and a toothpick or two. In the midst of it all was a small piece of paper, a gum wrapper with a name and address written down.

Kenneth Brandt, 42 Wintergarden Street,

Fort Napaco, FL

Suddenly, that one address landed heavy as a whole phone book on my brain. Could that be the Ken? It had to be the Ken. We didn’t know any other Kens. I considered swiping the wrapper, but thought, What if Dad is taking us there to get Mom, and needs it? So real quick, I wrote myself a copy on another wrapper, just in case I might need it too.

When I leaned to put the address in my back pocket, something beneath me rubbed my ankle in a most irritating way. It was a big piece of paper rolled up like a scroll in the floorboard. I tried to unwedge it and take a quick peek as Dad rounded the back of the RV. Before I could get it loose, though, both Dad and his jumbo bag of teriyaki beef jerky had already climbed in.

“Sorry if you saw any of that tree carnage back there,” he said sadly. “Some landscaper I turned out to be, huh?”

I pretended I didn’t even know what he was talking about. After all, if he didn’t already know that tree was important to me, I sure wasn’t going to tell him about it or any other important things now. Dad was developing quite a knack for making important things disappear.

“Did you get some smell-good stuff?” I asked.

“Yeah. Hopefully these guys will do the trick,” he said, producing an air freshener from behind the jerky bag. It was a bonus double pack of two little cardboard pizza slices with arms and legs and faces that winked at me. One was a mister with a mustache, and the other a missus with red smoochy lips. Dad busted the seal on his beef jerky and it smelled almost as bad as my box-bed. I couldn’t get those fresheners opened fast enough.

“Look at ol’ Brother Edge over there,” he said. “I bet he’ll fix that sign a dozen times this week. When your Uncle Clay and I saw him the other day, he was in a stir trying to knock a hornets’ nest from the awning before the church swap meet, but check it out. He still found the time to gather us a little something for our trip.”

Dad leaned toward me and opened the glove compartment, bumping my knees a little with the door. Inside was a stash of CDs, each case with the word Encouragement written in orange on the spine. Dad’s It’s a dirty job ball cap sat upside down next to the collection.

“Some of his best sermons to go,” said Dad. “The ones with the most UMPH in them, I guess. On Sundays, we’ll take a rest from our work and give a listen.”

Dad tried to slam the glove compartment shut eight times before it stuck.

“Speaking of work,” I said. “Where’s the meat?”

“In the church parking lot, like always,” Dad said.

“Not the swap meet. The M-E-A-T.”

He aimed the bag of jerky my way.

“No,” I said. “The meat. That we’re supposed to sell this summer.”

“Oh that,” Dad said. “I thought you’d never ask.” He squinted one eye and looked down into the bag. “Cass, have you ever looked at, I mean really studied, the number eleven?”

“Um, not really.”

“Look here.” He pulled two long matching pieces of jerky out of the bag and dangled them side by side in front of me. “Now, pretend this is the number eleven, albeit a teriyaki-flavored eleven.”

“All right.”

“See how the left and the right of the number eleven are in perfect balance with one another? Ignoring the lumps and bumps of the beef jerkiness, of course.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, that there is a good demonstration of what’s so great about being almost eleven years old, Cass. On one side, you’re old enough to gain knowledge about certain unexplained secrets of this our tiny mobile world, and on the other side, you’re still young enough to appreciate the magic of them. It’s the perfect balance.”

Dad leaned in, bit off half a 1, and gave me the other 1. I took a nibble, finding the taste way less bizarre than his little speech.

“Regarding the meat,” Dad continued. “You just don’t even need to worry about that. We’re about to have a summer beefy with new places, new faces, and some lumps of wonder mixed in along the way.”

“Florida would be a lump of wonder,” I said, bracing inside for the scowl I expected from Dad.

“I’ve got forty-nine better ideas than Florida, Cass.”

As soon as he said those words, I wanted to crumple them up and stuff them right back into his mouth.

“Then why do you have Ken’s address written down?”

Dad almost urped his jerky.

“Well, now that you mention it, I’ve been wondering the same thing myself, Cass. I looked the address up, I guess out of some kind of morbid curiosity. But it occurs to me that that little piece of knowledge may well cause us some surplus suffering.”

He picked up the gum wrapper and crammed it into the plastic quick-mart bag. I was so glad I’d made a copy.

“How come we can’t just try?” I said. “Maybe go and see her? I bet both of us talking to her will help. We could stay there until she changes her mind.”

“It won’t do any good, Cass.”

“It might.”

“It won’t.”

“So then, where are we going?” I said. “Do we even have a map?”

Dad peered over a pair of convenience-store sunglasses that were already so stretched they scooted down his nose.

“I see that you are ready for Rule of The Roast Number Two,” he said. “And that is: Maps are for saps.”

“Then how will we know where to go?”

“Go lift the lid on that magician’s box back there,” Dad said.

“My bed?”

“Yep. Go on back there and have a look inside.”

Arming myself with the new air fresheners, I made my way to the back and lifted the pile of things off the box. I opened the latch to find a small collection of old shoes inside. There was a clog, a dress shoe, a hiking boot, and a loafer. One almost new, one almost crumbling, all of them dirty, and none of them matching.

“Whose are these?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Uncle Clay and I found them while we were running errands this week. On the side of the road. In the middle of the road. One about to fall into a sewer drain.

“Which brings us to Rule of The Roast Number Three,” he said. “It’s the shoes what choose.”

Again with the rhyming. Who is this man, I wondered. And what has he done with my dad?

“The shoes choose what?” I said.

“Choose where we go. What I mean is, that there is our map,” Dad said. “You and I are going to drive until we find a deserted shoe in the road, whatever kind of shoe it may be, and then we’ll stop to work in the nearest town thereafter.”

I started having that strange other-planet feeling again.

“But why shoes?” I asked.

“Because,” he said, “I heard a certain someone once mention how exciting it would be to not know where she’s going next, and to have to be ready for anything. I thought of the shoe thing when Clay and I found all those the other day. They were like a sign.”

He started the engine.

“I’ll admit it’s an unconventional way to see what life is like in someone else’s shoes. But frankly, I felt like you and I needed some why not on this trip, and it just seems to me like a good why not thing to try.”

Lowering the box lid slowly, so as not to puff out a blast of stink, I watched Dad’s face in his rearview mirror for some sign of Ha-ha, just kidding about the shoe thing. A twitch, a wink, anything. But he was serious as he could be.

“And we’re not coming home until we find a matching pair,” he said.

I dropped the lid of the box right onto my thumb.

“What?” I said. “You mean two alike?”

“Two alike.”

“Together?”

“Not necessarily.”

My stomach got a little twisty. “But that could take forever!” I said, feeling certain that forever wackadoo would not qualify as a good permanent.

“Yeah, well, the way I see it, Cass, if we find something good out here on the road, then forever might not be such a bad thing.”

My thumb still throbbing, I knotted Mr. and Mrs. Winky Pizza onto the latch of my big metal shoe-box bed. Within seconds, the scent of oregano replaced the foot smell in my space, but I still took my little velvet pillow and crammed it into the hole just in case. Once my nose was totally satisfied, I made my way back to the passenger seat and buckled in.

“Sorry,” said Dad sheepishly. “I seemed to have overlooked the stink factor. We can shove those shoes in a bag if you’d like.”

“It’s okay for now,” I said. “I think I sealed them up good.”

Besides, I had bigger concerns than my nose for the moment.

“Dad, are you okay?”

“Will be,” he said, chewing so hard I could hear his jaw pop. “And you will be too.”

He nodded toward the big roll of paper on my floorboard.

“Careful not to squish that with your feet,” he said.

“Why? What is it?” I said.

He smiled. “We find a shoe, and you find out.”