Chapter 9

AN ALL-NIGHT DRIVE

Duff was confused. Bonnie had been fine when he went out for his run. What could have upset her? Whatever it was, he’d probably made it worse by standing there gaping at her.

In the garage, Stu was cramming his belongings into his backpack. When he saw Duff, he straightened up and grinned at him.

“Hey, good news, man,” he said. “I found your wallet.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. Weirdest thing! It was in my backpack.”

“What? How did it get there?”

Stu shrugged. “I don’t know, but here’s my guess. One of those bikers snatched it off the counter while you were dancing. Grabbed what he wanted out of it and stuck it in my pack. I didn’t notice, because I was busy watching you.”

A vision of himself dancing threatened to rise in Duff’s imagination, and he shut it out. “What got taken?” he said.

“Just money. Everything else is there, looks like.”

Duff took his wallet from Stu and sat down on the salmon-colored couch to examine it. What Stu said was true: his license was there, and his bank card, and his triple A card, and a few other things. All the money was gone except for forty-six cents. The biker who nabbed his wallet had gotten over three hundred dollars, which would probably be spent on chrome polish and beer. But Duff was so relieved to have his license and bank card back that he almost didn’t care.

“I’m ready,” said Stu, slinging his pack over one shoulder. “Are you?”

Duff put his wallet in his pocket. He snapped closed his laptop and zipped his duffel. “Let’s go.”

They went out to the car, which was parked at the end of the driveway. Stu got in the driver’s seat and honked the horn. The door of the house opened, and Bonnie stepped out.

She had a battered brown suitcase in one hand and her guitar case in the other. The setting sun shone in her face; she squinted her eyes against it. Duff wondered how she felt. Was she sad to be leaving her house? Or maybe angry at her mother for screwing up? He couldn’t tell.

He opened the door on the passenger side of the car and then went over to Bonnie and took the suitcase, which he put in the trunk. Bonnie went back to the house and came out with a big plastic carrying case with a wire screen on one end. She set it down long enough to turn and lock the front door, and then she brought it to the car. “Moony has to ride in his crate,” she said. “Otherwise, he jumps all over the place. Sometimes he gets carsick, too, so it’s good if he isn’t in anyone’s lap when he does.”

They got settled in the car. Bonnie sat in front. Duff sat in back next to Moony, who was turning round and round and pawing at an old ripped cushion Bonnie had provided for him. When he had his bedding properly arranged, he lay down, pressed his black nose against the wire mesh, and whimpered.

“Okay,” said Stu. “Three, two, one, zero—blast off!” He floored the accelerator, and with a squeal of tires they were away.

Duff grabbed Moony’s case to keep it steady. “Where are we heading?” he asked.

“Albuquerque, of course,” Stu said. “Home of Bonnie’s esteemed aunt Shirley.”

“Yeah, but it’ll take a couple days to get to Albuquerque,” Duff said. “Where are we heading tonight?”

“First stop, Oklahoma City,” Stu said. “We should be there by morning.”

They drove. Stu and Duff took turns at the wheel. Whoever was in the passenger seat was supposed to make sure the driver didn’t fall asleep, and whoever was in the backseat slept. Bonnie got less sleep than the other two, but she didn’t seem to mind. When it was his turn to drive, Duff concentrated on the road, trying to keep his mind strictly blank, avoiding troubling questions such as: How long would it take to get from Albuquerque to San Jose? How was he going to get there without a car? How much did a plane ticket cost? He pushed all these thoughts aside and concentrated on the road.

When it was his turn to sleep, he lay uncomfortably on the backseat with his legs draped over Moony’s crate, drifting in and out of an uneasy doze. It was a strange, dreamlike trip—the headlights approaching and passing like the eyes of big night animals, the hum of the motor, the long, rhythmic rumble of the wheels on the road. It was peaceful, in a way—no hard decisions to be made. Duff was almost sorry when light started to show around the edges of the sky.

They came into Oklahoma City hungry for breakfast. Once off the freeway, they wandered up and down city streets until Duff spotted a bank with an ATM machine, where he replenished his supply of cash. Not far from the bank was a fast-food place. They pulled in and parked. Bonnie took Moony for a short walk around the parking lot and served him his breakfast in the car. Then the three of them went inside. They ordered their food and flopped down at a table by the window.

Duff was tired but wired at the same time. It was interesting to be in a place he’d never seen before, even if it was, at least this part of it, a kind of uninteresting place. It looked pretty much like the outskirts of any other city, but because it was early morning and the sun was rising in a pinkish yellow haze and the air had a tingly smell that seemed a combination of gas fumes and freshly cut grass, everything had a feeling of shimmery newness.

They were all hungry. They concentrated on their eggs and hash browns and didn’t talk much. Duff gazed out the window at the four lanes of morning traffic surging toward the stop light, halting, waiting while cars streamed across, starting again, stopping again, and on and on. All those people going off to work, he thought. Probably most of them heading for those tall buildings he could see from here. He imagined a little office cubicle behind each tiny glittering window, and—by nine o’clock or so—a little person in each cubicle, answering phone messages, reading emails, settling in for a day of work. That would be him, pretty soon.

Stu commented now and then on a passing car: “Nice Jag.”

“Classic Mustang—I could go for one like that.”

“Hey, look, a weird old Studebaker!”

So Duff stared at the cars, too, though he couldn’t tell one kind from another, until something he saw written on the front end of a bus caught his attention. THIS BUS GETS 250 MILES PER ACRE, it said.

“What’s that mean?” he asked Stu, pointing at the bus. Stu squinted at it. “Miles per acre?” he said. “Mystery to me.”

The bus turned the corner and drove past the restaurant. On its side, it said, SOYBEAN POWERED! THIS BUS RUNS ON SOYBEAN BIODIESEL. A picture of huge tan-colored round things that must be soybeans decorated the bus’s whole lower half.

“Biodiesel,” Duff said. “Do you know what that is?”

“Not really,” said Stu, forking in his last bite of fried potatoes. “Diesel I know, but not biodiesel.”

The bus stopped, sucked up the people waiting at the bus stop, and moved on. It seemed to be an ordinary city bus. How could it be running on soybeans? But if a car could run on air…

By the time Duff and the others had finished breakfast, a few more people were waiting at the bus stop outside. Duff couldn’t resist asking one of them about the bean bus.

“Oh, yeah,” said the guy he asked, a young man wearing a white shirt and tie and carrying his suit jacket under his arm. “We’ve got a fleet of them. They run on biodiesel. That’s fuel made out of vegetable oil, you know?”

“It’s not gas?” asked Duff.

“No, no. Like from beans or corn. The kind of oil you use to make french fries. You can make it out of used french fry oil, even.”

Stu yelled from the parking lot. “Duffer! Hurry up!”

“Wait just a sec!” Duff called back. “Really?” he said to the guy. “Used french fry oil?”

Another bus pulled up to the stop and the passengers started to get on. The guy in the suit nodded and moved forward. Duff moved with him.

“But why?” he said.

The guy shrugged. “For diesel engines, it works just as well,” he said. “And it doesn’t pollute.” He stepped up onto the bus and looked back at Duff. “Lots of cities have them,” he said, “but we were one of the first.”

The door slapped closed, and the bus pulled away, leaving Duff’s mind humming again, as it had when he’d come across the air car. He thought about the thousands of fast-food places dotted across the nation. Maybe every single McDonald’s and Burger King and Wendy’s could turn their used oil into biodiesel, and they could all have little fuel stations out back, and then people with diesel cars, when they’d finished eating their hamburgers, could—

“DUFF!” It was Bonnie’s voice this time. She and Stu were standing at the open doors of the car in the restaurant parking lot. “Get over here!”

Duff went. It was his turn to drive. But full stomachs made all of them sleepy. They’d spent the night more awake than not, and they needed to rest. So Duff drove until he found a good spot to park on a shady, out-of-the-way street. Bonnie took Moony for a short walk and then stretched out on the backseat of the car. Stu reclined the passenger seat as far as it would go and dozed off with his mouth open. Duff bunched up his jacket and leaned his head against the window, but he didn’t have room to stretch his legs out, and his mind was still churning with the notion of cars running on french fry oil, so he didn’t sleep much. By noon they were on the highway again, bound for Amarillo, Texas, where somehow they’d have to figure out a way to spend the night.

Phone Call #3

Friday, June 28, 11:35 AM

Wanda: Hello?

Rosalie Hopgood: Wanda, it’s Rosalie. I’ve been trying to call Bonnie. No answer. Do you know where she is?

Wanda: I do indeed. She drove off in your car last night with two boys.

Rosalie: Two boys? What boys?

Wanda: Sloppy-looking boys. One of them had long hair.

Rosalie: But what boys? Where did they come from?

Wanda: Don’t shout, Rosalie. I don’t know where they came from. They appeared, in your car, yesterday.

Rosalie: They appeared in my car! And now they’ve gone?

Wanda: Yes, gone to her aunt, Bonnie said. Aunt Shirley.

Rosalie: She told me that. But she said she was going to take the bus, leaving tomorrow. What’s she up to now?

Wanda: Listen, Rosalie, I really think that girl should—

Rosalie: Thank you, Wanda. Good-bye.

Phone Call #4

Friday, June 28, 11:38 AM

Burl (a close colleague of Rosalie Hopgood’s): Hello?

Rosalie: Burl, I have a problem. Bonnie’s taken off in the Chevy with two boys.

Burl: Oh, hi, Rosalie. Heard you got—

Rosalie: Did you hear what I said? That Chevy is out on the highway somewhere instead of safe in the driveway of my house.

Burl: Uh-huh.

Rosalie: And in the Chevy is a very significant bundle of cash.

Burl: Oh, from your last—

Rosalie: That’s right. I want you and Rolf to go after it.

Burl: After the Chevy?

Rosalie: And Bonnie. She’s with two boys! I want to know why.

Burl: But how do we find her?

Rosalie: She’s heading for Shirley’s, in Albuquerque. Four seventy-eight Cactus Wren Way. They left yesterday. Get going.

Burl: Now? But I was just—

Rosalie: Now. Ten percent of what’s in the trunk if you bring the Chevy back safe. And Bonnie, too, of course.

Burl: Okay, okay, we’re gone.