I borrowed the road atlas Sloan had in his door pocket and looked in the index for St. Petersburg, Colorado. It wasn’t listed. St. Petersburg had to be so tiny, it wasn’t on the map. I noticed the latitude and longitude on the edge of the Colorado map and matched them up with what I could remember of the numbers I’d found in the new set of Huck Finn chapters. St. Petersburg was somewhere in the northeast corner of the state.
After we got back on I-70, the rumpled quilt of field and rangeland began to smooth out. We were almost to the town of Hays when we stopped for gas. Pulling into a big truck stop, Sloan stopped at the pump farthest from the mini-mart and restaurant. He handed me some cash and asked me to go pay for the gas. I wondered why he didn’t use a credit card, and why he wanted me to go inside, but I didn’t ask. I had other things to worry about.
I looked up through the windshield. A security camera pointed down at the camper. I didn’t know how hard the police and Mom might be looking for me. I pulled my baseball cap out of my backpack and slipped it on. Heading for the mini-mart, I walked toward a woman gassing up her pickup. She stared at the camper. I looked back. Sloan had put on a cowboy hat.
When I passed her, she checked me out, too. For a second I worried she might’ve seen my picture on the news. But I was three hundred miles west of Independence. TV stations wouldn’t be showing my picture that far away. Then I realized she was checking us out because we made a weird pair. In western Kansas, a black dude and a white kid traveling together probably wasn’t an everyday event.
I gave the cashier the money. When I got back outside, I was glad to see that the lady was gone. But her pickup still stood at the pumps.
While the camper guzzled octane, Sloan gave me a handful of change. “My cell’s not getting a signal. Go find a pay phone and see if you can get through to your mother.” I didn’t want to call her, but it seemed like he wasn’t giving up till I did. “Don’t forget my change on the gas,” he shouted as I went back inside.
I found a pay phone and dialed 411. Luckily, there was still no listing for Mom. But it was beginning to seem weird. I mean, Sloan had a point. If she was worried about me, why didn’t she have a phone yet? I’d been a runaway for over a day.
I heard a TV in the walkway to the restaurant. I went over to make sure they weren’t showing me on it.
The TV was turned to a sports report. It showed baseball highlights as a sportscaster rattled off scores. Then a picture of a ballplayer flashed up on the screen. The sportscaster called him “Ruah Branch” and said that he’d been put on the “fifteen-day DL,” whatever that was. The player’s weird name caught my attention, but it was his picture that froze my blood. It wasn’t the red cap with a big C on his head. It wasn’t the long dreadlocks spilling out from under the cap. It was the smile splitting his face. I’d been seeing that smile all day.
The TV cut to a commercial.
I jumped as a hand hit my shoulder. It belonged to the woman with the pickup. Her leathery skin was bunched up around a tight smile. “Havin’ a nice vacation, sonny?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I stepped back, pulling away from her hand. I figured she’d scoped the Pennsylvania plate on the camper.
“That’s a smart RV you boys got.” She hitched a thumb behind her. “Is that your big brother drivin’ it?”
“No, ma’am,” I answered with a half laugh. She wasn’t going to catch me on that one. “We’re not exactly the same color.”
Her smile bent tighter. “You don’t say. If he’s not kin”—her head cocked—“who is he?”
It was creepy how she kept asking questions. I swallowed to buy time. “He’s my coach, my baseball coach,” I tried to keep my voice calm and cool. “He’s taking me to Bible baseball camp.”
Her eyes ratcheted open. “Bible baseball camp? What’ll they think of next?”
“I dunno, ma’am. I gotta go.”
Her hand shot forward onto my shoulder again. Her grip was as tight as her smile. “What position do you play?”
I was no baseball expert, so I didn’t take her bait. “A little of everything.”
“You pitch, too?”
“A little of everything,” I repeated, wiggling out of her grip.
She eyeballed my long arms. “With those arms, I bet your fastball hits forty miles an hour.”
I forced a smile. “On my best days, yeah.”
Her look told me I’d fallen for the bait anyway. Her eyes gleamed with excitement. “You’re no ballplayer, and he’s no coach. I know who he is.”
I was done being nice. I dodged around her, pushed open the door, and jogged to the camper. “Sloan” was behind the wheel with the motor running. I jumped in. “I know who you are,” I blurted, “and so does someone else!”
His reaction blew away any chance he really was Sloan. He threw the RV in gear and took off.
I looked back and saw the lady come outside. She was dialing a cell phone. I didn’t know if she was calling the police about me, or some friend to say she’d just gassed up next to a star baseball player.
“Jump in the back,” he ordered. “See if anyone follows.”
Watching out the back window, no pickup or flashing police car came after us. The camper swerved, and the inter state slid away as we took an exit.
I went back up front. “Where are you going?”
“A little evasive action,” he said. “Neither of us wants to get caught, right?”
“Who wants to catch you?”
“Fans. They can be brutal.”
“You really are Ruah Branch?”
“Unfortunately, yeah.”
At the top of the exit ramp he took a left, heading south. It wasn’t the direction I wanted to go, but I wasn’t about to argue. When your getaway driver goes off trail, you go with him till you’re in the clear.
He must’ve sensed what I was thinking. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll take the first decent road going west we come to.”
I got out the road atlas and checked the map. In a few miles we’d come to a road that would get us to Route 4, which headed straight west, toward Colorado.
I looked at Ruah and decided I’d been cool long enough. “So who are you?”