Firestarter(37)

They went around to the trunk and Ray unlocked it. The spare was in good shape.

"Okay," John said. "Go on."

"It really wouldn't take but five minutes to change that sucker."

"Sure, and those two aren't at that motel. But let's play it as if it were real. After all, they have to be somewhere." "Yeah, okay." John took the jack and spare out of the trunk. Ray Knowles watched him for a moment and then started walking along the shoulder toward the Slumberland Motel.

5

Just beyond the motel, Andy and Charlie McGee were standing on the soft shoulder of Highway 40. Andy's worries that someone might notice he didn't have a car had proved groundless; the woman in the office was interested in nothing but the small Hitachi TV on the counter. A miniature Phil Donahue had been captured inside, and the woman was watching him avidly. She swept the key Andy offered into the mail slot without even looking away from the picture.

"Hope y'enjoyed y'stay," she said. She was working on a box of chocolate coconut doughnuts and had got to the halfway mark.

"Sure did," Andy said, and left.

Charlie was waiting for him outside. The woman had given him a carbon copy of his bill, which he stuffed into the side pocket of his cord jacket as he went down the steps. Change from the Albany pay phones jingled mutedly.

"Okay, Daddy?" Charlie asked as they moved away toward the road.

"Lookin good," he said, and put an arm around her shoulders. To their right and back over the hill, Ray Knowles and John Mayo had just had their flat tire.

"Where are we going, Daddy?" Charlie asked.

"I don't know," he said.

"I don't like it. I feel nervous."

"I think we're well ahead of them," he said. "Don't worry. They're probably still looking for the cab driver who took us to Albany."

But he was whistling past the graveyard; he knew it and probably Charlie did, too. Just standing here beside the road made him feel exposed, like a cartoon jailbird in a striped suit. Quit it, he told himself. Next thing you'll be thinking they're everywhere-one behind every tree and a bunch of them right over the next hill. Hadn't somebody said that perfect paranoia and perfect awareness were the same thing?

"Charlie-"he began.

"Let's go to Granther's," she said.

He looked at her, startled. His dream rushed back at him, the dream of fishing in the rain, the rain that had turned into the sound of Charlie's shower. "What made you think of that?" he asked. Granther had died long before Charlie was born. He had lived his whole life in Tashmore, Vermont, a town just west of the New Hampshire border. When Granther died, the place on the lake went to Andy's mother, and when she died, it came to Andy. The town would have taken it for back taxes long since, except that Granther had left a small sum in trust to cover them.

Andy and Vicky had gone up there once a year during the summer vacation until Charlie was born. It was twenty miles off the nearest two-lane road, in wooded, unpopulated country. In the summer there were all sorts of people on Tashmore Pond, which was really a lake with the small town of Bradford, New Hampshire, on the far side. But by this time of year all the summer camps would be empty. Andy doubted if the road in was even plowed in the winter.

"I don't know," Charlie said. "It just... came into my mind. This minute." On the other side of the hill, John Mayo was opening the trunk of the Ford and making his inspection of the spare tire.

"I dreamed about Granther this morning," Andy said slowly. "First time I'd thought about him in a year or more, I guess. So I suppose you could say he just came into my head, too."

"Was it a good dream, Daddy?"

"Yes," he said, and smiled a little. "Yes, it was."

"Well, what do you think?"

"I think it's a great idea," Andy said. "We can go there and stay for a while and think about what we should do. How we should handle this. I was thinking if we could get to a newspaper and tell our story so that a lot of people knew about it, they'd have to lay off."

An old farm truck was rattling toward them, and Andy stuck out his thumb. On the other side of the hill, Ray Knowles was walking up the soft shoulder of the road. The farm truck pulled over, and a guy wearing biballs and a New York Mets baseball cap looked out.

"Well there's a purty little miss," he said, smiling. "What's your name, missy?"

"Roberta," Charlie said promptly. Roberta was her middle name.

"Well, Bobbi, where you headed this morning?" the driver asked.

"We're on our way to Vermont," Andy said. "St. Johnsbury. My wife was visiting her sister and she ran into a little problem." "Did she now," the farmer said, and said no more, but gazed at Andy shrewdly from the corners of his eyes. "Labor," Andy said, and manufactured a wide smile. "This one's got a new brother. One-forty-one this morning." "His name is Andy," Charlie said. "Isn't that a nice name?" "I think it's a corker," the farmer said. "You hop on in here and I'll get you ten miles closer to St. Johnsbury, anyhow."

They got in and the farm truck rattled and rumbled back onto the road, headed into the bright morning sunlight. At the same time, Ray Knowles was breasting the hill. He saw an empty highway leading down to the Slumberland Motel. Beyond the Motel, he saw the farm truck that had passed their car a few minutes ago just disappearing from view.