Runaways (24 page)

We all got out when he stopped.

“The junkyard's about fifteen miles away,” he said. He looked at his garage. “I was thinking they may have the part.”

He turned to me with a warm smile on his face. “Why don't you come with me? If you guys want, you can wait in the office,” he suggested to the others. He unlocked the door and turned to us. “There's some cokes in the refrigerator, some cookies and stuff, too. There are a few magazines, but I don't think they'll interest you much,” he added with a devilish little smile.

Raven tossed her hair over her shoulder and widened her eyes.

“Probably not,” she said.

“Thank you,” Crystal said. She and Butterfly headed for the office.

“Just answer the phone for me, will you?” he asked.

“Of course,” she told him.

“How long is this going to take?” Raven asked.

“Could be a while,” he said. “First we've got to find a pump that works and then we've got to install it. Matter of fact, you girls might have to stay over.”

“Stay over? Where?” She glanced down the deserted road.

“I don't know the rates around here anymore, but there's a place called the Woodside, sort of a bed and breakfast, about two miles north of here,” he indicated. “Nice old lady runs it, Mrs. Slater. Look it up in the phone book while we're away.”

“Are you sure you should go with him?” Raven asked me as the mechanic walked back to his car.

“I'll be fine. He's gone out of his way to help us,” I pointed out. “Besides, he seems really nice.”

“Brooke, I of all people can warn you about ‘nice boys.' Don't follow my mistake,” Raven warned. I blushed and quickly walked over to the car.

“I'm Todd by the way,” he said, “Todd Mayton.”

“My name's Brooke,” I said.

“Glad to know you,” he said, nodding as he backed out. Raven stood there looking after us, her face a mask of worry.

Todd did most of the talking on our way to the junkyard. I found out that he was the youngest of three children, all boys, and his brothers were living and working for an uncle in Indianapolis. His mother had left his father four years ago and she and her new husband lived close to his brothers.
It was obvious from the way he talked about her that he resented her for what she had done to his father.

“He was always a hard-working guy, my old man, and I guess our lives were never very glamorous. She claimed life with him made her ten years older than she was. She's a good-looking woman, my mother. When we had the pumps, men used to drive an extra ten, fifteen miles to get gas at our station because she was out there pumping gas, wearing these abbreviated shorts and a halter,” he said with some bitterness. “I was just a kid, but I knew what their remarks meant and I hated the way they looked at her.

“Jeeze,” he said after a moment's pause, “look at me running at the mouth like this. I never do that. You must be special, all right,” he added with a smile.

I knew from the heat that traveled up my neck and into my cheeks that I was blushing like a full-blown red rose.

“So what about you?” he asked when I didn't reply.

“What about me?”

“How do four young girls come to be on America's highways by themselves, for starters?” he asked.

I hesitated. There was something about him, something about the way he had opened his own heart to me so willingly and without fear that made me resist lying.

“We're runaways,” I said, taking a chance with the truth. The others would kill me.

He started to smile, looked at me and then stopped, his face suddenly serious.

“No kidding?”

“No kidding. We're foster children. We have no families. We've been living in a home for years, actually, and for a variety of reasons, we decided it was time to move on.”

His eyes narrowed as he studied me closer.

“This is a joke, right?”

“It's getting to be. We were robbed along the way, accused of stealing and now have car trouble. We can't go back so we're caught in a vise that keeps squeezing us tighter and tighter.”

He was silent.

“There's the junkyard,” he indicated, nodding at the fenced-in yard directly ahead of us.

A man who looked close to seventy was piling some tires just inside the entrance. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and a pair of jeans with a rather significant hole in the rear end that revealed his faded boxer shorts. The lines in his face looked etched by a scalpel. He had a complexion the color of burnt toast. When he smiled, he showed a mouth with a number of teeth gone.

“What are you doin' here so late?” he asked as we pulled up. Todd had his window down.

“Breakdown. I need a water pump for a 90 Buick Wagon. Think you've got one, Lefty?” he asked.

The old man turned, squeezed his grimy jaw between his left forefinger and thumb and thought a moment. I gazed at the pile of wrecks, the sea of metal, rubber and glass. To my eye there was no order or reason to why anything was where it was. I saw older wrecks mixed in with new vehicles, trucks with cars, a school bus turned on its side near a John Deere tractor and a recreational vehicle
that looked like it had been on fire. In some of the wrecks, birds had made themselves homes.

“Take the freeway to the Golden Gate,” Lefty instructed. “Seems I remember a Buick in there about that age. Johnny picked it up near Cranberry Lake a year or so ago.”

“Thanks.”

Todd drove in.

“The freeway to the Golden Gate?” I asked. He laughed.

“Lefty's joke. He names the corridors and if you've been here enough times as I have, you know what he's talking about. This is the freeway. And this,” he said turning right and slowing down to a crawl. “is the Golden Gate.” We went over some sheets of metal that had been placed there to navigate over some deep ditches.

Cars were piled two and in some places three high on our right and left. We both looked and suddenly, I spotted it.

“There!” I said, pointing to my right, a few yards in from the corridor.

“Good work,” he said, impressed.

The vehicle I had spotted had its roof bashed in, the windshield and side windows shattered and the driver's side door ripped off.

“Looks like it rolled,” Todd said after stopping.

We got out and went to the wreck. He tried to open the hood, but it was jammed shut.

“Going to take some doing,” he said.

“Will Lefty help?”

“Here it's find what you want and get it yourself. Then you go up to the gate and bargain with Lefty for a while. I have some tools in the trunk,” he added and went back to the car. I studied the hood
and saw where the latch had been jammed. While he walked around the car, I took out his rubber hammer and a chisel and began pounding the tooth of the latch. To my surprise it broke free and then I stood up, put my fingers under the hood and pulled. He stood by, smiling with amazement when it went up.

“Need a job?” he asked, half-jokingly.

“Actually, yes. We're pretty low on funds.”

“I'll bet. Traveling isn't cheap.”

“Especially when you get robbed,” I said.

He shook his head, still not sure whether or not I was making it all up. Then he leaned over the engine, located the water pump and studied it for a moment.

“It looks good,” he said.

I stood by and watched him remove the pump. As he worked, he talked a bit more about himself and the area, but occasionally, he snuck in a question about our lives in the foster home.

“So,” he said just before pulling out the pump, “your foster parents aren't looking for you?”

“Oh yes. By now they surely are.”

He nodded and then pulled out the pump. I helped him put back his tools and we started out of the yard, pausing at the gate to show Lefty what we had taken. He studied it a moment.

“Twenty dollars seems fair,” he said.

“It seems fair,” Todd replied, “but it's not. I got a ten that's fair.” He showed the bill.

“You're robbin' me,” Lefty grumbled.

“Wouldn't be the first time,” Todd told him. Lefty laughed, just a silent chuckle.

“Your dad taught you well,” he said, taking the ten. “I feel generous today.”

“Thanks, Lefty. See you.”

“Tell your dad hello,” he called as we started away.

“Thanks for being such a good negotiator,” I said. He laughed.

“It's just a game. Lefty always asks twice as much as he'll take. Everyone knows it. You were a great help,” he added.

“Will your your father be upset that you're spending so much time with us?” I asked him.

He shook his head and was silent for a while. Then he took a breath.

“My father doesn't do all that much with the station anymore. He's got a bad leg, diabetes,” he explained. Then he turned to me and added, “He spends most of his time with a bottle.”

“Oh. I'm sorry.

“I'll have to go home for a while,” he said. “What I'll do is come back after dinner and work on this for you guys, but I think it's a good idea you all get a room for a night.”

“Okay. Maybe Crystal called already. She's very efficient.”

“Crystal?”

I told him a little about each of us. Talking to him was easy; it felt as though we'd known each other forever. He listened quietly and then turned to me and said, “You don't have to worry about me, Brooke. You all do what you think is best for you. I'm not going to call the police or anything.”

“I know,” I said. I truly did believe him. It put a soft smile on his lips. “I can come back and help you later if you tell me when,” I joked.

“Sure. Like I said, if you want to stay and become my assistant . . .”

I laughed, just imagining.

“I'm the only one who drives. They'd all have to stay.”

“Oops. That's too many girls for me,” he said and we both laughed.

We were laughing when we pulled up. Raven was sitting on the step by the office, looking as if she was standing guard.

“It's about time,” she cried the moment we stepped out of the car. “It's getting late. Crystal called the bed and breakfast and thinks we should sleep there.”

“It's a good idea,” Todd said. “You have to stay somewhere tonight.”

Crystal came out and filled me in on the details

“I took a chance, Brooke,” she said, “hoping this wasn't going to cost more than twenty dollars. Is it?” she asked, her face full of worry. Todd overheard and stepped up to us.

“Don't worry about the car. The part cost just ten dollars,” he said. “And I won't charge you for labor.”

“Really? That's wonderful.”

“I gotta go home for a while, so why don't I drive you all to the bed and breakfast,” he suggested. “Oh, and Brooke, I could use some help later when I start working on the pump. Do you want to come help?”

“Uh . . . yeah, sure,” I answered. The way my heart was beating you'd think I just got asked to the prom.

“I'm hungry,” Butterfly said. “All we had were some candy bars in there.”

Todd laughed.

“I know. I've got to start eating better. You'll get a good supper at the Woodside,” Todd said.

We got into his car and he drove us to what
looked like someone's private home. There was only a small sign to indicate that rooms were for rent.

“Tell Mrs. Slater hello for me,” Todd said as we got out.

“I will,” I said. “Two hours?”

“Two hours.”

He drove off and Raven shook her head.

“I don't know, Brooke. I was worried about you going off alone with him, but if putting a water pump into a car engine is his idea of a date, I guess he's probably safe.”

Everyone laughed as I turned beet red.

Maybe because I was very hungry too, I saw Mrs. Slater in terms of food. She wasn't more than two or three inches taller than Butterfly and as plump as a stuffed Thanksgiving turkey. Her jowls shook like Jell-O when she walked, or waddled along, I should say. Her hair was milk white with a hairpin the color of dark chocolate holding her bun tightly against the back of her head. Her eyes were almost mint green, bright and friendly, grandmother eyes, as Butterfly would say. She had arms that reminded me of large rye breads and fingers that looked like fresh dough, one of which trapped a marriage ring in the folds between her knuckle and hand forever.

The house, small but very pleasant and warm, was filled with the aroma of meat loaf and apple pie. She had one other guest, a salesman named Mr. Franklin.

“I'm sure glad Todd told you to come over here. As usual I made too much for supper,” she said.

She showed us the room with two double beds. We had a bathroom to share with her other guest so
she asked that we be considerate. Raven was happy because it meant she could get a hot shower and wash her hair, “before it falls out from the weight of the dirt. Maybe our breakdown was a lucky thing,” she added.

“Which is why I tell you to concentrate on the positive,” Crystal said cheerily.

“Mercy,” Raven cried and hurried into the bathroom first.

Toward the end of our dinner, Raven leaned over and whispered, “Maybe I should come along with you to the garage to be a chaperone. It's pretty obvious that Todd likes you.”

“No,” I said, maybe too quickly. Her eyebrows lifted. “Todd and I don't have time to be friends. Our car has to be fixed tonight so we can leave early in the morning,” I continued.

She didn't look convinced and just shook her head slowly. “Well, don't say I didn't warn you.”

Crystal sensed the tension between us and came to the rescue. “I think we've all learned from your experience with Taylor, Raven. I'm sure Brooke will be careful.” And with that she shot me a meaningful glare.

Butterfly reached over and grabbed my arm. “I think Todd's awfully handsome, Brooke. Would you let him kiss you if he asked?”