The Detachable Boy (6 page)
I slurped and chomped my way through the entire stash inside five minutes, leaving my lap covered in crumbs and my bloated stomach wishing I’d chewed more and swallowed less. I ate so fast I accidentally discovered that iced doughnut and hot dog mustard go surprisingly well together.
In time, the Texas Eagle arrived and I clambered aboard with the fifty or so other passengers boarding at Union Station. There were women and men and children and a startling number of cowboy hats. My ticket allowed me a window seat and as we left the city, the quiet rock of the train and the sun on my face lulled my jet-lagged body to sleep.
It was dark outside when I woke. The big man opposite had his white cowboy hat tilted over his face and his hands folded on his stomach. Perhaps he was watching a documentary about sea cucumbers on Discovery Channel under there? Perhaps he was just asleep. The woman in the corner seat beside me had her eyes concealed behind dark glasses but her head lolled peacefully with the movement of the train. The watch on the big man’s wrist told me it was five minutes to ten. I’d been asleep for more than six hours. Fifteen minutes more and I would have missed my stop.
The restaurant was closed but the snack bar was packed with travellers. I bumped through to the counter, ordered another doughnut – with mustard – plus a cheese sandwich and a bottle of water, then made my way back to my seat. As I did so, the train began to slow. There were streetlights flashing past the window.
‘Maricopa,’ the big man said, stretching and yawning. He stood and collected a small bag from under his feet. ‘Home sweet home. Well, almost.’
I smiled. I jammed my cheese sandwich into my jacket pocket and followed him to the door of the train.
‘You getting off at Maricopa, too?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I’m heading for Carcass Springs.’
‘Carcass Springs? Why would anybody in their right mind want to visit Carcass Springs?’
‘There’s a diner there. The Lost Head Diner.’
‘Lost Head Diner? I know the place. Greasiest, ugliest backwater filth-pit you’ll ever see. Now, what would a respectable young man like you want with an armpit of a place like the Lost Head Diner?’
‘My . . . uncle . . . owns it. I’m just here for a holiday.’
‘Oh. Well. No offence intended. I’m sure your uncle’s a mighty fine man. Is he coming to pick you up?’
‘No. It’s actually a surprise visit, so I don’t expect that he will.’
The big man touched the side of his nose and smiled. ‘You want a lift? I’m heading right past your uncle’s doorstep on my way home.’
‘Really?’
‘Do I look like the sort of man that would lie to you?’
His smile seemed genuine. He sounded as though he knew what he was talking about. I shook my head.
‘You have luggage to collect?’ the big man asked.
‘No. I travel light.’
The man looked me up and down. ‘I’ll say.’ He held out his hand. ‘Name’s Robertson. Bobby Robertson.’
I took his hand and shook it. ‘John Johnson.’
The cold night air on the platform at Maricopa smelled of diesel exhaust and dust. The big man threw his bag into the back of a rusty old ute and opened the passenger door for me. The cabin smelled of cheesy socks and armpits. I sniffed at my own shirt and recoiled. Guilty. I prayed the big man wouldn’t be knocked out by the stench of decomposing youth on the way to the diner.
If Bobby Robertson noticed the smell, he was too polite to say anything. He talked a lot. He talked about his home in the desert, the Grand Canyon and rattlesnakes. He talked about his collection of odd-shaped pretzels. Apparently he had a pretzel shaped like Kazakhstan and another that looked like a chicken’s foot.
‘Actually, I’m on my way home from a pretzelhunting expedition right now. I’ve been way up in the mountains, in the upper reaches of the Amazon. Man, those pretzels from Peru are particularly pointy.’
The lights on the old ute illuminated the lines on the road and little else. The road was long and straight for the most part, broken by the occasional cluster of dark, ramshackle houses. I could see a light in the distance and as the light got closer, the ute began to slow.
It was a single lonely streetlight on a wire, moving in the breeze and animating the shadows over an intersection. The sign on the roadside declared the track that branched from the main road as ‘Penny Silvania Avenue’, and in the gloom I could see a building. The paint had peeled away in patches, giving the shopfront the look of a second-hand jigsaw – with missing pieces on every weatherboard – but the shop’s name was still mostly legible.
T
HE
L
ST
H
E D
D
ER
.
The big man killed the engine. ‘Sure don’t look like anybody’s home,’ he said. ‘Shoot, what will you do if your uncle isn’t here?’
Now that we were here, I was scared. I didn’t want Bobby to go.
I swallowed. ‘I . . . I have a key.’
I patted the sandwich in my jacket pocket but it didn’t jangle like a set of keys.
‘You want me to hang around here until you’re settled in?’
‘No. I’ll be fine. Thanks, but I’m really okay.’
‘Well, remember, my house is the next on the left about a mile down the road. Has a sculpture of a fine pretzel over the gate. Can’t miss it.’
The door creaked as I let myself out. ‘Perhaps I could give you some money for fuel.’
‘Don’t be silly, boy. Was my pleasure.’
The ute roared to life and crunched back onto the road. I watched the tail-lights until they disappeared.
The street lamp rocked. The breeze made the wire howl and somewhere on the other side of the building, a shutter thumped listlessly against a window frame.
I’d never felt so alone. It was worse than the time I got up and went to school but nobody else was there and it took me a full hour to realise it was a Saturday. That was bad, but this was worse. I was a twelve-year-old on the shaky trail of my kidnapped friend who might have been and gone from here days before. It was the middle of the night in the middle of the desert and I was a million miles from home. I tugged my jacket around me and curled up at the base of the street lamp.
What had I got myself into?
I
DOZED
the way I sometimes did in class – fitfully, as if Mr Bomba or somebody was watching me. Trucks rattled by from time to time and just before dawn, one drove in to Penny Sylvania Avenue. Its headlights lit me up and I froze like a mime with stage fright. The lights eventually faded and I hurried across the road to hide behind a large boulder – less like a mime and more like a rabbit. As the sun coloured the morning in, I could gradually make out my surroundings.
This was the desert, complete with tumbleweeds and towering cactus. I had been deposited in the Wild West. I thought I heard a roadrunner meep-meeping as it tore down the road at breakneck speed. Weathered rocky pillars dotted the plain like the ruins of ancient office blocks. They looked perfect for a coyote to drop Acme products on unsuspecting birds. The sky stretched as an uncreased blue tarp from horizon to horizon. Sunlight flashed off my exposed skin, making me squint and warming me to the core.
From my hiding place, I watched trucks arriving and driving into a large shed at the back of the diner. The shed was taller than a fully laden semi-trailer and longer than the actual diner. A truck would drive into the shed and half an hour later drive out the other side. Undercover parking while the drivers ate.
By daylight, the diner looked bleaker than it had in the night. The windows were dusty and except for the occasional flash of movement inside, the place seemed . . . well . . . deserted. I felt the hope leaking away from me. At least I thought it was hope. Smelled more like mustard doughnut and I excused myself. Why would a kidnapper bring Crystal halfway around the world and choose this place as a hideout? And if she was inside, what could I do about it? My stomach rumbled and it was easy to translate from gut language to English – it was saying “Forget the hero rubbish, where’s breakfast?”
In time a family of travellers parked at the front of the diner and sent a bell tinging as they entered the shop. The sound of the bell made me dribble. I was getting crazy with hunger; fantasising about doughnuts mixed with Skippy’s kangaroo stew, hot dogs and icecream, lemonade and mints. I couldn’t take it any more and I exploded from my hide and stole across the road.
The bell pinged as I entered and a cloud of delightful food aromas buffeted my sense of sniff. Hamburger, bacon, eggs and frying onion. My gut decided that my mission to investigate the Lost Head Diner was going to include some takeaway. The place was immaculately clean and modern inside – all stainless steel and glass. One entire wall was covered with baseball memorabilia – signed photographs, caps, mitts, toy cats named Baxter, bats and balls, all arranged lovingly as art. Something wasn’t quite right. It was supposed to look normal – disappointingly normal – but it was too clean. Too orderly. The inside didn’t match the outside.
A man the size of a small bus was taking orders. His head gleamed like an oily bowling ball and the smile never left his face. Behind the big man were two women – who must have been sisters and could have been twins – tending hotplates and frying vats. Above their heads, exhaust fans hummed.
I realised there was no place to hide a kidnapped girl in the Lost Head Diner. It must have been a cover.
‘How can I help you, boy?’ Big Baldy rumbled at me.
He spoke like a kindergarten teacher but paced behind the counter like a professional wrestler. His outside didn’t match his inside, either.
‘Could I please have a triple bacon burger with extra bacon and a vanilla milkshake.’
I put a ten-dollar note on the counter.
The man stuck out his hand.
I jumped.
‘I’m Doug,’ the big man said, and I reluctantly let my own hand be swallowed in a bear’s-paw shake.
‘Doug DeGraves.’
‘I’m Michael,’ I squeaked. ‘Michael Jordan.’
‘Nice to meet you, Michael Jordan. I must say you have an interesting accent. Where are you from? Canada?’
I almost said Australia, but if this was the place then Doug DeGraves was probably a kidnapper in disguise. ‘Yes, Canada. The land of the . . . maple leaf . . . flag . . . red and white.’
Doug stared. ‘Canada? Which part?’ He was still crushing my hand.
‘Um . . . the left-hand side. Yes. A little town called . . . Poopipant . . . Island.’
‘Really? Never heard of it.’ Just then another customer came up, so I retrieved my hand and took a seat, glad to be out of the spotlight.
A few minutes later my triple bacon burger with extra bacon arrived. My fears about the big bald man were eclipsed by the prospect of food.
The burger was unique. Enticing. Delicious. Heavenly. My tongue – not to mention the rest of my body – had a little party and in no time, all that was left of the burger was a few crumbs.
A truck engine growled. The windows vibrated. I briefly caught sight of the metal monster as it left the shed at the rear of the diner.
I followed the family of travellers as they left the shop, moved across the road and tucked myself behind the boulder to puzzle some more about the Lost Head Diner.
I watched the shed. The shed was the key. The trucks came and went all day. They drove in the shed and they drove out of the shed some time later. The drivers never appeared in the diner. If they were eating at all, it was in the shed. Plenty of room back there for a kidnapped girl.
As the sun set, I stole from boulder to boulder and across the road to a vantage point behind a large cactus. I had a clear view of the shed doors and the back of the diner.
As darkness swamped the desert and stars flickered to life above, I saw the faint forms of Doug DeGraves and the two women leave the diner and enter the shed through a side door. I could hear their laughter – cut neatly by the closing door – then silence. Big silence. Massive silence. The humungous silence of the still desert in the night. I crept from my hiding spot and jogged across to the shed, holding my nose at the rotten pong from the diner rubbish bins. The shed door was locked. Locked from the inside.
I pressed my ear to the cool metal. I could hear nothing but the low rumbling of an approaching truck. I crouched behind the rancid bins just as a bank of blazing headlights illuminated the weathered wall of the diner. The huge doors opened as if by magic, the truck entered and the doors closed.
I had the briefest glimpse inside the shed. It was dark – only lit by the truck’s headlights.
And it was empty.
No Doug DeGraves. No women. No chairs or tables, just metal walls and a cold concrete floor.
Things were certainly not as they seemed.
If three grown-ups could vanish in there, Crystal could too.
I had to get inside. Crouched low, I scrambled around to the other side of the shed to the exit doors. I’d have to time my entry well. With my back against the side wall, I waited. And waited. And waited.
I could feel the shed vibrating before I could hear the truck’s engine. Suddenly the door was opening and the truck was driving out. I saw the red tail-lights and ducked inside, hanging close to the wall. The door shut with a resounding clunk.
Total darkness. Not even a pin of light.
I held my breath.
Absolute silence. Not a sound.
I felt my way along the smooth wall to a corner, then along another featureless wall to another corner. I did a lap of the inside of the building, returning to the door I’d come in by. I found no switch, no other handle, and no other bump on the smooth metal walls.
Half a moment before the darkness and silence had creeped me right out, the entry doors opened. Headlights sliced up the darkness. I shrank into the shadows. A truck entered and the door closed behind it. The truck idled.
Just as the words ‘Now what?’ formed in my head, there was a clunk and the floor began to move, lowering me and the truck deep into the earth.