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1

The old man pulled up to the house in a Dodge pickup. Black, dually crew cab. Not a bad truck except that it looked like he washed it every three, four years at the most. We wouldn’t be picking up any girls in this tub. Not that we would’ve done any better in a Maserati. My girl, the lovely Jen, wasn’t actually aware I was alive, and my summer wasn’t likely to change that. And the old man, last time I checked, likes ’em young. The only dental hygienist in town was like fifty and wielded that cleaning thingy like a pickaxe.

So, no, I didn’t need a fortune cookie to tell me babes weren’t in my future. Which meant it didn’t matter that the Dodge had little “Wash me” notes finger-scribbled into the dirt that was layered up on all four doors.

I was sitting on the front step holding a copy of Catch-22. I hadn’t actually opened it and wasn’t sure I would since it didn’t fit in with the summer this one had become.

The old man didn’t try to hug me, so at least he wasn’t stupid. Didn’t shake my hand either or even say much. Climbed out of the truck, nodded to me on the way to the front door of the house, and said, “Throw your stuff in the back seat.”

I did that. My “stuff” was the duffle bag I’d found in the basement and my school backpack. Then I went back up the sidewalk, put Catch-22 in the mailbox (I’d let Mom figure that one out) and sat back down on the front step. Mom had made blueberry muffins, so I figured he’d be a while talking to her, drinking coffee, and eating muffins. I liked where I was — outside, far from all of that. Far from him.

I thought about my first impression of him. Pretty well all of it was a surprise since I really didn’t know what he’d look like. He was pretty tall. And skinny. See, right away I was wrong. I guess I expected a bald, fat, slobby-looking guy, dirty T-shirt, ass crack showing over his jeans whenever he bent over. The only part I had right was the T-shirt, and it wasn’t dirty.

If he’d shaved that morning, he hadn’t done a very good job of it, but his hair was neat, no Hank’s Auto Parts ball cap, a little grey but not much. He was wearing jeans, but they were clean and new-looking, crease down the front of each pant leg. Looked younger than sixty-two. Maybe fifty-two. Still, no kid.

That’s about all I had time to notice in the time it took him to get from the Dodge to the house.

I was right. He was in the house for quite a while. When he came out he was carrying a pretty good-sized brown paper bag. “Lunch,” he said. “Your mom’s looking after us.”

I stood up as Mom came out onto the steps right behind him. She was smiling, but her eyes were wet. I wondered if he’d said something to make her feel bad. Or maybe she was just sad because I was going away. It popped into my head that the longest I’d ever been away from my mom was day camp. A couple of times we’d camped out overnight, which made it two days and a night that I wasn’t home. So this was a big deal, I guess.

She hugged me like it was a big deal and said a couple of things in a squeaky voice. Be good, look after yourself kind of stuff. Eat lots of zucchini. Trying to lighten things up. We’d already done all the reminders — don’t lose the passport, don’t let the old man pay for everything (I wasn’t sure about that part — the whole thing was his idea), and try to look like I was enjoying myself. (I wasn’t sure about that part either.)

I held onto the hug a couple of seconds longer than usual. “You take care too. I’ll phone, okay?”

She stepped back, but kept her hands on my arms. “Okay? You better phone, mister.” She smiled again. I smiled back at her and turned to go down the steps. The old man sort of waved and started down the sidewalk toward the truck. His boots clicked on the pavement like there was something metal on the bottom. I thought about calling, What are you — fourteen? But I kept my mouth shut, probably the better idea.

He went around to the driver side of the truck, climbed in, and started it up as I was getting in the passenger side. I looked back at the house, and Mom was waving. I nodded at her, hoping I was letting her know that everything would be okay. And then we moved out — ready to get my summer started.

“They got car washes where you live?” I guess I wanted him to know right from the get-go that I wasn’t happy.

I don’t think he got that, though. He just laughed and floored it. “They got ’em, but ol’ Betsy’s allergic to water.”

The truck has a nickname. I’m about to spend half my summer holidays with the old man and Betsy the pickup. Can’t get better than that.

2

“Think of it as a buddy movie.” That’s what the old man said about an hour into what turned out to be the most boring drive in the history of the automobile.

I didn’t bother to tell him that we weren’t buddies and that this wasn’t a movie, but I did mention that it was the most boring drive in the history of the automobile. I mentioned that a few times.

Country music, a thousand miles of bald-ass, dick-all prairie, and rain that started about an hour into the journey. What buddy movies had he been watching?

I figured out real quick that the old man wasn’t a big conversationalist. Which was okay for the first while since I was working on what Mom calls the teenager pout. The teenager pout doesn’t come with sound effects. In fact, silence is a big part of the pout. It’s designed to make any thinking, feeling adult within several city blocks feel like crap.

If the old man felt like crap, he was amazing at hiding his pain. He sang along to some of the songs, chuckled a couple of times like he’d just thought of something funny, and ate sunflower seeds, spitting the shells out his side window, which he kept half open, even in the rain.

After what felt like three days but was probably three hours, I changed tactics. “I think we ought to have some rules,” I said.

“Sure, rules are a good idea,” he nodded. “Hungry? Feel like a sandwich? Your mom made up a bunch.”

Actually, I did feel like a sandwich. “Sure.”

“Okay, rule number one, you’re in charge of the sandwiches.”

I reached into the back seat and grabbed the bag Mom had sent. It was heavy. I pulled it into the front seat and opened it. There had to be six or seven of those see- through baggies things in there. That’s a lot of sandwiches. Plus fruit and a couple of juice boxes.

I studied the baggies. “Looks like roast beef, cheese with jam, and maybe tuna. What do you want?”

“Roast beef … unless you want it.”

I shook my head and passed him a baggie. “Want a juice box?”

“Not right now.”

“Rule number two,” I said.

He opened the baggie, pulled out the sandwich and took a bite the size of a small town. Then he looked over at me, chewing and nodding like he was ready to hear the rule.

I started unwrapping a cheese and jam. “We switch up on the music every couple of hours. If I have to listen to that shit all the way to wherever we’re going, my brain will turn into Cream of Wheat.”

“Not a bad rule. You say ‘shit’ in front of your mom?”

I shook my head and bit into the sandwich.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t say it in front of me.”

“Is that a rule?”

“Not a rule. A suggestion. Don’t talk with your mouth full. That’s a rule.”

“You asked me a question.”

“Good point.”

“And your mouth is full.”

“Was full.” He opened it and showed me, which was about as mega-gross as you can get.

“When are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

“Why don’t you switch up the music? You remember, rule number two?”

I messed with the radio for a while until I found a rock station. I listened to a couple of songs — one oldie, Fleetwood Mac, I think, and “Rock Star” — Nickelback. I wasn’t a big Nickelback guy, but it was way better than what we had been listening to. I looked at my watch. “Twenty after one. You can change it back at twenty after three. I’m giving you a break. We had country a lot more than two hours.”

“Gettin’ more like a buddy movie all the time.”

“No, it isn’t, you know why?”

He looked in the rear-view mirror and shrugged.

“Because in a buddy movie both buddies know where they’re going. I don’t know sh—crap.”

“Fair enough. I’ll tell you at twenty after three.”

“Why then? Why not now?”

He nodded at the truck’s radio. “I don’t want to take away from your two hours.”

I reached out and hit the on-off button. Silence. “I’d like to know now.”

He crumpled up the baggie from his sandwich and flipped it over his shoulder into the back seat. “Minneapolis.”

“Minneapolis.”

He nodded.

“Why Minneapolis?”

“Airport.”

“We’re going to the airport in Minneapolis?”

He nodded again.

“Why?”

“Why do people usually go to airports?”

“Okay, so we’re getting on a plane at Minneapolis. Then where?”

He reached across and hit the button on the radio. Aerosmith, “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing.” “We talk at twenty after three. You don’t wanna miss this thing.”

Just a zany guy.

At a quarter past three, I said, “Five more minutes.”

The old man looked over at me. “You don’t look like I thought you would.”

“What did you think I’d look like?”

“Taller, skinnier maybe … pimples.”

“I’m one of the tallest kids in my class. I’m not exactly fat. And see those? Those are zits.”

“I thought your hair would be brown. That’s how I remembered it.”

“Yours isn’t brown.”

“No, but your mother’s is. You’ve got her dark eyes. I thought you’d have her hair. That’s how I remembered it.”

I wondered why he said that twice. “Maybe it was brown then and sort of blonded up as I got older.”

“Blonded up?”

“Got lighter.”

“I figured that’s what ‘blonded up’ meant.”

“So you think I look like you?” I hadn’t thought about that until right then. I didn’t want to look like him.

“No, you look more like your mom. I’m better looking than either of you.”

I didn’t laugh. I didn’t plan to laugh at any of his jokes. Maybe we had a couple of rules for driving and maybe we’d had a minor conversation, but this still wasn’t any damn buddy movie.

I looked at my watch. “It’s twenty after three.”

3

“Saigon.”

That was it. One word. No explanation. Not even where exactly Saigon was. I’m not bad on geography. So I’d heard of it. Watched some war movies, so I had an idea about the place, but that was it. What I didn’t have was an idea as to why people would go there. Why I was going there.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Saigon. Vietnam. Southeast Asia.”

“I know where it is,” I said. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are we going there?”

“You might learn something.”

I was getting tired of people saying that. “I learn crap all year long. That’s what school’s for. I don’t need to learn in summer.”

“School’s about half of one percent of what you need to learn to get along in life.”

“What’s the other ninety-nine and a half percent?”

“That’s what you’re going to find out. Starts with Saigon.”

“Does my mom know you’re insane?”

He laughed hard at that. “I think she’s got a pretty good idea.”

“What if I just say no. Like drugs. Just say no to your old man who’s a couple of beer short of a case?”

He laughed again and reached over to change the station on the radio. Back to country music.

“All this conversation is cutting into my two hours.”

4

I kept waiting for him to call me “kid.”

Most of his sentences sounded like they should end with “kid.” You might learn something, kid. Starts with Saigon, kid. But he didn’t call me kid. Come to think of it, he hadn’t said my name either. Which fit in perfectly with the weirdness of this whole thing.

I had a couple of other questions I wanted to ask him. But I knew he wouldn’t answer me during his two hours of radio time. I watched scenery go by for a while. Then a sign: Minneapolis 439 kilometres. I did a calculation. Four hours. Maybe a little more. And then what? That was the biggest question of all.

I discovered there’s an upside to country music. Or maybe it was just the driving and the total boredom. Anyway, something put me to sleep. I’m betting it was Garth and Clint and Reba and all their friends. I woke up from one of those dreams you want to keep going. Jen Wertz and I were at this lake. She was lying on a rubber raft, and I was in the water pushing it along. Every little while she’d lean her head over the edge and kiss me.

Except some of the time she wasn’t Jen anymore. Sometimes she was a different girl, who was totally hot too, except that I couldn’t remember her face after I woke up. I could only remember that she was gorgeous and hot. And weird. The non-Jen girl kept singing all the songs from The Lion King. Yeah, a lot of hot babes do that. But then she was Jen again and had just finished telling me she could kiss me a lot better if I’d get up on the rubber raft with her. That’s when I woke up.

I looked over at the old man. He wasn’t tapping or bopping or singing along. He was just driving. “Do we ever make bathroom stops on this trip?”

He smiled. “Town coming up. Last town before the border. We’d best pee, get rid of all the drugs in the car, and dig out our passports. We need fuel anyway.”

I was having trouble figuring out when he was trying to be funny. His face didn’t change much when he said stuff, so it was hard to tell. But I figured the drugs-in-the-car thing must have been a joke.

Or a warning. Like if I had something stashed that I shouldn’t have, last opportunity to get rid of it. I’d never been in the States in my life, so I didn’t know what to expect at the border. Although right then I didn’t care. I was at the point where a pee stop was all I was thinking about.

That and Jen Wertz. On a rubber raft.

We pulled into the pumps at a Gas Rite service station, and getting to the can I practically ran over a lady holding a totally ugly dog — one of those squished-face ones that looks like an alien with fur. I yelled “sorry” over my shoulder, but I didn’t slow down. The emergency was now a stage-four crisis.

When I came out of the can, the old man was checking out the chips display. “You wash your hands?”

I looked at him. Who asks you that? I didn’t bother to answer.

“Lots of guys don’t. Think it’s manly, maybe.”

“Guess I’m not manly. I washed.”

“Cool. Want something?”

I reached over and took a bag of Crunchits and headed for the counter.

“Just put it there with that other stuff. I’ll pay for it.”

“I’ve got money.”

“I know you have. You can pay next time.” He started in the direction of the bathroom.

“Make sure you wash,” I called.

He waved over his shoulder without looking back, but I could tell he was laughing.

I threw the Crunchits on the counter with some other stuff he’d put there — a couple of bananas, some little cartons of yogurt, and a Cherry Blossom chocolate bar. And some baseball magazine. Then I went outside.

The lady had put the dog on a leash, and it was sniffing around some pretty much dead flowers along the front of the service station. I watched the dog for a few seconds then looked up at the old lady. She was glaring at me. Another drug-crazed teenage pervert purse snatcher.

“What kind of dog is that?” I asked her.

She told me it was a cross between two words I’d never heard before.

“They all look like that?”

“What do you mean?”

“That is one very unattractive dog.”

She picked up the dog and kind of held it to the side to keep it away from me. Like I was an animal killer. I thought about telling her I wasn’t, but if I ever became one, I’d start with her dog. I didn’t, though, and the door of the place opened, and the old man came out with a bag full of the stuff he’d bought.

He flicked the fingers of one hand and a few drops of water hit me.

“Good for you,” I said.

He nodded and we climbed into the truck. As he put it in gear and we pulled away, I looked back at the lady and the dog. She was talking to it. Probably telling it, “Don’t worry, Pookey, I’ll protect you from that acne-covered little bastard.”

“What’s so funny?” The old man was looking at me and grinning.

“People,” I said. “People are what’s funny.”

He nodded. “No argument there. You got your passport handy?”

“It’s right on top of my backpack.”

“Better fish it out.”

I did and handed it to him. He put it beside him with his own passport and an envelope with Mom’s writing on the front. All it said was permission letter.

“Mom said you played professional baseball.”

He looked like he was going to turn up the radio but changed his mind. “Yeah, a little.”

“What were you?”

“You mean what position did I play?”

I nodded.

“Mostly third base. But I wasn’t good enough, so I was a utility player. That means I played all the infield positions. Only got in the game if someone was hurt or we were blowing someone out or getting blown out ourselves.”

“So you were a crappy fielder.”

“No, I was a pretty good fielder. I was a crappy hitter. Couldn’t handle the curve ball.”

“Mom said you got hurt. Had to quit.”

“Tore up a knee. But I wasn’t going to make it to the big leagues anyway. So it didn’t matter. I just quit a little sooner than if I’d stayed healthy, that’s all.”

“Then what?”

“Then what … what?”

“What did you do after you quit baseball?”

“Got a job.”

“What kind of job?”

This time he did reach over and turn the sound up on the radio. I muttered “rude” under my breath, but if he heard me he didn’t say anything. And then it was all about Alan Jackson telling us how great it was “way down yonder in Chattahoochee.”

5

The next part of the drive was almost as boring as the part that had gone before. When I pointed that out to the old man, he said, “That’s your favourite word, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Boring.”

I didn’t bother to answer.

The old man was nervous about crossing the border, I could tell — he was doing this thing with his hair, kind of curling the part by his ear with his index finger. He hadn’t done that until we were about a half-hour away from the border. Now he was doing it all the time.

I figured, Sweet, the old man’s a convicted drug dealer in the States, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life in some prison with bad food and black and white TV.

But actually getting through the border wasn’t that bad. The big thing was me. Like, had the old man kidnapped me at some mall and was sneaking me across the border with a fake letter from a fake mom in some fake town?

They told us to park and come inside, and they put us in separate rooms. A guy named Granfield, who was big enough to be a defensive end and soft enough to be an angel food cake, took me into a room and closed the door. He offered me a granola bar, and I shook my head. Then he told me about fifteen times that I didn’t have to be afraid, I could tell him the truth, and there was nothing the man in the other room, whether he was my dad or not, could do.

Apparently, the permission letter from my mom wasn’t cutting it with the border police. I knew that I could put an end to the whole summer-with-the old-man gig right then and there. All I had to do was say something like there I was drinking a slurpee and minding my own business and that nasty man in the other room came up to me and told me my cat had been run over by a car so I got in the pickup that he hadn’t even bothered to wash and the next thing I knew here we were at the border and please save me Officer Granfield. That’s all it would have taken, and I’d be spending the rest of my summer reading Catch-22 and drinking milk shakes and quite possibly doing amazing things to Jen Wertz’s body.

I didn’t do that. Partly because I figured even somebody as stupid as Granfield, who didn’t smell real good, especially in a room that wasn’t all that big and had like zero air flow, would eventually figure out I was lying. And also it wouldn’t have been fair. The last thing I wanted to be doing with the next few weeks of my life was going to freaking Saigon with the old man. But he’d been fair about it. He’d phoned Mom, and he’d obviously put out some serious money to pay for the trip, and he was even trying to make it okay for me. So I couldn’t really do something as dirty as rat him out at the border for something he hadn’t done.

Instead, I said to Granfield, “Why don’t you just phone my mom, and she’ll tell you if the letter is the real deal.”

I could see Granfield was pissed. He’d been all excited about the possibility of a big international case and saving some poor kidnapped child, and I’d just burst his bubble. We were out of there about five minutes later.

Back on the endless highway. The old man didn’t talk much, but I noticed he wasn’t twirling the hair anymore, and he was bopping to the music again.

We stopped at a diner in a place called Thief River Falls. There was a poster on the outside of the door advertising a PBR Bull Riding at the arena that night. I’d seen a couple of bull riding events and thought they were pretty cool. But I knew we wouldn’t be going to this one because we had to get our asses to Minneapolis so we could carry on to Saigon. Sweet.

“Have anything you want. I’m buyin’,” the old man said as we sat down. “They charge for airplane food except for the pretzels, and the food’s crap anyway. So let’s load up here.”

I ordered an open-faced western sandwich and the old man ordered a double order of veal cutlets. I figured anybody who ate double orders of stuff would have to be part of the North American Obesity Problem you read about all the time, but one thing I could say for the old man — he was as far from obese as you can get.

That didn’t stop him from tucking away the whole veal cutlet extravaganza. He ate fast at first, then slowed down and talked between pretty well every bite. Didn’t say a lot, but he was doing more talking now than at first.

“I’ve crossed the border dozens of times, and I still don’t like it. A lot of the border guards are pretty good guys, but every once in a while you get somebody who thinks he’s Dirty Harry — and the women can be just as bad.”

I didn’t know who Dirty Harry was, and I didn’t get a chance to ask.

“How was your guy?”

“Granfield? Fat. Stupid.”

The old man nodded. “A lot of ’em carry guns now.”

Granfield with a gun. Scary.

“He wanted me to say you’d kidnapped me. I think he would have liked to make a big arrest. Get some headlines.”

The old man nodded. “Dirty Harry.”

“Why are we going to Saigon?”

“We won’t be in Saigon the whole time.”

I’d noticed that I didn’t get a lot of direct answers to my questions. “Where to after that?”

“The countryside.”

“The countryside where?”

“Vietnam … that’s where Saigon is.” He cranked his head around. There was a mark on his neck, a scar or something. “Can we get a little more coffee, please?”

The waitress brought the coffee pot and topped up the old man’s cup.

He looked at me over what was left of the cutlets and mashed potatoes. “How about pie, you want some pie?”

I shook my head.

“No, thanks,” he said.

“No, thanks,” I repeated. Great, now he was starting to act like a father.

He looked up at the waitress. “What kind of pie do you have?”

“Coconut cream and cherry.”

“We’ll have two pieces of coconut cream.”

She looked at me, shrugged, and walked away.

“How is it that she gets that I didn’t want pie, and you don’t?”

“I’ll eat it if you don’t.”

“Why don’t you weigh four hundred pounds?”

“Metabolism.”

The pie came, and I ate one bite. I’d never had coconut cream pie before and based on that bite didn’t plan to ever have it again. I pushed it away. The old man dusted both pieces, but I noticed that he hadn’t finished the carrots that came with the veal cutlets, so the man was probably starving.

We sat for a while. He ate and I watched him eat and looked around the diner. There were pictures on the walls, all of them of people fishing. Some were guys standing in streams fly-fishing and the rest were pictures of people with the fish they’d caught. Some of the pictures were pretty old, like black and white old, so maybe they were famous people who’d caught fish nearby.

“Grab me that paper, will you?” The old man nodded at a mess of newspaper pages on a table across the diner.

I got up and went over there and tried to organize the thing so it looked like a real paper. When it was more or less sorted out, I brought it back to our table.

He read and I read. I sat, sipped on my chocolate milk and looked at the back pages of the paper as he flipped through the sections. Sometimes he’d fold the paper over, and I’d get to look at more than just the back pages.

56 Die in Wave of Iraq Suicide Bombings

California Wildfires Threaten Thousands of Homes

Yankees Romp Over Red Sox — Win Streak at Eight

J.K. Rowling Pens Adult Novel

Global Economic Recovery Slower Than Expected

Aryan Supremacy Group Stages Rally in Idaho Town

Unlikely Songstress the Toast of Britain

Man Expresses Remorse After Beating Three-Year-Old

Education Budget Slashed

I wasn’t one to read the paper much. Sometimes we’d look at what was going on in the world in social studies class, but it wasn’t like I paid a lot of attention to current events. I mean I wasn’t stupid — I knew about Afghanistan and 9/11 and I could name the prime minister of Canada and the president of the United States, which was more than some of the kids in my school could do, but I wasn’t into the news.

Out of what I was reading that morning sitting across from the old man, I was most interested in the J.K. Rowling thing. I’d read the Harry Potter books and thought they were amazing, and I’d also read somewhere that the author was now mega-rich. Maybe I’d ask her to marry me. Right after I got back from my lovely Saigon vacation.

Then it was back in the truck and Steve Earle singing “Copperhead Road.” There’s a line in the song, something about running whiskey in a big black Dodge. And some stuff about Vietnam too. The war. I liked Steve Earle. If all country music was like that we wouldn’t have needed rule number two. I sat back and thought about what other rules might make sense.

6

I must have fallen asleep again, but this time no great dreams starring Jen Wertz and the mystery girl. When I woke up, we were parked in one of those pullouts on the side of the highway. The old man was sitting with his arms resting on the wheel. He was holding the envelope that said permission letter in Mom’s handwriting. He didn’t look over at me, but he must have known I was awake.

“Your mom used to leave little notes on a table in the living room when I was out at night. She’d write a couple of lines about her day and said she hoped my evening had gone well. I’d be out drinking or … whatever, and she’d write me a note for when I got home. Never ever missed. Always ended it with something like, ‘I hope you know how much I love you.’ ’Course she didn’t know that I was drinking or —”

“Screwin’ around.”

“Because I guess I was a pretty good liar. Those notes were probably the nicest thing anybody ever did for me. Your mom’s a … a … very good person.”

He still hadn’t looked over at me. He set the envelope back on the seat between us and started the truck. He pulled out onto the highway, and for the first time since we’d left, there was no loud music pounding out of the radio.

7

I wondered why he’d told me about the notes my mom left for him. Guilt? Didn’t stop him from taking off with the teenager. Maybe she was one of the ones he was screwing when he was out at night and Mom was at home writing notes to him.

I was young when he left, so I don’t really remember how she was after that, you know, how she handled the breakup. Except I remember waking up a couple of times and she was sitting beside my bed watching me sleep. It wasn’t the times when I was sick or anything, so I was never sure why she was there. But thinking back on it, that might have been right around the time the old man took off.

I watched more amazing Minnesota scenery rolling by and yawned a few hundred times. But I was careful not to say the word “boring.” Actually, I didn’t say much of anything.

I got to thinking about the first job I’d ever had. I was eleven years old. One of the women Mom worked with lived just a few blocks from us. She was looking for a baby sitter for the summer for her five-year-old.

I got the job. I’d get up at 7:00 a.m. every weekday and ride my bike over to their house. Then I’d look after the kid — his name was Asa — from eight until four thirty when the mom got home from work.

She left lunch to be warmed up every day, usually soup or macaroni, stuff like that. The best was this soup she called red borscht. I’d never had it before. It’s a cabbage and beet soup — some other vegetables and potatoes in there too. Except it was purple, not red … purple soup. It looked gross but tasted awesome. Asa and me, we really got after it on red borscht days.

The kid was okay. The best part was that even though he was five, he had a sleep every afternoon. I’d sit around and play his mom’s CDs — she had pretty good taste in music — until the kid woke up.

We went for a lot of walks. Pretty much toured the whole neighbourhood. Like explorers. Sometimes we rode our bikes.

One bad day kind of wrecked the whole summer for both of us. We were out walking. Actually, Asa was riding his bike, and I was walking along beside him. It was easy because Asa didn’t ride very fast. He had one of those little bikes, which made sense since he was a pretty small kid, even for five.

We were on the sidewalk by a major street called Edmonton Trail. Asa was pedalling and talking, and I was off in whatever world eleven-year-olds go to when they get tired of listening to five-year-olds. We were by a playground. There were some kids playing on slides and swings and stuff. Suddenly, this little girl, maybe about Asa’s age, ran out onto the road to get a ball.

I started to yell at her not to run out there, but I didn’t have time. She got hit by a car, a big boat of a car, I remember. The guy driving didn’t have a chance to miss her. It was the worst sound I ever heard. I could see what was going to happen, and everything slowed down. It was like I had time to think about what it would sound like when the car hit her.

Except it didn’t sound like what I thought it would. It was awful, first the thump of the car hitting the kid, then the sound of the brakes on the car, squealing but not until after it had hit the little girl, then the bump of her hitting the pavement, I bet it was twenty metres down the road.

It went on what felt like forever — that little girl rolling and rolling on the pavement. But then came the worst sound of all — it was the kid’s mother who came screaming from the park out onto the road. “Carla, oh, god, oh, my god, Carla, my baby!”

She just kept yelling that. Over and over. She was bent over the little girl where she’d finally stopped rolling. I grabbed Asa, and we turned down the lane at the end of the park.

He was pretty shook up. I was too. He told his mom about it that night. She said she’d heard about a little girl being hit by a car on the news on her way home from work. She said the newscast didn’t say if the girl was going to be okay or not. I always had the feeling she really did know but didn’t want to say in front of Asa.

Asa didn’t want to go for any walks or bike rides for a couple of weeks after that. And we never went anywhere near Edmonton Trail again that summer.

8

We hadn’t had a pee stop in quite a while. I told the old man I needed to stop, and we pulled into a Conoco in Sauk Center, Minnesota. The old man told me it was pronounced like ‘go soak your head.’” The hilarity just keeps on coming.

I saw a sign that said Sinclair Lewis House, and there was an arrow pointing off to the right. I figured Sinclair Lewis must be a big deal in Go-soak-your-head Centre, Minnesota. Like in the next town to ours there was an NHL guy born there, and there’s a big sign — Libbert, Alberta, home of whatever the guy’s name is. In Canada, if you’re a hockey star, you can get your name on the town sign.

I asked the old man if he’d ever heard of Sinclair Lewis, but he just shook his head. Then there was another sign a little further on: Sinclair Lewis, 1930 Nobel Prize Winner for Literature. I didn’t figure that would get you a sign in my town. Unless you also happened to play for the Blackhawks or Penguins.

We stayed in a Motel Six just outside of Minneapolis that night. The old man said it was cheaper than getting a place in the city. Great, we’re on the economy plan. I didn’t know how I felt about not having my own room. Sharing a room with my old man. Who, let’s face it, until ten or twelve hours ago, was pretty much a total stranger to me.

What if he was a pervert or something? Or walked in his sleep? Or snored real loud? Sure, Mom had said he wasn’t an evil man — wasn’t that how she’d put it? But hell, she hadn’t seen him in forever. Maybe she didn’t know him as well as she thought she did.

As soon as we checked in and dumped all our stuff in the room. we went out to an Italian restaurant. I had ravioli and meatballs. and the old man had something that had too many consonants for me to pronounce.

We didn’t talk much at first. I noticed a couple of women, I’m guessing in their forties, looking over at us from another table. I doubted very much if it was me they were checking out. The old man didn’t seem to notice them, or if he did, he didn’t seem to care.

After I’d polished off about half of the ravioli and a couple of meatballs, I looked over at him. “You got a girlfriend?”

He was chewing, so it was a while before he could answer, but then all he did was shake his head, which he could have done while he was chewing. He looked at me with a look that I figured said he didn’t want to have this conversation. I set my fork down.

“What happened to the teeth cleaner?”

“She was a dental hygienist. Name was Cindy.”

“Was?”

“She went back to her husband after we’d been together for a couple of years.”

“She was nineteen and had a husband?”

“They were split up when we met.”

“She was nineteen and had split from her husband. Sounds really nice.”

“She was really nice. And she was almost twenty.”

“That’s way better. And you and Mom?”

“What about us?”

“You weren’t split up at the time.”

“No, we weren’t. Not until after.”

“Sweet.”

I have to give him credit. I was doing everything I could to really get to him, and so far he was keeping his cool. He didn’t like it, but he hadn’t blown up. Yet.

When the cheque came, I found out he wasn’t kidding before when he said I could pay next time. Which was this time. I figure the chips and snacks he bought at the truck stop came to maybe eight bucks tops. The dinner at the Italian place was thirty-eight. The old man threw in a ten to pay for his beer, and I got the rest.

He didn’t say anything on the way back to the hotel, or after we were back in our room. He took some stuff out of his suitcase and went for a shower. Ball game on TV — Seattle and Detroit, two teams I couldn’t care less about. I fell asleep before the seventh inning stretch. The old man poked me awake. I brushed my teeth and climbed into one of the two beds in our $49 room.

Day one of my summer vacation was over. I wasn’t sure I could stand much more of this kind of excitement. I think I fell asleep in about six seconds. Maybe that’s how the motel got its name.

The next morning we were up early — 6:00 a.m., which to me is a ridiculous time of day to be doing anything but sleeping. We hurried down to the lobby for the free continental breakfast, which was coffee and a bagel for the old man, juice and a tired muffin for me. Tired as in been out in the open air way too long. Chewy.

While we were sitting there the old man handed me a pill. “Take this.”

“What is it?”

“Malaria pill. You take one today and for the next few days, then for a couple of days when we get back.”

“Who says I have to take it?”

“Nobody. You take it so you won’t get malaria, not because somebody told you to take it.”

“Think I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself.” He picked up the pill and dropped it in his jacket pocket.

I ate some more muffin.

“You ever know anybody that got malaria?”

He nodded. “A few. Some of ’em are still alive.”

Some people say something like that, you figure it’s for effect. They’re being dramatic. With the old man, he just threw it out there like he didn’t give a damn if you believed him or not.

“So what happens?”

“When you get malaria?”

“Yeah.”

“Comes from mosquito bites. You get sick. Fever. Vomiting. Major muscle pain, hot then cold, big-time headache. You go to the hospital. Sometimes you get over it. Sometimes you don’t. Let’s go.”

“Maybe I’ll take the pill.”

“You sure? I don’t want to trample on your human rights.”

I took the pill. We threw our garbage in a container in the lobby, went back to the room to brush our teeth and load up our gear. When we had packed our stuff into the truck and were sitting in the front seat waiting for the diesel to warm up, I had a thought.

“What do we do with the truck?”

“We leave it here … in Minneapolis. Not far from the airport.”

“You can do that?”

“I know a guy. He’s got a place.”

The place was a little piece of land with a small, kind of old house on it. A couple of other buildings too. Same vintage as the house. Looked like it could have been an okay place if somebody took better care of it, and if it wasn’t in the middle of an industrial area. Lots of equipment and high chain-link fences. Industrial plumbing supply outfit across the street. I thought about what industrial plumbing meant. Maybe you call these guys for the BSP — Big Shit Problems. Chase Sheet Metal on one side. Road Runner Courier Service on the other side.

The guy the old man knew, the guy who lived in this little slice of heaven, was a piece of work too. Looked like Santa Claus after a three-day drunk. I figured him to be about the same age as the old man. He was a little taller, maybe heavier but not by a lot. The thing you noticed about the guy was the white hair and beard, a lot of hair and a lot of beard. A ball cap advertising Rent-A-Wreck was perched on top of the white hair. The Rent-A-Wreck place was probably another one of his neighbours.

His face and eyes gave the impression that this was a man who hadn’t been looking after himself all that well. Crack cocaine instead of fruit and vegetables — that kind of look.

The other thing about him, which I didn’t notice right away, was that most of his left arm was missing. His sleeve was folded up and pinned at about the elbow. When we got out of the truck, he threw the good arm around the old man and the two of them hugged. They hugged long enough that I finally turned away and looked out at the trees that surrounded the guy’s place on three sides.

The trees were a good idea. Who wanted to look at a sheet metal place all the time?

“Nathan.”

I turned back, and the two of them had an arm around each other, and they were grinning, but it looked like there were tears in their eyes. I was wishing we could just ditch the truck and get out of there.

“I want you to meet one good son of a bitch.” The old man was grinning and wiping his nose with his sleeve.

The good son of a bitch stuck out a hand the size of a pillow. The good hand. The only hand. I reached out and took it. No, that’s not right. I didn’t take his hand; he took mine. It was like my hand had disappeared. I couldn’t see it anymore.

At least the GSOB didn’t squeeze the crap out of it like some people do to show you how strong they are. His hand was knobby and warm. Hard too, like it had calluses. Nothing like a pillow.

“I heard about you.” He was still grinning, and his eyes were still shining.

Him knowing about me, that surprised me. I didn’t figure the old man told a lot of people about his kid.

“Great … uh … good to meet you,” was the best I could do.

“Nathan, this is Tal Ledbetter. Tal, my son, Nathan.”

Tal nodded his head like crazy. Tal. What’s that short for … Talbert? Talisman? No, that’s a book. Tallas? I didn’t bother to ask.

He let go of my hand. “Let’s get you boys a beer.” He started for what looked like a shop that was off to the left of the house. The old man followed him, looking back at me and jerking his head for me to follow. I followed. But first I looked at my watch. Eight thirty in the morning. Seemed early for beer but what do I know — maybe that’s what good sons of bitches do.

Not a lot more was said until three lawn chairs were arranged on the cement pad out front of the shop. Tal Ledbetter handed the old man a beer and me a Dr Pepper. Awright. How’d he know that? Probably just luck. All he had in the fridge.

He twisted the top off another beer and sat across from me and the old man. Looked at the old man like he was memorizing him.

“By damn, you’re looking good, man. Old but good.”

“You think I look old? You passed by a mirror lately?” They both laughed like they were the two funniest guys on the planet. I sipped my Dr Pepper and looked around at the place.

It was hard to get hold of. I mean I didn’t know what happened there. Sure there was a shop, but the big double doors were open and except for a John Deere tractor that looked about the same age as Tal and the old man, the fridge Tal had got the drinks from, and a ride-on lawn mower, there wasn’t much in there. I didn’t see the tools you expect to see in a shop, you know, all arranged on the walls, hanging on metal hooks.

In fact, what was on the walls were paintings — some of people, some of countryside, a couple of horses. And there was one big one, really big, of a bald eagle sitting on the seat of a very large motorcycle — maybe a Harley. All of the paintings had this weird sort of off-kilter feel to them. The people ones were mostly women, and the people in the paintings were all at an angle so you wanted to tilt your head when you looked at them. The countryside paintings — every one of them had a big space, a white space, like there was a hole in the painting, or he’d forgotten to finish it. The space was in a different place in each of the paintings, but they all had it. The eagle on the motorcycle was the most normal painting in the place. And it wasn’t all that normal, since it was an eagle on a motorcycle. No helmet. Not a safety conscious eagle.

If Tal was the artist, I didn’t think he was very good. I decided not to mention that to him.

“I can’t believe you’re going back,” Tal was saying to the old man.

“A lot of guys are. They’ve got tours.”

“I heard about that. Don’t believe I’ll ever go on one.”

“Okay if I walk around?” I was looking at the old man, but actually, it was Tal I was asking.

“Sure, kid, make yourself at home.”

Kid. There it was.

I picked up my Dr Pepper and wandered off toward the house. One storey, maybe two, three rooms. Big enough for one person, or maybe a couple, but only if they didn’t own much. Tal didn’t look like he owned much. I wondered if there was a Mrs. Tal.

I circled around the house to where a lot of places have a backyard. This one had a back swamp. There was a fence around the outside but not chain-link. Wooden like you see around animal corrals. And inside the fence was a body of water too small to be a lake or even a slough but too big to be a swimming pool. It wasn’t encased in concrete; it just sat there — this huge hole dug out of the ground and filled with water.

I remember reading, I think it was in a magazine or the newspaper, about water that looked “brackish.” I didn’t know what the word meant then and I still don’t, but if I was looking for a word to describe that water, I’d go with brackish. But that wasn’t all. There was a fair amount of grass around the outside of the water and also inside the fence.

And two cows. Not like a herd. And not milk cows, not the kind you see in pictures on milk containers. I figured these had to be beef cows. Who has two cows?

I climbed up on the fence and watched the cows eat grass for a while. I figured it was better than listening to two old guys telling each other how great they looked. Besides, I needed some time to think about a few things.

I was finding some things out about the old man, even if he wasn’t very good at telling me stuff about himself. Or maybe I wasn’t all that good at asking.

So what was this for? What was this about, this trip to Vietnam with a man who hadn’t been part of my life for most of it, then suddenly shows up with malaria pills and two tickets to Saigon?

I finished the Dr Pepper, watched the cows for a few more minutes, and climbed down off the fence so I could throw a few rocks into the swamp. Then I walked back around to the front yard. I figured Tal and the old man had had enough time to visit. If we were going, we should get going.

When I got back to where they were sitting, they were on their second beer and laughing like two junior high girls. Looked pretty stupid on a couple of old guys, even stupider than it does on junior high girls.

Tal looked up and said, “What do you think of my moat?”

“Moat?”

“Well, that’s what I call it.”

“It won’t be very effective keeping your enemies out. Isn’t a moat supposed to go around the whole place?”

“I figure all my enemies, being the no heart sons o’ bitches that they are, will try to sneak up behind me, so I only need a moat on that side.”

“Makes sense.” I nodded. Actually, it made no sense at all. Near as I could see, there wasn’t much about Tal Ledbetter that made any sense.

“Besides, I got tired of digging.” More laughing from the two of them. What the hell had been funny about that?

“You dug that whole thing?”

“Me and that John Deere. Took me three and a half days to get it the way I wanted.”

“For two cows.”

“I’d planned to have more. Couldn’t afford ’em.”

“Why have just two? If that’s all you can afford, then why not just go with none?”

“Because I like cows better than cats.”

Another answer that didn’t make sense.

“The water looks brackish.”

He nodded. “Yes, it does.”

“Time to mount up, Nathan.” The old man got up out of his chair.

I looked around for whatever Tal was going to drive us to the airport in. Nothing. But a taxi was pulling into his driveway. Tal and the Old Man did some more hugging while I walked over to the truck and pulled my stuff out of the back seat.

The old man did the same thing as the taxi came alongside us. The driver didn’t look happy as he popped the trunk and got out to help us load our stuff. Except he didn’t help. Or say anything. He just watched as we threw the old man’s duffle bag and my suitcase and backpack into the trunk. He kept looking from the old man to Tal and back to the old man. He wasn’t very good at hiding how much he didn’t like either of them.

Maybe he’d been mugged or something and figured these were the kind of guys to do something like that. I couldn’t totally blame him. They didn’t look like people you’d want to meet in some dark out-of-the-way place. Like where we were right then. Except it wasn’t dark.

The driver got back in the taxi as we turned back to Tal.

“See you in a couple of weeks.” He punched the old man on the shoulder.

The old man nodded. Which is how I learned how long we’d be in Vietnam. Tal turned to me and grinned. “Good to meet you, kid.”

I nodded. “Yeah, same. You’re the first good son of a bitch I ever met.”

He grinned but only for a couple of seconds, then he looked at me all serious. “You’re wrong about that, kid. You’re travelling with one.”

I shrugged and moved away to get in the taxi. I watched Tal and the old man talking to each other, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Handshake. Nods. The old man went around to the other side of the car and climbed in.

“Airport,” he said and looked out the side window. Away from me. And away from Tal. He didn’t see Tal wave to us as the taxi rolled out. I did and nodded in Tal’s direction.

If our time with Tal Ledbetter was an indication of what the summer was going to be like, I was looking forward to it even less. Nothing wrong with the guy really, just strange. The kind of guy you could spend a day with and at the end of it, you’d think, what was that all about?

I sat in the unpleasant silence of that taxi, hoping my summer would get better but without a whole lot of confidence about it.

9

My first big international flight experience wasn’t all that memorable. I’m trying not to say boring. First came the airport in Minneapolis, where we had to spend an extra hour and a half because the flight to Los Angeles was late. The old man was going nuts because he figured we’d miss our connection. I couldn’t really have cared less. After an hour of sitting and watching planes take off and land, I just wanted to be somewhere other than in that airport.

I bought a book of Sudoku puzzles. Part of the Asian theme. Yeah, right. I didn’t even think of that until the old man pointed it out. When he said it, I just shrugged. Didn’t have an answer.

I’d never worked a Sudoku puzzle in my life, but by the time we got out of Minneapolis, I was pretty good. Could knock off the easy ones pretty fast. I figured I’d try some of the tougher ones in the next airport. LAX. Los Angeles.

I watched Talladega Nights on the plane. Like, don’t they have any recent movies on here? Once he figured out we were still okay for our next flight, which was Los Angeles to Tokyo, the old man relaxed. In fact he slept pretty much the whole flight. If I’d known just how stupid Talladega Nights was, I would’ve done the same thing, although that would have meant missing out on the free beverage and “Cookies or Bits and Bites?” The old man was right about the food. The second time the flight attendant went through, I asked if it would like totally blow the budget if I had one of each. Apparently, the woman attendant somehow became deaf at that exact moment, because she dropped a Bits and Bites on my tray and moved on to the next row.

I’d never been to Los Angeles, and except for the inside of the airport, I still haven’t. We had to hurry to get from our gate to the one for the Tokyo flight, which was in a different terminal. No time for Sudoku. Oh, damn. I could see tall buildings through some of the windows, and it seemed like everywhere there were these big-screen videos of amazing looking hotels. I told myself this would be a good place to bring Jen Wertz on our honeymoon. That’s if she didn’t fall in love with someone else while I was blowing off the whole freaking summer going to places I never wanted to see.

The second leg of the flight was long. That’s all — long. Ten hours long. By the end of it, I had memorized every hair on the head of this chick who was in the aisle seat one row ahead of us. It wasn’t like she was amazingly hot. It was just that after another movie, a couple of thousand games of Sudoku, and part of one of the old man’s paperbacks, memorizing someone’s hair made sense to me.

Actually, the movie was pretty good — Body of Lies, which was directed by one of my favourite Hollywood directors, Ridley Scott. I guess I know a lot about movies. You have a mom who works a fair amount, you watch more than your share of movies. Anyway, this one was decent. A couple of years old, but at least it was from this decade. Leonardo DiCaprio, the middle east, spies, some pretty good action scenes.

The paperback wasn’t that bad either. The weird part was it was about this guy taking a train across America. Long trip. Like us — travellers. Except the book all happened around Christmas. The author was this guy named Baldacci..

So okay, good movie, good book, chick with okay hair just a few seats away … why wasn’t I having a blast? If that book, that movie, and the chick with the hair had come into my life anywhere but there, and anytime but then, and if I’d been with anybody but the old man, it would all have been good.

And that’s it — the highlights of my big journey. Enough said.

Except for Tokyo. I’ll tell you about that part. We got in there just after noon. The weird part was we left Los Angeles on a Thursday and it was now Saturday. An entire day of my life had disappeared.

The old man seemed to think that it was really important that we make up for the lost day. At least that’s what I figured he was thinking because suddenly he was in this big frenzy.

We had a four and a half hour layover, and he said if we hurried we could make it into downtown Tokyo and back in time for the next flight. All so I could “get a feel for the place.”

I wasn’t real nuts about getting into another mode of transportation even if it didn’t ever leave the ground. I was thinking more that a couple of burgers and fries, maybe some poutine, and about a pail of Dr Pepper might actually fix me up. But no, there I was running through the airport, dodging people with luggage carts packed higher than the people pushing them.

I didn’t bother to tell the old man I could probably live out the rest of my life without having a feel for Tokyo, but I wouldn’t have been able to say anything even if I’d wanted to, because I had to run hard to keep up with him as he dashed for the taxi place. I’ll say one thing for him — he could run pretty good for a guy his age. What pissed me off was when we’d finished a death-defying dive into the back seat of a taxi that for some reason was already moving, I was breathing hard and he wasn’t. Just sitting there grinning at me. I knew what he was thinking …

Now this is a buddy movie.

I was thinking there’s a pretty good chance I might hurl right here in this taxi. I hadn’t eaten any real food in about eight hours — just chocolate bars and pop and the always tasty Bits and Bites. After the sprint through the airport, my stomach seemed to think puking was a pretty good idea. I took some deep breaths through my nose and after a minute or so, I felt more or less okay.

I don’t remember a lot about Tokyo. What I do remember is that we spent most of the time driving. The old man decided we needed to see the Tokyo Tower, which is supposed to be patterned after the Eiffel Tower in Paris except the Tokyo one is a little taller. There are a couple of observation areas, and one is really high up, so you get this really awesome 360 degree view of Tokyo.

Good idea, right?

Well, it might have been if it wasn’t eighty-five minutes travel time in each direction. A guy directing people to the cabs told us that in perfect English. “Eighty-five minutes,” he said. “Less on Sunday, more during the week.”

We’d no sooner got into the taxi than the old man started to worry about whether we’d make it back in time for the flight to Saigon.

Sweet. A nice relaxing jaunt around Tokyo. The old man looked at his watch about every four minutes and kept telling the driver to hurry up, step on it, go faster and several other expressions that meant about the same thing. The driver kept saying stuff back to the old man but, of course, it was in Japanese. I figured he was probably saying shut up, stupid.

I was getting one of my headaches. All very nice.

“Maybe we should just turn around and go back,” I said.

The old man looked at me like I was nuts. “No way,” he said. “No problem.”

I have to admit, the tower was actually pretty cool. The driver got us there in seventy-nine minutes, six minutes quicker than what we’d been told at the airport, so the old man finally started to chill. Twelve thousand yen for the cab fare — one way. That’s almost a hundred and fifty bucks American. He never said how much we had to pay to go up to the observatory, but I bet it was a bunch.

I was beginning to think the old man had some serious coin. Either that or he saved up big-time for this trip.

Once we got up in the observatory, my head started feeling better, and I kind of enjoyed the view. We walked around the whole platform so we saw the city in every direction. There was another tower, newer and taller — called the Tokyo Sky Tree — off in the distance. Impressive.

But the best part was Mount Fuji. I’ve seen mountains, some of them close up, but I’d have to say that was the most amazing, and biggest, mountain I’d ever seen.

“If it’s cloudy or there’s too much smog, you don’t see the mountain,” the old man told me three or four times, like the fact that it was a clear day was all his doing. Part of the “old man tour of Tokyo.”

The ride back to Narita Airport was a replay of the ride to the tower. Eighty-two minutes this time. We ran our asses off getting back through the airport, then through the security line and back to our departure gate about five minutes before they started boarding the plane.

Now the old man was grinning. “Not bad, eh? You see some of Tokyo, and we’re back here in time, just like I planned it. Nothing to it.”

Yeah, nothing to it.