He had been shaken when the van pulled behind them again after their
breakfast stop near Harrisburg, but of course that had been merely
coincidence. It had trailed them across all of Pennsylvania and through
a sliver of West Virginia, then into Ohio-but that was because it
happened to be going west on the same Interstate they were using.
The driver of the van, whoever he was, had chosen his route from a map,
just as Doyle had; there was nothing sinister in the other man’s mind
when he outlined ” his trip. belatedly Alex realized that he could
have relieved his own mind at any time during the morning just by
pulling to the side of the road and letting the van go past. He could
have waited for it to build up a fifteen-minute lead and could have
dispensed immediately with the whole crazy idea that they were being
pursued. Well, it did not matter much now. The van was gone, way out
ahead of them somewhere.
“He back there?” Colin asked. “No.”
“Shucks.”
“Shucks?
“I’d really like to know what he was up to,” Colin said. “Now I guess
we’ll never find out.”
Alex smiled. “I guess we never will.”
Compared to Pennsylvania, Ohio was almost a plains state. Vistas of
open green land stretched out on both sides of the highway, marred only
by an occasional shabby town, neat farm, or oddly isolated and routinely
filthy factory. The sameness of it, stretching away into the distance
under an equally bland blue sky, bored and depressed them.
The car seemed to crawl at a quarter of its real speed.
When they had been on the road only twenty minutes, Colin began to twist
and squirm uncomfortably. “This seatbelt isn’t made right,” he told
Doyle.
“Oh? / “I think they made it too tight.”
“It can’t be too tight. It’s adjustable.”
“I don’t know Colin tested it with both hands.
“You aren’t getting out of it with excuses as contrived as that one.”
Colin looked at the open fields, at a herd of fat cows grazing on a hill
above a white-and-red barn. “I didn’t know there were so many cows in
the world. Ever since we left home I’ve seen cows everywhere I look. If
I see one more cow, I think I might puke.”
“No you won’t,” Alex said. “I’d make you clean it up.”
“Is the rest of the country going to be like this?” Colin asked,
indicating the mundane landscape with one slim, upturned hand.
“You know it isn’t,” Doyle said patiently. “You’ll see the Mississippi
River, the deserts, the Rocky Mountains . . . You’ve taken enough
imaginary trips around the world to know it far better than I do.”
Colin quit tugging at his seatbelt when he saw he was not getting
anywhere with Doyle. “By the time we find these interesting places, my
brain will be all rotten inside. If I watch too much of this nothing,
I’ll turn into a zombie. You know what a zombie’s like?”
He made a face like a zombie for Doyle’s benefit: mouth agape, flesh
slack, eyes open wide but taking in nothing.
While he liked Colin and was amused by him, Doyle was also disturbed. He
knew that the boy’s persistent campaign to be let out of his belt was as
much a test of Doyle’s talent for discipline as it was an expression of
real discomfort. Before Alex had married Courtney, the boy obeyed his
sister’s suitor as he might his own father. And even when the
honeymooners came home to tie up their affairs in Philadelphia, Colin
had behaved. But now that he was alone with Doyle and out of his
sister’s sight, he was testing their new relationship.
If he could get away with anything, he would. In that respect, he was
the same as all other boys his age.
“Look,” Alex said, “when you talk to Courtney on the phone tonight, I
don’t want you complaining about your seatbelt and the scenery. She and
I both thought this trip would be good for you. I might as well tell
you that we also thought it would let you and me get used to each other,