Alive and Dead in Indiana Read Online Free Page A

waited for the lane to clear, then leapfrogged another truck.
    I could see, when I swerved out there to pass, that the line went on for what looked like miles ahead. She perked up when we started passing. Rolled down her window. Took off her sunglasses.
    As we got along deeper into the convoy, she waved to the boys. I could tell they knew right away she was a girl. Some drivers sped up to get a good look, pacing us and not letting me jog around. I could see the jeep of MPs in the rearview. It was working its way up the line behind us. They passed when we passed, eyes on us.
    She yelled out to each truck. How far you going? Where you going? And then she would listen for a boy to shout how good-looking she was. I kept my eyes on the road. Listen to them, will you?
    Laughing.
    I felt sad seeing her reach out so far and trying to hold hands with some boy while the wind blew.
    But I got to the head of the line, and that was that.
    It was dark in Mackinaw City. A storm was on the lake. We could see the white in the water. Here was the end of the world as far as I was concerned. Even the roads ran out.
    Across the water there was an island with no cars, restaurants that might sell my chicken. We’d take the ferry in the morning.
    I arranged for a cabin. It had a small stove and a sink. I grabbed some food from a grocery just as it closed. Then I cooked dinner, using her skillet. I took my knives and started cleaning chicken, telling her I’d been cooking it since I was six. I told her about Momma peeling tomatoes all day for Stokely–Van Camp in Henryville. I told her about May apples, greens, sassafras buds. I let her help, showing her how to peel a potato, snap the skin off the garlic with the flat of the knife. She was helpless, and I asked her why she brought the pan along anyway. She had seen pictures of Johnny Appleseed when she was a kid. She was serious, she said, about leaving home. I was cutting an onion. I can cut an onion, if it is a good onion, in such a way that it stays whole for a few seconds after I am done slicing. One instant it is whole, the next a pile of a hundred pieces. She had me do this several times. You have to know what to do with it once you have it, I said, thinking of her frying pan, of the onions, well, of everything. We were both crying tears we didn’t mean. We ate in silence. She said she loved the food. Everybody does.
    The storm boomed on outside. I don’t think she knew where she was. Not just that moment—an old log cabin with an old man—but where in the world. Maybe if she knew, she would have considered turning back. The highway was pretty slow after all. Camping with her family all over again. I looked at her as she looked at the fire and wondered if she would be telling stories about this ancient man crossing roads with chickens. She asked me what held the onion together in the first place and if I ever tried to put it all back together like a puzzle.
    I slept outside in the backseat of the car. She hadn’t said one thing, not one way or the other. There are certain lines I don’t cross. I hadn’t offered her candy, only stone soup. To me it is all the same. When my belly’s full, so is the rest of me. Maybe she just didn’t have the words. Outside the Pontiac, it was bad. The chief’s head flashed. I went to sleep in the smell of sage and fresh ground pepper.
    In the morning, it was all there. My spices, the storm, the girl in the cabin.
    We drove to the ferry. But we could see from the water that no one was going anywhere. We got out and stood around. Some places you never reach.
    I asked her what she wanted.
    She said, “Let’s just go. Just keep moving.”
    We headed south down 131. Nothing to talk about. No sun to give her a clue to the direction. The tin of the pressure cooker whistled as we drove.
    It is the pressure cooker that is the secret. No waiting. Eight minutes to cook your goose. Didn’t she know how much danger she would have been in if she hadn’t been