Eddie circled behind the dog, hoping to grab him and wrestle him into the van. Before he could try, the dog backed out of the trash can and stuck his nose in the air.
Something in the van attracted him, for he scampered across the sidewalk and jumped inside. I piled in after him, sliding the door closed. Eddie hopped into the driver’s seat and gunned the engine.
The dog lay on the floor, happily nuzzling through the greasy potato chip bags and other garbage that had piled up during our weeks on the road. I went to wipe the sweat from my face and discovered that I was still clutching his collar. My eye was caught by a metal plate bolted to it. “Red Rover,” I read aloud.
The dog abandoned the trash, clambering across the seat to smother me in drool. Eddie slowed to a normal speed and headed the van toward our campground. I was half drowned by a hot tongue coated with bits of garbage and greasy chips. It made for a long ride.
Red Rover didn’t care much for the final mile, which was off road. The van lurched over rocks and bounced in and out of ruts. I should have gotten suspicious when he calmed and lay on the seat, his head in my lap. But it took me by surprise when he upchucked the meatball and everything else he’d eaten since he met us.
The smell was so bad that I almost lost it myself. Eddie cursed and cranked his window. Mine only went down halfway, but I stuck my nose out the opening and kept it there. The second we came to a stop, I was out of that van, stripping off my barf-covered clothes. My other jeans and T-shirt were hanging from a tree branch. They weren’t quite dry, but they were a big improvement on the set Red Rover had christened.
“Soon as you’re dressed, clean the van,” Eddie called. Typical. Eddie had stuck me with every dirty job that had come up since we took to the road. I’d cleaned fish, changed a tire, even dug the latrine for our campground. My folks thought we were traveling from farm to farm, picking crops—not that they really cared. When Eddie told my dad his cock-and-bull story, he hadn’t asked for details. He was busy figuring out how much money he’d save, not having to feed me all summer. Eddie promised my mother he’d bring me back by the time school started, and off we went.
Our crimes were petty. Eddie would cruise some little town after dark. We’d look for unlocked doors or windows on any gas station or convenience stores we came across. Surprisingly often, we found them.
But they were the kinds of places that didn’t have much worth stealing. We lived on the singles and coins people didn’t bother to take out of their cash drawers before closing up shop.
I’d never stolen before, and didn’t much like it. Eddie said that if folks were too dumb to lock up proper, they
deserved to be ripped off. We were doing them a favor, teaching them to be more careful, and all it cost them was chump change. I knew it wasn’t right, but sleeping under the stars with Eddie was a lot more peaceful than lying in bed at home listening to my parents fight.
Then our wanderings brought us across the state line to the Richardson place. Once Eddie saw it, he was determined to break in. “We’ll clean up enough cash to take a couple of weeks off and enjoy ourselves,” he promised. I wasn’t tempted by the vacation. I just didn’t know how to say no to Eddie.
By the time I had cleaned the van and rinsed my dirty clothes in the creek, Eddie had cooked hot dogs. I thought the smell would attract Red Rover, but he was nowhere to be found. “He took off two minutes after we got here,” Eddie said.
“How are we going to collect a ransom for a dog we don’t have?” I asked.
Eddie spun Red Rover’s collar on the end of his finger. “We send this with the ransom note, and Richardson will believe we’ve got the dog. We get the money without the trouble of returning him.”
I worried about Red Rover. That crazy dog would charge into anything and we’d turned him loose in the wilderness. He was liable to get killed. Hungry as I’d been an hour earlier, I couldn’t finish a single hot dog. I stuck half in my pocket in case I wanted it later.