The Car by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

14

THEY DIDN’T head west out of Omaha.

It was early morning and Terry followed Wayne while he went to the courthouse, took the title papers from Terry, and went inside. Twenty minutes later he came out with license plates. They put them on the Cat, and Wayne took a pen from his saddlebags and signed the place on the title that transferred ownership.

“All you do is keep the title in my name. When you’re ready to change it—you know, later—you sign your name on it and take it into the courthouse where you live and they’ll transfer the title back to you . . . ,” he trailed off, looked at Waylon. “North all right?”

Waylon nodded and Wayne fired the Harley up and they moved down side streets until they came to a highway heading north of Omaha before noon.

Still, Terry noted, without eating.

It was a beautiful day, however—hungry or not—and nice to be moving, the wind whipping around the cockpit while they followed Wayne on the Harley.

“Hungry?” Waylon asked when they were well clear of the city.

Terry nodded. “I could eat road kill.”

“Just a minute.” Wayne turned and rummaged in a side pocket of his pack and came up with a package of trail mix. Terry hated trail mix—it made him feel like he was eating dry cereal with no sugar-milk on it—but he took some that Waylon poured in his hand and munched it.

It tasted delicious. Almost sweet. But there was too little of it and Waylon had put the bag back in his pack.

“Can we have more?” Terry pointed at the pack with his thumb. “I’m still hungry.”

He was surprised to see Waylon shake his head. “You want to stay hungry—from here on you want to stay hungry.”

Terry pulled out to pass a truck. “I do? Why?”

“To learn,” Waylon said. “You always stay hungry to learn. You get full, you get sleepy, lazy; you get lazy, you don’t learn.”

“What are we going to learn driving on a highway?”

Waylon laughed. “Anything you want to know.”

“But what?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. . . .”

Waylon peered at him, then back out the windshield. “I don’t believe it—there’s nothing you want to know?”

“Well, sure, lots of things. But I can’t think of them now.”

“Not one thing?”

Terry frowned. “Well, all right. Why are we heading north? I thought we were going to go west.”

“We’re heading north because Wayne is heading north and we’re following him.”

“Why is he heading north?”

Waylon shrugged. “I guess there’s something he wants to know up north.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. We’ll follow him and find out. That’s how you truck. You don’t necessarily get anywhere, you just go. . . .”

And go they did. Wayne kept the northern pace for almost two hours, over a hundred miles, before stopping for gas. They were just past Sioux City, Iowa, when they stopped.

Terry filled the Cat while Wayne gently put gas in Baby, then walked over while Waylon paid—he still wouldn’t let Terry pay.

“Why are we heading north?” Terry asked.

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