There was no way he could stay in Cedar Hill much longer, not after this.

* * *

Ronnie’s mother died unexpectedly a week after Pierce’s funeral. She had a heart condition that she never told Ronnie or his father about; her death, if it can be said of any death, was as peaceful and painless as it could have been, coming in the middle of the night, in her sleep, deep in the “wee hours” (as she liked calling them). She simply kissed her husband and her son good-night (this was a weekend when Ronnie was staying at his parents’ home), went upstairs, fell asleep, and stayed that way.

Her funeral was well-attended, and Ronnie couldn’t stop crying; he never realized that his mother had so many friends.

He didn’t even bother going back to the house afterward. He walked downtown, bought a bus ticket to Indianapolis and, once there, quickly vanished into the city.

It took his brothers, sisters, and father several hours to notice that he was missing.

* * *

Though he never did—as the doctor predicted—grow to beyond the age of eleven years old emotionally, he was nonetheless a smart and exceptionally resourceful eleven-year-old. Armed with the two thousand dollars he’d taken from Mr. Pierce, he found it easy to find inexpensive rooming where no one asked any questions once they saw the money up-front. He ate only three meals a day, no snacks, and took great pains to make sure he got full use out of the various clothes and toiletry supplies he had to purchase.

Once the two thousand began to run low, he took to hanging out in front of temporary employment agencies where every morning around four, several trucks would pull up, a man would open the passenger door and stand on the running board, his eyes scanning the dozens of men who stood patiently enduring this often-degrading inspection, then the man would begin pointing to certain individuals—“I’ll take you…and you…and you over there…”—until he had his quota of workers (usually a dozen), and Ronnie, who by now was big for his age and quite strong-looking, would always be picked. He’d then climb into the back of the flatbed truck with his other co-workers for the day and they’d be driven to a field to pick fruit, or dig ditches, or help with landscaping projects, or sometimes to just haul trash or bricks or old furniture from the sites of demolished or condemned buildings.

It was always hard work, and Ronnie was exhausted by the end of the long days (fifteen hours was the average on-job work time), but the jobs paid in cash at the end of the day, and the trucks always drove the men back to the front of the employment building when things were done. The money wasn’t as much as he would have made if he’d gotten a regular steady job, but Ronnie didn’t have any official identification—and, besides, he didn’t want anyone to know his real name, anyway, just in case one of his brothers or sisters had reported him to the police as missing.