I’m hoping he’ll find my frank reply endearing, but he merely nods in a cursory way and shines the beam over the brightly painted psychedelia on the outside of Odysseus. “And what’s your military family think of this rig, Lucas?”

“Honestly, sir? Drives ’em out of their freakin’ minds, if you’ll excuse my French.”

The border agent studies me. His expression is unreadable. My innards clench in near spasm. I’ve overdone it. Shit! I’ve definitely sounded too ingratiating. Tried too hard to appear as if nothing is wrong.

The corners of his lips curl upward. He hands back the IDs. “Have a nice weekend painting.”

I drive through the border feeling light-headed, my arms shaking. That was way, way too close.

You know you’re far away from everything when not a single car passes while you stand on the side of the road watching your microbus burn.

Twenty minutes ago, Odysseus’s engine started to sputter. A small red warning light in the speedometer began to glow. Tinsley was sacked out in the passenger seat. Barry was still in the back.

I thought I saw something strange in the side-view mirror. “See anything behind us?”

Barry pushed a box aside, climbed over the duffel, and looked out the back window. “Sparks.”

Definitely not good. Odysseus misfired and continued to lose power. What a night. First we risked getting busted at the border. Then this. It was beginning to feel like the gods were sending a message. A second red warning light began to glow. We were in the middle of an endless Canadian nowhere. Nothing but the dark silhouette of forest on both sides of the road. In the side-view mirror, a trail of orange-red sparks had begun to swarm over the road behind us.

The headlights flickered and dimmed. Odysseus, intrepid traveler and faithful companion, was slowly failing. A short distance ahead, through the bug-spattered windshield, was a road sign: Kemptville 2.

In the seat beside me, Tinsley opened her eyes and sat up. Before she could ask what was happening, Barry yelled, “There’re flames coming out!”

For the second time tonight, his voice was tight and panicky. I heard bustling and looked over my shoulder just as he was reaching for the side door.

“Don’t!” I shouted.

“But . . .”

“Get your stuff together. I’ll tell you when.” All I needed was for him to jump out while we were moving. He’d probably break a leg, if not his skull.

Odysseus continued to slow. The fire was in the engine compartment in the rear. As long as we were moving, I hoped the flames would trail behind and not spread forward into the microbus.

For all I knew, Kemptville might have been nothing more than a bar, a church, and a post office, but we needed to get as close as we could to some form of civilization before we bailed into the vast empty Canadian night.