I’ve reached the MassPike and I am impatient as the tollbooth attendant languidly passes out tickets to the five cars ahead of me. I wish that the car had a FastLane transponder so that I wouldn’t have to stop again, just glide through the exit at Worcester and catch up to Artie. Immediately after getting on the Pike, I pull off at the Westboro service center to pee and to call the truck-repair place. I’ll ask them to keep Artie there. Bladder empty, phone in hand, I am ready to confront Artie Schmidt.

As soon as I punch in the telephone number that Troy has given me, I suddenly wonder if this is a good idea. I’d like to know if Artie’s still there, but what if they tip him off that I’m coming and he bolts? In the end, I snap my phone shut. A quick study of the napkin with the scrawled directions and I’m fairly confident that I can find A-1 Truck Service. It’s just off Exit 11. Bang a right, a left, and then take the next right. It’s bound to be easy, so that all these big rigs can locate it without any trouble; there’s probably one of those huge signs visible from the highway. On the road, I dig out the money needed for the toll and drive with it gripped in one hand. I can’t waste any more time.

*   *   *

We left California when Tony was thirteen, ending up in Kanab, Utah, on the promise of a hotel manager’s job in what turned out to be a seedy, run-down motel on the main drag. The first thing I did was to move us out of the manager’s pitiful accommodations and into an apartment. In all our moving around, this was by far the nicest place we’d ever lived. Instead of renting a furnished place, I found an empty two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a Victorian house complete with gingerbread and a circular turret. The bulge of that turret was our living room and we looked out toward the mountains that rose like protection around us. I slowly filled the place with secondhand but decent furniture, some of it donated by our landlords.

Marta and Henry Sanchez were the grandparents Tony had never had. He spent more time in their kitchen than in ours, sampling Marta’s cooking—tamales, chimichangas, homemade red and green sauces. We spent Thanksgiving with them, and popped in for Christmas Eve eggnog. Henry taught Tony how to drive a nail and change the oil in a car. Marta simply loved him.

It wasn’t the job of my dreams, but moving to Kanab put the brakes on Tony’s bad behavior. Maybe time would have done that, but Kanab and the Sanchez couple were good for him.

Things went much better in Kanab, until I had an offer I couldn’t turn down.

Chapter 36

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