Besides, I couldn’t stay in town. Not after what I’d done.

Or at least, what Mom thought I’d done.

It was a long journey I was headed on, let me tell you. Tough too. Wished I could have taken a dirigible like I’d seen float over us once at the county fair. Rides on it cost more than Mom makes in a whole year. Another reason to leave this dopey town.

Nope, instead I walked.

I walked and I walked and I walked.

All night I walked, and come morning I took to hitchhiking. I rode a blind donkey and a bald horse (the owner said he lost his mane in a fight). I rode in a fancy lady’s carriage (“Oh you poor thing!” she said) until she got a whiff of how I smelled and made me ride up top with the driver, which was fine with me.

Never had I seen so much of the country, even if it was mostly ugly old farmers wandering through their corn. It took days and days of dreary walking, constant traveling, bumming rides, and sleeping under trees on the side of roads. I kept hoping something wild would happen, something exciting, like maybe I would get robbed or see a ghost or get attacked by wolves. But naw, it was just a long bumpy journey, same as always. I slept under wagons and up in trees and in the tops of barns, always with my eyes open, always looking, looking, looking.

The fields became woods and the ground got murkier, and it was hard, hard to get a ride.

I took up with a fearful old codger on a mule. He slouched and had a beard that grazed his belly. His eyes were bright gold behind his spectacles and he rode all night, barely faster than I could walk.

“What are you so worried about?” I said.

“The Creepy,” he said, “lives in the swamp, he does. Eats babies right out of their moms’ cribs. Likes to gnaw on dead bones.”

“We ain’t even in the swamp yet,” I said. “We’re miles and miles from any notion of a swamp.”

“Try telling that to the Creepy.”

That night we slept tired and mosquito-bit on the side of the road, and when I woke up my shoes were gone. The old man sat there, chewing on some bread.

“What happened to my shoes?” I said.

“The Creepy,” he said, and spat.

Truth was, I was happy to be on the journey, no matter how bad it was. I’d already run away a dozen times, but I always came back because I knew me leaving would break Mom’s heart. Besides, she needed help in the bakery. I only ever left for a day or so at a time. So now that I’d gone and wrecked everything, I figured Mom was lucky to be quit of me. I was happy I wouldn’t be a nuisance to her anymore. Because let’s face it, I was no good as a baker. In fact, I wasn’t much good at anything. If you accused me of being a bad kid and a no-good son, well, you wouldn’t be too far off the mark.