Warm wind pushes against Hunter’s face. Giving the kid a lift reminds Hunter of his father helping a runaway girl. She was fed up with her home life. Her mother had died of cancer. Her father worked the barges, was never home. He was trying to provide. The girl stayed with her older sister, her boyfriend, and their crying newborn. But she hated the small, cramped living conditions. So she’d decided to run away, fend for herself. Hitchhiking across the USA. When Hunter’s father gave her a lift, she told her story. She was hungry. Hank had bought her supper. Paid for a separate hotel room. And over the days, he had talked her into returning home. Gave her a lift on his way back to Indiana. He convinced her that the road was no place for a sixteen-year-old. The hunger she had already experienced was nothing compared to what awaited if she stayed in the wind. The world would chew her up and spit her out.

Hunter had to wonder if maybe it was a half sister he never knew about.

Tapping Hunter’s shoulder, Cory yells in his ear, “Turn down the next dirt road.”

Slowing down, hanging a left down a wide dirt track liberally strewn with loose rock. Everything is flat, with nary a tree or bush. Not even grass—just scraggly purple nightshades growing on bare dirt. They roll up to a frame house with a corrugated metal roof. Some boards are graying, others chipped and showing white. Windows are boarded up or covered with cardboard. An air conditioner hangs from a window, dripping moisture, creating a dark spot on the dead earth. Electricity runs from a pole off away from the house. Rusted steel tanks lay about the yard, held in reserve for some unknown or forgotten purpose. A camper stands on legs off to the side of the house. In the distance, a school bus with blown-out tires sits on its axles, surrounded by four or five cars that look beyond any hope of repair.

Downshifting and throttling down, they make less noise—just a low, soft rumble. Everything in sight is glossed and smudged with the aura of defeat. And Hunter wonders what he could possibly do to help this kid living in such squalor and despair. They come to a stop, and Cory gets off the bike. “Appreciate the lift.”

Hunter doesn’t want to leave him here. “You’re welcome. Parents home?”

Cory looks nervous as a cat in a dog pound. “Yeah. Dad’s inside.”

Shutting his bike off, Hunter glances at Itch, asks Cory, “Mind if we come in?”

“I don’t know,” Cory hedges. “He might be sleeping or something. Not fond of strangers.”

“He don’t mind if you’re hitchhiking?”