The Lanyard Read Online Free Page A

tighter each day for no reason he could see or understand.
    "Did you actually think we'd just leave your mother?"
    "Well where is she?"
    "Back at the house..."
    "But why?"
    "Because... "
    "Where are we going then?"
    "That way," he said, pointing out of the window ahead, towards the mountains.
    " Where ?"
    "I just wanted us to get away for a few days, you know? Give her a break. Give us a break. She's been tired of late..."
    "Of what?"
    "Just tired... It's a chance for us, so that we can just be together too..."
    "She didn't want to come?"
    He laughed.
    "No. It's not like that."
    "Oh?"
    "I thought it was better if it was just us."
    "Why?"
    "You'll see."
    He glanced across at something out of the right side of the car, but the boy didn't register what it was.
    "When I was your age my Dad did this for me, you know, took me out to the country. We made a camp, we fished, we built a lousy fire that just smoked all night and... yeah, we almost froze. But it was good. I loved it, even if I complained all the way there t--"
    "I'm not complaining."
    "I know, I know. But I did."
    He pulled down the driver's side sun visor, even though there was no sun. Then he pushed it up again.
    "Can we fish?" the boy said.
    "I guess... If we can find a spot... You brought your line?"
    The boy shook his head, then he smiled. He glanced over to where scores of abandoned cars made a running tally at the side of the roads.
    "Did people really just leave them like that?"
    "They must have."
    "But why?"
    "Ran out of fuel, didn't want to drive anymore? Your guess is as good as mine."
    "But you were there, weren't you?"
    The boy pushed his face up on the glass. Some of the vehicles were skeletons, burned free of their wheels and seats, no sense of the type of car they once were, as if the metal and the colour that must have turned to smoke were just like skin, just like corpses out to rot. After a few more yards the cars vanished again, peeling away to leave long stretches of scrubland without anything of note, where the road relaxed and widened too, and he could see clean out beyond the brown metal barrier that had become a constant presence, away to hills that once more seemed to glide, allowing his eyes to roll along the top of them like a pair of marbles along a track, bumping over rocks feathered with white, down many gentle valleys that curved like a river turned on its side. Not a house in sight anywhere. And then again, the snap of a fresh collection of cars, this time turned into a circle, stacked up.
    "They'll get cleaned up someday," his father said.
    The boy turned back towards him, with a serious look.
    "Did Mom leave us?"
    "No!" he took his hands off the wheel and held them open. The car began to drift until he grabbed it again and made an attempt at easing it back into the old line. "What makes you say that?"
    "I heard what she said about me, the other day."
    "The other day?"
    "Yeah."
    "What did she say?"
    "She said there's something wrong with me."
    "She did not."
    "She did."
    "What?"
    "That I can't look at people."
    "Oh, that."
    "It's true, isn't it?"
    "...she's just concerned, that's all."
    "So it is true?" he turned to face his father, but he continued to stare at the road. Then he shifted in his seat as if he could feel the burn of the glare.
    "What?" he said, taking his hands off the wheel again.
    "Is it true that I can't look at people?"
    "You are looking at me now, aren't you?"
    "I know, but... Ah just forget it."
    The boy's head dropped and even while staring into his lap he could tell that his father turned away from him, as if it was easier to focus on the mountains than face another person. Maybe that was the real lure of driving.
    "I don't know what's best to say to you. It's just not something I've experienced. I know you must find it tough. It's not your fault."
    "See, there is something..."
    "I'm not saying that."
    "I just can't help it,"
    "I know. But you know what there was a book about it at the last house. That's why your