Three Miles Past Read Online Free Page B

leather vest behind the counter of the pawnshop ratcheted his head around to the sound, then up the hood to William.
    William looked away, pursed his lips. Backed out.
    The paper had said they had camper shells, but it was just to get the hunters in, sell them a gun. William didn’t need a gun , though. He used his blinker to get in front of a blue El Camino. What he needed was a camper shell. Because if he didn’t get one, he would be back to tarps, and wouldn’t be able to drive on the interstate anymore, because the truckers would see, radio ahead.
    Because because because.
    William had three hundred dollars in his pocket, part of it an advance on his paycheck, part left over from selling the Ford.
    That was another reason he was leaving Houston: every day, he had to see his old truck across the road, cocked at an angle against the chain link, by the parts cars.
    Finally, in the classifieds, William found a camper shell. It was supposed to be north of town, and east. Tomball, in the crotch of I-10 and I-45. He had to call twice for directions, then listen for real the second time. Each time, the man who answered the phone thought William was calling about a help wanted ad, somebody to replace his son. One hour later—eight miles—William turned up the long driveway of the farm house, slowed alongside the camper shell. It was on an old Gentleman Jim, had been painted black and gold to match the truck, then had the paint baked on.
    William stepped out, ran his hand over the warm fiberglass then looked at his palm. It was glittering. Past it, the old man, picking his way through all the other junked cars. He held his hand out, looked over William’s shoulder at his Chevy. It was gold and white, the colors of some oil company from West Texas.
    The old man nodded.
    “It matches,” he said. “The gold, right?”
    The old man was sixty-eight, maybe seventy-four. A house twice as old as him, at the end of a series of dirt roads that were better than any fence. Most of the land around the house was weeds, some of it on the downslope spongy with swampwater, thick with frogs.
    William looked to the Gentleman Jim then raised one cheek, narrowing that eye. He shook his head no.
    “You don’t think it’ll fit,” the old man said. “It will.”
    “I know,” William said. “But—the paint, I mean. You can’t just spray fiberglass yourself.”
    The old man agreed.
    “Seventy then,” he said, no eye contact.
    William shrugged, looked to the shell again. The ad in the paper had an OBO after the $100 . “I don’t know,” he said. Overhead, one small airplane whined just as another—yellow—broke from the line of trees down the hill from the man’s house.
    William flinched backwards, stumbled into the grass.
    The old man looked to the plane to let William avoid the embarrassment of trying to stand as if nothing had happened.
    “Maniacs,” he said. “There should be a law.”
    It was a cropduster. The racks of nozzles, the bitter smell in the air, then, just all at once, no smell at all. William knew the herbicide had numbed his nose. He still couldn’t talk.
    “Fifty,” the old man said, toeing the ground.
    William opened the envelope from his shirt pocket, counted out the three bills, and then the old man insisted on a receipt, was gone for ten minutes to the house, for pen and paper.
    William ducked again the next time the plane came, but this time saw a roll of toilet paper trail down from it. It was how the pilots flew when they didn’t have a spotter—how they marked their passes.
    “Maniac,” William said to the plane, low, smiling, then got the wrenches and pliers and flat-head from his truck, started getting the camper ready to move off the Gentleman Jim.
    When the old man came back with his receipt the Sold To part was blank. William wrote in Bill Dozier then laid on his back in the bed of the Gentleman Jim, placed the soles of his boots against the underside of the camper shell. At first, pushing