John Gilstrap - Nathan’s Run

A guy could only ignore his stomach for so long, though. He was getting bored with the radio anyway, so he switched it off with an hour still left in The Bitch’s time slot and headed downstairs, where he launched a search-and-destroy mission looking for something to eat. The pantry proved to be as empty as the refrigerator had been the night before, but a quick look in the mud room revealed a freezer full of his favorite foods. Once he realized that the pizza was too big for the microwave, he followed the directions on the back of the box and cooked it in the oven. While he waited the required twelve to sixteen minutes, he mixed a vat of orange juice from frozen concentrate. He couldn’t find a pitcher, so he used a stew pot.

Once lunch was ready, Nathan camped out on the floor of the family room, in front of a round coffee table. The remote control he found for the entertainment center looked like something invented. by NASA, with blue, green, red and yellow buttons. He pushed buttons at random until the big screen popped to life. None of the cable cartoons he liked were on, so he settled for a Star Trek rerun. Those guys were so lame. By, the time the twenty-third century came around, you’d think people would wear something more hip than high-heeled boots and skin-tight polyester. Captain Kirk was in the process of being beaten up—with his shirt off, of course, while everyone else was fully clothed. Nathan wondered with mild amusement why anyone would agree to be the guest star. Sure as hell, when you got beamed down with the regulars, you were doomed.

At the bottom-of-the-hour break, Nathan saw his face again on the screen—from a fuzzy video picture he hadn’t seen before—with a teaser voice-over for the News at Noon. Being famous was getting to be pretty cool. He wasn’t afraid anymore; at least not the same way he had been. He wasn’t sure where that shot of emotion on the telephone had come from, but he still hated himself for nearly breaking down. He still had friends, after all—somewhere. There was Jacob Protsky, his best friend and soccer teammate, and David Harrellson, who’d shared every classroom with Nathan since first grade. They’d undoubtedly be paying attention to all of this, and a guy had to be careful about his reputation.

Nathan thought about Huck Finn—not the one in the book, which was too boring for him to finish, but the one in the movies. When Huck was about his age, he outsmarted everybody, and got away from the law. Even helped people along the way. That’s what Nathan was going to do. He was going to live an adventure, moving from house to house, maybe sometimes camping out in the woods. Problem was, Huck had Jim to talk to and help him figure out his problems. Much as Nathan hated to admit it, grown-ups just knew more about certain things that he really needed help with. Like coming up with a plan. Huck and Jim had a plan. They used the cover of night to raft upstream to the free states, where Jim could find his family and Huck could start a new life.

What am I going to do?

He knew that his first priority should be putting distance between himself and the JDC, and though he had no real concept of where he was, he figured he couldn’t be more than a mile or two from where he started. That put him in the hottest part of the search area. The morning news shows had shown pictures of search parties and roadblocks, all looking for him. The reporter had even gone so far as to say that there were no leads as to his whereabouts. He figured, then, that he’d made a “clean getaway,” as they said in the movies. Now he just had to work out the next step.

Huck was little help to him here. Nathan had no raft; hell, there wasn’t even a river. And Huck didn’t have to worry about everybody in the country seeing his picture on TV and knowing what he looked like. He also didn’t have to worry about police cars and radios and faxes and radar and all the other stuff the cops had today just to make your life miserable.

On the other hand, Huck didn’t have access to those things either, did he? In one morning, Nathan had heard people change their minds about him, just because he talked on the radio. If he could change minds with a single call, what could he do with more calls? He was already the lead story on all the news shows, but television was still portraying him as the bad guy. He had to figure out a way to switch that around. He was a decent guy who’d gotten into trouble. He’d killed only to protect himself. If he could get the opportunity to tell the truth often enough, then people might start believing him. Television commercials did the same thing all the time, didn’t they? If people could accept what a make-believe psychic said, they had to believe his story, didn’t they? It was the truth, after all. All he had to do was call every radio station in the state and tell them his story.

Shit! Cops can trace phone calls!

Sure, The Bitch said they couldn’t trace the calls to her show, but what about the others?

Maybe The Bitch was wrong and the cops were outside waiting for him right now. Maybe there were rules about breaking down the doors to houses this nice. A quick and cautious check of the street from behind the small seam in the living room drapes out front revealed just a normal, empty summer street. Not even any kids running around. He figured that in a neighborhood like this everybody went away to day camp in the summer. That’s what he used to do.

So The Bitch was right after all—at least so far. And if she was wrong and cops were still on the way, well, that wasn’t something he could worry about. But he decided to cancel his planned telephone blitz. No sense taking unnecessary chances.

So now there was the matter of distance. Walking wouldn’t do. Not only was it too slow, but the news had said something about dogs trying to sniff him down. There had to be another solution.

If I could only drive.

Wait a minute! Why couldn’t he drive? Driving Uncle Mark’s pickup truck was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. And it wasn’t so long ago that Nathan had driven Granddad’s ancient pickup truck around the fun farm in Gainesville. Purchased for a song in 1979, the eighteen-acre spread with its squalid little ranch house and collapsing barn had served as a place for Granddad to play farmer during his retirement years. Nathan loved going out there, mostly for the well-stocked ponds, but also for the old standard-shift ’68 Ford, which he was allowed to drive anywhere on the property so long as he stayed away from the water and the buildings. Granddad had even fashioned some detachable wooden blocks so he could reach the pedals.

After Granddad died, Nathan found out that the fun farm would be his one day, but that he couldn’t visit the place anymore because some lawyer in New York had rented it to somebody who turned it into a bowling alley. Nathan didn’t even like bowling.

A year ago, Nathan had made it nearly twenty-five miles in Uncle Mark’s truck before the cop pulled him over, and that was in the middle of the day when everybody noticed a kid driving a car. He smiled as he remembered dragging Uncle Mark’s prized vehicle along fifty feet of guardrail and into a maple tree before surrendering to the police. He realized that it was this final act of defiance which likely got him thrown into Juvey, but he still thought it was funny.

If he could do his traveling at night and avoid the major roads with their roadblocks, and if he could keep the car on the road, he might just be able to drive himself right out of the country!

Like everything else in this palace, the garage was huge. Closest to the door from the kitchen was a blank space, the home for the vehicle currently in use by the family. Dry stains on the concrete floor told the story of a once-leaky transmission. In the middle slot, there stood a gleaming fiberglass speedboat with twin Evinrude motors, mounted securely on a trailer.