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  The Pork Larb was sweet and tart and spicy all at the same time. The Red Curry was rich and creamy with big hunks of eggplant in it. But this time it was difficult for him to relax and enjoy the food, not only for the usual reasons of being in a strange place and being with these strange men.

  They didn’t seem to like what he was telling them.

  “What do you mean Moscow doesn’t do fireworks on the Fourth?” This was Smith talking around a huge mouthful of Drunken Noodles, some of them slithering out onto his chin. “What’s with their patriotism?”

  “Pullman does the fireworks,” Michael explained. “It doesn’t seem right to compete with them. They’re less than ten miles away.”

  “So you go over to Pullman for the fireworks?” asked Hank while carving up his noodles into more manageable chunks. “That’ll work.”

  “Well, I don’t. Annie doesn’t, so I don’t. Mom and Dad used to take me sometimes, when I was a kid, but I don’t really like fireworks. They make so much noise.”

  Hank and Smith looked at each other over their noodles. It was the kind of look they’d been doing often, as if they would have liked to go off by themselves and discuss something. But that would have been rude, to just walk away. They seemed to be trying to be good friends.

  “Okay, then what does Moscow do?” Now Hank was using his quiet voice again. “People here must do something for the Fourth.”

  “Sure,” said Michael. “They do the Fat Man Race.”

  “The Fat Man Race,” said Hank.

  “Yeah, they run down Main Street, some fat men.”

  Hank and Smith did that look to each other again.

  “And there’s free ice cream.” Michael wanted to please them. He didn’t understand what was upsetting them about Moscow’s celebration of the Fourth. “Then, in Friendship Square, they read the Declaration of Independence. The whole thing. The mayor and the city council take turns.”

  “That’s it?” Even Hank’s quiet voice was taking on a bit of an edge. “You listen to the Declaration of Independence? How many people show up for that?”

  “Not many. It’s kind of boring.”

  “This fucking town,” said Smith. “Hard to believe they have good Thai food.”

  The look Hank gave him that time seemed to say shut up.

  “Besides,” said Michael, “most people here, what they like to do, and Annie and I like to do it too, so if she’s here, that’s what we do, we go over to Johnson.”

  “Why? What’s at Johnson?” asked Hank.

  “You’ve never heard of the Johnson Parade? You’ve got to see it, it’s great.” And Michael began to feel better, just remembering the last time he got to go.

  “What’s so great about it?” grumbled Smith.

  “You just have to see it. People dress up. Crop dusters fly in formation.”

  “Crop dusters.” This was Smith again, still sounding annoyed.

  “You can walk in it if you want. I’ve walked in it. And thrown candy to the kids. Anybody can.” Now he was feeling much better, talking about the Johnson Parade.

  “I’ve never heard of this Johnson,” said Hank. “But it’s got a big parade? So it’s bigger than Moscow?”

  “No, it’s much smaller. It’s not really a town at all. Probably less than fifty people. Just a few houses out in the wheat fields.”

  “Like I said,” said Smith.

  “But on the Fourth of July people come from all around. Several thousand. Really, it’s a big deal. National Geographic wrote it up. You can see it on YouTube.”

  “Stop your complaining,” Hank said to Smith. “This’ll do.”

  “Does this parade have floats?” asked Smith.

  “Are you kidding?” Michael loved the floats. “My favorite was this little red wagon. Just a little kid’s red wagon.”

  “That’s not going to work,” said Smith.

  “But you had to see it. There was a cardboard box on it, and the box was cut up to look like a cage, and there was a sign on the cage. ‘Beware, Man Eating Chicken.’” And Michael started chuckling just thinking about that float.

  “I’m telling you I can’t use a little red wagon,” growled Smith.

  “With a cardboard box on it,” Michael said.

  “You told us about the fucking box.”

  “But that wasn’t what made it so great, of course. It was the sign.”

  “You told us about the fucking sign!”

  “But in the cage there was just this guy with a bucket of KFC!” Couldn’t Smith see how clever and funny that was? And yet so wonderfully simple! “Get it? ‘Man Eating Chicken,’ and this guy is eating—”

  “We get it,” said Hank. But neither of them was laughing. “Tell us about some of the other floats.”

  “Well, the Man Eating Chicken is my all-time favorite,” Michael insisted, and Smith groaned. “But I also really liked the Giant Palouse Spitting Worm. It was maybe fifty feet long.”

  “You can’t work with something fifty feet long?” said Hank.

  “Some people say they’re endangered,” Michael added. “Those worms.”

  “If they’re fifty feet long, they ought to be endangered,” muttered Smith.

  “No, they grow to just three feet or so. Still, that’s pretty big for a worm.” Sometimes Michael thought Smith might not be too bright. “The worm that was fifty feet long, it wasn’t real. It was only a float. Remember, you asked about floats.”

  “But the thing was fifty feet long?” said Hank.

  “Yeah, I think it was made out of three or four riding lawn mowers hooked together. They stretched a big cloth over all those lawn mowers.”

  “I can’t use a lawn mower either!” said Smith.

  “But they make terrific floats. One time this guy, he mounted a Lazy-Boy on top of a lawn mower—”

  Hank interrupted. “So floats are built on lawn mowers and little kids’ wagons. What else?” Now his quiet voice was beginning to sound a lot like Miss Robertson, who had been Michael’s second grade teacher. Michael felt himself kind of clamming up the way he often had in her room.

  “Tractors. Motorcycles. ATV’s,” he said almost peevishly.

  “How about trucks?”

  “Sure, there are trucks. Like the ‘Bigfoot for President’ one.” And again, Michael felt better, remembering that float. “‘Got Squatch!’” He almost shouted it the way the people on the truck had. “A lot of the floats are sort of political, and you might like what they say. Like the guy who shovels up the horse shit, his wagon says, ‘Campaign Promises,’ and there was this train that said ‘Party Line’—”

  But Hank interrupted again. “Now do you get the picture?” he said to Smith. “You can use whatever you want. All you have to do is put a sign on it like ‘Bigfoot for President.’”

  “But that’s already been done,” Michael felt he had to point out. “You’ve got to come up with something new.”

  “That’s your job. You get to design the float,” said Hank.

  “But let’s build it on a van,” said Smith. “A cargo van. No windows. Can you do that?”

  “A flatbed truck would sure work better,” Michael said. “Or a riding lawn mower.”

  “You get to decorate this van any way you want,” said Hank.

  “We’ll make a float no one will forget,” said Smith.

  “Right. And it’ll be all yours. You’ll be waking people up,” said Hank.

  “The parade is at ten o’clock in the morning. Most people are awake,” Michael said.

  But then he remembered what Hank and Smith meant by waking people up, and he wondered if he could design a float that would do that.

  Chapter 11

  Wes had followed Annie out into the country to a barn. The land was so open here he’d had to park more than a quarter mile away in the hope that maybe she wouldn’t notice the ridiculous metallic blue bimmer. Clearly her band practiced out here so they could play at full volume. He could still hear the music, in fact recognized
some of the songs from her show. The songs were good. He found himself wishing they weren’t so good.

  He had to talk himself through that. She didn’t look like the enemy, but in Iraq you had to watch out for women in burqas. Even little kids would lay roadside bombs.

  She worked for the enemy.

  Then after a half hour or so, rather than have her see him when she left the barn—and also maybe to get out of earshot of her captivating music—he decided to go back to town. He’d put a GPS tracker on her car when it was parked at the record store. He didn’t have to stay with her to know where she was. He thought he might as well take in the strip mall near her house. Maybe there he could “accidentally” run into her again if she stopped to do some shopping on her way home.

  He parked off in a corner of the mall’s lot in a small patch of shade where he had a good view of both entrances, and after a while a black van dropped someone off at the main entrance. This had happened every once in a while. Wes noticed it this time because the man who got out of the van seemed disoriented.

  He was an older man, tall and skinny with a red and gray, Einstein-style fro, and he sort of wandered into the lot, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was at the main entrance where cars were constantly pulling in. One honked and squealed to a stop before maneuvering around him. Another came in too fast to stop and swerved barely missing him. After a third nearly mowed him down, he backed into a slot between two parked cars, but then he started looking around as if searching for his car.

  Now it wasn’t unusual for the elderly to forget where they’d parked their cars. Most of the time they found them. But Wes was getting bored by then and had nothing better to do. He got out of his car and walked over to the man.

  “What were you driving?” he asked.

  The old guy jumped. He wouldn’t look at Wes, and Wes sensed fear.

  “You okay? Maybe you ought to come into the supermarket where it’s air conditioned. Maybe the heat’s got to you.”

  The man looked over at the supermarket. “Oh,” he said with obvious relief.

  “You know where you are now?” said Wes.

  “The supermarket.”

  “Right. And your car? What kind of car do you drive?”

  “I have a Volkswagen bug. 1964. Not the split windshield, but the six volt.” Still no eye contact and more detail than necessary, but the guy seemed to be coming around.

  Wes scanned the parking lot without spotting a classic VW bug though. “Your friends, the people who brought you here, could they have taken you to the wrong strip mall?”

  The man didn’t answer. He just started walking, walking fast. He may have been old and skinny, but clearly he wasn’t frail. He seemed to know where he was going now too, heading off across the lot, but he still wasn’t paying enough attention to the cars. Wes watched as an irate woman rolled down her window and yelled at the guy. Another woman who was racing to nab a parking spot actually bumped him on the hip. Not hard enough to knock him down. In fact, the man only staggered a bit and continued on as if he’d hardly noticed, but Wes couldn’t just watch anymore. He ran over and grabbed the man by the arm.

  The guy froze.

  “I’m sorry.” Wes let go of his arm. “Look, you don’t seem right. You’re going to get hurt. And I’m not sure you’re in condition to drive. Where are you trying to go? I can take you there.”

  “Home. I need to go home. Lisa needs me.”

  “Okay, let’s go home to Lisa. Do you know where that is?”

  The man pointed back behind the mall.

  “Do you have an address on you. Some ID?”

  The guy produced a bent and shabby wallet from his back pocket with a driver’s license. Wes took one look and couldn’t believe his luck.

  The bad news was that Annie was now going to see him in the BMW X6. But maybe that wouldn’t matter anymore. Maybe this was the break that would get her to trust him. Then he wouldn’t be sneaking around trying to follow her anymore, and the bimmer would make him look like either a deeply in debt broker or a successful one.

  “I know right where you live,” he said to Annie’s schizophrenic uncle. “It’s not far from here.” The picture of the uncle in her file was apparently twenty years old and just about as accurate as the one on his driver’s license. Also, no telling who Lisa was, but, “I know your niece.”

  “You’re a friend of Annie’s?” This clearly made the old guy feel much more at ease. He almost looked Wes in the eye.

  “I’m not sure she would put it that way. But I’ve seen her show. I’m a fan.”

  “She’s wonderful, isn’t she?” Now the uncle was willing to follow Wes over to his car.

  “She’s very talented,” Wes agreed as he opened the passenger door. “But that’s a tough road, rock and roll, touring, playing small clubs.”

  “But she’s smart too.” The stringy old guy folded himself into the leather seat. “She knows how to manage her money. She gets by okay.”

  Wes went around to the driver’s side thinking she was smart all right, too smart for her own good. And getting by much too well.

  Her uncle carefully tightened his seat belt over his bony frame. “She’s also kind. I know she’d do better somewhere else. Austin or Nashville or L.A. She stays here for me.”

  Maybe that would have been better, thought Wes as he pulled out of the parking lot. Better for her to get lost in a big city, as grueling and disappointing as that could be for a young musician, than for her to stay here where a couple of old family friends, according to her file, had turned her into their delivery girl.

  “When Mom died, I was so alone,” the uncle said. “My sister lives in Phoenix, you know.”

  Wes did know that. He knew all about this guy, including the amount of his disability checks and every purchase he’d made on eBay. He knew the sister seemed unwilling to put much effort into her brother’s care.

  “I think I’m doing pretty good. But sometimes I don’t, I guess.”

  “You weren’t looking so good today,” said Wes, and he found himself driving slower than he normally would. Because he didn’t want to go through with this?

  “I know someday Annie will have to move on. She can’t stay in Moscow forever.” The old guy kept talking like that, making Wes begin to hope Annie was still at the barn. It no longer seemed right to use her uncle’s confused state of mind to win her trust so he could send her and her dope-making friends to prison.

  Which would leave her uncle all alone again.

  Not his problem, of course. Busting the lab was the right thing to do. But maybe not this way. Then he was pulling up in front of her house, and as soon as the uncle stepped out of the car, Annie came running out.

  Wes still considered driving off. She couldn’t have seen him yet. But he didn’t drive off. He got out and came around the car to her.

  *

  “Are you okay? Where were you?” Annie asked Michael in a rush. He was getting out of an insanely expensive car.

  He said, “I’m okay,” but he kept his head down and avoided her eyes the way he had Friday too, when she’d found him in the basement.

  Then she saw Wes. This insanely expensive car was his? Plus, “What are you doing with my uncle?”

  “What does it look like? I’m bringing him home. You’re not going to thank me? What’s this thing you’ve got about never thanking me?” He was doing his cocky grin again. At least he had the sense to let it fade, maybe because he could tell she was upset. “I found him at the shopping center near here. The strip mall with the supermarket.”

  So now she wasn’t upset. When she’d come home and found Michael gone this time, she had become worried, but, “Guess what, there’s still no reason to thank you,” she said. “You’re just interfering again. He walks over to that strip mall all the time.” He’d probably wanted another book from the used book store.

  “When I found him, he didn’t seem to know how to get home,” said Wes.

  “I got confused,�
�� Michael said. “I’m okay now. Really, I am, but your friend here, he did help me.”

  Her friend? Whatever. “Then sorry. Thanks. Uncle Michael, he’s been . . . different lately.” Which was why she’d worried. “Thanks for bringing him home,” and she turned to go back into the house. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to Wes—about her uncle or bookings or anything else. Absurd as it was in hindsight, it had taken her almost all weekend to get over her last run-in with him.

  “Maybe his friends shouldn’t have dropped him off right at the entrance of the lot,” said Wes.

  “What?” Annie spun back around. “You must be mistaken. He just walked over there.”

  “Could be.” Wes shrugged. “He told me he drove a Volkswagen bug, and I didn’t see one in the lot. But I saw him get out of a black van.”

  “Are you sure?” That didn’t make sense, but Michael was now going up the front steps with his head still down. And he’d been quiet all weekend. But then she’d been quiet all weekend—at least partly due to the unnerving aftereffects of talking to Wes. Which was why she didn’t want to talk to him again!

  But if he’d seen something that might explain what was going on with her uncle . . . Reluctantly she said, “Would you like a beer?”

  Michael went straight to his room. “I’m just tired. Please don’t worry,” he said.

  That left her alone in the kitchen with Wes, and he seemed too big for the kitchen. Just because his shoulders were so much wider than his hips? “Let’s sit outside,” she said.

  The folding outdoor chairs were still in the garage where they’d been stored for the winter. Wes followed her into the garage.

  “There’s the Volkswagen bug,” he said. “Guess he did walk to the shopping mall. And hey, nice bike.” He started circling the KTM.

  Clearly he knew what he was looking at, and it was the sort of bike enthusiasts could talk about for hours. But Annie hadn’t invited him in to talk about motorcycles. She just said, “I like it,” grabbed a couple of lawn chairs and headed for the backyard.

  Soon he came out of the garage, and once he was settled into one of the chairs, she said, “So what exactly did you see?”