Innocent on the run. Part 24.

Keeping to the back streets, Ricky started walking. He had no idea where he was going but he had to get as much distance between himself and the docks as he could. Luckily there were a lot of people around and he was dressed pretty much the same as everyone else. After he'd been walking for an hour he went in to a burger bar and ordered Coca Cola and a sandwich. Sitting at one of the tables he tried to figure out what to do. He couldn't go to Chuck's house, even if he could find it again, as the police were bound to question Al. My God, he thought, what if they arrest Al as an accessory ! But he quickly rejected that idea. It wasn't Al's fault that he'd run away in a panic. No, the only thing he could think of was to get to another port and try to find a ship going to the U.K. Maybe he could work his passage, or even stow away. He knew the places to hide on a ship, the covered lifeboats, or the chain locker, plenty of places where he wouldn't be discovered until the ship was at sea. First, he had to find out where he was, and which direction to head in, so he drank the last of his coke and went out into the street. His headache had gone now, which was a blessing, and he headed roughly west, keeping the sun on his left. In another hour it would be midday and the sun would be scorching, directly overhead. It was hot walking so he slowed his pace and tried to keep in the shade. After walking for half an hour he saw a bus station and went in to the cool interior to look around for a map. There were maps along the length of one wall. Route maps around Port Arthur, with lists of bus numbers and times underneath, bus numbers for intercity connections, and right at the end a map of Texas. If he continued going West, he would reach Houston, a very large city, so he decided that this would be a good idea. He could get lost in the crowds of a city. Transport was the problem ! It looked to be about a hundred miles to Houston, but he didn't want to enquire at the booking office for a ticket, as the police would be bound to ask if an English kid had enquired about fares. He had three dollars in his pocket, which probably wouldn't take him very far. Leaving the bus station he carried on walking West, until he saw a sign for a Truck Stop Diner on the right hand side of the road. Maybe he could hitch a lift from one of the drivers. As he approached the car park of the diner, he could see a police patrol car with a cop sat in the driver's seat, pulled up outside it. Luckily the cop had his back to Ricky, so he ducked into a telephone booth on the pavement, and watched the car from the window. After about five minutes, another cop came out of the diner carrying some paper bags and got into the car. The driver turned in a wide circle and came out on to the road. Ricky turned his back to them, grabbed the phone and held it to his ear. When they'd gone, he breathed a sigh of relief and carried on walking to the car park. There were plenty of trucks in the car park, huge vehicles with dozens of enormous wheels, some with extra trailers towing behind. He waited until a driver came out, and crossed to meet him. 'Can you give me a lift, please,' he asked. The driver was a big man with a large belly stuck out in front of him. Without looking at Ricky, he snarled, 'Beat it,' out of the corner of his mouth and climbed into his cab. The next driver out was a little wizened guy, and when Ricky asked him the same question, he said, ' Which way you headed, kid?' ‘To Houston.' ‘Sorry, kid. I'm going East.' Ricky tried two more drivers, but had no luck. One didn't answer him and the other just shook his head. He was about to give up and start walking again when a voice said, 'No luck, kid?' He turned and saw a big man with a baseball cap on, and a grin on his face. 'No, I was just about to give up and start walking.' 'Where you headed?' 'Houston.' 'I'm going that way, come on.' He beckoned Ricky over with his head, and made his way over to a truck. Ricky climbed up the side of the truck on the steel steps fixed to the side. He missed his footing on one step in his eagerness to get in, and slipped, wrenching his arms as he took the strain. 'Damn,' he muttered as he scrambled in to the cab. It was enormous, and they were so high up that he could look over the flat roofed diner and see into the next car park. The driver started up the engine and the truck rolled forwards. It was quiet inside the cab with just a growl from the engine, and he pulled out on to the road and headed for Houston. 'Where you from, kid.' 'England.' 'Yeah, I guessed you weren't from these parts. You on vacation over here.' 'Yes, I've been doing some work, here and there.' 'What do you think of the States?' Ricky gave him the stock answer that he knew all Americans liked to hear. 'It's a great country.' 'It sure is ! The greatest country in the world. What part of England you from?' 'Wales. It's a little country to the West of England.' 'Hell, I know where Wales is. I was stationed in England in the war. In Suffolk, over on the East coast. My wife is English! We married over there and she came back to the States with me, after the war.' 'Where do you live now?' Ricky asked. 'Houma, Louisiana. A couple of hundred miles back that way.' He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. 'I’m a Cajun !' 'A what?' 'A Cajun. We speak our own form of French, and have our own culture. You see, our people were French and used to live in Acadia in Nova Scotia, way up on the Canadian side, but the English drove us out of our homes back in 1755, and the people took to their boats and ended up in Louisiana. A lot of us Cajuns live in the swamps, making a living fishing in the bijous, catching alligators and hunting. Cajun is a shortened version of Acadian.' 'There's alligators in the swamps, aren't there?' 'You bet there are. Millions of them. If I had a dollar for every 'gator I'd caught, I wouldn't be driving this truck.' 'How do you catch them ?' 'Well, there's lots of different ways. My way is to lasso the tail first, then when the head comes around to see what's going on, you lasso that as well. Then you draw the ropes together, tie the jaws up nice and tight and tie the head to the tail. That way you can roll them home like a car tyre!' 'I see,' Ricky said, doubtfully. The driver smiled to himself ! 'What do you do with them, once you've caught them.' 'Well, Sir, I like a nice steak off a 'gator. That's always tasty, and then you cure the skin and make shoes and handbags, and pretty things like that for your wife and family. The eggs are tasty as well, but you got to be careful. If you get one that's near to hatchin' out, and you boil it up, and crack it open, a little 'gator can come crawling out.' Ricky gagged, 'Oh, my God.' he groaned. The driver roared with laughter! 'DAMN, I had you going for a while there,' he shouted. Ricky laughed! 'I knew you must be joking.' he said. 'You knew? You knew, shit,' he laughed. 'There's people make a living out of telling lies in the States. They entertain on the stage with their stories, and they have competitions to see who can tell the biggest lies. 'You ought to enter. You might win.' Ricky told him. 'Not me, ' he replied. 'I'm only an amateur.' They were driving through miles and miles of flat, featureless land. The fields on either side of them stretched to the horizon, with miles of wheat, as far as the eye could see. Working across some of the fields were six combine harvesters, in line abreast, cutting and gathering the wheat in one end before spewing it out the other, tied in bundles. The road in front of them stretched to infinity, seeming to narrow towards the furthest point. It was a huge country, and this was just one state. 'Where you going to in Houston ?' the driver asked. 'Nowhere in particular, any place I can find work.' 'What kind of work can you do?' 'Painting, labouring, anything that comes up. I'm pretty good at painting, I've had a lot of experience.' 'Well, I'll drop you on the approaches to the city before I turn off, I don't go into the city itself.' 'Thanks, that'll be great!' The truck sped on towards Houston, along the arrow straight highway. There was very little traffic apart from the truck, just the occasional car or other juggernaught. Rick's driver always acknowledged the other truck drivers with a blast on the truck's wind horn. The first time Ricky heard it, he nearly jumped out of his skin, it was so loud. The driver roared with laughter, and did it once again, watching for his reaction, but he was used to it now and he wasn't caught out. They could see the skyline of Houston from miles away. Enormous skyscrapers thrusting themselves up from the ground, as if attempting to reach the sky. To Ricky they looked like the sets of bar graphs that he'd had to draw in school, different sized rectangles placed on end. As they approached the city outskirts, the scenery changed from wheat and cotton fields to factory buildings and oil wells. The oil was pumped out of the ground by huge reciprocating pumps, which looked like a bird with an enormous neck, pecking at the ground, in a slow, even, up and down movement. Before they reached the city limits, the driver turned off on to a slip road which linked up with the road he wanted to use to skirt the city. He pulled to a stop with a great hissing of brakes and said, 'This is it, kid. End of the road.' Ricky opened the door, and said, 'Thanks very much for the lift,' and offered his hand. The driver shook it and said, 'You take care now,' as Ricky climbed down to the ground. The truck pulled away and Ricky started walking down the slip road, to get off the highway before any police car came along. They would be bound to stop a hitch hiker, and he hurried to get into a built up area where he wouldn't be conspicuous. Copyright Deric Barry 2005.