As we sped south on the blacktop, I lay on some of our things in the back of the pickup and wouldn’t talk to anyone. Not even Junie’s cute tricks could get me out of my blue funk. I kept thinking of James back at the store. Of course, I’d heard the stories about him. How he didn’t like sports or hunting or roughhousing. And how he looked at guys in a way that made them queasy.
He used to hang around our place all the time, but lately my mom didn’t even try to hide the way she felt about him. When my old man, Woodrow—his friends and drinking buddies called him Woodie—came home, he’d chase James off by shouting curses and slinging rocks at him. James wouldn’t show his face if the pickup was parked beside the house.
We pulled off into a roadside park sometime before nightfall and ate some o
