Travis just nodded his approval.
“Anything in particular?”
“It’s your car.”
Yes, it was. His favorite station was classic rock. He cranked up the volume and was soon thumping the steering wheel and tapping his left foot and mouthing the words. The noise cleared his brain, but he was still stunned by how quickly he had almost collapsed.
Only eleven hours to go. He thought of Charles Lindbergh and his solo flight to Paris. Thirty-three and a half straight hours, with no sleep the night before he took off from New York. Lindbergh later wrote that he was awake for sixty straight hours. Keith’s brother was a pilot and loved to tell stories.
He thought about his brother, his sister, and his parents, and when he began to nod off, he said, “How many brothers and sisters do you have, Travis?”
Talk to me, Travis. Anything to keep me awake. You can’t help with the driving, because you have no license. You have no insurance. You’re not touching this wheel, so come on, Travis, help me out here before we crash.
“I don’t know,” Travis said, after the obligatory period of contemplation.
The answer did more to lift the fog than anything by Springsteen or Dylan. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
A slight tic. Travis had now shifted his gaze from the side window to the windshield. “Well,” he said, then paused. “Not long after I was born, my father left my mother. Never saw him again. My mother took up with a man named Darrell, and since he was the first man I ever remembered, I just figured Darrell was my father. My mother told me he was my father. I called him Dad. I had an older brother and he called him Dad. Darrell was okay, never beat me or anything, but he had a brother who abused me. When they took me to court the first time—I think I was twelve—I realized that Darrell was not my real father. That really hurt. I was crushed. Then Darrell disappeared.”
The response, like many of Boyette’s, raised more mysteries than it solved. It also served to kick Keith’s brain into high gear. He was suddenly wide-awake. And he was determined to unravel this psycho. What else was there to do for the next half day? They were in his car. He could ask anything he wanted.
“So you have one brother.”
“There’s more. My father, the real one, ran off to Florida and took up with another woman. They had a houseful of kids, so I guess I have outside brothers and sisters. And there was always this rumor that my mother had given birth to a child before she married my father. You ask how many. Pick a number, Pastor.”
“How many are you in contact with?”
“I wouldn’t call it contact, but I’ve written some letters to my brother. He’s in Illinois. In prison.”
What a surprise. “Why is he in prison?”
“Same reason everybody else is in prison. Drugs and booze. He needed cash for his habit, so he broke into a house, wrong one, ended up beating a man.”
“Does he write back?”
“Sometimes. He’ll never get out.”
“Was he abused?”
“No, he was older, and my uncle left him alone, far as I know. We never talked about it.”
“This was Darrell’s brother?”
“Yes.”
“So, he wasn’t really your uncle?”
“I thought he was. Why are you asking so many questions, Pastor?”
“I’m trying to pass the time, Travis, and I’m trying to stay awake. Since I met you Monday morning, I have slept very little. I’m exhausted, and we have a long way to go.”
“I don’t like all these questions.”
“Well, what exactly do you think you’re about to hear in Texas? We show up, you claim to be the real murderer, and then you announce that you really don’t like questions. Come on, Travis.”
Several miles passed without a word. Travis stared to his right, at nothing but the darkness, and lightly tapped his cane with his fingertips. He had shown no signs of severe headaches for at least an hour. Keith glanced at the speedometer and realized he was doing eighty, ten over, enough for a ticket anywhere in Kansas. He slowed down and, to keep his mind going, played out the scene in which a state trooper pulled him over, checked his ID, checked Boyette’s, then called for backup. A fleeing felon. A wayward Lutheran minister aiding the fleeing felon. Blue lights all over the road. Handcuffs. A night in jail, maybe in the same cell with his friend, a man who wouldn’t be the least bit bothered by another night behind bars. What would Keith tell his boys?
He began to nod again. There was a phone call he had to make, and there was no good time to make it. The call was guaranteed to engage his mind at such a level that sleep would be forgotten momentarily. He removed his cell phone from his pocket and speed-dialed Matthew Burns. It was almost 2:00 a.m. Evidently, Matthew was a sound sleeper. It took eight rings to rouse him.
“This better be good,” he growled.
“Good morning, Matthew. Sleep well?”
“Fine, Father. Why the hell are you calling me?”
“Watch your language, son. Look, I’m on the road headed for Texas, traveling with a man named Travis Boyette, a nice gentleman who visited our church last Sunday. You may have seen him. Walks with a cane. Anyway, Travis here has a confession to make to the authorities in Texas, a small town called Slone, and we’re dashing off to stop an execution.”
Matthew’s voice cleared quickly. “Have you lost your mind, Keith? You’ve got that guy in the car?”
“Oh yes, left Topeka about an hour ago. The reason I’m calling, Matt, is to ask for your help.”
“I’ll give you some help, Keith. Free advice. Turn that damned car around and get back here.”
“Thanks, Matt, but look, in a few hours I’ll need you to make a couple of phone calls to Slone, Texas.”
“What does Dana say about this?”
“Fine, fine. I’ll need you to call the police, the prosecutor, and maybe a defense lawyer. I’ll be calling them too, Matt, but since you’re a prosecutor, they might listen to you.”
“Are you still in Kansas?”
“Yes, I-35.”
“Don’t cross the state line, Keith. Please.”
“Well, that might make it rather difficult to get to Texas, don’t you think?”
“Don’t cross the state line!”
“Get some sleep. I’ll call you back around six, and we’ll start working the phones, okay?”
Keith closed his phone, punched voice mail, and waited. Ten seconds later it buzzed. Matthew was calling back.
They were through Emporia and bearing down on Wichita.
———
Nothing prompted the narrative. Perhaps Boyette was getting sleepy himself, or maybe he was just bored. But the more he talked, the more Keith realized he was listening to the twisted autobiography of a dying man, one who knew no sense could be made of his life, but wanted to try anyway.
“Darrell’s brother, we called him Uncle Chett, would take me fishing, that was what he told my parents. Never caught the first fish, never wet the first hook. We’d go to his little house out in the country, had a pond out back, and that’s where all the fish were supposed to be. Never made it that far. He’d give me a cigarette, let me taste his beer. At first I didn’t know what he was doing. Had no idea. I was just a kid, eight years old. I was too scared to move, to fight back. I remember how bad it hurt. He had all sorts of kiddie porn, magazines and movies, sick stuff he was generous enough to share with me. You cram all that garbage into the head of a little boy, and before long he sort of accepts it. I thought, well, maybe this is what kids do. Maybe this is what adults do to kids. It looked legitimate and normal. He wasn’t mean to me; in fact, he bought me ice cream and pizza—anything I wanted. After each fishing trip, he would drive me home, and right before we’d get to my house, he would get real serious, sort of mean and threatening. He would tell me that it was important for me to keep our little secret. Some things are private. He kept a gun in his truck, a shiny pistol. Later, he would show me how to use it. But at first, he would take it out and place it on the seat, then explain that he loved his secrets, and if they were ever revealed, then he would be forced to hurt someone. Even me. If I told anyone, he would be forced to kill me, and then kill whomever I told, and that included Darrell and my mother. It was very effective. I never told anyone.