The Boy Who Earned the Campout

I turned off the engine at the end of the drive, fifty yards back. The motor ticked as it cooled.

“Stay here,” Jonah said.

“I’m staying.”

He got out. I watched him go up the gravel, his hitch showing in the work light, until he was small. He stopped at the barn door. I saw Orrin look up from the bench. I saw him put the rag down very slowly, as if it might go off.

I could not hear them. For twenty minutes I made up every word, and I was wrong about most of them.

I saw Jonah take the card from his pocket and hold it out. I saw Orrin wipe his hand on his coat and take it. He read it under the work light, and he read it again, and then he turned it over, as if there might be something more on the back. There was a stool by the bench. He pointed at it. Jonah did not sit. He stood with his hands at his sides, and he said something that took a while, and Orrin listened with the card in his fingers, not saying a word.

Once Orrin put his hand flat over the bottom half of his face and held it there. Then he took it away. That was the only moment in twenty-one minutes that I thought I should get out of the car, and I did not.

When Jonah walked back down the drive, Orrin came after him as far as the barn door and stood there, and he lifted one hand, once. Jonah lifted his. Then Jonah got into the passenger seat and shut the door, and for a minute he said nothing, and neither did I.

“He read it twice,” he said.

“I saw.”

“He asked me who Gunnar was. I said my friend. He said, is he somebody who’d actually keep up with you, or is he somebody who’d get bored. I said he’s slow too, in math, so he’d get it.” Jonah almost laughed. “I don’t think that was the answer he wanted.”

“What else?”

“He told me about Bryce Holloway.”

“I know about that.”

“I know you do. Mr. Brinker told me too, I guess, because Mr. Gannon said, I expect you’ve heard.” Jonah looked out the windshield at the barn. “I told him I’m not Bryce. I said Bryce walked off the trail. I said I don’t walk off. I said I can’t hear where everybody else is on the left side, so I stay where I can see them. I told him that’s why I’m usually in the back, and it’s on purpose.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said, that’s the problem. If you’re in the back, no one can see you.” Jonah thought it through the way he thinks through everything. “So I said, then put somebody behind me. And a tap on my shoulder. And a red flashlight so I can look back without blinding anybody. That’s on the card.”