pablo woke up.
he had fallen asleep in the back seat of deano’s packard.
he sat up. the car had stopped. it was gray and overcast outside. a light rain - or was it snow? - was falling.
deano was mumbling to himself in the front seat, staring at the car’s small, cracked location tracking screen.
pablo did not say anything, not wanting to annoy deano, but deano, as if sensing pablo’s question , said aloud -
“i don’t know where we are.”
pablo did not say anything.
“the screen says we are in east st louis. but we are not in east st louis,” deano said.
pablo looked out the window. they seemed to be on a country road. there were no houses or buildings in sight. pablo had never seen a country road before, except in a comic book or on tv.
pablo had a few suggestions, like, “why don’t we just move, and we will get somewhere?” or “maybe we could get out of the car and look around?” but he was afraid to say anything to deano, who might not take kindly to suggestions from a little kid.
“this is not east st louis,” deano repeated. the snow - it was definitely snow now - though just a few flakes drifting down.
“do you want me to get out?” pablo asked.
“get out? for what?” deano asked.
“just look around. maybe there is a house around here somewhere. or a farm.” in the horror comics pablo read the “country” was always filled with old abandoned farmhouses and mansions. and the farmhouses and mansions were inhabited by mad scientists or zombies or cannibals.
deano just grunted. then, waking from his reverie, he started the car up, and started driving down the “country road” which did not seem wide enough for one vehicle to pass another.
they drove about half a mile. the sky got a little darker and pablo switched his lights on.
they came around a bend in the road and suddenly another vehicle was in front of them.
deano slammed on the brakes. the other vehicle, which looked like a fairly large pickup truck, also stopped. there were about twenty yards of dirt road between the two vehicles.
two men got slowly out of the front seat of the pickup.
pablo did not like their looks. they looked like twins. they wore wide brimmed straw hats with conical crowns, and bib overalls, and they looked like they weighed about three hundred pounds each.
one of the twins came up and looked in the window at deano.
“hello, there,” deano said. “we are sure glad to see you.”
“you think so?” the twin growled. “who might you be?”
“is this east st louis?’ deano asked. “we are trying to get to east st louis.”
“this is east st louis,” the twin said.
“it is? can you tell me how to get to renaldo johnson’s gym on main street?”
“never heard of it.”
the other twin spoke up from behind the first one’s shoulder. “i think we have a mis-communication here. are you looking for east st louis illinois, friend?”
“yes, that’s right,” deano said. “renaldo johnson’s gym on main street.”
“i hate to break your heart, but this ain’t east st louis, illinois, it is east st louis, heartland territory a-2 . you are in the wrong place altogether.”
“oh,” deano said. “i guess that explains everything.”
“don’t explain nothing ,” the first twin said. “don’t explain why you be going to east st louis illinois. that’s gangster country.”
“i don’t know about that,” deano said.
pablo had not spoken the whole time and shrank back in the back seat. he looked out the window.
two more men had gotten out of the bed of the pickup truck and were approaching the car. they looked just like the first two. now they were quadruplets!
“are you a gangster?” the first twin said to deano. “you look like a gangster, from chicago or cicero. driving this here packard, that’s a gangster car.”
deano tried to laugh. “you see any machine guns attached to it?”
“you got a smart mouth, don’t you, gangster boy?’ the twin pulled the door of the packard open.
the first two twins reached in and hauled deano out of the car. the second pair of twins whooped and laughed. the first pair each had one of deano’s arms and dragged him back to the pickup truck.
one of the second pair took a pistol out of the big pocket of his coveralls and shot out the tires of the packard.
with deano in the back of the truck with the second pair, the first pair got back in the cab.
the truck backed up, turned around and disappeared down the darkening road.
they had seemed to take no notice of pablo at all. had they even seen him?
after a few minutes, pablo got out of the packard and started walking.
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