out the way they’d come—if they took one too early. In the end, CJ had decided to trust that Artie knew what he was doing. Besides, if this trip was what he thought it was, he wouldn’t think of talking Artie out of it, even if it meant CJ would have to carry both Artie and a deer on his back.
Artie guided the Chevy down the 458, making good time toward Spring Cove, just west of Meachem, where they would catch lunch before finishing the trip to the lake. The whole thing still sounded like a bad idea to CJ. He glanced at Artie’s leg.
“Steroids,” Artie said.
“What?” CJ asked.
“The doc shot my knees up with steroids,” Artie explained. “Helps bring down the pain and the stiffness.” When his passenger didn’t respond, Artie took his eyes from the road long enough to give CJ a half smile. “I saw you looking. You’re wondering how I’m going to hold up.”
CJ returned Artie’s smile with one of his own. “You’re right.
I was.”
“Don’t worry. I feel better than I have in years.”
CJ took him at his word and decided not to worry about it—or any other aspect of their trip. He turned and looked through the rear window to see how Thor was faring. He hated that he’d become the guy who let his dog ride in the back of a pickup on the highway, but Artie had assured him Thor would be fine, and so far he was. At the moment the Lab was lying down, and he looked the part of the comfortable passenger. CJ decided to emulate him. He settled back against the seat and closed his eyes.
The next time he opened them, he was alone in the truck, which was parked next to a gas pump. After a yawn he got out and breathed in the cold, clean air. Thor was at Artie’s feet, sniffing around the gas pump.
“How long was I out?” he asked Artie.
“Only thirty minutes or so. We still have about an hour to go.”
“Alright. I’m going to go inside and get a soda,” CJ said. He started for the store and Thor began to follow.
“Stay,” CJ said, and with a mournful look Thor complied. As CJ was almost to the door of the convenience store he reached into his pocket for his roll of bills, and didn’t find it.
“My other pants,” he groaned to himself. With a headshake he started heading back to the truck. Before he reached it, though, Artie pulled out his wallet and tossed it to CJ.
“Get me one too,” Artie said.
Inside, CJ got a can of Coke for himself and a diet for Artie. At the register he fished out two dollars and handed them over. While the clerk made change, CJ thumbed through the pictures in Artie’s wallet. The first was of his wife, whom CJ had only seen twice in the whole time he’d worked for Artie. She seemed nice enough, but the picture captured what CJ would have called her principal characteristic: severity. The next photo was of two young children, both of whom favored Artie’s wife, and since CJ knew that Artie didn’t have kids, he guessed these were other relations on his wife’s side of the family.
The last picture—the one CJ flipped to just as the clerk handed him the change—required closer scrutiny, for there was no mistaking one of the two faces in it. It was his dad as a much younger man. With as picture-happy a family as CJ’s, there were thousands of pictures of every aspect of family life, dutifully catalogued in countless photo albums. The man staring back at CJ from the wallet-sized photograph was his dad in his late teens or early twenties, sometime during his first few years of college. This picture captured what all the pictures from that time caught: confidence, charm, and something CJ didn’t recognize until much later—a hint of cruelty.
It was reasonable to assume that the other man in the picture, the one with his arm around George’s shoulders, was Artie. Yes, he could see some of the features of the older man in the younger.
There was something else too, although CJ couldn’t put his finger on it at the moment. He was curious; he hadn’t realized Artie and his father had been friends.
He flipped the pictures back into place and was just about to slip Artie’s change in the wallet when the thing that had eluded him rose to the surface. He almost dropped the coins