Page 137 of Whistle

By dusk, Charlie was getting hungry again, and now that he was out in the country somewhere, between towns, there was no place to get something to eat. There were still some stale bagels in his backpack if he got really desperate. And now he had to start thinking about where he would spend the night. It wasn’t like he could check into a motel. He didn’t have enough money for that. He was starting to wonder if he hadn’t thought this through as well as he could have.

Especially when the chain on his bike broke.

He’d been going along pretty good when suddenly the pedals offered no resistance and he could hear something clicking and whacking down by his ankles, and he looked down and saw that the chain had snapped.

And I put out eight bucks for this thing, he thought.

Charlie wobbled the bike to the shoulder, got off, and inspected the damage. There was no way he could fix this. The bike was toast. He let it fall to the gravel shoulder.

He was in the middle of nowhere and in another hour it would be dark.

For the first time since embarking on this adventure, Charlie was scared. He didn’t know what to do. He had to get to Lucknow. He’dcome too far to give up now. Would he hitchhike the rest of the way? No, he couldn’t do that. No one was going to pick up a kid unless it was to take him to the police station.

Or something much, much worse. Charlie was a kid from New York. He knew the stories.

Maybe someonenicewould come along and take him and the bike to a repair shop. Except they’d all be closed now, and anyway, Charlie didn’t have any money left.

He started to cry.

Up ahead, he could hear a vehicle approaching. There hadn’t been a lot of traffic on this road, and there was no telling when the next car might go by. Should he take a chance and flag it down, ask for help? He knew there were risks doing something like that.

So, no, he wouldn’t flag down the car, which had almost reached him. He’d find another tree to sleep under and in the morning contemplate his next move. Wasn’t that something his mom would say to him sometimes? “Things will look better in the morning.”

The driver of the car must have spotted him, because it was slowing down. And as it got closer, Charlie could see that it wasn’t a car, but a white van.

The van pulled over to the shoulder on the other side of the road and the driver powered down his window.

“You okay, kid?”

Charlie stopped crying long enough to say, “I’m okay.”

“Your bike broken?”

Charlie nodded.

“You a long way from home?”

Charlie didn’t say anything.

“I get it. You’re not supposed to talk to strangers.”

Charlie nodded again.

“But I’m not really a stranger,” the man said, “if I know your dad.”

Charlie felt an uncertain swelling of hope in his heart.

“I’m betting you’re on your way to Lucknow,” the driver said. It was at this point Charlie noticed the man was wearing a funny engineer’s hat and a vest with patches all over it.

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “That’s where I’m going.”

“Well, that’s where I’m going, too. Actually, it’s where I’m comingfrom, but I can turn around right here and head back. It’s not that far. You’ve come a long ways.”

Charlie was wondering how the man would know that. He hadn’t told him where he’d started out from.

“Truth is,” the man said, “I was expecting you, and then I started to worry that even for a boy like you, who’s been training so hard on his bike, it’d be a long haul, so I decided to come meet you along the way. Now, I understand if you’re worried about getting in the van with me. I bet your mom’s told you not to do something that dumb, but we’re not really strangers if I already know your name, right, Charlie?”

Charlie smiled. The man had a point.

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