The runaway (by Verdie Farque)

It was a warm summer evening as Tim walked slowly down the center of the lonely country road. He was rather small for his thirteen years; his reddish hair was crew-cut and there was a troubled look in his deep blue eyes. Why had he bragged like that to Tom about not being afraid of anything or anybody?
Just that morning his older sister Sally said, "Tim, I hate to see you run around with Tom. He's too old for you. I'm afraid you'll get hurt. You know how he's always playing practical jokes."
The sound of an automobile horn made him jump to one side as a blue-and-white sedan slowed down almost to a stop. The couple in the car were strangers to him.
"That's him," the girl said, loud enough for Tim to hear. "That's the boy who robbed the store."
"Right!" the young man added. "Wonder if the old man is going to live?"
The automobile turned around and speeded back toward town.
Old Mr. Jones was alone in his store when he passed there a little while ago. Tim remembered how his hands shook when he handed him his change. He had not robbed the store nor had he hurt the old man, but this was a small town and if the two people in the car identified him as the one who was guilty what chance did he have?
Tim jumped the ditch, crawled under the barbed-wire fence and ran toward a cane patch. He was panting when he reached the other side of the field. In the west, the sun, like a large ball of fire, slowly sank behind the trees. Far across the field a dog barked. It sounded to him like the barking of a hound. His heart pounded in his chest. He walked until he came to the fence next to the highway. He lay down on the ground and fell asleep.
Tim opened his eyes. An airplane passed by overhead. Its lights blinked in the dark. Where was he? Then he remembered. Tears ran down his face. He wished for morning. Problems did not seem so enormous in the light of day.
The ground was hard. He wished for his soft bed at home and he would even welcome the sound of his kid brother's 124
crying that so often irritated him in the past. If only he could tell his mother and father. He might never see his home again.
Tim sat up. His clothes were wet from the dew. The sun had just made its appearance in the east. He saw a truck stop on the side of the highway. A tall, gray-haired man got out and took something from the truck. He saw it was a large jack. Tim got to his feet, put his hand on the lower wire of the barbed-wire fence and crawled through.
"Hey there, boy, come here. Know how to change a tire?" The man called from the truck. "If you're headed my way I'll give you a lift."
Tim walked over to the highway. He helped the man change
the tire.
"I'm headed West," Tim said. "I would like to find work."
"I live in West Texas, son. How would you like to come live with my wife and me?" the tall man asked.
They climbed into the truck, the motor roared, the speedometer went up to sixty, then seventy. They came to a long stretch of road built through a marsh. On both sides was a wide ditch. When they were half way across the marsh they came to a restaurant built up close to the highway.
"I'll buy us some hamburgers to eat on the way." The tall man got out of the truck and went into the restaurant.
Tim was thirsty. He climbed out of the truck and walked toward the door of the building. He stopped, on the radio his favourite announcer from his home town was talking: "He is five feet two inches tall, weighs one hundred and sixteen pounds, has blue eyes and red hair."
"I've got that boy in my truck!" the man from Texas said to the other behind the counter. "I'm going to stop in the next town and turn him over to the authorities."
Now Tim knew the strangers in the blue-and-white sedan had identified him to the police. He saw a bridge ahead and ran in that direction.
A large black car stopped near him. One of the boys in the front seat called out, "Hey there, punk, want a ride?"
Tim got in the front seat with the two boys.
"Well, stupid, from whom were you running?" the boy at the wheel said to Tim.
"The police." Tim did not intend to say that.
"Oh, you were running from the police. That's all right with us, kid; we're not too friendly with them ourselves." The boy next to Tim winked at his companion.
"I'm Butch and this is my friend Jeff," the boy driving said.
"My name is Tim." He looked from one of the boys to the other.
When they reached the outskirts of the city, they drove through a junk yard, down a narrow lane and parked in front of a small house.
"You can join up with us, see," Butch, the older of the two boys said, as he led the way into the building.
Tim looked around. They were in a room with bunk beds, a radio, and a couple of chairs.
"You stay here while we go see a friend," Butch said as he and Jeff hurried out.
Tim wrinkled his nose. Was it whisky? The smell came from the small door that stood ajar in the back of the kitchen. He opened the door. Broken glass was all over the floor. On the shelves around the room were bottles of whisky and cartons of cigarettes. He saw a gun on one of the lower shelves. He started to pick it up, then pulled back his hand.
He walked into the front room and turned on the radio. When the news broadcast came on, the announcer said: "The police are looking for the two boys who shot a watchman and escaped with liquor and cigarettes." What if the police found him here? He prayed he might be able to escape.
It was getting dark outside as he started up the lane. He saw a car turn in from the street, on top of it was a large spotlight. Tim hid behind the body of an old V-Eight as the patrol car passed about twenty feet from where he stood. His knees shook and perspiration broke out on his forehead. He waited until the police car stopped in front of the small house and the two uniformed men entered the building. Then he ran for the street.
Tim felt older than he did the day before yesterday. He was through running away. He would return home and try to prove his innocence.
Tim found a police station where he told his story to the man at the desk.
"I only met the two boys today," Tim insisted. "I had nothing to do with them." "Why, Timothy, is it really you?" It was a reporter from Tim's home town who waked up to the desk. "There are no charges filed against you. Your mother and father broadcasted your description on all the home stations. They asked me to try and find you and bring you home."
The next day Tim and Sally sat in the parlor at their home on the farm. "The police caught Butch and Jeff," Sally said looking up from the paper in her hand. "It says here they confessed."
"You won't catch me running away like that again," Tim said. "I won't be bragging how brave I am either. I don't know why I never suspected it was one of Tom's practical jokes."
"That's my new boyfriend," Sally said. A blue-and-white sedan, that somehow looked familiar to Tim, came to a stop at their front gate. "He's Tom's cousin."
"That guy," Tim frowned.
"You know," Sally said, "it was you who brought us together."