As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth by Lynne Rae Perkins Page A

they get in your car?” asked Ry.
    “Oh, this isn’t my car,” said Carl. “I don’t have a car. I used to have cars. I have had many, many a car in my time.” He smiled, a sweet smile. A glimmer of—mischief?—seemed to pass through his eyes. Ry wondered if he had imagined it. He knew Del had only been inside for a couple of minutes, but it seemed like forever. He couldn’t think of any more topics.
    He was about to ask, Well, whose car is it then? whenhinges creaked behind him. He turned with relief to see Del come back outside with a coat hanger in his hand.
    “Got one,” said Del, holding it up. “This should do it.”
    But in the passing instant that the top half of Ry was turned toward Del, the lower half of Carl found a way to let his weight fall hard on the gas pedal. The Oldsmobile spun out of the dirt and clattered up onto the hard road, throwing up a choking curtain of dust into their faces. It roared off.
    By the time they could see it again, the Oldsmobile was half a mile away.
    “I hope he doesn’t kill anyone,” said Del.
    “Should we report him? To the police or something?” asked Ry.
    “I reported him to Cecile,” said Del. “She said she would call. I guess we better go ask her to call again.”

(POST-CARL)
    L ater, when Del was putting the generator back into the Willys, Ry said, “So, how come twisting the wires together would be shoddy, but hooking up a muffler with a coat hanger isn’t?”
    “It is,” said Del. “But that was an emergency. It was a desperate measure.”
    “Isn’t it an emergency when your car dies in the middle of nowhere?” asked Ry.
    “It could be,” said Del. “If your life was in danger. Otherwise, it’s just an interesting situation. You could even think of it as fun.”
    He had soldered the broken wire together over a small fire they built. Ry had helped lay the fire and he held things in place while Del soldered, but he had the feeling that Del would have managed just fine by himself.The plan had been to walk to a town, find a mechanic to solder the wire, maybe get a ride back. But while they were at Cecile’s, Del found this dinky little soldering tool in a jewelry-making kit. The kit was in the crafts section, a dusty pile of battered boxes. Del happened on it by luck, while Ry searched for food they could call breakfast.
    It turned out to be a parallel-universe breakfast. A long shelf-life version; you didn’t want to know how old any of it was. Just be like an astronaut and choke it down. He picked jerky, pickled eggs, potato chips, and orange soda. Corresponding to bacon, scrambled or fried, home fries, and juice.
    It was not only the food that was of indeterminate age at Cecile’s. Without even exploring very far, Ry found small American flags with the wrong number of stars, yellowing comic books with heroes he had never heard of, and music on cassette tapes. The cars in the postcards all looked like—well, Carl’s or Del’s, so he couldn’t really draw any conclusions there. But the little girls and women were wearing dresses, an old-fashioned kind with big full skirts. Maybe it was more of an antique shop. He brushed past a spinning rack of brochures that illustrated a variety of ways of going to HELL in hand-drawn wavy letters, and found himself in a small sectionof actual groceries. Maybe this was a better idea. He picked up a box of Cheerios. The sell-by date stamped on the top was two years past. The contest deadline on the back of the box, likewise. Antique cereal. It might still be okay. According to legend, Twinkies lasted for seventeen years. Maybe Cheerios did, too.
    He decided to go with the stuff up front. It was probably the faster-moving stuff. Relatively. He went back up to the counter. Del was already there, taking money from his wallet to pay for the food and—a jewelry kit?
    “You don’t by any chance have a cup of coffee you could spare?” he asked Cecile. Who was herself ageless, in a way. And preserved.
    Her