When Brad ran away the whole neighborhood turned out to search.
``He can't have gone far,'' people said.
``He was on his bike around three. Saw him by the quarry.''
``Saw him eating a Popsicle by the Texaco around five.''
His grandmother was in a panic.
``I'll run away! I'll never come back!'' he'd said, and now it seemed that he had. Why, in her old age had she been afflicted with so much trouble? The boy had no respect. He was selfish and demanding and not even cute. Now he'd run off and the whole world would blame her no doubt.
``I didn't ask for it,'' she screamed internally, ``I didn't ask to be mother to a ten year old at the age of seventy.''
He was picked up by the cops in Wyoming. Buying an ice cream cone at the Little America truck stop.
``I can't handle him,'' she said.
They put him in a foster home.
One day she offered to take him ice skating at the mall.
``There's three others want to go,'' the foster father said.
``OK.'' She took them all.
She took them every week. Then twice a week. After a month she got a deal on the skate rental and she bought them all Pepsis with the savings.
Brad wasn't very good. He fell down a lot, but he always got up fast. The girl Lunette was skating backward already. It took six months for Brad to shine.
One day she watched him do some kind of crouching spin, smiling at her when he paused. He beckoned to her, nodding and smiling.
She rented some skates and staggered along the wall of the rink until Brad took one arm and Lunette the other. They swept her away at breakneck speed. She thought of broken hips. Were they going to slam her into the wall and whirl away laughing like maniacs as she lay bleeding and broken on the cold ice?
No.
They guided her carefully back to the rail.