Shattered

waited for it to build up a fifteen-minute lead and could have dispensed immediately with the whole crazy idea that they were being pursued. Well, it did not matter much now. The van was gone, way out ahead of them somewhere.
        “He back there?” Colin asked.
        “No.”
        “Shucks.”
        “Shucks?
        “I'd really like to know what he was up to,” Colin said. “Now I guess we'll never find out.”
        Alex smiled. “I guess we never will.”
        Compared to Pennsylvania, Ohio was almost a plains state. Vistas of open green land stretched out on both sides of the highway, marred only by an occasional shabby town, neat farm, or oddly isolated and routinely filthy factory. The sameness of it, stretching away into the distance under an equally bland blue sky, bored and depressed them. The car seemed to crawl at a quarter of its real speed.
        When they had been on the road only twenty minutes, Colin began to twist and squirm uncomfortably. “This seatbelt isn't made right,” he told Doyle.
        “Oh?”
        “I think they made it too tight.”
        “It can't be too tight. It's adjustable.”
        “I don't know…” Colin tested it with both hands.
        “You aren't getting out of it with excuses as contrived as that one.”
        Colin looked at the open fields, at a herd of fat cows grazing on a hill above a white-and-red barn. “I didn't know there were so many cows in the world. Ever since we left home I've seen cows everywhere I look. If I see one more cow, I think I might puke.”
        “No you won't,” Alex said. “I'd make you clean it up.”
        “Is the rest of the country going to be like this?” Colin asked, indicating the mundane landscape with one slim, upturned hand.
        “You know it isn't,” Doyle said patiently. “You'll see the Mississippi River, the deserts, the Rocky Mountains… You've taken enough imaginary trips around the world to know it far better than I do.”
        Colin quit tugging at his seatbelt when he saw he was not getting anywhere with Doyle. “By the time we find these interesting places, my brain will be all rotten inside. If I watch too much of this nothing , I'll turn into a zombie. You know what a zombie's like?” He made a face like a zombie for Doyle's benefit: mouth agape, flesh slack, eyes open wide but taking in nothing.
        While he liked Colin and was amused by him, Doyle was also disturbed. He knew that the boy's persistent campaign to be let out of his belt was as much a test of Doyle's talent for discipline as it was an expression of real discomfort. Before Alex had married Courtney, the boy obeyed his sister's suitor as he might his own father. And even when the honeymooners came home to tie up their affairs in Philadelphia, Colin had behaved. But now that he was alone with Doyle and out of his sister's sight, he was testing their new relationship. If he could get away with anything, he would. In that respect, he was the same as all other boys his age.
        “Look,” Alex said, “when you talk to Courtney on the phone tonight, I don't want you complaining about your seatbelt and the scenery. She and I both thought this trip would be good for you. I might as well tell you that we also thought it would let you and me get used to each other, throw us together and smooth out any wrinkles. Now, I won't have you complaining and groaning when we call her from Indianapolis. She's out in San Francisco getting people to put down the carpet, install the drapes, deliver the furniture… She has enough on her mind without worrying about you.”
        Colin thought about that as they rushed directly westward toward Columbus. “Okay,” he said at last. “I surrender. You have nineteen years on me.”
        Alex glanced at the boy, who gave him a shy under-the-eyebrows look, and laughed quietly. “We'll get along. I always thought we would.”
        “Tell me one thing,” the boy said.
        “What's that?”
        “You have nineteen years on me. And-six on Courtney? “
        “That's right.”
        “Do you make the rules and regulations for Courtney, too?”
        “ Nobody makes rules and regulations for Courtney,” Doyle said.
        Colin folded his skinny arms over his chest and nodded smugly. “That's sure the truth. I'm glad you understand her. I wouldn't give this marriage six months if you thought you could tell Courtney to wear her seatbelt.”
        On both sides,