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cursing as he dropped his keys on the floor, cursing again as he found them, ground the starter, and flooded the engine. Duane hurried. He knew that the Old Man was drunk enough to forget that Duane had ridden with him when they had come into town almost ten hours earlier 'to pick up a few things at the coop."
    "Duanie," said the Old Man, squinting at his son. "What the hell are you doing here?"
    Duane said nothing, letting the Old Man's memory work.
    "Oh, yeah," the Old Man said at last,"did you see your friends?"
    "Yeah, Dad." Duane had left Dale and the others in late afternoon when they'd gone over to the city ballpark to play a pickup game. There had been a chance that the Old Man would stay sober enough to head home before Dom threw him out.
    "Hop in, kiddo." The Old Man was enunciating with the precise care and south Boston accent that came out only when he was seriously drunk.
    "No thanks, Dad. I'll ride in the back if that's OK."
    The Old Man shrugged, ground the starter again, and got the heap started. Duane jumped into the back next to the tractor parts they'd picked up that morning. He stuck his notebook and pencil in his shirt pocket and crouched low on the metal truckbed, peering over the side, hoping that the Old Man wouldn't rack up this new GM junker the way he had the last two used trucks they'd owned.
    Duane saw Dale and the others riding down Main in the dim light, but he didn't think they'd seen this vehicle before so he lay low in the truckbed while the Old Man weaved past. Duane heard the shouted "Lights!" but the Old Man ignored them or hadn't heard. The truck screeched around the corner on First Avenue and Duane sat up in time to see the old brick home on the east side-the Slave House the town kids called it although most didn't know why.
    Duane knew why. It was the old Thompson place and it had been a way station on the Underground Railroad in the 1850s. Duane had become interested in the slave escape route when he was in third grade and had done some research in the city library over in Oak Hill. Besides the Thompson place, there had been two other Underground Railroad way stations in Creve Coeur County… one, an old frame farmhouse belonging to a Quaker family in the Spoon River valley toward Peoria, had burned down before the Second World War. But the other one had belonged to the family of a kid in Duane's third-grade class and one Saturday Duane had ridden his bike there-eight and a half miles each way-just to see the place. Duane had shown the kid and his family where the hidden room was behind the closet under the stairway. And then he had pedaled home. The Old Man hadn't been drinking that Saturday and Duane had avoided a beating.
    They roared past Mike O'Rourke's place, out past the city ballpark north of town, and turned east at the water tower. Duane shifted around in the truckbed as they hit gravel. He hunkered down and closed his eyes as gravel flew and dust surrounded him, tickling his neck under his heavy plaid shirt, settling in his hair and between his teeth.
    The Old Man didn't run off the road, although he almost missed the turnoff to County Road Six. The truck braked, skidded, tipped, righted itself, and then they were pulling nto the crowded parking lot of the Black Tree Tavern.
    "I'll be just a minute, Duanie." The Old Man slapped at Juane's arm. "Just stop in to say hi to the boys before we head home to work on the tractor."
    "OK, Dad." Duane settled lower into the pickup bed, propped his head against the back of the cab, and pulled out his worn notebook and pencil. It was full dark now, the stars were visible beyond the trees behind the Black Tree, but enough yellow light spilled through the screen door to allow Duane to read if he squinted.
    The notebook was thick, warped with sweat and smeared with dust, and the pages were almost filled with Duane's tiny script. There were almost fifty similar notebooks in the secret hiding place in his basement room at home.
    Duane McBride