Book of Mercy by Sherry Roberts Page B

Antigone instructed, but, to someone who had never even ridden a bike, the car seemed way too fast and too large for this narrow country lane. Worse, the Mustang had a mind of its own, like those hotrods from hell in the movies, the kind that sniffs out and corners humans, then runs them over—repeatedly.
    “I’m barely touchin’ the gas, and it’s leapin’ out of its skin,” Ryder complained.
    “Relax. You’re trying to control too much.”
    The Professor used to tell him that, too. He and the Professor had looked out for each other on the streets of New York. They’d been a weird pair: a skittish, angry black kid and a used-up old white guy with a British accent and manners that could charm the hearts of the meanest female volunteers at the soup kitchen. “Why are you always trying to control things?” the Professor had asked Ryder once.
    “So they don’t control me,” Ryder told him.
    The Professor laughed. “You’ll never be able to control it all.”
    “I can try.”
    “But, my boy, it takes but a single butterfly to do you in.”
    A butterfly? What’s that supposed to mean?
    The Professor explained how a butterfly lazily flapping its wings in China could change weather patterns in Canada. It had to do with something called the chaos theory. Chaos, Ryder snorted. That he could understand; chaos was his middle name.
    “Ever hear of the chaos theory?” Ryder glanced at Antigone.
    “Butterfly. Weather. Yada, yada, yada.” She pointed to the windshield. “Look where you’re going.”
    Ryder’s head whipped to the front just in time to see the large pothole ahead. The car jerked as it hit the edge of the pothole, and Ryder fought to straighten the wheels on the gravel road. “Shit. This is a waste of time. I told you I ain’t got no birth certificate.”
    “Don’t have,” Antigone corrected.
    Ryder scowled. “Can’t get a license without a birth certificate. If my mom ever had mine, she probably rolled a joint with it and smoked it.”
    Antigone gave him one of her “what bullshit” looks. “I’m working on it,” she said. “You’re going to need it to register for school anyway.”
    “School?” His hand jerked, and the car jumped.
    “Keep your mind on what you’re doing.”
    Ryder battled with the touchy gas pedal of the Mustang. “Whoa. I never agreed to no school. I ain’t been to school in years.”
    “Then it’s about time you went. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
    “Who said I was afraid?”
    “Well, you
sound
defensive.”

    W HENEVER R YDER HAD A driving lesson, wildlife in the vicinity went into hiding, as if word had gotten around about the squirrel he’d nearly clipped and the turtle he’d flipped into the ditch. Antigone and Ryder rode in silence. Finally, Antigone turned on the radio. Voices filled the car.
    “Sam says you listen to the radio and forget to come home,” Ryder said.
    “It’s a bad habit,” Antigone admitted.
    “You run away.” He glanced at the woman with the flying hair.
    “Not as much as I used to,” she said.
    Ryder arched an eyebrow at her.
    “Okay. I turn on the radio to keep from thinking and then I get involved in someone else’s problems. Before you know it, I’m hundreds of miles from Mercy and Sam and the deer. Sometimes I don’t even know what state I’m in. It drives Sam crazy.”
    “You don’t say,” Ryder said sarcastically.
    “I can’t seem to help it.” Antigone’s voice turned thoughtful. “When I was little, I used to take the radio to bed with me. I loved hearing those voices. Talk radio. Have you ever really listened to people sometime?”
    “I try not to,” he said.
    She ignored him. “You can hear their whole life’s story in their words. You can hear if they’re happy, in love, or hate their job. If they’re afraid to go home at night. If they wish they’d done it all differently.”
    “All?”
    “Life. The men they fell for, the children who hate them, the dreams they let slip