She told Kristi a smaller version of it on Friday morning, in the car, on the way to the school, because she had thought about it all night and decided she wanted one person at that school to know that boy was not a camel. "His granddaddy's an old man," she said, "and his grandmother can't see, and he's been looking after them all by himself, and he's been doing without so they wouldn't have to. Do you understand me? Not because there's anything wrong with him. Because he's the bravest person in that building."
Kristi looked out the window at the stacked rigs going by in the Rimrock yard. "Okay," she said.
"I mean it. If somebody makes that noise at him, I want you to remember what I told you."
"Mama, I said okay," Kristi said, and got out of the car with her sack lunch, peanut butter, and went in without looking back. And Neva drove to work and did not think about it again, which was the mistake, though she would not know that until a quarter to one that afternoon, when the telephone rang on the wall by the register and Ancel picked it up and listened and held the receiver out to her across the counter with his long face gone very still.
"It's for you," he said. "It's an old lady. She says she can't see to dial and the operator put her through. She says the boy's gone."
Velma's voice on the line was high and thin and very careful, the voice of a woman holding a full cup across a room. The school had called. Troy had not come back to class after lunch. A girl in the sixth grade had sat down beside him in the cafeteria and talked to him, and he had gotten up and walked out the side door by the gym, and nobody had seen him since. Hiram wasn't home. Hiram had gone to the gas office at noon, after the beauty shop, the way he'd said. "He'll go to the gas office," Velma said. "Won't he. That's where he'll go. Honey, I can't see to drive. I can't see to do anything."
"I'm going," Neva said. "Stay by the phone."
She hung up. Ancel was looking at her. Six men at the counter were looking at her. She untied her apron.
"I got a full counter, Neva," Ancel said.