Pig-Out Inn by Lois Ruby

what’s happening here?”
    â€œWhat, Cee Dubyah?”
    â€œWell, they’re acting like I’m some kind of criminal, sending the police out for me and all. I’m gonna get caught. I can’t disappear forever and never get back to driving my truck, and when they find me, do you think a judge is gonna let you come live with a man who’s a kidnapper?”
    â€œIt’s not kidnapping when it’s your own kid,” Tag said.
    â€œI know that and you know that, but your mother doesn’t, and those cops don’t, and a judge sure won’t, because—” he paused as if he were looking for just the right way to put what he had to say. “Your mother has the law on her side.”
    â€œBut nobody ever asked me who I want to live with,” Tag cried, and whatever else he said was muffled in his father’s chest.
    After a while Cee Dubyah said, “Here’s what I got to do, son. I’m turning myself in, because I can’t keep you holed up here, and I can’t keep running, and there’s nowhere we can get to that they won’t find us.”
    â€œWe could go to Boston, Massachusetts,” Tag said in a tiny voice.
    â€œNo, son.”
    â€œAll right,” Tag said, back in command of himself. “What’s the plan? We gotta have a plan.”
    â€œThat’s my boy. I’ll just catch a few winks here. You think you can find a corner of that bed for me for an hour or two? Then I’ll head back to Wichita, and me and the lawyer will go to the police.”
    â€œThey gonna put you in the slammer, Cee Dubyah?”
    â€œNaw,” he said, without much conviction. “Then the lawyer and me are gonna start building an airtight case for you to come live with me. If your mother won’t let me have you full-time, well then, we’ll work on half-time, or summer-time, or whatever we can wheedle outta her, because she sure knows now that you and I belong together. Now don’t you worry, we’ll work it out … it’ll be all right … we’ll be two peas in a pod again.” Cee Dubyah crooned it over and over, like a lullaby, and pretty soon I heard this little crinkling of bedsprings as Cee Dubyah put Tag down, then a ferocious groaning of the springs under Cee Dubyah.
    I leaned my back against an oak tree out behind the cottages to wait for the sun, but even so I missed Cee Dubyah’s leaving. I hoped Tag had, too.
    Tag never said a word about his middle-of-the-night visitor, but I had to tell Stephanie and Momma that the ax was about to fall. I went the long way around from the walk-in freezer to Tag’s shop that morning. There he was squeezing one of Johnny’s lemons into a can of Coke and telling some trucker that this was the refreshing new taste sensation from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He licked the lemon juice off his grubby fingers and puckered his whole face up.
    â€œReal sanitary conditions here,” the trucker said, giving way to a big yawn.
    â€œYou look a little sleepy, sir,” Tag told the driver. “That’s the curse of being on the road.” Again, it sounded just like Cee Dubyah talking.
    â€œI could use a package of No-Doz,” the driver conceded.
    â€œHey, forget No-Doz.” Tag fished around in his carton and pulled out a package of Bubble Yum. “Try this. I reckon nobody can fall asleep while he’s chewing and blowing bubbles.”
    I smiled to myself as the man gave Tag a quarter for the gum and headed back to his truck with the refreshing new taste sensation sloshing around in the can.
    â€œHold it!” Tag said. He wrote something on a slip of paper.
    â€œWhat’s this?” the trucker asked, stretching to get the kinks out of his long, lean body.
    â€œIt’s a receipt.”
    â€œFor twenty-five cents’ worth of gum?”
    â€œSure. It’s a tax-deductible business expense,” Tag assured him. “Just a little