Clean Getaway

ROUTE 1-Quite a Ways to Go

It might sound silly, but to William “Scoob” Lamar, the WELCOME TO ALABAMA THE BEAUTIFUL sign looks… well, beautiful. Not as beautiful as his best friend Shenice Lockwood in her yellow sun dress, but beautiful enough to make Scoob tip his head back, close his eyes, and sigh into the breeze blowing through the open passenger-side window of G’ma’s Winnebago.
Exhale Dad’s lockdown. Inhale the sweet fragrance of freedom. Which smells like pine mixed with a little bit of truck exhaust.
“You all right over there, Scoob-a-doob?” G’ma says from the driver’s seat. She’s propped up on the gingham-covered foam wedge she uses to see over the steering wheel, pale, polka-dotted little hands perfectly positioned at ten and two. She’s only four feet, eleven inches tall, G’ma is.
Hearing his full nickname makes Scoob cringe. G’ma gave it to him when he was five years old and obsessed with an old cartoon he used to watch at her house about a dog who liked to solve mysteries. G’ma thought it was just too adorable that he couldn’t pronounce Scooby-Doo. And because Shenice was G’ma’s neighbor, she picked up on the nickname and started using it at school. So it stuck. Well, the Scoob part did. Which is fine. Kinda cool, even.
Scoob-a-doob, though?
“G’ma,” he says, “you mind if we stick to Scoob? The rest is a little… babyish. No offense,” he adds. “Oh, none taken!” G’ma says. “My apologies, Mr. Scoob.”
“I mean… you can drop the mister, too,” Scoob goes on.
This makes G’ma laugh.
Which makes Scoob smile. He’d never tell any body, but there’s really no sound in the world he loves more than his grandmother’s barking laughter. Dad’s not a fan; says it “grates” on him because it’s the one reminder of G’ma’s past smoking days “and potential future lung cancer,” but it reminds Scoob of elementary school days playing card games she taught him that he wasn’t supposed to know the rules for-like Texas Hold’em and blackjack. Even now, it blows Scoob’s mind that a harsh, booming sound like that could come out of a person as little as G’ma.