This country, as countries go, is huge. It has the two longest borders in the world, separating us in the north from Canada and in the south from Mexico. Each border runs for thousands of miles.

By land mass, Canada ranks as the largest country in the world. The USA is not far behind. In the US there are a thousand highways that can go in all directions. They go everywhere people want to go.

Teenage boys can often be found moving along the highways and byways. Anywhere from a few hundred to thousands might be walking along the highways, thumb out, backing up the way they want to go.

There could be hundreds of teenagers walking along a highway where the last ride left them off. Some boys might be walking home from school. Others may be coming from or going to town. On rural roads, boys use the highways to get from here to there. To town or to see a friend.

Some boys have no destination in mind. They aren't going anywhere. Rather, they are leaving something behind. These boys have had enough of a place and can't live there any longer. When you have nothing, there's nothing to leave behind.

Potee is such a boy. He left home. What he left was a house with two adults who yelled a lot. He knew he had to leave for a long time. Growing older, he'd finish growing up elsewhere on his own terms. Having no destination in mind. He'll know when he gets where he's going.

It took years for Potee to go, because going requires a plan. At fourteen and fifteen, there was no plan. He didn't know where to go.

At sixteen he realized he didn't need a place to go. He needed to go if he hoped to finish growing up.

Potee closed the door on childish things. He left in the hope he'd find himself. He had no identity. He was nobody.

At times, many teenage boys find themselves alongside America's highways. They aren't out there on a lark or to have a good time while they go wild. They are going to find a place to go.

Potee is going. He left home the week before. He hasn't figured out where he's going yet. He'd like to find a place where no one yells, and where there is plenty of food and some way to work for meals. After a week, he knows how important eating regularly has become.

He wanted to find a place where he fit in and no one had an objection to him. He'd like to learn a craft. His grandfather was a brick mason, and his house showed it. He was always building onto it. He couldn't go there. His grandfather died.

He'd like to go somewhere that he wasn't in the way. He wanted to live somewhere that no one told him what to do. He wanted to live in a place where no one told him what a big disappointment he was.

Often parents aren't capable of seeing their sons through puberty, the gush of hormones, chemical reactions and the mood swings that come with the territory. Discipline and punishment can make matters worse.

A teenager who wants to spread his wings and fly, doesn't need another kick in the teeth to keep his feet on the ground. Some boys who already have wanderlust on his mind, might bolt, once they've had enough discipline. A home can become a prison for some.

Potee fits on the scale of displaced boys somewhere. He can no longer live at home. It doesn't matter how he got on the side of a highway. He's hoping to find a job, a meal.

When he opened the door to get out of the car after his last ride, he asked, "Where's this road go?"

"Laramie. It's about forty-five miles to Laramie."

Potee began walking. There was one truth he began to understand as he walked. If there ain't no cars. It'll take a while to get to Laramie.

Potee is on the road to Laramie and there were no cars. He tried to calculate how long it might take to walk forty-five miles. He could multiply how long it took him to walk a mile and multiply, but he had no idea how long it took him to walk a mile. His hunger made thinking difficult. He'd be there tomorrow if he had the strength to keep going.

No cars came along and so Potee walked, and he walked, and he heard a car coming, but he didn't turn around. He knew by the sound, the car was coming way too fast. He wasn't going stop.

Potee might be able to catch a ride with a trucker out of Laramie. He'd look for a truck stop. Truckers were cool. He thought he'd join the navy. Only there is no water around Laramie.

He didn't have his birth certificate, which only proved he wasn't old enough to enlist. Maybe he'd join the army. He could lie and tell them he was eighteen. His birth certificate burned in a fire and he always wanted to join whatever service would have him. He'd find a place to get a phony ID. That's what he'd do.

Maybe he'd find some odd job. He'd get paid and he'd be able to eat. He hadn't eaten today. He only ate once in the last two days. A traveling salesman picked him up near Sheridan. He pulled over on Route 87 at a Taco Bell.

"You look hungry, Kid. You in the mood for lunch? My treat."

It was a treat. He knew better than to ask for much. It was the salesman who dropped him off on this road. He slept in the bushes last night. He got cold. He'd been cold before. He woke up and started walking. The sun came up and it was plenty warm now.

He kicked gravel as he walked, looking behind him every now and again. Kicking more gravel and looking back once in a while.

What never crossed Potee's mind was becoming a cowboy.

Had he been twelve or thirteen, being a cowboy might have been at the top of his list of things he wanted to do. He was sixteen and ideas like that didn't seem practical. He wasn't a kid.

He had no idea how someone went about becoming a cowboy. He was about to find out how it was done. A destination, or destiny was waiting for him on the other side of the wire fence that followed the road. The ideas he had about what he could do were on the way out of his head.

What he was looking for, even if he had no idea what, was waiting dead ahead. It wasn't the twilight zone, but it could have been. It was the unexpected colliding with the unknown. A life Potee took on the road was about to run into a life going nowhere. The improbable was on a collision course with one of America's lost boys.

Potee was on the run. Pardo was going nowhere, except for the chow hall where he'd be late for lunch. Uncertainty joining forces with convention. One life going nowhere meeting a life with nowhere to go.

Potee looked back over his shoulder. No cars. No sounds. He kicked the loose gravel as he walked, looking back now and again, kicking more gravel. He never saw the cowboy.

Pardo is a cowboy. There's no doubt about that. He's been a cowboy for most of his thirty years. He was born on a ranch and for thirty years he'd lived and worked on ranches.

Pardo always wanted to be a cowboy, and he became one, or he had been born into a cowboy life. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out what he'd do if he wasn't a cowboy, but he was one, and he did the things all cowboys do.

He shoveled what horses left behind during their travels on the first ranch where he worked. He was sixteen and man enough to leave home and find his own way through life. He never looked for work anywhere but ranches. He grew up not knowing that all boys didn't grow up riding horses and wrestling steers just for fun.

He'd cleaned stables, tended horses, and he did anything he was told to do on his second ranch. He wasn't looking for work the day the cowboy asked him if he might like a job. Hell, Pardo had nowhere in particular to go, and his pockets weren't empty. Sure, why not? At least he was no longer shoveling shit He was exercising the horses one day when the ranch foreman rode up.

"Kid, saddle one of them horses. May as well take the best one. He's your horse now. Get out to where we brand cattle. I'm short a cowboy. You're a cowboy now."

He'd been a cowboy ever since.

Cattle didn't take much tending, unless it was branding time or time to cut out cattle to send to market. Cowboys rounded up younger cattle that were up for branding. They'd roundup cattle that were going to market. The rest of the time the cows were moved from one spot where they grazed to another spot where they graze.

Pardo wasn't going to Laramie today. He no longer went to Laramie these days. For years, he went to Laramie each payday. Once back from Laramie, he promised himself he'd never go again. He pretty much stuck to his vow until next payday. Luckily payday only came once a month.

What he remembered about Laramie, he started out drinking beer with the other cowboys from the Lazy R. He drank hard and tipped big. Near dawn, he found himself drinking whiskey in some hole in the wall. His pockets were empty and he drank alone.

It was weeks before payday, and Pardo was riding fence. He volunteered to take the stretch of fence that ran along the highway.

It was a boring job, but Topper, his horse, enjoyed nibbling the grass that grew just outside the fence. Cattle couldn't reach it, so it grew tall and sweet.

On a good day a few dozen cars passed that way. He liked the racy sporty cars with power to burn. Those drivers picked this highway because it was straight, flat, with few intersections until you got close to Laramie. It wasn't patrolled because so few cars wanted to make the long boring drive.

Pardo didn't own a car. He drove a ten-year-old pickup. It had eight thousand miles on it and he wasn't ready for a new truck yet.

He was always astride Topper, except on payday.

He knew the ranch, his horses, Topper, the cattle, and little else. If life could pass a fellow by, it passed Pardo aways back. At thirty he was stuck in his ways and not hankering to make no changes.

Today, he rode fence, stopping where Topper decided. With one leg around the saddle horn, and a piece a grass in his teeth, he looked for breaks in the wire.

He had strips of wire and pliers in his saddlebags. If there was a break, he climbed off Topper and went to work fixing it. If the break was too large for him to fix, he reported it when he got back to the ranch house. They sent a team down to fix the section with enough wire to reach from one fence post to the next.

He did keep track of the activity on the highway. He could hear a car coming long before he saw it. He hadn't heard one in a while, but he kept his ears open.

Topper's long neck was built for reaching over the fence to get at the lush grass that never got mowed. Walking along the fence, Topper stopped to nibble for a while, before walking on. Pardo was in no hurry. Cookie would have cold cuts out if nothing was left by the cowboys eating lunch. Pardo liked cold cuts. They were fresh, because cowboys ate anything Cookie put on the table in front of them. It took some doing to feed fifteen cowboys who were always hungry.

It was miles to the house. He'd finish here before going back.

It was during a yawn, he spotted the kid. He was looking over his shoulder, kicking gravel once he saw there were no cars coming. He looked like a kid going nowhere fast.

Pardo remembered when he was that kid. At thirty, he felt old. He remembered when he had places to go. He didn't remember the last time he saw someone walking along the road. It was forty miles to Laramie. That was a long way if you wanted to take a walk.

Another yawn hit him as the boy came closer. Pardo didn't look at him. He could see him fine. Once he was within earshot. Pardo might speak to him. He might not say anything. He didn't have all that much to say, except to Topper. He talked to his horse all the time. He talked to the cattle. Maybe he should say something to the kid.

He was a rangy kid. His hair was too long. His jeans were too tight. Pardo looked at him because the boy never acted like he saw him. His pace remained the same. He looked over his shoulder, kicked more gravel, and kept coming.

"Where you heading, kid?" Pardo asked.

The boy was startled. He stopped to see Pardo and Topper for the first time.

"What's it to you?" was the surly answer.

The boy's shoulders squared, he stood as straight as he could, taking in Pardo and his horse.

He hadn't seen him and now he realized the man was a cowboy.

"You a cowboy?"

"Yep," Pardo said. "I'm a cowboy. This is Topper, my horse."

"Can I pet him?" Potee asked, losing the tough boy air.

"Sure," Pardo said.

The boy's hand moved out as he stepped into the tall grass.

"He might bite your hand off though," Pardo said just for fun.

The boy's hand jerked back, like he'd touched a hot stove.

"He bites?" the boy said with surprise.

"Never known him to bite. Always a first time though."

Potee gave Pardo a dirty look.

He'd yanked his hand back like some sissy afraid of his shadow. He hated it when someone made him look foolish.

"He likes being scratched up between his ears. He won't bite."

Potee moved closer without hesitating and he scratched Topper between his ears. He didn't stop eating but he made a sound that sounded pleasing to Potee.

Pardo looked at how the boy moved, totally distracted by his encounter with a horse. He definitely had something on his mind when he walked up. Like most teenage boys, he was easily distracted by something unexpected taking place.

Potee liked horses. He'd only seen them in movies.