I tromped back through the woods to my car and caught my breath. I wasn't sure if the Pace Arrow motor home had vacated its site or simply was out for an afternoon jaunt. I drove slowly around the circle to make sure the site previously occupied by the California motor home was indeed vacant. It was. As I passed by the volunteer resident keeper's site, I saw an elderly couple in lounge chairs by a cold fire pit. She was reading a paperback and he was relaxing, with his eyes closed. I stopped.
"Nice afternoon," I said as I stepped from the car. The old man woke with a start as the woman smiled and set aside her book. She introduced herself and her husband as Sadie and Sid, with no last names.
"My name's Ben," I said extending my hand.
"May we help you?" she asked.
"I drove by earlier with my family and we thought we saw a friend's rig back in the corner. I got thinking about it and decided to come back and see if we were right but the site's vacant now."
"Oh, you must mean Mr. Green, in the Pace Arrow," the woman said. "He pulled out not long ago; him and the family. We waved but he never stopped to say good bye."
"He had a family?" I asked.
"He said his wife and child just arrived. We never saw them. He told us so if he heard the child crying, we'd no he had company."
"Do you think he's gone for good?"
"He paid each day and he didn't drop off his rent. I don't expect to see him back," Sadie said.
The man spoke up. "He wasn't very sociable. I invited him to pitch shoes with me but he wouldn't have any of it. Is he your friend?"
"Are you sure his name is Green; not Greely?" I asked.
The woman checked a ring binder on the picnic table, running down the names with her finger. "Nope. Lou Green, from Palo Alto, California."
"Was he here long?" I asked without answering the man's question.
He answered. "About a week. He didn't stick around the campground much; always off at weird hours. Wife and kid must have just come today."
"On his bicycle," she added, finishing his sentence. "He always was riding around on his bicycle."
"Electric bicycle. Damnedest thing; I've never seen one like it before. I wouldn't mind having one myself."
The woman turned to her husband. "You'd break your damn fool neck, Sid."
"Sorry to bother you," I said with haste, anxious to get going. "He's not the guy I was looking for."