Cadillac Jack

  Chapter V

  At the end of the Twine driveway I turned left, toward Washington, D.C.

  "I hope you'd just as soon go to Washington," I said to Josie.

  "Why not?" she said. "That's my motto, why not. Little Joe got me some license plates with that on 'em, for my birthday once. That was one of the nicest presents he ever gave me."

  Josie began to watch me as we drove toward Dallas. I had a feeling she was more intelligent than I had first supposed her to be. Also, she seemed kind.

  "How come you're not happy?” she asked. "You sure got a nice car."

  "Do you think anybody's really happy?" I asked. I had a feeling that the one person I knew who was really happy was Belinda Arber. Her sister Beverly had traces of doubt in her eyes, traces of anxiety, but Belinda had none. In all likelihood, Belinda simply wouldn't tolerate unhappiness; for all I knew it might never touch her, or touch her at most momentarily.

  "Shoot, my baby sister's happy as a frog," Josie said. "She's real pretty and she knows how to take up for herself. She ain't but eighteen and she's already had more boyfriends than I've had in my whole life. She don't take nothing off any of them, either, unless it's something she wants. If one of them don't do right she just kicks him out of bed and gets another."

  "Was Little Joe ever nice?" I asked.

  Josie considered for a moment, looking out at the pale plains.

  "Well, he wasn't mean," she said. "Little Joe ain't never been mean. That's something. All he really wanted to do was get away from Big Joe. We was gonna run off, but shoot, we never stood a chance. They wasn't about to let Little Joe loose or nothing."

  Josie sighed. "Actually, he was kinda sweet for a while," she said. "He still is kinda sweet, only now he just takes dope all the time. You wouldn't believe how much that man spends on dope. If he was a normal person he'd be broke in no time."

  She sighed again, a small quiet sigh. The next time I looked at her she was asleep.

  I hit 1-30 and drove across East Texas, leaving the plains and entering the pines. By four in the morning I was into Arkansas, and a little tired. The first real stopping place inside Arkansas is a little town called Hope, where I often stopped. Why Hope was called Hope has always interested me. The pioneers who settled it must have been in a good mood the day they arrived there, so they named it Hope.

  But most of their descendants, the residents of present-day Hope, looked as if they wished their ancestors had kept on trucking. They did not seem rich in the quality for which the town was named.

  In the faint light of the dashboard Josie Twine looked very young—a girl, really. One whose hair had recently been dyed several times.

  I drove over to the Holiday Inn and asked for a room with two beds.

  When I came out, Josie was sitting up, looking blankly at the motel.

  "I went to sleep," she said, in the tones of a child. "Where are we?”

  "Arkansas,” I said.

  "My momma was born in Fayetteville,” Josie said. "Are we anywhere near there?”

  "It's not too far," I said.

  "I'm gonna send her a postcard," Josie said. "She loves to get postcards. You think it's too late to buy one now?"

  "No, but it won't go off until tomorrow," I said.

  "Okay, but don't let me forget," Josie said. "I gotta take advantage of my opportunities."

  In the room, Josie went right to the TV set and turned it on. Naturally all she got was snow. There is nothing happening on TV at four in the morning in Arkansas. Josie flipped through all the channels with mild disbelief.

  "Shoot, we are out in the sticks," she said. "They ain't even on the cable. We've been on the cable for over a year. Now little Joe's got one of them $7,000 discs and we can get 120 channels. He can watch live fucking straight from Denmark. I don't know what we'd do without the cable."

  At the mention of fucking she looked at me with sort of a puzzled expression, as if she were not sure what ought to happen next. The mere fact that we were driving around America together did not necessarily mean we were going to get involved. However, the fact that we were also in a bedroom together carried implications. I sat down on one bed, drained of will. Josie stood in front of the TV set, as if she hoped a program would suddenly come on and break the silence. What I mostly felt was an urge to brush my teeth, only I had forgotten to bring in my traveling kit.

  "Excuse me," I said, getting up. "I forgot my toothbrush and stuff."

  Just as I opened my car door to get my kit from the back seat the phone rang.

  "Where are you?" Cindy said. "I called you a lot of times yesterday. Then I called you tonight. You said I could call you any time but it isn't true."

  She sounded very distraught.

  "I've been driving for most of the last eight hours," I said. "You could have got me."

  "Yeah, but I was afraid to call then," she said. "Spud was supposed to come and I didn't want him to walk in and find me talking to you. I only can call at times when I know he's not supposed to come. And then I never get you even though you said I could get you anytime."

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I said. "Now and then I'm out of the car. What's the matter?"

  "This is the most terrible thing that's ever happened to me," Cindy said. "I wish it had never happened."

  "What happened?"

  "Nothing," she said. "He hasn't come to see me yet. His secretary called and said he was coming about four this afternoon, but he didn't."

  I was secretly glad, but I thought it best to conceal this.

  "How soon can you get here?" she asked.

  "I don't know," I said, a little surprised. "I've got to sleep for a while. I guess I could get there in a day and a half."

  "You don't have to drive everywhere," she said. "Just go somewhere and take an airplane. I'll be crazy in a day and a half."

  "Why don't you just go on back to Washington?" I said. "Why sit around Miami if the man isn't even going to come and see you? He made you go there, you know. I think it's terrible behavior."

  "I didn't call to listen to you criticize him," she said, anger replacing hurt in her voice.

  "Well, you have to admit he's behaved terribly," I said.

  "I don't know why you think you have any room to talk," Cindy said- "You said I could get you anytime but it wasn't true.

  "You were impotent, too," she reminded me. "You have no right to criticize anybody."

  "I was impotent once,'" I pointed out.

  There was silence on the line. Our conversation was getting nowhere.

  "I cried for hours,*' Cindy said. "Now I’m puffy. He probably won't sleep with me now even if he does come."

  "I doubt he'll come this time of night," I said. "What do you suppose he's doing?"

  "He's with Betsy," Cindy said.

  "Who's Betsy?"

  "His wife. I told you that. Can't you remember anything?" Cindy said.

  "Why did he bring his wife if he wanted to see you?" I asked. "I think you should leave on the first plane in the morning."

  "I didn't ask for your advice," Cindy said. "Just come and help me."

  "Help you do what?" I asked.

  "Help me wait."

  "How's that supposed to work? If I'm sitting there helping you wait and Spud shows up he might be a little annoyed, don't you think?"

  "You won't be in the room with me," Cindy said.

  "Then where will I be?"

  "You could be somewhere in the hotel," she said. "In another room."

  "How would that help you wait?" I asked.

  "I never thought you'd ask so many questions," Cindy said. "God, you ask a lot of questions."

  "Well, it seems strange," I said. "What help can I be if I'm in another room?"

  "Because you'll be there if I give up," she said. "I don't want to give up, but I might."

  She said it in a voice that was not quite in control of itself. It was clear she was not that far from giving up, even as we spoke.

  I was silent for a moment. br />
  "Jack, are you there?" she asked.

  She had rarely used my name in speaking to me.

  "I'm here," 1 said.

  "Can't you just do it and not ask questions?" she said. "That's our problem, you know."

  "What is?"

  "We talk too much," Cindy said. "We should just do things and not talk so much."

  "Can I just ask you one more question?" I said.

  "What?"

  "What if I start to Miami and Spud shows up while I'm in transit? He may just be planning to let you suffer and then surprise you. How am I gonna know?"

  "I wish you didn't make everything so complicated," Cindy said.

  I was silent again.

  "I feel like I'm about to give up," she said. "You know how you sometimes feel you're about to vomit? I feel that way, only I'm about to give up."

  "Listen," I said. "I've been driving too long. I've got to sleep. You should sleep too. Then call me. If you give up you could fly to someplace and I'll meet you."

  "Okay," Cindy said, meekly. "I hope you're gonna be reliable this time. I hope I can get you if I call."

  "I have to eat," I said. "I'm sometimes out of the car for a few minutes. But you can keep trying. You'll get me."

  "Okay, Jack," Cindy said. "Do you love me?"

  "Yeah," I said.

  "Okay, Jack," she said again, and hung up.

  Chapter VI

  When I came back to the room Josie was lying right in the middle of one of the two large double beds, staring at the ceiling. She had the covers pulled up to her chin, and she looked perplexed.

  I felt sympathetic. Only a few hours earlier I had been staring at the ceiling of a motel in Lubbock, feeling perplexed. Even Cindy Sanders, who seemed to have nearly everything going for her, was probably lying in bed in Miami, staring at the ceiling and feeling perplexed.

  "I’m sorry," I said. "I got a phone call on my car phone."

  "I don't know why I come," Josie said.

  She looked like she had spent too much time asking herself questions that had no answers.

  "Maybe you just wanted a change," I suggested.

  "Yeah, but this ain't a change," she said. "I feel lonesome at home and I feel lonesome here."

  She looked at me quizzically, to see what I could offer. I didn't have a thing to say. The truth was, I felt lonesome too.

  "Little Joe just about never comes upstairs anymore," Josie said. "I never thought I'd spend my whole life watching TV, but that's how it's worked out. It's a good thing we can get 120 channels, otherwise I wouldn't have nothing to do at all."

  Then we both fell silent. Our adventure, if that was what we were having, was turning out to be miserable all around.

  I excused myself, as if I was leaving a dinner table, and brushed my teeth. I felt very awkward, and had no one but myself to blame for feeling that way. I almost never use good judgment, or any judgment, when it came to personal relationships. What was I doing in Hope, Arkansas, with the wife of a millionaire rancher from Henrietta?

  I brushed my teeth for quite a while, but came up with no good answer to that question.

  When I came out, Josie was still staring at the ceiling.

  "Do you know a lot of rich people?" she asked.

  I sat on the other bed and began to take off my boots.

  "Quite a few," I said.

  "I never knew any till I married Little Joe," she said. "My dad's just a carpenter. What are the ones you know like?"

  I tried to think, but it was hard to come up with a general analysis of rich people.

  "The thing about Little Joe is that he expects a lot," Josie said. "I guess that's the difference. I guess I just never expected very much."

  I took off my socks.

  "I still don't expect very much," Josie said, sadly. "Seems to me like the less I expect the less I get. I was just sittin' up there watching Benjy and you walked in. I thought I'd just run off with you before I had time to start expectin' anything. Once you start expectin' something then it's sadder if you don't get it, don't you think?"

  At that point I decided to try and sleep with Josie, as a means of stopping her from saying such heartbreaking things. She seemed to have tapped a pure spring of sadness inside herself, the result no doubt of several years spent sitting around the Twine ranch watching Little Joe grow dopier and dopier.

  I particularly didn't want to hear her say any more about expectations, since I too spent a lot of time expecting things that didn't happen. My fantasies were just little seances of expectation.

  "Can I come to bed with you?" I asked, before Josie could say another word.

  Josie seemed surprised. She had evidently abandoned that expectation so completely that it startled her.

  "Did you just get horny, or what?" she asked.

  "I ain't been doin' much fuckin' lately," she added, as if that had a bearing on the question.

  "It doesn't matter," I said.

  "I don't know what happened," Josie said. "I used to do a lot. Then gradually I stopped. I don't buy much anymore, either. All the stuff looks the same to me now."

  I turned off the light, undressed, and got in bed with her.

  "Was the reason you wasn't horny before because my hair's so funny looking?" she asked, sliding over to me. Her tiny body was hot, from having had covers on it for the last half hour.

  "Had nothing to do with it," I said. "Your hair looks fine."

  Chapter VII

  The next day Josie and I drove across Arkansas and Tennessee. Josie had never seen the Mississippi and got very excited when we approached it.

  "Shoot, I don't see how they got a bridge across it," she said, when she actually saw the river. She looked the happiest I had seen her, and she tried to get me to stop on the bridge so she could take a picture of it.

  "I can't stop on the bridge and anyway I don't have a camera," I said.

  Josie looked disappointed. Practically her first trip and already she was being denied things. Simple American needs, too, such as getting to take a picture of the Mississippi to send to her mother, who liked postcards.

  By the time we got into Memphis I felt so bad that we stopped and bought a Polaroid and we went back to the river and took pictures. We also bought a lot of postcards at a newsstand by the river. She wrote five or six and sent them right oflf to her mother. Most of them just said, "Hi, Mom, wish you were here!" Josie has not had much practice composing postcards.

  I spent most of the day expecting the phone to ring. Undoubtedly the phone would ring and Cindy would demand that I rush to Miami. Josie would enjoy seeing Florida and her pilot could easily fly there to get her. I had begun to like her more and more, actually. She was afifec-tionate, generous, and kind. We got to Nashville and the phone still hadn't rung so we just kept going east.

  By this time I was very puzzled by Cindy's silence. Something had to have changed. Spud must have come, after all. I felt quite disappointed. Cindy wasn't affectionate, generous, or kind, but she was absolutely beautiful, and I had been looking forward to having her back.

  Then, just as we were approaching Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the phone did ring, only when I picked it up it wasn't Cindy's voice I heard.

  "Is you still in the car?" Belinda asked.

  "Why yes, I am," I said. "Where's your mother?"

  "She wants to talk to you. Bye," Belinda said.

  "We just wanted to find out if this phone-in-the-car stuff really works," Jean said.

  Josie had stopped tapping my leg and was trying to pretend she wasn't there.

  "Where are ya?" Jean asked.

  "Tennessee," I said. "I'm on my way back."

  "Buy any nice trunks?" she asked.

  "No," I said. "However, the trunk of my car is full of interesting boots."

  "There's no such thing as an interesting boot," Jean said. "Are you alone?"

  "Yep," I lied.

  "If you weren't you'd be in trouble by now," she said. "You're not very wary or you wouldn't have given
me this number."

  "I'm not very wary," I said.

  "Weil, there's not much news," Jean said. "I sold sixteen dollars worth of cups today. A big day for me. When may we expect to see you?"

  "Probably in a day or two," I said. "Although there's a distant prospect that I might have to go to Miami. I've heard of an estate that sounds interesting."

  "Are you sure it's an estate, and not a woman?" Jean asked.

  "Oh well," I said, made cautious by the tone of her voice.

  Jean was silent.

  "It might be a little of both," I admitted.

  "And then again it might be a woman and not an estate," Jean said. "Am I right?"

  She had cleverly trapped me in a situation in which I had to admit to a lie, or else keep lying. Neither option was very palatable, particularly not with Josie sitting there pretending not to hear a word I said.

  "You're right," I said, deciding she would probably rather have a rival than a liar.

  "Then how come you mentioned the estate?" she asked.

  "I guess I was just being tactful," I said weakly.

  "No, you were being dishonest," Jean said, anger in her voice. "I hate dishonest men. Jimmy lied to me practically every day. I wish you hadn't done it. We aren't involved enough for you to need to lie to me."

  "I apologize," I said. "It was stupid."

  "More importantly, it was wrong," Jean said. "Stupidity I can forgive."

  She was silent again. I didn't know what to say. I had already apologized once—apologizing twice wouldn't help.

  "I wish I hadn't called," Jean said. "It was just a spur of the moment fancy Belinda and I had. Beverly thought it was weird to call someone in a car, and she was right. Beverly's got a lot of sense."

  "Whereas you and Belinda can't resist your impulses," I said lightly.

  "Unfortunately not," Jean said.

  "I met you at a complicated time of my life," I said.

  "Shut up," she said. "I hate men who make excuses like that. All times of my life are complicated, as it happens."

  "I don't think I'm really going to Miami," I said. "I don't know why I even mentioned it."

  "You mentioned it to leave yourself an out," Jean said. "I wish I could find a man somewhere who didn't constantly feel the need to leave himself an out."