“What’re you going to tell him when he gets here? Our stolen car broke down and we need a ride to where we can steal another one? That’ll be a big hit, Earl.”
“I’ll talk,” I said. “You just listen to the radio for ten minutes and then walk on out to the shoulder like nothing was suspicious. And you and Cheryl act nice. She doesn’t need to know about this car.”
“Like we’re not suspicious enough already, right?” Edna looked up at me out of the lighted car. “You don’t think right, did you know that, Earl? You think the world’s stupid and you’re smart. But that’s not how it is. I feel sorry for you. You might’ve been something, but things just went crazy someplace.”
I had a thought about poor Danny. He was a vet and crazy as a shit-house mouse, and I was glad he wasn’t in for all this. “Just get the baby in the car,” I said, trying to be patient. “I’m hungry like you are.”
“I’m tired of this,” Edna said. “I wish I’d stayed in Montana.”
“Then you can go back in the morning,” I said. “I’ll buy the ticket and put you on the bus. But not till then.”
“Just get on with it, Earl.” She slumped down in the seat, turning off the parking lights with one foot and the radio on with the other.
The mobile-home community was as big as any I’d ever seen. It was attached in some way to the plant that was lighted up behind it, because I could see a car once in a while leave one of the trailer streets, turn in the direction of the plant, then go slowly into it. Everything in the plant was white, and you could see that all the trailers were painted white and looked exactly alike. A deep hum came out of the plant, and I thought as I got closer that it wouldn’t be a location I’d ever want to work in.
I went right to the first trailer where there was a light, and knocked on the metal door. Kids’ toys were lying in the gravel around the little wood steps, and I could hear talking on TV that suddenly went off. I heard a woman’s voice talking, and then the door opened wide.
A large Negro woman with a wide, friendly face stood in the doorway. She smiled at me and moved forward as if she was going to come out, but she stopped at the top step. There was a little Negro boy behind her peeping out from behind her legs, watching me with his eyes half closed. The trailer had that feeling that no one else was inside, which was a feeling I knew something about.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” I said. “But I’ve run up on a little bad luck tonight. My name’s Earl Middleton.”
The woman looked at me, then out into the night toward the freeway as if what I had said was something she was going to be able to see. “What kind of bad luck?” she said, looking down at me again.
“My car broke down out on the highway,” I said. “I can’t fix it myself, and I wondered if I could use your phone to call for help.”
The woman smiled down at me knowingly. “We can’t live without cars, can we?”
“That’s the honest truth,” I said.
“They’re like our hearts,” she said, her face shining in the little bulb light that burned beside the door. “Where’s your car situated?”
I turned and looked over into the dark, but I couldn’t see anything because of where we’d put it. “It’s over there,” I said. “You can’t see it in the dark.”
“Who all’s with you now?” the woman said. “Have you got your wife with you?”
“She’s with my little girl and our dog in the car,” I said. “My daughter’s asleep or I would have brought them.”
“They shouldn’t be left in the dark by themselves,” the woman said and frowned. “There’s too much unsavoriness out there.”
“The best I can do is hurry back.” I tried to look sincere, since everything except Cheryl being asleep and Edna being my wife was the truth. The truth is meant to serve you if you’ll let it, and I wanted it to serve me. “I’ll pay for the phone call,” I said. “If you’ll bring the phone to the door I’ll call from right here.”
The woman looked at me again as if she was searching for a truth of her own, then back out into the night. She was maybe in her sixties, but I couldn’t say for sure. “You’re not going to rob me, are you, Mr. Middleton?” She smiled like it was a joke between us.
“Not tonight,” I said, and smiled a genuine smile. “I’m not up to it tonight. Maybe another time.”
“Then I guess Terrel and I can let you use our phone with Daddy not here, can’t we, Terrel? This is my grandson, Terrel Junior, Mr. Middleton.” She put her hand on the boy’s head and looked down at him. “Terrel won’t talk. Though if he did he’d tell you to use our phone. He’s a sweet boy.” She opened the screen for me to come in.
The trailer was a big one with a new rug and a new couch and a living room that expanded to give the space of a real house. Something good and sweet was cooking in the kitchen, and the trailer felt like it was somebody’s comfortable new home instead of just temporary. I’ve lived in trailers, but they were just snailbacks with one room and no toilet, and they always felt cramped and unhappy—though I’ve thought maybe it might’ve been me that was unhappy in them.
There was a big Sony TV and a lot of kids’ toys scattered on the floor. I recognized a Greyhound bus I’d gotten for Cheryl. The phone was beside a new leather recliner, and the Negro woman pointed for me to sit down and call and gave me the phone book. Terrel began fingering his toys and the woman sat on the couch while I called, watching me and smiling.
There were three listings for cab companies, all with one number different. I called the numbers in order and didn’t get an answer until the last one, which answered with the name of the second company. I said I was on the highway beyond the interstate and that my wife and family needed to be taken to town and I would arrange for a tow later. While I was giving the location, I looked up the name of a tow service to tell the driver in case he asked.
When I hung up, the Negro woman was sitting looking at me with the same look she had been staring with into the dark, a look that seemed to want truth. She was smiling, though. Something pleased her and I reminded her of it.
“This is a very nice home,” I said, resting in the recliner, which felt like the driver’s seat of the Mercedes, and where I’d have been happy to stay.
“This isn’t our house, Mr. Middleton,” the Negro woman said. “The company owns these. They give them to us for nothing. We have our own home in Rockford, Illinois.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said.
“It’s never wonderful when you have to be away from home, Mr. Middleton, though we’re only here three months, and it’ll be easier when Terrel Junior begins his special school. You see, our son was killed in the war, and his wife ran off without Terrel Junior. Though you shouldn’t worry. He can’t understand us. His little feelings can’t be hurt.” The woman folded her hands in her lap and smiled in a satisfied way. She was an attractive woman, and had on a blue-and-pink floral dress that made her seem bigger than she could’ve been, just the right woman to sit on the couch she was sitting on. She was good nature’s picture, and I was glad she could be, with her little brain-damaged boy, living in a place where no one in his right mind would want to live a minute. “Where do you live, Mr. Middleton?” she said politely, smiling in the same sympathetic way.
“My family and I are in transit,” I said. “I’m an ophthalmologist, and we’re moving back to Florida, where I’m from. I’m setting up practice in some little town where it’s warm year-round. I haven’t decided where.”
“Florida’s a wonderful place,” the woman said. “I think Terrel would like it there.”
“Could I ask you something?” I said.
“You certainly may,” the woman said. Terrel had begun pushing his Greyhound across the front of the TV screen, making a scratch that no one watching the set could miss. “Stop that, Terrel Junior,” the woman said quiedy. But Terrel kept pushing his bus on the glass, and she smiled at me again as if we both understood something sad. Except I knew Cheryl would never damage a televisi
on set. She had respect for nice things, and I was sorry for the lady that Terrel didn’t. “What did you want to ask?” the woman said.
“What goes on in that plant or whatever it is back there beyond these trailers, where all the lights are on?”
“Gold,” the woman said and smiled.
“It’s what?” I said.
“Gold,” the Negro woman said, smiling as she had for almost all the time I’d been there. “It’s a gold mine.”
“They’re mining gold back there?” I said, pointing.
“Every night and every day.” She smiled in a pleased way.
“Does your husband work there?” I said.
“He’s the assayer,” she said. “He controls the quality. He works three months a year, and we live the rest of the time at home in Rockford. We’ve waited a long time for this. We’ve been happy to have our grandson, but I won’t say I’ll be sorry to have him go. We’re ready to start our lives over.” She smiled broadly at me and then at Terrel, who was giving her a spiteful look from the floor. “You said you had a daughter,” the Negro woman said. “And what’s her name?”
“Irma Cheryl,” I said. “She’s named for my mother.”
“That’s nice. And she’s healthy, too. I can see it in your face.” She looked at Terrel Junior with pity.
“I guess I’m lucky,” I said.
“So far you are. But children bring you grief, the same way they bring you joy. We were unhappy for a long time before my husband got his job in the gold mine. Now, when Terrel starts to school, we’ll be kids again.” She stood up. “You might miss your cab, Mr. Middleton,” she said, walking toward the door, though not to be forcing me out. She was too polite. “If we can’t see your car, the cab surely won’t be able to.”
“That’s true.” I got up off the recliner, where I’d been so comfortable. “None of us have eaten yet, and your food makes me know how hungry we probably all are.”
“There are fine restaurants in town, and you’ll find them,” the Negro woman said. “I’m sorry you didn’t meet my husband. He’s a wonderful man. He’s everything to me.”
“Tell him I appreciate the phone,” I said. “You saved me.”
“You weren’t hard to save,” the woman said. “Saving people is what we were all put on earth to do. I just passed you on to whatever’s coming to you.”
“Let’s hope it’s good,” I said, stepping back into the dark.
“I’ll be hoping, Mr. Middleton. Terrel and I will both be hoping.”
I waved to her as I walked out into the darkness toward the car where it was hidden in the night.
The cab had already arrived when I got there. I could see its little red-and-green roof lights all the way across the dry wash, and it made me worry that Edna was already saying something to get us in trouble, something about the car or where we’d come from, something that would cast suspicion on us. I thought, then, how I never planned things well enough. There was always a gap between my plan and what happened, and I only responded to things as they came along and hoped I wouldn’t get in trouble. I was an offender in the law’s eyes. But I always thought differently, as if I weren’t an offender and had no intention of being one, which was the truth. But as I read on a napkin once, between the idea and the act a whole kingdom lies. And I had a hard time with my acts, which were oftentimes offender’s acts, and my ideas, which were as good as the gold they mined there where the bright lights were blazing.
“We’re waiting for you, Daddy,” Cheryl said when I crossed the road. “The taxicab’s already here.”
“I see, hon,” I said, and gave Cheryl a big hug. The cabdriver was sitting in the driver’s seat having a smoke with the lights on inside. Edna was leaning against the back of the cab between the taillights, wearing her Bailey hat. “What’d you tell him?” I said when I got close.
“Nothing,” she said. “What’s there to tell?”
“Did he see the car?”
She glanced over in the direction of the trees where we had hid the Mercedes. Nothing was visible in the darkness, though I could hear Little Duke combing around in the underbrush tracking something, his little collar tinkling. “Where’re we going?” she said. “Fm so hungry I could pass out.”
“Edna’s in a terrible mood,” Cheryl said. “She already snapped at me.”
“We’re tired, honey,” I said. “So try to be nicer.”
“She’s never nice,” Cheryl said.
“Run go get Little Duke,” I said. “And hurry back.”
“I guess my questions come last here, right?” Edna said.
I put my arm around her. “That’s not true.”
“Did you find somebody over there in the trailers you’d rather stay with? You were gone long enough.”
“That’s not a thing to say,” I said. “I was just trying to make things look right, so we don’t get put in jail.”
“So you don’t, you mean.” Edna laughed a little laugh I didn’t like hearing.
“That’s right. So I don’t,” I said. “I’d be the one in Dutch.” I stared out at the big, lighted assemblage of white buildings and white lights beyond the trailer community, plumes of white smoke escaping up into the heartless Wyoming sky, the whole company of buildings looking like some unbelievable casde, humming away in a distorted dream. “You know what all those buildings are there?” I said to Edna, who hadn’t moved and who didn’t really seem to care if she ever moved anymore ever.
“No. But I can’t say it matters, because it isn’t a motel and it isn’t a restaurant.”
“It’s a gold mine,” I said, staring at the gold mine, which, I knew now, was a greater distance from us than it seemed, though it seemed huge and near, up against the cold sky. I thought there should’ve been a wall around it with guards instead of just the lights and no fence. It seemed as if anyone could go in and take what they wanted, just the way I had gone up to that woman’s trailer and used the telephone, though that obviously wasn’t true.
Edna began to laugh then. Not the mean laugh I didn’t like, but a laugh that had something caring behind it, a full laugh that enjoyed a joke, a laugh she was laughing the first time I laid eyes on her, in Missoula in the East Gate Bar in 1979, a laugh we used to laugh together when Cheryl was still with her mother and I was working steady at the track and not stealing cars or passing bogus checks to merchants. A better time all around. And for some reason it made me laugh just hearing her, and we both stood there behind the cab in the dark, laughing at the gold mine in the desert, me with my arm around her and Cheryl out rusding up Little Duke and the cabdriver smoking in the cab and our stolen Mercedes-Benz, which I’d had such hopes for in Florida, stuck up to its axle in sand, where I’d never get to see it again.
“I always wondered what a gold mine would look like when I saw it,” Edna said, still laughing, wiping a tear from her eye.
“Me too,” I said. “I was always curious about it.”
“We’re a couple of fools, aren’t we, Earl?” she said, unable to quit laughing completely. “We’re two of a kind.”
“It might be a good sign, though,” I said.
“How could it be? It’s not our gold mine. There aren’t any drive-up windows.” She was still laughing.
“We’ve seen it,” I said, pointing. “That’s it right there. It may mean we’re getting closer. Some people never see it at all.”
“In a pig’s eye, Earl,” she said. “You and me see it in a pig’s eye.”
And she turned and got in the cab to go.
The cabdriver didn’t ask anything about our car or where it was, to mean he’d noticed something queer. All of which made me feel like we had made a clean break from the car and couldn’t be connected with it until it was too late, if ever. The driver told us a lot about Rock Springs while he drove, that because of the gold mine a lot of people had moved there in just six months, people from all over, including New York, and that most of them lived out in the trailers. Prostitutes from New York
City, who he called “B-girls,” had come into town, he said, on the prosperity tide, and Cadillacs with New York plates cruised the little streets every night, full of Negroes with big hats who ran the women. He told us that everybody who got in his cab now wanted to know where the women were, and when he got our call he almost didn’t come because some of the trailers were brothels operated by the mine for engineers and computer people away from home. He said he got tired of running back and forth out there just for vile business. He said that 60 Minutes had even done a program about Rdck Springs and that a blow-up had resulted in Cheyenne, though nothing could be done unless the boom left town. “It’s prosperity’s fruit,” the driver said. “I’d rather be poor, which is lucky for me.”
He said all the motels were sky-high, but since we were a family he could show us a nice one that was affordable. But I told him we wanted a first-rate place where they took animals, and the money didn’t matter because we had had a hard day and wanted to finish on a high note. I also knew that it was in the little nowhere places that the police look for you and find you. People Fd known were always being arrested in cheap hotels and tourist courts with names you’d never heard of before. Never in Holiday Inns or TraveLodges.
I asked him to drive us to the middle of town and back out again so Cheryl could see the train station, and while we were there I saw a pink Cadillac with New York plates and a TV aerial being driven slowly by a Negro in a big hat down a narrow street where there were just bars and a Chinese restaurant. It was an odd sight, nothing you could ever expect.
“There’s your pure criminal element,” the cabdriver said and seemed sad. “I’m sorry for people like you to see a thing like that. We’ve got a nice town here, but there’re some that want to ruin it for everybody. There used to be a way to deal with trash and criminals, but those days are gone forever.”
“You said it,” Edna said.
“You shouldn’t let it get you down,” I said to him. “There’s more of you than them. And there always will be. You’re the best advertisement this town has. I know Cheryl will remember you and not that man, won’t you, honey?” But Cheryl was alseep by then, holding Little Duke in her arms on the taxi seat.