Rain was flooding the side of the road. “I’ll follow you to the truck stop. Just stay in the right lane and click your flashers on.”
She nodded, smeared the rain off her face and rolled the window up. She tried to take a deep breath but it didn’t get very far. She opened and slammed the door, which did little to lock it shut. She shut it again, but the hinge was bent and, judging by the sound of metal on metal, had been for a while.
She dropped the stick to drive, rolled up her window, and eased off the side of the road, slinging mud out of the right tire. The left spun on the asphalt. The car fishtailed. Two eyes stared at me out of the backseat.
CHAPTER THREE
Dear God,
I figure you already know everything I need to tell you. If you don’t then you ain’t much of a God. Certainly not The God. Momma says God would know. And if God was really God then He would be pissed. I’m writing you ’cause we don’t never stay nowhere long enough for me to find a real pen pal. Plus, Momma told me to. Remember the train station? We were sitting on that bench in that town with the name I can’t remember, just Momma and me, and she was rubbing her hands together, and we didn’t have no ticket to nowhere and no money and no nothing and I kept bugging her and asking her to tell me who to write ’cause somebody needed to know about us. Somebody other than us needed to care about our life, which was real bad but it was ours so anyway she’s rubbing her face and sweating and pacing back and forth and trains are coming and going and nighttime was coming and I didn’t want to sleep in that station another night and I jabbed my pencil into this book and I said Momma, who can I write? And she looks at me and tells me not to raise my voice at her. Can’t I see she’s got enough going on. And when I started crying and threw this book at her she went and picked it up and straightened all the pages and then she sat down and put her arm around me and she cried too, which she don’t do much ’cause she’s trying to be strong but she cried then and she cried hard, I know ’cause she was shaking and she couldn’t catch her breath and then she was quiet a while and finally she picked me up and carried me through this door that said “chapel” and it wasn’t nothing more than a broom closet without the broom but with a stained-glass and bleeding Jesus hanging crooked on the wall that reminded me of one of those velvet Elvises you see hanging at closed gas stations and we spent the night in there and a couple hours later when the trains had quit coming and going and she was combing my hair with her fingers she looked at me and said, God, baby. He’ll listen. He’ll be your pen pal. You can write God. So, you’re stuck with me. I know you’re busy with hungry people and folks dying and disease and all kinds of bad stuff but when I asked Momma about you and having the time for me she just smiled and told me that you can walk and chew gum at the same time, which I think means you can do more than one thing at a time so if I’m bugging you then just tell me and I’ll try to write shorter letters.
I haven’t written much lately ’cause, well—I guess you know. Anyway, I can’t talk to Momma about it ’cause it hurts her too much to hear it and come to think about it it hurts me too much to say it and, well, I don’t really know where to start so I’ll just start right here—Momma found out about the… you know, and she blew a fuse. Like I ain’t never seen. She grabbed me and we took off. Said we were “getting the hell out of there.” Sorry to cuss at you but that’s what she said as we ran to the car. I’m just repeating it and repeating it ain’t a sin ’cause it didn’t start with me.
She stole this car. It was the neighbor’s and she wasn’t driving it. Just letting her cats sleep in it. She won’t miss it none. Anyway, we stole it and Momma’s been breaking every speed limit we see. By a lot, too. She says we’re headed to her sister’s. Told me not to worry. Says when we get there, she can get a job and we’ll be fine. Just fine. She said it twice, which means she don’t believe it none neither. Says there’s lots of jobs in New Orleans. She can go back to Wally World and they’ll transfer her job to wherever she’s living at the time. She says they’re good about that. They like her ’cause she’s always on time and never stole nothing like the other cashiers. And at her sisters, she says we’ll have our own room. Upstairs. Overlooking the water and the lights of the city. And we can have clean sheets every night ’cause her sister’s got a washing machine. Says there’s always something going on in New Orleans. Always a party. I’m not so sure. I know I’m just ten, but sometimes I think she tells me things to make me feel better even though they ain’t true and they ain’t never gonna be.
My blanket is dirty. I asked Momma if we could get a new one and she rubbed her hands and put her hand on her forehead, which told me it cost money and we didn’t have none of that so I took it in the bathroom at the rest area and tried to wash it out with the pink hand soap and then held it under that hair dryer mounted on the wall but it didn’t do no good. I tried to find a word to describe it. I think I found one. “Bedraggled.” I think it fits. Anyway, it’s real dirty and looks like I been dragging it in the mud.
It’s raining. I better go. Momma just cussed, twice, ’cause the engine quit and now we’re sitting in the middle of the highway with headlights getting closer.
It’s been a few minutes. This man stopped to help us. Actually, he bumped into us, Momma cussed him out and he just tipped his hat and helped us, which I thought was strange. He looks like a cowboy. Wears one of those long raincoats you see in the movies. Gave us some gas. Looked through the window at me. Momma pulled the hood latch and he fiddled with something. The engine don’t sound as bad. He told us about a truck stop up ahead. Said he’d follow us.
He is. I just looked.
Momma once told me she’s got a tumbleweed heart. I didn’t know what it was so I looked it up. It’s a bush that dries up ’cause its water source goes away, then, once it’s sucked dry and dead, it rolls around in the wind. Or, tumbles. That’s how it got its name. You’ve seen them in old Western movies.
Momma just asked me how I’m feeling. I said fine. But between you and me I feel like a dirty tumbleweed. Just rolling ’round in the wind. No roots. No place to set down. Nothing to call home. And you know when you see a tumbleweed rolling around those old movies, the movie always ends before you get to see what happened to it.
But, looking back on it, I don’t think it’s real good.
CHAPTER FOUR
The rain had driven most of the trucks on I-10 off the interstate and into the flooded truck stop parking lot. Must have been two hundred trucks sitting in six to eight inches of water. She parked underneath the canopy overhang and sat long enough for the windows to fog up. I tapped on the window. A crack appeared. “There’s oil inside.” The landscape was a tightly packed sea of parallel trailers. “If you have anything valuable, I wouldn’t leave it lying around.”
She nodded and rolled up the window. Her eyes were darting all over the place.
I grabbed my bag, and headed for the showers. Twenty minutes later, shaved, clean, and feeling more human, I dropped my bag in my truck and saw that her car was gone. Nothing but a big black oil spot remained. She wouldn’t make it far.
I took a seat at a booth in the corner and a waitress named Alice appeared with a pot of hot coffee, a dirty apron, and an empty mug. I looked up. At one time, Alice had been good looking. The “A” in her name tag had worn off. She smiled. Several teeth were missing. “Baby…” Her voice was sweet, and cigarette raspy. “What you need?”
“Just an egg sandwich with cheese. Please, ma’am.”
She set down the cup, filled it, and patted me on the shoulder. “You got it, baby.” Her white uniform shoes were run down. Greasy. Yellowed. The years had not been kind to her.
I bought a paper and made it halfway down the first column before the picture of that wood-paneled station wagon reappeared in my mind. Then my mind played a trick on me and I heard that cough. I made it to page two before I heard it again. I looked up over the paper and caught movement out of the corner of my eye.
She was wrapped in
a worn fleece blanket that, at one time, had been cream-colored and printed with Disney characters. Now it was a dirty brown and most of the characters had blended in or worn off. One frayed corner dragged the ground. Something red had dried and smeared in one corner. She coughed slightly, one hand covering her mouth. Tight, labored, and mucus-filled. She crept around the far end of the diner, away from Alice, slowly eyeing each tabletop. When Alice disappeared toward the kitchen, the girl approached a table where a tip had been left. A few dollar bills and some coins. Glancing over her right shoulder, she slipped her hand out of the blanket, across the table and took one quarter. Six minutes later, when the two guys down from me stood and left a similar tip, she reappeared, quickly scanned, and stole a second quarter.
Alice appeared at my table with my egg sandwich just about the time the girl’s fingers clasp around the coin only to disappear back under her blanket. Alice put her hand on her hip and muttered, “Well, I’ll be a—”
I put my hand on her arm and shook my head. Alice watched the little girl leave, and muttered, “What’s the world coming to?”
I reached in my wallet, and gave her a ten-dollar bill. “Will this cover it?”
Alice smiled at me and slid the money into the top of her bra. She leaned on the table and the front of her dress hung open exposing two sagging bosoms. “Are you married?”
“No, ma’am.”
Alice raised one eyebrow and shook her shoulders. “You want to be?”
“It’s tempting, but… I’m still trying to get… unraveled from the first one.”
She patted me on the shoulder. “Baby, I know what you mean.” She stood, ran her fingers through my hair and walked back toward the kitchen keeping her eyes on the girl.
The girl walked the aisles of the convenience store next to the restaurant. She paused in the medicine aisle, then walked down to the trinket aisle where they sell all the crap that kids look at and bug their parents about but is absolutely worthless. She stopped a long time at one thing but I couldn’t tell what it was. She pulled it off the rack, flipped it over, looked up at the counter and then she eyed the LOTTERY sign. She hung whatever was in her hand back on the rack, wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, coughed three times hard enough to bend her double at the waist, and then took a long look into the restaurant. When she walked around the aisle and disappeared from sight, I emptied a handful of change and six dollar bills on the table two down from me.
The girl reappeared at the end of the row of booths, shuffling close along the edges of the tables with her head low. Wrapped in the blanket, I still couldn’t see what she looked like. About this time, I started wondering what happened to her mother who I hadn’t seen since the side of the highway. Least, I assumed it was her mother.
The girl reached the table two down from me and paused, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. I hunkered over the sports page. She reached out, grabbed one quarter, then returned her hand to inside the blanket. She took one step, then stopped and looked down into both her hands. Her lips moved, then she turned her head to look at all the money remaining on the table. She coughed again, covering her mouth, then slipped her hand out, grabbed a second quarter and walked out of the restaurant.
I finished my sandwich, paid Alice, and meandered into the convenience store, stopping in the children’s crap aisle. Didn’t take me long to find it.
Tinker Bell stickers.
I pulled two packs off the rack and approached the counter where the girl stood swaying back and forth—her head just extending over the counter. She laid four quarters on the laminate surface. Her voice was constricted, “I’d like to buy a lottery ticket, please.”
The woman at the register laughed and tapped the sign above her head with a pencil she slipped from her beehive. “Child… you got to be eighteen. How old are you?”
Her eyes never left the lady at the register. “Eighteen… minus the eight part.”
The lady leaned on the counter. “Child, if I sell you a ticket, I could lose my job.”
I laid the stickers on the counter next to the four quarters and paid no attention to the kid. “Howdy. I need sixty on pump seven, these stickers, and one lottery ticket.”
The kid stepped back and eyed her quarters. She shook her head, mumbled something I couldn’t hear, slid the quarters off the counter, and shuffled back toward the restaurant. I walked out the side door and began pumping the gas. I leaned against my truck, and stared back through the window at the kid crouched in a corner watching Alice. When Alice disappeared into the kitchen, the kid crept into the restaurant, laid four coins on the table nearest the door and walked out.
I scratched my head and stared down the highway. I have a thing in the back of my brain that starts dinging when something doesn’t set right. At the moment, it was banging pretty good.
I refilled the five-gallon tank in the back, screwed on both caps, and walked back toward the trashcan where the kid was leaning against the window. The glass had fogged up in front of her mouth. I walked inside and laid the lottery ticket on the frame next to her cheek. She stepped back, looked at the ticket, wrapped her blanket tighter around her and didn’t look at me. I spoke softly. “I was a kid once, too.”
Dirty fingers came out of the blanket and hovered over the ticket. “My mom told me not to take stuff from strangers.”
“Did she also tell you not to talk to them?” The kid nodded. “Good. Don’t talk to us, don’t take anything from us, and don’t ever, not ever, get in a car with one. You understand?”
A slow nod.
“Where’s your mom?”
She shrugged and her eyes darted left and right, skimming the floor. “Don’t know.”
I stared out over her shoulder, over the fogged-up section on the glass, across the parking lot and toward the intersection that led into the truck stop. At the corner, where the four lanes intersect, a woman stood in the rain holding a cardboard sign. I swore beneath my breath.
The girl looked up at me. “You shouldn’t cuss.” A weak cough. More of a tickle. “God don’t like it.”
“Seems like I remember hearing something about him not liking thieves neither.”
She flushed and shot a glance toward the restaurant. She pulled her hand back inside the blanket, leaving the ticket on the windowsill. “It’s not for me.”
“Yeah? Who?”
Her eyes darted to the intersection.
I reached in my pocket and set a penny on the sill next to the ticket. “Well… some lucky stranger might win…” I stared up at the marquee. “This is one of those quick pick deals where you can win a couple million bucks when three of the numbers match.”
Two hands came out. One grabbed the penny. The other, the ticket. She scratched furiously then turned it sideways, studying the numbers. None matched. She flicked it like a playing card and walked off. The ticket fluttered, spun, and returned like a boomerang, landing on my toe.
The girl was making her way toward the far corner of the parking lot where the station wagon sat in the shadows. She skirted a puddle, pulled away the sheet serving as the right rear window, climbed in and pulled the soaking sheet back across the window frame.
I swore again. This time louder.
CHAPTER FIVE
I cranked my truck, dropped it in drive and sat watching the intersection through my binoculars. The sign she held read, PLEASE HELP. GOD BLESS. The rain had slowed but was still falling, as was the temperature. Upper thirties. I could see her breath from the warmth of my seat. Maybe the last cold front of the year. The kid in the car had to be cold, too. I rubbed my forehead.
One of the passing trucks threw a hamburger wrapper at the woman on the corner. I pushed my hat back, and backed into a corner of the lot where I could see.
Thirty minutes later, the parking lot filled with trucks and the intersection quiet, the woman sailed her sign like a Frisbee into the ditch and then started making her way down the long row of semis—knocking on doors. Her clothes were drench
ed.
I rolled a cigarette and watched her talking with the drivers. The first seven shook their heads. The eighth deliberated, then shook his head. The ninth—a big man with an even bigger gut, looked around the parking lot, rubbed his hand through his beard, scratched his behemoth belly, then smiled and welcomed her up into the cab.
That was my cue.
I pulled on my slicker and my hat and set the unlit cigarette on the base of a lamp pole on the only dry spot I could find. I wove my way around the trucks, through clouds of spent diesel fumes, stopping just shy of his cab. His trailer was sitting low on the rear wheels. I waited, listening. About sixty seconds later, I heard the raised voices followed by the smacks and screams.
I didn’t used to be a flashlight nut but you spend enough time walking around in the dark and you come to appreciate a good light. SureFire makes one of the best. Something the size of your palm can light up the world. Mine did. I put my foot on the step, took a deep breath, put the flashlight in my left hand, and pulled on the door.
I swung into the cab, lit up the sleeping quarters and found him trying to do to her what he was paying her to let him do. Problem was, the thing he needed to do it with wasn’t cooperating. Or, if it was, it had a funny way of showing it. She lay on her back in front of him—available.
He shielded his eyes. “What the…?” He was not happy but his pants were crumpled at his ankles so I knew he wouldn’t be making any drastic movements. At least any that were successful.
I clicked the switch above my head and turned on the cabin lights. He liked that even less. She reached for her clothes and covered up. Her nose was bleeding and her lip was already puffy. Her glasses hung bent on her face. She turned and spat blood on his sheets. She needed to shave her legs a week ago. He made a move to pull up his pants, but I did something I’d done a hundred times before and his response was much the same. I drew from the holster and pointed the muzzle at him.